Léargas

A few years ago I visited NUI Galway to address the students on the peace process. The hall was packed and for reasons I still don’t quite understand there were very few chairs put out for the hundreds of students who turned up. Most sat on the floor and the craic was great. I was back there again on Tuesday. The heir to the British throne, Prince Charles, was in Ireland with his wife Camilla for a four day visit. At the weekend the Sinn Féin Ard Chomhairle met and discussed the party’s approach. On her recent visits to Ireland the British Queen Elizabeth had made clear her desire to be part of a process of reconciliation and healing. The meeting between Martin McGuinness and Queen Elizabeth in Belfast and then subsequently during a state visit by President Michael D, were widely acknowledged as historic and a boost to reconciliation efforts. It was in this context, of peace building, that I raised the possibility of Sinn Féin leaders meeting with Charles during his visit.  ...

There are no certainties in politics or when it comes to ‘ the vote .’ Constitutional decisions are not taken on the basis of opinion polls. The only poll that counts is the one in which citizens exercise their democratic mandate at the poll. Opinion polls may suggest that the marriage equality referendum will be passed on Friday but only the people have the power to make that decision. As we saw recently in Britain opinion polls can be wrong. The British Labour Party was badly mauled, neither of the north’s unionist parties emerged as ‘kingmakers’, and the Tories were returned with a clear and workable majority. None of the polls forecast those outcomes. So, not for the first time the peoples’ wishes confounded the pollsters predictions. If you have a vote in the two referendums in the 26 counties – on marriage equality and the lowering of the age for candidate in Presidential elections – then I am asking that you vote YES. If you don’t have a vote but know someone who does...

    There are lots of lessons to be learned from the Westminster election by all of the parties. The party number crunchers, as well as the political pundits, a host of academics and media columnists, like oracles of old, will closely scrutinise the entrails for sight of the future. Whose vote went up or down? What are the trends? How did this party perform against that one and against past performances? The statisticians will run it all through their computers to divine future outcomes. The short hand is pretty straight forward. The Unionist parties agreed an electoral pact against Sinn Féin and the Alliance Party and it worked in two constituencies – East Belfast and Fermanagh South Tyrone. Despite the Sinn Féin vote rising marginally across the north, and Michelle Gildernew’s campaign attracting the highest vote of any Sinn Féin candidate, the combined unionist vote secured the Fermanagh South Tyrone seat for the Ulster Unionist Party. In the early hour...

The life and death of James Connolly is a story of heroism in the struggle against injustice and inequality.   Connolly was born in 1868 into a poor family in an Irish ghetto in Edinburgh.   He was a self-educated man whose contribution to Ireland and to Irish labour is unequalled.   Connolly first came to Ireland as a member of the British Army. Aged 14, he forged documents to enlist to escape poverty and was posted to Cork, Dublin and later the Curragh in Kildare. Here in Dublin Connolly met Lillie Reynolds and they married in 1890.   First and foremost Connolly was a workers' leader. In 1911 he was appointed Belfast organiser of the Irish Transport and General Workers Union. He organised the workers of Belfast, and especially the linen slaves - those thousands of young women who worked in hellish conditions in the Mills which were the backbone of Belfast’s economy.   In the years before the 1916 Rising, Connolly was central to a wa...

Well the Westminster election is over and the shape of the next British government is now known.   We also know the strengths of the parties in the north. For the political anorak it’s an early Christmas present. The election opens up months, even years of debate and analysis. For most citizens its importance will be in who delivers jobs and housing; peace and prosperity; and how we answer critical questions around the future of the Health Service, and the threat to other public services.   In the immediate term the big question will be whether the Stormont House Agreement can finally be made to work. These are significant challenges, especially given the very different ideological positions the parties hold. And all of this will be made more problematic given that we are only 12 months away from an Assembly election. However, there is another underlying and formidable challenge which must also be addressed. How do we break down the sectarian barriers that have be...

Inné bhí mé ag caint ag Bricfeasta na hAoine, ócáid eagrithe ag Glór na nGael. Bhí slua maith de Ghaeilgeoirí ann. Daoine le Gaeilge ag teacht le chéile ar son phroinn na maidine san ArdChathair. At Bricfeasta na hAoine in Dublin   I spoke as a guest of Glór na nGael. I spoke of my own 'grá' for our native language. Tá mé thar a bheith sásta a bheith libh anseo go moch ar maidin. Tá sé chomh maith go bhfuil an oiread seo daoine a bhfuil suim acu i ndul chun cinn na Gaeilge anseo linn inniu. Go raibh míle maith agaibh as cuireadh a thabhairt dom bheith in bhur measc. Tréaslaím an obair iontach atá idir lámha ag Glór na nGael. Táim den tuairim go gcaithfear an Ghaeilge a scaoileadh saor ón seomra ranga agus beocht a thabhairt di in achan gné den tsaol. Beatha teanga í a labhairt. Tugann Glór na nGael go leor dieseanna do dhaoine an Ghaeilge a labhairt i níos mó áiteanna. Chuir mé féin suim sa teanga nuair a bhí me ag freastal ar bhunscoil Naomh Finian De La ...