Léargas

  The Re-Conquest of Ireland Well done Mayo in the all-Ireland football final. Commiserations to Kerry. Both teams played their hearts out but in the end Mayo were worthy winners. Next month on August 30 I will be in Ballina, Mayo for the 45th anniversary of the 10 hunger strikers who died during the 1981 hunger strike. The event will also remember the three Mayo Hunger Strikers, Jack McNeela (1940), Michael Gaughan (1974) and Frank Stagg, (1976). 22 Republican prisoners died on hunger strike in the 20 th century. I am always mindful, when talking or writing about the hunger strikers, of their families who throughout the Blanket Protest in the H-Blocks and in Armagh Women’s Prison, endured the trauma of the protest with them. In recollecting that period I have an advantage over most people in that I was in the Cages of Long Kesh when Special Category Status ended and the Blanket Protest commenced in September 1976, when Kieran Nugent bravely refused to wear a convict’s uniform. La...

  Women’s Voices, Hopes for a New Ireland’ Féile an Phobail is the launch pad each year of exiting new projects, and especially new books. One such book this year is ‘ Women’s Voices, Hopes for a New Ireland.’ The book is published by Sinn Féin’s Commission on the Future of Ireland and will launched at 1pm on 4 th August in Áras Uí Chonghaile by Uachtarán Shinn Féin Mary Lou McDonald TD. The book is compiled and edited by Grace McDermott and Aoife Ferguson and is an innovative collection of contributions from 62 women across Ireland and the diaspora sharing their hopes for the future and a new Ireland. The women are drawn from all sections of society. They are writers, actors, musicians, community workers, political activists, health workers. They include Protestant voices. This book is a mixture of written contributions, poetry, song lyrics and artwork. They reflect the experiences of these women to partition and a society that has often held them down, treated them as second-cla...

Another step in the right direction The decision by Micheál Martin last week to oppose Sinn Féin’s “Planning for Constitutional Change Bill 2026” was no real surprise. His opposition to any meaningful planning for Irish Unity has been transparently obvious for many years. Despite Fine Gael spokespersons declaring that Fine Gael would not oppose the Sinn Féin Bill they then chose to support An Taoiseach. No surprise there. Simon Harris is Tánaiste to Micheál Martin’s Taoiseach. For Fine Gael to step away from a united government approach would have likely had serious repercussions for the coalition government. I spent the day in Leinster House on the day of the debate and it was clear from my conversations with some Fianna Fail TDs and the Sinn Féin team, who had spent significant time speaking to TDs from other parties and none, that there is a significant number of them deeply unhappy with ‘The Republican Party’ turning its face against a common sense Bill that would have advanced the...