The View There can be no doubt that Ireland’s health care services are struggling, as are many of those who work for them. Here are a few facts: The Irish Independent reported this week that 500,000 public patients are waiting to see a specialist. “Some 138,584 of these patients spent the whole of 2017…
The View Ireland has a proud record of environmental protection. It is good to see the concern which enables the continued protection of pygmy stoats, red squirrels, otters, pine martens, badgers, hares, all bat and deer species, the Natterjack Toad and the Common Newt, almost all resident wild birds, the White-clawed Crayfish, the Freshwater…
The View In just a few days Pope Francis will come to Ireland for the World Meeting of the Families. It will be a brief visit and its primary focus will be the family, not the whole Church in Ireland, nor its future nor its past. So what can we realistically expect will happen…
The View The United Kingdom is in a very strange place. The approach to Brexit has been muddled, uninformed and chaotic. It seems that nobody can quite work out what is happening or what should happen. For Ireland there is equal chaos – there is fear that Brexit will result in huge damage to…
The View Although the battle to save the Eighth Amendment was lost, there is still work to do which could result in the saving of many babies’ lives. As I write this article, the draft legislation which will decriminalise abortion in some circumstances has not yet been published. When it is published, there will have…
The View As the dust settles on the repeal of the Eighth Amendment to the Irish Constitution, I watched the joy, the rapture, the excitement, the delight of those who voted ‘Yes’ in the referendum with disbelief. They argue that what they were celebrating was the recognition of a woman’s right to choose what…
The View On May 25, the people of Ireland will be able to vote on whether the Eighth Amendment to the Irish Constitution should be repealed. That amendment reads: ”The State acknowledges the right to life of the unborn and, with due regard to the equal right to life of the mother, guarantees in…
The View The view that an unborn child has the right to life is a view which is shared by millions across the world. You would not think so, listening to some of the media in Ireland at the moment. As long ago as 1924, the Geneva Declaration of the Rights of the Child…
The View As I have listened and watched the arguments for abortion in Ireland, north and south, I have been moved to wonder about all the women who have been unable to conceive a child, or whose babies died in the womb before they were born, and about those whose children were stillborn. How…
The View There are a lot of questions about the forthcoming abortion referendum and the country’s response to it. Perhaps the first question is: does everyone know what the Eighth Amendment actually says? An important question, when the people are about to vote about whether it stays or it goes. It’s not just about…