One of the points that Volodymyr Zelensky made in the now infamous Oval Office confrontation with Donald Trump and JD Vance, was that 20,000 Ukrainian children have been abducted by Russia. No further discussion ensued about this terrible statistic, which is confirmed by other sources. Indeed, Radio Free Europe claims the number of Ukrainian children…
Back in the days of the Wild West in the United States, the primary means of transportation was the stagecoach. We’ve seen people riding in stagecoaches in Western movies. What we might not know is that the stagecoach had three different classes of tickets. However, the distinction between classes had nothing to do with the…
The new programme for Government informs that it will “prioritise a radical step change in housing supply to rise to that fundamental challenge” and “build on the momentum generated to achieve our target of delivering more than 300,000 new homes by the end of 2030”. Considering there were just over 30,000 homes built last year,…
Perfectly reasonable for academics to call for Ireland’s neutrality to be kept under active review, writes Michael Sanfey There’s a song that used to be sung by football fans to taunt the rival team’s supporters – ‘Oh you’re all very quiet over there’. This ditty applies well to some Irish academics and public intellectuals who…
Easter might be late this year, but Lent has come early for a group of Irish men, who have signed up for ‘spiritual bootcamp’. While the Lenten journey is 40 days, an estimated 1,000 Irish men are about halfway through a 90 day experience – which includes daily cold showers and no television. “It’s Lent…
I believe the majority of us favour the flourishing of the Irish language (even if some school pupils do try to obtain exemptions – it’s not an easy subject to master). And in Northern Ireland, as I’ve written previously, I think the Unionists have been daft to try to oppose its introduction: they should have…
In early February, newly appointed Minister for Education, Helen McEntee, announced the final phase of the free textbook scheme. The scheme now extends from primary schools to all post-primary students except those attending fee-charging institutions at a cost so far of €191 million. The Department of Social Protection has instituted free hot school lunches for…
The war in Ukraine has now been raging for three years with hundreds of thousands dead and injured on both sides. A few weeks after the invasion began, I wrote a piece for this newspaper that I think has aged very well. I said: “Here is one very plausible scenario if peace is not arrived…
A Cambridge theologian I once heard asked her audience to consider the importance of the forty days, weeks, years – be it for Christ, 40 days, or Moses and the people of Israel, 40 years. She told us that it was seen in the ancient world as the period of gestation for a human baby…
It took them long enough! Finally, the Iona Institute, whose CEO is David Quinn, a columnist with The Irish Catholic, has had their ban on X (formerly Twitter for those of you as social media disinclined as I am) lifted. Crazily, the ban on advertising on Twitter was imposed in 2019, so the charity (yes, it is a Charity) has been a victim…
Mary Kenny
Martina Purdy
Breda O'Brien
David Quinn