Andy Pollak – Slugger O'Toole

O’Leary’s conclusion is that Ireland is now simply a better, fairer and more prosperous country than the UK…

Andy Pollak on November 18, 2022, 7:00 am | Readers 5664

I have been reading Making Sense of a United Ireland by the University of Pennsylvania-based Irish political scientist Professor Brendan O’Leary. This is an important book, rich in detail, truth-telling but also hard-nosed. It is the first deeply considered exploration of how and why Irish unity should come about through a Border poll as allowed for by the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. It is not without its flaws, an almost exclusively nationalist reading of the future being the major one. …

“One of the most disturbing features of contemporary Ireland is the almost universal ignorance among the younger generation of the Northern Troubles…”

Andy Pollak on October 31, 2022, 11:00 am | Readers 6912

Una Mullally is a high profile Irish Times columnist: a gay left-wing feminist (although I have never seen or heard her describe herself as a socialist) who is particularly popular among the young. This is not surprising given that one of her recurrent themes is that young Irish people (idealistic, open-minded, liberal in gender and identity politics, probably Sinn Fein inclined) are mobilising to take over the running of this country from old Irish people (reactionary, narrow-minded, Catholic Church-influenced, probably …

What next for Ireland’s Future?

Andy Pollak on October 11, 2022, 7:57 am | Readers 5999

photograph of concrete structures beside tree

I was at the big Ireland’s Future ‘Preparing for a United Ireland:Together we can’ event at Dublin’s 3 Arena earlier this month. There was very little ‘preparing’ in the proceedings – it was more like a ‘Forward to the Promised Land’ rally, with not a voice raised in dissent. Well, maybe one: Fine Gael leader and Tánaiste Leo Varadkar, while saying he believed in a united Ireland, then suggested that the existing structures of the Good Friday Agreement – internal …

The results of the census and the revolt of the masses…

Andy Pollak on October 3, 2022, 8:34 am | Readers 2260

Firstly, and briefly, the 2021 Northern Ireland census results. We know the headline figures well by now, that the number of those who are Catholics or from a Catholic background (at 45.7%) now outnumber the number of people who are Protestants or from a Protestant (or other Christian) background (at 43.5%). Given that Northern Ireland was originally set up as a Protestant state for a Protestant people with a two thirds Protestant majority, that is a truly historic shift. The …

Sinn Féin are winning the peace, as people forget the IRA’s war…

Andy Pollak on September 2, 2022, 7:00 am | Readers 6791

Sinn Fein are winning the post-1998 peace. They are now the largest party in Northern Ireland, and almost certainly will be the largest party in the Republic after the next election. A combination of internal and external events have come together to make their brand of ‘left populism’ (housing spokesman’s Eoin Ó Broin’s telling phrase) seem unstoppable. The housing crisis in the South and the chaotic aftermath of Brexit, the Covid pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis caused by the Ukraine …

Mary Lou McDonald and the forgotten people of the Northern Ireland ‘Troubles’…

Andy Pollak on August 17, 2022, 7:00 am | Readers 6101

Silent!

My core contention in writing this column is that for more than 400 years there have been two clashing politico-religious cultures on this island – Catholic nationalist and Protestant unionist – and that for the past century these have been forced into the ‘narrow ground’ of Northern Ireland, with disastrous consequences for all concerned. I hold that before Irish people can come together peacefully and harmoniously in the same political unit, there have to be mechanisms in place to allow …

I prefer good art and archaeology to bad politics

Andy Pollak on October 31, 2014, 5:35 pm | Readers 830

Taken from Andy Pollak’s monthly blog… Sometimes the sheer badness of politics in Northern Ireland takes my breath away (badness=bad faith, lying, incompetence, being mired in the past). Take the third week of October, for example. Peter Robinson boycotted the opening meeting of the British government initiated all-party talks he had himself called for to deal with the deadlock between the DUP and Sinn Fein on a wide range of issues which has led to the North being largely ungoverned …

While Britain and Europe’s tectonic plates move, we argue about Orangemen and Ardoyne

Andy Pollak on April 12, 2014, 3:37 pm | Readers 83

[This is taken from Andy Pollak’s monthly blog www.2irelands2gether.com] What is the strategic issue causing senior people in the Irish Department of Foreign affairs to lose their sleep these nights? In the week that Michael D. Higgins paid the first ever, spectacularly successful state visit by an Irish President to Britain, it is the possible break-up of the United Kingdom and its exit from the European Union. In September the Scottish people will vote on independence.As Jonathan Powell, Tony Blair’s …

Would Bobby Sands have agreed with cross-border teacher training?

Andy Pollak on October 25, 2013, 1:18 pm | Readers 99

A republican acquaintance of mine once said that Bobby Sands didn’t die for cross-border teacher training. I’m very sorry that Bobby Sands had to die at all. I don’t believe his cause, the IRA’s armed struggle (or terrorist campaign, depending on your point of view) to unite Northern Ireland with the rest of the island, was worth one death, let alone the more than the three and a half thousand it led to between 1968 and 1998. Cross-border teacher training …

A Cross-Border Gun for Hire

Andy Pollak on June 26, 2013, 4:27 pm | Readers 71

So, after nearly 14 years, it is time to say farewell to the Centre for Cross Border Studies – although not to this blog, which is migrating to a new site (see below). We have done some good things in our small centre in Armagh during that time, and I must pay tribute to my colleagues for their huge support and extremely hard work: incoming director Ruth Taillon, particularly for her superb work on impact assessment; deputy director Mairead Hughes, …

My Top 14 cross-border co-operators in Ireland

Andy Pollak on May 29, 2013, 4:30 pm | Readers 100

Since this is my penultimate ‘Note’ before I stand down as director of the Centre for Cross Border Studies, I am going to use it to nominate my personal Top 14 cross-border co-operators, one for every year since the Centre was founded in 1999. There is no doubt that the pioneers of cross-border cooperation are passing on: some, like the intellectual leader of the movement, Sir George Quigley, and the valiant unionist headmaster from Portadown, Billy Tate, have gone to …

‘Note from the Next Door Neighbours’: a 90 second read from South Armagh

Andy Pollak on May 2, 2013, 8:57 am | Readers 77

Two good news stories from South Armagh and Social Welfare In a small village in South Armagh something rather wonderful is beginning to take shape. After some difficult early years the Middletown Centre for Autism, a North/South body whose mission is to create a centre for excellence in Ireland for the education of children and young people with autism spectrum disorders, is beginning to take off. In 2009 the Centre, set up two years earlier with funding from the two …

A LAST PLEA FROM SIR GEORGE QUIGLEY FOR MORE NORTH-SOUTH COOPERATION

Andy Pollak on March 27, 2013, 3:31 pm | Readers 112

Sir George Quigley died on 3 March after a long and full life of service to Northern Ireland and Ireland. He was as near as a small place like Northern Ireland gets to a Renaissance man: head of four government departments; chairman of Ulster Bank and Bombardier; the tireless chair of numerous public bodies in both parts of Ireland; leader of the campaign for lower corporation tax; author of a mould-breaking report on contentious parades; overseer of loyalist arms decommissioning …

Time to Reach Out a Southern Hand to Unionists

Andy Pollak on February 27, 2013, 3:12 pm | Readers 182

In a thought-provoking blog on the new 15 Years On site (http://15yearson.wordpress.com) this month, former Community Relations Council director Duncan Morrow lists all the promised reforms in Northern Ireland since 1998 which have not been realised: a Single Equality Bill, a Shared Future, the Review of Public Administration, Dealing with the Past, educational reform, youth work, parades, Irish language, flags, shared housing and cross-community development. He warns that if politicians and people in Northern Ireland ‘can’t muster the energy’ to …

The Centre Roars Back with New Funding and a New Shared Blog

Andy Pollak on January 31, 2013, 4:13 pm | Readers 38

Nearly two years ago I wrote a ‘Note’ saying that the Centre for Cross Border Studies had 15-18 months funding left, we were starting to feel a little nervous, and were appealing to our readers and supporters for some good new ideas for cross-border cooperation in Ireland. In the event we generated most of those new ideas within the Centre’s four walls in Armagh, with my colleague Ruth Taillon coming up with a disproportionate share of them. These ideas – …

What will be the impact on the Irish border if the UK leaves the EU?

Andy Pollak on January 7, 2013, 10:29 am | Readers 545

After last year’s hugely successful visit by Queen Elizabeth to the Republic and a joint communiqué of extraordinary warmth following last March’s summit between David Cameron and Enda Kenny, British-Irish relations were generally considered to have reached a closeness unprecedented in more than 90 years since Irish independence and partition. In July the Irish ambassador to Britain, Bobby McDonagh, spoke of the elements that went into this successful relationship. The first of these was Britain and Ireland’s shared membership of …

An Essential Cross-Border Information Service

Andy Pollak on November 28, 2012, 2:40 pm | Readers 70

For the second month running I am unashamedly going to blow the Centre for Cross Border Studies’ trumpet. Because the Centre does not only write about cross-border cooperation in Ireland; it not only researches such cross-border cooperation – it also does practical cooperation between the two parts of this island. Last month I wrote about the cooperation and exchanges it manages between teacher educators and student teachers. This month I am going to write about another unique and innovative cross-border …

An Incredible Achievement for Teacher Education

Andy Pollak on October 31, 2012, 3:32 pm | Readers 45

As a rule I try to avoid using this column as a way to blow the Centre for Cross Border Studies’ trumpet. But given the Irish and Northern Irish media’s almost total lack of interest in things cross-border, I sometimes can’t resist the temptation to tell a particular success story that the Centre is involved with. One of these is the rather clumsily titled Standing Conference on Teacher Education North and South, or SCoTENS as it is more commonly known. …

The Challenge of Turning Goodwill into Cooperation

Andy Pollak on September 26, 2012, 3:17 pm | Readers 56

Regular readers of this ‘note’ will know that I have certain obsessions which keep re-surfacing: the need to upgrade the Belfast-Dublin rail line; the exhortation to Northern Irish people to fully enjoy both their identities, Irish and British; the need for more people-to-people cooperation across the border; and the imperative for the public sectors in the two Irish jurisdictions to work more closely together to provide joint services for the benefit of both their peoples. It is to this last …

Does the South really want the North as part of Ireland?

Andy Pollak on August 22, 2012, 3:23 pm | Readers 4577

A Note from the Next Door Neighbours (72) August 2012 DOES THE SOUTH REALLY WANT THE NORTH AS PART OF IRELAND? It is difficult to overstate the lack of interest there is among people in the Republic these days in Northern Ireland, and in relations between North and South. As somebody who works in the North and lives in the South, my experience in recent years, as the economic and financial crisis has come to dominate all public discourse, is …