Society and Culture – Page 6 – Slugger O'Toole

Irish Language: An bhfuil sé in am tús úr a dhéanamh?

Terry Wright on December 13, 2024, 3:41 pm

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people sitting on chair in front of table while holding pens during daytime

It would be churlish not to welcome the latest- maybe not meant to sound as condescending as they did – remarks of DUP Education Minister, Paul Given, MLA regarding the Irish Language and his tentative assertion that: “My Northern Ireland is big enough to accommodate everyone.” Any truth in the rumours Santa is bringing a hurley and sliotar for Christmas? Do they indicate a ‘Damascus experience on the way to the Gaeltacht’ for the Minister and his party; akin to …

Requiem for a Dream

Gerry Lynch on December 9, 2024, 9:06 pm

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Today, the Netherlands reinstituted border checks with Germany and Belgium. The new policy, which will initially run for six months, aims “to combat migration and human-trafficking”. According to the EU, fourteen of the twenty-nine members of the Schengen passport-free travel area currently have some form of “temporary” border control; of these all but Malta’s relating to a major international conference feel at least semi-permanent, with Russian sabotage efforts and “risk of violent actions against Israeli citizens” cited by some countries …

If Election 2024 is anything to go by Fianna Fáil’s slow growth approach seems to be working just fine

Mick Fealty on December 2, 2024, 9:29 pm

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aerial view of people walking on cross pedestrian lane

To be honest about the election it felt more like a dour mid winter scoring draw than any victory. Yet, after all the shouting’s done, the two main parties of the outgoing coalition still have the ball. This was a secure consolidation in tough conditions. Let’s look at some of the key numbers in order to distinguish what actually happened from of the weird party spin that conjured alternative realities from the RTÉ Exit Poll which rated Fianna Fáil at …

Election 2024: Sinn Féin should take lessons from Fianna Fáil on what civic republicanism can do…

Mick Fealty on November 28, 2024, 3:49 pm

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person holding floral umbrella between buildings

If I hadn’t seen such riches, I could live with being poor. James, Sit Down After years of enduring glad handed propaganda about how well the Republic is doing (and economically it is) the testimonials of real people during the last three weeks of the election campaign show the depth of misery that many are currently enduring. Housing was the key issue in the 2020 election and it remains a huge issue, but it’s clear from various polls and many …

Challenge for Democrats is drop pretensions and get real about progress for the common man and woman

Mick Fealty on November 15, 2024, 4:22 pm

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selective focus photo of baby on green grass field

On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron. -HR Mencken, On Politics: A Carnival of Buncombe “Game, set and match to Trump”, said one of his biggest supporters, Elon Musk. If you do subscribe to the idea that Trump is, to use Mencken’s words, ‘a downright moron’ then ask yourself why the ‘smarter’ Democrat party has lost twice …

The ARINS survey has some serious weight issues

Soapbox on November 8, 2024, 10:22 am

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Colin Coulter is Professor of Sociology in Maynooth University. Here he asks some technical but searching questions about the gold standard ARINS survey, and why it is important to have a consistent base in such an influential survey. While the criteria that might determine the calling of a border poll remain opaque, it is almost certain that opinion polls will have at least some bearing on the decision. The recent deliberations of a panel of experts, after all, concluded that …

Five takes on what second Trump may mean for Ireland…

Soapbox on November 7, 2024, 11:46 am

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A woman wearing a red scarf around her neck

David Moane is Dublin-based and retired who likes to comment on current affairs. Here we reprint his short first take from his Facebook page that focuses largely, but not exclusively, on what Donald Trump’s second term might mean for Ireland. FIVE TAKES FOR TRUMP’S SECOND TERM The Trump coalition extends well beyond the traditional Republican base and is more representative of America as it is today. The Democrats coalition is more brittle. This could be an insurmountable challenge for that …

Four Legs Bad … Sectarianism and Progressivism in Northern Ireland

Cillian McGrattan on October 30, 2024, 10:17 am

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photo of gloomy sky

Although Northern Ireland has long considered to be a paradigmatic case of ethnic conflict – a place apart from liberal democratic norms – much of its politics continue to replicate trends found elsewhere. The hollowing out of policy programmes works to shield decision-makers from accountability and denude voters of agency. Outwith policy options a kind of anti-politics takes hold whereby the stuff of debate degenerates into platitudes and virtue-signalling. Of course, that is part and parcel of the performative dimensions …

Questions facing Sinn Fein are reasonable and answerable it just can’t answer them honestly

Mick Fealty on October 25, 2024, 1:42 pm

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…novelty ordinarily emerges only for the man who, knowing with precision what he should expect, is able to recognise that something has gone wrong. Thomas S. Kuhn, Structure of Scientific Revolutions Every time this storm around Sinn Féin looks like abating, something else kicks it off again. Wednesday’s committee meeting may have been a cynical attempt to strong-arm an Assembly committee into silence, but it also raised an important question. Is there an impermeable boundary between the First Minister’s civic …

Another escape from scrutiny as First Minister runs roughshod over Stormont committee…

Mick Fealty on October 24, 2024, 7:12 am

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white bottle with cup

I’m putting this up with a minimum of comment. It’s the Stormont Committee for The Executive Office (TEO) which has accumulated 1.7k views within hours of the session finishing. The reason being is that it is utterly shambolic. At the heart of the spectacle is an odd confusion about committee rules that have in place for 26 years. It’s not actually obvious if anyone on the committee (possibly even including the clerk) understood those rules up to the point they …

Sinn Féin’s secrecy crisis deepens as victim gives his version of the Ó Donnghaile story

Mick Fealty on October 20, 2024, 5:47 pm

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yellow car toy on white surface

You knew Sinn Féin was in some trouble when it called for Paddy Kielty to be censured for a joke at the start of the Late Late Show, even though their ongoing saga has been pretty much the only thing in the southern domestic news for the last fortnight. Then on Saturday evening the Sunday Independent dropped a bombshell in the form of aa personal testimony from the young person Niall O Donnghaile sent the inappropriate texts which eventually lead …

Sinn Féin’s “politics of concealment” means that what we know now is certainly not “the story…”

Mick Fealty on October 18, 2024, 11:02 am

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an abandoned building with graffiti on the walls

In the weirdest consensus of post Belfast Agreement Northern Ireland Sinn Féin has agreed to a TUV proposal to cancel former Lord Mayor Niall Ó Donnghaile. Just days ago he was using X to attack journalists for following the McMonagle story. That was before we knew about his own behaviour, and the real reason for his stepping down with a fine encomium from party leader Mary Lou McDonald. Along his official portrait, all evidence of his existence on Twitter has …

There’s no magic carpet out of Sinn Féin’s multiplying issues, other than to make some hard choices…

Mick Fealty on October 15, 2024, 3:45 pm

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selective focus photography of wind blowing on four green and purple buntings

So Sinn Féin’s troubles continue, this time they are merely deepening in the south. Over the weekend the party lost its second TD in a week to resignation. It wasn’t over the McMonagle case but the result of internal machinations. Kildare South TD Patricia Ryan resigned last Wednesday citing internal censorship by the national leadership of any criticism of the party’s dismal performance in the local and European elections, and the vetting of questions for Mary Lou McDonald. Then on …

In the Dáil Sinn Féin leadership still trying to deflect as further details emerge on McMonagle’s access to Stormont

Mick Fealty on October 9, 2024, 6:55 am

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You’d wonder what Pearse Doherty was on yesterday in the Dáil when his colleague and leader of the opposition treated their party’s liabilities around McMonagle with lurid insouciance, as it becomes ever obvious the whole party needs to go into rehab. Political parties are a particular type of voluntary organisation which plays an important role in gauging public sentiment and mediating between ordinary people and ultimately the institutions of government be it in opposition or as party of the executive. …

Question for Sinn Féin over its handling of convicted sex abuser: who had knowledge?

Mick Fealty on October 7, 2024, 10:40 am

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moon eclipse

“…uncertainty eases the way for con artists to make fraudulent claims” -Rob Nelson Listening to Carlo Gebler’s new podcast series for BBC Radio 4 on the Provisional IRA’s mass escape from the Maze Prison back in September 1983 you cannot fail to be impressed with its meticulous planning and ruthless execution by the prisoners. Organisation was to become the hallmark of Sinn Féin’s electoral success as they moved from a twin track armed/democratic struggle to a latter day commitment to …

Maurice Quinlivan TD on McMonagle: “I’ll be quite clear, I’m pretty sure we didn’t know…”

Mick Fealty on October 5, 2024, 8:43 am

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to be continued sigange

A messy few days in, and some inside Sinn Féin must be questioning the party hierarchy’s decision to make its head northern spin doctor carry the can for what increasingly looks like a much wider screw up. In 22 years I don’t remember anything like it. The problem with secrecy, be it that of the Catholic Church or in more recent times Sinn Féin’s problematic handling of sex cases within its own ranks, is that eventually it gets hard to …

Why Michelle O’Neill’s answers in the McMonagle case just don’t add up…

Mick Fealty on October 3, 2024, 5:35 pm

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It’s a sniper’s rule you only get two shots at the enemy. A third and they will figure where you’re hiding and you’re a goner. This is now Sinn Féin’s fourth scandal and it is very clear it just cannot deal with child sex abuse cases that involve its members. Being the fourth ‘shot’ the party can no longer expect to have the benefit of the doubt. Their defence on previous occasions was that they were historic, but policies were …

Why everything you’ve ever heard on the Northern Irish constitutional question is wrong…

Mick Fealty on October 1, 2024, 1:43 pm

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orchestra playing their piece

“…we don’t so much get our predictions wrong as make predictions about the wrong things”. – Ben Evans, via Memex 1.1. Like queuing for paper tickets for space trips once imagined in 1950s sci-fi, confident predictions of a near term border poll miss the fact that the future will track through possibilities adjacent to the present, not a linear projection of that present. Before I get to what I want to say, let me be clear about what I’m not …

Sinn Féin’s drop in the southern polls demonstrates the problem of “pre-fab” politics…

Mick Fealty on September 27, 2024, 1:24 pm

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2 women standing in front of blue wooden door

There was a time when I paid more attention to polls than I have over the last six or seven years. To be honest I lost interest in trying to analyse them because with the increased frequency of each publication the variation between them became limited. In yesterday’s Inside Politics podcast from the Irish Times there’s a superb conversation hosted by Hugh Linehan with Theresa Reidy and Aidan Regan on the apparently sudden collapse of sentiment for Sinn Féin in …

A stiff warning to the DUP that “what got us here is not going to keep us here.”…

Mick Fealty on September 20, 2024, 4:30 pm

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woman falls on purple surface

…they are no substitute for a small number of strong local connections. -Benjamin Allen, researcher at the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics at Harvard I was asked on Nolan yesterday to comment on Lee Reynolds analytical piece in The Critic magazine (brutally titled “Unionism has to wise up”), timed no doubt ahead of this weekend’s DUP party conference and the new leader’s first big set piece speech. The focus was consideration of a name change, to signal to the Northern Irish …