Republic – Page 84 – Slugger O'Toole

When will the property bubble burst?

Mick Fealty on May 3, 2006, 7:17 pm

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This piece in the FT today clearly identifies a possible property bubble and a reliance on the construction industry, as one of several sources of anxiety about the potential fragility of the Irish economic boom. As it happens, Leviathan is running tonight on that very same subject. David McWilliams hosts a panel consisting of Managing Director of HOK, Paul McNeive; Evening Herald columnist, Dan White; and co-founder of daft.ie. Politics.ie has a debate already motoring on the topic, where one …

Orange Order in Dublin

Pete Baker on May 3, 2006, 4:14 pm

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And meeting McAleese.. according to the BBC that’s Martin McAleese, the non-elected husband of the Irish President, whose meetings have attracted criticism in the past, although the UTV/PA report claims that President Mary McAleese is also expected to attend, possibly – RTÉ don’t necessarily agree. ANYway, it follows the Orange Order’s meeting yesterday with the SDLP, but there a couple of points in the reports today worth highlighting.From the BBC report – Although Mr McAleese is not an official arm …

April Red C poll shows more movement than expected

Pete Baker on April 30, 2006, 3:13 pm

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I’ve been sceptical of the minor shifts in party support noted previously in the monthly, Sunday Business Post commissioned, Red C polls, and I remain sceptical, but the result of the April polling are in. In first preference voting intentions the main movements are – Fianna Fail up 5 points to 38%, Fine Gael down 2 to 23% and SF down 3 to 8%.. Labour stay at 11%, the Green Party at 7%, PDs at 4%. RTÉ are in no …

Rumour Mill: O’Gorman to declare for the PDs?

Mick Fealty on April 26, 2006, 3:03 am

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Another scoop for blogdom? Well, we’ll see what happens in the morning. Slugger hears that Colm O’Gorman, director of One in Four is expected to declare for the PD’s tomorrow and to run for them in Wexford in the next Dail elections. Rumour also has it that he approached Labour, but that they were not interested. Mick FealtyMick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and …

On the impossibility of being Irish…

Mick Fealty on April 24, 2006, 3:16 pm

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There has been a full scale conversation going on the nature of Britishness for some years now. Last week, Bertie Ahern called for a ‘national conversation’ on Irishness. Roisin O’Hanlon objects, primarily on the grounds that the Irish already have a negative trait for pointless navel gazing. But she also makes the point that the problem with such conversations is that the perameters are likely to get drawn to tightly, and too prescriptively. Once you start trying to define what …

Sinn Fein could be ‘Kingmakers’?

Mick Fealty on April 23, 2006, 2:21 am

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That’s the prediction from Michael McDowell to his party’s annual conference, the penultimate one before the Republic’s general election next year. It seems to be part of strategy of painting a strong choice between left and right: First there is the issue of Sinn Fein. If they get between 8% and 10% of the vote and translate that into seats they will win between 11 and 16 seats in the next Dail. And the paper (before delegates) spells out what …

Donegal, holidays and a poor border economy..

Mick Fealty on April 21, 2006, 2:13 pm

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Nice piece from Fionnuala O’Connor on the role of Donegal for many escapees from the stress and division (subs needed) of Northern Ireland. It’s worth reading in full, but here’s a couple of snippets: Bad Northern habits are pushed to the back of the mind. People from irritable Belfast, tiny intermarried Derry, uptight towns and watchful divided countryside, switch off their internal alarm systems. The coast’s deep inlets have a history of sanctuary, Lough Swilly famously sheltering the British grand …

RTÉ profit surges to more than €9m

Mick Fealty on April 20, 2006, 5:58 pm

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Despite it’s amny detractors, the RTE’s profits have moved up substantially, on the back of increased advertising, but also the massive growth in houses and apartments in the state. Emmet Oliver reports: These show its after-tax surplus or profit growing from €6.8 million in 2004 to over €9 million in 2005, a jump of over 30 per cent. This is in sharp contrast to its financial position of four to five years ago when it struggled to turn a profit …

Can imagination replace dispair of 1916?

Mick Fealty on April 18, 2006, 10:14 pm

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John lloyd posits the idea that there “ruling classes all have at least four indispensable prerequisites if they are to keep ruling and remain a class. They must have a certain level of popular support (essential in a democracy, but also needed in a tyranny) as well as cadres, or people willing to bear the burden of executive power. A monopoly on the use of force is also needed, as is a structure of belief”. He continues: “A monopoly on …

In denial of a bloody and Catholic past…

Mick Fealty on April 18, 2006, 10:50 am

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Eammon McCann hits a rare dissonant note when he argues that the only real inheritors of the rebels of 1916 are those who continue to be unadulterated rebels – Republican Sinn Fein. He notes a particular reluctance to acknowledge the determination of many of the participants to build “a Catholic country for a Catholic people”: Nobody knew in 1916 what the world would look like 90 years later or how Ireland might fit within it. People say of 1916 what …

1916: a Catholic revolt against Redmondite elite?

Mick Fealty on April 18, 2006, 10:40 am

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Paul Bew argues that Mary McAleese’s speech in Cork recently was a retrospective explusion of John Redmond from the Irish body politic. He goes on to tackle the President on her critical mention of that former haven of the Anglo Irish elite, the Kildare Street Club: Harvard University Press has just republished Gustave de Beaumont’s celebrated and highly sympathetic 19th-century text Ireland – Social, Political and Religious. As early as 1863, de Beaumont is able to point out that eight …

Ahern: time for an international debate…

Mick Fealty on April 14, 2006, 8:29 pm

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Jon Myles in the Irish Post reports Bertie: “We need a great national conversation on what it means to be Irish, on the values that we hold and on the hopes that we cherish.” But does it, or given that it’s framed in terms of 1916 can it, include Ulster Protestants? Mick FealtyMick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a regular guest and …

1916: it’s about the present and the future …

Mick Fealty on April 14, 2006, 12:45 am

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Sunder Katwala is general secretary of the Fabian Society, He’s also a second generation Corkman, who was born and raised in Britain with Indian heritage through his father. He argues that Wheatcroft and Morrison have have in their quite separate ways sought to bring the complexity of the post 1916 narrative of the island down to brash certainties which ignore the cultural complexties that have risen in the intervening years. Read him at Comment is Free. An alternative approach makes …

Free State left UK at just the right moment

Mick Fealty on April 12, 2006, 6:37 pm

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Garrett FitzGerald argues that some revisionists have taken the re-drafting of history too far. In particular, he argues that the southern state got out of the UK before it was economically too late (subs needed) to kick out for economic independence, “at a moment when the cost of the break was still bearable, involving as it did only a small reduction in public service salaries and in the very limited social welfare provisions of that period”. It is true that …

Morrison: Easter inheritance belongs to all…

Mick Fealty on April 12, 2006, 3:37 pm

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Danny Morrison with a John Mitchel-esque view of the unification of the island. He argues that its commemoration triggers certain imperatives to examine the effects of British rule in Ireland – and that open ended exploration of such themes cannot harm the Irish Republican project. Interestingly, he strikes a pragmatic note towards the end: “within my lifetime a united Ireland is unlikely to be configured as a unitary state, but united it will become”.By Danny Morrison By any objective standards …

DUP to end ‘cold war’ with inter governmental forum?

Mick Fealty on April 12, 2006, 2:16 pm

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Some would argue that the DUP’s prolonged boycott of the British and Irish Interparliamentary Body was mostly a case of never having quite getting round to attending rather than a key issue of principle. After all, its function is essentially East West rather than North South. Nevertheless, their decision to send observers is being seen as a positive move towards some form of rapprochement. Mick FealtyMick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the …

Kipling, the Irish Guards and the First World War

Mick Fealty on April 11, 2006, 11:59 pm

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Wesley Boyd with a fascinating Irishman’s Diary in today’s Irish Times (subs needed)on Kipling and his personal connection to the Irish Guards: “…a fervent unionist, Kipling was incensed by the insurgency in Ireland but he developed a great admiration for the gallantry of the men of the Irish Guards, most of whom were Catholic and from the southern provinces”.He continues: When the war started in 1914 Kipling’s only son, John, still at school and not yet 17, applied for a …

Reconciliation the undone business of 1916

Mick Fealty on April 11, 2006, 1:24 pm

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Michael McDowell argues that the conflation of history and politics especially at a ninety year remove is futile. He goes on to argue that Republicanism’s greatest challenge is to address its own failure to provide the means for reconciliation of the two main traditions on the island. At this remove, railing against the respective positions in 1916 of Redmond, or of Pearse and Connolly, or of MacNeill is futile and, I think, faintly ridiculous. Each had his courage, his beliefs …

Dublin ahead of London in quality of life

Mick Fealty on April 10, 2006, 11:21 am

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The Mercer Human Resources quality of living survey has Dublin slip two places to 24, mostly to do with traffic congestion. But it is still well ahead of London which came in at 39th. Unsurprisingly, Zurich and Geneva stole first and second places. Mick FealtyMick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a regular guest and speaking events across Ireland, the UK and Europe. …

Conflicted over the memory of 1916?

Mick Fealty on April 10, 2006, 10:26 am

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This week sees the nintieth anniversary of the Easter Rising in 1916. It is a subject not to be trifled with. Inthe online edition of the Observer Geoffrey Wheatcroft was avalanched with strident criticism for his characterisation of the Rising as a betrayal of democracy. He mentions “Pearse’s exalted (or insane) words about the tired old earth that needed to be enriched by the spilling of much blood”. Though as Dan O’Brien has argued this same theme was echoed in …