Following the launch of this book in Dublin, a senior SDLP member advised the current reviewer that this would not be an easy read. What he meant was that it contained a lot of factual information that needed to be carefully deliberated on as the book was being read. The blurb on the back cover … Read more
With its seamless blend of fact and elastic pishoguery, Irish rural folklore is a slippery business, and nowhere more so than in Ulster, as exemplified by this humorous and heartfelt coffee-table picture book of Fermanagh folk memory. Long ago, McKeagney, a shopkeeper and undertaker from Tempo village near Enniskillen, had the brainwave of turning local … Read more
This is ostensibly a comprehensive study of the stone churches of the early medieval period in Ireland—an aim it fulfils admirably. But it is about much more than that. Rarely has one element of the Irish archaeological heritage been treated to such intellectual analysis and international contextualising. The period covered is often proclaimed as Ireland’s … Read more
Raymond Crotty is probably best known to the general public for the ‘Crotty judgement’ of 1987, which may yet prove to be the country’s strongest defence against unwarranted pressures from the larger EU member states. This Supreme Court ruling, on foot of a case taken by Crotty, forced the government to accept that significant changes … Read more
Fundamental discussions are currently taking place, North and South, on the nature of the respective education systems. In the South, new Minister for Education Ruairí Quinn has hit the ground running with a proposal, first aired by Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, for a forum to discuss ways and means of ending the Catholic Church’s near monopoly … Read more