Author Archives: Admin

Earlier today.

In the Dáil.

In light of the Jobstown verdict two weeks ago.

Solidarity TD Paul Murphy said:

“It started with politicians. It started with a Labour minister a few hours after the protest, saying it was false imprisonment. It was followed by the Taoiseach saying that it was kidnapping. It was followed by the now Taoiseach saying it was thuggery. It was followed by our lost colleague Noel Coonan describing it as the same as Isis, and it was echoed by large sections of the media.”

“Now Taoiseach, politicians, not courts, politicians have to deal with the consequences. If you believe it’s serious chance, as there is, that the gardai gave false evidence on the stand, will you accept that we have to have an independent, public inquiry.”

In response, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar says:

“Deputy, you had a fair trial. It went on for nine weeks. Your peers heard both sides of the case, the prosecution and the defence and they reviewed the evidence and they acquitted you of false imprisonment. You’re not a victim here…”

Via RTE News

Meanwhile…

Again?

Noel Whelan 

Noel Whelan’s article “Far left’s high profile contrasts sharply with modest electoral reach” describes the Solidarity-PBP grouping as minnows.

The Labour Party has seven seats to Solidarity-PBP’s six. If we combine, as Mr Whelan does in his article, Solidarity-PBP’s seats with those of the Independents 4 Change grouping and other left-wing TDs, the left comfortably outnumbers Labour.

Yet Noel Whelan does not call Labour small fish or “fringe deputies”.

The thuddingly dull comparison between Donald Trump and the left, as constant in your newspaper as the Angelus, on the basis of criticism of the mainstream media, is fatuous.

It should not need to be said that the basis and method of the left’s critique of certain sections of the media differs ever so slightly from Mr Trump’s lying, egomaniacal Twitter outbursts against CNN.

Your columnist manages class snobbery and reverse class snobbery in the one paragraph, suggesting that the kind of people who vote left are not natural Irish Times readers and, heaven forbid, that some left-wing TDs have the temerity to have been born to middle-class backgrounds.

I can assure him that many supporters of the left of all classes read this newspaper, either as its de facto status as the paper of record or as a means to keep abreast of the latest fashionable delusions of the bourgeois hive-mind, of which Noel Whelan is such a stalwart proponent.

Jill Bryson,
Walthamstow,
London.

Yikes.

The Irish left and fringe deputies (The Irish Times letters page)

Related: Far left’s high profile contrasts sharply with modest electoral reach (Noel Whelan, Irish Times, July, 2017)

Rollingnews

This morning.

National Library of Ireland, Kildare Street, Dublin 2

Director of the National Library of Ireland Dr Sandra Collins (top left) and Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht Heather Humphreys Tat the announcement of a major redevelopment of the NLI main building to “create storage and preservation conditions necessary to keep the National Collections safe for the long term”.

The project is expected to take four years to complete.

National Library of Ireland

Sam Boal/Rollinngews.ie

Regina O’Doherty

Further to a post last week concerning Tyrone-born, US-based academic Catherine Kelly and Fine Gael TD and Minister for Social Protection Regina Doherty…

Yesterday.

In response to a question from Sinn Féin TD Mary Lou McDonald…

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar told the Dáil…

In respect of the Minister, Deputy Regina Doherty, I had a brief conversation with her about it. I understand that she made a complaint to the Garda with regard to harassment, and the Garda thought it sufficient to caution the individual against whom the complaint was made.

Obviously, if Deputy McDonald has any further questions, she should put them to her directly. This is clearly a private matter. It is not one of public policy.

It is one involving two individuals – one individual who felt that she was being harassed by another. The Garda, based on the evidence it saw, decided to take the action that it did.

Meanwhile…

Michael O’Regan, in The Irish Times, reports:

…The Minister made a criminal complaint of harassment under the Non-Fatal Offences Against the Person Act 1997 over online and social-media comments by Ms Kelly relating to the collapse of a company run by Ms Doherty and her husband eight years ago.

… Ms Kelly, whose partner, Jim Cullen, is the head of Friends of Sinn Féin in New York, is considering legal action against the Garda.

She has hired the Irish solicitor Michael Finucane and written to Minister for Justice Charlie Flanagan to allege that she was falsely imprisoned.

Mr Finucane has also asked Pearse Street Garda station for an explanation and written to Dublin Airport, seeking CCTV footage of the incident.

Regina Doherty blogger controversy private, Taoiseach says (The Irish Times)

Full Dail transcript here

Update:

FIGHT!

Stephen Dunne writes:

Local authorities cracking down on the latest craze on Wicklow town’s foot bridge.

Meanwhile…


Glencar, Co. Leitrim.

(Thanks Olga Wehrly)

Meanwhile…

Spotted in the Imperial Hotel in Cork city.

Thanks Dave Taylor

Meanwhile…

Dave Kinnane writes:

At Hook Head (obviously not referring to any overpaid celebrity troll)

Previously: Everybody Stay Cool

Have you taken a picture of a sign that you believe people may not have seen before? Why not send it to broadsheet@broadsheet.ie marking your entry ‘Signs You May Not Have Seen Before’

Today’s figures show that Dublin residential property prices increased by 11.2% in the year to May.

Dublin house prices were up 11.5%, while the price of apartments increased by 8%.

The CSO noted that the highest house price growth of 12.4% was seen in South Dublin, while the lowest – 6.8% – was recorded in Fingal.

Meanwhile, residential property prices in the rest of the country jumped 12.8% in the year to March.

House prices outside of Dublin increased by 12.2%, while apartment prices soared by 20.6%.

Oh, that bubble.

But, but Dan said…never mind.

Property prices grow at fastest pace in two years (RTÉ)

Rollingnews