Swuite student accommodation Grangegorman, Dublin 7 last July 11 (top) and this afternoon (above)

Paul Flynn writes:

Yaay! Result! Just an update on the excuse for a map of Ireland at Swuite student accomodation you featured …I’m delighted to say that a proper map has been installed and while the North still looks a bit frosty I’m delighted that my mother’s one-pub parish of Dromintee has been given the prominence it deserves.

Previously: They Want Us Divided

Name all those jammers, anyone?

Update:

Update:

Thanks Paul R


Tomorrow.

At a as-yet undisclosed location in Dublin city centre.

The group Streets Are For People – an alliance of the Dublin Cycling Campaign, Dublin Commuter Coalition, Irish Pedestrian Network, and Extinction Rebellion Dublin – will be making a street car-free from 11am until 6.

The group is appealing for people to get involved.

Streets Are For People

 

Twitter and LinkedIn posts from an account with the name Daniel Nicolson which have since been deleted

Meanwhile…

On Twitter…

Anyone?

Update:

The bizarre collages of artist Lola Dupre – shards of photographs offset, duplicated, stretched, squished and layered.

Currently exhibiting (until September 7th) as part of the ’Lunacy’ show at Prescription Art in Brighton, if you’re passing.

colossal

Ah here.

From  left: Maria Bailey, Kate O’Connell and her sister Mary Newman-Julian

This morning.

On RTÉ’s Today with Miriam, Fine Gael TD Kate O’Connell commented on why she changed her Facebook photograph moments after her friend and party colleague Maria Bailey did an interview with Sean O’Rourke on RTÉ about swinggate in May.

Ms O’Connell’s ‘cover photo’ on Facebook had been a picture of her with her sister Mary Newman-Julian, a Fine Gael election candidate for Tipperary, and Ms Bailey.

Her comments on RTÉ this morning follow Minister for Communications Richard Bruton saying yesterday that he would support Ms Bailey if she decides to run in the next election and reports that Fine Gael are considering adding two councillors to the ticket in Ms Bailey’s constituency of Dun Laoghaire.

Ms O’Connell couldn’t confirm if it is the case that Fine Gael are planning this strategy – saying she’s not on the national executive.

But she added it would be “bizarre to have that many people on the ticket”.

She said, in terms of the “democratic process”, that “if anybody thinks somebody shouldn’t, anybody in Ireland isn’t allowed to run for parliament, I think you’re actually cutting into democracy”.

But she refused to give her opinion on whether or not Ms Bailey should run again.

Ms O’Connell then had this exchange with Ms O’Callaghan:

Miriam O’Callaghan: “And Kate, remember, you Kate, I think, took Maria Bailey down off your Facebook page, hours after Seán’s interview on this show was heard.”

Kate O’Connell: “Well, actually I discussed that with Maria and such was the level of abuse my social media page was getting, it wasn’t actually, I never commented before now, but it was more to protect what my staff were facing.

“I spoke to Maria Bailey pretty much every day, every few days, since this crisis, if you want to call it that, happened. Yes, she made an error of judgement. Yes, obviously, that Seán O’Rourke interview…but I would very much echo Richard Bruton’s words yesterday, you know, are we going to have, you know, a tick box list of who can and who can’t run for Dáil Éireann.”

O’Callaghan: “So were your staff getting abuse?”

O’Connell: “My staff?”

O’Callaghan: “Yeah.”

O’Connell: “Of course, my staff were. And as for the people working with Maria Bailey. They have endured a huge amount of abuse. And these are people who are working, as you know Daragh [O’Brien, Fianna Fáil TD] they’re not on great wages, Dáil staff, and they are dealing with, and they have to get up and go to work every day and get huge social media abuse.

“So I laughed at how it could make a story in a newspaper – my profile picture. But it was very much to protect staff and I think if Maria Bailey wants to run, it’s her decision. She’s a hard-working TD, she had to resign from an awful lot of committees, she does an awful lot of work in Leinster House.”

Listen back in full here

Previously: Time Waster Of The Day

Eamonn Kelly: Not Far From The Tree

Small ads in irish newspapers in the 1950s and 1960s

This morning.

Today is International Day of the Disappeared.

The Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL) has reiterated its call for the Government to ratify the UN Convention on Enforced Disappearances (CED).

Via ICCL:

‘It is essential that government appropriately address the potential enforced disappearance of hundreds, if not thousands, of children from mother and baby homes and the ongoing legacy of harm caused by this.

In particular, we point to the failure to locate the burial site of 836 children at the Bessborough Mother and Baby Home and the failure to exhume the burial place of 796 children at Tuam as two examples of practices that could constitute enforced disappearances in this country.

If ratified CED, the State would be obliged to prevent the withholding of information and to impose sanctions on those who have information and do not share it.

The Mother and Baby Homes Commission has said they believe information was withheld from them, and indeed that Church bodies provided information which was “speculative, inaccurate and misleading”.

CED would require investigators to have the necessary powers and resources to conduct the investigation effectively.

Through its continuing failure to compel witnesses to give evidence to processes of investigation, the State is helping to hide the truth and ensuring families of the disappeared remain in the dark.

If it ratified CED, the State would also be obliged to hold the perpetrators of these human rights violations criminally accountable. ICCL is concerned that the government’s current strategy of investigation is hindering future access to evidence, and thereby preventing prosecutions, by prioritising secrecy over transparency.

We are particularly concerned that the Retention of Records Bill, which is currently passing through the Oireachtas, will seal all evidence given to the Mother and Baby Homes Commission for 75 years.

This is particularly worrying given that An Garda Síochána could not carry out prosecutions stemming from the Ryan report because of the Commission’s similar terms of reference.

In 2016, when the UN Committee Against Torture demanded to know why there had been no prosecutions, the State reported that the perpetrators identified in that report could not be named.

This approach to potential evidence of criminal wrongdoing is inexcusable, particularly given all that has come to light over the past year, including the falsification of adoption certificates, the possibility that the state was complicit in what could be considered child trafficking, and the ongoing struggle of adoptees to access their basic information, including birth certificates.

ICCL has repeatedly called for information to be provided to those who were illegally or forcibly adopted in Ireland during the twentieth century but the State has yet to respond appropriately.

Despite numerous apologies and gestures towards restorative justice for survivors of the cruel and inhumane system of institutionalisation of the most vulnerable in this country, the State is still not living up to its obligations to survivors or families of victims.

It must act to properly address the ongoing legacy and harm caused by the range of human rights violations that occurred in these institutions.’

ICCL calls for action on disappeared children (ICCL)

Broadsheet.ie