Nov 08
Chatting with a regional reporter, we got round to anecdotes about “the one that got away”. Every regional journalist has stories like that. A minor scandal, an odd item on a council expense sheet, a row between rival TDs or councillors, a prominent local priest or businessman with some unorthodox political opinions. There are lots …
Aug 06
Christopher O’Driscoll was seventeen. The HSE knew about him since he was ten. Since then, he had been in and out of care facilities, an when they were full, bed and breakfasts, or hotels. On May Day weekend last year, he had nowhere to go. The administrators had shut down their computers, closed their offices, …
Mar 19
A Garda who investigated one of the most notorious clerical child abusers in Ireland has called on the Catholic church to “open its books” about child sexual abuse. Retired Garda Martin Ridge was a key player in the investigation which led to the conviction and jailing of Fr Eugene Greene for twelve years in April …
Nov 27
Yesterday, the government published the Murphy report, the results of an investigation into the sexual abuse of children in the Dublin diocese, and how complaints were handled. This is not the first such report. The Ferns Inquiry was published in 2005. Earlier this year Ryan looked at institutional child abuse. So after the initial rage …
Sep 27
The commentariat can be defined as those who are willing to offer an opinion on things they know nothing about, and get paid handsomely for the privilege. Sometimes, the lack of knowledge is blatant. Take the number of people who happily declare that they haven’t actually heard what Tommy Tiernan said at Electric Picnic, before …
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Jun 30
The benefit of the doubt (or if you prefer, the presumption of innocence) is one of the longest established principles in the common law. At it’s most blunt, the principle is expressed in Blackstone’s formulation: “better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer”. Populist cheerleaders for tough policing often focus on those …
May 27
The redress board worked upstairs, and I worked downstairs at the tribunal. Sometimes, I’d meet a survivor as I took a cigarette break. They’d tell me what was going on upstairs was unbelievable. I’d tell them that as much as I’d love to hear it, I was a journalist, and forbidden by law from talking …
Mar 02
Today is Brian Cowan’s 300th day as Taoiseach. It’s symptomatic of his reign that today, the door fell off a minister’s helicopter as it left a tourism conference. Brian Cowen’s reign just can’t seem to achieve takeoff. He was elected, as far as I can tell, because he was great crack altogether. He became the …
Feb 13
The voting machines just won’t go away. The useless machines are stored by local councils under contracts which commit them to pay millions for up to a quarter century. So far, the electronic paperweights have cost €54 million, and the clock up another €200000 a year. The thing is, according to EU law as enshrined …
