Category Archives: Ireland

German minister calls for solution to Northern Ireland protocol deadlock

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Annalena Baerbock makes appeal as she holds talks in London with UK foreign secretary James Cleverly

Disputes over implementation of the Northern Ireland protocol have become “the achilles heel” of the EU’s relations with the UK, the German foreign minister said on Thursday as she held talks with her UK counterpart in London.

Annalena Baerbock’s appeal to find a solution to the deadlock over the protocol came during wide-ranging and much delayed talks with James Cleverly in London, which also covered the war in Ukraine and the state of Anglo-German relations.

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Meta dealt blow by EU ruling that could result in data use ‘opt-in’

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Irish regulator fines Facebook owner €390m after EU rejects argument for use of data to drive personalised ads

The business model of Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta empire has been dealt a blow following a ruling that its legal justification for targeting users with personalised ads broke EU data laws.

Campaigners said the move could force the Facebook and Instagram owner to ask users to “opt in” to having their data used for targeted ads.

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Is Iceland’s language a Norse code – or legacy of Celtic settlers?

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Gaelic origins of Icelandic words and landmarks challenge orthodox view of Viking heritage, says author

According to folklore, a Gaelic-speaking warrior queen called Aud was among Iceland’s earliest settlers. Her story is central to an emerging theory that Scottish and Irish Celts played a far bigger role in Iceland’s history than realised.

A book by Thorvaldur Fridriksson, an Icelandic archaeologist and journalist, argues that Gaelic-speaking Celtic settlers from Ireland and western Scotland had a profound impact on the Icelandic language, landscape and early literature.

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Brexit: Northern Ireland protocol ‘perhaps a bit too strict’, says Varadkar

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Irish PM says he understands unionists’ concerns and he will be ‘flexible and reasonable’ on matter

The Irish prime minister, Leo Varadkar, has said mistakes were made on all sides in the handling of Brexit, vowing to be “flexible and reasonable” when attempting to solve issues with the Northern Ireland protocol.

“One thing I have said in the past is that, when we designed the protocol, when it was originally negotiated, perhaps it was a little bit too strict,” the taoiseach said, speaking in Dublin.

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Banshees of Inisherin shines light on Ireland’s west coast in tourism spin-off

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Despite film’s macabre plot, campaign featuring its actors and locations draws millions of views

It has a macabre plot featuring violence, mutilation and despair, but that has not stopped The Banshees of Inisherin being used as a global advertisement for visiting Ireland.

A tourism campaign based on the film has taken off and transformed its dark story into a glowing promotion for Ireland’s west coast islands.

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Ryanair restores pandemic pay cuts for Ireland pilots in time for Christmas

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Settlement means airline has reached a pay deal with unions across Europe, excluding Belgium

Ryanair has reached a deal with its pilots in Ireland that will restore the 20% pay cuts the airline made during the Covid pandemic.

The four-year pay deal will also see low single-digit percentage rises for the carrier’s home nation pilots in the next three financial years until March 2027.

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Leo Varadkar returns as Ireland’s taoiseach in rotation agreement

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Micheál Martin hands over to Fine Gael leader after two years at head of coalition government

Leo Varadkar has become Ireland’s taoiseach after swapping posts with Micheál Martin, who took over as tánaiste, or deputy prime minister.

The Dáil, the Irish parliament, approved Varadkar’s nomination in a vote on Saturday that drew a line under Martin’s two-year premiership and put Varadkar at the head of the coalition government for the rest of its term.

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Irish soldier killed on UN peacekeeping mission in Lebanon

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Convoy of two armoured utility vehicles travelling to Beirut came under small arms fire, Ireland’s defence forces said

An Irish peacekeeper has been killed and another seriously wounded in a gun attack after a hostile crowd surrounded Irish members of the UN peacekeeping force in south Lebanon.

The incident happened on Wednesday night when a convoy of two armoured utility vehicles with UN markings passed near the village of al-Aqbieh, just outside the force’s area of operations in a strip along Lebanon’s southern border with Israel.

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Trinity College Dublin considers returning Inishbofin skulls

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Skulls’ removal from island in 1890s was colonial-era violation, say campaigners

Under cover of darkness in 1890, two headhunters climbed over a gate and crept into a graveyard on Inishbofin, a remote County Galway island on Ireland’s Atlantic coast. In the ruins of a medieval monastery they found dozens of skulls. They selected 13.

“When the coast was clear we put our spoils in the sack and cautiously made our way back to the road,” Alfred Haddon later wrote in his diary. He and his accomplice, Andrew Dixon, smuggled the skulls on to a boat and sailed away.

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Leo Varadkar nightclub footage triggers privacy debate in Ireland

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Leaked clip of deputy leader also fuels moves to tighten social media regulation

A video of Leo Varadkar, Ireland’s tánaiste, socialising in a nightclub has triggered a debate about the right to privacy and regulation of social media.

The brief clip of the deputy prime minister was clandestinely recorded in a Dublin nightclub earlier this month and has racked up millions of views on multiple platforms.

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UK set for new wave of strikes as civil servants and train drivers vote for action – politics live

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Around 100,000 civil servants, working in multiple government agencies, have voted to strike in a dispute over pay, pensions and jobs.

According to Pat Leahy, political editor of the Irish Times, the Irish government is doubtful about the prospect of a breakthrough in the coming weeks in the talks on the Northern Ireland protocol.

In his Sky News interview Chris Heaton-Harris, the Northern Ireland secretary, also suggested that large number of politicians in parliament are voting for Matt Hancock to perform “grim” tasks on I’m A Celebrity. My colleague Aubrey Allegretti has the story here.

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‘Era-defining scandal’: Ireland revisits ‘Gubu’ murders 40 years on

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Scandal over Malcolm MacArthur killings destabilised a government and spawned an acronym

No single adjective could do justice to the events that rocked Ireland in July and August 1982, so the then taoiseach, Charles Haughey, used four: “Grotesque, unbelievable, bizarre and unprecedented”. An acronym was soon born: Gubu.

That summer, Malcolm MacArthur, a socialite with a yen for bow ties and cravats, had bludgeoned a young woman to death, killed a farmer with his own shotgun and attempted to rob a retired US diplomat, sparking a huge manhunt.

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UK must ‘step up to plate’ over Northern Ireland protocol, says Sinn Féin

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Party vice-president Michelle O’Neill says government must find a way to make post-Brexit arrangements work

The Sinn Féin leader in Northern Ireland, Michelle O’Neill, has said the UK government needs to “step up to the plate” and find a way to make the Northern Ireland protocol work.

On Friday, the Northern Ireland secretary, Chris Heaton-Harris, said there will not be a Stormont election in December.

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Northern Ireland power-sharing system not fit for purpose, says Irish PM

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Micheál Martin says electoral system ‘should not be one that constantly reinforces polarisation’

Ireland’s prime minister has said the system of sharing power between unionists and nationalists in Northern Ireland is no longer fit for purpose and should be reviewed.

Micheál Martin’s remarks come amid claims the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) wants to delay a new Stormont assembly election as long as possible to give talks over the disputed Brexit protocol a chance to take off.

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Richard Harris archive donated to Cork University

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Late Irish actor’s poems, photos, plaques and even his wedding list among items handed over by family

Richard Harris blazed through life as an actor, singer, boozer and womaniser but few knew he was also a hoarder.

Poems, photos, letters, script notes, artefacts, documents, rugby plaques, his wedding guest list – he kept it all. After his death in 2002, the trove spanning 50 years of cinema and theatre gathered dust in a lock-up in Oxford, known only to his family.

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Micheál Martin urges DUP to restore powersharing at Stormont

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Ireland’s taoiseach says party should honour mandate of people of Northern Ireland ahead of election deadline

Ireland’s taoiseach has called on the Democratic Unionist party (DUP) to “honour” the mandate of the people of Northern Ireland by contributing to the restoration of the Stormont institutions as the election deadline looms.

Micheál Martin said it does not appear that devolved government at Stormont will be restored by Friday’s deadline. He added that it is “not satisfactory” that the powersharing institutions are not functioning.

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What are European countries doing to cut power consumption?

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Governments across the continent have announced a range of measures to tackle any energy shortages this winter

Paris is switching off the Eiffel Tower lights an hour early, Milan has turned off public fountains, and Hanover is offering gym users cold rather than hot showers in an effort to combat potential energy shortages this winter.

At the same time, the public are being encouraged to do their bit by avoiding using household appliances between 4pm and 7pm, stock up on blankets and slow down their driving.

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Ireland’s gangland trial of century set to begin in Dublin

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Crime boss Gerry ‘the Monk’ Hutch to be tried for a 2016 murder that fuelled a lethal feud with a rival gang

Armed police, members of the underworld and a fascinated public are expected to converge on a Dublin courthouse this week for what has been dubbed Ireland’s gangland trial of the century.

Gerry “the Monk” Hutch, 58, a prominent crime boss, is to be tried for a 2016 murder that fuelled a lethal feud between rival gangs that still simmers six years later.

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Lockdown babies slower to meet some milestones, study finds

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Irish research shows infants were slightly less likely to speak, point or wave at 12 months but were more likely to crawl

Babies born during the first lockdown met fewer developmental milestones aged one compared with those born before the pandemic – although they may have been faster to crawl, data suggests.

About 600,000 babies were born in Britain, and a further 60,000 in Ireland, during 2020 – when Covid restrictions and mask wearing put a stop to many social activities, including toddler rhyme-times, antenatal group outings and cuddles with grandparents. Since then, parents and psychologists have pondered the impact of such enforced isolation on babies’ social development.

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Child among 10 killed in Donegal petrol station blast as search for survivors ends

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Search through debris called off after blast at Applegreen service station outside village of Creeslough

Ireland is in mourning after the death toll from the explosion at a petrol station in County Donegal rose to 10, including a young child and two teenagers.

Emergency services called off a search on Saturday evening after sifting through rubble all day, and did not expect to find more survivors or bodies.

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