Government plan to cut agriculture emissions by 25% by 2030 will drive many farms into bankruptcy, say critics
Donald Scully gazes at his herd of 208 cows munching grass and clover in a verdant field, as a light breeze ruffles the stillness.
“There is an enjoyment for me to come out and look and see how healthy and happy these cows are,” says Scully, 47, a third-generation dairy farmer. “Every single cow has her own personality, they’re all individuals.”
Continue reading...Boy, aged under two, had been staying near Ballinagare, Co Roscommon, with his parents
A British toddler was killed by a car while on holiday in the Republic of Ireland.
It is understood that the boy, who was under the age of two, had been staying at a property in Co Roscommon with his parents.
Continue reading...Michael O’Leary warns of rising cost of fuel and says policymakers need to get inflation back to about 2%
The boss of Ryanair has warned the era of ultra-low airfares is over and said Brexit is partly to blame for a shortage of airport workers that has created chaos during the peak holiday period.
The airline’s chief executive, Michael O’Leary, said surging oil prices would make it impossible to keep offering promotional tickets for less than €10 (£8.50). He added that Ryanair’s average fare would rise from about €40 towards €50 over the next five years as the company adjusted to rising inflation.
Continue reading...Octogenarian and child of five among adopted children or parents applying for unrestricted access to early years data
An 81-year-old, adopted as a child, and a 74-year-old mother who gave up her baby for adoption, are among 900 people who have registered to trace their parents or children after landmark legislation was passed in Ireland.
The public response to the new laws, which came into force on 1 July, is opening decades-old wounds for children and parents who were separated at birth, some sent to the UK or the US, during the past 100 years.
Continue reading...Cameraman Daniel McGovern copied footage of Hiroshima and Nagasaki devastation to ensure lessons were learned
The photograph shows devastation in Nagasaki after the atomic bomb: a scorched wilderness where there was once a city. At its centre stands a lone man with a camera.
It was 9 September 1945 and Lt Daniel McGovern, a US Army Air Force cameraman, was documenting ground zero, the point directly below the bomb’s detonation four weeks earlier. Few would recognise McGovern, but the vision of apocalypse is familiar from documentary footage of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of the second world war.
Continue reading...Campaigners warn of damage as concessions now cover over a quarter of land on both sides of border
Environmentalists on the island of Ireland say they fear a “new carve-up of the island” over coming decades, with mining concessions now covering more than a quarter of all land on both sides of the border.
More than 25% of the total land area of Northern Ireland is covered by mining concessions, according to government statistics, while the figure for the Irish republic has in the past couple of years been even higher at 27%. The prospecting licences covering these areas grant mining companies permission to survey and assess sites, as well as carry out exploratory work that includes digging tunnels, pits, taking rock samples and carrying out chemical analyses.
Continue reading...Campaign launched to reach those sent overseas during years of hostility towards unmarried mothers
Irish people who were sent to Britain, the US and elsewhere for adoption when they were children as a result of decades-long Catholic hostility towards unmarried mothers will be entitled to unrestricted access to their birth certificates and other official records in Ireland for the first time thanks to a new law.
The Adoption Authority of Ireland, which has been charged with managing the scheme, has launched a campaign to reach adults who were adopted, formally or informally, overseas. It believes about 100,000 people will be affected by the new Birth Information and Tracing Act. The new law relates to all those born to parents within Ireland and adopted at home or abroad since the foundation of the state 100 years ago.
Continue reading...From Europe to India and the US, the revelations have fuelled anger from across the spectrum, from the drivers to politicians
The release of the Uber files has prompted a frenzy of reaction around the world, piling pressure on senior politicians, fuelling calls for a crackdown on corporate lobbying and drawing outrage from groups including traditional taxi drivers.
The fuse was lit with the publication of revelations from a trove of more than 124,000 documents about Uber spanning from 2013 to 2017, leaked to the Guardian and shared with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and international media.
Continue reading...Country’s film industry makes 20 horrors in last six years, as directors channel the vampires and banshees of traditional tales
A century after Bram Stoker introduced Dracula to the world, Irish storytellers are again conjuring vampires – as well as zombies, ghosts, changelings and grisly, mysterious diseases – and this time on the big screen.
Young film directors are channelling Ireland’s dark folklore and contemporary social ills into a wave of horror films that are finding mainstream audiences overseas.
Continue reading...This live blog has now closed, you can find our latest political coverage here
Boris Johnson restated his commitment to levelling up this morning. (See 12.03pm.) But a new report from the Resolution Foundation underlines quite what a challenge this will be. Using data showing how average incomes at local authority level have changed since 1997, it says inequalities have been persistent and that over the last 25 years overall change has been limited. It says:
We begin by showing that income differences at the local authority level are substantial. In 2019, before housing costs income per person in the richest local authority – Kensington and Chelsea (£52,451) – was 4.5 times that of the poorest – Nottingham (£11,708). These outliers clearly paint an extreme picture, but even when we compare incomes at the 75th and the 25th percentiles the differences remain significant. In 2019, for example, Oxford had an average per person income that was more than 20 per cent higher than Torbay (£18,700, compared with £15,372). More critically, the income gaps between places are enduring: the differences we observe in 1997 explain 80 per cent of the variation in average local authority income per person 22 years on. This means, for example, that the average income per person in Hammersmith and Fulham has stubbornly been two-to-three times higher than in Burnley for more than two decades.
Britain is beset by huge economic gaps between different parts of the country, and has been for many decades. While progress has been made in reducing employment gaps, this been offset by a surge in investment income among better-off families in London and the south-east.
People care about these gaps and want them closed, as does the government via its ‘levelling up’ strategy. The key to closing these gaps is to boost the productivity of our major cities outside London, which will also lead to stronger growth overall.
Driving a massive, massive agenda for change is a huge, huge privilege to do. And nobody abandons a privilege like that.
The mandate that the electorate gave us in 2019, there hasn’t been a mandate like it for the Conservative party for 40 years, it’s a mandate to change the country, to unite and to level up, and that’s what we’re going to do.
I’ve got a new mandate from my party which I’m absolutely delighted with … it’s done.
I think the job of government is to get on with governing, and to resist the blandishments of the media, no matter how brilliant, to talk about politics, to talk about ourselves.
I think most fair minded people, looking at how the UK came through Covid, around the world most people would say, actually fair play to them. They got the first vaccine into people’s arms, and they had the fastest vaccine rollout. Actually, they’ve got pretty low unemployment. They’ve got investment flooding into their country, they have got a lot of things going for them.
Continue reading...Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson was assassinated by IRA gunmen 100 years ago and then all but forgotten
On 22 June 1922 Sir Henry Wilson, an army field marshal turned MP, unveiled a plaque to railway employees who had died in the first world war before returning to his stately home in Belgravia, central London.
He was a distinctive figure – tall, in uniform, with a facial scar that had earned him a nickname as the “ugliest man in the British army”.
Continue reading...Feared backlash fails to emerge despite leading Conservative warning of international law breach
Ministers believe they have largely muted Conservative opposition to the Northern Ireland protocol bill, even though one leading Conservative critic has said no MP should be voting for a breach of international law.
Leading opponents of Boris Johnson held off from publicly rejecting the legislation after it was published, despite the government’s fears beforehand that it would provoke a backlash.
Continue reading...The UK government hopes a little-known legal principle will overturn parts of the post-Brexit agreement
In justifying its attempt to unilaterally overturn parts of the post-Brexit agreement with the EU, the UK government has invoked a little-known legal principle known as the “doctrine of necessity”. The loophole is allowed by the UN’s International Law Commission to be used by a state facing “grave and imminent peril”.
But the government’s ex-legal adviser Jonathan Jones said the EU would find the use of the doctrine “completely unpersuasive”.
Continue reading...Court of appeal judges have rejected a last-ditch legal bid to block a flight due to relocate asylum seekers to Rwanda on Tuesday
Q: Your Northern Ireland protocol plan is holed below the water line because it has so much opposition in your party, isn’t it?
Johnson says the government needs to resolve the problems with the protocol.
Continue reading...Move could add to Europe’s travel problems, although airline does not expect widespread disruption
Cabin crew working for Ryanair in Spain have voted to hold six days of strikes at the end of June and early July, potentially adding to the disruption affecting air travel across Europe.
The Spanish-based staff in the USO and SITCPLA unions will walk out for two three-day strikes from 24 June to 26 June and 30 June to 2 July.
Continue reading...An Cailín Ciúin, as it is known in Irish, has earned more than €600,000 since its release last month
An Irish-language film has shattered box office records in Ireland and the UK and become a standard-bearer for a language seldom seen on the big screen.
The Quiet Girl has astonished the industry by quadrupling the previous record for an Irish language film, and by last week earning more than €610,000 (£518,000) since its release in mid-May.
Continue reading...Tory tensions high over risk of illegality in imminent bill to improve trade between Northern Ireland and rest of UK
Boris Johnson is being warned that he will repeat the mistakes of Partygate by backing “rule-breaking over the rule of law”, when he publishes plans on Monday that are expected to prompt a new Tory rebellion over Brexit.
Frantic legal and political negotiations have been taking place this week among Johnson, his cabinet and MPs in advance of the government’s bill designed to improve trade between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK. The legislation will be published on Monday.
Continue reading...Draft legislation to be issued Monday, as Keir Starmer promises a Labour government would repeal law if it passes
Legislation to disapply parts of the Northern Ireland protocol will be published next week, but senior government sources acknowledge it is going to be a “difficult” process to get it through parliament.
The new laws are aimed at unilaterally changing parts of the protocol to make trade easier between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK, but critics say overriding the post-Brexit treaty could contravene international law.
Continue reading...Fr Pat Collins says there is urgent need for ‘deliverance ministry’ amid ‘crisis of meaning’ in Ireland
The appeal for help sounds like it was channelled from the TV show Stranger Things. “Exorcist: trained teams needed in parishes to fight evil spirits.”
It is, however, the splash headline in this week’s Irish Catholic, Ireland’s biggest-selling religious newspaper.
Continue reading...Airline accused of discrimination after it introduces test due to ‘high prevalence of fraudulent passports’
Ryanair is facing accusations of racial discrimination after forcing South Africans to take a test in Afrikaans before boarding flights home from the UK and Europe.
The budget airline, which claimed the “simple questionnaire” was part of efforts to tackle fraudulent South African passport holders, is facing criticism for conducting the general knowledge test in a language that is the third most used in the country and had a controversial role in the oppression of black citizens during apartheid.
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