Former Brexit negotiator criticises Irish government’s focus on ‘all-island’ economy
Boris Johnson’s former Brexit negotiator David Frost has said the “weakness” of the UK’s position shaped the negotiations for the Northern Ireland protocol but blamed a lack of pragmatism in the EU’s approach for the current difficulties.
Frost said the deal he negotiated while in Johnson’s government would have run smoothly only if it had never been fully applied by the EU.
Continue reading...Gardaí confirm body of woman in her 40s has been found after search involving Irish naval service dive team
A woman in her 40s has died and two children are in hospital after a car plunged into a river in Ireland.
The incident happened at about 8.45pm on Friday, when the vehicle the three were travelling in entered the River Lee at Kennedy Quay in Cork city.
Continue reading...Digital wizardry and academic sleuthing have helped recreate a cultural treasure severely damaged in the conflict in 1922
In June 1922, the opening battle of Ireland’s civil war destroyed one of Europe’s great archives in a historic calamity that reduced seven centuries of documents and manuscripts to ash and dust.
Once the envy of scholars around the world, the Public Record Office at the Four Courts in Dublin, was a repository of documents dating from medieval times, and packed into a six-storey building by the River Liffey. It was obliterated when troops of the fledgling Irish state bombarded former comrades who were hunkered down at the site as part of a rebellion by hardline republicans against peace with Britain.
Continue reading...Micheál Martin visits Belfast to try to break deadlock over DUP’s opposition to Brexit protocol
Ireland’s taoiseach has said it is unacceptable for one party in Northern Ireland to block others from taking power, as he visited Belfast to try to break the deadlock over the Brexit protocol and power-sharing at Stormont.
After meetings with party leaders, Micheál Martin said the Northern Ireland assembly and executive should be formed while negotiations continued between the UK government and the EU over the protocol. “Our view is there should be parallel discussions,” he said as he urged the DUP to abandon its decision not to return to power-sharing until “decisive action” was taken over reforms to Northern Ireland’s Brexit arrangements.
Earlier he said it was “unheard of in a democratic world” that a parliament could not convene after an election. “We can’t have a situation where one political party determines that the other political parties can’t convene in a parliament,” he said.
Aidan Harte was thrilled to be asked to make a statue of a púca, a mythological mischievous spirit, but then his troubles began
In Irish mythology, a púca is a mischievous, shapeshifting spirit that can take the form of a horse and entice unwary travellers on to its back for a wild ride.
Aidan Harte knows how that feels. Eighteen months ago the sculptor was commissioned to create a 2-metre tall bronze statue of a púca for the town square in Ennistymon, County Clare.
Continue reading...Man held liable for the Omagh bombing, is due to face charges related to weapons smuggling for the Real IRA
The man found civilly liable for the 1998 Omagh bombing in which 29 people were killed has been extradited to Lithuania after a lengthy legal process.
The Irish supreme court ruled last week that Liam Campbell could be extradited to the Baltic country in relation to offences of smuggling, the possession of firearms and terrorism.
Continue reading...Latest updates: Maroš Šefčovič responds to Truss, saying EU keen to reach a settlement but stresses UK actions raise ‘significant concerns’
In the Commons the government chief whip, Chris Heaton-Harris, has just moved the writ for two forthcoming byelections - in Wakefield, and in Tiverton and Honiton.
Both byelections are expected to be held on Thursday 23 June - the sixth anniversary of the Brexit referendum.
Under pressure from some Conservative MPs, some of whom have been threatening to write letters of no confidence in Boris Johnson unless they get their way, ministers have retreated from banning “Buy One Get One Free” deals and from imposing a watershed of 9pm on junk food advertising. While some measures, such as rules on the positioning of unhealthy foods by retailers, will still go ahead in October, this U-turn adds to the long history of failed obesity strategies.
Humans evolved, when food was scarce, to indulge in calorie-dense foods if the opportunity arose. Now, the abundance of food and its particularly highly processed nature, which means we go on eating for a long time before feeling full, leads us to eat a lot of the wrong things. Food companies have an overwhelming incentive to design products that lead us ever further down this chemically induced addiction to foods that make us overweight, more prone to disease, and less able to work and enjoy life to the full. This is not freedom ...
Freedom is, most crucially, being free from oppression, violence or discrimination. But it is also the freedom of a child to skip and somersault; of an adult to enjoy running down a country lane or in a city park; of an old person to keep their quality of life until their final days ... These are the freedoms being denied to vast numbers of people who are the victims, not the free agents, in a system that wants to fill them up with salt, sugar and saturated fat.
It is therefore a terrible error to associate conservatism with a reluctance to protect people from their natural appetites being abused, in an industrial age for which they were not designed. If we could liberate more people from that fate, they could enjoy greater personal freedom and have some chance of a lighter tax burden.
MPs who have pressed, seemingly successfully, for the dilution of the obesity strategy are profoundly mistaken. They are acquiescing in a future of higher dependence, greater costs, reduced lifestyle choice and endless pain. For the government to give in to them is intellectually shallow, politically weak and morally reprehensible.
Continue reading...Archie Norman backs UK plans to scrap parts of protocol, saying lorries require ‘700 pages of documents’
The chairman of Marks & Spencer has backed government plans to override parts of the Northern Ireland protocol, saying that some food exported south of the border now requires 700 pages of customs documents, partly written in Latin.
Archie Norman, a former Conservative MP, called on the UK government and EU to come to an agreement, saying the rules for sending food between them were “highly bureaucratic and pretty pointless” given that British food standards were in line with or higher than those of Brussels.
Continue reading...Latest updates: UK prime minister meets Sinn Féin and DUP as Mary Lou McDonald suggests forming Stormont assembly is not UK government priority
This is from my colleague Jennifer Rankin in Brussels on the UK government’s mixed messaging over the Northern Ireland protocol.
Taoiseach Micheál Martin and Sinn Féin’s leader in Northern Ireland, Michelle O’Neill, have said they recognise there are “serious issues” in relation to the implementation of the Brexit protocol that Boris Johnson is planning to override in part.
They expressed serious concern about possible unilateral moves on the protocol by the British government, which would have a destabilising impact on Northern Ireland.
They recognised that there are genuine issues regarding aspects of the implementation of the protocol but these can be taken forward in the context of EU-UK discussions.
Continue reading...Foreign minister criticises ‘sabre-rattling’ from UK amid signs British rhetoric is softening over Northern Ireland protocol
Plans to shred parts of the Northern Ireland protocol “would send headlines around the world” that the UK is prepared to break treaties, Ireland’s foreign minister has said, as a British cabinet minister insisted the UK did not intend to break the law.
The business secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, said the UK had “the right to act in a sovereign way” and to “reopen or re-examine the protocol” but denied the actions would constitute a breach of international law.
Continue reading...After an initial shock to businesses, manufacturing jobs are growing four times faster here than the UK average
Whenever Boris Johnson’s government wades into battle over the Northern Ireland protocol, it wields one assertion like a broadsword: that the protocol is ruining the region’s economy. Checks on goods entering Northern Ireland are disrupting trade, increasing prices and bankrupting businesses, and the damage will worsen unless the protocol is changed, goes the argument.
The Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), a rightwing thinktank, joined the fray last week with a report that estimated the annual cost of the agreement at £850m.
Continue reading...Latest updates: Conservative Lee Anderson says people just need to be shown how to cook nutritious meals that cost less
Michelle O’Neill, Sinn Féin’s leader in Northern Ireland, has criticised the DUP for refusing to commit to backing the election of a speaker for the Northern Ireland assembly. (See 11.25am.) She said:
What we need to see is the positions filled - first minister, deputy first minister, all the ministerial positions filled, and let’s get down to doing business.
I don’t think it is good enough. It is not good enough for the people here that the DUP is holding society to ransom, punishing society, preventing the establishment of a speaker and an executive to actually respond to the things people are worried about.
Continue reading...DUP will refuse to join new administration until UK government addresses post-Brexit trade border deal
Sinn Féin was celebrating a historic victory in the Stormont assembly election on Saturday despite warnings from the Democratic Unionist party that it would block the formation of a new power-sharing executive until the Northern Ireland protocol was changed.
As counting resumed ahead of the allocation of final seats, it was clear that Sinn Féin, with 29% first preference votes, had overtaken the DUP, which won 21.3%. It meant the all-Ireland republican party would be entitled to nominate its deputy leader, Michelle O’Neill, as the Northern Ireland’s first nationalist first minister.
Continue reading...People could write a message in a blank space on the census, to be read by future generations in 100 years
Some were funny, some were angry, some were utterly heartbreaking and all were written in the same blank space of Ireland’s census form, a “time capsule” section.
In what Ireland’s Central Statistics Office says is a world first, the official census left a blank space for people to leave messages for future generations. The voluntary section of the 27-page form is to be made public in 100 years but many people have shared their messages on social media.
Continue reading...Simon Coveney evacuated after suspect device driven to venue in hijacked van
Ireland’s foreign minister, Simon Coveney, has been evacuated mid-speech from an event in Belfast after a suspect device was discovered in a hijacked van driven to the venue.
A controlled explosion was carried out in the car park of the Houben Centre venue, next to Holy Cross church.
Continue reading...US congressman Richard Neal says peace deal must not be held ‘hostage over domestic politics’
A bilateral trade deal between the US and the UK is “desirable” but will not progress while the Northern Ireland peace deal is being used for domestic political purposes, one of the most powerful American congressmen has warned.
Richard Neal, the chairman of the ways and means committee, has told the Guardian: “We will not entertain a trade agreement if there is any jeopardy to the Good Friday agreement.
Continue reading...An airport building is turned into one-stop shop for life essentials and legal support
“Thank you very much Ireland,” said Kate Kolva, waving a little blue and yellow flag in the arrivals hall at Dublin Airport.
As she waited to collect her best friend’s mother, Ukrainians with no family connections with the country were all too easy to identify.
Continue reading...Taoiseach Micheál Martin says there is an increasing view in Northern Ireland that agreement is working
Boris Johnson has told the Irish premier that “significant changes” are still needed with the controversial Northern Ireland protocol – after the taoiseach said there is an increasing view that it is working.
The prime minister met taoiseach Micheál Martin in London where the pair discussed Ukraine and the protocol before watching Ireland beat England in the Six Nations at Twickenham.
Continue reading...Joe McCarthy and Gary Taylor were held at gunpoint by Russians before successfully evacuating Irish woman and Nigerian men
Two Scottish gardeners have rescued three students – one Irish and two Nigerian – who were trapped in the wartorn city of Sumy in the north-east of Ukraine.
Along the way, the men were held at gunpoint by Russian soldiers – but were then rescued themselves by locals.
Continue reading...Former Observer journalist was perhaps best known for his courageous coverage of Pinochet’s brutal coup in Chile in 1973
Hugh O’Shaughnessy, the admired journalist known for his reporting on Latin America, has died aged 87.
The former Observer correspondent won a series of awards during an illustrious career largely spent covering the rapidly changing social and political landscape of South America.
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