If there really is a recovery, Paddy seems determined not to learn any lessons from the greed and stupidity that drove us to the poorhouse, writes Donal O’Keeffe. A few years ago, the editor of the Avondhu was chatting with...
"I know I should be grateful," says "Kate" (not her real name) as she starts crying. "And I am. It's just…" She bursts into tears. "I'm sorry." Kate is an asylum-seeker. For the past year, she has lived with her young...
“Emily Helena (indecipherable) Daughter. But O for the touch of a vanish’d hand.” Another small gravestone still reads “Sacred to the memory of Jane, daughter of Edwd. and Maria Jennings, 39th Regt, who died Jan 31st 1869 aged 2.”, writes...
By Donal O’Keeffe “It’s six o’clock on RTÉ1 and we go shortly to Bryan Dobson and Sharon Ní Bheoláin for the Six One News, but first we pause for the new-look Angelus.” On your screen, sunlight sparkles on water, breaking through...
Last week I did something I’ve never done before. I lodged a planning objection. The development to which I objected is proposed for a dangerously-derelict property, in a neighbourhood twenty miles from my home. Perhaps I should mind my own business. But...
Irish society was completely warped by the Catholic Church, writes Donal O’Keeffe. It’s time for a-la-carte Catholics to think about what they condone. The Catholic archbishop of Tuam, Michael Neary, last week called for the inquiry into mother-and-baby homes to...
It was all true. Every word. 796 babies, dumped in a septic tank in Tuam. Last Friday, the Mother and Baby Home Commission of Investigation announced it has found “significant amounts of human remains” in what was a disused sewage...
The Eighth Amendment was never really about abortion. That might seem a strange thing to say in the only country in the democratic world to have a constitutional ban on abortion, but the fact that 23,000 pregnant Irish women...

An Open Letter to Ryan Tubridy

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An open letter to Ryan Tubridy from Donal O'Keeffe Dear Ryan, I watched the Late Late Show the other night and was struck by your genuine empathy for Megan Halvey-Ryan and her mother Sharon, as they recounted Megan's suffering while...
False sex abuse allegations against Sergeant Maurice McCabe destroyed his life and the lives of his family, and the apparent weaponisation of those false allegations has made life even worse for genuine victims, writes Donal O'Keeffe. The best-case scenario about...

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