#oireachtas-endorsements

#oireachtas-endorsements

The power-sharing coalition's principal parties, Sinn Fein and the Democratic Unionist party (DUP), are locked in chronic feuding that has severely hindered legislation and governance, creating a perception of drift and neglect.

Gerry Adams allegedly stated to a fellow republican that he was prepared to 'wade up to my knees in Protestant blood to a united Ireland', a claim made in the early 1970s.

Sanewashing is a word that had to be invented to describe how the more strait-laced media outlets were covering the speeches and tweets and other outpourings of Donald Trump.

Freezing, knock-kneed and shivering in a tartan pleated skirt. A withering bunch of shamrock attached by safety pin to the only green jumper I owned, still damp from its overnight submersion and the splash of holy water from early mass. A grey, damp day, squashed up against a cold metal barrier since early morning, to 'get a good spot', a red line for my father.

'Old age,' Bette Davis once said, 'is not for wimps.' There's nothing wimpy about the formidable team of Terry Prone (77) and Fergus Finlay (75). The communications doyenne and the former Barnados CEO are about to launch Grey Matters, a new podcast which is billed as 'a long overdue conversation about ageing'.

Plus, King Henry's new conquest, RTÉ and TG4 make nice, and the clickbaity WSJ Browsing through the annual reports of the National Gallery and National Library for 2024, both published last week, we noticed how modestly the people who guard our cultural heritage are paid. Dr Audrey Whitty, the director of the library, got a salary of €127,868 that year. There are no bonuses or benefits-in-kind attached to the position. And the director of the National Gallery, Dr Caroline Campbell, was paid €128,724.

If there are two commandments in Irish politics - get thyself elected and mind thy seat - there might be room for another about boosting thy salary. But do government wages in this country need an overhaul?

At yesterday's monthly council meeting, elected representatives passed a motion calling his assertion "baseless" and accusing him of attempting to "scapegoat and demonise migrants" for the housing crisis. Introducing the motion, Labour councillor Darragh Moriarty said the Tánaiste was conflating the issues of housing, homelessness and immigration, and had presided over a housing crisis for the last decade and a half. "[Simon Harris] has never met a problem that he won't blame on someone else, and now he's pointing the finger at migrants. It's disgraceful," he said.

When the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky first addressed the Dáil via video link back in 2022, Mary Lou McDonald was amongst his most ardent supporters. It was the early days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the Sinn Féin leader hit out at the "ferocious violence" and the "shameful disinformation war" being waged by the Putin regime "to justify the savagery of its military invasion".

The chief executive of Rowing Ireland did not attend an Oireachtas committee hearing into the safeguarding of high-performance athletes at the organisation in what was described as an "extraordinary meeting before it ever started".