Journalist, author, broadcaster
IRELAND’S devastated economy received a boost yesterday with the announcement that an offshore field at Barryroe, 30 miles off the coast of County Cork, could yield up to 280 million barrels of oil. Providence Resources, an Irish and UK company that has been drilling at six locations off the coast of Ireland, said Barryroe will […]
Noelle McHale bought her “dream home” in a new estate in Ireland’s midlands in 2006 for €175,000 (£142,000 today). But her dream has turned to nightmare with her semi-detached worth only a fraction of that price, and the unfinished estate it sits in considered dangerously unsafe because of toxic gases. “If you light a match […]
THE prospect of independence in Scotland is a world apart from the quashed Irish bid for home rule in 1912, writes Peter Geoghegan. “THE DARK eleventh hour draws on and sees us sold to every evil power we fought against of old.” So begins Rudyard Kipling’s poem Ulster 1912. Now fondly remembered as the hirsute […]
THE conference that took place recently in the Kosovan capital Pristina to mark the end of the country’s supervised independence was billed as “chapter closed in the Balkans”. But away from the panel discussions and the diplomatic soirees, the atmosphere on Pristina’s streets was more subdued than celebratory. The end of the supervision of Kosovo’s […]
IN THE wake of the 2008 crash, thousands of people are moving their accounts from the Big Five banks every month. Crisis? What crisis? The immortal phrase – created by a Sun journalist, but erroneously attributed to then prime minister Jim Callaghan – helped bring down a Labour government in 1979, but could as easily […]
A new republican anti-ceasefire group in Northern Ireland is a threat, but its goals are likely to be unfulfilled, writes Peter Geoghegan In DECEMBER 1969, the Irish Republican Army held an extraordinary convention at Knockvicar house in Boyle, County Roscommon. During the preceding months, the Troubles had exploded into life across the border. Many rank […]
IF you had wanted to see the movers and shakers in Edinburgh this week, it would have cost you £3,850, writes Peter Geoghegan If you did find yourself with just shy of four grand burning a hole in your pocket, would you spend it all on a ticket for a four-day conference on “radical openness”? […]
ALMOST as soon as first ballot boxes were opened yesterday morning, it was clear the fiscal treaty referendum was not going to go the way of the rerun Nice and Lisbon votes. Just a handful of constituencies voted No, even then by small margins in most cases. Overall around three in every five ballots cast […]
Ireland went to the polls yesterday in the only referendum being held on the new fiscal treaty in the European Union, which it hopes will alleviate the ongoing eurozone crisis. The fiscal treaty, agreed by leaders of 25 of the 27 European Union member states in January, introduces tough fiscal rules across the union. Under […]
Whatever voters decide on the stability treaty, the figures don’t add up, the words won’t last long and it won’t help the eurozone crisis, writes Peter Geoghegan Few people have had such a major impact on recent Irish political life – and yet remain so unknown, inside and outside the country – as Richard Crotty. […]