Category Archives: Politics

Ireland will hold general election; plus other news & data

After months of speculation, the three leaders of Ireland’s coalition government have agreed to hold a general election. Taoiseach Simon Harris has set Nov. 29 for polling. (This paragraph was revised from the original, written before the date was set.)

Voters will select 174 representatives to Dáil Éireann, an increase of 14 seats from the current parliament as the number of constituencies grows from 39 to 43. Each constituency has from three to five members. The expansion is based on the growing population, now over 5 million.

The new Dáil will select the next  taoiseach, or prime minister, with Harris aiming to keep the job. It seems likely the next leader also will lead a coalition government, as has been the case since the last election, in February 2020, just before the COVID pandemic. Polling indicates none of the major parties are poised to win a majority.

The snap election comes as Sinn Féin, the Irish republican opposition party, is plagued by several scandals. “It’s been a nightmare October for Sinn Féin,” Politico.eu reports, “… raising serious questions about the political survival of Mary Lou McDonald, the Dubliner handpicked by Sinn Féin’s previous leader, Gerry Adams, to take the Northern Ireland-rooted party from the political fringe into power for the first time in the Republic of Ireland.”

The election will be the fourth this year on the island of Ireland. In June, voters in the Republic cast ballots in local government and European Union constituencies. The following month, voters in Northern Ireland decided United Kingdom parliamentary races. In March the Republic also held a referendum on its 1937 constitution. A proposal to include “other durable relationships” beyond marriage and another to eliminate language about women’s “life within the home” were each defeated by nearly 3-1 margins.

Image from An Coimisiún Toghcháin, The Electoral Commission.

Catching up with modern Ireland. Some other contemporary news and data:

  • Ireland’s environmental health is rated “poor” in the latest assessment by the country’s Environmental Protection Agency. The New York Times describes how a Cork sculptor is trying to restore a patch of native rainforest in the Beara Peninsula.
  • The UK government plans to appeal a Belfast court ruling that the 2023 Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act was incompatible with human-rights protections secured in a post-Brexit agreement, Reuters reports.
  • Ireland won’t wait for the rest of the EU to restrict trade with Israel over the occupation of the Palestinian territories and expects to receive legal advice soon on whether it can impose its own curbs.

Data for the 28-county Republic of Ireland. CSO graphic.

‘Special relationship’ or the fading of the green?

This month marks the 100th anniversary of official diplomatic relations between the United States and Ireland. In presenting his credentials to US President Calvin Coolidge, Irish professor Timothy A. Smiddy became not only the first minister plenipotentiary appointed by the Irish Free State, but also the first representative from any member of the British Commonwealth.

Smiddy was first appointed as the Free State’s minister in the US in March 1922, but he had to combat both official disinterest and untrustworthiness among his own staff. US officials noted the Free State had the same dominion status as Canada and therefore believed that Irish matters should be addressed through the British embassy until told otherwise, RTÉ explains.

Irish ambassador Timothy Smiddy (left) with US Assistant Secretary of State J.B. Wright at the State Department on October 7, 1924. Library of Congress

To mark the centenary of bilateral relations, Irish Taoiseach Simon Harris last week arrived in Washington to meet with US President Joseph R. Biden, Jr., a proud Irish American Catholic. The two leaders met at the White House, though a planned Rose Garden ceremony was postponed due to Hurricane Milton in Florida. In an official statement of fewer than 100 words, Biden “reflected on the deep cultural, people-to-people and economic ties between the two countries, and expressed confidence that the next 100 years will see even deeper cooperation.”

Deeper? I doubt it.

“As Biden’s presidency ends, it also represents the close of an era for a particular type of Irish-American political narrative and attitude given demographic, cultural and generational changes,” historian Diarmaid Ferriter wrote in the Irish Times. “…the days of an American president touching the pulses of Irish ancestral memory are over. For reasons of tradition, Irish visits to the White House may continue in some form, but they are unlikely to carry the same emotional heft or diplomatic significance of yesteryear.”

A Times‘ editorial made a similar point:

The last big wave of emigration from Ireland to the US was over 30 years ago. Moreover, the US is becoming much more diverse and Irish America is becoming much less coherent and influential. … The symbolic handing over of the shamrock may continue each March, but there is work to be done in maintaining Ireland’s real influence. The traditional calling card may not have the same power in future.

These sentiments reprise what was written during Biden’s April 2023 visit to the Republic and Northern Ireland, where he marked the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement. Since then Biden dropped his re-election bid, ending Ireland’s chance to keep a close friend in the White House for another four years. Neither Donald Trump nor Kamala Harris will have the same personal and political interests in Ireland. Trump could be hostile to Ireland because of its stance on Palestine, though moderated by the self-interest of his golf property in Clare.

Harris (Simon, not Kamala) said the 1998 peace process is the “single most important achievement” of Ireland’s relationship with the US. “Bipartisan support has come from all levels of government and from communities in each and every one of the 50 states, and today I say thank you for that to our friends across the US,” he said at Georgetown University.

The Embassy of Ireland, USA, in Washington, D.C. Irish and EU flags at right, Ukrainian flag on balcony.

The New York Times noted the centenary of US-Irish bilateral relations as a secondary point in a story focused on how the George J. Mitchell scholarship program in Ireland and Northern Ireland might have to be discontinued after 25 years due inadequate funding.  Mitchell was the US envoy who guided the Good Friday accords. Congress pulled funding for the scholarship program in 2014 during a round of budget cuts, and Northern Ireland did the same in 2015. The Irish government remains committed to matching funds raised by the U.S.-Ireland Alliance from philanthropic sources, according to the Times.

See Irish Envoy Received By The President on the front page of the October 18, 1924, issue of the The Gaelic American.

The Washington Post, like most US media outlets, ignored the diplomatic centenary except to mention the Rose Garden ceremony was being cancelled because of the hurricane. U.S. Reps. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.) and Richard E. Neal (D-Mass) issued a joint statement as co-chairs of the Congressional Friends of Ireland Caucus. Their resolution to recognize the centenary and the “mutually beneficial economic relationship” has languished without passage since July, more a reflection on the dysfunction of the US Congress than the state of US-Irish relations.

Economic factors are likely to be the main driver of the US-Irish relationship going forward. Ireland’s well-educated, English-speaking workforce and strategic location as the geographic fulcrum between the US East Coast and European continent are strong advantages. Economics will influence the politics that determine any US involvement in a potential future referendum on whether to reunify the island of Ireland.

The term “special relationship” is typically applied to the US and the UK. But it seems just as appropriate for the US and Ireland over the long century measured from Charles Stewart Parnell’s 1880 tour. The two countries are likely to remain friendly, but the special, sentimental US-Irish relationship appears to be fading.

U.S. press on the rise and fall of the Paisley dynasty

UPDATE:

Mervyn Gibson, grand secretary of the Orange Order, has said the poor performance of Northern Ireland’s unionist parties in the July 4 general election “could have been a lot worse for unionists, it wasn’t too bad. But there is a lot of work to do to promote the union.” As Twelfth parades stepped off across the province, he told the Belfast Telegraph there is “massive growth in Orange activity across the country.” This claim is suspect, according to nationalist Irish News columnist Brian Feeney. He writes the Orangeism’s “ageing membership is a fraction of what it was fifty years ago. Many marchers can’t manage the distance of their parades. Instead of a manifestation of the power of unionism ‘the Twalf’ is Exhibit A of what has happened to unionism.” … Northern Ireland’s Secretary of State Hilary Benn attended a Twelfth parade in County Fermanagh one day after meeting Irish Tánaiste (deputy PM) Micheal Martin in County Down. “I see my job as being a friend to all, beholden to none, but an honest broker in Northern Ireland,” said Benn of the newly empowered U.K. Labour party.

ORIGINAL POST:

Ian Paisley Jr.’s defeat in the United Kingdom elections marks the first time in 54 years that the family will not represent Northern Ireland’s North Antrim constituency at Westminster. The Rev. Paisley Sr. entered Parliament in June 1970, then 15 months later founded the militant Democratic Unionist Party. Now, the DUP’s loss of two other seats in the July 4 election means it is no longer the largest or dominant party among 18 representatives from Northern Ireland.

Paisley’s defeat has been called “a political earthquake,” one that reveals division among those who seek to maintain Northern Ireland’s union with Great Britain. It comes as Northern Irish Protestants begin their annual July 12 Battle of the Boyne commemorations. It will worth watching to see if unionism’s troubles manifest at this year’s marches and bonfires. (See update above.)

The election result sent me to U.S. newspaper databases[1]Newspapers.com and ProQuest. to review coverage of Paisley Senior’s rise to political power early in the Troubles.

Paisley Sr. in 1970.

The firebrand preacher was named in the U.S. press as early as 1951, when Religion News Service reported on the St. Patrick’s Day formation of the Free Presbyterian Church.[2]“Presbyterian Church Inaugurated In Ulster”, RNS via Public Opinion, Chambersburg, Pa., March 31, 1951. More widespread coverage of Paisley began in 1962, when the Associated Press reported that Italian police had detained him and two other Protestant preachers from Northern Ireland for distributing pamphlets in St. Peter’s Square to protest a meeting of the Roman Catholic Ecumenical Council.

Paisley did not surface in the New York Times until 1966, when he was mentioned in 14 stories, mostly about his incarceration for unlawful assembly and related rioting in Belfast. In covering that year’s Twelfth marches, the Times American-born correspondent Dana Adams Schmidt reported that Orangemen were “divided over a form of religious and political extremism known as Paisleyism. … (He) has gained an avid following with emotional tirades against the Catholic Church, against the ecumenical movement and against the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, Capt. Terence O’Neill.”[3]”A Divided Northern Ireland Celebrates The Battle Of The Boyne”, New York Times, July 13, 1966. “Dana Adams Schmidt, Reporter Based In Europe and Mideast, 78”, New York Times, … Continue reading

Paisley had already developed a relationship with the namesake founder of the Christian fundamentalist Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina. The university bestowed Paisley with an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree, and Jones visited the Free Presbyterian Church in Belfast in October 1966. The American preacher told the Irish congregation that the United States and the United Kingdom had in common “the same biased press.”[4]“Jones Charges British, U.S. Press Biased”, Associated Press via The State, Columbia, S.C., Oct. 28, 1966. Paisley’s namesake first son was born in December 1966.

Dynasty begins

By the time he was elected to Parliament four years later, Paisley Père was a fixture in U.S. press coverage of Northern Ireland. He was described as “Northern Ireland’s answer to Alabama’s George Wallace. … Both men possess formidable oratorical talent, and both speak—with varying degrees of subtlety and fervor—to the deep-seated fears of many people.”[5]“Paisley Alters 20th Century”, Marvin Kupfer of Newsweek Features via Press and Sun-Bulletin, Binghamton, N.Y., June 30, 1970.

Paisley joined the House of Commons months after Catholic civil rights crusader Bernadette Devlin won a Mid Ulster by-election to become the youngest woman elected to Westminster. The 21-year-old claimed the seat in London, unlike traditional Irish republican abstentionists.

“These are the two symbols of Northern Ireland today … the Socialist martyr, hope of despairing Catholics … (and the) ordained apostle of right-wing reaction, arch-sectarian, defender of Protestants who feel their world and its values crumbling away,” wrote one correspondent.[6]”The Rebel In Armagh Jail, The Hater In The Pulpit”, Anthony Carthew of the Daily Mail, London, via the New York Times, Aug. 9, 1970. Another said she was “a rabblerouser, Castro in a miniskirt” while he was “a rank demagogue and an embryo Fascist.”[7]”Bernadette Devlin, Rev. Ian Paisley Symbols of N. Ireland Polarization”, Edwin McDowell in the Arizona Republic, Sept. 14, 1970. McDowell later worked for the Wall Street Journal and the … Continue reading Noted U.S. conservative columnist William F. Buckley Jr. worried that “Paisleyism is more important than Paisley, and would most likely survive him. … If Paisleyism triumphs, Northern Ireland will disintegrate.”[8]Buckley’s July 1970 column was widely published in U.S. papers.

Paisley Jr. in 2020.

Northern Ireland did disintegrate into bloodshed, which lasted until the late 1990s. As it turned out, Paisley had a longer and more successful political career than Devlin. But he eventually moderated his position enough to lead the power-sharing Northern Ireland Assembly with Sinn Féin’s Martin McGuinness. (Alabama’s Wallace also moderated his politics later in his career.)

Dynasty ends

Paisley Sr. retired from politics in 2011, and he died three years later. Paisley Jr. replaced his father at Westminster in 2010, and was re-elected three times. He was defeated by 450 votes this month by Jim Allister, leader of the Traditional Unionist Voice, which split from the DUP in 2007 as a more hardline party. Since his loss, Paisley refused to join the DUP’s call for unionist unity, and he has dodged the press.

The end of the Paisley dynasty rated only two paragraphs in the New York Times‘ online roundup of the U.K. election. It was the paper’s first mention of the family since the father’s death a decade ago. Most U.S. media outlets have ignored the fall of the house of Paisley.

References

References
↑1 Newspapers.com and ProQuest.
↑2 “Presbyterian Church Inaugurated In Ulster”, RNS via Public Opinion, Chambersburg, Pa., March 31, 1951.
↑3 ”A Divided Northern Ireland Celebrates The Battle Of The Boyne”, New York Times, July 13, 1966. “Dana Adams Schmidt, Reporter Based In Europe and Mideast, 78”, New York Times, Aug. 26, 1994.
↑4 “Jones Charges British, U.S. Press Biased”, Associated Press via The State, Columbia, S.C., Oct. 28, 1966.
↑5 “Paisley Alters 20th Century”, Marvin Kupfer of Newsweek Features via Press and Sun-Bulletin, Binghamton, N.Y., June 30, 1970.
↑6 ”The Rebel In Armagh Jail, The Hater In The Pulpit”, Anthony Carthew of the Daily Mail, London, via the New York Times, Aug. 9, 1970.
↑7 ”Bernadette Devlin, Rev. Ian Paisley Symbols of N. Ireland Polarization”, Edwin McDowell in the Arizona Republic, Sept. 14, 1970. McDowell later worked for the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.
↑8 Buckley’s July 1970 column was widely published in U.S. papers.

New British PM makes connections with Ireland

UPDATE 4:

New British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has spoken by phone with Irish Taoiseach Simon Harris. They are scheduled to meet in London on July 17. Starmer also spoken with Northern Ireland First Minister Michelle O’Neill and Deputy First Minister Emma Little-Pengelly. He is expected to visit the province within days. … Hilary Benn has been named Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. Funding, and either repeal or modification of the Legacy Act, are top issues for the new Labour government in the North.

Leaders from London, Dublin, and Belfast met 100 years ago …

Leaders Ramsay MacDonald of Britain, William Cosgrave of the Irish Free State, and Sir James Craig of Northern Ireland discussed the Irish boundary commission and related matters four years after partition. Ransey was the Labour Party’s first prime minister. Image from the Buffalo (N.Y.) Courier, July 13, 1924. 

UPDATE 3:

Nationalist Sinn Féin has emerged as the largest U.K. parliamentary party in Northern Ireland by holding its seven seats from the 2019 election while the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) lost three seats in a split among unionists. Sinn Féin now has the most seats in local council offices, the power-sharing Northern Ireland Assembly, and at Westminster, though the party does not take its seats in the London parliament.

The unionist debacle included the “political earthquake” of the DUP loosing the North Antrim seat held by the late firebrand Ian Paisley, then his namesake son, since 1970. The seat tipped to Traditional Unionist Voice leader Jim Allister. The Alliance Party captured the Lagan Valley seat held by Sir Jeffery Donaldson, the former DUP leader now criminal charged with sexual offences. Sorcha Eastwood, 38, is the first non-unionist and first woman to win the seat.

Political observers suggest the massive majority won by Labour at Westminster will foster a “reset” between London and Dublin, with implications not only for British-Irish relations but also between Northern Ireland and the Republic. More in the next update.

UPDATE 2:

Labour has won a landslide victory in the U.K. general election, according to BBC exit polling. Party leader Keir Starmer will becomes the new prime minister. … Results from Northern Ireland are likely to remain outstanding until early July 5, U.S. Eastern time.

UPDATE 1:

Voting is underway in the U.K. until 10 p.m. local time, or 5 p.m. U.S. Eastern time. The U.K. does not permit exit polling to be reported while the voting is ongoing. (Original post below the photo.)

Former U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, standing at right center, addresses the House of Commons on May 15. He was ousted by the Labour landslide. ©House of Commons

ORIGINAL POST:

Voters in Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom head to the polls Thursday, July 4. Many observers believe the election will boot the Conservatives from power after 14 years, five prime ministers, and one Brexit.

Northern Ireland, bright yellow, and the rest of the U.K.

Only 18 of the 650 seats at Westminster represent constituencies in the six partitioned counties of Ireland. Sinn Féin nationalists don’t bother making the trip to London. But the election results will matter as the North continues to find its post-Brexit footing as the only part of the U.K. with a European Union land border–the Republic of Ireland. The make up of the Northern Ireland delegation, and the full Parliament and new prime minister, will also impact ongoing speculation about holding a referendum on whether to re-unify Ireland.

Of course, both of these matters will be influenced by the still unscheduled national election in the Republic, which must take place by spring. And, too a lesser degree, the U.S. election in November.

In the 2019 U.K. election, the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) won the most seats in Northern Ireland with eight. The resignation of party leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson has reduced that to seven. Sinn Féin also has seven seats. Michelle O’Neill, the party vice-president, is first minister of the Northern Ireland Assembly, the power-sharing local government established by the Good Friday Agreement. At Westminster, the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) hold two seats and the non-aligned Alliance Party one.

Sinn Féin, which took a beating in last month’s local and E.U. elections in the Republic, may not make gains in the North, but still could emerge with the most seats. On the unionist side, the vote could be split between the DUP, the Ulster Unionists, and Traditional Unionist Voice. This may help the Alliance.

The BBC offers this roundup of key races in the North.

Irish local and E.U. election outcomes offer surprises

Pressure continues building from within the coalition government to hold a national general election in the Republic of Ireland before the end of the year, perhaps Oct. 18 or Oct. 25. That brings this coverage of the local and E.U. election full circle (see original post at bottom). Remember, U.K. (Northern Ireland) elections are July 5. Happy Bloomsday and Father’s Day. MH

UPDATE 5: Counting completed

After a week of counting under Ireland’s proportional representation system, June 7 election totals are now complete. Among 14 European Union seats, Fianna Fáil doubled its previous total to four; Fianna Gael also has four seats, one fewer than before the election; Sinn Féin doubled from one to two seats; Labor took one seat and independent candidates claimed three. 

UPDATE 4: Local seat totals & turnout

With a 49 percent election turnout, the tally of 949 county and urban district seats shows:

  • Fianna Fáil, 248
  • Fianna Gael, 245
  • Independents, 227
  • Four small party total, 127
  • Sinn Féin, 102

Only 6 of 14 European Union seats had been resolved as of June 13.

UPDATE 3: Call him Mayor Moran

Independent candidate John Moran has emerged as Ireland’s first directly-elected mayor in his native city of Limerick. Mayors are normally elected by local councilors and for one-year terms. “If the new position proves a success, if Moran makes it a success over the next five years, it could well trigger similar elections in other local authority areas and potentially the biggest shake-up in local government in decades, the Irish Times reports. The story details Moran’s high-profile background, including work as a lawyer and investment banker in the U.S.

UPDATE 2: Time to undo Mary Lou?

Media speculation over whether Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald can survive her party’s poor election result is gathering pace, even as local and E.U. counting continues Tuesday morning (U.S. time):

“If Sinn Féin strategists were hoping to conduct their 2024 election postmortem in private, they might be seriously disappointed. The party is struggling to contain the fallout from the local and European elections and, for the first time, McDonald’s leadership is on the table as an item for discussion.” — Irish Times

“(McDonald) adopted an open borders policy which would allow mass immigration into Ireland. (Her) attempts to become respectable with the overwhelmingly liberal and middle-class Dublin mediocracy quite simply blew up in her face, as rising non-EU immigration has come to dominate the political agenda.” — The Spectator

The unexpected level of lost support has cast doubt on the leadership of McDonald and her longtime status as a prime minister-in-waiting. Their fall from public favor has left Sinn Féin activists stunned, demoralized and speculating over whether the party needs a new leader in time for a general election that must happen by March.” — Politico.eu

UPDATE 1: Uncoupled doubleness

” … The modern Sinn Féin on the one hand drew on the same kind of ethnonationalist identity politics that now fuel the far right across Europe, the United States and elsewhere. Yet on the other, it thought of itself as a progressive socialist party, committed to equality and inclusion. … This doubleness created a kind of ambivalence that was very useful in a society experiencing a very rapid transition from monoculture to multiculture. … And for about a quarter of a century, this accidental mechanism was extremely effective. … What we’ve now seen in the election numbers are the first effects of (an) uncoupling: a shrinking of Sinn Féin’s vote and the emergence of the far right as a potentially viable political force.” — Fintan O’Toole in the Irish Times.

ORIGINAL POST:

June 7 local and European Union election results in the Republic of Ireland have prompted fresh calls for a national government contest before the March 2025 deadline. Taoiseach Simon Harris has doubled down on his earlier commitment to have the existing coalition government run its full five-year course until spring. Harris, of Fine Gael, became the Irish leader in early April after the unexpected resignation of Leo Varadkar.

Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil, the main coalition partners, have done better than expected in the local elections, each polling about 23 percent. Independent and small party candidate surged to just over 28 percent of the vote at the expense of Sinn Féin, which fell shy of 12 percent. As of early June 10, U.S. East Coast time, 829 of 849 city and county council seats had been decided.

The outcome in Ireland’s 14 European Parliament races is still developing. Far-right candidates in other E.U. member nations have made gains, but the centrist governing coalition in Brussels is expected to hold.

Regardless of what Harris says, Irish political observers expect snap election will take place before the year-end holidays. Why should Ireland miss the “year of elections,” as at least 64 countries (plus the E.U. assembly) decide the representation of about half the world’s population. French President Emmanuel Macron Sunday was forced to call an election for later this month after his centrist alliance was roughed up by the right in his country’s E.U. ballot.

Sixty-two percent of respondents to an online poll at TheJournal.ie website favored holding the Irish national election before the end of this year. Disclosure: I participated in the poll on June 9 in order to see the result and take the screen grab shown here.

Regardless of when the election is scheduled in the next nine months, voters in the Republic will follow the electorate in Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom. The national election there is set for July 4, with the Tory government predicted to fall to the British Labor Party.

A total of 136 candidates are running in Northern Ireland, nearly three dozen more than the last election five years ago. The more moderate Alliance and the Social Democrat and Labor Party (SDLP) are contesting all 18 constituencies, while the pro-reunification Sinn Féin and Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) are each skipping a few races, according to the BBC.

The DUP were knocked off stride in March, when leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson resigned after being charged with sex crimes. He is not seeking re-election in his Lagan Valley constituency. The DUP had already lost top billing to Sinn Féin in the power-sharing Northern Ireland Assembly.

On recognition & partition: Ireland, Israel, & Palestine

Ireland’s decision to recognize Palestinian statehood has gravely disrupted diplomatic relations between Ireland and Israel. The latter condemned the gesture as “a reward for terrorism” perpetrated by Hamas in October and withdrew its ambassador from Dublin.

On May 22, Irish Taoiseach Simon Harris said:

“On the 21st of January 1919 Ireland asked the world to recognize our right to be an independent State. Our ‘Message to the Free Nations of the World’ was a plea for international recognition of our independence, emphasizing our distinct national identity, our historical struggle, and our right to self-determination and justice. Today we use the same language to support the recognition of Palestine as a State.” Read his full statement, which also condemns the Hamas attack and supports the Israeli state.

The recognition has generated a new round of media stories about why the Irish identify so strongly with the Palestinians. Such reports began long before the civilian death toll in Gaza from Israeli military strikes surpassed the number of victims from the Hamas incursion into Israel.

Palestinian flag

Fourteen months before that attack, Palestinian journalist Daoud Kuttab wrote a piece headlined “Comparing the Palestinian and Irish-Catholic Struggles.” In each case, he wrote, “a powerful force oppressed local indigenous populations in a clearly racist and paternalistic fashion.” He also details their differences with today’s Northern Ireland.

Kuttab noted that U.S. President Joe Biden, during a July 2022 speech in East Jerusalem, compared the Irish-Catholic struggle against Great Britain to the Palestinians against Israel. But the journalist questioned whether Biden, a strong supporter of Israel, is capable of “real and actionable policies related to Israel and the Palestinians.” The Biden administration has criticized Ireland’s recognition of Palestine, which was joined by Spain and Norway. But Ireland enjoys far more attention and goodwill from the U.S. government than the other two European nations.

In late May, a headline in the Jesuit magazine, America, declared, “Ireland recognizes Palestinian statehood: Why many Irish people resonate with the conflict in Palestine.”

Notice for Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign protest against U.S. weapons to Israel being shipped through Ireland. The bill has been delayed.

The piece quotes an Irish documentary filmmaker who says the Irish have a deep cultural memory of British rule and know what being colonized by a stronger neighbor is like more than most nations. The filmmaker has documented the efforts of peace activists to prevent the U.S. military from using Shannon airport in the west of Ireland as a refueling stopover for its Middle East adventurism, including arms shipments to Israel.

Catherine Connolly, an independent member of the Irish parliament, raised the Shannon issue in a May 23 interview with Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! Connolly rejected the suggestion that Ireland’s recognition of Palestine is a prize for terrorism. “This is a step for peace,” she said.

Partition plans

The sectarian and territorial conflicts between the Palestinians and the Israelis parallel those between nationalists and unionists, Catholics and Protestants, in the north of Ireland, as detailed by M.C. Rast at History Today.

“Ireland and Palestine: United by Partition?” recounts how British officials in late 1930s planned to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab states in much the same way they had divided Ireland along sectarian lines nearly two decades earlier. A British report suggested “the gulf between Arabs and Jews in Palestine is wider than that which separates Northern Ireland from the Irish Free State.”

Rast also quotes Dublin’s Irish Independent newspaper as saying: “Partition is the Englishman’s favorite way out of a difficulty. But it is in itself a confession of failure.”

Economic impact

The economic impact of Ireland’s recognition of Palestine is beginning to take shape. Israel’s national airlines announced it will not renew direct flights to Dublin, which were only launched last year. Irish officials have said its €15 billion sovereign investment fund would divest from six Israeli companies, the Irish Times reported.

Israeli flag

Israel’s trade deficit with Ireland was €4 billion in 2022. Israeli imports totaled €5 billion, seventh largest among trading partners, but less than a quarter of the U.K.-leading €29 billion and U.S. second-place €22 billion.

Just under 600 Israelis lived in Ireland in 2022, according to the Central Statistics Office. The same census return does not indicate the number of Palestinians, while 2016 data showed fewer than 200 Palestinians. There were fewer than 3,000 Jews living in Ireland in 2016 compared to more than 63,000 Muslims. These figures do not include Northern Ireland.

For more on how activists in Ireland are responding to the recognition, visit the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign and the Ireland Israel Alliance.

Catching up with modern Ireland

March was a newsy month for Ireland, including the failed constitutional referendum, a sour St. Patrick’s Day visit to the White House, and the shock resignation of Taoiseach Leo Varadkar. Here’s some coverage and commentary that has caught my attention:

Varadkar resignation, Harris ascension, Donaldson resignation

Varadkar

The messiah complex: Neither Leo Varadkar, nor anyone else, could be a ‘savior’ of Fine Gael, Fintan O’Toole in The Irish Times (Ireland)

“He was able, articulate and – in the twin crises of Brexit and the Covid pandemic – reassuringly adept. But his great talent was for riding out contradictions, not for resolving them. He managed to walk the line between politician and anti-politician, conservative instincts and an increasingly progressive society. …”

Update 1: The governing Fine Gael has selected Simon Harris as its new leader. There was no opposition to him within the party. At 37, he is set to become Ireland’s youngest taoiseach on April 9; a year younger than Varadkar when he took the job in June 2017. Some are already calling Harris the “TikTok Taoiseach.”

Harris was first elected to the Dáil in 2011 and managed Ireland’s COVID-19 response as minister for education, research and science. He has dismissed calls for a general election before the scheduled contest in March 2025.

Update 2: Jeffrey Donaldson, leader of the Democratic Unionist Party in Northern Ireland, abruptly resigned March 29 after being charged with sexual offenses. Leaders of the Northern Ireland say the development will not impact the power-sharing government, but it has rocked Irish and British politics.

Reverse reads on referendum result

“Ireland’s Snakes of Secularization“, National Catholic Register (USA)

There is a very understandable desire among the faithful in Ireland — and elsewhere — to interpret this month’s rejection by Irish voters of a pair of “woke” constitutional amendments as a decisive Catholic inflection point. According to this narrative, the unexpected and overwhelming rejection of these amendments represents a watershed moment in terms of reversing the tide of secularization that has washed over Irish society in recent decades. Unfortunately, that’s probably untrue. … The hostility of voters toward the progressive inanities expressed by both amendments can’t be taken as a sign that secularism is now generally on the wane in Ireland — or that a concomitant rebirth of Catholic faith is broadly underway.

“Ireland and the terrible truth about wokeness“, Spiked (England)

Ireland has become hyper-woke. Its elites are fully converted to the gender cult. They promote the ruthless policing of ‘hate speech’, which really means dissent. They damn as ‘far right’ anyone who raises a peep of criticism about immigration. Their culture war on the past is relentless. Woke is the state religion of Ireland now. And if you thought Catholic Ireland was sexist, irrational and illiberal, just wait until you see what wokeness unleashes. … The irony is too much: in ostentatiously distancing themselves from bad old religious Ireland, the elites have created a system of neo-religious dogmas that makes the Catholic era seem positively progressive in comparison.

Green (and blue) at the White House

Biden

Can the Irish Get Biden to Change His Policies on Gaza?, New York (USA)

Many of the actual Irish — the ones who came over from Éire for this annual celebration of the shamrock diaspora — spent the afternoon trying to talk sense to Biden over his Gaza policies, and his confounding (to them) support of Israel’s relentless military response to Hamas. … The Irish have a long-held kinship with the Palestinians. They see parallels between their struggle against Israel and the Irish struggle against British rule. They see in the famine that is gripping Gaza today a tragic echo of their own. This has been true for decades, but never more so than now. … So just beneath all the stout suds, these were the fault lines on display at Biden’s St. Patrick’s Day party this year: his assumption that the Irish were his friends and that so were the Israelis. But it’s no longer so easy to be both.

Three more stories:

  • Britain is appealing a ruling against its Legacy Act, which gives amnesty to ex-soldiers and militants involved in Northern Ireland’s “Troubles.” Victims’ families have challenged the law, and a Belfast court in February ruled it breached human rights. The Irish government is separately contesting the law before the European Court of Human Rights.
  • Rose Dugdale, who left a life of wealth to become a partisan activist fighting for Irish independence in the 1970s, died in Dublin, aged 82.
  • The Central Statistics Office launched the Women and Men in Ireland Hub, ” which features data from the CSO and other public sources broken down into six main themes: Gender Equality, Work, Education, Health, Safety & Security and Transport.

On marriage, family, and the Irish constitutional referendum

UPDATE: Both referendum questions were defeated by margins of nearly 3-to-1, an embarrassment for the coalition government that put forward the measures. The Irish Times editorialized: “The timing was rushed, the rationale unclear, the propositions confusing and the campaigning lackluster. It was an accident waiting to happen.” Whether the outcome is merely a botched one-off or indicates a conservative turn from the progressivism of the past two decades remains to be seen. I’ll have more analysis in a future post as Ireland now prepares for a general election in 2025. MH

ORIGINAL POST:

My maternal grandparents were married 100 years ago this week at Holy Rosary Catholic Church in Pittsburgh. They are seated in the wedding photo below, joined by five siblings of both families. All seven emigrated from Kerry between 1910 and 1921. Other members of both families remained in Ireland.

The newlyweds welcomed six children over the next eight years, all of them girls. My mother, 93, is the only survivor.

I remember these relations ahead of the March 8 referendum on proposed language changes in the Republic of Ireland’s 1937 Constitution. One measure would include “other durable relationships” beyond marriage; another eliminates language about women’s “life within the home.”

The language about women was controversial 87 years ago. The conservative influence of the Roman Catholic Church on the constitution was and is a target of secularists and progressives.

I will report the referendum results as they become available. Until then, an affectionate nod to my traditionally married grandparents and their families, which the Irish Constitution describes as “the natural primary and fundamental unit group of Society.” That language will remain in place regardless of the referendum outcome.

Nora Ware and Willie Diggin, seated. Standing, left to right, John Ware, Mary Diggin, Michael Diggin, Bridget Ware and Annie Diggin. March 4, 1924. (Thank you JVS for the restored photo.)

Guest post: John Bruton (1947-2024), an appreciation

Dublin historian and former public servant Felix M. Larkin’s last contribution to this site was about ‘Periodicals and journalism in twentieth-century Ireland‘, two volumes of essays co-edited with Mark O’Brien. Larkin is the author of ‘Living with History: occasional writings’, among other works. MH

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John Bruton, who died on Feb. 6, 2024, was one of the most significant figures in Irish public life for more than 50 years. He was taoiseach from December 1994 to June 1997, and the European Union’s ambassador to the United States from 2004 to 2009.

Bruton’s book

In 2015 Bruton published a collection of essays entitled Faith in Politics. The pieces ranged widely over politics, economics, history, and religion. Included in the last category was a paper he gave at the 2012 Eucharistic Congress in Dublin, in which he reflected on the “added value” that Christians can bring to politics. He concluded that paper by saying that “no Christian, and Catholics in particular, should be afraid to bring their beliefs into the public square”. This is today an unfashionable idea in an increasingly secular Ireland, but Bruton never shrank from writing and speaking against the grain of the prevailing consensus.

Also unfashionable was his defense of the constitutional nationalist tradition in Irish history. John Redmond, the long-time leader of the Irish party at Westminster, was his great hero. In a seminal address in the Royal Irish Academy in 2014, reproduced in his book, he argued that “the 1916 Rising was a mistake” and left us with a baleful legacy of political violence. He feared that our continued commemoration of the Rising ran the risk of “saying that killing and dying is something that will be remembered by future generations, but patient peaceful achievements will be quietly forgotten”.

Elsewhere in his book he expressed concern about what he saw as the “higher level of skepticism about politicians nowadays”, but his “faith in democratic, constitutional politics” was absolute – hence the title of his book. His steadfast defense of constitutional politics both today and in the past is perhaps his greatest legacy to his fellow countrymen. I am proud to have known him.

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Journalists, historians, authors, researchers, and travelers to Ireland are welcome to offer guest contributions. Submissions are generally from 500 to 1,000 words, with an accompanying photo or graphic. Use the contact form on the Guest Posts page, where you can see earlier contributions.

N.I. Assembly reopens after two years; led by Sinn Fein

UPDATES:

Feb. 7: The death of former taoiseach John Burton, King Charles’ cancer, other news in Ireland and the rest of world have pushed the Northern Ireland Assembly off the home pages of Irish media. This post is now closed.

Michelle O’Neill

Feb. 4: Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak have arrived in Belfast for bilateral talks impacting Northern Ireland and other issues between the two island neighbors. …  See “How the world reported Michelle O’Neill’s election as First Minister of Northern Ireland.”

Feb. 3: Sinn Féin’s Michelle O’Neill has been named first minister of the restored Northern Ireland Assembly after a two-year boycott by unionists. O’Neill, 47, the nationalist party’s vice president, emphasized that she would be “a first minister for all” — including unionists and republicans, Protestants and Catholics, those who want a “United Ireland” and those who want to remain “British Forever” (alongside a growing number in the middle ground), The Washington Post reported. “To all of you who are British and unionist: Your national identity, culture and traditions are important to me. None of us are being asked or expected to surrender who we are. Our allegiances are equally legitimate. Let’s walk this two-way street and meet one another halfway.”

O’Neill has waited for the job since Sinn Féin topped May 2022 elections in the North, three months after the DUP walked out of the Assembly. The DUP’s Emma Little-Pengelly, 44, will serve as deputy first minister, giving the power-sharing government its first all-female co-executives. Though technically equals, this is the first time a nationalist has been first minister.

The growth of nationalist political representation is unsurprising, The New York Times noted:

Demographics have shifted significantly in Northern Ireland, with the Protestant majority’s slow erosion there first attributed to the Catholic Church’s opposition to birth control and then to economic factors like the decline in industrial jobs, which were held predominantly by Protestants.

Catholics outnumbered Protestants in Northern Ireland for the first time in 2022, according to census figures. And Northern Ireland is not the binary society it once was. Decades of peace drew newcomers in, and like much of the world, the island has grown increasingly secular. The labels of Catholic and Protestant have been left as a clumsy shorthand for the cultural and political divide.A large percentage of the population identifies as neither religion. And when it comes to political attitudes, the largest single group — 38 percent — regards itself as neither nationalist nor unionist, according to the Northern Ireland Life and Times Survey.

Feb. 1: Britain’s parliament approved revamped rules governing Northern Ireland trade that were negotiated between the government and the DUP. This prompted the DUP to formally requested the reconstitution of the power-sharing government. Opposition to the trade deal has been minimal, Reuters reported.

ORIGINAL POST:

Jan. 30: The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) has agreed to return to the Northern Ireland Assembly after a two-year walkout arising from its disagreements about Brexit trade protocols. The decision by the North’s main unionist party means nationalist Sinn Féin could lead the Assembly for the first time in the nearly 26 years since the Good Friday Agreement.

“This is obviously good news, but this is only one step and there are about 10 things that could still go wrong,” an unnamed U.K. official told reporter Shawn Pogatchnik at Politico.eu. Or, as former Ulster Unionist Party communications director Alex Kane wrote in The Irish Times: “I’ve seen far too many ‘breakthroughs’ come and go in Northern Ireland to abandon my usual pessimism just yet.”

This story is developing. Today (Feb. 1) the U.K. Parliament is set to vote on special legislation designed to allay DUP concerns about how Northern Ireland is treated under Brexit. Then there is the matter of making Sinn Féin‘s Michelle O’Neill the Assembly’s first minister, a position the party earned by topping May 2022 elections in the six counties.

I’ll curate this post over the next week or so. Email subscribers are reminded to visit the website directly for the latest updates. MH

Stormont, the Northern Ireland Assembly building, outside Belfast.