All posts by Dr Declan Hayes

Rose Dugdale: The Life of an Irish 68er

Seán O'Driscoll's riveting account of British aristocrat Rose Dugdale's topsy turvy life resembles a Monty Python thriller. Here is a niece of Oswald Mosley, a member of Britain's ruling elite, who had once prostrated herself in front of their Queen,...

/ 01/12/2022

East Wall: Dublin Working Class Turns Against Asylum Racket

Men, women and children from East Wall, Ballybough and North Strand gathered in their hundreds to protest outside the nearby Old ESB offices on East Wall Road today, which has been transformed, literally overnight, into a military style barracks for...

/ 19/11/2022

USI Waste Student Time on Asylum Crusade

Judging by this recent RTE report, USI’s recent housing protest was impressive in terms of quantity, if not quality. As the crowds that gathered at Trinity’s Dining Hall Steps, where they were addressed by student union leaders and senior academics,...

/ 26/10/2022

Mná na h-Éireann: Hidden Politics and Irish Sport

The women footballers of Ireland celebrating making the 2023 World Cup Finals has drawn flak all of us could have done without. Just as the Limerick hurlers sang Seán South of Garryowen, so also did these women stir a hornet's...

/ 17/10/2022

Maynooth’s Secular Seminary Takes Aim at Inner City Schooling

The pampered prats of Maynooth University and RTÉ are at it again. This time, the focus of their ire is on central Dublin.  An American academic, “an interdisciplinary scholar whose historical interests intersect with interests in architecture, the built environment...

/ 13/10/2022

Who Lets Moore Street Rot?

Wandering down Moore Street the morning after hoodlums rammed Garda cars in Cherry Orchard, I chanced upon a glimpse of Dublin in the rarified ol' times. There, guitar in hand, surrounded by a phalanx of smiling Gardaí, was actor Phelim...

/ 25/09/2022

Civil Society Assemble! Maynooth Issues Report on Combating Right Wing Populism

Resisting the Far Right: Civil Society Strategies for Countering the Far Right in Ireland is a recent publication by the academic jokers of Maynooth University, which was once synonymous with the supposedly far right Catholic Church, before this obvious rot...

/ 20/09/2022

Kicking Paul Murphy Up the Arse: Don’t Let the Left Neuter the Irish Winter of Discontent

As Western Europe flexes itself for a winter of protests against extortionate energy bills, the science and mechanics of protests both warrant examination to gauge the abyss that lies ahead. One of the more satisfying protests I recently attended was...

/ 18/09/2022

Bashing the Burkes: Progressive Ireland Takes Aim

At the time of writing, Enoch Burke, a young teacher at Westmeath's Wilson's Hospital School, remains incarcerated in Dublin's Mountjoy Prison, where many a good Irish man has been locked up before in days gone by. Though Burke, being an...

/ 13/09/2022

Arguments Against IRFU Trans Decision Fail to Cross the Line

Writing in the University Times, River Cooke tries to argue that “women's rugby must include all women”, and, in particular, men who want to masquerade as women.  Rivers sees the exclusion of such men from women's sports as unfair because,...

/ 04/09/2022