Category: Ireland
Did Brexit Break Belfast? Mass Migration and the Six Counties
One of the most frequently repeated promises made during the Brexit campaign was that leaving the European Union would “end mass migration”. Nearly a decade on, that claim does not survive contact with official data. On the contrary, immigration into...
Will Anyone Acknowledge Ireland’s Rental Pressure Zone Failure?
With 5,405 eviction notices issued in Q3 of 2025, it looks like 2026 is going to be a particularly grim year for renters in Ireland. The Residential Tenancies Board (RTB) reported a 35% increase in eviction notices being issued over...
Simon On Substack: Will the Tánaiste’s Dog whistling Bury Right-Wing Populism?
Asylum: The Centre Strikes Back If centrist and centre-right promises to hem in mass migration had ever carried real policy weight, London would today remain overwhelmingly native-born thanks to Tory and New Labour promises. Readers should assess Tánaiste Simon Harris’s...
Custodianship Over Contest, Sinn Féin and Abstentionism: Part 2
1926-1938: The System, Withdrawal and Transfer of Authority The Sinn Féin that emerged from the split of 1926 did not mistake its survival for success. It had retained a justification without a viable constituency only a year after the split...
J. J. O’Kelly, Brian O’Higgins and Sinn Féin’s Suppressed Tradition: Part 1
1904-1923: From Strategy to Doctrine and into Practice Irish Republicanism did not begin with Sinn Féin, nor did Sinn Féin initially speak in its language. By the time the party was founded, a Republican tradition already existed, organised most coherently...
Babiš and Bertie: Why Fianna Fáil Didn’t Follow Their Czech Counterparts into Populism
Prague’s Populist Paladin The boom could be back in Prague with Czech voters opting to return neoliberal businessman turned populist kingpin Andrej Babiš to power despite desultory claims of Russian interference. A Slovak who made his fortune creating the agri-chemical...
Moy Park, Meat Processing, Migration, and an Irish Republican Response
The meat and poultry plants of Tyrone and Armagh are rarely discussed in polite political debate. They should be. Within them lies a concentrated example of how modern Ireland’s economic model actually functions. It functions by prioritising speed over safety,...
The O’Callaghan Compact: Is Ireland Already Reneging on the EU Migration Pact?
If the state succeeds in scaling its systems, reception centres, and so on, Ireland could stabilise its asylum regime and integrate smoothly into the EU’s new migration framework. If it fails, the country risks slipping into an uncomfortable halfway house...
Digital Identity and the War on Sovereignty: Britain, the North and the European Project
A sovereign Ireland cannot permit London to define identity in the Six Counties, nor Brussels to regulate it in the 26. The Irish people must remain the authors of their own social order. Rather than being clients of remote technocracies,...
David McCullagh: “So back to the 1930s….?”
The thing is McCullagh is no random RTÉ cub news presenter. He is, of course, an historian and published author in his own rite. His quip revealed a deeper institutional bias not just at RTÉ but within the political establishment...