Police said they were dealing with “serious disorder” in a part of the town, which is about 45 km (30 miles) from the capital Belfast, and urged people to avoid the area.

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The Irish government is to set up a statutory commission of inquiry into sexual abuse at schools run by Catholic religious orders after a preliminary investigation found almost 2,400 allegations of historic abuse.

The investigation, led by a leading barrister, Mary O’Toole, documented 844 alleged abusers in 308 schools run by 42 religious orders across the Republic of Ireland.

One hundred and thirty seven people who participated in her inquiry completed in-person interviews and 12 provided written submissions.

Most of those who took part were men in their 50s and 60s.

Continue reading HERE

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/sep/03/ireland-to-set-up-inquiry-into-sexual-abuse-at-schools-run-by-religious-orders

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Ireland, Norway, and Spain have announced they will formally recognise a Palestinian state from 28 May.

Spain and Ireland said the decision was not against Israel nor in favour of Hamas, but rather in support of peace.

Israel reacted angrily, warning the move would mean more instability in the region and recalling its ambassadors to all three countries.

Both Hamas and its rival, the Palestinian Authority, have welcomed the recognition.

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Flanked by colleagues outside government buildings in Dublin on Wednesday, Varadkar said he felt he was no longer the “best man” for the job. He said he would stay as prime minister until a successor can be elected after parliament returns from recess next month.

Varadkar first became prime minister in 2017, after being elected leader of the Fine Gael party. He is the country’s youngest premier and Ireland’s first gay leader.

“I am resigning as president [of the party] and leader of Fine Gael effective today, and will resign as taoiseach [Irish prime minister] as soon as my successor is able to take up that office,” Varadkar said.

Continue reading HERE

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/20/europe/leo-varadkar-ireland-prime-minister-resignation-intl/index.html

[Disclaimer]

The post Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar announces surprise resignation first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Ireland has long prided itself on greeting visitors with warmth, styling itself the land of “a hundred thousand welcomes”, but now there is a new slogan: #IrelandIsFull.

It appears on placards and on social media and is chanted at rallies alongside other exhortations such as #IrelandForTheIrish and #IrishLivesMatter.

They are the cry of an anti-immigrant backlash that has spread across Dublin and other towns in recent weeks, earning praise from far-right allies abroad.

“Unlike the English, who say very little, the Irish are speaking out – and protesting on the streets – about the huge number of young, male ‘asylum seekers’,” tweeted Nigel Farage.

Pickets and blockades of roads are often held outside refugee centres in working-class neighbourhoods but on Saturday activists marched in the heart of the capital.

“It’s not about racism. There is no room for them,” said Gavin Pepper, 37, as he and about 350 others denounced the increasing number of asylum seekers. “Why should migrants skip Irish people on the housing list? I won’t accept it.”

Continue reading HERE

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jan/22/anti-immigration-protesters-march-dublin-ireland-refugees

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[Disclaimer]

The post ‘There is no room’: anti-immigration protesters march in Dublin first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

So they caught the guy responsible for publicizing highly classified documents. Everyone’s concerned that this young (21 yr. old) guy would have access to such ruinous documents But they got him. The news media is all over it. They want to know what they can do to help see that government secrets remain secret! Never mind that the release reveals we’ve been, uh, misled by the spokespeople of various departments and agencies. We are apparently deeper into the Ukraine war than we were given to understand. They’re talking about the agencies and spokesmen being “embarrassed.” We’re worried that government officials may be embarrassed?

It seems we may have more to worry about than the embarrassment of government officials. The news is so gruesome as it is, and we knew these buffoons weren’t to be trusted. We’ve been lied to so routinely that we no longer trust official statements anyway. But the news agencies aren’t worried about what the documents revealed, they’re wondering instead how they can help make sure this doesn’t happen again.

The Catholics are all torn up about crying statues again. This isn’t the first time, by a long shot, that statues have been caught crying blood. But now the Vatican is going to send out scientists to verify what’s going on. Like we care. They ought to be sending out plumbers.

Everybody who’s visited the Middle East is familiar with the call the Muslim prayer, blared over outdoor loud speakers to your hurting ears. Now it’s big news that you only need to go to Minneapolis to hear the phenomenon. Assuming you want to. Obama called it the sweetest sound he ever heard, or words to that effect.

The pretender has been visiting Ireland, exploring his roots, or whatever. It’s almost more that we can stand, seeing that vacant look in his eyes while being directed which way to go. Hunter is now much in evidence, to the point that we suspect that there must be some motivating factor.

When has the United States projected such weakness? We see our former allies seemingly betting on China. Even Macron went to kiss the ring. Nations that weren’t particularly friendly are making deals with the presumptive leading superpower, and it’s not the U. S. anymore. It’s hard to remember a time when everything internationally went against us. Jimmy Carter comes to mind, but he wasn’t even in the same league.

Bud Light has a tranny on the can, and they can’t figure out why their beer isn’t selling. Must be us bigots. We just don’t understand! Hopefully the board of directors realizes that they’re running a business. You don’t just insult your core audience and expect to thrive. But that’s not the only corporation that’s decided we need a push. Cruise lines, rental properties, prescription drugs… The television has become an instrument of indoctrination and you can hardly escape it. Big corporations have decided that they’re going with the clap trap, and we’ll either be drug along or they’ll call us the names they’ve made up. We’re getting used to it.

You wonder what HWA would say, thirty seven years later. He wouldn’t believe how far society has fallen. We’ve got every aberrant intellectual explaining, in kindergarten terms, why all this is good. My Dad would be denouncing our society in the most glaring terms. That’s just exactly what we intend to do. Somebody has to stand up and say, “NO!”. Nobody else dares for fear of being canceled. We will continue to slaughter their sacred cows.

Mark

The post Weekly Update by Mark Armstrong – April 14, 2023 first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Oh Brussels! Only in the land of the EU could 49 objectives containing 325 proposed actions be seen as the answer to Europe’s future development. But remarkably, this is exactly what the grandly sounding Conference on the Future of Europe has recently proposed.

Although originally conceived as a great experiment in collaborative, pan-European policymaking, what the EU actually delivered was a two-year vehicle for President Emmanuel Macron to wax lyrical about his centralizing, integrating vision of a French Europe.

Pushed by Paris, the conference was deliberately timed to finish by the summer of 2022. It was neatly sandwiched between the French elections and the French presidency of the European Council, and Paris is now reveling in its role as the de facto EU HQ.

And therein lies the danger for Ireland, and many other small EU member states.

Because from the very beginning, the purpose of the conference was not only to guide the EU’s future evolution, but also to demonstrate that Brussels was capable of “moving past Brexit” in a united and coherent fashion.

However, what the conference’s draft recommendations show is less a measured consideration of why Europe’s second-largest economy would voluntarily choose to leave the EU, and more a bland vindication of all the EU’s existing policy dreams.

Its draft actions read like a wish list of every stressed-out Brussels Eurocrat. Increased harmonization, abolition of national vetoes, greater military co-ordination and more common borrowing at EU level are just some of the highlights.

And while nobody doubts that more EU-level action is required in key areas – combating climate change, fighting terrorism, helping Ukraine, finalizing the structure of the euro zone – this vision of a universally deepening Europe hardly reflects majority thinking in any member state.

Policy failures
It is also a potential political nightmare for referendum- and neutrality-happy Ireland.

In using Brexit (and the pandemic) as “fertile soil for another attempt at deepening integration”, the EU is ignoring how, in countries like Britain, decades of rising insecurity played an important role in allowing economic grievance become political dissent.

The illiberal sentiments and hyper-nationalism witnessed during the Brexit process are not unique to Britain. The recent French presidential election – 52 per cent of first-round voters chose hard-right or extreme-left candidates – shows that the perception of being “left behind” eventually begins to hollow out the centre of the political spectrum.

In Ireland, decades-long housing (and banking) policy failures are fueling voter discontent regardless of underlying economic growth or employment figures. And in refusing to confront (or even acknowledge) these underlying problems, the EU is worsening its ability to form part of the solution.

Because more integration in Brussels will do nothing to sate increased voter dissatisfaction at national level. Indeed, as Britain has already shown, it may have exactly the opposite effect.

Looser vision
Unfortunately, the EU still remains unable to acknowledge how its choices impacted upon Britain’s drift to the periphery and beyond of EU decision-making.

For it was Britain’s loss in attempting to put intergovernmentalism at the heart of the EU that precipitated its European demise. This was a plan to use the single market, Atlanticism and global trade as the drivers of growth. Since the 1980s, this was an alternative model of European integration which favoured concentrating power at the centre of a “European conglomerate”.

Britain was collateral damage to a European integration process which chose a more integrated development path
Ultimately, wider geopolitical events – the collapse of the Soviet Union, the reunification of Germany, Franco-German agreement on monetary union – ensured the failure of Britain’s looser vision for Europe.

In a sense, Britain was collateral damage to a European integration process which chose a deeper, more integrated development path.

For Ireland, the explicit acknowledgment – through the conference – of the EU’s continued commitment to a deeper Europe should give pause for thought.

A more nuanced and deliberative approach to maximizing EU membership is now required given the realities of an Anglo-American Irish economy bound up in a centralizing, harmonizing EU. But to do this requires a fundamental repurposing of official Ireland’s simplistic views of Brussels.

The conceit behind Ireland’s view of the EU (as highlighted by Prof Katy Hayward and others) is that EU membership is of benefit not just to Ireland, but also to Europe. In essence, it’s the old Jack Lynch view from the 1970s that “We can, by becoming better Europeans, become better Irishmen.”

But it’s really time to drop these shenanigans.

What Ireland needs now is the confidence to put forward a vision of Europe that moves beyond the jaded stereotypes of Dublin as the best of Europeans. Picking up Britain’s focus on the single market and Atlanticism would be a good place to start.

Source: https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/brexit-lessons-forgotten-in-eu-drive-to-deeper-integration-1.4869443

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The European Union needs to cut off financing for the Russian war in Ukraine by introducing sanctions on oil exports, Ireland’s foreign minister has said.

Simon Coveney is in Luxembourg for a meeting of the EU foreign affairs council, where further sanctions against Moscow will be discussed.

Speaking as he arrived for the meeting, Mr Coveney said the EU is spending hundreds of millions of euros on Russian oil.

He said: “Ireland has maintained for quite some time that we need to take a maximalist approach to sanctions to offer the strongest deterrent to the continuation of this war and brutality.

“The European Union is spending hundreds of millions of euros importing oil from Russia. That is certainly contributing to financing this war

“We know that is very difficult for some member states and we have to keep a united position across the EU.

“We now have coal as part of the sanctions package. We know that the commission is working on a future package that we hope we can see soon that will involve oil as well.

“The European Union is spending hundreds of millions of euros importing oil from Russia. That is certainly contributing to financing this war.”

“In our view we need to cut off that financing of war even though it creates huge challenges and problems for the EU to solve together.

“We will see what the commission says. They are now working on ensuring that oil is part of the next sanctions package. We believe the sooner that can happen the better.”

EU foreign ministers are expected to take stock of EU support to Ukraine and discuss the geopolitical impact of the war on the wider region.

They will also meet the foreign ministers of Iceland and Norway on co-ordination in response to the war and will hold an informal exchange with International Criminal Court prosecutor Karim Khan and Ukrainian prosecutor general Iryna Venediktova.

Source: https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/russia-luxembourg-moscow-ukraine-international-criminal-court-b993659.html

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According to him, while the number of asylum seekers in Ireland marked a decrease last year, mainly due to travel restrictions imposed by countries in order to halt the further spread of the virus, the number of applications in November was the highest since 2015, SchengenVisaInfo.com reports.

Based on the report of the Irish Times, last month, a total of 333 people filed an application for international protection in the State, up from 44 compared to 2020 figures.

The same shows just 60 people per month sought asylum in 2020. From July to this year, the average is 241 per month, returning towards the pre-pandemic average of a total of 320 per month.

“It’s a big increase on 2020, which was significantly down, but even in terms of 2019, which was a significant year, there’s a significant increase,” O’Gorman pointed out.

He said that as a result of the greater openness on international travel and transport, it seems more people can access the State and seek asylum.

According to O’Gorman, such numbers create a challenge in terms of accommodation.

“We’re hoping in January to undertake a significant new tendering process to provide better accommodation in terms of allowing us to move away from the types of emergency reception centres that have been used since 2019, but also allow for the accommodation of additional people seeking international protection,” he pointed out, stressing that the focus will be on obtaining “own door or own room accommodation” for international protection applicants.

The Irish Legal News previously announced that people seeking international protection and waiting for over two years to have their filed application processed would be granted permission to remain in Ireland under the new scheme.

The same report stressed that, according to Justice Minister Helen McEntee, Irish Ministers approved such a scheme in order to help undocumented migrants and their families who are remaining in the country.

Earlier this month, Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTE) reported that since August, the Irish government granted 510 Afghans with visas or visa waivers to travel to Ireland following Ireland’s Refugee Protection Programme.

The same showed that the government launched five visas as well as 505 visa waivers, with a total of 394 people arriving as part of the scheme.

Recently, the European statistics provider Eurostat stressed that the number of people applying for international protection in European countries is increasing.

Based on the figures provided by Eurostat, the number of people who filed an application for international protection for the first time increased by 21 per cent during September, accounting for 60 800 applications filed for asylum in the EU Member States.

Such figures mean that over 10,600 more first-time applications for international protection were filed in September compared to the previous month when 50,200 applications were filed.

Source: https://www.schengenvisainfo.com/news/number-of-asylum-seekers-in-ireland-marks-significant-increase/

The post Number of Asylum Seekers in Ireland Marks Significant Increase first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Former taoiseach Charles Haughey with former minister for foreign affairs Gerry Collins (front right). Photograph: Eddie Kelly/The Irish Times

British officials strongly resisted what they regarded as attempts by Dublin to adopt an all-Ireland approach to European Community matters in 1990 and 1986.

In 1990, during the Irish presidency of the community, as the European Union was then known, Northern Ireland civil servants discovered what they described as the “relatively imminent publication” of an Irish discussion paper on “a possible ‘all Ireland’ approach to EC matters”.

The senior Northern Ireland Office (NIO) official, Sir Kenneth Bloomfield, commented that “if this is indeed the case, I think it is outrageous and that we are entitled to take serious umbrage”.

Sir Kenneth acknowledged that during a review of the Anglo-Irish ministerial conference, both sides had recognized that the completion of the EU single market in 1992 would generate common opportunities and common difficulties for both parts of Ireland.

However, Sir Kenneth said that at a previous ministerial meeting he had informed Ireland’s minister for foreign affairs, Gerry Collins, that if a paper was to be drawn upon this topic the British government, as well as Northern Ireland’s MEPs, would have an interest in its preparation.

The senior official indicated that this point had caused Collins “discomfiture” and the UK side had not yet had any response.

British officials discovered the progress made on the paper in the run-up to a visit by the then taoiseach Charles Haughey to Belfast to talk to local business leaders about European integration. Sir Kenneth commented that “we have a situation in which there is every possibility of the taoiseach, wearing the mantle of the presidency, speaking in Belfast on the platform of an ‘all-Ireland’ EC paper commissioned by his government… about which there has been no discussion with us whatsoever. I think this is an utterly unacceptable position from the point of view of HMG.”

Pressurize

Sir Kenneth argued that if Dublin was to again pressurize the British over matters such as the behaviour of the Ulster Defence Regiment, the issue provided an opportunity for the UK to retort that “a viable [Anglo-Irish] agreement has to be worked bilaterally, not unilaterally”.

Five years previously another all-Ireland European initiative, this time by the Irish minister for agriculture Austin Deasy, had raised British hackles. In a speech in December 1985, Deasy had suggested that he should negotiate on behalf of Northern Ireland when it came to the Common Agricultural Policy.

An NIO paper drafted in 1986 says the Deasy proposal “would lead in effect to the establishment of a common market for agricultural products throughout Ireland (North and South)”. The paper, written by civil servant WH Jack, says “the Deasy approach raises major constitutional problems. Negotiations in the Community are ‘excepted matters’ for UK ministers to decide. They could not be undertaken by a minister from another state without major UK and EC legislative changes which would be highly controversial. There would be severe difficulties within the machinery of government.”

Source: https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/serious-umbrage-at-attempted-all-ireland-approach-to-europe-1.4442084

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