Incumbent Michael D Higgins has been officially confirmed as the winner
of the Irish Presidential Election with 822,566 votes (55.8%),
exceeding the quota. Independent Peter Casey secured second place with
23.1% of the vote.
Michael D Higgins will serve another seven year term as President of
Ireland as tallies and early results in Friday’s Presidential election
bore out the results of two exit polls which last night indicated he is
set to be elected on the first count.
The British Army were involved in a dawn raid on the national
headquarters of Saoradh in Derry as concerns increase over the
increasing use of British military units in political oppression.
British Direct Ruler Karen Bradley has been accused of subverting
democracy after postponing Stormont elections for up to ten months while
prioritising the interests of unionists during Brexit.
A potentially historic announcement of a first Fianna Fail candidate in
the Six Counties has instead exposed a deep divide within the party over
its stance in relation to northern elections.
A former DUP minister who called Pope Francis “the anti-Christ” in a row
over a Papal event in Ireland has been condemned by nationalists and is
to be the subject of a formal complaint at Stormont.
A Catholic priest who comforted the bereaved after the Greysteel
massacre 25 years ago has said he believes the revulsion felt after the
savage mass-murder helped move the North of Ireland towards peace.
I am now convinced that the Police Service of Northern Ireland is an
elaborate prank, a kind of brilliantly large-scale Candid Camera -- and
the courts are totally in on the joke.
Two exit polls have predicted that Michael D Higgins has been
re-elected to the largely ceremonial post of President of Ireland with well
over half of the vote.
Concerns are growing that a failure to negotiate a solution to the
issue of the border after Brexit could spark a return of serious
violence in the north of Ireland.
Loyalists placed a tyre at the front door of a Catholic family in
Magherafelt and set it alight this week, forcing the four terrified
occupants, including an infant girl, to flee the home.
A row has erupted after Sinn Fein candidate for President of Ireland,
Liadh Ni Riada, said that if elected she would would wear a poppy symbol
on the day of her inauguration.
An unusual dispute has arisen in east Tyrone after a former IRA leader
denied a Sinn Fein man’s claims that loyalists and republicans reached
“an understanding” in the area after a secret meeting in the early
1990s.
For a year now, I am held without bail and without even a trial date for having
defended fundamental rights in any democracy, such as the freedom of
speech and the freedom to meet and protest.
Arlene Foster is preparing to have a train crash Brexit in pursuit of a
narrow agenda with no regard for the majority who voted to remain or for
any of the people of the north.
Former Garda police Commissioner Martin Callinan led a whispering
campaign of lies and defamation against police whistleblower Sergeant
Maurice McCabe and then denied it under oath, according to the findings
of a sworn tribunal of inquiry.
The widow of a man shot dead by a British soldier in Belfast 47 years
ago has begun a High Court bid to obtain access to documents stored in
secret English vaults.
Sinn Fein has condemned the Police Federation in the North (PFNI) after
it warned that current and former members of the PSNI/RUC police would
not cooperate with the proposed Historical Investigations Unit (HIU).
Ireland’s reputation as a centre of large-scale financial corruption has
not been helped by a whirlwind of devastating revelations which brought
a sudden end to the Ministerial career of Denis Naughten on Thursday.
In the Ireland of 1922, a civil war tore through the land and in its
path it ripped apart families and friendships. It also created a deeper
wedge in an unstable society where the church grappled for top position
in an emerging new state.
The 26 County Minister for Communications Denis Naughten resigned
suddenly this afternoon as a controversy escalated over his handling of
a 500 million euro contract for the rollout of rural broadband.
Fine Gael’s Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe has revealed the third and
final annual 26 County budget agreed with Fianna Fail as part of their
government pact.
DUP leader Arlene Foster has described her party’s opposition to a deal
in Brexit negotiations that would result in new checks on goods moving
across the Irish Sea as a “red line” that is “blood red”.
Events have been taking place in Derry to mark the 50th anniversary of
the 1968 civil rights’ march, which some consider to have been the start
of the recent conflict in Ireland.
Up to 20,000 people, of all ages and from across the country, gathered
at a rally outside the Dublin parliament on Wednesday demanding an end
to the housing crisis.
MI5 authorised its agents and informers to kill targets and commit other
crimes under a secret policy which operated throughout the conflict in
Ireland and continued until at least 2012, an investigative powers
tribunal in London has heard.
Aggressive house raids on republicans in North and West Belfast were
followed by an open attempt to bug the family home and car of one of the
victims, as British intelligence operations become increasingly public
in the face of smart phone technology.
Seamus Costello was a founding member of the Irish Republican Socialist
Party (IRSP) and the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA). He was shot dead on 5
October 1977, 41 years ago this week.