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Brussels, Dublin and London have all stated they do no want a hard border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland after Brexit. But the EU has given apparent confirmation they would enforce such a scenario should the UK leave the bloc without a withdrawal agreement, known as a no-deal outcome. The comments prompted Ireland's deputy prime minister Simon Coveney, also his country's foreign minister, to repeat Dublin's position that it is not planning for a hard border, even with the possibility of a no-deal Brexit. "The Irish government will not support the re-emergence of border security on this...

Theresa May was handed a two-week deadline to resuscitate her Brexit deal last night after she caved to Tory Eurosceptics and pledged to go back to Brussels to demand changes to the Irish backstop. With just 59 days to go until exit day, MPs narrowly passed a government-backed amendment, tabled by the senior Tory Graham Brady, promising to replace the Irish backstop with unspecified “alternative arrangements”. But within minutes of the Commons result the European council president, Donald Tusk, announced that the EU was not prepared to reopen the deal. “The withdrawal agreement is, and remains, the best and only...

Pro-choice TD Troy is denied holy communion A Catholic priest refused to give communion to Fianna Fail TD Robert Troy at a recent funeral mass because the politician supported the introduction of legalised abortion services.Fr John Hogan, parish priest of Multyfarnham in Co Westmeath, withheld the host from Troy on January 4 during a requiem mass at St Nicholas’s parish church in the diocese of Meath.Troy, who had been regarded as “anti-choice”, revealed last month in an interview with Hot Press magazine that he voted yes in the referendum to repeal the eighth amendment last May. Last week the TD...

Israeli foreign ministry officials excoriated Ireland’s backing for a bill banning business ties with Jews in Judea, Samaria, and parts of Jerusalem, delivering a sharp reprimand to the Irish ambassador to Israel. “It was made clear to the ambassador that this hypocritical and anti-Semitic legislation will have serious consequences for Israeli-Irish relations and [Ireland’s] standing in the region if [the bill] is advanced,” the Israeli Foreign Ministry said Friday. “It would be better if Ireland confronted dictators and evil terrorist groups instead of [attacking] Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East.” …

Ireland’s reliance on Muslim doctors in hospitals around the country may derail Government plans to roll out a national abortion service, a leading obstetrician has said. Large numbers of non-consultant hospital doctors (NCHDs) working in maternity units outside Dublin are Muslims from abroad, according to Dr Trevor Hayes of Kilkenny’s St Luke’s Hospital, who says he had been personally told that they have serious religious qualms about performing abortions. “A lot of the NCHDs – a lot of the registrars and senior registrars and SHOs (senior house officers), so the front line – would be from Egypt, Sudan, and generally...

Meat consumption in western countries such as Ireland may need to drop by 90 percent to avert a climate catastrophe and reverse the current obesity epidemic, a new study has warned. The research by 20 influential food scientists, published in the Lancet Medical Journal, suggests the global food system is unsustainable and driving the planet towards environmental destruction while simultaneously leaving billions of people either underfed or overweight. […] To get the required daily intake of calories, people would be expected to eat almost 18 times as much dry beans, soy and nuts. … To promote the shift to a...

BRUSSELS are likely to buckle to Britain’s key Brexit demands, due to uproar among EU countries over fears of an economic decline in the case of a no deal departure. The EU27 will give in to Prime Minister Theresa May’s demands to make the Irish border backstop a legally temporary measure. The key British demand is the only obstacle holding up Mrs May’s deal from passing in Parliament. The DUP and dozens of Brexiteers have vowed to vote down the deal this month unless changes are made to the backstop.

Dozens of protesters have gathered outside Dublin’s Custom House in the latest “yellow vest” protest in the city. This is the fifth weekend such a protest has taken place in Dublin, sparked by similar demonstrations which started in France last year. In a Facebook post, the group Yellow Vest Ireland listed a number of issues it is calling for action on, including citizen-initiated referendums, the resignation of Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, and an end to evictions. …

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said he was “saddened” to hear that nurses had decided to strike during the week rather than at the weekend. Speaking during his trip to Africa, Varadkar said that the knock-on effect from the midweek industrial action will be greater than if nurses decided to strike at the weekend. Yesterday it emerged that nurses and midwives will hold a strike on Wednesday 30 January, with further days of action planned in February if their issues are not addressed. […] Student nurses and midwives earn €14,243 a year under the current public sector pay deal; staff nurses earn...

An ancient folk remedy from County Fermanagh could help scientists in the fight against drug-resistant bacteria. According to local belief, the soil from a churchyard in Boho can cure infections. A microbiologist who took samples to see if there was any scientific basis for the cure has made an astonishing discovery. Dr Gerry Quinn found a unique strain of streptomyces, a microorganism used to produce antibiotics. It was found to kill the top three pathogens (organisms that cause disease) identified by the World Health Organisation (WHO) as a major threat to human health. "When we brought the soil back to...

January 7, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) – 2018 was the year that saw the Irish Referendum on abortion passed with cheering crowds on the streets of Dublin and elsewhere.   As the Feast of the Holy Family drew to a close on December 30, armed police at the request of the local clergy forcibly dragged an Irish pro-lifer from a Catholic cathedral. Seemingly, his crime was wanting to pray through the night in that cathedral as an act of reparation for the liberal abortion law about to be enacted in Ireland. The cathedral in question was St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Armagh. That...

GALWAY, Ireland, January 7, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) – The euphoria of the “Yes” campaign on winning the Irish abortion referendum last May is turning decidedly sour. Not only are those who campaigned for a ‘yes’ vote complaining that the measures that have been rapidly introduced by a compliant government to kill the unborn are not enough, the same people who campaigned for freedom from the then existing restrictions on abortion now wish to restrict the rights of those morally opposed to abortion. The strategy by which the pro-abortion side wish to silence debate on abortion is through censorship zones, similar to...

A student has died after falling from cliffs in Ireland while reportedly taking a selfie. The man in his 20s fell from the Cliffs of Moher in County Clare, in the west of the country. He was studying in Dublin and Irish media say he was an Indian national. Police are treating it as a "tragic accident" amid reports he slipped while taking the selfie on Friday afternoon. A police spokesman said: "The alarm was raised shortly after 3pm when a man was seen falling from the cliff edge." His body was later recovered by the coastguard based at Doolin...

A US-backed roup says that it has captured an Irish citizen fighting for Islamic State in Syria. The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces said that it had arrested five militants who had been fighting for the Islamic State. It reported that one of these was a 45-year-old man originally from Dublin, Ireland. Two of the other men are from the US, while the other two are from Pakistan. In a statement, the SDF — which mainly fights against Islamic State and other extremist groups in Syria — said that it was carrying out Operation Jazeera Storm, which has the aim of...

The brother of a U.S. citizen arrested in Russia on espionage charges said Tuesday that he's innocent and was in Moscow to attend a wedding. Paul Whelan, a retired Marine, was arrested in Moscow on Friday. The Russian Federal Security Service, in announcing the arrest three days later, said Whelan was caught "during an espionage operation," but gave no details. "We are deeply concerned for his safety and well-being," his brother, David Whelan, said in a statement posted on Twitter. "His innocence is undoubted and we trust that his rights will be respected." The Russian spying charges carry a prison...

Russia has detained a US citizen on suspicion of spying, according to the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB). American Paul Whelan was arrested December 28 in Moscow "while carrying out an act of espionage," the FSB said in a statement. "The investigation department of the Federal Security Service of Russia initiated a criminal case against a US citizen under article 276 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. The investigation is underway," the statement continued. Article 276 is espionage. If found guilty, Whelan faces 10 to 20 years imprisonment, Russia's state-run news agency TASS reported. The Russia Ministry of...

….The details of the charges against Whelan from a special court-martial that resulted in his discharge for bad conduct two years later add to an increasingly complex picture of the 48-year-old former Marine, whom Russian officials have accused of spying. His case grew more perplexing on Friday after Ireland became the fourth nation to acknowledge him as a citizen and seek consular access.

The National Maternity Hospital will begin accepting referrals for abortion services from Monday, 7 January. In a new section on its website, titled “Unplanned Pregnancy Support Services”, the hospital said it would take women from its catchment area of South Dublin, Wicklow and Kildare. Referrals will only be accepted from GPs or community-based services such as the Irish Family Planning Association and the Well Woman Clinic. Regulated abortion services have been legal in Ireland since President Michael D. Higgins signed the Health (Regulation of Termination of Pregnancy) Bill into law on 20 December. Hospitals and GPs have been working with...

There is no prospect of electronic voting being reintroduced into Ireland in the short to medium term, the Government has confirmed. The Minister of State in charge of local government, John Paul Phelan, has said that far from representing progress, electronic voting can potentially undermine people’s confidence in the democratic process. “There is no prospect in the short to medium term of the chicken coops being taken out of retirement and used,” he said. Mr. Phelan was referring to the eventual fate of the voting machines that were purchased when then minister for the environment, Martin Cullen of Fianna Fáil,...

Video LinkThis is one of numerous short videos online that explain how the "backstop" is one of the major sticking points of Brexit. This little video helps explain the complexities of the "backstop" (i.e., the Brexit issues that pertain to the UK, Northern Ireland, and the Republic of Ireland...specifically, the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland).