Irishblogs.ie
Observing the Irish blogosphere since 2005
Observing the Irish blogosphere since 2005
Ar feadh na nglúnta, bhí rithim ar leith ag Aoine san oíche in Éirinn. Bhí deireadh na seachtaine tagtha, caitheadh na cótaí orainn, agus shiúlamar isteach sa teach tábhairne le haghaidh pionta agus gáire. Ní raibh sé i gcónaí faoi na deochanna féin — ba é an scíth, an comhrá agus an ceangal sóisialta a bhí tábhachtach. Tá an nós sin fós beo, ach le blianta beaga anuas tá deasghnáth eile ag dul i dtaithí orainn: an tráthnóna Netflix.
Ag an gcéad amharc, is rud simplí é. Casann tú an teilifís, scrollaíonn tú beagán, roghnaíonn tú seó. Ach tá sé i bhfad níos mó ná siamsaíocht amháin anois. Tá sé tar éis éirí mar chomhartha cultúrtha, mar bhealach chun ár gcuid ama saor a chur i bhfráma, agus mar theanga nua chomónta againn i saol atá gnóthach agus torannach.
Toghchán Uachtaránachta 2025 in Éirinn ar 24 Deireadh Fómhair. Faigh amach faoi na hiarrthóirí — Heather Humphreys, Jim Gavin agus Catherine Connolly — agus na ceisteanna móra: an Ghaeilge, géarchéim tithíochta, athrú aeráide agus cothromas sóisialta.
Ní hamháin gur féile é Oíche Shamhna i gCorcaigh. Bíonn an chathair ag ullmhú le seachtainí: páistí ag déanamh mascanna páipéir, ealaíontóirí ag péinteáil cinn ollmhóra, agus comharsana ag fiafraí: “An mbeidh an Dragon of Shandon níos mó i mbliana?”
Nuair a thagann oíche an 31 Deireadh Fómhair, cloisfidh tú drumaí i bhfad uait. Bailíonn slua mór: mic léinn i gcóistí, teaghlaigh le páistí, daoine scothaosta le soilse beaga i lámha. Ansin tagann sé: an Dragan Shandon, ollphéist solais agus páipéir, cruthaithe ag lámha áitiúla.
Tá boladh toit agus cnónna rósta san aer, braon báistí ar na sráideanna — fíor-atmaisféar Oíche Shamhna i gCorcaigh. Ní paráid amháin é, ach féiniúlacht chathrach.
A deep sense of shock hangs over Finglas this week after the deaths of a father and his five-year-old daughter, discovered on Saturday evening in their family home at Heathfield Terrace. Gardaí have confirmed they are treating the case as a murder-suicide.
Three adults killed in Tallanstown as Gardaí arrest man in his 30s — questions raised about family pressures and mental health support in Ireland
Ireland has been rocked by another family tragedy, this time in the rural community of Tallanstown, Co Louth. Gardaí confirmed that two men and a woman, all members of the same family, were found dead in a house on Monday morning. A man in his thirties has been arrested at the scene.
Michaelmas in Ireland: how the traditions of St Michael faded and why they still matter to us today
September 29 has long been marked in Ireland as the Feast of St Michael and All Angels — Michaelmas. Today it may seem like just another autumn day, but for centuries it was one of the most important markers in the Irish calendar: a time of payments, contracts, fairs, food and folklore.
Nearly half of US companies in Europe expect worsening relations, but Ireland sits at the very heart of the debate
Ireland has launched a new public consultation on its Whole of Government Circular Economy Strategy 2026–2028, inviting citizens, businesses, and organisations to contribute ideas on how the country can accelerate its transition from a “take–make–waste” model towards a sustainable circular economy.
Wexford Festival Opera 2025 runs from 17 October to 1 November and once again Ireland’s south-east will become a stage for rare operatic treasures. For audiences unable to travel, RTÉ will broadcast the main productions live on RTÉ lyric fm and stream them on RTÉ Culture. This combination ensures that the magic of Wexford reaches both local listeners and opera fans across Europe.
The Global Sumud Flotilla set sail toward Gaza in 2025, carrying not only boxes of food and medicine but also the heavy burden of the world’s conscience. This mission, envisioned as a lifeline for the besieged enclave, has triggered diplomatic storms, military threats, and deep emotions across the globe.
For the 2.3 million people trapped inside Gaza, this convoy is more than ships on the horizon. It is a symbol of hope breaking through the endless cycle of blockade, bombardments, and deprivation.
National Heritage Week 2025 is here — and it’s more than a festival, it’s a reminder of who we are.
When you walk past a ruined abbey in the mist, hear fiddle music spilling from a pub, or see schoolkids trying a céilí for the first time, you don’t need statistics to know that Irish heritage runs deep. But numbers can still surprise: a new survey by Ecclesiastical Ireland has found that 88% of people across the country feel a strong personal connection to our heritage.
That’s not nostalgia — that’s identity.
In the shadow of the MacGillycuddy Reeks, a rare stretch of Irish countryside has come onto the market — 266 acres of scenic farmland at Derrynafeana, Glencar, Co Kerry.
Here, where the ancient paths of shepherds have become part of the famed Kerry Way hiking trail, every bend of the road opens to views of Lough Acoose and the rugged, weather-carved hills of southwest Ireland.
The guide price is €550,000, making it one of the most talked-about rural listings this autumn. The sale is being handled by Tom Spillane & Co., a long-established auctioneer based in Killarney.
From the moment humans learned to tell stories, they began to talk to chance as if it were a god.
From ancient Greek dice to Chinese oracle bones, from Renaissance tarot cards to today’s digital casinos, luck has always been a language — a symbolic dialogue between risk, hope, and control.
Ireland has never simply preserved its past — it has reincarnated it.
From spiraling carvings on Celtic crosses to the glowing geometry of digital screens, the island’s artists keep re-translating their heritage into new forms of expression. The rhythm that once pulsed through stone and vellum now hums through pixels, algorithms, and blockchain code.
In Ireland, gatherings have always mattered more than the stage. Whether in the back room of a pub, a windswept field, or a shared Google Drive — creation here is collective. The old céilí, a traditional get-together filled with songs, stories, and dance, has quietly found its digital echo: a crypto céilí, where artists, coders, and dreamers meet not in person, but on the blockchain.
In an age of artificial shine and digital silk, the world is once again searching for truth you can touch.
A fabric that smells of rain, time, and patience suddenly feels like the rarest luxury.
Irish tweed returns not as nostalgia, but as an answer — to exhaustion from plastic, disposable trends, and the hollow speed of fast fashion, where meaning dissolves.
Tweed isn’t a trend. It’s a form of memory.
Once, the microphone at Raidió na Gaeltachta glowed with the warmth of its valves, and the studio in Casla smelled of peat smoke and coffee. Today, the same voice streams on Spotify and Alexa, yet its purpose has never changed — to speak to Ireland in the language that the world once tried to silence.
For more than fifty years, Raidió na Gaeltachta has been the heartbeat of the Conamara Gaeltacht, the western region where the Irish language is not studied, but lived.
Relocating to another country isn’t only about buying new luggage or finding an apartment with decent light — it’s about understanding how your new home treats your income. For anyone planning to move to Ireland, Germany, or Australia, tax systems quietly shape daily life. They decide how much freedom you have after payday, how much you can save, and sometimes even how long you’ll stay. Choosing a country without understanding its tax logic is like booking a flight without knowing the destination.
They say that when the world was still young and the wind remembered the names of gods, an island rose from the western sea — green as the first morning after rain. Its people built temples of stone and light so that the sun could enter them on the shortest day of the year.
They did not know the word eternity, yet they carved it — in spirals, knots, and lines that echoed the breath of the world.
That is how the story of Ireland began — a land where everything was made to remember.
In the old rhythm of the Irish year, November was not the month of endings but of transformation. It began with Samhain, the most mysterious of all ancient festivals, when the border between worlds dissolved like mist over the bogs, and time itself stood still to listen. To the people of early Ireland, Samhain was both the death of summer and the birth of winter — the pause between the inhale and exhale of the earth. Cattle were brought down from the hills, fields were cleared of their last sheaves, and fires were extinguished in every home so that they could later be rekindled from a sacred flame. It was a ritual of cleansing and renewal, a way of making sure that what had grown old in the light would find a new life in the dark.
In Ireland, every story begins with a fire, a pint, and a tune. The Irish pub is not merely a place to drink; it’s a living chronicle of laughter, rebellion, and belonging. From the candlelit corners of medieval taverns to the neon buzz of modern Dublin bars, pubs have always been the beating heart of Irish life — a democratic space where strangers become friends and conversation flows as freely as the stout. Step into any Irish pub, and you step into a rhythm older than memory: the clink of glasses, the hum of talk, the rise and fall of a fiddle tune that seems to echo from another century. Even when the rain taps against the windows, the world inside feels whole, warm, and human.
There’s something magical about fear when it’s safe. The way it sharpens your senses, slows time, and makes you listen to your own heartbeat. On Halloween, that feeling becomes ritual. We crave the darkness, we open the door to it, and in video games, we get to live inside it. Horror games aren’t just stories you watch—they’re places you survive. And this year, the genre is thriving like never before, twisting terror into something intimate, cinematic, and oddly beautiful.
As Ireland’s new president pledges to make Gaeilge the working language of the nation’s highest office, the question lingers: can a country that keeps forgetting its own voice still call that progress?
Ireland crossed a remarkable and deeply paradoxical demographic threshold in 2023. The number of babies born to women aged 45 and older reached 408, the highest ever recorded and more than 80% above the levels of a decade ago. Late motherhood, once seen as an exception, is now becoming a visible part of Ireland’s family landscape — driven by advances in reproductive medicine, longer education, and economic pressures that delay parenthood.
Ireland has entered a new phase of migration policy, marked by the government’s decision to reduce free state accommodation for newly arrived Ukrainians from 90 days to 30 days. This reform applies to everyone arriving after 10 November 2025 and signals a shift from the emergency humanitarian approach of 2022–2024 toward a more structured, capacity-based model. According to updated guidance from the Department of Justice (https://www.gov.ie/en/organisation/department-of-justice/), the one-month accommodation period now defines the critical early adaptation stage for displaced people.
There’s a moment each year that isn’t marked by a date but is instantly recognisable. Someone casually mentions in a group chat that they “put on that old series again,” someone else admits they rewatched a whole season over the weekend, and suddenly the conversation shifts. That’s when rewatch season begins — the quiet, unmistakable ritual when familiar stories resurface as if the collective mood has called them back.
Ireland’s internal migration has entered a new phase — one that cannot be explained by the familiar language of opportunity, housing affordability, or cultural preference. A deeper structural force is emerging: a shift in how the economically active under-40 population evaluates risk, stability and long-term resilience. This shift is redrawing Ireland’s urban hierarchy, pushing young workers toward Galway, Cork and Limerick, while older centres show signs of stagnation.
Life here has begun to shift in ways that are hard to ignore. Over the past two years it has become clear that the systems people relied on for decades can no longer keep pace with what used to be a manageable flow of new arrivals. Eurostat reports a 65% increase in applications for international protection compared with 2021, and ORAC has logged over 13,000 new applications in the latest cycle – numbers that might barely register in larger nations but land heavily in a country of this size.
For much of the past two decades, success in Ireland followed a clear and socially accepted path. Build a career, buy a home, settle somewhere permanent. Progress was measured through milestones that felt tangible and, for a long time, attainable. Ambition had a shared direction, and that direction was rarely questioned.
Today, that certainty is quietly disappearing.
For much of Ireland’s recent history, the idea of home was inseparable from ownership. Buying a house was not simply a financial goal; it was a social milestone. It marked stability, adulthood and a sense of having secured one’s place in the world. Renting, by contrast, was understood as temporary — a phase to pass through on the way to something more permanent.
That assumption no longer reflects reality.
For a long time, Irish cities were shaped by an idea so familiar it rarely needed to be named. Urban life was expected to be rooted, local and continuous. Shops were run by people who lived nearby. Pubs passed from one generation to the next. Streets changed slowly, accumulating memory rather than replacing it. A city was not merely a space to move through, but a place that belonged — quietly and almost invisibly — to those who lived in it.
Not so long ago, the phrase festival cinema sounded almost like a warning. A slow pace, minimal dialogue, the absence of familiar dramatic structure — for a mainstream audience, this was cinema perceived as “not meant for them.” These films belonged to a closed circuit of major festivals, with their own codes and rhythms, seemingly detached from everyday viewing habits.
Cinema has not disappeared from everyday life. It has quietly changed its position within it. At home, films are no longer events that require preparation, silence, and full attention. They play while messages arrive, while food is cooking, while fatigue sets the rhythm of the evening. The screen is on, the story moves forward, but attention drifts in and out. We still watch films, yet rarely in the way cinema was once designed to be watched. Increasingly, we live alongside them.
How Geography, Strategy, and Radical Preparedness Made It Nearly Untouchable**
European history is written in wars. Borders were drawn by force, empires rose and collapsed, and geography often determined who survived and who disappeared. Against this background, Switzerland appears almost anomalous. While much of the continent was repeatedly torn apart by conflict, Switzerland preserved its territory, avoided occupation, and remained largely untouched by the great wars of modern Europe.