Bringing an end to conflicts involves speaking to participants on the basis of parity of esteem, but no party should be allowed “shoot their way to the table”, former taoiseach Bertie Ahern told TDs and senators on Tuesday. Ahern and former Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams spoke to the Oireachtas Committee on Foreign Affairs about … Read more
Paul Brady is sitting in his home studio, showing me the scrapbooks that his mother, Mollie, faithfully kept from the beginning of his six-decade musical career. The studio is set in the beautifully landscaped garden of his home in south Co Dublin, a creative haven for the songwriter from the Border town of Strabane, in … Read more
As taoiseach from 1994 to 1997 with responsibilities for Anglo-Irish relations and the incipient peace process, John Bruton gets a poor press. Much of it may have been his own fault. He was a man who had taken a keen interest in Irish history throughout his life and was stubbornly “his own man”. Why else … Read more