Jim Sheridan: ‘There was a Galway Men's Club and a Roscommon Men's Club. There was no Dublin Men's Club. Nobody inside The Pale had a club'
Jim Sheridan's In America is about an Irish family who make their way to New York City in the 1980s without proper legal documentation, looking for a fresh start. It is also a true story – Sheridan's own story of a hard life in New York over eight years.
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Extra.ie
an hour ago
- Extra.ie
Irish TikToker goes on epic quest to find classic drink from 2010s
An Irish TikToker has embarked on an epic quest to determine if anywhere in the country still serves a classic drink from the 2010s. Being sold in the good old days in promos such as two for a tenner, the staple that was Zaconey and Coke was a bestseller in pubs and clubs around the country — becoming a particularly popular beverage of choice for the college students, before being unceremoniously discontinued in 2016. While bottles of the 'God's nectar' were knocking about until 2019, there are, unfortunately, only a finite number of bottles left; with TikToker Liam Mackessy going on a quest to try and find a bottle of the brown stuff. @liammackessy I feel we are closer to getting Zaconey back on the market but in case we don't succeed, Linnane's bar in Tralee is the place to be! Sinead, you are and will always be a legend for this! #zaconey #zaconeyandcoke #bringbackzaconey #irelandtiktok #blastfromthepast #ireland ♬ original sound – Liam Mackessy After being inundated with comments saying that people have a 'tiny drop' left that they want to save for a special occasion, Liam didn't stop there, saying that he was looking for a proper bottle/to see if there were any pubs, anywhere in the country, that still served it (and again, we cannot stress, this was discontinued over half a decade ago). However, he struck gold (and Coke) when he found out that Hennessy's Bar in Tralee bought a number of the bottles before they were discontinued, and are serving the drinks, as well as Linnane's Bar — with a follower whose partner worked there bringing up a bottle of the good stuff to Liam, where he and his husband enjoyed a Zaconey and Coke over a decade later. 'We used to drink this all the time when we lived in Galway back in 2014, 2015,' Liam said. 'Let's do a little taste test and see if it brings back all those memories from that time.' Zaconey and Coke was a staple of the college town drink in the mid-2010s, with the drink being discontinued. However, some people are still looking for the finite bottles. Pic: Riley's Dundalk/Instagram The taste brought back the memories for Liam, who immediately said: 'I didn't realise how much I missed Zaconey until now.' While the drink has been discontinued, some people have shared that they have managed to keep their bottles over the years — with one person on the Ireland subreddit sharing an unopened bottle of Zaconey and writing 'Could this be the last one in Ireland?' '2 Zaconey and Coke for €10 (I think) in Workman's Dublin,' one person reminisced. 'Peak college years!' The drink has been discontinued with a few bottles still knocking about — and even a few pubs still serve them. Pic: Zaconey/Facebook 'Man, we really were living in the good days,' another wrote. 'Nowadays they'd call it a cocktail and you'd be paying €15 for a watered-down one,' while another added 'Zaconey and Pepsi in Electric Galway. What a time to be alive gods nectar.'
RTÉ News
3 hours ago
- RTÉ News
Support, don't star: rethinking the Arts Council's role
Theatremaker Dan Colley asks: Has the Arts Council of Ireland taken on too much 'main character energy'? I would like to propose a gear shift with the appointment of the next Director of the Council. The next Director should reorient the Arts Council into the role of supporting character in the story of the arts. It will take a really adept leader not to try and fix everything that's wrong with the organisation from within, but instead to follow. From the outset I want to acknowledge the many dedicated public servants who work at the Arts Council - people who care deeply about the arts and have served tirelessly through periods of huge change. Not least among them Maureen Kennelly, the outgoing Director of the Arts Council, who enjoys widespread support and respect among the community. Her commitment to artists, particularly during the pandemic, has been felt and appreciated. The Arts Council is the national agency for funding, developing and promoting the arts in Ireland. The money it gets from Government to fulfil that mandate has gone from €75 million in 2019, to €140 million in 2025. An 86.5% increase in six years. It's a credit to the people at the Arts Council, and to the volunteer advocates at the National Campaign for the Arts, that they have helped bring greater public and political understanding of the arts—not just as an economic or reputational asset, but as an essential part of Irish life and a foundation of a healthy society. So why, when the Arts Council has more money than ever before, does it feel harder than ever to make theatre? I'm a theatre maker, and that question brought a group of my peers together last year - trying to make sense of an increasingly precarious sector. Theatre funding has effectively stagnated - rising only 5.8% since 2008 - an increase that's been outstripped by inflation. And yet the Arts Council more than doubled its staff since 2020. While additional capacity at the Arts Council may have been necessary, the lack of parallel investment in their clients has created a gulf between the people who produce art and the agency that manages the funding. No theatre has doubled its staff. No plays have doubled its cast. Over 800 artists signed an open letter calling for emergency investment in the sector which was delivered in December 2024. The feeling was widespread: theatre in Ireland is struggling, not because there's no funding, but because of how it's being distributed. The problem is not about people. It's about systems. The Arts Council is a public body with a wide remit, serving everything from festivals to literature, music, venues, visual art, as well as the more nebulous idea of 'promoting the arts in Ireland'. But its most essential function - getting funding to artists and the people who connect art with the public - is not working. If the Arts Council were truly attuned to the interests of artists, it would see the current delays in funding decisions as an organisational crisis. Radical measures would be considered - like redeploying staff or drastically simplifying processes - to get investment to artists in time. If it were more attuned to artists' interests, the fact that only 15% of eligible theatre applications are funded wouldn't be brushed off as "the competitive context." It would be treated as an emergency. The next Director should make the Arts Council a supporting character - one that enables, rather than directs. If it were aligned with artists' interests', the Council's budget submission to Government would not be built around what it thinks it can get, or what looks tidy on paper, but on the real cost of funding all the applications it has already judged to be worthy. They would base it on the real demand, no matter how big that number is. These are questions I've been asking, along with many others, not out of hostility, but out of necessity. These failures are not moral ones. They are systemic. Systems respond to power and, as it stands, the Arts Council responds most clearly to the pressures it is most exposed to - be they departmental, political, or bureaucratic. The artist's voice is still too faint in that chorus. That's why I've been part of a group that formed the Theatre Artists Assembly - an attempt to give the arts practitioners a unified, democratic voice. Not to shout louder, but to speak more clearly and together about what we need to do our work. I would like to see assemblies like this being integrated into Arts Council decision-making processes. I would like to see artist and practitioner-led groups taking power and responsibility over the decisions that affect them. Yes, even the difficult and unpopular decisions. We have seen in citizens' assemblies how groups of people can come together and, when provided with the facts, expertise, and time to digest them and come to a conclusion, they do so with remarkable civility and clarity. I think this could be an experiment in co-creation of state policy. This could be a way of making institutions work in ways that reflect the interests of its stakeholders. It could be something we so acutely need; a form of democracy that happens between elections. This approach could strengthen and renew the principle of the Arts Council's 'arms-length' from Government. This is the principle, established in the Arts Art, that keeps decisions about what kind of art to produce and who to fund to do it, out of the realm of party politics. This could be a way of affirming that distance from the political system, while establishing community-voice and democratic responsibility. The next Director should make the Arts Council a supporting character - one that enables, rather than directs. They should build models for democratic decision-making - not merely "consultation" but real decision-making power. It will take a deft leader to resist the urge to fix everything from within, and instead recognise that real leadership often means creating space for others to shape the path. In short, they should lead by following.
Irish Independent
5 hours ago
- Irish Independent
Kerry woman has triggered great interest in Irish dancing at elite English university
A Tralee woman has sparked great interest in Irish dancing in the unlikely surroundings of an elite English university.
