‘Arts' dropped from department's title after series of renamings following Coalition shake-up
Arts has been dropped from the name of a Government department as part of series name changes in recent days to reflect a shake-up of their responsibilities following the formation of the new Coalition.
The old
Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media
is now known as the Department of Culture, Communications and Sport.
The
Tourism
and
Gaeltacht
responsibilities now come under the remit of the, now renamed, Department of Enterprise, Tourism and Employment and the Department of Rural and Community Development and the Gaeltacht.
Those functions officially transferred on June 1st.
READ MORE
Asked about the dropping of the word 'Arts' from the Department's name – and whether this signalled any downgrading of priorities in this area – a spokeswoman said: 'The title Department of Culture, Communications and Sport more succinctly captures the full remit of the Department.
'The word Culture includes the Arts and is a common term used in the title of equivalent Ministries in the EU, noting also that EU Ministers meet at the Education, Youth, Culture and Sports Council.'
She also said: 'It should be noted that a previous format of the Department was the Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht.'
The old
Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications
is now known as the Department of Climate, Energy and the Environment.
The
Department of Justice
is now called the Department of Justice, Home Affairs and Migration, reflecting a significant change in function with the responsibility for housing asylum seekers transferring from the
Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth
. It is now known as the Department of Children, Disability and Equality.
A Department of Justice, Home Affairs and Migration spokesman said the order changing its title took effect on Thursday.
The transfer of functions from the Department of Children took effect on May 1st and 'this included responsibility for all aspects of international protection accommodation, Ukraine accommodation and integration'.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
RTÉ News
5 hours ago
- RTÉ News
28 people deported to Nigeria detained prior to flight
Twenty-eight of the 35 people who were deported to Nigeria on a charter flight from Ireland this week were held in custody prior to their deportation. The average length of their detention was 27 days. The figures were provided in response to a request to the Department of Justice by RTÉ's Saturday with Colm Ó Mongáin. In a statement, the Department said a person who is subject of a deportation order can be held for up to 56 days "for the purpose of ensuring their deportation from the State". It added that this was "to facilitate the procurement of travel documentation and the making of arrangements for the deportation flight". Details were not provided on where those deported this week were detained in advance of the flight to Nigeria. However, the Department said there are a number of "prescribed places of detention" which include Castlerea Prsion, Cloverhill Prison, Cork Prison, Limerick Prison, Midlands Prison and Wheatfield Prison. It is understood women detained prior to deportation are held at the Dóchas Centre in Dublin. Detainees can also be held at any garda station. Speaking on RTÉ's Saturday with Colm Ó Mongáin, Fianna Fáil Minister of State Charlie McConalogue said that in some instances it was necessary to detain people in advance of deportation, but this was "hopefully in a small number of circumstances". "The information I have in terms of the women and children involved, there was no detentions there, that there was a date given in advance," Mr McConalogue said. The breakdown of figures for the flight to Nigeria included 21 men, nine women and five children - indicating that at least some women were held in custody prior to their enforced deportation. Speaking on the same programme, Sinn Féin TD Eoin Ó Broin said: "There is no doubt that part of what the very high profile nature of Minister O'Callaghan has done is to try and distract attention away from their failures in terms of running an international protection system that is compassionate, that is human rights rooted, but also that is fair, efficient and ultimately enforced." Social Democrats TD Sinéad Gibney said the events of Thursday morning was "the stuff of nightmares" for the children deported - as well as the children who witnessed their friends being taken away by gardaí.
Irish Times
14 hours ago
- Irish Times
The Irish economy grew by 22% over the past year. Yes, you read that right
Ireland's economic data was always going to be a bit special at the start of this year. But Thursday's figures were mind-bending. It is impossible to overstate the extent to which we now stand out in international comparisons. And this is not just a curiosity – it matters. The economy, as measured by gross domestic product (GDP) , was 22 per cent larger in the first quarter of 2025 than one year earlier, according to the latest estimates from the Central Statistics Office . Think about it. The figures suggest that for every €1 of activity last year, there was €1.22 in 2025. Even comparing GDP in the first quarter of this year with the last quarter of 2024, there is a rise of close to 10 per cent – this is roughly the extent of growth across the euro zone over the past decade. Of course this bonkers data is not real, in the sense that it does not reflect what is happening in the underlying economy in which we all live. How could it? As has been long discussed the headline economic data is entirely distorted by the activities and tax planning of a small number of very big US tech and pharma companies. From time to time, this has created huge distortions in the figures. A decade ago, top US economist Paul Krugman famously described a 26 per cent GDP growth rate reported for the Irish economy (later revised up to over 30 per cent) as 'leprechaun' economics . At the time the figures were distorted by massive tax-driven investments by the companies concerned, including Apple, essentially a manoeuvre by the companies involved to try to keep their tax bills down as international rules changed. READ MORE Now, as one observer put it, we are seeing another 'Krugman' moment. This time the reasons are different. Big pharma companies have been rushing product over to the US to try to get drugs and key ingredients into the market before Donald Trump announces tariffs on the sector. This has led to a surge in exports, feeding into the GDP data. Many of these are manufactured here – and some are made elsewhere but organised by Irish subsidiaries and so also show up in our figures. And so we see a massive surge in Irish GDP in the first quarter of this year. A big – temporary – decline in pharma exports in GDP will follow at some stage, as the firms involved must now have massive stocks jammed into every free warehouse in the US. Much will depend on how the tariffs story plays out. [ Welcome (back) to the era of Leprechaun economics Opens in new window ] Whether Krugman renews his leprechaun offensive or not, let's not pretend this won't be noticed. Ireland's GDP data is not some irrelevance in a quirky economic corner. The amounts of money being moved through Ireland are now enormous. Daniel Kral, chief economist at Oxford Economics , calculates that Ireland – which accounts for 4 per cent of the euro zone economy – accounted for half its total growth over the past year. Analysts have taken to looking at the figures 'excluding Ireland'. How do we pull back from all of this to judge the underlying health of the economy? Total demand in the domestic economy – adjusted by the CSO to remove the multinational factors - rose just 1 per cent over the year. But we need to look under the surface here, too. Consumer spending, a good measure of how we feel, was up by a decent 2.5 per cent. But the overall figure was dragged down by a fall in business investment, presumably reflecting the international uncertainty. So households continued to spend in the first part of the year, but businesses are taking a wait-and-see approach to big capital spending. This is likely to be reflected in the jobs market as the year goes on – and here AI is also changing the game in many sectors. Consumers may get more cautious too. Uncertainty is starting to slow the economy and this is a trend we need to watch as the year goes on. The piece of data that seemed a bit out of line this week was a 30 per cent fall in corporation tax in May compared with the same month last year. This was affected by the comparison with a strong May last year – which the Department of Finance suggests was boosted by once-off factors. Two of our biggest taxpayers, Pfizer and Microsoft – pay significant amounts of tax that month. But the key early indicator for most of the big companies is June – and what happens here will give a good pointer for the year as a whole. The figures do underline one point. It is our huge reliance on the opaque affairs of four or five massive companies – and our exposure to the sectors they operate in, their own performance and complex decisions on how their tax structures are set up. Our latest bout of data exceptionalism again puts Ireland in the spotlight, when it would have been better to keep the head down. It underlines the outsize take Ireland is getting from pharma and tech activity in the EU – both contentious points in the White House. Notably, the US added Ireland to an economic watch list this week, based on the size of our trade surplus. We are very much on the radar in Washington. Our corporate tax take and manufacturing base are looked on enviously not only from the US , but from elsewhere in Europe. [ 'No long-term commitments to anything' – Ireland's economy is experiencing a silent slowdown Opens in new window ] The advance shipping of products again focuses attention on the scale of activity and tax planning in Ireland by big pharma companies. And this causes a rollercoaster of cyclical activity. But what really counts is longer-term, structural issues. Will these pharma giants decide over time – and it would take years – to relocate some of their production to the US? Will their profits and thus tax payments here be hit by Trump's policies? Or will they – or some of the tech giants – alter their corporate structures so that they pay significantly less tax here? It comes down to whether Trump's policies change the way the economic and corporate world operates fundamentally, a fair bit or not much at all. As Ireland benefits from the current system so much, the more it changes, the more risks there are for us. The coming months will tell a lot.
Irish Times
16 hours ago
- Irish Times
Death In Derry - Martin McGuinness and the Derry IRA's War Against The British: Strong on candour, weak on analysis
Death In Derry: Martin McGuinness and the Derry IRA's War Against The British Author : Jonathan Trigg ISBN-13 : 978-1785375477 Publisher : Merrion Press Guideline Price : €19.99 This book is a valuable contribution to the literature of the Troubles period and the history of the IRA. Jonathan Trigg has secured interviews with several former British soldiers and IRA members, many under pseudonyms. This is new material. The weaknesses in the book are that it is not strong on political analysis and that it accepts simplistic versions of key events such as the Battle of the Bogside and the Falls Road rioting of August 1969. He says, for instance, that the 1971 internment raids were not extended to loyalists because of unionist pressure. Actually, this was on legal advice that such a measure could not be used against a force that did not threaten the state – the same logic by which the Irish government refused to intern IRA members at the same time. READ MORE Trigg is happy to describe the period of violence as a war, accepting terminology favoured by the IRA themselves. He writes of IRA activists in a tone bordering on admiration, apparently as one soldier respecting others. [ A former British army officer and author on former IRA members opening up to him: 'Trust is a huge issue' Opens in new window ] That will grate with some who will prefer a more moralistic approach and will not like to read of murders being described as 'successes'. Trigg is a military historian. His strengths are in understanding military culture and warfare. It is almost endearing how he admits to occasional failings in his research. One IRA man refuses to tell him what he was jailed for and he leaves it at that, when another researcher might have gone into the newspaper archives and found out. He misses some important nuances. In a chapter about the south Derry IRA centred around Bellaghy, he attributes the reduced level of republican militancy in the area to the presence of the literary centre Seamus Heaney HomePlace, and the 'thousands of tourists wandering around with their camera phones'. Clearly he hasn't been to Bellaghy lately. However, he has secured the candour of several former Provos and soldiers, and this factor provides an understanding of their actions and their thinking that earns the book a place on the shelves of any serious future researchers or writers on the period. One amusing detail is that the British army developed a remote control camera system for monitoring suspects but had to scrap it because those suspects would hear the click and the whirr of the film winder. That wouldn't be a problem with the technology of today.
