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Irish Times
18-07-2025
- Sport
- Irish Times
The Irish Times view on the hurling final: a shared national passion
Fixture dates change, rules are altered, and the fortunes of individual counties fluctuate, but one thing remains constant: the shared passion generated by the GAA championship season. With the all-Ireland hurling final this weekend, we are reminded of the remarkable ability of a unique sporting organisation and its amateur athletes to provide compelling spectacles, marshal devoted followers and create a sense of communal pride. For over 140 years, the GAA has been an anchor of reliability and a distinct identity, creating a positivity lacking in many other areas of Irish life. The GAA has never been without controversy, or avoided entanglement in Irish divisions, but it has always avoided being completely captured by one group. It has adapted to meet contemporary challenges to ensure the sports prevail above all else; sports with a deep ancestry that are particular to us. The GAA could not thrive without nationwide volunteerism, and its more recent promotion of Ladies football and the expansion of Camogie have increased its membership, reach and relevance. It has fostered mental and physical strength and a tribalism rarely tainted by ugly confrontation. The championships culminate in what the late journalist Nuala O'Faoláin described as All-Ireland final days encapsulating the 'feeling of the nation as an entity'. In 1922, Eoin O'Duffy, as commissioner of the new Civic Guard, urged his policemen to embrace the GAA and 'play their way in to the hearts of the people'. That took on a wider resonance, and with our history of emigration, the GAA became an intrinsic bond between home and the diaspora which endures, robustly and emotionally, to this day. Immigrants have also made invaluable contributions to the association. READ MORE Commercialism had been part of the GAA, and it has not avoided self-righteousness, but its many achievements stand taller. The late poet Paul Durcan saw hurling as 'Pure poetry. Pure Inspiration. Pure Technique…Hurling is the father of freedom…the hurler strikes, and man is free'.
Euractiv
01-07-2025
- Politics
- Euractiv
Poland reintroduces border controls with Germany, Lithuania in latest Schengen blow
Poland will introduce temporary controls at its borders with Germany and Lithuania from next Monday, Prime Minister Donald Tusk announced. The decision came on Tuesday, one day after Tusk had teased the measure at a press conference. He framed it as a reaction to an inflow of irregular arrivals from Lithuania and to reports that German was sending illegal migrants to Poland. The prime minister said on Tuesday that the decision had been made after a briefing in the morning "on the situation at the Polish border and the consideration of the Border Guard's request for the temporary restoration of controls at the Polish-German and Polish-Lithuanian borders." Based on this, the government had decided to temporarily restore controls that would enter into force from Monday. Poland's announcement follows Belgium's move last month to reinstate police checks at the border this summer, delivering another blow to the Schengen dream of free movement, just days after the pact's 40th anniversary. Poland previously suspended asylum applications at parts of its border with Belarus, as it accused Minsk and Moscow of targetedly sending migrants over the border to destabilise the country. On Monday, Tusk said that he would now make sure that "people who cross borders illegally do not come from the Lithuanian direction." There had also been reports in Poland that Germany was sending migrants, who had already arrived in Germany, to Poland. That had led to right-wing groups forming so-called 'Civic Guard' units that were patrolling border crossings with Germany. Berlin had reintroduced checks at all its borders last year and started turning away all irregular arrivals including asylum seekers after the inauguration of the new conservative government in May. "We have informed the German side that if there are cases that we see as doubtful, we'll have to reinstate checks at the Polish-German border," Tusk said on Monday. Germany denies 'repatriation tourism' German Chancellor Friedrich Merz denied that Germany had engaged in any such practice. Some media in Poland had claimed that there was "so to speak, regular repatriation tourism from Germany to Poland", he said on Monday. "This is not the case, there are no such cases," he stressed. Merz said that illegal border crossings were "a joint problem" between Germany and Poland that needed to be solved. The two governments had been coordinating on the matter since last week and would work closely to "keep the burden [of the border controls] to a minimum," Lithuania also said it had been informed of the Polish decision. Both countries would need to assess which measures would be most effective in protecting the EU's external border while "maintaining everyone's expectation that the measures won't violate our interest in free movement of persons," said Lithuania's Foreign Minister Kęstutis Budrys. Blow to Schengen Poland's decision came as the latest exception to Europe's border-free Schengen travel zone, supervised by the European Commission. A Commission spokesperson said on Tuesday that controls at internal Schengen border were "possible under certain conditions." The Commission was "in close with in close contact with all the member states that have border controls in place and all the member states that are affected by them," they added. Several countries, including Germany, had used the possibility of legal exceptions to reintroduce border controls over the last few months, after migration figures spiked in 2023 after the end of the Covid-19 pandemic. Merz said on Tuesday that Europe was committed to "preserving this Schengen area." "But freedom of movement in the Schengen area will only work in the long term if it is not abused by those who promote irregular migration, particularly through smuggling," he added. Why Merz's migration crackdown is failing A court ruled that Germany's new border policy is effectively unlawful. It will hardly change the reality on the ground. Nicoletta Ionta and Alexandra Brzozowski contributed reporting. (om)
Irish Examiner
07-06-2025
- Irish Examiner
Clodagh Finn: Restoring some honour to Honour Bright, 100 years on
I will be thinking of Lizzie O'Neill, also known as Honour Bright, this Monday on the centenary of her murder on June 9, 1925, aged just 25. Her death — caused by a single bullet to the heart — rocked the new Irish state, not least because Leopold Dillon, a former superintendent of the Civic Guard, and Patrick Purcell, a doctor from Wicklow, were tried for her murder. It was a sensational trial which recounted 'a hideous tale of a night of debauchery', as prosecutor William Carrigan described it, to a packed Central Criminal Court in Dublin in February 1926. Yet, it took the jury just three minutes to acquit the high-profile defendants. Three minutes. That is not to say they reached the wrong decision. The revolver owned by one of the accused, Dr Purcell, could not have been the one used to kill Ms O'Neill, the court heard. HISTORY HUB If you are interested in this article then no doubt you will enjoy exploring the various history collections and content in our history hub. Check it out HERE and happy reading And while the men were freed, their reputations were in shreds; Dr Purcell was forced to leave his Wicklow practice and emigrate to the UK, while Dillon was dismissed from the police and is thought to have left for Canada. What has always bothered me, though, is that Lizzie O'Neill's reputation was also left in shreds. In court, she was described as 'an unhappy girl of the unfortunate class' and 'a woman who, through some cursed necessity, was compelled to seek her livelihood on the streets at night'. It didn't help that the only surviving image of her was the police photo showing her dead body in a field in Ticknock on the outskirts of Dublin, surrounded by gawping onlookers Nobody has ever been convicted of her murder in a case that has generated much fevered speculation. But that is not the focus of this week's column which, instead, is dedicated to trying to restore a little bit of respect to a young woman on the centenary of her death. Let's start by recalling this single, overlooked detail. During the trial, Superintendent Reynolds gave evidence that her pockets contained a purse, some other small articles and a rosary beads. A rosary beads. Interpret that as you will, but it is a tiny shred of evidence that helps us to counter the reductive image of a woman so misrepresented during the trial. She not only lost her life but her dignity and good name, a phenomenon that endures to this very day. There was no mention during the court case, either, that Lizzie (as her friends called her) was the mother of a young son. Kevin Barry O'Neill was born on November 9, 1920, in the Coombe Hospital in Dublin. The fact she named him for the IRA volunteer and medical student executed just days before says something about the new mother. Like Barry, she had a link to Carlow. Perhaps she was acknowledging that shared connection or maybe she was voicing her support for an independent Ireland. Artist Holly Christine Callaghan restores some dignity to Lizzie O'Neill, aka Honour Bright, in her portrait of the young woman whose murder caused a sensation a century ago. Census returns tell us that Lizzie, born Elizabeth, O'Neill was living with her parents, Elizabeth and John O'Neill, a printer, lino-operator, in College Street, in Carlow in 1911. She was the second eldest of the couple's seven children, three boys and four girls. All the family, and the boarder Patrick Hanrahan, a sacristan, are listed as Roman Catholic and, we can see that 11-year-old Elizabeth was going to school. She's listed as a 'scholar' who can speak Irish and English. She moved to Dublin when she was about 18 and, according to an account in a book by John Finegan in 1995, she got an apprenticeship at a drapery store in Lower Camden Street. He offers this uplifting, though unattributed, vignette: 'People who knew Lil [she was known as Lil and Lily] O'Neill when she first arrived from the country described her as an attractive, fresh-complexioned, warm-hearted girl, with brown hair and deep brown eyes.' She loved dancing too, a detail mentioned by Finegan and her granddaughter, and was apparently a regular at the city's dance-halls and ballrooms despite the political turbulence of the time. Pregnancy We know she got pregnant a year after her arrival in Dublin, but nothing of the man she may have hoped would support her. When he did not, she lost her job and the accommodation that went with it. It is hard to find documentary proof of what happened next, but it seems Lily found a foster mother for her child and paid for his upkeep weekly. We know from court reports that she was living in Newmarket in the Liberties at the time of her death. On the night of June 8, she and her friend Madge 'Bridie' Hopkins were working on St Stephen's Green when they met the two men later accused of her murder. She had assumed the name Honour Bright a few years before. Some said it was because she was fond of the colloquial phrase, 'honour bright', which meant 'on my honour' or 'honestly' (for example: 'I'll do that, honour bright'). It adds another layer of poignancy to think of this young woman adding her bond of honour to the end of her sentences. Or perhaps her pseudonym was her attempt to separate her work persona from her private one, a mother who one day hoped to earn enough money to care for her son. We will never know but what we can do is attempt to pick her up from that lonely field in Ticknock and remember her as she might have been in life Newspaper reports described her as a woman of about five foot four, with chestnut brown hair. She was wearing a black hat, a grey tweed suit with a mauve silk blouse, black patent leather shoes with T-straps and silk stockings. Her hair was in a bob. That in itself says something because, on the same day her trial opened, the Irish Independent ran an article by suffragist Agnes Maude Royden, observing that many women were bobbing their hair even though men, in general, preferred them to wear it long. It was a sign, she said, that women were thinking for themselves and acting accordingly. We might think of Lizzie O'Neill, then, as a young woman who was trying, against the odds, to be independent so that she might raise her son. To help us imagine — and remember — the woman she was, artist Holly Christine Callaghan completed this beautiful portrait: 'Her story really moved me,' she says. 'It reminds me a lot of Black Dahlia (Elizabeth Short, an American woman whose murder in 1947 was highly publicised because of the mutilation of her body), and similar 'discarded women'. I was really struck by how victims are just erased, and rarely honoured properly.' At least Honour's son and her late granddaughter, Patricia Hughes, tried very hard to find out more about her death. In her book, Hughes developed an elaborate though speculative theory that her grandmother's murder was a conspiracy to cover up her connection to the poet WB Yeats. If you take the time to read through the reports of the trial, a question emerges about the taxi-driver who gave Lizzie O'Neill a lift on the night of her murder. One witness said she saw him with a revolver in the summer of 1925, but there is no more than that. On June 9, all we can do is think of Lizzie or Lily O'Neill as a person, snuffed out in the prime of her life. Perhaps we might mark her anniversary by calling for greater recognition of victims in court. Victim Impact Statements were introduced in 1993. Maybe it is time to introduce something like a Victim Profile Statement in murder trials so that victims are no longer lost in the evidence that follows. We might think of it as a small honour in memory of Honour, and the very many others who have been overshadowed in the legal process.
