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Irish Times
01-08-2025
- Business
- Irish Times
The Irish Times view on the August bank holiday: a weekend to rest easy
In 1924, the leader of the Irish Labour Party, Thomas Johnson, told the Dáil 'a man is easier in his mind when he is getting a holiday if he is getting his pay for the same day'. His remarks came during a debate on the Public Holidays Bill, repealing nineteenth century British legislation which also covered Ireland, relating to four bank holidays: 26th December, Easter Monday, Whit Monday and the first Monday in August. St Patrick's Day had been designated a bank holiday in 1903 by the Westminster parliament. The 1924 Act gave power to the government of the new Irish Free State 'to appoint any particular day to be observed as a bank holiday.' Johnson's plea was that 'workmen who are given a holiday by statute… shall have their day's pay for that holiday.' While that request was not acceded to then, further legislation in 1939 established workers' entitlement to paid leave, with six bank holidays legally established: Christmas Day, St Stephen's Day, St Patrick's Day, Easter Monday, Whit Monday and the first Monday in August. New Year's Day and the October holiday were added in the 1970s, while in 1993 the May holiday was introduced. The most recent public holiday was established in 2022, St Brigid's Day, which also marked the Celtic festival of Imbolc, traditionally acknowledging the commencement of Spring. It was the first Irish public holiday named after a woman. We use the terms bank holiday and public holiday interchangeably, but our laws refer only to public holidays. Collectively, these days arise from inheritance, independent statehood and our distinctive traditions; historically, there were rest and feast days, and celebrations marking seasons, harvests and saints. READ MORE Some may regard the plethora of public holidays, including this weekends August Bank Holiday, as indulgent. But with ten public holidays, Ireland falls below the EU annual average of twelve, and the Irish, working an average 39 hours a week, toil at a higher rate than the EU average of 37.8 hours, allowing workers benefiting from this weekend to be easy in their minds.
Irish Times
19-07-2025
- Irish Times
Saoirse, the small Irish boat that sailed into history carrying the Tricolour in 1925
A remarkable centenary has just slipped by under the radar, apart from a small gathering in Dún Laoghaire , Co Dublin last month and a few posts on social media. But maritime historians are hoping that the 100th anniversary of a special nautical event will shine a spotlight once again on this story, and Ireland might finally celebrate a record-setting achievement that drew 10,000 onlookers to Dún Laoghaire seafront on June 20th, 1925, to raise a cheer as a small Irish boat sailed into history. Saoirse had just become the first boat to carry the Tricolour around the world, sailing up the Irish Sea two years to the day since embarking on an epic circumnavigation. The 42ft ketch was also the first known small craft to sail the globe via the Three Great Capes, crossing oceans and surviving storms with neither an engine nor a radio on board. Limerickman Conor O'Brien, owner, designer and skipper of Saoirse, made headlines around the world. This was seen as our nation's first international sporting achievement, and the voyage would herald a new era of ocean-going sailing aboard smaller craft. [ A dispatch from Conor O'Brien for The Irish Times in June 1925 Opens in new window ] The Irish Times was there to record the hero's welcome, describing O'Brien as an ambassador, proudly flying the newly-minted flag of the Irish Free State. Many years later O'Brien's biographer, Judith Hill, would come across contemporary descriptions of the scenes in Dún Laoghaire, where bands played on the East Pier, and an aeroplane flew low over the crowd: 'O'Brien emerged [on deck] in dark glasses. He was cheered and carried shoulder-high as people pressed around ... and then driven into Dublin in a procession of 100 motorcars led by one carrying a model of Saoirse, with his young godson, Conor Cruise O'Brien, dressed in a white sailor suit posing as Conor.' READ MORE The purpose of O'Brien's sea voyage isn't entirely clear. According to his great grandnephew, Dermod O'Brien, he was an avid reader of the epic challenges that were making headlines at the time. Amundsen's and Scott's expeditions had reached the South Pole a decade earlier; George Mallory, with whom O'Brien had climbed Mount Brandon in Co Kerry, had made summit attempts on Everest. But Dermod says O'Brien hadn't thought much past getting to New Zealand: 'He'd wanted to go mountaineering with friends and this was the easiest way to get there'. Fortunately, we can read O'Brien's own accounts of his voyage around the world. A prolific writer as well as a reader, he partly financed the trip writing dispatches for The Irish Times . He was the author of 15 books, including Across Three Oceans recording his adventures aboard Saoirse: here we can read of trouble with his drunken crew in Brazil, hitting a submerged whale in the Indian Ocean, running out of supplies days out from Australia and nearly resorting to putting Saoirse up for sale in Fiji. We also have first-hand accounts of O'Brien's earlier adventures, most notably his gun-running operation for the Irish Volunteers along with Erskine Childers. O'Brien landed 600 rifles at Kilcoole in Co Wicklow in July 1914. Dermod O'Brien says the Childers' landing is much better known because Asgard's cargo was unloaded in broad daylight whereas O'Brien, on the Kelpie, worked under the cover of darkness. To give the impression they were on a pleasure sail, neither boar carried an engine, and O'Brien's crew of four included his sister Kitty; among Childers's crew were his wife Molly and Conor O'Brien's cousin, Mary Spring Rice. Despite being an Oxford-educated architect who'd grown up in Cahermoyle House, a landed estate in Co Limerick, and who had served with the Royal Navy in the first World War, O'Brien was an outspoken nationalist. He was a grandson of the 19th-century nationalist MP for Mallow, William Smith O'Brien, leader of the Young Ireland rebellion of 1848 who had been transported to Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania). O'Brien would later campaign unsuccessfully for a Seanad seat for Sinn Féin in 1925 (an adventure that didn't end quite so well. Asked for a publicity photo, O'Brien gave the party a portrait of himself in his British naval uniform). Saoirse setting sail from Dún Laoghaire on June 20th, 1923 Conor O'Brien, circa 1915 in a Royal Navy reserve uniform The O'Briens spent their summers at their house on Foynes Island in the Shannon Estuary, and at Derrynane in Co Kerry (the home of Daniel O'Connell), where young Conor learned to sail. Cruises along the coast of west Cork meant he was familiar with the local mackerel boats, which would ultimately influence his design of Saoirse. Comfort aboard during long voyages was to be more important than speed. And so Saoirse, modelled on these traditional working boats, was built in Baltimore. The Irish Times from Monday, June 22nd, 1925 It was the beginning of a long association between O'Brien and boatbuilding in Baltimore, which continues to this day. O'Brien died on Foynes Island in 1952, predeceased by his wife Kitty. Saoirse was eventually destroyed during a hurricane in Jamaica in 1979, but in the past decade a replica has been built at Hegarty's Boatyard, the last remaining boatyard in Ireland building these traditional boats. Today Saoirse sails again side by side with another Conor O'Brien-designed boat, AK Ilen (Auxiliary ketch, Ilen). So impressed were authorities in the Falkland Islands with Saoirse, they commissioned O'Brien to build them a trading vessel. AK Ilen was delivered across the Atlantic in 1926 by O'Brien and two experienced mariners Denis and Con Cadogan from Cape Clear. After 70 years transporting sheep AK Ilen was repatriated by Limerickman Gary McMahon in 1997, and reconstruction began, again at Hegarty's Boatyard. Quietly observing the work in Hegarty's were two local artists, including documentary photographer Kevin O'Farrell. He says these boats are part of our heritage and the skills to construct them should be celebrated. Paula Brown Marten's paintings beautifully capture the reconstructions, the huge whale-like hulls gradually taking shape. Both Saoirse and AK Ilen can be seen this summer sailing the waters off west Cork. Dermot Kennedy, who's taught sailing in Baltimore for decades and is an authority on Conor O'Brien, says that if he'd been 'a Frenchman, a German or an American the world would know his name'. He points out that Saoirse is remembered in other parts of the world, 'for example on the island of Madeira, her first port of call in 1923'. Kennedy says at the very least the story of Saoirse should be on our school curriculum, 'we're a small maritime nation, we should be celebrating our achievements rather than writing them out of the history books'.
Irish Independent
04-07-2025
- Business
- Irish Independent
In the salerooms: Collectors cash in with rare banknotes, work by key Irish artists and a 5kg silver bar
When is a £50 worth more than £100? When it's a Lady Lavery banknote. An Irish £50 bearing the portrait of Lady Lavery sold for £14,000/€16,360 at Noonans Mayfair on June 25. 'This Irish Free State £50 note is considerably rarer than the £100,' Andrew Pattison of Noonans commented. In the same sale, a proof £100 note from the Central Bank of Ireland (1979-80), showing an imagined portrait of Grace O'Malley complete with pirate ships, sold for £3,000/€3,500. The proof was never put into production. 'No final proofs or specimens showing the obverse have ever come to auction before,' Pattison explained. Adams Blackrock With an exhibition of their work still on show at the National Gallery of Ireland, paintings by Mainie Jellet and Evie Hone continue to sell well at auction. On June 18, Cubist Composition by Mainie Jellett sold for €8,571 at Adam's Blackrock, while The Artist's Garden by Evie Hone fetched €2,857. Flowers by a Window, also by Hone, sold for €833. See Matthews A two-day sale of Jewellery & Silver at Matthews Auction Rooms in Kells, Co Meath, includes one 5kg silver bar (est €4,000 to €7,000) and 22 tubes of Canadian Maple Leaf pure silver coins (each est €700 to €1,200). ADVERTISEMENT With wars and unrest increasingly threatening the world economy, many investors are turning to gold and indeed silver to hedge against all eventualities. 'This is a good opportunity for anyone who wishes to invest in the continuing upward values of this precious metal,' Damien Matthews says. The sale takes place on Sunday, July 6, from 5.30pm and Monday, July 7, at 12pm. See
Irish Times
11-06-2025
- Politics
- Irish Times
Many Northern nationalists doubt Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael's commitment to Irish unity
Northern nationalists felt betrayed by Dublin 100 years ago, after the collapse of the Boundary Commission in December 1925. It left the border with Northern Ireland unchanged despite their hopes that it would make unification inevitable. Many of their descendants still feel that way. Most Irish nationalists believed the commission, set up as part of the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty, would see much of the territory of the six counties of the Northern Ireland state that was established in May 1921 being transferred to the fledging Irish Free State. The shifting of Tyrone, Fermanagh, south Armagh, south Down (including Newry) and Derry City with their Catholic majorities to the Free State, it was hoped, would leave the remainder of Northern Ireland an unviable rump. Irish unity would then be inevitable. Events, however, did not turn out as nationalists hoped, for a catalogue of reasons, including the ambiguous wording of Article 12 in the Treaty that set up the commission and allowed for multiple interpretations. READ MORE From the off, the newly-created, inexperienced Free State government was politically and diplomatically outmanoeuvring by both London and the new authorities in Stormont. And, throughout, Northern nationalists were naive. In the end, the commission ended in rancour when it proposed that only slight rectifications should be made to the original boundary lines drawn up in the Anglo-Irish Treaty, leaving the Border as it was then and remains today. Even the simple things were not handled properly by the Irish side. The commission was chaired by a British-appointed head, not by an independent chairperson, while there were lengthy delays in setting the body up. Following a largely accurate forecast of the expected final boundary recommendations published by the diehard unionist Morning Post newspaper on November 7th, 1925, WT Cosgrave 's Free State government insisted the report as a whole should be shelved. The newspaper's report had rightly claimed that the commission would propose only minimal transfers from Northern Ireland to the Free State. Crucially, the Free State would lose parts of east Donegal and north Monaghan. The furore led the commission's Free State representative Eoin MacNeill to resign from the role. Once it was revealed, however, that he had appeared to consent to the changes, or had not substantially objected, he was forced to resign as the Free State's minister for education. In a panic, Cosgrave rushed over to London to have the Boundary Commission report buried, and after a week of intense negotiations involving the Free State, British and Northern Irish governments, a tripartite agreement was signed on December 3rd, 1925. Under the agreement, Article 12 of the Treaty, which set up the commission, was revoked and Northern Ireland's boundary remained as it had been defined under the Government of Ireland Act, 1920. Meanwhile, Article 5, which had created a £150,000,000 bill that the fledgling State was to pay to London, was waived, with the Free State becoming liable for malicious damage incurred during the War of Independence. Under the treaty, 40 parliamentarians, 20 each from Stormont and Dublin, were to have looked after subjects of common concern, including railways, fisheries and contagious diseases of animals. Extra powers could have been added, as required. However, these were scrapped too. While the Council of Ireland was considered an 'irritant' to the Northern Ireland government, it was the Free State government that readily abandoned it. In lieu of it, the Northern Ireland prime minister James Craig 'suggested joint meetings of the two governments in Ireland 'at an early date' so that both governments could deal with charges brought by one against the other'. Cosgrave agreed but they never met again. In fact, the next meeting between the heads of both Irish governments was 40 years later, when Seán Lemass met Terence O'Neill in 1965. Instead of engaging with Ulster unionists with a view to ending or limiting partition, Irish governments of different hues preferred to preach about its evils without offering anything like practical or tangible policies that could deal with the issue. It was only from the 1960s that Irish governments promoted the merits of North-South bodies, such as the Council of Ireland, as well as bodies that exist today such as the Shared Island initiative. The fallout from the Boundary Commission has left a bitter taste in the mouths of Northern nationalists ever since 1925. Their trust in British governments (always threadbare) evaporated completely, but, perhaps more importantly, their trust in the South suffered an irrevocable blow, due to the Free State government's abandonment of the North for financial benefits. That mistrust still resonates today. Many Northern nationalists believe there is a partitionist mindset in the South and that the 'establishment' political parties of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are not interested in Irish unity, despite rhetoric to the contrary. There is contempt for the geo-blocking of programmes in the North by RTÉ (particularly sporting ones), the provision of weather information from Met Éireann for just the 26 counties, the naming of the 26 county state as Ireland under the Constitution, and the prohibition of citizens in the North from voting in Irish presidential elections. [ Geography and destiny – Ronan McGreevy on the Boundary Commission Opens in new window ] As prospects of a Border poll have entered public discourse since the acceptance of the Belfast Agreement of 1998, focus has shifted to an ambiguous clause in that agreement: Schedule 1 (2), which states that the British secretary of state for Northern Ireland 'shall exercise the power' to call a Border poll 'if at any time it appears likely to him that a majority of those voting would express a wish that Northern Ireland should cease to be part of the United Kingdom and form part of a united Ireland'. As with the Boundary Commission, many Northern nationalists believe this clause leaves the power in the hands of the British government. Some fear that this could prevent a Border poll from occurring at all. While there appears to be a clear avenue to Irish unity now through the Belfast Agreement, people are still very wary that the way the commission imploded in 1925 could happen again through what they would see as underhand and devious methods over calling a Border poll. Cormac Moore is a historian, currently serving as historian-in-residence with Dublin City Council. His latest book, The Root of All Evil, about the Boundary Commission, is published by Irish Academic Press
Irish Times
17-05-2025
- General
- Irish Times
Irish hares are unique but the law of the land is against them
The floorboards in the house hadn't been touched for more than 50 years, so when we finally lifted some at the start of this year it wasn't surprising to uncover a collection of random items tucked between the creaky old joists. Among them were cardboard milk cartons from Hughes Bros Ltd in Rathfarnham, set up by three brothers who established Ireland's first pasteurisation plant in 1924. One discovery stood out above the rest: an old cupronickel threepence coin, or '3d', featuring an Irish hare – the design work of the English artist Percy Metcalfe, who was commissioned to create the first coinage for the Irish Free State , which began circulating in the winter of 1928. The hare was part of a broader set of coins, divided into two themes: the pig, hen, bull and ram, symbolising farm life and produce; and the wolfhound, woodcock, hare, salmon and horse, reflecting the world of hunting. Roughly the size of a coat button, Metcalfe's Irish hare appears in profile, facing left and alert, as if poised to leap into motion. Its head is lifted, ears laid back flat along the curve of its arched back, while its muscular and powerful legs are drawn in close beneath the body, braced and ready to jump. By pure chance, just a few days after we had cleared out the room, Joe Duffy was on RTÉ's Liveline talking with his callers about their interactions with the Irish hare. Sheila phoned to share her story about a tiny hare that her dog brought into the house years earlier. She fed it warm, sugared milk from a baby's bottle, which it gulped down. The hare, she told Duffy, was 'absolutely fabulous' – tame as anything with her family, but wild, wary and skittish with anyone else. READ MORE The Irish hare has long been tied to fairies and the spirit world. Another Joe, from Cork, told listeners a story from 50 years back. He was driving late one wet November night when a hare began running in front of his car, matching his speed at 45 miles an hour before vanishing into a field. He knew it was bad luck to harm a hare, but later his father told him he shouldn't have followed it – hares, his father said, were from another world. Another caller, Patsy, chimed in with his memories of a priest he knew who travelled by pony and cart. If the priest ever spotted a hare on the road, he would stop, get out, and walk around the cart three times, just to keep bad luck at bay. Technically, it's a type of mountain hare, but it carries distinct genes that set it apart The Irish hare and humans go back a long way. It's been here since before the last ice age, evolving in isolation for thousands of years. Unlike the European rabbit and the brown hare, which arrived only in the past few hundred years, the Irish hare is unique and found nowhere else in the world. Technically, it's a type of mountain hare, but it carries distinct genes that set it apart, shaping its size and the colour of its coat. Unlike the mountain hare, the Irish hare doesn't turn white in winter. We're not the only ones to connect with these mystical creatures. Raising Hare, English author Chloe Dalton's bestselling debut, tells how she found a newborn hare one February morning during the Covid years, and how the bond she formed with the little female transformed her life. Hares are the only game species in England and Wales that can be shot year-round – a grim fact, given that their population has plummeted by more than 80 per cent in the past century. Last month Dalton launched a petition urging the UK government to introduce a legally binding closed season for hares, protecting them from January to September. Despite its unique status, the Irish hare is poorly studied. And while its population is believed to be stable, it faces real threats from habitat loss and a warming climate. It doesn't enjoy full protection under Irish law either. Between September and February, the Irish hare can legally be shot or hunted with packs of beagles and harriers. Ireland, Spain and Portugal are the last remaining countries in Europe where hares can be legally chased by dogs, either in open hunts or in so-called 'closed' coursing fields, where hares are first captured and then released for the chase. Each year, some 6,000 wild hares are taken under licence. They're given a 75 metre head start in the coursing field before two muzzled greyhounds are set loose; the winner is the first dog to force the hare to turn. After spending about two months in captivity, the hares are then released. A few years ago, in research funded by the National Parks & Wildlife Service, researchers from Queen's University Belfast set out to track the fate of hares released after coursing . They fitted 40 hares with GPS-radio collars and monitored them over six months. Half of the hares had been previously captured and coursed. The results showed no significant difference between the coursed and uncoursed hares: they didn't experience higher mortality rates, nor did their movements differ meaningfully. [ Anti-blood sport campaigners criticise finding that hares do not experience greater risk of death after coursing Opens in new window ] This research is unlikely to sway those determined to see hare coursing banned. In 2019, the same year Irish politicians in the Dáil declared a national biodiversity crisis, a Red C poll, commissioned by the Irish Council Against Blood Sports , found 77 per cent of Irish people supported ending live hare coursing. Wicklow TD Jennifer Whitmore introduced the Protection of Hares Bill, which has garnered cross-party backing. The Bill is short and to the point: it seeks to ban the practice, stating that 'it shall not be lawful to engage in live hare coursing' under the Wildlife Act. The Irish hare's ability to rely on its speed and agility to escape predators is why it's used in hare coursing. As awareness grows and the debate surrounding coursing intensifies, it remains to be seen whether future generations will choose to protect this unique species or allow the practice to persist.
