Latest news with #O'Dwyer
RTÉ News
7 hours ago
- General
- RTÉ News
Ballintubber Abbey to build heritage and cultural centre
The 800-year-old Ballintubber Abbey in Co Mayo is aiming to become a centre of pilgrimage, with the addition of a heritage and cultural centre. Construction is due to begin next year on the new section which will compliment the existing church building and incorporate preserved ruins at the site. Speaking to RTÉ news Abbey Manager Suellen McKenna said the heritage centre will be a three-story extension. "The ground floor will be depicting the 800 years of the abbey. The second story will be dedicated to the Tóchar Phádraig and pilgrimage walks, and the third story will be a journey through mankind." Money for the renovation was sanctioned last year. Ballintubber Abbey Trust received €5.8 million from the Government's Rural Regeneration and Development Fund. Ballintubber Abbey is the starting point for pilgrims who walk the Tóchar Phádraig, or Patrick's Causeway. This is a 35km pilgrim route from Ballintubber to the top of Croagh Patrick. St Patrick is said to have fasted and prayed along the route as he spread the Christian message in Ireland in the fifth century. In the 1980s, the path was revitalised as a pilgrimage walk with the help of Ballintubber's Fr Frank Fahey. Fr Fahey still meets pilgrims and advises them to light a candle before they depart. He urges pilgrims to talk to fellow walkers about their lives and to offer up their sore feet as an act of penance. "Pilgrimage is always associated with penance. So, the penance is that during the day when walking the 22 miles, there is to be no complaining," he said. "For the things that you could complain about, you say thanks be to God." Ballintubber Abbey organises several walks a year on the Tóchar Phádraig. "You can see Croagh Patrick in the background. You come across every kind of terrain, and nature, and animal along the route." said Ms McKenna. Pilgrim path expert and guidebook author John G O'Dwyer said the Tóchar Phádraig goes back even further than St Patrick. "This would have been a pagan trail, and Croagh Patrick was a pagan mountain." He said the route to the mountain was once travelled by royalty in horse-drawn chariots, and some of the ancient stones from that road are visible in the ground. "It's older than the Spanish Camino," he said, adding that the trail is at least 2,000 years old. "The Camino is only a little bit over 1,000 years." Pilgrim paths are growing in popularity, according to Mr O'Dwyer. His latest guidebook details journeys that can be made on foot in a day or in stages over several days. "For example, you have St Finbarr's pilgrim path in Cork, Cnoc na DTobar, Cosán na Naomh on the Dingle Peninsula." Mr O'Dwyer also notes a rise in foreign visitors coming to Ireland specifically to walk a pilgrim path. Some, he said, walk for the challenge and scenery, others walk as an act of faith. So, what level of walking is involved for Patrick's Causeway? "It's not the same as training for a marathon," said Mr O'Dwyer. "But you do need to be reasonably fit. If you want to smell the flowers and hear the sheep, I'd suggest you walk to the abbey at Aughagower, then on the second day you do Croagh Patrick." Mr O'Dwyer said the benefits of walking in the footsteps of our ancestors and the saints are many.
Irish Daily Mirror
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Irish Daily Mirror
All-Ireland winner recalls fury and apology after dropping f-bomb on RTE
John 'Bubbles' O'Dwyer has recalled the furore surrounding his infamous 'f-bomb' interview on RTE after winning the All-Ireland Hurling Championship. The Tipperary legend was on top of the world in September 2016, scoring 1-6 in the final as The Premier County beat Brian Cody's Kilkenny by nine points. Shortly after the final whistle, O'Dwyer was interviewed on RTE and in the heat of the moment, he proclaimed that Tipperary were "Champions of f*****g Ireland." The forward was hardly the first nor the last player to let a curse word slip in a post-match interview, but unlike many others, O'Dwyer was forced to apologise the next day. Recalling the incident on 'Talksport's Beyond The 65', O'Dwyer said: "I got absolutely scaled for it like in 2016. "After winning the All-Ireland, a microphone and a camera put up into my face 30 seconds after and I said 'We're the champions of f*****g Ireland. "I had to do a live apology the next morning on RTE in Crumlin Hospital. I thought I'd have to go to the President to apologise. Swear to God. "I remember after it, I just - I brushed it off, and then you go out, you celebrate your All-Ireland. "Next morning, County board delegates come up, Marty Morrissey comes up, 'look, RTE are looking for you to do an apology, "I'm just like, 'Right, yeah, okay. If you just leave me alone I'll do it.' "People are saying, as you said at the start, 'there's no characters in the GAA and stuff like this. "A lad goes off then and says something, you might call it a slip of the tongue or whatever, but like, leave it be."
USA Today
28-05-2025
- Politics
- USA Today
Rebels, gangsters and presidents animate biography of radical lawyer Paul O'Dwyer
Rebels, gangsters and presidents animate biography of radical lawyer Paul O'Dwyer 'An Irish Passion for Justice: The Life of Rebel New York Attorney Paul O'Dwyer,' takes readers through the civil rights era, Northern Ireland, and post-war New York's machine politics. Show Caption Hide Caption Harvard Law School's Magna Carta revealed as an original Harvard Law School's Magna Carta revealed as an original, the school bought a 1327 copy of the Magna Carta from legal book dealer for $27.50 in 1946. Robert Polner and Michael Tubridy's biography of Paul O'Dwyer examines the clash between purity and pragmatism in public llife. The book includes cameos from presidents including JFK, Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, Lyndon Johnson, and Franklin Roosevelt. O'Dwyer spent decades fighting for civil rights and desegregation. His elder brother, New York Mayor William O'Dwyer, was dogged by unproven allegations of gangland ties. In the endless dogfight between purity and pragmatism it's never clear who to bet on. It's even harder to know who to love. Radical Irish-American lawyer Paul O'Dwyer was a passionate purist who spent most of the 20th Century fighting – and often winning – for society's losers. O'Dwyer stood up for Irish Republicans, the early Zionists, Blacks in the segregated South, Blacks in the segregated North, gays and lesbians during the AIDS crisis, Kentucky coal miners and, briefly, the entire population of Iran. His elder brother, William O'Dwyer, was the silver-tongued, machine-backed mayor of post-war New York who traveled by chauffeured car and got things done – until creeping scandal pushed him from office, all the way to Mexico City. The intensely loyal but often difficult relationship between these immigrant siblings is only the most attractive of several threads crackling through Robert Polner and Michael Tubridy's excellent biography, 'An Irish Passion for Justice: The Life of Rebel New York Attorney Paul O'Dwyer' (available now from Three Hills Books). The clash of zealotry and conciliation, the question of how best to do the right thing, animates the O'Dwyer story in ways eerie and often striking. Sometimes tilting at windmills and at others slaying dragons, Paul O'Dwyer keeps popping up where the action is, wavy-haired, brogue-talking, and brave. It's 1967: O'Dwyer is in segregated Alligator, Mississippi, watching the local polls to help out civil rights icon Fannie Lou Hamer. It's 1968 and he's manhandled by Chicago cops while trying to save an anti-Vietnam war delegate from a beating at the riotous Democratic National Convention. There he is, sunburned in San Antonio, springing suspected Irish Republican Army sympathizers from federal lock-up. And here he is in 1993, whispering to Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton during the Democratic presidential primaries that the time might be right for the U.S. to get off the sidelines and broker an end to decades of violence and repression in Northern Ireland. O'Dwyer, the youngest of 10, grew up in an impoverished hamlet in Ireland's County Mayo. After graduating from a Dickensian church-run school and completing a year of college – supported by the meager salaries of his schoolteacher sisters – he was summoned at age 17 to New York by his four brothers, who'd already escaped across the Atlantic. There he met Bill, who'd never laid eyes on the baby of the family. Bill was something: A seminary dropout, he'd worked as a barman, riverboat furnace-tender, and laborer before joining the NYPD and becoming a lawyer. He flashed a gold tooth. Unlike his younger brothers, he didn't send money home. He steered Paul into law school, and encouraged him to rise through the patronage and compromises of Tammany Hall – the city's ruling Democratic machine – though Paul chose more difficult means of ascent. Eldest and youngest formed a bond that would survive decades of friction over principles and tactics. Bill was elected district attorney of Brooklyn, where he prosecuted the button-men of Murder Inc., but he was stalked by allegations – never proven – of gangland ties that would later undo his mayoralty. Where Bill sent men to the electric chair, Paul defended accused killers bound for the death house. The contrast is even more striking when the book describes how their brother Frank O'Dwyer was himself shot dead in a hold-up, and his killer executed. Paul O'Dwyer didn't let zealotry fence off the road to common ground. Fiercely anti-British, he refused to condemn IRA violence, and also refused to condemn attacks on Catholics by Northern Ireland's Protestant paramilitaries, reasoning – despite his Catholic allegiance – that he couldn't pit one group of Irishmen against another. In the 1970s he caught hell for reaching out to the violent anti-Catholic bigot Andrew Tyrie, a man with plenty of blood on his hands, in search of a way to unite the poor of Belfast, Protestant and Catholic, against their shared poverty and unemployment in the British north. O'Dwyer influence and compromise While Bill O'Dwyer became mayor in 1945, the highest office Paul achieved was that of city council president, in 1973. He lost primary or general election races for mayor, Congress and the U.S. Senate. Friends and foes "painted Paul as more influential than he actually was" in his brother's administration, the authors write. In retirement, Bill said his younger brother "had little patience for me because of compromises that I may have made." "That's perhaps the difference between a successful politician and one who had to learn some things yet," he added. In a now-familiar swing of the pendulum, the man who defeated O'Dwyer in the 1968 Democratic primary for senator from liberal New York, in a year of riots and tumult, ultimately lost – not to a Republican, but to the Conservative party candidate. Fifty-six years later, at another moment of upheaval, a majority of New Yorkers pulled the lever for Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election – but Donald Trump still won 30% of the city, the best GOP showing in three decades. As Polner and Tubridy write, O'Dwyer's life is 'relevant to understanding America's and the world's polarization in the twenty-first century.' Sense and sensibility Back to the brothers: Who to love? Bill O'Dwyer took the world as it was, made his deals, and built airports, housing, transit and sewers in America's biggest city. Paul O'Dwyer tried to make the world a better place, catching where he could those who walked life's high-wire without much of a net. He died in 1998, shortly after the Good Friday Agreement ended decades of open conflict in Northern Ireland. As Polner and Tubridy show, to make a go of things – in a story, a city, a republic – you ultimately need both characters, the pragmatist and the purist.
The Journal
27-05-2025
- Politics
- The Journal
Undocumented Irish are not attending routine US immigration meetings over deportation fears
UNDOCUMENTED IRISH PEOPLE living in the US are not attending routine meetings with immigration enforcement agents out of fear that they may be deported. Many believe that they can 'disappear back into the economy' where they have been evading deportation for years. Others avoid meeting with immigration officials on advice from their solicitor. This is according to two Irish-American lawyers who assist Irish-born people who are living in the US. The lawyers told The Journal that these meetings with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency are typically described to attendants as being informal, but can have serious outcomes. According to Brian O'Dwyer, a veteran Irish-American lawyer and a well-known immigration activist, there have been people who attend the 'routine' meetings 'and have the handcuffs put on them' immediately. However, if someone doesn't turn up to the meeting, a warrant can be issued for them and eventually, ICE agents can obtain a court-ordered deportation notice. The O'Dwyer & Bernstein lawyer in New York said the meetings are currently viewed as a legal 'grey area'. Some Irish people try to avoid them and blend away into the workforce or informal economy, he said. Most undocumented Irish people living in the US have overstayed a visa and are considered 'low-hanging fruit' by ICE officials, it is understood. These visa overstayers are not entitled to appear before a judge if detained by immigration officers, and typically are deported within days. The group commonly come to ICE's attention after being ticketed by police for minor traffic infractions. Boston-based Irish-American immigration lawyer John Foley told The Journal : 'I wouldn't encourage any individual to speak to ICE without first speaking to a lawyer.' Advertisement Foley, who is representing a Donegal man facing deportation despite waiting three years for a green card application, said even if people discuss their meetings with a lawyer, they are not guaranteed their desired outcome. According to the Legal Aid Society in New York, ICE agents require immigrants to appear for regular appointments to confirm that they are still living at the same location and that they are not a security risk. 'It is important to show up to your ICE appointments,' their website says. 'If you miss an appointment, ICE may try to detain you.' O'Dwyer said the detention process amounts to 'deliberate cruelty' and that some people are picked up and 'put into a centre for days on end'. Many people who have been detained by ICE have reportedly not had access to counsel either. The lawyer said there was 'no question' that the manner in which ICE is detaining people is an attempt to intimidate people before deporting them. He said that many Irish citizens facing deportation are 'keeping it quiet' in hopes that they can return again. O'Dwyer said there is no evidence to suggest that there have been any diplomatic communications between the US and Ireland, as there have been in the past, that seek to minimise the deportation of undocumented Irish people in the US. 'I'm unaware of what the Trump administration has done that would give any satisfaction to Irish people,' O'Dwyer said, adding that ICE does not seem to have a 'preference' for who faces deportation. Speaking to The Journal previously, Foley said he had his request for his client's release under 24/7 monitoring with an ankle bracelet rejected, without hesitation. He said there was 'no flexibility' from the ICE officials. He noted that agents had been willing to compromise before the second Trump administration. Foley said fear of deportation is growing among Irish immigrants and other diasporas in the US. Since January, the Trump administration has intensified immigration enforcement, carrying out widespread arrests at immigration courts across the US. Over 70,000 people have been detained and deported since Trump took office in January. Increased deportations have impacted many Irish nationals living in the US, sparking concern among communities and advocacy groups about family separations and legal rights. Readers like you are keeping these stories free for everyone... A mix of advertising and supporting contributions helps keep paywalls away from valuable information like this article. Over 5,000 readers like you have already stepped up and support us with a monthly payment or a once-off donation. Learn More Support The Journal
RTÉ News
23-05-2025
- Business
- RTÉ News
CEOs rethink strategy amid tariff uncertainty
Irish chief executive officers (CEOs) are making strategic shifts in their planning in response to rising geopolitical instability and escalating trade tensions, according to the latest EY CEO Outlook Survey. The study surveyed 1,200 executives globally, including 40 leading CEOs in Ireland. According to the survey, 90% of Irish respondents said that they have revised investment strategies, including 73% who have delayed a planned investment and 8% who have stopped a planned investment entirely. The research, which was undertaken in March and April including the immediate aftermath of the introduction of global tariffs by the US administration, found that 57% of Irish business leaders now see geopolitical disruption as the number one threat to growth, compared to 42% of international CEOs who said the same. Additionally, 80% of Irish respondents expressed worries about the financial impact of tariffs, slightly below the 85% of their global counterparts. "The findings show just how quickly Irish businesses are adapting to a more fragmented global landscape," said Helena O'Dwyer, Partner and Head of Strategy at EY-Parthenon Ireland. "CEOs are not waiting around for an ideal moment or future resolution, they're taking the initiative now with the things they can control, making smart bets, and maintaining momentum," Ms O'Dwyer said. At a time when some global companies are pulling back, Irish CEOs are holding firm on diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I). According to the research, 83% say they are maintaining or strengthening their DE&I commitments, including embedding it into leadership accountability, workforce policy and business performance - compared to 75% of their global peers. The study also shows that Irish CEOs are also taking calculated steps to futureproof their businesses through technology with some 40% of survey respondents said that they are now prioritising developing in-house AI expertise and governance.
