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Irish Times
18-07-2025
- General
- Irish Times
Brianna Parkins: People who get up early in the morning for no reason are a menace to society
I am deep in enemy territory. Surrounded by supporters of the very regime I've been railing against for years: the menace to society that is people who get up early in the morning for no good reason. When I first moved to Ireland I had jet lag. They say you need one day per timezone to get over it. I had just jumped nine. By day three I was so tired I could smell colours. My body was a cranky toddler that drifted off to sleep in the car and came to screaming in a pram being pushed around an Aldi . I fought off the desperate and dragging need to sleep, going to bed later in a bid to reset myself. But I shouldn't have bothered my hole. My circadian rhythm was way off . It didn't matter if I slept at 7pm or 1am, my eyes would spring open at 4am without fail, and I would be ready to greet the day in Dublin . Except my new city wasn't ready to greet me. READ MORE My plan was to pretend to be a morning person, get up, get a coffee and walk around the streets. Cafes open from around 6am in Sydney or even earlier. I'd just wait two hours and watch the sun rise, beverage in hand. Then I discovered the sun wouldn't show itself properly until 9am in winter and no cafe except the closest Starbucks would open until 7.30am (the Sydney equivalent of noon). So I waited, and as I made my way through the streets of Ringsend , which were empty enough to make me feel I'd survived an apocalypse, I felt profound joy. Finally I had found my people. I had found a culture that didn't compel people to leap out of bed predawn. I saw tradespeople going to work at 8am or sometimes 9am; in Australia the heat has most on site between 5am and 7am. My new boss told me to show up at 10am. Brunch – the meal that's meant to come between breakfast and lunch – was being offered at 2pm. All this would have been unthinkable just a short time and a long plane ride ago. Ireland does have a decent number of early risers who do so out of choice and not work requirements. The sea swimmers who like to slice through Dublin Bay while it looks like glass. Parents of small children who have too much inconvenient guilt about drugging them. Nuns. Runners. Busy mothers who just want 'one bloody hour of quiet to themselves before everybody wakes up, if that's not too much to ask'. [ Moving to another country is hard. You're not failing if you're not living up to a filtered social media standard Opens in new window ] But you don't catch them banging on about it. It's very much a case of 'your body, your choice'. They're happy in their way but they won't attempt to proselytise you. Sadly, my partner has farming child trauma and believes that if you get up at 8am a man in wellies will come stand by your bed and tut 'sure half the day is gone' at you in shame. But even he enjoys an occasional lie-in. A morning safe from being ripped from the warm blankets and the soft bed, where it is so, so cozy and you are so, so comfy. When I moved back to Australia I realised the false supremacy of morning people had taken my beloved country to new extremes. It's become an influencer trend after Covid to take photos at Bondi or any beach at sunrise, doing something that could easily be done at any point of the day – like running or walking. Or wearing tights. The problem with morning people is that they assign moral value to what happens to be their natural preference. Which you never catch night people doing, oddly. Depriving yourself of sleep is not labelled performative productiveness – 'it's a mindset for success'. The Puritans would have hated TikTok , but they would have loved the early morning propaganda being spread on it. Instead of leaving early mornings for the Protestants (like my dad), we have let them become the drag impersonation of work ethic. Getting up and journaling at 6am is seen as self-discipline, but writing things in a diary at 2am is a cry for help. Working into the night is bad time management even if those are your most productive and creative hours. But waking up four hours before you have to work to faff around is not. It's a marketing battle, and we are letting the morning people win. Just as I cannot be brilliant at breakfast, a person who wakes up at 5am every day will be no craic at midnight. But who would you rather have at your wedding?
Irish Times
05-07-2025
- Irish Times
Elizabeth Plunkett: How murdered woman's family discovered they were not ‘relevant victims' in serial killer case
When something false is repeated often enough, it has a tendency to become accepted fact. At some point a seed of incorrect information takes root in the public discourse before spreading through newspaper articles, books and political statements. Eventually, the actual truth becomes almost impossible to discern. It is a phenomenon known to researchers as the illusory truth effect. The family of Elizabeth Plunkett came face to face with this effect in 2023 after getting a call from the Parole Board. Elizabeth was a 23-year-old woman from Ringsend in Dublin who, in 1976, was kidnapped and murdered by two English men. The killers, John Shaw and Geoffrey Evans, had come to Ireland with the aim of murdering one woman every week. A month after Elizabeth's death, they murdered another young woman, Mary Duffy, from Co Galway , before being caught by gardaí and confessing to their crimes. READ MORE Shaw and Evans became known as Ireland's first serial killers. Both received life sentences and Evans died in custody in 2012 at the age of 72. Shaw (78) remains in Arbour Hill Prison. He is Ireland's longest-serving prisoner. He sought to change that in 2023 by applying for parole, having already been granted release for two days a year. Under a new parole act passed in 2019, the Plunkett family had an automatic right to express their views on Shaw's parole bid. Elizabeth Plunkett was 23 when she was murdered by John Shaw and Geoffrey Evans in 1976 When the family were contacted by the Parole Board, it was decided two of Elizabeth's sisters, Bernadette Barry and Kathleen Nolan, would speak for all of the siblings. They spent hours drafting their submissions, explaining the ongoing trauma of Elizabeth's murder and the effect it had on their parents who both died a few years afterwards. Shaw should not be released under any circumstances, they said. 'I poured my heart and soul into that,' said Kathleen this week. 'It was like slicing me open, with the trauma of remembering.' They repeated the process later in person during a meeting with two members of the Parole Board who would decide Shaw's future. 'We got emotional, we got angry – it was gruelling,' recalled Bernadette. Afterwards, the family put the matter to the back of their minds and prepared for the wedding of Kathleen's daughter that summer. That August, the sisters got a call from the solicitors representing them in the parole process and were asked to come into the office on a Saturday morning. Their solicitor, James McGuill, informed them that the Parole Board had made a serious mistake. It had been discovered the Plunkett family were not 'relevant victims' and therefore had no right to take part in Shaw's parole process. This was because Shaw had in fact never been convicted of Elizabeth's murder. Bernadette and Kathleen could not believe what they were hearing. For decades, newspaper articles and books had repeated the same 'fact': that John Shaw and Geoffrey Evans – 'Ireland's first serial killers' – were serving life for the murders of Elizabeth Plunkett and Mary Duffy. Elizabeth Plunkett: In 1979 the DPP dropped the charges against John Shaw relating to the Ringsend woman's rape and murder. To date, nothing has emerged to explain this decision More than that, various State agencies were under the same impression. Over the years, every time Shaw or Evans was moved out of the prison, for example for hospital appointments, the Irish Prison Service (IPS) contacted the Plunkett family 'as relevant victims' to let them know. Similarly, the Parole Board had contacted the family in the belief that Shaw had been convicted of Elizabeth's murder, only to realise belatedly its mistake. 'There's retired judges on the Parole Board,' said Kathleen. 'The highest echelons of Irish society get these jobs on these boards. They're highly educated people, and yet no one checked this out.' How did this illusory truth take hold? A look through the archives provides a few clues. Shaw and Evans confessed to raping and murdering both women shortly after their capture. However, the prosecution was a convoluted affair. First, a judge granted a defence application that the men be tried separately, as each one was blaming the other for the murders. For reasons that remain unclear, the judge also ordered the men be given separate trials for each of the murdered women, meaning a total of four trials. The hearing began in July 1977, when Shaw went on trial for Mary Duffy's rape and murder. To the surprise of many onlookers the jury became deadlocked on a verdict. He was retried and subsequently convicted. [ The late summer murders: Two men on a mission to kill Irish women Opens in new window ] The Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) then successfully appealed the original judgment mandating separate trials, meaning they could try Evans for both of the murders at the same time. Following the trial, he was convicted of Mary Duffy's murder but, for reasons that are also unclear at this remove, the judge ordered the jury to find him not guilty of Elizabeth Plunkett's killing. Both men were sentenced to life for Mary Duffy's murder. Then, in 1979, the DPP dropped the charges against Shaw relating to Elizabeth's rape and murder. To date, nothing has emerged to explain this decision. It is possible the DPP believed Shaw would never be released so there was no point in going through the expense of another trial. Like the rest of Irish society, Bernadette and Elizabeth, who were teenagers at the time, went through their life believing Shaw was in prison for their sister's murder. They explained that during the trials, their father went to great lengths to shield the family from the trauma of the process. 'The way it was in the house, it wasn't discussed. My father would just shut down any conversation about it because it set my Mammy off. It was all about trying to keep us together because we were all ready to just lose the plot,' said Bernadette. 'When you see somebody going to jail and there was a court case, you just automatically live your life thinking, yeah, they were found guilty,' said Kathleen. After being informed about the Parole Board's mistake in August 2023, the sisters decided they would refuse to accept the label of 'not relevant victims'. Their solicitor hired two barristers to examine the case. After searching through the records, the lawyers found that not only had there been no conviction for Elizabeth's murder, no inquest had been held either. It would later emerge that a death certificate had not even been issued for the young woman. It felt like Elizabeth had been erased, the sisters said, and they were determined to address that. The sisters wrote to the Garda, the DPP and the Government but got nowhere. At that point they decided to go public and made contact with the RTÉ Documentary on One team, having been impressed by their investigation into abuse in Blackrock College. 'I said to Kathleen: they're meticulous. They have to be. Because they can't afford to be sued after all the Ryan Tubridy thing,' joked Bernadette. The sisters have nothing but praise for the documentary team, and in particular its producer Liam O'Brien. Last month RTÉ started publishing a six-part podcast on the case called Stolen Sister. Earlier this year, thanks to the sisters' campaign, an inquest was finally held into Elizabeth's death which recorded a verdict of unlawful killing. However, officially, no one has been convicted of her death and the Plunkett family still have no say in Shaw's parole. [ From the archive: State's longest-serving prisoner in fresh bid to secure temporary release Opens in new window ] His last parole bid was rejected. He is expected to apply again early next year. James McGuill, their solicitor, has called on the Garda to reopen the murder investigation with a view to securing a murder conviction against Shaw. The Garda has said its investigation concluded in 1976 and the matter is one for the DPP. The family have received legal advice that, in rare cases, it is possible to reopen a case after charges are dropped. One path being pursued by McGuill and the two sisters is gathering enough new evidence to allow prosecutors to reopen the case. They have had some success to date. After the inquest, and particularly after the start of the RTÉ series, multiple women have come forward to say they believe they were also targeted by Shaw and Evans during the men's 1976 crime spree. [ Eight women come forward with information on being targeted by 1976 killers of Elizabeth Plunkett Opens in new window ] This includes a woman who was knocked down by a car very close to where Elizabeth was abducted in Co Wicklow. These testimonies will be passed on to the Garda and DPP, McGuill said. Looking back, Kathleen says she can understand her father's desire to protect them from the trial and why he 'hid the newspapers behind the sideboard'. 'When anyone would it bring up, he'd say: 'Let Elizabeth Rest in peace', because he couldn't cope,' she said. Nevertheless, they are determined to keep up their campaign for Elizabeth's case to be reopened by authorities. 'They thought these two auld ones would just go away, said Bernadette. 'But no, sorry, not when you're fighting for your family.'
Irish Times
16-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
In pictures: Bloomsday 2025
Bloomsday , the celebration of James Joyce's literary masterpiece Ulysses, was celebrated in Dublin today. Named after its anti-hero, Leopold Bloom, and based on his all-day meanderings around Dublin on June 16th, 1904, it has been celebrated annually since 1994 with breakfasts, public readings from the book and the donning of the finest of Edwardian clothing. John O'Reilly and his wife Marianne O'Reilly on their way to a Bloomsday breakfast in the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin. Photograph: Tom Honan/The Irish Times Singer Simon Morgan (right) and other performers prepare behind the scenes at the Bloomsday breakfast in Belvedere College, Dublin. Photograph: Dan Dennison People gather at the table for Bloomsday Breakfast in Belvedere College, Dublin. Photograph: Dan Dennison Simon Morgan sings for the audience at the Bloomsday breakfast in Belvedere College, Dublin. Photograph: Dan Dennison Baby Nova Forbes enjoying the Bloomsday breakfast in Belvedere College, Dublin. Photograph: Dan Dennison (L-R) Carol Reynolds, Sheena Bourke, Marian Finn, Carol O'Neill, Louise Whelan, Margaret Gray, Rosemary Phipps and Yvonne Rossiter in Ringsend Park, the location of James Joyce's first date with his future wife, Nora Barnacle. Photograph: Nick Bradshaw Philip Murphy and Mary O'Neill Byrne at the Joyce Bench in Ringsend Park, Dublin. Photograph: Nick Bradshaw Brendan Byrne plays the ukulele in Kennedy's, Westland Row, Dublin, during Bloomsday breakfast. Photograph: Tom Honan/The Irish Times Carole Ward and Liz Kinch enjoying the Bloomsday festivities on Duke Street, Dublin. Photograph: Tom Honan/The Irish Times Lisa Tonello from Italy and Issa Ali from Dublin celebrate Bloomsday in Kennedy's, Westland Row, Dublin. Photograph: Tom Honan/The Irish Times A group of friends dressed up for Bloomsday on Duke Street, Dublin. Photograph: Tom Honan/The Irish Times Raychel O'Connell and her son Tadhg in Bloomsday attire on Duke Street, Dublin. Photograph: Tom Honan/The Irish Times Paddy Keogh at Kennedy's, Westland Row, Dublin, for Bloomsday breakfast. Photograph: Tom Honan/The Irish Times
Irish Times
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Bridge of Sighs (and Laughter)
Walking to Ringsend for Paul Durcan's funeral on Thursday, I noticed a crowd of locals gathered on the city side of the humpbacked bridge that crosses the Dodder just before the village. They were waiting for the cortege, a man told me, to continue an old tradition whereby – even if they don't know the deceased - Ringsenders help the bereaved family carry the remains over the river to the church. As I took up a position on the far side to get a picture, a woman emerged from somewhere in funeral finery (and a bright red hat). 'Are they going to carry Paul over the bridge?' she asked. They are, I told her, pointing to where the hearse that had just arrived. 'Oh gosh,' he said, hurrying off to join in. READ MORE Sure enough, from there to St Patrick's Church, the cortege became a local production, as the undertakers stood aside temporarily, and the villagers took over as pall bearers and funeral directors. Not all those involved were dressed for the occasion. One leading participant had a baseball hat and shorts. But, the informality of the attire somehow only added to the poignancy. The idea of crossing rivers to eternity is a staple of mythology. In James Joyce's Ulysses, where Paddy Dignam made the journey in the opposite direction to Durcan, the four rivers of Hades become the Dodder, the Grand Canal, the Liffey, and the Royal Canal, in that order. But when I asked Father Ivan Tonge of St Patrick's about it afterwards, he thought the Ringsend tradition might have its origins in a more practical consideration. The Dodder is notoriously prone to flooding on its last stretches and must have washed many early bridges away: 'Locals would sometimes have had to help carry coffins across.' The custom may also, however, be tied up with the unusual traditions of dockers, a profession to which Ringsend has long been central. It used to be the case – and maybe it still happens sometimes – that a docker's coffin was carried by a circuitous route involving the homes of all his friends, at each of which the door knocker would be lifted and dropped one last time, to say goodbye. More mysteriously (according to a 1953 report in The Irish Press), dockers' coffins were also carried 'between the two gasometers': industrial landmarks of the area. Whatever the bridge-carrying ceremony's origins, like many old habits, it might have ended in 2020 with the pandemic. Instead, that only increased the determination of Ringsenders like David 'Smasher' Kemple to keep it alive. 'The Covid ruined a lot of things, and we didn't want it to ruin everything .' he said in a short recent film for the Irish Hospice Foundation. He soon found himself performing the rite for an old friend, whose death first alerted him to the threat of Covid: 'He was a fit man going down to Galway that Friday,' recalled Kemple, sadly. 'Then a couple of weeks later, we were carrying Larry over the bridge.' Mind you, Ringsenders tend to have a robust sense of humour, and 'Smasher' is no exception. He also jokes in the film that he'd like to hold his own wake before he dies, 'to see what it's like'. In which vein, it struck me on Thursday that it was a pity Durcan – one of the funnier poets Ireland has ever produced - wasn't alive to enjoy his own funeral. Among the poems read during the service was one inspired by the election of the pope in 2013, in which he compares Ringsend to the back streets of Buenos Aires and describes many of the landmarks of the funeral route as if they were stations of the cross: 'The Barber Shop, Tesco Express, HQ Dry Cleaners, the three public houses – The Yacht, The Oarsman, Sally's Return – The Bridge Café, the pharmacy, Ladbrokes bookmakers.' He would surely have got another poem from his last trip into the village. The pallbearers do special requests on occasion. In an interview with the Dublin Inquirer newspaper in 2020, another regular participant Eoin Dunne recalled the funeral of a man who had spent his life working as a match-day steward in nearby Lansdowne Road, a stadium visible from the bridge. On his final journey, as demanded, the coffin carriers did an about turn and bowed the departed in gratitude to the scene of so many pay days. But comedy always vies with solemnity in the Ringsend tradition. Dunne also told the Inquirer about an occasion when the deceased was (a) a former scrap metal dealer and (b) very heavy. As the carriers struggled under the coffin, Dunne recalled: 'One of the lads was saying, 'I think he has all the bleeding copper in it'.' Then there was the time they overdid their enthusiasm for the tradition, stopping a hearse with three limousines behind it at the bottom of the bridge. They immediately launched into the routine of organising each other to carry the coffin into Ringsend, until the driver of the hearse intervened. 'Lads, lads stop,' he said (allegedly): 'This funeral is going to f**king Bray.'
Irish Times
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Paul Durcan remembered as ‘Ireland's poet' at funeral service in Ringsend
Continuing a decades-old funeral tradition in Ringsend, the remains of poet Paul Durcan were carried across the river Dodder by locals and family members on the way to his requiem Mass at St Patrick's church on Thursday. The motor cortege paused before the humpbacked bridge, where residents of the village greeted the Durcan family and then helped carry the coffin the rest of the journey, in tribute to a man who had lived among them for the past 30 years. President Michael D Higgins was among the mourners who filled the church for the funeral, the music at which included a recording of Durcan's typically spirited poetry reading on his 1990 duet with Van Morrison: In the Days Before Rock 'n' Roll. Chief funeral celebrant Father Ivan Tonge cited the 12th century Book of Leinster, recently restored and now the subject of an exhibition in Trinity College Dublin, as evidence of the respect Ireland has always had for its poets, even 'at the highest levels of society'. READ MORE Durcan's funeral continued that ancient tradition, Fr Tonge said. He was Ireland's poet, but he was also Ringsend's and a regular visitor to the church, as witnessed in the community's moving tribute earlier. Actor Mark O'Regan read Durcan's poem The Days of Surprise, which is set in St Patrick's on the day after the election of Pope Francis in 2013, and features a lovingly detailed description of the village, including the bridge: The library with its Chinese granite benches, The health centre, the Master Butcher's, Ferrari's Takeaway, Spar, The charity shop, the wine shop, the humpbacked bridge, Under which, behind Ringsend Church, the River Dodder flows, Like a little mare over the last fence At Cheltenham or Punchestown Before it breasts the line at the winning post, Its rider bent over double Like the angel at the Annunciation, And meets the River Liffey and the sea Durcan's daughter, Sarah, delivered a eulogy in which she said that managing to make a living out of poetry was probably her father's greatest achievement. But she recalled that he also had a great love of sport and liked to believe, had it not been for an early injury, he could have been a star football player. The poet's remains are brought to St Patrick's Church, Ringsend, Dublin. Photograph: Nick Bradshaw He had also been pleasantly surprised by the number of grandchildren he eventually acquired and 'struggled valiantly to keep up with them'. Durcan especially enjoyed it when his poetry connected with young people, she said. She recalled his special delight in the story of a Cork student some years ago who, of the prescribed poets on the curriculum, had studied only her father and promised that if the gamble paid off, he would get the name Paul Durcan 'tattooed on his backside'. Sure enough, Durcan did come up that year and, as widely shared on social media, the student got the tattoo. As part of a reflection on her father's life, Siabhra Durcan read an extract from Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita. A close friend of the poet, Caitríona Crowe, read A Psalm of David. Michael John O'Neill read from St Paul's Letter to the Corinthians. Soloist Kathy Kelly sang Ag Críost an Síol. Violinist David O'Doherty played the traditional air, The Coolin/An Chúilfhionn. President Michael D Higgins attended the funeral service for Paul Durcan in Ringsend. Photograph: Nick Bradshaw Writers at the funeral included Rita Ann Higgins, Dermot Bolger, Mary Leland, Belinda McKeon, and Gerard Smith. The Patrick Kavanagh Centre in Inniskeen, whose annual poetry award helped launch Durcan's career, was represented by Una and Art Agnew. [ Paul Durcan - 11 memorable lines: 'She was a whirlpool, And I very nearly drowned' Opens in new window ] Also in attendance were Arts Council director Maureen Kennelly, former TDs John Gormley and Conor Lenihan, journalists Mick Heaney and Paul Gillespie, broadcaster John Kelly, and the historian Charles Lysaght. The poet's remains were greeted at the church by Ballina uilleann piper Eamonn Walsh, and later carried out to the strains of Bob Dylan's Paths of Victory. Durcan's deep connections with Mayo will be remembered at funeral prayers in St Mary's Church, Westport, on Friday, after which he will be buried at the nearby Aughavale Cemetery.
