It sounds like a rude sort of phrase but ‘pulling a Peter’ is about to enter the lexicon of Irish politics. Haven’t you heard it yet? It’s Irish for finding a handy target, preferably an ethnic minority, then accusing it of criminality and in turn blaming it for all our economic ills, in order to win [...]
What about the homeless? I’ve always had an issue with whataboutery. Urbandictionary.com defines “whataboutism”, or whataboutery, as “when you deflect criticism by pointing out flaws in your opponent, specifically using the phrase "what about x?" This is an attempt to excuse you from changing your behavior by painting your opponent as a hypocrite.” It’s annoying, a [...]
What was she thinking, walking home alone? What was she thinking, wearing that? What was she thinking, getting that drunk? What was she thinking, getting a taxi by herself? Last month, a woman was brutally attacked while walking home from a house party in the early hours of the morning. The attack happened in the Togher [...]
I'm delighted to be back working with the RTE Today show for the sixth season. The show is a real credit to RTE Cork and provides enormous opportunities for new stories and faces. When I started working with the show, my previous TV experience was limited to newspaper reviews on current affairs shows like Tonight with [...]
Ireland’s maternity services are once again under the spotlight, as an overwhelming number of callers to RTE Radio One’s Liveline described difficult experiences of the system. Women told of being dismissed and humiliated, and a minority told of severe injuries to them or their baby. They were all over the country and they had given birth [...]
You judge a society by how it treats its most vulnerable citizens, and once again it seems we are failing. We’re one of the richest, happiest and most advanced countries in the world but we can not get care - of our children, our elderly, our sick or our people with disabilities - right. We leave [...]
I got lots of reading in during maternity leave, thanks to a lot of night feeds and discovering how useful a backlit iPad is as a Kindle! And I'm looking forward to meeting some authors (and you, I hope!) at exciting events over the next few months. Next month I'm at the West Cork Literary Festival [...]
Love your body. We’ve heard it all before, and to most of us, raised on a diet of, well, diets, skinny celebrities and wonder cures, it’s in one ear and out the other. But body image is a fundamental part of who we are, and it affects everything from our relationships to our careers, no matter [...]
I'm very excited to share the news that I will be interviewing Mary Robinson at the West Cork Literary Festival in July. The former President has written a book, Climate Justice, on the fight for climate justice by grassroots women around the world. It ties in very well with her podcast with Cobh comedian Maeve Higgins, [...]
My childhood memories are filled with holy statues, the smell of incense, the sound of pews squeaking on a tiled floor in an echoey church. Visits to the crib and offkey hymns were Christmas. The somewhat gory sight of the Virgin Mary’s foot crushing a snake fascinated me during primary school assemblies, and the comforting Sunday [...]
