Ian O’Doherty

Ireland is gearing up for its general election this Friday – and what started out as a relatively moribund campaign seems to have finally kicked into gear. The two main bones of contention remain the housing crisis and immigration. To the frustration of many voters, politicians refuse to accept these issues are linked A large part of the new energy can be pinned on Simon Harris, Ireland's TikTok Taoiseach, who has been travelling the highways and byways of Ireland with his own dedicated social media team. Last week, he achieved his obvious aim of going viral, although not for the reasons he would have wanted.

This week, when he was returned to Dublin's Mountjoy jail for the third time in two years, Irish schoolteacher Enoch Burke was hailed by his many supporters as a martyr for free speech.  He was, according to some, a very modern victim of a tyrannical ‘woke’ establishment riding roughshod over an individual's right to religious liberty. The row between Burke, his school and the Irish state began in June 2022 when staff at Wilson's Hospital School in County Westmeath were instructed by the head teacher that one of their students was transitioning and wanted to be referred to as 'they/them.' Burke, who comes from a well-known evangelical Christian family based in Mayo, refused that request and insisted that he would not bow down to this new ideology.

For the average member of the Irish political, media and NGO complex there are several political issues in Ireland which need to be addressed urgently. There is the burning need to introduce more stringent hate speech laws, a topic which seemed dormant until Taoiseach Simon Harris resurrected this prospect last week. There is the race to institute even more regulations which will help Ireland show the rest of the world how to tackle climate change.

Balaclavas were once the preserve of bank robbers and members of the IRA, but this week they were worn by thugs who clashed with police. During riots across England, protestors concealed their faces as they threw projectiles and smashed up shops. Balaclavas were also worn during anti-immigration protests against a proposed asylum site in Coolock, Dublin, last month. The sight of criminals wearing face coverings is a terrifying one – and Ireland has responded with a proposal to ban balaclavas at protests. It's a shame it took so long.

The Republic of Ireland has always prided itself on its lack of racism. Take the fact that two of the country’s most popular sons are black or mixed-race. Thin Lizzy’s Phil Lynott was the first truly international Irish rock star, while the brilliant footballer Paul McGrath was, and remains, perhaps the most genuinely beloved Irish person alive. When I was at an under-21s game between Ireland and England many years ago, a small bunch of Irish fans started shouting racist abuse about Trevor Sinclair. They were soon attacked by other Irish fans, who asked the idiots if they would say the same thing to McGrath, who is simply known as ‘God’ in Irish footballing circles.

For once, the Irish government has actually done something it promised. The problem is that it's precisely the wrong thing, at precisely the wrong time. On Wednesday, Ireland, along with Norway and Spain, committed to recognising a Palestinian state. Ireland will formally ratify this on 28 May. It's a bizarre and utterly counterproductive move which has the very real potential to plunge the region into even more carnage, but one which many Irish politicians from all parties have been demanding for the last few months. This is a reward for committing the single greatest crime against Jews since the dark days of the Holocaust It's easy to see why Taoiseach Simon Harris decided to engage in such a fatuous piece of political virtue-signalling.

‘We will not be used as a loophole in another country’s immigration challenges.’ Those were the angry words of Irish Taoiseach Simon Harris over the weekend, a further escalation in the war of words between Dublin and Downing Street which have seen diplomatic relations between the two nations reach their lowest point since the darkest days of the fraught and fractious Brexit negotiations. It’s hard to see an amicable solution being forged between the two governments The news that the Irish government now plans to change existing legislation to allow them to return illegal immigrants who arrived in the country from the UK is unlikely to see a warming of relations any time soon.

When the Irish foreign minister Micheal Martin recently stood up and announced to the Dail that Ireland would officially recognise a Palestinian state ‘within a matter of weeks’, there were no sharp intakes of breath or fits of fainting in the chamber. Irish political parties have long been relatively united in their calls for full recognition of a Palestinian state. But this was the first time there had been an explicit statement of intent, and within a specific timeline. Relations between Ireland and Israel have traditionally been poor since diplomatic ties were established in 1975. But events since October 7 (which many Irish politicians seem to have conveniently forgotten) have plunged those relations into freezing territory.

Genuinely shocking political announcements are relatively rare in the Republic. It's a small country, with an even smaller political and media base who all know and frequently socialise with each other. This means that the whisper-streams between politicos and hacks usually ensure that what may come as a surprise to the general population is usually well flagged, or at least strongly suspected, by the elites in advance of any public pronouncement. But yesterday's announcement that Taoiseach Leo Varadkar was stepping down from his role seemed to genuinely catch people by surprise. An emotional Varadkar cited 'personal and political reasons' for his departure.

There have been diplomatic tensions between Ireland and Israel almost since the latter was founded. Ireland only established diplomatic relations with Israel in 1975, and it took until for 1996 for it to open an embassy in Tel Aviv. In recent years, the frosty relations between the two countries had been improving, largely thanks to mutual investment and cooperation between their tech industries. That uneasy truce was shattered by the Hamas pogrom on October 7 – and the subsequent Israeli invasion of Gaza in an attempt to eradicate Hamas once and for all.  Things escalated in Ireland this week, when there were several fractious debates in the Dail on the subject of expelling Dana Erlich, the Israeli ambassador.

It's a widely known secret within Israeli diplomatic circles that Ireland is seen as something of a lost cause.  While the Irish left is quick to react with fury to any accusations of anti-Semitism, insisting instead that they are merely opposed to Zionism and the Israeli government's policies, sometimes that seems a distinction without a difference. This week has certainly been one of those times.

You have to hand it to the green movement. When it comes to their increasingly farcical and delusional race towards the illusory target of net zero, they're never short of ideas. Bad ideas, that is. E-bikes and E-scooters that have an unfortunate tendency to explode in the middle of the night. Electric cars which take days to charge – when you can find a charger. Motorists threatened with eye-watering fines if they dare to go faster than 20 miles an hour. Honestly, don’t be surprised if the next generation of cars come equipped with only two gears and a built in speed inhibitor. But here in Ireland, we have really taken the lead in coming up with Very Bad Ideas. In fact, the latest might be daftest yet. The government wants to kill our cattle.