Liz Walsh

Ireland’s President, Catherine Connolly, is in London, doing the rounds with King Charles – sandwiches, small talk, the full diplomatic biscuit tin. She arrived in the manner of all visiting heads of state; gracious, stylishly dressed, saying nothing that could be used against her before the vol-au-vents had cooled. Meanwhile, somewhere on the high seas between Cyprus and Gaza, her 69-year-old sister has been kidnapped. Or intercepted. The Israelis prefer intercepted. The distinction matters enormously to one party and not much to the other, and the party to whom it does matter is currently in Israeli custody, which suggests the Israelis have won that particular argument. At least for now.

When a government’s answer to protesting truckers is to send in the army, something has gone badly wrong. At present, truckers and farmers in Ireland are blocking roads around the country as part of a protest against the cripplingly high cost of fuel and the lack of government action to fix it. Sending in the army to remove blockades should have been a last resort, after all other attempts to diffuse the situation have been exhausted Truckers, school bus drivers and farmers have parked their vehicles on both sides of Dublin City’s busiest thoroughfare, O’Connell Street. Protesters and understandably frustrated commuters have, in some cases, come to blows. National motorways are at crawling pace.

A Palestinian flag is currently fluttering from the top of the Spire, Dublin’s tallest landmark, looking down on the Irish flag which flies from the historic General Post Office a few metres away. Pro-Palestinian fanatics dropped the flag – emblazoned with the words 'Stop Genocide in Gaza' – onto the Spire from a drone hovering 120 metres above ground, in defiance of aviation laws, in September. More than three months on, the authorities seem powerless to remove it. The Spire, newly adorned with the now familiar green, red, and black Palestinian colours, stands on the same site in O’Connell Street where before Admiral Horatio Nelson had overlooked the street with his one good eye since 1809.

The massacre of Jews on Bondi Beach was the tragic, yet inevitable, result of rising Jew hatred throughout the western world, including in Ireland. Ireland's Chief Rabbi, Yoni Weider, spoke of the festering anti-Semitism targeted at Ireland's Jewish community, as the Taoiseach Micheál Martin and senior ministers fell over themselves to proclaim support for Irish Jews. Their support in the wake of the Bondi Beach atrocity rings somewhat hollow. For two years, they effectively acted as spectators as, week after week, protesters took over Dublin's streets expressing support for the Intifada. This hatred has spilled over into acts of violence and abuse against Ireland's Jews, as a yet unpublished report shows.

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood’s asylum shake-up has sent the Irish government into something approaching panic mode. The profound new measures, including penalties for those exploiting the system, a 20-year wait for settlement, and returning refugees if their native country is deemed safe, are deeply problematic for Ireland. The government correctly predicts a sharp surge in the number of asylum seekers opting to claim asylum in Ireland, rather than the UK, if these measures become law. It does not take a genius to guess where failed UK asylum applicants will go. Not to mention those who reckon they stand a far greater chance of success in pushover Ireland and decide to skip the UK process and board the next ferry to the emerald isle.

As predicted, the radical far-left has emerged victorious from Ireland’s farcical presidential election, leaving the ruling coalition parties humiliated and obliterated in a shambles of their own making. Catherine Connolly, Ireland’s 68-year-old answer to Jeremy Corbyn, will be Ireland’s next head of state. But large swathes of middle and rural Ireland who feel disenfranchised by this two-horse derby are seething. The number of deliberately spoiled votes reached a historic high, and in some constituencies, outpolled the Fine Gael candidate. This points to a dangerous polarisation for which the Taoiseach Micheal Martin and Tanaiste Simon Harris are entirely responsible. The backlash, when it came was as swift, harsh and deserved.

Beer, Brits, and bad language are the few culturally accurate elements of the new Netflix series, House of Guinness. Loved by American and UK critics, hated by Irish critics, the series on the battle for control of the iconic Irish Guinness family brewery in 19th-Century revolutionary Ireland has sharply divided opinion. Are we Irish an over-sensitive lot? A ‘steampunk Mr. Tayto’ or a ‘rollicking retelling’ of an Irish version of Succession sums up the extent of the divide. The eight-part drama debuted with an 89 per cent audience approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a five-star review from the Guardian. But to Irish critics, House of Guinness is historically inaccurate, stereotypical tosh.

The Irish presidential election was already an anti-democratic farce even before the combined left candidate lobbed an incendiary device into the mix. Catherine Connolly’s comments on BBC describing Hamas as ‘part of the fabric of Palestinian people’ – and her opinion that Keir Starmer is wrong to exclude Hamas from a new Palestinian state – has not gone down well. Fourteen interminably long years of suffocating sanctimony from Michael D. Higgins will come to an end. But will Ireland's new president be any better? For the first time in 14 years, the Irish people get to elect a new president of Ireland next month. Fourteen interminably long years of suffocating sanctimony from the present incumbent, Michael D. Higgins, will come to an end.

Irish Taoiseach Micheal Martin is keeping a close eye on the ‘Operation Raise the Colours’ campaign, and he does not like what he sees. According to Martin, society must say no. ‘Watching what is happening in the UK, I don’t like it. We, so far, have resisted a lot of what has transpired in other societies,’ he said, with a detectable whiff of sanctimony. Well good for us, but what Martin really means is that when it comes to English people raising English flags on English soil, it’s a case of Down with That Sort of Thing – before it catches on here. Even that most basic expression of expression of nationhood, flying the flag, is viewed as an act of sedition at the highest levels of government.

US diplomat Mike Huckabee was dead right to question whether Ireland had ‘fallen into a vat of Guinness.’ Huckabee, the United States ambassador to Israel, played into stereotypical tropes on the Irish and alcohol when he made that comment last week. But it is, he reckoned, the only possible explanation for Ireland’s looming ban on Israeli settlement goods, despite ominous soundings from the US over the potentially ruinous consequences. This bill is so stupid it amounts to ‘diplomatic intoxication’, he concluded. This bill is so stupid it amounts to ‘diplomatic intoxication’, Mike Huckabee concluded To answer his question, Ireland is not drunk. More’s the pity. It is preparing to commit economic suicide while cold stone sober, just to tighten the screws on Israel.