What was the worst event in modern Irish history?

Nodin

Roger_007 wrote: »

Since independence, 6 million have chosen do exactly that. Whether they felt free or not is open to question. Emigration is the the most obvious example of how this state has failed. There are now twice as many people who were either born in Ireland, or have parents who were born here, living outside the the country as live inside it. Hardly a vote of confidence by Irish people in their motherland!

There was no emigration under the Brits?

EyeSight

oppenheimer1 wrote: »

You do know why they lied about the bailout?

If they came out and said that they were preparing a bailout as a backup plan, it would have become a self fulfilling prophecy.

I don't get why that would be so bad? (Maybe i'm just misunderstanding you)
Either way, they serve the people and their bold face lie(of which there were many) showed how badly they treated us. We all knew it was happening, people involved were even saying. Except our leaders

Muahahaha

BuilderPlumber wrote: »

There's a LOT to choose from.

-The exaggerated media emphasis on Brian Cowen being 'drunk' back in September 2010 which in effect made up the minds of the Rating agencies to pull the trigger on us and thus allow in the IMF. Cowen was not even drunk by the way! Total and harmful media exaggeration.

In fairness Brian Cowen sounded very hungover on the radio that morning. It was revealed that Cowen and most of his ministers were up till 3am and it's pretty unlikely they weren't drinking.

That aside it was pretty much an open secret around Leinster House that Cowen had hit the bottle hard as the economy crumbled further and further. I remember myself seeing him staggering out of Doheny &Nesbitt on Baggot St at 10pm on a Thursday, he was having trouble walking he was that bad. A poster here at the time also told a story of how he was at a lock in in Offaly around this time and had sent his Garda driver home. At 5am he realised he was due in Dublin and one of the pub regulars who was sober had to drive him up to work- locked.

foxy farmer wrote: »

Allowing a love ulster march in dublin in 2006.

TV3 believing it was in the national interest to publicise the fact that Brian Lenihan had cancer.

Well given he was the Minister for Finance it was in the public interest. In fact I'd go further and say that any Minister for Finance who has a serious illness has a duty to resign their position so they can focus on their treatment and let someone with a full focus on Finance be the Minister for Finance.

Maybe it's a horrible thing to say but I often wondered at the time how much his decision making was affected by other troubles. You need to be at the top of your game to fight the economic crash he had on his hands and he wasn't - he was terminally ill and not exactly in the best frame of mind to be making decisions that will effect the country long after he is gone. The media may like to sell Brian Lenihan as a 'patriot' for struggling through an economic crash and cancer at the same time but I just see him as someone who was at their weakest when the nation of Ireland needed someone at their strongest. I think time will show this, especially if we ever get sight of the Trichet letters where he brow beat Lenihan into the bailout.

fiachr_a

• Rap against rape
• This year's IFTAs ceremony
• Fans singing 'You'll never beat the Irish' at the 2012 Euros
• Self Aid in 1986

SaveOurLyric

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqzhcV_7ajQ

oppenheimer1

Muahahaha wrote: »

In fairness Brian Cowen sounded very hungover on the radio that morning. It was revealed that Cowen and most of his ministers were up till 3am and it's pretty unlikely they weren't drinking.

That aside it was pretty much an open secret around Leinster House that Cowen had hit the bottle hard as the economy crumbled further and further. I remember myself seeing him staggering out of Doheny &Nesbitt on Baggot St at 10pm on a Thursday, he was having trouble walking he was that bad. A poster here at the time also told a story of how he was at a lock in in Offaly around this time and had sent his Garda driver home. At 5am he realised he was due in Dublin and one of the pub regulars who was sober had to drive him up to work- locked.




Well given he was the Minister for Finance it was in the public interest. In fact I'd go further and say that any Minister for Finance who has a serious illness has a duty to resign their position so they can focus on their treatment and let someone with a full focus on Finance be the Minister for Finance.

Maybe it's a horrible thing to say but I often wondered at the time how much his decision making was affected by other troubles. You need to be at the top of your game to fight the economic crash he had on his hands and he wasn't - he was terminally ill and not exactly in the best frame of mind to be making decisions that will effect the country long after he is gone. The media may like to sell Brian Lenihan as a 'patriot' for struggling through an economic crash and cancer at the same time but I just see him as someone who was at their weakest when the nation of Ireland needed someone the at their strongest. I think time will show this, especially if we ever get sight of the Trichet letters where he brow beat Lenihan into the bailout.

Did you just libel the former Taoiseach? Nothing good became of Nell McCafferty for saying something similar

JupiterKid

The civil war
DeValera's economic war with The UK and isolationist policies that ended up holding the development of Ireland back for 30 years
The power of the religious institutions
The 1974 Dublin and Monaghan Bombings
The 1981 Stardust tragedy
The 1998 Omagh bombing

...to name but a few.

P_1

The civil war
The extremely short-sighted destruction of the British built infrastructure of our cities
Swapping London rule for Rome rule
The Troubles
The Dublin & Monaghan bombings
Stardust
Omagh

Adamantium

The bones of 800 babies dumped in a septic tank in Tuam and who knows how many other sites around the country. Experimentation and medicine trials on said children.

The congnitive dissonance to so such things only because those children "were already dead in the eyes of God, they're souls are worthless anyway", that's probably what these "people" tried to convince themselves of.

The human and animal parts of the brain were turned off, a animal wouldn't be able to do it to a cub of its pack.

Amazing how quickly that receded in the news.

GerB40

Personally I genuinely believe Charles J Haughey is the worst thing thats happend to Ireland in recent years.. His utter and completely corrupt way of "governing" a state has poisoned Irish politics and the worst thing is, Fianna Fail havent changed whatsoever from CJHs modus oparandi.
Fianna Fail need to go before Irish Politics can be taken seriously again..

Adamantium

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9h2c5v8IZNA

Karl Stein

Azwaldo55 wrote: »

Ireland might well have won independence sooner and more painlessly and with less bloodshed.

No. With the rise of the welfare state in the UK it's very likely we would have become an English dependency. Plus it's very likely there would have been ceaseless resistance to British rule. We'd have been a bit like the north in the 70's and 80's.

Nodin wrote: »

There was no emigration under the Brits?

I know yeah. Ireland had a population of 8 million before the famine under British administration - by the time they fucked off we had half that with a million dead from starvation. But oh no, some would have you believe it was the golden age of Ireland.

Such proud displays of profound ignorance.

partyguinness

How far back are we going?

Roy Keane in Saipan.

partyguinness

GerB40 wrote: »

Personally I genuinely believe Charles J Haughey is the worst thing thats happend to Ireland in recent years.. His utter and completely corrupt way of "governing" a state has poisoned Irish politics and the worst thing is, Fianna Fail havent changed whatsoever from CJHs modus oparandi.
Fianna Fail need to go before Irish Politics can be taken seriously again..

CJH was, with all subjectively aside, actually a very good politician and enacted many ground breaking pieces of legislation but of course, he was corrupt and self serving which tarnihses everything.

Manach

For the collective shock, I'd place the event of the Dublin/Monaghan bombing, followed by the Tuskar air disaster.

In passing on Charlie Haughley - yes he was corrupt, but both by international standards he was only small scale and he did not overly indulge in the deficit spending to drive social change that has weaken Western economies so much that Europe is now a shadow of its former share of world GDP.

Birroc

Adamantium wrote: »

The bones of 800 babies dumped in a septic tank in Tuam and who knows how many other sites around the country. Experimentation and medicine trials on said children.

The congnitive dissonance to so such things only because those children "were already dead in the eyes of God, they're souls are worthless anyway", that's probably what these "people" tried to convince themselves of.

The human and animal parts of the brain were turned off, a animal wouldn't be able to do it to a cub of its pack.

Amazing how quickly that receded in the news.

+1

This issue really rocked me. I am still flabbergasted at how cruel "Christian" people were in the new Irish state.

Birroc

GerB40 wrote: »

Personally I genuinely believe Charles J Haughey is the worst thing thats happend to Ireland in recent years.. His utter and completely corrupt way of "governing" a state has poisoned Irish politics and the worst thing is, Fianna Fail havent changed whatsoever from CJHs modus oparandi.
Fianna Fail need to go before Irish Politics can be taken seriously again..

I agree with you for the most part. He was a sheister. However, when we needed CJH the most was when we were negotiating the nationalisation of the private banking debt. CJH was who we wanted at that negotiation table. A ballsy poker player who would have scared the EU into a much better deal.

tomwaterford

those 2 weeks back in the 80s from gibraltor killikngs to the killing of two undercover soldiers in front of tv cameras,...showed a real low point of brutality of people hardened by the troubles

or the forcing of the orange parade through drumcree in 95...an unwillingness of the police/army to stand up to bigots/thugs....even though at the time it looked like it was on the verge of civil war.

GerB40

partyguinness wrote: »

CJH was, with all subjectively aside, actually a very good politician and enacted many ground breaking pieces of legislation but of course, he was corrupt and self serving which tarnihses everything.

He made a lot of changes, I wont argue that.. But how many changes for the good are still relevant? Now look at his bad choices and see how many of those are still relevant.

Personally I think destroying a whole party and basically ending trust in our whole system of governance trumps his good ideas..

Tail Docker

Currently, the fact this bottle of wine is empty.

GerB40

Birroc wrote: »

I agree with you for the most part. He was a sheister. However, when we needed CJH the most was when we were negotiating the nationalisation of the private banking debt. CJH was who we wanted at that negotiation table. A ballsy poker player who would have scared the EU into a much better deal.

As my father (who hates Haughey more than I can put into words) once said "To be fair, if he was Taoiseach now he would've told the IMF and EU to f*ck off)."
It's hard to argue with that..

Sayin that, Ireland wouldn't have needed a bailout if it wasn't for Fianna Fails utter corruption and where did that come from??? The one and only CJH himself.

Meangadh

Not an individual "event" as such, but the likes of Sean Fitzpatrick and his ilk pretty much completely getting away with the damage they have done to this country.

Muahahaha

oppenheimer1 wrote: »

Did you just libel the former Taoiseach? Nothing good became of Nell McCafferty for saying something similar

It's not libel but defamation. And a clear defence to that is an honestly held opinion. I saw Cowen locked drunk with my own eyes, I also know other people who work around the Baggot St area who can testify that they saw similar to myself. I'm not the only poster here who saw him pretty drunk with my own eyes- others too reported it at the time. Like I said his drinking slowly became an open secret, at least around Dublin. Before that radio interview there wasn't anyone I knew who wasn't aware of what had being going on so it didn't come as that much of a surprise to me tbh.

Muahahaha

theemigrant wrote: »

Undoubtedly the civil war…. there are still divisions in my local area.

That's mad, I just never get the mentality and then people go out and vote along those lines. It is completely insane to choose to vote for a candidate in 2014 based on events that happened in the 1920's.

GerB40 wrote: »

He made a lot of changes, I wont argue that.. But how many changes for the good are still relevant? Now look at his bad choices and see how many of those are still relevant.

Personally I think destroying a whole party and basically ending trust in our whole system of governance trumps his good ideas..

In fairness to Haughey he did stand up to the Church with the Succession Act, before that widowed women had no rights to property of their deceased husband, the Church got the house and land after the widow was allowed to live in it for the rest of her days. That was a big thing because it meant that the Church stopped accumulating land so easily and it gave women rights to land that they never had before. In fairness to Haughey I'd say he came under immense pressure from the Bishops not to do it but he went ahead anyway, it was one of the few ballsy moves against the Church that legislators have ever implemented.

But all that was a good 15 years before became Taoiseach for the first of three stints. He was a completely different animal by that stage, I think it was historian Diarmuid Ferriter who said that the beginnings of his career were very dynamic but from the 1970s onwards it was all about one thing- himself and enriching himself as much as possible.

WilyCoyote

Roy Keane (Lucifer) rebelled against McCarthy (God) and all Hell broke loose

Closely followed by that French pimp handling the ball back into play before scoring.

StudentDad

The 'rising' of 1916 which didn't have popular support. Leading to the overreaction of the govt. Which led to the war of independence and formation of the Free State. Following on from those actions this little country went from being one of the wealthiest in Europe to an economic, social and religious gulag.
I read somewhere that during the 50's the govt. here toyed with the idea of ringing London and asking if we could rejoin the UK. Absolute madness.

Thank god we joined the EEC when we did.

SD

Johro

Garth Brooks getting cancelled. Apparently.

FatherTed

Dev getting power. Really fked up the country in so many ways especially giving free reign to the church to chart the course of the country. Still paying for it. If someine else became leader long term e.g. Collins maybe the country would have ended up more secular.

WilyCoyote

FatherTed wrote: »

Dev getting power. Really fked up the country in so many ways especially giving free reign to the church to chart the course of the country. Still paying for it. If someine else became leader long term e.g. Collins maybe the country would have ended up more secular.

Homosecular? Surely knot!

Ah Jasus Ted.

porsche959

GerB40 wrote: »

As my father (who hates Haughey more than I can put into words) once said "To be fair, if he was Taoiseach now he would've told the IMF and EU to f*ck off)."
It's hard to argue with that..

Er, actually it's very easy to argue with it.