Irish person who caused social change in Ireland in the last 30 years

Ghost Buster

kupus wrote: »

So it hasnt really changed then. Is true what they say, the more things change, the more it stays the same.

IT has a little. The RCC no longer have the power and influence they had in Bobs day and at least politicians have to be a little more discreet in their corruption!
A long way to go though.

Beano

CrabRevolution wrote: »

While it was certainly a step forward for human rights in the country and in the right direction for equal rights/marriage etc. I dont think the work of David Norris and the decriminalization of homosexuality really caused that much of a social shift in the country. I reckon it was more a correction of an anachronism than a sudden liberation of oppressed masses.

You were obviously not one of those oppressed masses.

BMJD

Bobby Sands - his sacrifice made a lot of people realise the power of the ballot box

Meathlass

What about someone like Joe Duffy, OP?

Liveline has caused social change for good and bad - the govt. accused it of almost causing a run on the banks in 2008.

Mary Robinson, David Norris and Christine Buckley are all excellent examples as well but if you want to approach this from a totally different angle I think JD would be good.

Of course if this is for secondary school I'd stick with a safer option.

joe swanson

BMJD wrote: »

Bobby Sands - his sacrifice made a lot of people realise the power of the ballot box

Pretty sure the thread is not about terrorist scum of the past. Plus hes outside the Timeframe

Banjoxed

Freddie "Do your own homework" Mc Fredson.

nelly17

Fr Brendan Smith for all the wrong reasons

RoboRat

For me it would have to be Michael O'Leary. He made travel accessible to the masses and in turn made international trading possible for a lot of small companies. It also enabled Irish people to travel and bring back their experiences and enabled people later to work abroad and regularly commute home.

foggy_lad

fryup wrote: »

that was mary robinson,

nell had no use for condoms...if you know what i mean;)

Nope, Definitely Nell. she brought suitcases packed with condoms and family planning booklets many of which gave details of clinics in the UK where women could have an abortion. She was really only the decoy and attracted so much attention from the customs and Gardai that the many others who were doing the same were able to slip the net:D

foggy_lad

I think Bertie Ahern is a person who caused more social change than most others and should Never be forgotten for it!

Ben D Bus

kupus wrote: »

So it hasnt really changed then. Is true what they say, the more things change, the more it stays the same.

I think it has changed an awful lot. Still very far from perfect, but a long, long way from the '80s.

I'd have to agree that Gay Byrne had a significant inflence on social change in Ireland.

DarkyHughes

Martin McGuinness
Brendan Hughes
Gerry Kelly
Boby Sands okay little over 30
The Loughgall martyrs
Bik McFarlane


There some of the most important revolutionaries I can think of in the last 30 years.

foxy farmer

Padraig Nally. Not famous or rich but his actions ultimately forced a change in the law regarding protecting yourself and your property from criminals.

DarkyHughes

joe swanson wrote: »

Pretty sure the thread is not about terrorist scum of the past. Plus hes outside the Timeframe

I'm guessing you wont like my post. Plus he wasn't scum, his sacrifice opened the doors to a peace process. Plus I find it offensive you cal people "scum" who fought & died for this country just because they have different politics.

Dyr

I think the interesting thing in Ireland is we always remember the media darlings who were pushed in front of the people that were actually bringing about the change, David Norris, Noel Browne, Mary Robinson etc. Unsurprisingly they always came from the upper rungs of the social ladder

Change in Ireland was rarely brought about by individuals, its just more convenient to potray it that way for a two minute clip on reeling in the years

Although Garret Fitzgerald, for all his many faults, did a lot to change society during his tenure as taoiseach.

diomed

Monsignor James Horan was one of the people who got the airport built at Knock, Co Mayo, even thought they didn't need an airport they just wanted to be as good as Dubs which of course they are not.
The runway was used for Ford Cortina drag racing iirc before they got the aircraft to land.

foggy_lad

diomed wrote: »

The runway was used for Ford Cortina drag racing iirc before they got the aircraft to land.

WTF? did they drag the auld Cortinas along behind the planes as they were taking off?

diomed

I think they built the runway first, but had no airlines to fly there, and probably hadn't got the runway lighting, terminal, hangars, fuel, and so on. You need to get things approved by the Irish Aviation Authority before opening for business.

Ghost Buster

diomed wrote: »

Monsignor James Horan was one of the people who got the airport built at Knock, Co Mayo, even thought they didn't need an airport they just wanted to be as good as Dubs which of course they are not.
The runway was used for Ford Cortina drag racing iirc before they got the aircraft to land.

I hope you get the responses you so desperately crave.

Ghost Buster

DarkyHughes wrote: »

I'm guessing you wont like my post. Plus he wasn't scum, his sacrifice opened the doors to a peace process. Plus I find it offensive you cal people "scum" who fought & died for this country just because they have different politics.

The fighting and dying didnt achieve anything. It was deciding to stop and talk that did the trick.

thee glitz

Sean Boylan, around here anyway.

fryup

Bambi wrote: »

Although Garret Fitzgerald, for all his many faults, did a lot to change society during his tenure as taoiseach.

i think Garret Fitzgerald did more than any other politician to help encourage irish society to become more broad-minded & pluralist in its outlook

he also took a more pragmatic neutral stance regards the northern troubles which was in contrast to the aggressive clanish fianna fail stance towards the unionist community

gugleguy

charlie bird
Fintan O Toole, for writing in the Irish Times( I don’t like much of the rest of it) about the Government’s shenanigans with the health service in this country. Your article with the lines, ’pull that lever............press that button’ showed the true way things were done in opening new primary care facilities.

The Cool

Somebody I only learned about from the "Photos that shook the world" thread, who's been kind of forgotten about or not learned about by my generation, but caused a major shift in society without trying was Anne Lovett.

She was 15 years old and gave birth to a baby in a Grotto in Granard in January 1984, without anyone's help or support. Her baby died from exposure at the scene and she died from haemorrhaging shortly after. This was still the time when unmarried mothers were seen as a disgrace upon their families. Gay Byrne read out the headline about the story on the front page of a national newspaper and women around the country wrote in their droves about their experiences of being pregnant and unmarried and finding themselves completely without the support of their friends or families, and how awful they were made to feel.

It was the start of women starting to stand up for themselves and say, I do not deserve this shít.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Lovett

ToddyDoody

Jack Charlton for ending the 80s

fleet_admiral

John Hume

O.A.P

Already posted but ex bishop Emanon Casey changed this country (for the better ) more than anyone else mentioned so far.

acon2119

The Cool wrote: »

Somebody I only learned about from the "Photos that shook the world" thread, who's been kind of forgotten about or not learned about by my generation, but caused a major shift in society without trying was Anne Lovett.

She was 15 years old and gave birth to a baby in a Grotto in Granard in January 1984, without anyone's help or support. Her baby died from exposure at the scene and she died from haemorrhaging shortly after. This was still the time when unmarried mothers were seen as a disgrace upon their families. Gay Byrne read out the headline about the story on the front page of a national newspaper and women around the country wrote in their droves about their experiences of being pregnant and unmarried and finding themselves completely without the support of their friends or families, and how awful they were made to feel.

It was the start of women starting to stand up for themselves and say, I do not deserve this shít.



Yes wonderful choice. I would like to write about this but in my case its been done before so I cant use it now. Thank you.

DarkyHughes

Ghost Buster wrote: »

The fighting and dying didnt achieve anything. It was deciding to stop and talk that did the trick.

I think it's irrelevant but to me there's nothing less selfish or more noble than dieing in the hope the people of your country will have better lives & they did achieve something

There was talking & deals done in 73 & 85 which both collapsed because they didn't include two out of the three combatant forces doing the fighting. You won't get peace until you talk to the people your fighting with.

Just like it took the French & Americans roughly the same time to figure that out in Vietnam.

DarkyHughes

I pick Joe O'Connell for his speech from the docks that help lead to the release of Guildford 4 which in turn transformed the whole British justice system.

[SIZE=-1]Members of the Jury: There has been an attempt by this court to isolate certain incidents which have been called 'crimes'. These incidents have been put completely outside the context in which they occurred in a way that is neither just nor consistent with the truth. The true context is that of the relationship between this country and our country - Ireland. That relationship is one of a state of war against the occupation of Ireland by Britain.
No mention has been made in this court of the violence suffered by the Irish people; of the use of internment without charge or trial in the six counties; of the conviction before the European Court of Human Rights of the British Government for the torture of Irish people; nor of the brutalities of British colonial rule. The judge has attempted to restrict the reference to bombings and shootings to 'terrorist' offenses. We would like to ask the judge whether the bombing of Hiroshima or Dresden were terrorists offenses? Whether the torture carried out by British soldiers in Aden and Cyprus and Hola Camp, Kenya were acts of terrorism? Whether the British were guilty of terrorism when they forced thousands of civilians into concentration camps in South Africa where thousands of them died?
We say that no representative of British imperialism is fit to pass judgment on us, for this government carried out acts of terrorism in order to defend British imperialism and continues to do so in Ireland. We have struggled to free our country from British rule. We are patriots. British soldiers in Northern Ireland are mercenaries of British imperialism. Yet none of them has ever been convicted for the murders of unarmed civilians which they had committed in Ireland. We ask the members of the jury to consider this paradox. We are all four Irish Republicans. We have recognised this court to the extent that we have instructed our lawyers to draw the attention of the court to the fact that four totally innocent people - Carole Richardson, Gerry Conlon, Paul Hill and Paddy Armstrong - are serving massive sentences for three bombings, two in Guildford and one in Woolwich, which three of us and another man now imprisoned, have admitted that we did.
The Director of Public Prosecutions was made aware of these admissions in December, 1975 and has chosen to do nothing. We wonder if he will still do nothing when he is made aware of the new and important evidence which has come to light through the cross examination by our council of certain prosecution witnesses in this trial. The evidence of Higgs [principle scientific officer for the Crown in the Guildford trial] and Lidstone [forensic scientist] played a vital part in the conviction of innocent people. Higgs admitted in this trial that the Woolwich bomb formed part of a correlated series with other bombings with which we are charged. Yet when he gave evidence at the earlier Guildford and Woolwich trial he deliberately concealed that the Woolwich bomb was definitely part of a series carried out between October and December, 1974 and that the people on trial were in custody at the time of some of these bombings.
Lidstone in his evidence at this trial tried to make little of the suggestion that the Guildford bombs could have been part of the 'Phase One' bombings with which we were accused with the excuse, and this appeared to be his only reason, that the bombings in Guildford had occurred a long time before the rest. When it was pointed out to him that there were many clear links between Caterham and Guildford and the time between Guildford and the Brooks Club bomb with which we were originally charged was 17 days and that Woolwich occurred 16 days later, and that equal time gaps occurred between many of the incidents with which we are charged, Lidstone backtracked and admitted that there was a likely connection.
This shifty manoeuvring typifies what we, as Irish Republicans, have come to understand by the words 'British justice'. Time and again in Irish political trials in this country innocent people have been convicted on the flimsiest evidence - often no more than extorted statements or even 'verbals' from the police. Despite this often repeated claim that there is no such thing as a political prisoner in England, we would like to point out that the stress laid in Irish trials on the political beliefs of the prisoners and the fact that over the last few years convicted Republicans have been subjected to extreme brutality in English prisons. This brutality has led to prisoners being severely injured like six Republicans in Albany in September last year and to the almost constant use of solitary confinement for such prisoners. It has also resulted in the deaths of three of our comrades - Michael Gaughan, Frank Stagg and Noel Jenkinson.
We do not wish to insult the members of the Jury when we say that they are not our peers. An English jury can never be the peers of Irish men and women.
We will be judged only by our countrymen. Any verdict or sentence from this court is nothing more than the continuation of the hypocrisy of British rule in Ireland and the injustice it has inflicted on our country and its people.
We admit to no 'crimes' and to no 'guilt', for the real crimes and the real guilt are those of British imperialism committed against our people.
The war against imperialism is a just war and it will go on, for true peace can only come about when a nation is free from oppression and injustice. Whether we are imprisoned or not is irrelevant for our whole nation is the prisoner of British imperialism. The British people who choose to ignore this or to swallow the lies of the British gutter press are responsible for the actions of their government unless they stand out against them. As Volunteers in the Irish Republican Army we have fought to free our oppressed nation from its bondage to British imperialism of which this court [/SIZE]