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What was the worst event in modern Irish history?
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Much the same point as I made. I was actually very recently in the "Should hand back the keys to Westminster with an apology" camp myself till a thread here a few months ago where someone made the point infinitely more eloquently and comprehensively that I.
Basically, we fcuked up, we fcuked up regularily and we fcuked up big but even despite that we are still better off now than we would be if we were still part of the UK.
As someone pointed out earlier there are 8 million Irish and children of Irish parents outside the country. Had we not made so many screw ups those 8 Million would be living here. Imagine how dynamic a nation we could be with 12 million people without that brain and labour drain and larger domestic demand. Yet despite everything we're still better off than if we had remained in the UK. But imagine what it could have been like with fewer screwups and 12 million native Irish!!
Is it statistically possible for 8 million Irish citizens to be alive abroad?
(Emigration being 30k per year or much lower for the bulk of the last 2 decades).0 -
comongethappy wrote: »Is it statistically possible for 8 million Irish citizens to be alive abroad?
(Emigration being 30k per year or much lower for the bulk of the last 2 decades).
yes as afaik...your children can get a passport0 -
tomwaterford wrote: »yes as afaik...your children can get a passport
Taking average western birthrates of about 1.8 kids per couple, that 15-20% of people never have kids.... plus 10%+ people here aren't Irish.... You are looking at around 2 Irish born people living abroad for every 3 in Ireland itself.
Doesn't seem possible.0 -
comongethappy wrote: »Taking average western birthrates of about 1.8 kids per couple, that 15-20% of people never have kids.... plus 10%+ people here aren't Irish.... You are looking at around 2 Irish born people living abroad for every 3 in Ireland itself.
Doesn't seem possible.
it is apparently....a lot of them would be very old as there was horrendous emigration in the late 50s (dunno deos this apply to modern history though)0 -
I presumed the person who mentioned it earlier in the thread meant emigree's and their progeny since Independence, so the statistic seemed plausible.0
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The birth of the Provos...............the civil rights movement would have prevailed in the end (through US and public opinion) and lots of lives saved.
Birth of the Provos was caused by the British after they destroyed the civil rights in Derry other wise know as Bloody Sunday******
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BarryLyndon wrote: »How are the fruits of Empire working out for the people of Dundee and Humberside nowadays?
Really? You think the internecine crap, death, sectarianism, economic collapse, emigration, social stagnation, corruption, govt. ineptitude, religious fascism etc etc was worth it?
This little country didn't begin to come out of the Irish dark ages until we joined the EEC. As it stands we're still facing a rump of ultra conservatives in this country who'd happily drag us back to the 1930's.
SD0 -
The birth of the Provos...............the civil rights movement would have prevailed in the end.
Nope, Burntollet bridge was the nail in the coffin for the Civil Rights movement. Savagely crushing and oppressing the voice of a people through brutality, inevitably leads them to armed resistance.0 -
The death of the isuzu trooper.0
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riffmongous wrote: »It's interesting how the Omagh bombing gets mentioned twice as often as the Dublin/Monaghan bombings in this thread, while I appreciate that most people would only have been alive for one (in that boat myself) I would have expected D/M would figure as much as Omagh
Yeah it is interesting though perhaps as you say it's because most people posting here weren't alive when the Dublin Monaghan bombings occurred but were for Omagh. I think though it might be a media thing too, there is a certain cover up the media don't seem prepared to talk about in relation to the DM bombings, on the other hand Omagh can be used as a tool to remind people not to vote Sinn Fein and certain media outlets have been working full time on that agenda of late.StudentDad wrote: »Really? You think the internecine crap, death, sectarianism, economic collapse, emigration, social stagnation, corruption, govt. ineptitude, religious fascism etc etc was worth it?
This little country didn't begin to come out of the Irish dark ages until we joined the EEC. As it stands we're still facing a rump of ultra conservatives in this country who'd happily drag us back to the 1930's.
SD
As much as I complain about the EU most of our more liberalising laws have come from it. It was illegal to be a homosexual in Ireland in the 1990s and even after David Norris won his discrimination case in Europe (after losing it in the Irish Supreme Court and appealing to the higher European Court of Human Rights), even after all that and all the infamy Ireland gained internationally for being a backward theocracy on the edge of Europe our government still didn't change the law on criminalising homosexuals for several years later. They had to be dragged kicking and screaming by the EU to do it. In fact if we weren't a member of the EU Norris would never had a higher court to appeal to and it's actually a good possibility that being gay in Ireland could still be illegal to this very day. As mad as that sounds if it wasn't for the European Court of Human rights overruling the Irish Supreme Court it could very well still be illegal.0 -
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CrabRevolution wrote: »Why would all property have gone to the church? If that was the case then the church would have owned the property of everyone who died from the 20s till the 60s, which it clearly didnt. As much as the early state loved the RCC, I doubt they set up a system where eventually all the land in the country would have ended up in the hands of the church, paying no rates/tax etc.
I have heard stories however of wives/daughters/sons being shafted where the land was left to the church in the man's will and they were left with nothing. Another problems was widows/other children being left with nothing and the estate going entirely to the eldest son.
It wasn't that the system was set up for property to end up in the hands of the Church- however it was structured in a way that it often happened and women were left by the side of the road in many instances. In some deals they got a life estate but the house/land reverted to the Church on their death. We're talking about deepest darkest 1920s-1965 Ireland here where the men in black held the keys to heaven and women's opinions counted for nothing. It's not hard to see how priests had a valuable opportunity to increase the worth of their parish by having an input into the estate of their parishioners. People at that time were God fearing and I guess did irrational things.
There's a lot to criticise Haughey about but in fairness to him bringing in that piece of legislation advanced women's rights and security tenfold. And I've no doubt he had to do it with Archbishops telling him he was going to hell for doing it. It took balls at a time in Ireland where standing up to the Church was virtually unheard of.0 -
Just as an aside and on reflection of all the events mentioned the more I think of the emigration thing the more I think it is probably is the most tragic event in modern Irish history. Except we don't see emigration as 'an event', more of a constant daily occurrence.
I fully agree with the other poster who mentioned how we could be today if we had 12m people and our very brightest and best working and contributing to Irish society. You only have to look at the stats to see how well Irish people do abroad, in the UK the Irish directors are the most represented nationality on company boards, take a scan across Fortune 500 companies and you'll see lots of Irish pop up there too in proportions far above our numbers. Many of these people emigrated in the 1980s and if they didn't come back during the Celtic Tiger then there isn't a snowballs chance in hell they will ever now. They're doing great for themselves but the real tragedy is that they should be doing great for themselves here and creating jobs here. But they aren't because they now see Ireland as a great place to visit but also have a recognition that Ireland is well below the standard of living for the level of taxation you're expected to pay. And the health service is in a mess too, education not great either.
The other side of having a large population of 10m and over is that services can be delivered cheaper as you get economies of scale on everything from energy to pharma. Also at that population level the possibilities in the sporting arena are raised considerably. Holland only has around 13m citizens but from those 6.5m odd males they have consistently produced football teams that get to World Cup finals (even if they haven't won one yet!). At the London Olympics they brought home 22 medals across a large range of sports, both team and individual. We brought home three from boxing and one from a previously disgraced drugs cheat. If Ireland had a population of c10m I really do think we could do some marvellous things in the sporting arena.
The other tragedy of emigration though is the splitting up of families. Two close friends of mine have emigrated with young children whose relationship with their grandparents is now defined by Skype calls and one yearly visits. That's sad really, it's sadder to think that none of them wanted to go but they couldn't see a future here for them of their kids. So they had to make the heart wrenching decision of taking their kids away from their grandparents who had been waiting a long time to actually have grand kids. There's stories like that up and down the country, we have all experienced it or know someone who has. It makes me angry to see good people feeling forced out of the country because of the clusterfcuk our politicians have delivered to us over the past few decades.0 -
Not the worst in the overall scale of things, but not great either: Dustin in Eurovision. " Being the sports that we are, since we can't win the game anymore we'll puncture the ball." Every cloud has a silver lining. Maybe the crash has made us a little bit humbler.0
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well the 'famine' would stand out,even though there was more than enough food grown and produced in Ireland to feed the populace.It wasn't a famine,It was basically genocide.In more recent history the omagh bombings and the cold blooded murder of Veronica geurin were dark days.The Irish civil war was another dark chapter in the history of our little nation.0
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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.
I need to see that thread.0 -
The Backwards Man wrote: »Sending that turkey puppet to the Eurovision.
Yet for many that was a high light. I maintain that we should send Dustin ever year until we bludgeon the feckers into submission0 -
PopePalpatine wrote: »I need to see that thread.
It was a few years back now and I can't recall if it was on here on politics.ie Unconfirmed of course and just what a poster said they saw happen with their own eyes but it made for a funny story, AFAIR it was a funeral in Offaly somewhere and Cowen stayed in the pub till all hours before going directly to work in Dublin (most likely bed tbh).
That aside as I said anyone who drank in the Baggot Street area from 2009-2011 would have been well aware of the drinking Brian Cowen was doing at the time, people were whispering and comparing notes on when and where they'd seen him. A sister of mine who is a GP remarked about how much his skin had changed over the time he was Taoiseach and she doesn't even follow politics and knows little about the man.0 -
Just as an aside and on reflection of all the events mentioned the more I think of the emigration thing the more I think it is probably is the most tragic event in modern Irish history. Except we don't see emigration as 'an event', more of a constant daily occurrence.
I fully agree with the other poster who mentioned how we could be today if we had 12m people and our very brightest and best working and contributing to Irish society. You only have to look at the stats to see how well Irish people do abroad, in the UK the Irish directors are the most represented nationality on company boards, take a scan across Fortune 500 companies and you'll see lots of Irish pop up there too in proportions far above our numbers. Many of these people emigrated in the 1980s and if they didn't come back during the Celtic Tiger then there isn't a snowballs chance in hell they will ever now. They're doing great for themselves but the real tragedy is that they should be doing great for themselves here and creating jobs here. But they aren't because they now see Ireland as a great place to visit but also have a recognition that Ireland is well below the standard of living for the level of taxation you're expected to pay. And the health service is in a mess too, education not great either.
The other side of having a large population of 10m and over is that services can be delivered cheaper as you get economies of scale on everything from energy to pharma. Also at that population level the possibilities in the sporting arena are raised considerably. Holland only has around 13m citizens but from those 6.5m odd males they have consistently produced football teams that get to World Cup finals (even if they haven't won one yet!). At the London Olympics they brought home 22 medals across a large range of sports, both team and individual. We brought home three from boxing and one from a previously disgraced drugs cheat. If Ireland had a population of c10m I really do think we could do some marvellous things in the sporting arena.
The other tragedy of emigration though is the splitting up of families. Two close friends of mine have emigrated with young children whose relationship with their grandparents is now defined by Skype calls and one yearly visits. That's sad really, it's sadder to think that none of them wanted to go but they couldn't see a future here for them of their kids. So they had to make the heart wrenching decision of taking their kids away from their grandparents who had been waiting a long time to actually have grand kids. There's stories like that up and down the country, we have all experienced it or know someone who has. It makes me angry to see good people feeling forced out of the country because of the clusterfcuk our politicians have delivered to us over the past few decades.
Wind the clock back even further and erase the famine deaths and resulting emigration and you'd end up with a current Irish population of between 30 or 40 million. In 1845 there were 8 million Irish and about 15 million English. Now there are 60-70 million English.0 -
Although the ECHR is not an institute or product of the EU as such, rather it was established by the European Convention on Human Rights.Yeah it is interesting though perhaps as you say it's because most people posting here weren't alive when the Dublin Monaghan bombings occurred but were for Omagh. I think though it might be a media thing too, there is a certain cover up the media don't seem prepared to talk about in relation to the DM bombings, on the other hand Omagh can be used as a tool to remind people not to vote Sinn Fein and certain media outlets have been working full time on that agenda of late.
As much as I complain about the EU most of our more liberalising laws have come from it. It was illegal to be a homosexual in Ireland in the 1990s and even after David Norris won his discrimination case in Europe (after losing it in the Irish Supreme Court and appealing to the higher European Court of Human Rights), even after all that and all the infamy Ireland gained internationally for being a backward theocracy on the edge of Europe our government still didn't change the law on criminalising homosexuals for several years later. They had to be dragged kicking and screaming by the EU to do it. In fact if we weren't a member of the EU Norris would never had a higher court to appeal to and it's actually a good possibility that being gay in Ireland could still be illegal to this very day. As mad as that sounds if it wasn't for the European Court of Human rights overruling the Irish Supreme Court it could very well still be illegal.0 -
Wind the clock back even further and erase the famine deaths and resulting emigration and you'd end up with a current Irish population of between 30 or 40 million. In 1845 there were 8 million Irish and about 15 million English. Now there are 60-70 million English.
True that. But within that current 70-80 million is also contained immigrants from over 40 Commonwealth nations and also just general immigration from the 70s and 80s when border controls were lax any determined person could find a way to the UK and set up a life there. In fairness to the UK they had a lot more experience of immigration than most other EU nations before free movement of EU citizens came in. But I take your point for sure, the results of the famine devastated the Irish population. I'd say if the country was run in a decent way that people had confidence in and we didn't have the mass emigration that we did then we'd likely be back to around 8m by now.Although the ECHR is not an institute or product of the EU as such, rather it was established by the European Convention on Human Rights.
Just glad we have it. I could never understand our government letting the Norris case go that far. The bishops must have had them by the balls because at the time the rest of Europe were flabbergasted that we had a law criminalising gay men and not only that, our government was fighting to keep it and willing to go all the way to Europe to do so.0 -
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There has been quite a few but DeValera signing a book of condolence for Hitler and the treatment of those who fight in WW2 when they returned home has got to be up there.
Also, The Omagh bombing was the most pointless waste of life on this island.
It wasn't signed for hitler,it was a book of condolence for the german people,who believe it or not suffered greatly during the war and many of whom didn't support of like the nazis very much at all!0 -
Just as an aside and on reflection of all the events mentioned the more I think of the emigration thing the more I think it is probably is the most tragic event in modern Irish history. Except we don't see emigration as 'an event', more of a constant daily occurrence.
I fully agree with the other poster who mentioned how we could be today if we had 12m people and our very brightest and best working and contributing to Irish society. You only have to look at the stats to see how well Irish people do abroad, in the UK the Irish directors are the most represented nationality on company boards, take a scan across Fortune 500 companies and you'll see lots of Irish pop up there too in proportions far above our numbers. Many of these people emigrated in the 1980s and if they didn't come back during the Celtic Tiger then there isn't a snowballs chance in hell they will ever now. They're doing great for themselves but the real tragedy is that they should be doing great for themselves here and creating jobs here. But they aren't because they now see Ireland as a great place to visit but also have a recognition that Ireland is well below the standard of living for the level of taxation you're expected to pay. And the health service is in a mess too, education not great either.
The other side of having a large population of 10m and over is that services can be delivered cheaper as you get economies of scale on everything from energy to pharma. Also at that population level the possibilities in the sporting arena are raised considerably. Holland only has around 13m citizens but from those 6.5m odd males they have consistently produced football teams that get to World Cup finals (even if they haven't won one yet!). At the London Olympics they brought home 22 medals across a large range of sports, both team and individual. We brought home three from boxing and one from a previously disgraced drugs cheat. If Ireland had a population of c10m I really do think we could do some marvellous things in the sporting arena.
The other tragedy of emigration though is the splitting up of families. Two close friends of mine have emigrated with young children whose relationship with their grandparents is now defined by Skype calls and one yearly visits. That's sad really, it's sadder to think that none of them wanted to go but they couldn't see a future here for them of their kids. So they had to make the heart wrenching decision of taking their kids away from their grandparents who had been waiting a long time to actually have grand kids. There's stories like that up and down the country, we have all experienced it or know someone who has. It makes me angry to see good people feeling forced out of the country because of the clusterfcuk our politicians have delivered to us over the past few decades.
The population of what is now the ROI declined from 6.5 to just under 3 million in the 80 years prior to independance, and continued to drop until the 60s. What makes you think that had we remained in the UK we would have added an additional 9 million citizens in 50 years?
You're simply fantasizing and speculating, and getting it incredibly wrong at that.0 -
Besieging and destruction of the British Embassy in Dublin by a crowd of thousands in the aftermath of Bloody Sunday.
Real third world stuff. Largely forgotten about now - some people I've mentioned it to wouldn't believe it happened!0 -
franer1970 wrote: »Besieging and destruction of the British Embassy in Dublin by a crowd of thousands in the aftermath of Bloody Sunday.
Real third world stuff. Largely forgotten about now - some people I've mentioned it to wouldn't believe it happened!
Nobody died. Compare that to everything from the famine up to the mother and baby homes to the Hep c scandal.0 -
StudentDad wrote: »Really? You think the internecine crap, death, sectarianism, economic collapse, emigration, social stagnation, corruption, govt. ineptitude, religious fascism etc etc was worth it?
This little country didn't begin to come out of the Irish dark ages until we joined the EEC. As it stands we're still facing a rump of ultra conservatives in this country who'd happily drag us back to the 1930's.
SD
For the right to self-determination, absolutely. Please can you tell me how many European countries navigated through the 20th C without a plethora of political, social and economic crises (let's disregard for a brief moment the vast majority of the planet's populace and how they experience the rule of law, economic conditions, human rights and social freedom etc.)? How many other nations avoided the descent in bona fide fascism or totalitarian communism? How many other nations went from a post-imperial economic husk to offering a median standard of living that is in the upper tier for industrialised countries within 3 generations?
Speaking of rumps, this is the very word to describe our likely legacy under quasi- Westminster rule. An adjunct of a shrinking empire, with the consequent social and economic challenges that would have gone with that. I have no real bother with any of all that, and as much as I loathe the narcissistic root of the argument that "we can't govern ourselves", I equally detest the "what have the Romans ever done for us" spiel. But people have got to drop the pathetic, mournful BS and just get on with making the most of life in a first-rate society without grieving over the past.0 -
BarryLyndon wrote: »For the right to self-determination, absolutely. Please can you tell me how many European countries navigated through the 20th C without a plethora of political, social and economic crises (let's disregard for a brief moment the vast majority of the planet's populace and how they experience the rule of law, economic conditions, human rights and social freedom etc.)? How many other nations avoided the descent in bona fide fascism or totalitarian communism? How many other nations went from a post-imperial economic husk to offering a median standard of living that is in the upper tier for industrialised countries within 3 generations?
Speaking of rumps, this is the very word to describe our likely legacy under quasi- Westminster rule. An adjunct of a shrinking empire, with the consequent social and economic challenges that would have gone with that. I have no real bother with any of all that, and as much as I loathe the narcissistic root of the argument that "we can't govern ourselves", I equally detest the "what have the Romans ever done for us" spiel. But people have got to drop the pathetic, mournful BS and just get on with making the most of life in a first-rate society without grieving over the past.
Pure bloody fluke and geography. Were it not for the EC this place would still be a hell hole.
We could very easily have gotten independence without the bloody mayhem. Scotland now has the choice of independence - no bloody mayhem.
We're still witnessing the mayhem in the North although it's more subdued.
The way I see it, is a clique of Irish society wanted power and they didn't much care how they got it or how high the price.
How many people left due to economic circumstances or were forced to leave because of social factors? Those factors are still there but to a much lesser degree.
SD0 -
Bertie turning up at that world leader's summit where Celia had dressed him like a canary.
The good people of Blackrock voting Mary Hannifan in
Mary Hannifan's mother suing the state after she fell in Dail Eireann when her daughter brought her in.
Seeing the amount of disgraced and exposed over paid, underworked and under qualified public servants being paid off to retire when their actions warranted firing with no handshakes and no bumper pension, take a bow Roddy Molloy (FAS) Pat Neary (Regulator/golfer/buddy of the bankers) Flannery, Kearns and all the others in the golden circle
Any of the pointless RTE programmes like 'up for the match' which are used as an opportunity to wheel out some of RTE's worthless presenters to justify their crazy salaries.
Any election which has seen FF people elected, after what they did to us and this country we deserve what we get when people still vote them back in.
Priory Hall
Selling off the fishing and exploration rights to the Irish seas.0 -
CrabRevolution wrote: »The population of what is now the ROI declined from 6.5 to just under 3 million in the 80 years prior to independance, and continued to drop until the 60s. What makes you think that had we remained in the UK we would have added an additional 9 million citizens in 50 years?
You're simply fantasizing and speculating, and getting it incredibly wrong at that.
The 12m population figure I referred to was mentioned by another poster a few pages back and I was referring to that more as a figure to illustrate a point of how if we had a population of those levels then the price of many services delivered to the public, from energy to pharma, education, etc would come down. At a population level of 10 or 12m it begins to become a lot more feasible to look at securing our energy and driving prices down by a good 25% by building two nuclear power plants. At current populations levels it would likely be prohibitively expensive.
Other benefits from a population that size would be that we would have far more universities. With that comes specialisation and perhaps more universities would concentrate on fostering a culture of engineering and manufacturing in Ireland that has sadly always been lacking. Look at Philips in Holland,a giant of an electric goods manufacturing, exporting worldwide from Rotterdam and bringing vast amounts of foreign currency inwards in exchange. Nokia in Finland the same, another giant, Volvo, SAAB and Ericsson in Sweden. They all have a culture of engineering & manufacturing in their university systems which is where the seeds of these companies are sown.
A larger population also gives that bit extra for military spending that we are completely lacking. I just saw how the Netherlands send a Hercules transport plane down to Ukraine today to pick up all those bodies, I thought to myself what the hell would happen if 200 Irish citizens were blown out of the sky on foreign soil ? How would we get them home , does our Air Force have that capability? Do the Irish military have a morgue that can refrigerate 200 bodies like the Dutch did today ? These are things I'm not sure we're capable of as a nation, I suppose it's largely a lack of funding but having a small population where only 1.6m people are actually working full time and paying tax means it is difficult for us to move forward as a nation without that critical mass of taxpayers that medium sized nations benefit from.0 -
Bertie turning up at that world leader's summit where Celia had dressed him like a canary.
The good people of Blackrock voting Mary Hannifan in
Mary Hannifan's mother suing the state after she fell in Dail Eireann when her daughter brought her in.
Seeing the amount of disgraced and exposed over paid, underworked and under qualified public servants being paid off to retire when their actions warranted firing with no handshakes and no bumper pension, take a bow Roddy Molloy (FAS) Pat Neary (Regulator/golfer/buddy of the bankers) Flannery, Kearns and all the others in the golden circle
Any of the pointless RTE programmes like 'up for the match' which are used as an opportunity to wheel out some of RTE's worthless presenters to justify their crazy salaries.
Any election which has seen FF people elected, after what they did to us and this country we deserve what we get when people still vote them back in.
Priory Hall
Selling off the fishing and exploration rights to the Irish seas.
You have some warped sense of the question posed in the thread title.
One of the worst events in Irish history... the colour of Bertie's suit? FFS. :rolleyes:0 -
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I must be almost beyond dispute that the two worst events in modern Irish history were:
1. The Cromwellian War and the subsequent persecutions and forcible transplantations.
2. The Great Famine.0
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