Being a 'Northerner' in the South has been an interesting and an enhancing experience and perhaps those of us who have moved from one area to the other have our own particu...
Ireland today is in many ways unrecognisable from the Ireland of the fifties and sixties in which I grew up. The economic fatalism of the fifties, a decade in which about a third o...
What it means to be Irish' has been one of the most insistent questions in public life over the last thirty years. It arises from the theory, shared widely among politicians, p...
Excellence or Mediocrity? The future of second level education in Northern Ireland
If this was a simple choice there would be a brief discussion, excellence would be preferred, and the seminar would close before it began. Excellence means different things to diff...
Looked at in a broad sense, the answer to the first question has to be an emphatic “no”. In the Republic, politics has delivered a greater increase in material prosperi...
Clearly from the context, we're talking about religious faith, and so I need to make it clear at the outset that I am thinking broadly in terms of the Christian heritage in Ire...
I thought I would use the opportunity to try out on you some ideas that are really very new and somewhat garbled ideas and hopefully in the process of doing that you can help me mo...
My aim is to persuade you that the idea of Ireland as a self-sufficient entity is a false construct; that instead Ireland shares in the life of the whole British Isles; that contin...
I thought I would begin with a short account of when, where and how the Association was founded. The man mainly responsible was Major-General Hugh Montgomery of Blessingbourne, Co....
My title does not refer directly to the canonical texts of the Judaeo-Christian tradition - the Hebrew Bible, the Christian Scriptures, and the Rabbinical corpus. But they are on m...
Northern Ireland a place apart or a variation on a theme?
Ulster has always been somewhat apart from the rest of Ireland. The largest drumlin belt in Europe, around thirty miles wide, in earlier times was a formidable frontier: Estyn Evan...
Opportunities and Threats to North-South Co-Operation
Partition was in the end a concession to the principle that Ireland after empire could only flourish in separation. A profound divide in the middle of an island was, for its ...
The UN Human Development Report (2003) on Millennium Development Goals: A compact among nations to end human poverty identified Ireland as having the best economic performance in 1...
Public Support for Political Violence and Paramilitarism in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland
Most of the research on paramilitary activity in Northern Ireland has concentrated on either the historical origins of paramilitary organisations or the background characteristics ...
Re-building war-torn societies: the Role of Non-Governmental Actors
My topic this evening is the role of the non-governmental actors in war-torn societies - a topic that is not only timely but also challenging. The diversity of NGOs varies greatly ...
Religion and national identity are one of those natural twins, a seemingly inescapable combination wherever you look in Irish history, St Patrick and Ireland, faith and fatherland....
Religion and Violence: The Case of Paisley and Ulster Evangelicals
This essay uses the specific question of how far and in what ways, Ian Paisley has been responsible for the violence in Northern Ireland to consider the wider question of evangelic...
With virtually full employment and labour shortages that can only be met by significant numbers of migrant workers, with manufacturing output and productivity increasing even with ...
I came to Ireland forty-two years ago as a student, and began working for my living on The Irish Times four years later, in 1961. I was a writer working for the only newspaper that...
The Irish association has long been ahead of its time. For sixty years it has encouraged the people of Ireland and Northern Ireland to communicate. To celebrate what unites them, t...
Nationalism is the leading political ideology of the late twentieth century, and has outstripped its main competitors (such as communism, fascism, nazism and racism) as the most co...
Sport, Politics and Community Relations in Northern Ireland
Since the early 1980s the relationship between sport and sectarian division in Northern Ireland has been subjected to considerable academic scrutiny. In addition, since the mid 199...
While the Republic of Ireland has undoubtedly experienced a period of fifteen years of very rapid growth, Northern Ireland has also experienced a prolonged period of sustained grow...
While not here to debate political theories nor political ideals, I would rather like to share a few thoughts with you on a topic, I believe, both of us here today, are qualified t...
The Church in Northern Ireland Today - The Test Of Change
It is often said that the Northern Ireland population is one of the most politically-aware groupings in western Europe. Certainly our history over the past 30 years bears ample tes...
I stand here as a nationalist. As a social democrat. As a supporter of the Good Friday Agreement. As a former Minister who believes deeply in the Agreement's Pledge of Office f...
Towards an all-Ireland Economy: The business opportunities and political obstacles
I am very flattered to be invited to speak to this important meeting of the Irish Association. The Irish Association is an admirable society of individuals who have worked quietly ...