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Martina Devlin Opinion Good Friday Agreement is being used as a poker chip in Britain’s battle with the EU

“At least governments led by Margaret Thatcher” are words I never dreamed I’d find myself writing, but here goes. At least governments led by Margaret Thatcher had ministers of a certain stature and ability – politicians such as her successor, John Major, and others including Geoffrey Howe, Nigel Lawson and Michael Heseltine.

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Martina Devlin Opinion Cynical brinkmanship over protocol serves only to weaken the bedrock of democracy

Barking can lead to biting – or getting bitten. The British government is growling and snarling about the Northern Ireland Protocol in a display of aggression more focused on domestic politics than any tensions in the North around post-Brexit trade rules.

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Somerville and Ross: the writing collaboration from ‘beyond the grave’

A century ago, one of Ireland’s most successful writers was engaged in something extraordinary. Edith Somerville convinced herself, and managed to persuade others, that she was collaborating beyond the grave with her dead writing partner to continue producing their popular Somerville and Ross novels.

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Martina Devlin Opinion Better safe than sorry – we must put new maternity hospital into public ownership

“Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth” is the attitude – as though people who raise difficulties are fault-finding or being ungrateful. But the ownership and governance of the new national maternity hospital are too important, for current and future generations of women, to allow plans to pass without scrutiny.

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Martina Devlin Opinion On the brink of change: Voters in North are poised to turn status quo on its head

There’s a joke that does the rounds in Northern Ireland at election time that goes: “To heck with the future, let’s get on with the past.” While that has the ring of truth, the forthcoming election is in a league of its own because voters are poised to upend the status quo.

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Martina Devlin Opinion Taxpayers run risk of being pushed beyond their limits as public-sector pensions soar

Without knowing it, I once slept in a house where someone had been murdered. A sense of disquiet troubled me during the course of that night. I can’t pretend to have detected its cause – there was no flash of insight into what happened years earlier – but a general unease bothered me.

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Martina Devlin Opinion We shouldn’t get bogged down in a turf war when the planet’s future is at stake

The longest distance between two places in Ireland is the gap between urban and rural dwellers. This latest turf-cutting row has the hallmarks of that divide, but also highlights a trend in political life: concede ground to special interest groups, and never mind the long-term costs.

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Martina Devlin Opinion Our leaders must use their voice to press for a total economic blockade of Russia

How many more Mariupols before we decide saving lives is more important than saving energy supplies? How many more Buchas before our reliance on creature comforts begins to matter less than the Ukrainian people’s right to peace?

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Martina Devlin Opinion The Russian mother helping traumatised Ukrainians feel safe and settled in Ireland

One week you’re going to work, doing the shopping, meeting friends for coffee – the next you’re living in a distant country that may barely have registered in your consciousness. Home is now a stranger’s spare room or a hotel. You find yourself negotiating a new culture, foreign language, unfamiliar surroundings, even as anxiety about family members left behind bubbles just beneath the surface.

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Martina Devlin Opinion UK borders bill only highlights illogicality of having two jurisdictions on single island

Just when you thought the Brexit commotion had taken a back seat to war in Ukraine and spiralling cost-of-living concerns, a Westminster vote limiting free movement for people on the island of Ireland inserts a new plot twist.

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Martina Devlin Opinion I had a moving seat at the heart of Dublin’s parade. Now I know how heads of state feel

A rip in the fabric of time was how yesterday felt – as though all clocks whirred back to the pre-Covid era when buoyant crowds of strangers, cheering and laughing, were the norm and the phrase “super-spreader” had never been thought of.

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Martina Devlin Opinion Let’s tighten our belts and help put an end to Putin’s barbaric bombing of Ukrainians

What if the EU is financing Vladimir Putin’s aggression against Ukraine by buying his gas? What if the bloc is speaking out of both sides of its mouth, imposing sanctions to condemn the unfolding crisis while continuing to do business with Russia because of member states’ dependence on energy imports?

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Martina Devlin Opinion Uprooted, surviving in a terrifying limbo yet determined to preserve family integrity

How does it feel to shut the door on your home knowing it might be reduced to rubble by airstrikes in your absence? What do you pack when time is short, you don’t know if you’ll ever be back, and you can take only a few bags?

The Slowworm’s Song: Squaddie’s actions in the north come back to haunt him

“It cannot be made less and it cannot be made safe and it cannot be hidden and it cannot be forgotten.” Those words of remorse and pain reveal the burden of knowledge carried by a former soldier in Northern Ireland — a man haunted by a devastating secret from his tour of duty during the Troubles.

Myths, sagas and a voyage around an unconventional life

This might be the most unusual and original book you will read all year — part memoir, part personal essays, part masterclass on life and literature in medieval Ireland. Fierce Appetites by Maynooth academic Elizabeth Boyle is a voyage around her unconventional life.

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Martina Devlin Opinion If we’re to tame the Facebook behemoth, we must think holistically as well as legally

It’s the Goliath of social media networks, the go-to communication tool of the modern age, but privacy concerns mean Facebook also causes considerable unease – it collects huge quantities of data on its users and unashamedly monetises their identities.

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Martina Devlin Opinion Dublin-Belfast Economic Corridor: Blossoming all-island trade links quietly do the work of North’s political dinosaurs

‘Keep calm and carry on” may be sound advice in principle, but something more proactive is needed to improve island-wide relations. Positive outcomes are still possible post-Brexit and the pandemic, but they won’t happen overnight or by chance – imagination, energy and commitment are the essential ingredients.

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Martina Devlin Opinion Employers and workers must meet in the middle, and hybridity might be the answer

“Build back better” has become one of those phrases larded through political discourse – popular across the spectrum, brandished with equal enthusiasm by government ministers and opposition TDs.

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Martina Devlin Opinion Choreographed division from DUP in the name of tribalism could backfire at polls

Isn’t it stirring to see the DUP take back control? Its members treated us to a day of drama and derring-do, resignations and reproaches yesterday – and knowing it was no time for sound bites, they went easy on them.

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Martina Devlin Opinion Grassroots activism was key in keeping Bloody Sunday out of history’s waste bin

The tragedy of Derry’s Bloody Sunday is not just because 14 innocent boys and men were slaughtered by uniformed agents of the British state. Not just because there was a cover-up, where the victims were demonised as bombers and gunmen. Not just because their families had to fight a lonely battle for almost 40 years to have their names cleared and the truth acknowledged.

Bloody Sunday’s grim story told with tension, pace and detail

‘What really made Bloody Sunday so obscene was the fact that people afterwards, at the highest level of British justice, justified it,” said Bishop Edward Daly. The British establishment closed ranks and vilified the victims — it stole their lives and then stole their reputations.

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Martina Devlin Opinion One-off €100 is too little to help those in trouble, too much for people who honestly don't need it

Too much month left at the end of the money is a common January problem, but this year it’s more pressing than ever, with inflation surging to a 21-year high. Rising bills mean more people are feeling the pinch.

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Martina Devlin Opinion Society tells women to stay safe yet ignores the real problem – toxic male behaviour

Rule number one for women on how to avoid being attacked, raped or murdered: never leave home. Not to work, not to exercise, not to shop and definitely not to socialise. Unfortunately, domestic violence means staying indoors won’t guarantee absolute safety, but it does offer a certain level of protection.

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Martina Devlin Opinion In our collective stupor we’re clouded by a sense that alcohol is OK – but it is a killer

‘It’s a great advantage not to drink among hard-drinking people,” F Scott Fitzgerald has one character say of another in The Great Gatsby.

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Martina Devlin Opinion Free public transport could be the way to boldly face our climate change challenges

‘Be bold and everywhere be bold,” urged the English sociologist and philosopher Herbert Spencer. If we’re serious about reducing carbon emissions, we need daring policies – that’s the best way to shift public behaviour.

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Martina Devlin Opinion Tradition gives us something we can rarely manage without – hope

The human soul is drawn to traditions: something inside us requires them. We safeguard the ones we’ve inherited, and add others as time goes by. Some of our festive customs have been shattered by pandemic restrictions – large family gatherings, reunions with old friends and office Christmas parties have fallen by the wayside – but the rituals left standing matter more than ever.

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Martina Devlin Opinion A new sort of homecoming, swept along by a tidal wave of elation at Dublin Airport

In the film Love Actually, Hugh Grant says that whenever he feels gloomy over the state of the world, he thinks about the arrivals gate at Heathrow. It’s capital advice for raising the spirits, although any airport will do.

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Martina Devlin Opinion Boris’s ‘dead’ cat turns out to be very much alive – and has already bitten its owner

Deadcatting – or the ‘dead cat’ tactic – is a tried-and-tested political manoeuvre to deflect attention from a damaging subject. It springs from the notion of throwing a dead cat on to a table as a diversion, so that people talk about the cat rather than the issue causing problems.

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Martina Devlin Opinion Face facts, Frost – protocol is working and unionist rhetoric will leave UK out in cold

Problems are being caused by the Northern Ireland Protocol, apparently. Who for? Not for the bulk of Northern Irish businesses, which support it. Not for the majority of Northern Irish politicians, who back it. Not for most of the North’s population, who are in favour of it. Not for the Irish Government, which defends it. And not for the US administration, which speaks up for it.

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Martina Devlin Opinion It’s going to take more than scare tactics to convince the vaccine resisters among us

The media campaign in the Czech Republic to convince vaccine resisters to reconsider their stance is raw, brutal and contentious. Its defenders insist desperate times call for desperate measures. Dead bodies are shown being placed in coffins with captions such as “He thought he had time enough” or “She doesn’t believe in vaccines”.