Enlightenment Historians of Ireland and their Critics

Elite Catholics, who accepted Hanoverian rulers as legitimate, believed that Enlightenment historiography would show the Penal Laws to be unreasonable, and would necessitate a re-definition of the Irish political nation. When Hume, whom these elite members esteemed, endorsed Temple’s interpretation of the 1641 rebellion, they commissioned a philosophical history for Ireland to be written by Thomas Leland, a Protestant divine. Leland failed to meet the expectations of his sponsors by concluding, after a close study of early modern events, that a single Irish political nation would exist only when Catholics renounced allegiance to the Pope. Failure to reach political consensus was largely irrelevant because popular histories showed that concessions to elite Catholics would not have assuaged popular discontent. Moreover, urban radicals, notably Mathew Carey, contended that Enlightenment thinking suggested that a multi-denominational Irish nation could be imagined only in the context of an independent Irish Republic.

‘Great angels’ in Antrim: Hugh Shearman, theosophist perceptions, and Ulster unionist public relations

This article argues that the career and writings of the Ulster unionist propagandist and man of letters Hugh Shearman (1915–99) were influenced by his commitment to theosophy, which he saw as a logical extension of Protestant belief in private judgement. His work as a publicist echoed theosophist preoccupation with illusion and the perceptions accessible to initiates. Many of his writings displayed theosophist in-jokes, esoteric references and mental reservations. His apologias reflected theosophist belief in the breaking down of personality compartmentalisation in order to merge with the world-soul. Shearman saw the Irish republic as the ‘Pakistan of the West’, represented by him as embodying self-destructive insularity shaped by Catholic authoritarianism. In response to the 1940s anti-partition campaign, Shearman developed an apologia for the Stormont government as an essentially progressive technocracy, which he saw as culminating in the regime of Terence O'Neill. This article uses previously unexplored writings to track Shearman's life and career into the 1990s, when he is shown to have combined a view of the Irish question formed in the 1940s with a semi-conspiratorial unionist narrative of British betrayal.

Undivided Loyalty

Alison LaCroix and William Birdthistle examine two works: Sebastian Barry’s A Long Long Way (2005) and Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient (1992), which was made into a film, directed by Anthony Minghella, in 1996. Both novels challenge traditional notions of loyalty in wartime. Although they focus on different wars—Barry on World War I, Ondaatje on World War II—the novels raise a pair of related, crucial questions: Loyalty to what and to whom? The books interrogate the meaning of national sovereignty in an age of empire or imperial decline, as their characters confront law in personal ways. Barry’s novel holds out a slim hope that the birth of the Irish Republic might make comprehensible, even if not justify, the bloodbaths of the Western Front. Ondaatje, however, challenges the primacy of nations, suggesting instead that personal loyalties or regional ties provide the only meaningful connections for individuals uprooted by modern global warfare. Both novels thus force their characters to negotiate an overlapping series of boundaries: local and national political lines, as well as ethnic, familial, and emotional borders.

Residential Institutions Redress Board of the Irish Government 2002–2018

In 1999, the Irish Government commissioned a report into the abuse of children who were in the care of facilities managed and run under the auspices of the Roman Catholic Church in the Irish Republic in the 1940s and 1950s. It reported in 2009. A Redress Board was set up to investigate and compensate claimants who were abused physically and mentally as children when living in these facilities. The Board sat for 16 years. In total, 16,650 applications were processed with awards worth €970 million. Of these, 1069 applications were withdrawn, refused or had a nil award. This report on work of the Commission and the Board derives from the histories given and the expert assessment of 19 claimants for compensation. Their ages ranged between 47 and 72 years at the time of the expert’s assessment.

Deconstructing Stereotypes in the Discourse of the Irish Republic

Recent decades have witnessed in Ireland the advancement and integration of women in the socio-cultural and public spheres. Nonetheless, what does it mean to be Irish and a woman in today's Irish Republic? This period has seen a notable emergence of a generation of new feminine voices that have marked a change in the image offered of the Irish woman until this present moment, an image provided previously almost only by male writers and constructed mainly in terms of religiosity, passivity and motherhood. The short stories written by women at the turn of the 21st century highlight the change in both the perception and position of the Irish woman within her society; however, the Celtic Tiger and Post Celtic Tiger short stories frequently look back into Ireland's past to explore the present to challenge and understand former and contemporary dominant narratives, discourses and stereotypes. This is also the major objective of this chapter.

A Retrospective Review of the Contribution of Rare Diseases to Paediatric Mortality in Ireland

Aims: To ascertain the number of paediatric deaths (0-14 years) with an underlying rare disease (RD) in the Irish Republic between the years 2006-2016, and to analyse bed usage by a paediatric cohort of RD inpatients prior to in-hospital death.Background: Rare diseases are often chronically debilitating and sometimes life-threatening diseases, affecting fewer than 5 per 10,000 people in the EU. Although individually rare, collectively RDs are common, with a prevalence of 3.5-5.9% of the population. Under-representation of RDs in hospital healthcare coding systems leads to a paucity of RD epidemiological data required for healthcare planning. Studies have cited variable incidence rates for RD, however the burden of RDs to healthcare services still remains unclear. This study represents a thorough effort to identify the percentage of child mortality and paediatric bed usage attributable to rare diseases in Ireland addressing a major gap in the RD field.Methods: Retrospective analysis of paediatric death registration details for the Irish Republic in the 11-year period 2006-2016 from the National Paediatric Mortality Register. Data was subcategorised as Neonatal (0-28 days), Post Neonatal (29 days < 1 year) and older (1-14 years). Bed usage data (ICD-10 code, narrative and usage) of paediatric inpatients who died during hospitalisation from January 2015 to December 2016 was extracted from the National Quality Assurance Intelligence System of in-patient data. Orphacodes were assigned to RD cases from narrative records of both datasets.Results: There were 4044 deaths registered from 2006-2016, aged <15yrs, of these 2368 (58.6%) had an underlying RD. Stratifying by age group; 55.6% (1140/2050) of neonatal deaths had an RD, 57.8% (450/778) post-neonatal, and 64% (778/1216) of children >1yr. Mortality coding using ICD-10 codes identified 42% of RD cases with the remainder identified using death certificate narrative records. RD patients occupied 87% of bed days used by children <15 years who died during hospitalisation from January 2015 to December 2016.Conclusion: Additional routine RD coding is necessary to identify RDs within Irish healthcare systems to enable better healthcare planning. RD patients are overrepresented in paediatric mortality statistics and inpatient length of stay during hospital admission prior to death.

Addressing the Irish world: Éamon de Valera's ‘Cuban policy’ as a global case study

Writing in Nationalist revolutionaries in Ireland, 1858–1928, Tom Garvin observed that ‘well over 40 per cent, perhaps 50 per cent, had lived outside Ireland for considerable periods … foreign experience was very important in the development of the leaders’. The impact of ‘foreign experience’ on leading nationalist revolutionaries, this article submits, pace Garvin, could have proved influential in the development of the Irish Revolution more widely. Between June 1919 and December 1920, Éamon de Valera toured the United States. From New York City to Salt Lake City, Alabama to Montana, the self-proclaimed president of the Irish republic addressed ‘Ireland’ in hundreds of interviews and speeches. Of these myriad public statements, his Cuban missive, notably, crossed national boundaries. Comparing Ireland's geo-strategic relationship with Great Britain to that of Cuba and the United States, de Valera's argument for an independent Irish republic was made in the Americas. How did de Valera's movement across the U.S. alter his political views of Ireland? How were presentations of de Valera's ‘Cuban policy’ mediated across the ‘Irish world’? How did discourse on the Monroe Doctrine inform Anglo-Irish negotiations between Truce and Treaty? Exploring de Valera's ‘Cuban policy’ as global case study, this article concludes, ultimately, can shift the historiographical significance of ‘foreign experience’ from nationalist revolutionaries in Ireland to the flows and circulation of transnational revolution.

A Retrospective Review of the Contribution of Rare Diseases to Paediatric Mortality in Ireland

Aims: To ascertain the number of paediatric deaths (0-14 years) with an underlying rare disease (RD) in the Irish Republic between the years 2006-2016, and to analyse bed usage by a paediatric cohort of RD inpatients prior to in-hospital death. Background: Rare Diseases are life-threatening or chronically debilitating diseases that affect fewer than 5 per 10,000 people in the EU. Although individually rare, collectively RDs are common, with a prevalence of 3.5-5.9% of the population. Under representation of RDs in hospital healthcare coding systems leads to a paucity of RD epidemiological data required for healthcare planning. Studies have cited variable incidence rates for RD, however the burden of RDs to healthcare services still remains unclear. This study represents a thorough effort to identify the percentage of child mortality and paediatric bed usage attributable to rare diseases in Ireland addressing a major gap in the RD field. Methods: Retrospective analysis of paediatric death registration details for the Irish Republic in the 11-year period 2006-2016 from the National Paediatric Mortality Register. Data was subcategorized as Neonatal (0-28 days), Post Neonatal (29 days < 1 year) and older (1-14 years). Bed usage data (ICD-10 code, narrative and usage) of paediatric inpatients who died during hospitalisation from January 2015 to December 2016 was extracted from the National Quality Assurance Intelligence System of in-patient data. Orphacodes were assigned to RD cases from narrative records of both datasets. Results: There were 4044 deaths registered from 2006-2016, aged <15yrs. 2368 (58.6%) had an underlying RD. Stratifying by age group; 55.6% (1140/2050) of neonatal deaths had an RD, 57.8% (450/778) post-neonatal, and 64% (778/1216) of children >1yr. Mortality coding using ICD-10 codes identified only 42% of RD cases with the remainder identified using death certificate narrative records. RD patients occupied 84% of bed days used by children <15 years discharged deceased in the analysis period January 2015 to December 2016. Conclusion: Additional routine RD coding is necessary to identify RDs within Irish healthcare systems to enable better healthcare planning. RD patients are overrepresented in paediatric mortality statistics and inpatient length of stay during hospital admission prior to death.

More Than the Border? Looking at Brexit through Irish Eyes

During the first phase of the Brexit negotiations the question of Northern Ireland’s border with the Irish Republic emerged from decades of political obscurity to become one of the major themes of the controversy surrounding Britain’s future relationship with the European Union. Existing freedoms to act have been called into question not only by Brexit, but also by the Irish government’s determined positioning alongside its fellow member states of the EU around the negotiating table. The chapter looks at three aspects of Anglo-Irish relations. Initially it considers the development and current state of these relationships during the opening phases of the Brexit negotiations. The chapter continues by assessing the debate about Brexit amongst Irish policy-makers and commentators and how this has subsequently fed into political and cultural debates in Britain as well. It concludes by looking at how these assessments by Irish politicians and cultural commentators go beyond the immediate issues of the future of Anglo-Irish relations and pose existential questions about the nature of contemporary Britain.

The distortions of the Irish ‘recovery’

The return of the Irish Republic to economic growth after years of recession has been hailed as a vindication of the country’s adherence to strict austerity policies after the crash. In this article, we provide a critical reading of this familiar rendition of the recent turn in Ireland’s economic fortunes. We argue that the discourse of ‘recovery’ is an ideologically partisan reading that distorts the scale, origins and benefits of the recent spell of growth in the Irish economy. A close examination of each of these distortions suggests that the current economic revival has occurred in spite, rather than because, of the austerity strategy and has resulted in the lives of many ordinary Irish people becoming not better but worse.