Here's How

John Hamill is a long-time secular campaigner and participates in the Free Thought Prophet. We talked about his epic Freedom of Information request. ***** You can see there that John’s story tells a pretty damning tale about the attitude of the Department of Education and Skills, as it’s now called, towards the Freedom of Information […]

Peadar Tóibín is the leader, and only TD of Aontú, having previously been elected for Sinn Féin. ***** I don’t normally do pre-buttals on a podcast interview, but I think that in this case it’s important, because in the context of the coronavirus, and Covid 19, it’s just not acceptable to allow incorrect scientific claims […]

Dermot Lacey is a Labour Party member of Dublin City Council for the Pembroke ward. ***** That’s what he said He, by the way is Brandon Lewis, the UK’s Northern Ireland secretary, basically their minister for Northern Ireland. What he’s announcing there is the UK government’s shirking from the treaty that they signed last December […]

Linda Ervine is a Unionist and Irish language rights activist from East Belfast, and is the president of the recently-formed East Belfast GAA. I talked to her about last year’s Ashcroft polling indicating that support for a United Ireland is increasing towards a tipping point in Northern Ireland. **** I was sitting down to do […]

Larry Donnelly is a native of Boston, He teaches law in NUIG. He has published law journal articles in Ireland and internationally, as well as being a regular media commentator. I talked him about an article he wrote for TheJournal.ie. ***** Two minds are better than one. That’s a fairly obviously true saying in most […]

Alyn Smith is the SNP member of the Westminster parliament for the Scottish constituency of Stirling. Since we spoke, two opinion polls have been published showing the pro-independence side stretching their lead, excluding undecideds, by up to 10 clear percentage points ahead, 55 to 45. ***** You should be paying attention to Belarus. Well, that’s […]

Niall Keenan founder and chairperson of the Shared Ireland. ***** Sinn Féin are calling for a complete ban on co-living. Their housing spokesperson, Eoin Ó Broin, a very talented politician who’s been on this podcast before, not sure if those two are connected, said announcing this that the new housing minister Darragh O’Brien of Fianna […]

Last Saturday there was a demonstration outside the Dáil that was hastily organised to try to capitalise on a controversy that you may or may not have noticed, depending on what corners of Twitter you inhabit, if any. The genesis of this was an article on the website Gript, a clone of far-right American opinion […]

Kerry-Anne Mendoza editor-at-large of the Canary and the author of Austerity: Demolition of the Welfare state and the rise of the zombie economy, published in 2015. We discussed this Twitter thread of hers: ***** It really is good to get feedback from listeners, and to know that there is a growing number of listeners out […]

Malcolm Noonan newly elected Green Party TD for Carlow Kilkenny, having spent 16 years as a local councillor in Kilkenny. ***** It was announced last week that Bewley’s Café on Grafton Street in Dublin won’t be reopening, the operators said that the lockdown, coupled with high rents, have pushed their business over the edge, and […]

Malcolm Byrne won the 2019 bye-election for Fianna Fáil, but did not retain the seat at the general election. He was then elected to Seanad Éireann. Robin Cafolla is chairperson of the Green Party’s Climate Forum. His questions, which informed my interview were first published on Twitter. The Green Party has asked a slightly less-focussed […]

Thanks to Cathal Mac Coille, former Morning Ireland presenter for taking the chair in this special podcast. This is the complaint that I sent to RTÉ. RTÉ gave it short shrift. This is the totality of their response. There was some back-and-forth between me and RTÉ, and RTÉ eventually they made it clear that they […]

Alison Gilliland is Labour Party member of Dublin City Council for Artane/Whitehall. She is also chairperson of Dublin City Council’s Strategic Policy Committee on Housing. In our discussion I mentioned the article in the Irish Times by billionaire financier Dermot Desmond about solutions for the housing crisis. Desmond was found by various investigations to have […]

Peter Boland, as well as running Cases.ie is the director of the Alliance for Insurance Reform. ***** There’s a lot of people talking about the other thing, but I’m sure you’ve heard enough about it by now, and there’s nothing extra that I can say that hasn’t already been said, so let’s talk about something […]

Michael O’Regan is journalist and former parliamentary correspondent of The Irish Times. He says he doesn’t have a book for me to plug, ‘yet’. ***** I managed to grab an interview with Sinn Féin’s Aengus Ó Snodaigh at the election count in the RDS. To put this in context, Aengus Ó Snodaigh got one of […]

Colin Harvey is Professor of Human Rights Law in the School of Law, Queen’s University Belfast, a Fellow of the Senator George J Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice, and an Associate Fellow of the Institute of Irish Studies. In November, his group, Ireland’s Future sent a letter to An Taoiseach calling for […]

Seán Fleming, currently Fianna Fáil TD for Laois, if the gods of the ballot box smile on him he might become the Fianna Fáil TD for the reconstituted constituency of Laois Offaly. He’s been a TD since 1997 and for 15 years before that he was Financial Director of Fianna Fáil at national level. Gavin […]

John McGuirk is the founder and editor of Gript. John referred to the cost of building passive homeshere. In our discussion I mentioned an article falsely claiming that hacked emails from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia showed scientists ‘plotting to manipulate data, … suppress evidence … and boycott … divergent […]

Paul Murphy was an MEP for the Socialist party, since then he’s been elected and 2014 and 2016 as a TD for what became the Solidarity party. He has now founded the party Rise. In our discussion he mentioned the book The People’s Republic of Walmart: How the World’s Biggest Corporations are Laying the Foundation […]

Paul Cullen is the Health Editor of the Irish Times. His article headlined Almost 70% of cyclists without helmet at time of head trauma, appeared on the front page of IT last month. The article was sharply criticised in online discussion, including in this article by Cian Ginty. In our discussion, I mentioned a number […]

The Social Fabric podcast is created by Andrea Splendori, and I’m sharing it in the Here’s How feed to give you a chance to hear a sample episode. If you like it, you can subscribe on his website here.

Dr Katherine O’Keefe is an author, and the director of training and a management consultant with Castlebridge, a data privacy and information governance consultancy. Our discussion referred to a twitter thread by Katherine and another by solicitor Simon McGarr. ***** It’s probably just dumb luck, but I made two pretty accurate predictions about the byzantine […]

Brigid Laffan is currently Director and Professor at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, Director of the Global Governance Programme and of the European Governance and Politics Programme at the European University Institute (EUI), Florence. She was previously Professor of European Politics at University College Dublin. While she was there she was Vice-President of […]