The Mick Clifford Podcast

When Thomas Garavan was 12 he found out that his mother had a sister he never knew about. Over the following years, he was to discover that there were five other aunts and uncles whom he’d never heard about, all of whom along with his mother had been committed to Tuam Mother and Baby home when they were toddlers. The UCC academic set about tracing all of them and opening them up to the reality tha...

As numbers of refugees from the war in Ukraine and asylum seekers fleeing other forms of conflict continue to arrive in the country, accommodation services are under pressure. Reactions to the prevailing situation vary along the spectrum from welcoming to intolerance. However, some locations have been asked to do more than others in finding accommodation. One such town that has been in the headlin...

How do we solve the housing crisis? The question is one bedevilling public life at the moment and will be at the centre of the next general election. The crisis is having major impacts right across society, but what are the answers. Michael O’Flynn, one of Ireland’s leading developers and housing policy analyst and author Rory Hearne was very different views on what needs to be done. In a robust e...

This week Donald Trump announced his candidacy for the presidency of the United States in 2024. He is an early entry to the race and his announcement came in the wake of mid term elections in which the Republican party was expected to do much better. So does Trump have a good chance of making one of the greatest comebacks in US political history? Where now for his bogus claim that the 2020 electio...

David Quinn is for many a standard bearer of conservative Catholicism, through both his commentary in the media and his stewardship of the Iona Institute. He says that he is one of the few voices of conservatism around today in a media bubble that, some, including himself, would say is dominated by liberal and left wing ideology. On this week’s podcast he talks about hate speech and why it is unsa...

The planning board An Bord Pleanala has been beset by a series of controversies involving malpractice and misgovernance in recent months. Last week the Irish Examiner published details of an internal review at the board which outlined series issues and confirmed practically all the media reports that had come out in recent months. But has everything been revealed, and has any serious intent been a...

Catherine O’Brien has had a varied business career flitting between law, the florist business, a veterinary products company and moving in the bloodstock world. Today, there is a bench warrant out for her arrest on a charge of animal cruelty and the Criminal Assets Bureau went to the High Court in order to seize an expensive car she owned which the CAB say is the proceeds of crime. So who is this...

Noeline Blackwell, currently the chief executive of the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre, has spent her whole career working in human rights law. During that time she has always advocated for those who are seeking to have their rights vindicated, whether it’s through getting access to court or recovering from the trauma of intimate violence. She talks about the barriers that exist for the victims of viol...

A recent violent protest outside the Dail by far-right activists has once again raised the question as to whether their brand of intolerance is on the rise in this country. Throughout Europe, far right parties have been having electoral success this year, but beyond politics how much of a threat and these groups and how do they operate. Mark Malone, who has tracked the activities of the far right...

Shane Ross has written a major biography of Sinn Fein leader Mary Lou McDonald, entitled A Republic Riddle. He talks on this week’s podcast about the difficulties he had in getting people to talk to him about the book and how he still considers his subject’s evolution as a political being to be something of a riddle. He also defends a central theme of his book, that Mary Lou is not fully in charge...

Sinn Fein’s health spokesperson David Culinane is promising to reform the health service for once and for all. Last week his party published an alternative health budget but his plans go far beyond that. But how can he succeed where others have failed? Where will all the staff come from to fulfil his plans, and does he believe that reform is possible without closing some services and shipping majo...

The prospect of a border poll at some point in the future, and the expectation that it would lead to a united Ireland, has prompted much discussion, debate and books. Most of the focus has been on how exactly this will come about and what kind of entity will emerge from unification. Now, however, veteran journalist and writer Malachi O’Doherty has written a book asking can we be as one and beyond...

Kay Barrett, from Donaghmore Co Cork has experienced mental health difficulties which eventually led to her being imprisoned. Her family are highly concerned for her welfare and perplexed at a system in which the courts are forced to deal with people like Kay because the proper healthcare is not available. She is current serving a sentence for minor offences in Limerick prison and her sister Clair...

In recent years the country has been coming to terms with how previous generations of young women were treated when they gave birth outside marriage. A dark and painful history has been laid bare in documents like the Mother And Baby Homes Report. But what is it like for adopted people today looking for the details of their birth and early life? Aoife O’Connell has been on such a journey and she h...

How caring is our society and how caring can it be in a political system that champions the individual? Kathleen Lynch, Professor Emeritus of Equality Studies in UCD has written a book about how capitalism ensures we do not care for each other as we should, or, more importantly, need to. On the podcast she points out how caring is completely unvalued in society, yet for individuals it is, or will...

As the winter bears down on Afghanistan there are real fears of a famine with over 25m people now living in poverty under the Taliban regime. Irish journalist Hannah McCarthy has spent time in Afghanistan since the Taliban took over last August and she reports that there is a growing humanitarian crisis. She has also seen first hand the result of the American led sanctions and she questions who ex...

Journalist Sean O’Driscoll has written a jaw dropping account of the life of Rose Dugdale, the British aristocrat who forsook her life in the upper echelons of British society to join the IRA in the name of a socialist revolution. Heiress, Rebel, Vigilante, Bomber examines the exploits, politics and personal struggles of one of the most unlikeliest figures to emerge from the period of violence in...

In March 2019, Naoise Connolly Ryan’s husband Mick Ryan was among 157 people who died when a Boeing 737 max aircraft crashed in Ethiopia. Mick Ryan was a senior engineer with the UN World Food Programme. It was the second fatal accident involving a Boeing max in five months. Since then, Naoise and other families have been trying to get justice for their lost loved ones. Boeing has offered all the...

Don O’Leary was told last February that he had less than a year to live. Despite that he has still not missed a day at work as the director of the Cork Life Centre, which caters for youths who are unsuited to the confines of the education system. He talks about how the system fails so many and how the Life Centre has managed to succeed with youths who might otherwise have had nowhere to go. He loo...

The killing of Tom Oliver in Co Louth in 1991 was one of the more shocking murders associated with the Troubles. The IRA claimed he was an informer, a charge his family deny. In 2017, the gardai re-investigated the murder and the team believed they had advanced the case. However, the case is now the brief of a British operation investigating collusion, called Kenova. But why has there been no pros...

With the end of the Dail term in sight and a whole host of problems bedevilling the government, Irish Examiner political editor Danny McConnell runs the rule over the body politic’s performance since the start of the year. He covers all the issues with his usual insight, verve and colour and he even finds time to tell why it’s good to be a Dub. Well, most of the time.  Hosted on Acast. See ac...

Sonya Egan was recently imprisoned for two years for a campaign of harassment against former Sinn Fein TD Jonathan O’Brien and businesswoman Laura O’Connell. Some details of the campaign, which also involved Egan stalking Ms O’Connell, were revealed in court. But on the podcast Laura O’Connell tracks how she first came into contact with Egan, how things developed to the point where Egan was harass...

The enveloping inflation spiral and cost of living crisis is dominating public life today and practically everybody has been impacted in one form or another. This is the third major crises the country has faced in little over a decade, following a recession and the pandemic. But it is the first time in a generation that inflation is creating havoc in everyday lives. Irish Examiner columnist Fergus...

With the centenary of the start of the Civil War arriving next week and the conflict having been marked by a major conference in UCC last week, we are looking at the role of women in what unfolded at the time. For most of the last hundred years, women were largely written out of the period but that is now changing. Apart from the general omissions there were women who played particularly prominent...

Martin McMahon has seen first hand the inequalities within the Irish health system. A political activist, and co-founder of the Tortoise Shack podcast, Martin has had a cancer condition for the last thirteen years. His first hand knowledge of the system has opened his eyes to the gross inequities that current exist. But how can the problems be addressed and is the political will there to do someth...