american apparel, dublin, 2009

february 2010. county limerick, ireland.

dozens sympathise with sex offender

about 50 people, mostly middle-aged and elderly men, queued yesterday to shake hands with the convicted man and hug him tearfully after he was brought from the cell to the dock, before judge mcdonagh entered the courtroom.

before passing sentence, the judge criticised a character statement made by castlegregory parish priest fr seán sheehy. the priest had said foley was always “respectful of women”, but foley’s actions “gave the lie” to fr sheehy’s statement, the judge said. (link)

five serving bishops mentioned in report

the bishop of limerick, who resigned today, was one of five serving bishops criticised in the dublin diocesan report for their handling of cases of abuse in the dublin diocese between 1975 and 2004.

there can be no doubt that of the five bishops who – up until this morning were still in office – and who were dealt with in the report, the most vulnerable was the bishop of limerick, donal murray.

this vulnerability was added to when the family of a man who alleged abuse, and who died tragically in 2006 following a meeting with representatives of limerick’s catholic diocese, called for his resignation.

peter mccloskey (37) was found dead on april 1st, 2006, two days after mediation talks with diocesan representatives. his brother joseph said he had been “devastated” by the mediation process with the diocese. (link)

hogans pub, south great georges street. dublin. july 2006

time flies regardless

above is a picture of the proposed route for the raidejokeri light rail project – it will go from itäkeskus in the east to tapiola in the west. funny to see pictures of dublin in the raidejokeri website.

only on page 35 so far, but here are some interesting extracts:

“… successive governments had failed to implement the 1974 keane report on building land, which recommended that all land designated for urban developement should be compulsorily aquired by the local authorities at its existing use value, plus a premium of 25 per cent. as a direct result of this failure, huge profits went into the pockets of everyone who owned land or speculatively aquired it, and the inflated cost was passed onto the homebuyers”

“green party td (teachta dála, member of lower house of the irish parliament) ciarán cuffe estimates that at least 100 of the 800-plus councillors countrywide work as estate agents or auctioneers”

so on the homepage of rté i notice a flash graphic with a picture of the boys in green:

i click on the picture and im taken to the next page

hmm, no id like the score please. video only works in ireland, audio works worldwide but i could be listening for a few minutes before i actually get to hear the score and get an overview of what i missed…

i do notice “irish international” over on the left hand sidedbar. i click and i see the following:

so irelands biggest soccer match of a few months and no story updated about the match in eight hours! no word on the team, the first half etc. madness.

same thing happened a few months back when ireland played new zealand in rugby. the match was on at 1715 irish time, i checked the rte website at 2120 finnish time (1920 irish time) and there was nothing whatsoever about the match – probably because ireland got hammered. it seemed that the entire rugby section wasnt updated since before the irish rugby match started, indeed the only mention of the match was a match preview story from the day before.

my almost daily heckling of rte.ie goes on.

(to give rté its fair dues, im sure their coverage on radio + television of both matches in question was fantastic)

i finally got to go through dublin port tunnel when i was home just before christmas. i got the front seat upstairs in the bus to heuston station and i was all set for a great show. from an engineering perspective the tunnel is fantastic – but from a design point of view its horrendous. the tunnel ends up looking like a service tunnel. (just because its mostly for truckers doesn’t mean it should be ugly)

although its nice to see dublin planners finally thinking in 3d – its just a shame they didnt think beyond 3d and just moved the port out of the city like they’ve done here in helsinki. (hmm i thought i had posted about the helsinki port project on here but i dont think i have, will have to rectify that.)