Update: Tom Colton has since been jailed for two and a half years. Irish psychic medium Tom Colton is facing trial at the Dublin Circuit Court, where he is accused of stealing more than €300,000 nearly nine years ago. He has not yet indicated how he will plead. Colton is one of the people who […]
I’ve just visited the City of Raleigh Museum in North Carolina. It’s slogan is ‘Then. Now. Next.’ Inside is a powerful civil rights movement exhibition, that includes rest room doors from a demolished bank with signs saying ‘Colored Men Rest Room’ and ‘White Men Rest Room’. Outside, on a lamp post, is an advert for […]
This is an updated list of over 1,500 women, from different parts of the world and with different areas of expertise, who would make excellent speakers at atheist, skeptic, scientific or human rights events. It began as a list of a thousand women speakers that I compiled in 2012, after a debate on an atheist […]
The Irish Times today apologised for publishing a cartoon by Martyn Turner, and has removed the cartoon from its website. Whatever the reason for removing the cartoon, it is not the consistent application of the stated reasons for doing so. The Irish Times should withdraw the apology and republish the cartoon, or else it should […]
I have had a lot of reaction to my disturbing debate on RTE’s Liveline with host Joe Duffy and a Catholic priest, Father Gearoid O Doncha, who insists that he would not report the rape of a child to the Gardai if he heard about it at confession. Here is audio and a transcript of […]
Senator Jim Walsh of Fianna Fail made the following sweepingly inaccurate comment about Atheist Ireland and atheists generally today in the Seanad. “We’ve got a lot of representations from different groups, and particularly Atheist Ireland, and I want to say that, I said in the past here, I think that atheists, like people of belief, […]
The Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission could not get access to the Reasoned Opinion sent by the European Commission to Ireland about our failure to comply with the Employment Equality Directive 2000/78, because it is a confidential document. However, the European Commission also sent Reasoned Opinions to other Member States at around the same […]
The Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission has said that the approach of the current Seanad Bill allowing religious discrimination is undesirable, and may continue to leave the State exposed to a breach of its obligations under the European Employment Equality Directive 2000/78. In a new Recommendation Paper, authored by Marguerite Bolger SC and Claire […]
The concerns and proposals raised by Atheist Ireland in our briefing document to Senators were raised in the Seanad today, during a Committee Stage debate on Section 37 of the Employment Equality Act. This is the Section that allows religious institutions, including schools and hospitals, an exemption to discriminate against employees to protect the religious […]
Today is three years since Anne died. This is the tribute that I wrote to her then.