An alarming report in the English Independent newspaper of 14th July (but unreported in the Irish media as far as I can tell) indicates that at least one Irish army officer is involved in an EU mission training Somali soldiers in Uganda for action against the al-Shabaab movement inside Somalia. Al-Shabaab has claimed responsibility for [...]

The Irish Minister for the Environment, John Gormley T.D., may be about to grant permission for a final stage of a major gas project (the Corrib Gas Project) led by Shell Oil that has ruined the lives of a small community in the West of Ireland and prompted a massive national and international campaign of [...]

I have previously argued here that the military implications of the Lisbon Treaty constitute an argument for a NO vote on 2 October.  I now want to argue that the implications of Lisbon for ‘developing countries’ in Africa, Asia and Latin America would be negative - and that this constitutes another strong argument for a [...]

This article analyses the ‘assurances‘ in the specific area of security and defence that the government is persuading EU leaders to sign up to, ostensibly to allay concerns in Ireland about the Lisbon Treaty.  These ‘assurances’ are, in reality, simply political statements that, in themselves, have no legal status.  They are only legally valid if [...]