Danny Boy

News of the Oireachtas Environment Committee taking a shot at the government over its response to two natural disasters is a healthy sign of a well functioning democracy in Ireland.

Ireland really wasn’t riding its luck last winter. In November a massive “one in eight-hundred years” flood devastated the country, and shorty afterwards, in January, the country was literally frozen still by a protracted cold snap.

Despite the monumentally bad luck the government faced in having to cope with not one but two natural disasters in a winter, though, it didn’t exactly shine forth in brilliance with its response.

The county that’s promising to bring Ireland its first ever installation of the wacky Paddy Games brought together 56 daring cyclists to pedal naked around the streets of Cork in the early hours of yesterday morning.

Co.Cork, proudly and aptly known as The Rebel County, hosted the event to roughly coincide with the Cork Cycling Arts Festival. It got underway at 5:45am, and despite the typically dismal weather conditions and half-frozen participants it was a roaring success by all accounts.

The recurring theme from the news reports, which are already in, was the encouraging reception the motley troupe of naked riders got from the general public, which was described as constantly positive and involved much hooting and cheering.

Irish-American journalist Dave Hannigan has landed himself in hot water for remarks he made about both the Irish heritage certificates and about Killarney.

In short, the Long Island based writer called the heritage certs a “money grab sponsored by Dail Eireann,” and called Killarney, County Kerry a tourist-trap rip-off.

Kerrymen from Catherdaniel to Ballybunion reacted with predictable ire to the piece, which appeared in the Irish Mail on Sunday. “Hannigan owes Killarney an apology” harangued one local businessman, while the local rep of the Irish Hotels Federation called Hannigan’s column “cheapskate and cheap shot journalism that reflects no credit on the journalist who penned it or the paper that published it." Ouch!

Perhaps the only area in which America manages to exceed Ireland in terms of being a rip-off is in its education sector, which is one of the most prohibitively expensive in the world.

Going to university in America is a ferociously expensive endeavor. It’s almost beyond dispute that this situation leaves a lot to be desired. Education, as a catalyst for social progression, should be as open to the population as possible. This of course, would be achieved by charing as little as possible for tuition there, yet in America this obviously isn't the case.

Yet even when you’ve managed to get within the university system, by paying the massive six-digit tuition fees, extortion still abounds.