Danny Boy

Slightly unusual news from Ireland today.

A college student at University College Cork narrowly avoided having to pay a phone company over €1,600 ($2,200) for downloading over 80 gigabytes worth of online pornography in the space of just three weeks.

University College Cork, the usually quiet Irish university at the centre of an international controversy following a two day exhibition that featured a portrait of the Virgin Mary sporting a bikini, could now face criminal prosecution for allegedly violating recently introduced Irish blasphemy legislation, according to unconfirmed reports from a number of Irish websites.

Although national police (Gardaí) have thusfar declined to offer official confirmation that an investigation into the incident is ongoing (or even for that matter under contemplation), national Dublin-based news website TheJournal.ie led a story into the incident that prompted a columnist with the UK's The Guardian newspaper to speculate that the university could now have a "case on its hands" to answer, for having supposedly wilfully violated the provisions of the 2009 Blasphemy Act.

A 'blasphemous' exhibit depicting 'Our Lady of Guadalupe' in a floral bikini is to go on show in University College Cork (UCC) tomorrow -- and critics have begun attacking the 'artwork' before it's even begun.

'Our Lady and Other Queer Santas' is the brainchild of Alma Lopez, a graduate of the University of California at Irvine - a well-known target of criticism from religious Catholic groups, and is being displayed as part of a weekend conference on Hispanic Studies taking place at the university.

Two problems are currently at the fore for Irish students, one major, the other minor.

Quick something that might be of interest to the wild geese reading my blog on IrishCentral.

University College Cork, one of Ireland's seven universities, is hosting a symposium / web-seminar on Ireland's emigration problem this afternoon, and there's no need to make a special visit to Cork, as it will be available over the internet via a 'web seminar'!

Those of you who have been following Niall O'Dowd's possible bid for the Irish presidency may have read Walter Ellis' ad hominem in Ireland's paper of record The Irish Times this morning.

The surprisingly aggressive piece, in which Ellis criticizes O'Dowd for viewing Ireland as "a brand, not a nation", before regurgitating a series of highly selective quotes from this website and its print publication, The Irish Voice, displays almost as shocking a disdain for the Irish-American community and its values as its author accuses O'Dowd of having for the Queen, and culminates in a sweeping statement that those with ties to the fictional village of 'Glocca Mora' (Irish Americans) are deluding themselves into believing that they have any connection beyond that of 'blood and ancestry' to their genealogical homeland.

Even for Ireland's youth, for whom politics has come to symbolize little more than student emigration, economic ruination, and misery, there was a palpable sense of sadness at news of the death of former Minister for Finance, Brian Lenihan early this morning.

Ireland's high-school exams body, the State Examinations Commission (roughly equivalent to the American College Board) has announced today that it's going to hire out "an external agency" to check students' Twitter before and during exams in a bid to catch out potential cheaters.

The announcement comes just hours after GAA boss Christy Cooney confirmed that the Gaelic Games Authority (GAA) has issued guidelines to players on what they could and couldn't Tweet, following Laois footballer MJ Tierney's expression of disillusionment with team management made via the micro-blogging site, not to mention, of course, the ongoing 'superinjunction' fracas taking place in the UK.

A telling headline that caught my attention today was one from Irish education website schooldays.ie.

The number of Irish students taking summer courses in Gaelic speaking areas of Ireland (in Irish, the gaeltacht) has dropped further.

Reading the Irish Independent's coverage of the diplomatic cables it received from notorious whistleblowing website Wikileaks over the past few days, you'be be forgiven for forming the impression that the Irish government was being run by a bunch of amateurs.

The overall picture that emerges from the leaks on the whole can probably be summarized as a group of bemused but seemingly very clued-in American diplomats wondering just what was going on across Dublin in Leinster House, why those with the information about the impending economic bust close to hand weren't divulging it to the Irish public, and most pointedly why nobody at the Department of Finance had seemingly formulated a plan for recovery.