Boston College: Enda Kenny, Ireland’s Taoiseach (Prime Minister), will give the Commencement Address to Boston College’s 4,400 graduates at Alumni Stadium this morning.
 
In the three years since coming to power, Kenny has looked to build a “Republic of laws,” a Republic that many Irish expatriates in the US—myself included—identify with because it closely mirrors the society in which we now live, a society where the letter of the law rather than the unspoken assumption of a doctrinaire moral code determines social policy.
 
Savita Halappanavar is a victim of that moral code and social policy. Mrs. Halappanavar died of sepsis, an infection brought on by the miscarriage of her seventeen-week pregnancy, in a Galway hospital on 28th October 2012. Her grieving husband described the medical treatment meted out to his wife as “horrendous, barbaric and inhumane.” To read the “Timeline” of his wife’s eight-day ordeal, based on evidence presented at the week-long official inquest, induces shame and anger. A young healthy woman fell victim to a lack of political will.
 
Enda Kenny outlined his vision for a very different Ireland during a Dáil Éireann speech in July 2011 when responding to the publication of the Cloyne Report. Like earlier reports—Murphy, Ryan, and Ferns—Cloyne echoed the well established narrative of clerical child sex abuse and confirmed the Catholic hierarchy’s failure to report such abuse to the civic authorities. The Bishop in question observed the dictates of the Vatican rather than the law of the land.
 
But Cloyne was of a different order too. It detailed how the Vatican deliberately organized to frustrate an Irish State-commissioned inquiry into clerical child sex abuse as recently as 2009. In an unprecedented move, Mr. Kenny, a devout Catholic, entered the Dáil chamber, the seat of political power in Ireland, and called the Vatican to account. And, he declared the primacy of the State’s standards, not those of the Catholic Church, in all matters related to the protection of Ireland’s children.
 
The “Cloyne speech” represents a watershed moment because it encapsulates a new vision for the nation:

A new on the ground wedding service for the Irish Diaspora getting married in Ireland has been launched by business woman Olivia Buckley and her special guest Simon T. Bailey.

“Finally,” I remember thinking when I first heard of The Gathering Ireland.

Ireland’s Transport and Tourism Minister Leo Varadkar is backing proposals to allow the Diaspora to vote in Presidential and parliamentary elections.

A Baroness and member of the House of Lords has urged people of Irish descent to support the development of a diaspora centre at Dún Laoghaire Harbour in Co. Dublin.

The Constitutional Convention in Dublin will meet shortly to consider changes to the Irish Constitution.

Irish citizens approve giving the Irish abroad the vote, gay marriage, and a full review of the Constitution, according to a new poll.

In celebration of all things Irish; people, culture, heritage and history, ‘The Gathering Ireland 2013’ and St. Patrick’s Festival are inviting 8,000 people from across the world to march on St. Patrick’s Day next March 17th.

In his address at a reception in Buenos Aires for Argentina's 500,000-strong Irish community on Saturday, Irish President Michael D Higgins focused on the contributions the Irish had made in creating modern Argentina.

Irish genealogists have voiced concern that plans to resurrect 2006 Privacy Bill could restrict access to genealogical or biographical research materials.

A new app, the “Irish Family Ancestry App,” is now available to download from Apple’s App Store. The app allows users to search their family name to quickly find a wealth of information about their heritage, such as name meaning, motto, family history, and their coat of arms.
 
The app’s developers, Steinbock Applications, a Swiss software studio, worked with the Irish Ancestry experts at Araltas (based in Athlone) to create the app.
 
The innovative app allows users to easily search for and read about their family’s heritage.
 
“It’s a neat little app that’s easy to use, just enter your name and you’re done. It’s a starting point for users who are interested in their Irish ancestry, but also contains quite a bit of expert information too,” said Duncan Geoghegan, one of the developers who worked on the application.
 
“I used the app for my own name too – it was pretty interesting reading about my family’s history”.
 
Irish Family Ancestry is part of a growing trend in apps opening up access to rich information to consumers for free.
 
Steinbock Applications believe that the appeal of the application lies in its price and ease of use, “The Irish Family Ancestry App is completely free, with absolutely no additional charges later on. Just download, open and start learning.”