I think I’m one of the people who brought about peace in Ireland.
I grew up during one of Northern Ireland’s most complex periods.
Barney was interested in bringing professional boxing back to Northern Ireland in a big way.
It’s up to me to find a way to bring out my best game when I put on the Ireland jersey.
Ireland has always been a nation of great athletes from the past: in the nineties, we had Sonia O’Sullivan and Steve Collins.
At the time when I was going to school in Ireland people didn’t really have a clue about what it was, so I had to spend a lot of my time trying to explain to teachers what dyslexia meant.
With ‘Stones is His Pockets’ you have effectively a bare stage with two actors and yet a whole world in rural Ireland is created. There’s the countryside, the bar interior, the dressing room and the star’s bedroom.
It is tradition in Ireland that you’re given money for your first communion.
My family influenced me very deeply because my dad came from a musical background, from the hillbilly music part of it, and all that music came over from Scotland and Ireland and England in to the Appalachian Mountains and Ozark Mountains, where I was raised.
It was on the first day of Beltaine, that is called now May Day, the Tuatha de Danaan came, and it was to the north-west of Connacht they landed. But the Firbolgs, the Men of the Bag, that were in Ireland before them, and that had come from the South, saw nothing but a mist, and it lying on the hills.
That feeds anger, and I mean when we went and at last thank heavens got towards peace in Northern Ireland we went for justice within Northern Ireland as well as using security well, as well as a political settlement, but surely that is the lesson.
Nobody knows it, but I would be considered posh in Ireland.
I know when my father travelled 5,000 miles to make his home in Ireland, I doubt he ever dreamed that his son would one day grow up to be its leader.
There’s a herd instinct, and every time that people hear an announcement such as PayPal’s in Dundalk, they start thinking, ‘Ireland must be good if they’re investing there’, and by extension, ‘Dundalk must be good, so let’s have a look at it.’
I’m involved in Northern Ireland Screen and have been for a long time, so I keep my eyes open and ears to the ground.
Dublin people think they are the center of the world and the center of Ireland. And they don’t realize that people have to leave Ireland to get work, and they look down on people who do.
I would quite like to do something on Ireland about the culture, James Joyce, Yeats, persuade Seamus Heaney to have a chat and do some cooking.
By far, the greatest contribution Ireland can make is to lead by example, by actively pursuing its own transition to a sustainable, low-carbon economy.
Hopefully, I can build a house there with my dad so that he can retire there. That’s what he wants and I would love to spend my older days in Ireland. It’s peaceful, it’s nice.
While I cannot comment in detail about the inter workings of the State Department, it is a matter of public record that I recommended a visa for Gerry Adams to visit the United States. I believe then, and I continue to believe now, that this step did help to advance the peace process in Northern Ireland.
I always think of Ireland as a place for complex ideas and prose. I like Irishness. I like Irish culture and Irish literature.
I served 18 months in Northern Ireland and that was very scary. I remember when we were told do you want the good news or the bad news first. We wanted the good news – we’re going to Cyprus. The bad news? We’re going to Northern Ireland first. All the black blokes looked at each other and thought, ‘that’s really funny.’
You that would judge me, do not judge alone this book or that, come to this hallowed place where my friends’ portraits hang and look thereon; Ireland’s history in their lineaments trace; think where man’s glory most begins and ends and say my glory was I had such friends.
Ireland. Great for the spirit – very bad for the body.
My father gave me an old Olympia portable when I was in fourth grade. Our ancestors came from Ireland. Our family stories of immigration helped me understand more about my characters in ‘The Lemon Orchard.’
I mean I grew up in Ireland, so one would have to be consciously blinkered not to have reflected on the issue of political violence because that was the story since I was 19 years old or 20.
In France, they call the people who come to the theatre ‘les spectateurs’; in Britain and Ireland, they are the audience, the people who listen. This does not mean the French are not interested in language. On the contrary. It actually says more about the undeveloped visual sense over here.
I remember my dad came from Ireland and Scotland, and so he carried with him the fear of poverty. So when I wanted to break loose, it kind of made him very nervous.
There are Behan experts in international universities, but we seem to have forgotten him here in Ireland. He was an extraordinarily gifted writer. His poetry alone is outstanding.
In some parts of Ireland the sleep which knows no waking is always followed by a wake which knows no sleeping.
I think it’s safe to say that if you talk to anybody in Ireland, they’ll have a passing knowledge of the guitar. It was something that I couldn’t get away from when I was younger: guitars played in shops and parties, just everywhere.
We are bound to lose Ireland in consequence of years of cruelty, stupidity and misgovernment and I would rather lose her as a friend than as a foe.
The nineteenth century, especially the second half of it, was a time of restatement in Ireland. After the famine, after the failed rebellions of the Forties and Sixties, the cultural and political desires for self-determination began to shape each other in a series of riffs on independence and identity.
In Tasmania, an island the size of Ireland whose primeval forests astonished 19th-century Europeans, an incomprehensible ecological tragedy is being played out.
It’s not a hard sell to be asked to do something in Ireland.
At one point I would read nothing that was not by the great American Jews – Saul Bellow, Philip Roth – which had a disastrous effect of making me think I needed to write the next great Jewish American novel. As a ginger-haired child in the West of Ireland, that didn’t work out very well, as you can imagine.
I knew I was going to lose my house in Ireland and all the other properties. It’s all gone. But my house was the one material thing that was very important to me.
England have never wanted me at underage level; it’s always been Ireland.
Men, once enemies, are now jointly governing in Northern Ireland. And although there have been several hitches, by and large it’s working well.
Both the U.K. and the E.U. have made a sincere commitment to the people of Northern Ireland: there will be no hard border. Equally, as a U.K. government, we could not countenance a future in which a border was drawn in the Irish Sea, separating Northern Ireland from the rest of the U.K.
Ever since I left Northern Ireland, I’ve always been pretty comfortable on my own, which contradicts a lot of people’s perceptions of me.
My dad grew up in Banbridge, Northern Ireland, desperate to get to London. I grew up in London, so I don’t know what it’s like to yearn for the big city from a small town.
I am not in the business of pointing fingers or making excuses. However, recent history has shown that I, like thousands of others in Ireland, incorrectly relied upon the persons who guided Anglo and who wrongfully sought to portray a ‘blue chip’ Irish banking sector.
Back when Detroit was the head of auto manufacturing, it was clear where profits were created. Right? A car was made in Detroit. There was little argument that you could make that some of the money from that should be sent overseas to Ireland.
The problem is that in Ireland everybody thinks you have to have a ‘take’ on something. But if you have a ‘take’ on something then that’s a spoof.
Dublin’s a great place. It really is. It’s a great place. And Ireland, especially, is a great place. I’ve realized that growing up more. I’m loving my country more as I’m getting older.
The arts are very alive in Ireland, so that had its influence on me. But I consider myself European, really.
Ireland is the old sow that eats her farrow.
It was a chance encounter with a biotech entrepreneur from Ireland that got me started as an entrepreneur in India, because I partnered this Irish company in setting up India’s first biotech company.
My husband was in the war of the Crimea. It is terrible the hardships he went through, to be two months without going into a house, under the snow in trenches. And no food to get, maybe a biscuit in the day. And there was enough food there, he said, to feed all Ireland; but bad management, they could not get it.
From space, the earth appears predominantly blue; the clouds are brilliant white. Surprisingly, you don’t see much green, although Ireland looks green, and so do Scandinavia and New Zealand. The deserts are brick red and really stand out.
In the cycling world I am… okay, it sounds arrogant, but I am pretty high up. And I am a good athlete. But it is not recognised in Ireland.
The economy in Ireland has been rampaging ahead for the last 15 years. Barring an international, political or natural catastrophe, things can only get better for the Irish.
