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Among the best traitors Ireland has ever had, Mother Church ranks at the very top, a massive obstacle in the path to equality and freedom. She has been a force for conservatism... to ward off threats to her own security and influence. Bernadette Devlin-McAliskey
Ireland’s attachment to the Catholic Church is straining to breaking point. The secret crimes of Irish priests against children have collapsed the Church’s moral authority. This World: The Shame of the Catholic Church, BBC 2012
The cleric abuse scandal is far from ended. It goes to the very top of the Catholic Church in Ireland. ibid.
The police investigation which ended with Father Eugene Green being jailed in 2000 found evidence the priest’s crimes were covered up. ibid.
What the Church knew was never explained. ibid.
It involved Cardinal Sean Brady, primate of all Ireland, and the country’s most notorious paedophile priest Father Brendan Smyth. At its centre a boy who in 1975 reported Smith’s abuse to the Cardinal. ibid.
Their families were not warned in any way about the paedophile. ibid.
So far the abuse scandals have cost the Church about three billion pounds and counting. ibid.
Four years ago this priest – Father Sean Fortune – was at the centre of Ireland’s biggest child abuse inquiry. The scandal exposed details of a secret Vatican decree which seemed to shelter the perpetrators and silence the victims of abuse. Panorama: Sex Crimes and the Vatican, BBC 2006
When the boom started to slow down, the government looked around for a new golden goose and it turned to the property industry. That would prove a fateful dependency. Property became Ireland’s gold rush ... The sky was the limit for banks dolling out money for investors. Fergal Keane, Panorama: How to Blow a Fortune, BBC 2011
What made the property spree possible was easy credit ... The mortgage market descended into a feeding frenzy. Subsidiaries of British banks like HBOS & RBS had entered the market sensing lucrative returns. Property fever gripped Ireland. ibid.
From a debt of millions to billions. ibid.
The major Irish banks were dangerously exposed. And one in particular: Anglo-Irish Bank ... Anglo had made the fatal mistake of believing that property prices would keep rising. ibid.
By the end of 2008 Anglo and the other banks were facing collapse. The Irish government made a fateful decision. It would bail out the banks to the tune of billions. ibid.
The cost of the guarantee threatened to bankrupt the Irish economy. The government was forced to seek international rescue. The IMF & EU stepped up loans worth eighty-five billion Euros. ibid.
There is real public anger at the idea of Ireland being forced to seek an international bailout. ibid.
There is an Ireland shrouded in cliché. Of heroes and villains. Lost battles and sad songs. Perched on the margins of Europe, a claustrophobic Ireland cut off from the world ... That is not the Ireland of this journey. Fergal Keane, The Story of Ireland 1/5: The Age of Invasions, BBC 2011
We were shaped by waves of migration and invasion. ibid.
The real Irish were Gaelic and Catholic. ibid.
The first waves of settlers are thought to have come from Europe about ten thousand years ago. ibid.
One sixth of Ireland, more than any other European country, lies under bog. ibid.
Ptolemy map c.100 A.D. This is the first map of Ireland and its peoples. ibid.
Ireland was never subordinated to Roman law or government. ibid.
Irish raids on the British coast expanded. ibid.
Patrick hovers between the pagan past and the Christian future. ibid.
The terror of Viking attack ... The age of the Vikings had arrived. ibid.
Over the next century Dublin would become a boom town with the largest slave market in Europe. ibid.
Brian ... would become an icon of native resistance, the first nationalist hero. ibid.
The Norman King Henry II would now be wooed by Diarmaid mac Murchadha. Fergal Keane, The Story of Ireland 2/5: The Age of Conquest
The invaders hacked and cleaved their way through the Irish. ibid.
Over the next fifty years the Anglo-Normans established power bases in the main population centres. ibid.
The 12th century priest and chronicler Giraldi Cambrensis, Gerald of Wales, profiled the Irish in his Topographia Hibernica. ibid.
The black plague ravaged the towns and ports where the Anglo-Normans were strongest. ibid.
Henry VIII will come to see these free-roving lords as a threat to his power, and men who need to be taught a lesson. ibid.
Elizabeth’s forces launched a policy of scorched earth. ibid.
Some 30,000 Irish lost their lives, many to famine. ibid.
What happens here at Kinsale [Cork] will alter the balance of power in Ireland for ever. ibid.
The Flight of the Earls is one of the most romanticised images in Irish history. ibid.
He still didn’t know how to turn his paintings into hard cash. ibid.
Undercover agents posed as would-be buyers. ibid.
The protestant buyers were really undercover police. ibid.
Martin Cahill’s death was front page news. ibid.
I was supplying guns to the people in Ireland – they say I did. Christy Dunne
He brought me back hundreds of weapons – and I turned them over to the people who need them. Christy Dunne
The mad monks from the bogs turned me into the gangster I was. Michael Cahill, attributed