Mark Hennessy

1 month ago | irishtimes.com | Mark Hennessy

More than three decades on, the former British army officer, and now author of two books on the IRA, Jonathan Trigg still remembers the foot patrol in Tyrone, the farmyard and the suppressed rage. Then a 23-year-old lieutenant in the Royal Anglian Regiment, Trigg and his platoon had been dropped by helicopter – the roads deemed too dangerous for them to travel on because of IRA roadside bombs. The British Army was deployed in the North from 1969 until 2007.

1 month ago | irishtimes.com | Mark Hennessy

Former minister for justice and attorney general Michael McDowell is a man with a “fearsome devotion” to Ireland, former president of Ireland Mary McAleese has said. Launching The Definite Article, a collection of McDowell’s newspaper columns, Mrs McAleese said the Senator is equally dedicated to Ireland’s Constitution, “to its democracy, its principles, its people, its European character, as a sovereign State, and within the EU of course”.

1 month ago | irishtimes.com | Mark Hennessy

Weeks after Terence Reynolds, originally from Cloncowley, Drumlish, Co Longford, died at his home in Yonkers in New York, his daughter Christina found an old suitcase in the attic. “[It had] a single identifying label in cream tape with a handwritten writing stating CLONCOWLEY,” she wrote in reply to a request from the Department for Foreign Affairs for stories about Irish passports.

1 month ago | irishtimes.com | Mark Hennessy

Unionists’ British identity will have to be respected rather than just tolerated in a united Ireland, a leading Sinn Féin figure has said in comments that will challenge many pro-unity advocates. “I think we have to find a way to make sure that there isn’t just tolerance, and we’re not about tolerating, because if you start tolerating people then it’s very easy to come to intolerance” Senator Conor Murphy said during a speech in Dublin on Tuesday.

2 months ago | irishtimes.com | Mark Hennessy

Northern Ireland’s problems with high numbers of children leaving school early and low education standards will not be solved by the abolition of pupils’ selection examinations at 12 years of age, a leading academic has said. However, Professor Anne Looney, the executive dean of the Institute of Education at Dublin City University, said the Republic’s system should “not be too smug” because it streams children, too, but at 18, not at 12.