Una McCaffrey

Dec 28, 2024 | irishtimes.com | Una McCaffrey

The first time I heard the word spoken in relation to me was at a fortunetelling session in a Belfast student house around 1993. Somebody I knew was friends with somebody else who lived in the house and had arranged for the mystic to offer an evening of individual readings in their livingroom. Although livingroom was probably too grand a term for the venue: the student houses of Belfast at the time tended not to focus too heavily on the comfort of their inhabitants.

Oct 18, 2024 | irishtimes.com | Una McCaffrey

When you work part-time as an editor like me, your week can take on two very distinct personalities: the bit at home where you consume lots of media like everybody else and the insider bit in the office where you’re involved in its production. This week, I was a home-based hausfrau on Monday and Tuesday. This saw me stuffing my ears with history podcasts while ironing, and reading multiple news stories from around the world while batch-cooking.

Jun 23, 2024 | irishtimes.com | Una McCaffrey

Our guide at Auschwitz Birkenau in southern Poland points at a small wooden cart resting beside one of the camp buildings that remain on the vast, derelict site. It would have been used for the usual kinds of things you might expect in a camp, he says – supplying goods to the kitchen or laundry. Also, moving dead bodies. He tells us these might have been prisoners who died in this part of the camp during the night, with the job being allocated to their fellow inmates, probably teenagers.

Jan 16, 2024 | irishtimes.com | Una McCaffrey

I attended the loveliest party a few weeks ago and have been carrying a small happy echo of it with me ever since. We were a group of 20 or so women, gathered for a night in a magical location to celebrate a special event for one of our number. It all added up to a glowing treasure within our grey January lives. But there was a niggle, a hesitation I felt that somehow held me back from absorbing the best of this enchanted night away as fully as I should have. Why?

Jan 4, 2024 | irishtimes.com | Una McCaffrey

The Government used corporation tax receipts that were above expectations to pay for a €1 billion overrun in its health budget last year, according to the Department of Finance’s latest exchequer returns. Eoin Burke-Kennedy reports that the State’s general government surplus at the end of the year was €7.8 billion, €1 billion less than the Government had forecast in October and reflective of the additional health spending.