Fiona Quinn

@AontuIE Wonder what he'd say about medicine?! This is Leo's 2nd abandoned career. Now we just get to read him and be lectured to. Nice work (and pensions) if you can get it.

When FG politicians retire, they say what the party really believes.

@FaithandFooty_ Applies to Europe too.

Britain's future is religious. But the choice won't involve the established church. It will either be Catholicism or Islam

@colmflynnire But if you live in Ireland? I do but would love to join pilgrimage!

@JudgeJudgyJudge Yes, we’re hoping to have a mix. And the Americans would love to have other Irish on the trip :)

Paola and I are so excited about our pilgrimage in Ireland, and we would love for you to join us! Alongside Fr. Michael Baggot, we will journey through my beautiful country, visiting some of its most breathtaking places, celebrating Mass each day in a different church, and meeting wonderful people along the way. It will be a special opportunity for all of us to spend time together, share delicious meals, enjoy meaningful conversations, and experience the trip of a lifetime. See you in Ireland! 🙂 For all the details, click the link in the comments below:

@JamesOConnorTD I wish to God he'd shut up. No one wants to hear his views anymore. He's ruined the Sunday Times for me as well!

Leo’s urban bias balaclava slips. He should do his Fine Gael colleagues a favour and go into the quiet night to enjoy his private life. It goes against the precedent of Iar Taoisigh by commenting so actively on government policy and social issues and is corrosive to his “legacy”.

@PangurBn10 Looks a bit like Enda Kenny!

One of the craziest figures of the 19th Century was Clareman James Patrick Mahon >Born 1800 in Ireland as Charles James Patrick Mahon
>dad fights in 1798 rebellion, mother rich heiress
>Trinity College, law degrees
>dad dies, inherit land, call yourself “The O’Gorman Mahon” cuz it sounds cooler and makes you sound like clan chief
>become magistrate, join Catholic Association
>convince Daniel O’Connell to run for parliament in Clare, helps kick off Catholic Emancipation
>get elected MP for Clare in 1830
>unseated for bribery but acquitted, classic
>fight like 13 duels, get stabbed 6 times, stab others 7 times
>marry rich heiress, barely see her, have one son who dies young
>use her wealth to go on adventures >go to Paris
>hang with Talleyrand, party at Louis-Philippe’s court >spend time in Africa and South America >befriend Ferdinand de Lesseps, engineer of the Suez Canal >1846 go back to Ireland, elected MP in 1847 again but lose 1852 election after disputing with Young Irelanders >dip out of politics >back to Paris 
>Go to Russia and join Tsar’s Imperial bodyguard, fight Tartars and hunt bears with future tsar
>trek through Finland, Siberia, China, India, Arabia
>run out of money >become Ottoman mercenary for money >then become mercenary for Austrians >Return to England 1858 >Back to South America >try various canal schemes in Central America akin to Panama, prob for idea from Suez guy >investigate British captain’s murder in Peru >Become general in Uruguayan army >command a Chilean fleet >Become colonel in Pedro II’s Brazilian army (legend says they made him archbishop lmao)
>American Civil War breaks out? fuck it, sail over and fight for the Union in your 60s
>back to Europe, Napoleon III makes you colonel of chasseurs
>hang with Bismarck in Berlin and become close associates >nearly broke from adventures >invest in all sorts of speculative investments >1871 move back to Ireland >Become founding member of Parnell’s Home Rule League
>keep running for parliament, win some, lose some, ally with Parnell then split over the mistress drama
at age 87 win by-election in Carlow >become one of the oldest MPs ever in Westminster 
>die 1891 in London still in office at 91, funeral attended by Parnell
 19th century Forest Gump

@Independent_ie Why is that a photo of Macron?

Keir Starmer claims that he ‘wasn’t told’ Mandelson failed vetting ahead of US appointment buff.ly/NpNHHjW

@TheMistressRox Hope you're doing really well!

From your teeny tiny beginning in Scotland, to living your best life in Thailand, Happy 5th Birthday Tibor. The smallest dog with the heart of a Lion and my constant companion. I love you more than you know 🎂💜🎉

It’s amazing to see Cooper start to discuss IPAS centres. He’s at the “using local hotels is wrong” stage. He needs to start counting the costs: €15billion since 2021 is spent on emergency accommodation. Matt: Ask who is getting paid and how much profit they’re making? Ask how organised crime is involved? Ask whats the long term plan? Also, @LeoVaradkar is misguided when he says numbers are coming down. The reason there was a sharp drop last year was because a UK loophole for people arriving from Jordan ended. Once you subtract this, the numbers are increasing. Most notably those arriving from Somali up almost 100% yoy. All told we are adding an extra €1.5billion every year to our tax bill for asylum. This is economic lunacy. Let’s not forget Varadkar ran from office when Tent City was at its peak. A total and utter failure of policy. He hadn’t the balls the sort it out. Mount street has been destroyed. He doesn’t seem to care either. It’s going to take courage to sort this mess out. Something these guys don’t have.

@az_bradymaria @Mr_Husky1 Agree. Nuns have been doing this kind of thing for centuries - way back to plague times. Never get the credit though.

@Mr_Husky1 Yep. And the nuns from Sisters of the Poor were the only ones who would care for aids patients in San Francisco general hospital in the early 80s. The NUNS. No one else including their families wanted anything to do with them. Just remember. NUNS!

In 1984, Ruth Coker Burks was 25 years old, visiting a friend at a hospital in Little Rock, when she noticed nurses drawing straws outside a patient's room. Someone had to go in. She didn't wait for the straws. She opened the door herself. What she found inside would define the next decade of her life. 🕯️** Inside was a young man reduced to bones — maybe 80 pounds, dying alone, terrified. He kept whispering one word. *"Mama."* Ruth told the nurses to call his mother. They laughed. *"Honey, we've called. He's been here six weeks. Nobody's coming."* Ruth made them give her the number. She tried one last time. The mother's answer was cold and final: her son was sinful, already dead to her, and she would not be coming. So Ruth went back into that room. She took his hand. She stayed. For 13 hours, she held the hand of a dying stranger, promising him he wouldn't leave this world alone. When he died, his family refused to claim the body. Ruth decided she would bury him herself. She owned plots in her family cemetery in Hot Springs — where her father and grandparents rested. The nearest funeral home willing to handle an AIDS death was 70 miles away. Ruth paid from her own pocket. A local potter gave her a chipped cookie jar for an urn. She used posthole diggers to dig the grave herself. She spoke kind words over the earth because no minister would come to pray over a man who died of AIDS. Ruth thought that would be the end. It was the beginning. Word traveled through the quiet networks of fear and desperation across Arkansas. *There's a woman in Hot Springs who isn't afraid. There's a woman who will sit with you. There's a woman who will make sure you're buried with dignity when your own family won't claim you.* They started arriving. Dying young men from rural hospitals across the state, abandoned by the people who were supposed to love them most. Over the next decade, Ruth Coker Burks cared for more than 1,000 people dying of AIDS. She personally buried 40 of them in Files Cemetery — digging the graves herself, with her young daughter beside her carrying a small spade, holding their own funerals because no one else would speak over these graves. Of those 1,000 people, only a handful of families didn't abandon their dying children. Ruth called parents. Begged them to come say goodbye. To claim their child's body. Most refused. *"Who knew,"* she said, *"there'd come a time when parents didn't want to bury their own children?"* But she also witnessed something else — something that stayed with her. She watched gay men care for dying partners with a devotion that shattered every stereotype. She watched a terrified community take care of its own — and take care of her. *"They would twirl up a drag show on Saturday night and here'd come the money. That's how we bought medicine. That's how we paid rent. If it hadn't been for the drag queens, I don't know what we would have done."* By the mid-1990s, new treatments emerged. The crisis began to shift. And then, like so many heroes of the AIDS crisis, Ruth Coker Burks faded from public memory. She wrote a memoir in 2019 called *All the Young Men* because she needed people to understand what happened in Arkansas. What happened across America. What happens when fear convinces people to abandon their own children. And what happens when one person refuses to walk past a door everyone else fears. She didn't have medical training. She didn't have institutional backing. She didn't have money. She had compassion. Courage. Posthole diggers. And a family cemetery. That was enough to make sure 1,000 people didn't die believing they were worthless. The next time someone says one person can't change anything — Remember the red bag on the door. Remember the 13 hours she stayed with a stranger. Remember the 40 graves she dug with her own hands. She walked through that door in 1984. And 1,000 lives were forever changed because of it.

@For_Film_Fans Comic genius!

Remembering the genius performer, author, poet, musician, painter, actor, environmental campaigner, conservationist, cartoonist & Goon — SPIKE MILLIGAN — born 108yrs ago today. Here he talks about his faith, failures and how he’d like to be remembered.

Meanwhile 1 in 3 human babies in the UK are aborted

Strength on behalf of others

@Glinner @michaeljknowles One of the most irritating and challenging practices we are urged to follow! "Love the sinner, hate the sin!"

Absolutely brilliant from @michaeljknowles

@Ben_Scallan Amen! And it's been DISASTROUS for people and country. Cut it OUT! #FFG

Irish voters believed Eamon Ryan and the Green Party were responsible for many policies that they hate, e.g. carbon tax, ultra wokeness, etc. The public were under the impression that FFG were basically sensible and competent at their core, and were simply being forced to make concessions to radical environmentalists against their better judgement for the sake of holding the coalition together. So the voters destroyed the Green Party and reduced their Dáil share from 12 seats to 1, but kept FFG around, assuming they'd get a steady hand of the old parties unencumbered by window box salads and wolves. And yet now the Greens are gone, but the policies people hate remained. It's almost like the Green Party weren't actually the primary culprit, and were only a convenient mudguard for the bigger parties, who are actually the primary defenders of this stuff.

@CF_Farrow Her and her husband's treatment of their respective families has not been 'kind'. Quite the contrary.

Chris Chan is the most trolled person in the world. I wonder what metric she's using?

@AdamPollock Whereabouts in NI is it? Will circulate! And why is market so bad there? You wouldn't get a 2 bed apt for that here in Dublin.

The Northern Ireland housing market is absolutely bleak. Our house has been listed for sale for a month and we have only had one viewing. 3 bedrooms, fully renovated over the last two years, right by the coast, for under £230,000. Anyone want it?

@john_mcguirk @jasonomahony Cometh the hour, cometh the man....

@jasonomahony A government that actually wished to tackle the problems of the country would have to be willing to forego re-election. That's true. Doesn't mean it shouldn't be done.

If we set up an Irish doge to find savings in public spending to fund a very big cut in fuel Taxes we would run out of popular things to cut very quickly.

@Toibin1 Can't have very bright advisors or 'consultants' should I say?! #theyholdusincontmept

Mícheál Martin has doubled down all this week in attacking the protesters. He has been blackening the name of ordinary people who were at breaking point. When you are in a hole, stop digging. independent.ie/irish-news/fia…

@mullallyelaine @sarahcatryan @irish_question_ @Nick_Delehanty @PaulTreyvaud @declanganley @AidanJoyce Of course, what do people expect?! Modern governments are spin merchants - not servants of the people. 'People' are to be controlled...

Great to be joined by @sarahcatryan on this weeks episode of @irish_question_ where we discuss the fuel crisis and more ….. @Nick_Delehanty @PaulTreyvaud @declanganley @AidanJoyce