Search Results for: foreign affairs
The Department of Foreign Affairs has a secret file on Shergar
I’m not sure I really need to say much more than that here. Seriously, a secret Shergar file, from the Irish Embassy in London. Who could resist? The info in file 3/175 runs from 1983 to 1984. I guess, seeing as Iveagh House isn’t going to tell us, we’ll have to rely on Tesco to spill the beans.
Irish Foreign Policy
It would be really nice and reassuring if we could know what Ireland’s foreign policy is on some important matters. Recently, I heard the minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade on the radio; he asserted he was working very long hours and working hard. He said it was a privilege. I was immediately concerned. The assessment of his work is not his to make; it is ours. He should, instead have reported on the issues, not on his workload. With […]
How to Read the McAleese Report into the Magdalen Laundries
Preface The McAleese Report was published on 5th February 2013. It had been commissioned following a complaint to the United Nations Committee Against Torture (UNCAT) resulted in the then Secretary General of the Department of Foreign Affairs, Sean Alymard, attending in Switzerland in May 2011 to address specific claims of state involvement in an organised system of forced labour and mistreatment. The Irish State’s representative specifically denied the facts as they had been presented by the Justice for Magdalen’s research group. […]
I’m sorry, I can’t tell you about the weather. It’s a secret.
Dealing with these files sometimes throws up questions of balance. After all, you can see why personal data relating to job inquiries or sometimes even sensitive family matters such as adoptions shouldn’t be released heedlessly into the public domain. But in 2013 the Department of Foreign Affairs decided that file 250/1048, containing “Meteorological Data” covering the years 1953-1981 should be kept secret. The Certificate cites Section 8(4)(a) which requires that the file being withheld shouldn’t be released because it (a) would […]
Rendition at Shannon?
Well, he didn’t actually claim it was lawful, but the idea that what the US government tells the Irish government must be taken in good faith is dead in the water.
The Irish ePassport
Biometrics is the statistical analysis of biological data. A passport, therefore, cannot be a biometric passport, unless the meaning of biometrics has changed. A passport could be biometric if the purpose is the accumulation of statistics, not of one person or passport, but of many passports. Passports, historically, were provided to travelers to ease their journey in foreign countries. A State document, requesting that the authorities abroad should help the traveler accorded with the fact that only States existed in […]
The EU Reform Treaty
We do not yet know what is in the EU Reform Treaty. However, we have some insight into the Charter of Fundamental Rights, which forms part of the Treaty.