Here's How ::: Ireland's Political, Social and Current Affairs Podcast

Ellie O’Byrne is co-editor of Tripe and Drisheen, a Cork-based local news substack, and we discussed a recent article of hers. ***** In talking to Ellie, I mentioned a tweet from Cllr Fiona Ryan of People Before Profit, who claimed that there are 25,000 ‘Airbnb vacancies’ in Ireland. I used the website InsideAirbnb.com to show […]

Derek Mooney presents Mooney on Politics. Give it a listen.

Frank Armstrong is the editor of the magazine called Cassandra Voices. ***** I got a lot of the ideas for this discussion from an article by Yuriy Gorodnichenko on Berkeley Blog.

Reinhard Bütikofer is the senior member of German Green Party delegation to the European Parliament. *****

Sarah Hurst is a journalist who has been reporting on Russia for thirty years – her interview starts at 15:00. ***** Sharon Keogan is an independent member of Seanad Éireann, she’s one of those independent politicians who discovered her deeply-held belief in independent politics, just after she discovered that she had failed to get a […]

Michael Doherty is the PRO of the Mica Action Group. ***** I was talking to Billy Kelleher in the last podcast about Ukraine, and the west’s reaction, and in particular the attitude of MEPs Clare Daly and Mick Wallace. Naomi O’Leary started and epic Twitter discussion over Easter about the contrasting attitude of Wallace and […]

Billy Kelleher was Fianna Fáíl’s only MEP from being elected in 2019 for the South constituency until he was joined from the subs bench by Barry Andrews. He previously he served as a senator since 1993, and as a TD since 1997, including as and served as a minister of state from 2007 to 2011. […]

Ewan Mackenna is a sports journalist who was written five books on sports. Recently, he has been blogging and tweeting about the public health response to the COVID-19 pandemic. *****

John McGuirk is the editor of Gript.ie There is no doubt about the extent of the housing problem in Ireland, certainly not if you’ve been listening to this podcast, I’ve been banging on about it for longer than I, probably longer than you, care for. And if you’ve been listening, you’ll know that I’m a […]

Moore Holmes is a Loyalist and a member of the advocacy group Let’s talk Loyalism. ***** You probably think that you’ve never heard of the WSM, the Workers Solidarity Movement, but you probably have heard of them, even though you don’t remember it; most people don’t pay much attention when they are offered a leaflet […]

Inspector Peter Woods is an inspector at the Dublin Roads Policing Division of An Garda Síochana and Seán O’Kelly is the cofounder of Access for All Ireland. ***** In the last podcast I talked to Professor Norman Fenton the professor of Risk Information Management at Queen Mary University of London; he takes a position that […]

Professor Norman Fenton is a professor of Risk Information Management at Queen Mary University of London. I want to clarify a couple of things that Norman said there. First off, Klaus Schwab is the founder of the World Economic Forum, this is basically an annual event where the captains of politics and business get together […]

Dr Geraldine Simmie Mooney is a senior lecturer in education at the University of Limerick and director of EPI STEM, the National Centre for STEM Education. ***** One thing that, I thought, the Green Party had that left wing parties didn’t, was an understanding of how taxes could be used to modify behaviour. The Greens […]

Dr Karen Keaveney is Head of Subject for Rural Development, and an Assistant Professor in the School of Agriculture and Food Science, University College Dublin. ***** A short update on the last podcast about the conflicts of interest and poor academic and ethical standards at the Active Consent Unit in NUI Galway – we will […]

Dr David Ellis is Associate Professor of Information systems at Bath University and a member of that university’s Academic Ethics and integrity committee. The Active Consent Unit has its own section on the NUIG website, and its media page posts inaccurate media coverage of its work without comment. (Update: They appear to have now hidden […]

So then this happened. And with no notice at all, in the space of a single day, AA Roadwatch disappeared off our airwaves. According to their own announcement, this was a decision made by the AA, which “decided to move away from this service and instead focus on growing other areas of [their] business”. That’s […]

John Lyons is the Independent Left councillor on Dublin City Council for Artane–Whitehall. ***** I want to talk about a scandal. Actually, it’s not so much a scandal, it’s not even a scandal about a scandal, it’s a scandal about a scandal about a scandal. A third order scandal, if you like. The first order […]

Dr. Roslyn Fuller is an author and founder of the Solonian Democracy Institute ***** We have an expectation of a rules-based system of international order. Some of these rules are very famous, they show up in popular media, thing like diplomatic immunity, basically if you send an ambassador to another country, they can’t be arrested, […]

Holly Cairns is the Social Democrats spokesperson on agriculture, food and the marine, and further and higher education and disability. In the interview, Holly questioned the source of figures that indicated that the difference in earnings between men and women was concentrated in the over-40s, with no statistically-significant difference in earnings for those under 40. […]

Nicolas Šustr is the city development and transport editor for the German newspaper formerly known as Neues Deutschland now known as ND. ***** We’re going to have a new leader of the DUP. Leaders of the DUP are generally not anyone’s favourite person, unless that anyone happens to be a DUP supporter. As an aside […]

Daniel Long farming activist and running for president of Macra na Feirme. ***** Things that seem good aren’t always good, things that seem bad aren’t always bad, and things that really are good or bad can sometimes have the confounding outcomes. If you get three education spokespersons in a studio, they’ll usually come out with […]

Eoin Ó Broin is Sinn Féin TD for Dublin Midwest and his party’s housing spokesperson. ***** A topic which I am interested in is ageing and demographic shift. Ireland was, until quite recently, the youngest country demographically in Europe. However, as Ireland’s baby boomers, the generation that David McWilliams calls the pope’s children, push onwards […]

Brenda Power is a journalist for the Sunday Times and Irish Daily Mail, and whose work has appeared in many other publications, and is frequently heard on broadcast media. ***** Maybe I’m giving away my age if I mention my nostalgia for the pirate radio stations of the 1980s. I’m just about old enough to […]

Jim O’Callaghan is a senior council and Fianna Fáil TD for Dublin Bay South. ***** I want to talk about a coup. A coup attempt. A failed coup attempt. It was a ridiculous affair, viewed by some people as little short of comical, despite the fact that several people were killed. The coup attempt was […]

Kate McGrew is the main spokesperson for the Sex Workers Alliance of Ireland. In our interview, I referred to my interview with Sarah Benson, then of Ruhama. ***** I have a big project on at the moment, so this, I’m sorry to say, will be the last Here’s How podcast of 2020. I hope to […]

John Hamill is a long-time secular campaigner and participates in the Free Thought Prophet. We talked about his epic Freedom of Information request. ***** You can see there that John’s story tells a pretty damning tale about the attitude of the Department of Education and Skills, as it’s now called, towards the Freedom of Information […]

Peadar Tóibín is the leader, and only TD of Aontú, having previously been elected for Sinn Féin. ***** I don’t normally do pre-buttals on a podcast interview, but I think that in this case it’s important, because in the context of the coronavirus, and Covid 19, it’s just not acceptable to allow incorrect scientific claims […]

Dermot Lacey is a Labour Party member of Dublin City Council for the Pembroke ward. ***** That’s what he said He, by the way is Brandon Lewis, the UK’s Northern Ireland secretary, basically their minister for Northern Ireland. What he’s announcing there is the UK government’s shirking from the treaty that they signed last December […]

Linda Ervine is a Unionist and Irish language rights activist from East Belfast, and is the president of the recently-formed East Belfast GAA. I talked to her about last year’s Ashcroft polling indicating that support for a United Ireland is increasing towards a tipping point in Northern Ireland. **** I was sitting down to do […]

Larry Donnelly is a native of Boston, He teaches law in NUIG. He has published law journal articles in Ireland and internationally, as well as being a regular media commentator. I talked him about an article he wrote for TheJournal.ie. ***** Two minds are better than one. That’s a fairly obviously true saying in most […]

Alyn Smith is the SNP member of the Westminster parliament for the Scottish constituency of Stirling. Since we spoke, two opinion polls have been published showing the pro-independence side stretching their lead, excluding undecideds, by up to 10 clear percentage points ahead, 55 to 45. ***** You should be paying attention to Belarus. Well, that’s […]

Niall Keenan founder and chairperson of the Shared Ireland. ***** Sinn Féin are calling for a complete ban on co-living. Their housing spokesperson, Eoin Ó Broin, a very talented politician who’s been on this podcast before, not sure if those two are connected, said announcing this that the new housing minister Darragh O’Brien of Fianna […]

Last Saturday there was a demonstration outside the Dáil that was hastily organised to try to capitalise on a controversy that you may or may not have noticed, depending on what corners of Twitter you inhabit, if any. The genesis of this was an article on the website Gript, a clone of far-right American opinion […]

Kerry-Anne Mendoza editor-at-large of the Canary and the author of Austerity: Demolition of the Welfare state and the rise of the zombie economy, published in 2015. We discussed this Twitter thread of hers: ***** It really is good to get feedback from listeners, and to know that there is a growing number of listeners out […]

Malcolm Noonan newly elected Green Party TD for Carlow Kilkenny, having spent 16 years as a local councillor in Kilkenny. ***** It was announced last week that Bewley’s Café on Grafton Street in Dublin won’t be reopening, the operators said that the lockdown, coupled with high rents, have pushed their business over the edge, and […]

Malcolm Byrne won the 2019 bye-election for Fianna Fáil, but did not retain the seat at the general election. He was then elected to Seanad Éireann. Robin Cafolla is chairperson of the Green Party’s Climate Forum. His questions, which informed my interview were first published on Twitter. The Green Party has asked a slightly less-focussed […]

Thanks to Cathal Mac Coille, former Morning Ireland presenter for taking the chair in this special podcast. This is the complaint that I sent to RTÉ. RTÉ gave it short shrift. This is the totality of their response. There was some back-and-forth between me and RTÉ, and RTÉ eventually they made it clear that they […]

Alison Gilliland is Labour Party member of Dublin City Council for Artane/Whitehall. She is also chairperson of Dublin City Council’s Strategic Policy Committee on Housing. In our discussion I mentioned the article in the Irish Times by billionaire financier Dermot Desmond about solutions for the housing crisis. Desmond was found by various investigations to have […]

Peter Boland, as well as running Cases.ie is the director of the Alliance for Insurance Reform. ***** There’s a lot of people talking about the other thing, but I’m sure you’ve heard enough about it by now, and there’s nothing extra that I can say that hasn’t already been said, so let’s talk about something […]

Michael O’Regan is journalist and former parliamentary correspondent of The Irish Times. He says he doesn’t have a book for me to plug, ‘yet’. ***** I managed to grab an interview with Sinn Féin’s Aengus Ó Snodaigh at the election count in the RDS. To put this in context, Aengus Ó Snodaigh got one of […]

Colin Harvey is Professor of Human Rights Law in the School of Law, Queen’s University Belfast, a Fellow of the Senator George J Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice, and an Associate Fellow of the Institute of Irish Studies. In November, his group, Ireland’s Future sent a letter to An Taoiseach calling for […]

Seán Fleming, currently Fianna Fáil TD for Laois, if the gods of the ballot box smile on him he might become the Fianna Fáil TD for the reconstituted constituency of Laois Offaly. He’s been a TD since 1997 and for 15 years before that he was Financial Director of Fianna Fáil at national level. Gavin […]

John McGuirk is the founder and editor of Gript. John referred to the cost of building passive homeshere. In our discussion I mentioned an article falsely claiming that hacked emails from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia showed scientists ‘plotting to manipulate data, … suppress evidence … and boycott … divergent […]

Paul Murphy was an MEP for the Socialist party, since then he’s been elected and 2014 and 2016 as a TD for what became the Solidarity party. He has now founded the party Rise. In our discussion he mentioned the book The People’s Republic of Walmart: How the World’s Biggest Corporations are Laying the Foundation […]

Paul Cullen is the Health Editor of the Irish Times. His article headlined Almost 70% of cyclists without helmet at time of head trauma, appeared on the front page of IT last month. The article was sharply criticised in online discussion, including in this article by Cian Ginty. In our discussion, I mentioned a number […]

The Social Fabric podcast is created by Andrea Splendori, and I’m sharing it in the Here’s How feed to give you a chance to hear a sample episode. If you like it, you can subscribe on his website here.

Dr Katherine O’Keefe is an author, and the director of training and a management consultant with Castlebridge, a data privacy and information governance consultancy. Our discussion referred to a twitter thread by Katherine and another by solicitor Simon McGarr. ***** It’s probably just dumb luck, but I made two pretty accurate predictions about the byzantine […]

Brigid Laffan is currently Director and Professor at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, Director of the Global Governance Programme and of the European Governance and Politics Programme at the European University Institute (EUI), Florence. She was previously Professor of European Politics at University College Dublin. While she was there she was Vice-President of […]

Harry Todd is senior research executive at Get Britain Out, previously worked as campaign manager for Conservative Party. He was also the national ground campaign manager for Leave means Leave. I fact-checked some of the things that Harry said in the interview including that the EU required member states to maintain a VAT rate of […]

I talked to Cormac Halpin, chief statistician with the CSO about the upcoming census. ***** Let’s do a bit of science. Maybe, like me, you have had various social media invaded by people making all sorts of complaints about something called 5G. That’s the newest mobile data standard. Unless you are really special, that doesn’t […]