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When I took voluntary redundancy from a regional newspaper three years ago, I decided to set up a personal blog.

I had no idea what was coming next in my life, but I knew that I loved to write and I saw a regular or occasional blog as a great way of communicating my thoughts and feelings through this crazy journey called life.

Given my own personal demons at that time – sudden unemployment, illness, uncertainty about the future, fear – seemed so universal in an extremely unequal Ireland, it just kind of morphed into a political blog.

Many people feel that the gross inequalities currently on show in Irish life are not always adequately reflected in our mainstream media. Which is why bloggers can play an important role!

I had already written a travel blog – called Ciaran’s Gap Year – during a wonderful career break from the Connacht Tribune and I loved the experience of being able to chronicle my travels through Thailand, Nicaragua, and Spain in 2010.

Little did I think in 2014, when I began scribbling on a reasonably regular basis, that my blog would make such an impact that I’d find myself alone but very happy among strangers at a glittering awards ceremony in Dublin on Thursday night.

Over the three years since, I have touched on issues such as homelessness, Irish neutrality, mental health, Palestinian and Syria human rights, post-conflict Northern Ireland, and our appalling treatment of asylum-seekers, enjoying the sheer freedom which comes with writing a weekly or occasional personal blog.

Through the blog, I have met wonderful people such as Catherine Corless, who broke the ‘Tuam Babies’ scandal; African taxi-drivers, who have been subjected to appalling racism; and survivors of institutional abuse.

The blog has clearly struck a chord at times, sometimes reaching up to 30,000 ‘hits’ thanks to social media shares by people such as Luke ‘Ming’ Flanagan MEP, Belenus (of Call for a Revolution in Ireland), and the team behind Broadsheet.ie.

One blog post about 1916 even earned me a regular gig as a paid contributor to Irish Central, the biggest news site for the Irish community in North America.

It was written in anger, after two columnists at the Daily Telegraph dared to compare the 1916 rebel leaders to ISIS.

A night for celebration

So last Thursday was a night for celebration. I had reached the final of the V by Very Irish Blog of the Year awards and it was delightful to receive such recognition from my peers.

It was only when I got to The Academy that I realised the scale of the achievement. Although hardly anyone in the Dublin blogging community knows me, I was one of 5,000 initial entries who were whittled down to just a few dozen finalists.

I was thrilled to come second in the Current Affairs category, and I was also blown away by the quality and broad range of blogs and bloggers who made it to the final.

So congratulations to An Sionnach Fionn, who beat me to first prize in the Current Affairs (Personal Blog) category. And to the team behind Slugger O’Toole, winners of the corporate prize.

Congrats also to The Gastro Gays, who won the Blog of the Year award.

I survived three rounds of judging to make it to the final and the prize has given me a huge boost as I continue to adjust to life as a former newspaper journalist.

Thanks so much to everyone who has supported both me and my blog during a period of transition and even crisis in my industry.

And, remember, if you do want to hire a blogger – I have written about a huge variety of subjects over the past 25 years – there’s one available right here out in the wild west, on the Wild Atlantic Way.

I also hope to continue ranting about injustice in Irish society. Now, more than ever, Ireland needs writers with integrity. On Thursday night, I was delighted to see that there are quite a few of us about!

• To hire a ghost blogger for your business website, please call Ciaran Tierney at (087) 7996290
• You can read my regular rants at http://ciarantierney.blogspot.ie/ I have kept them separate from my business website, as the blog predates http://ciarantierney.com/

A few weeks ago, I got a chance to spend three wonderful days in Belfast. It was my first visit to the city in 21 years.

When I was last there, civil servants from the Republic were seen as “legitimate targets” by loyalists as they worked on the peace process which led to the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.

Nobody in the city ventured out late at night and the centre used to become deserted after about 7pm.

The visible scars have been removed and I found a city, with so much to offer, which has been radically transformed for the better.

It may still take some time for the less visible scars to heal.

The watchtowers, lookout posts, and British Army bases have been removed but, sadly, people in the nationalist and loyalist communities seldom cross the divide.

They may not mix as much as they could, at work, school, play, or in the sports they follow, but everyone seems pretty united in terms of how much better life is today than it was during The Troubles.

One of the people I interviewed, Una Murphy, recalled an occasion back in the 1990s when her mother was shocked to see two tourists outside City Hall.

“The phone rang and my mother was in awe, she said she had just seen two Japanese people with cameras outside City Hall,” recalls Una, with a smile. “In those days, tourists never came to Belfast.

“I came back to Belfast around the year 2000. It has taken a few years, but you can really notice the difference now. It’s normal to see so many tourists walking around the city center and we have had more cruise ships than ever in the harbor this year. During The Troubles, nobody really wanted to come here.”

Nowadays, the red open-top busses are full of tourists, the Titanic Quarter is pulsating with energy, and former paramilitarys bring the curious on walking tours of the “hot spots” on the Shankill and the Falls Road.

Read my latest travel feature for Irish Central here: https://www.irishcentral.com/opinion/others/buzzing-belfast-is-learning-to-leave-its-troubles-behind-photos

 

The winner of the Best Irish Documentary feature award at the Galway Film Fleadh last weekend was a poignant film about a Connemara-born boxer who once fought for a world title.

But it’s about so much more than boxing.

Sean Mannion left Ros Muc, in the Gaeltacht, for a new life in Boston which has seen him spend most of the past 40 years a long way from home.

In chronicling Sean’s career, and how unbelievably hard he has been on himself, the film is a tale of the Irish experience of exile and how so much of our identity is tied up in the towns and villages which spawned us.

In many ways, Sean is the complete opposite of current media hype specialist Conor McGregor. He never talked himself up, he hever denigrated his opponents, and he was far too hard on himself for losing a gruelling world title fight to Mike McCallum in 1984.

Here’s a piece I wrote for Irish Central about this excellent film, published yesterday:

https://www.irishcentral.com/opinion/others/exile-from-ireland-and-what-it-means-to-call-a-place-home#at_pco=smlwn-1.0&at_si=59720e7d836686f7&at_ab=per-2&at_pos=0&at_tot=1

 

A deeply moving vigil to remember and honour the “Tuam Babies” took place in Galway on Sunday evening.

The Honouring the Babies event was organised by First Light, a charity which provides specialised bereavement counselling to families who lose babies and young children.

It was all the more poignant because it was attended by a number of survivors from Mother and Baby Homes across the West of Ireland who had been impacted by the findings of the Commission of Inquiry last month.

First Light representative in Galway Emer Hennelly says the idea behind the event at the Circle of Life Garden in Salthill was to honour all of those children who lost their lives in institutions across Ireland.

She said young families who avail of the specialised counselling provided by First Light had been deeply moved by the “Tuam Babies” revelations in recent weeks.

The charity, which used to be known as the Irish Sudden Infant Death Association (ISIDA), also attracted a record attendance to its Mile in Memory walk in Salthill earlier the same day.

Parents, siblings, friends, and neighbours of children who passed away too soon walked a mile from the Galway Bay Hotel before returning to the Circle of Life Garden to release balloons in memory of their loved-ones.

“Not only did we want to let off the balloons to remember the little ones who left us too soon, we wanted to use the occasion to honour and remember the 796 Tuam Babies and all of those children who died or grew up in Irish Mother and Baby Homes,” said Emer.

The sudden loss of a child is the most unimaginable pain a family can suffer and Emer said it was important to remember all children who died too young, as well as supporting today’s parents in their darkest hour.

First Light have supported families in their darkest hour for 35 years and Emer says that many of today’s parents were deeply moved by the recent confirmation that hundreds of babies may have been buried at unmarked graves in Tuam.

“For 35 years, we have been helping families finding help and support following the sudden or unexpected death of a child. We felt it was important to honour all babies who passed away in Irish institutions,” says Emer.

Ms Hennelly said the First Light organisers were thrilled that historian Catherine Corless, who spoke at the event, and survivors from the Tuam home attended Sunday’s event.

Journalist Ciaran Tierney, who was MC for the 45 minute ceremony, said Ms Corless was a modern Irish hero.

“Only for her painstaking research, the world would never have heard about the ‘Tuam Babies’,” he said. “Catherine was determined to find out the truth about what happened at the Tuam home and, in doing so, she has given a voice to the voiceless.

“Some of the survivors have said they were unable to talk about their experiences in the home until Catherine’s research was made public. They said she has given them the courage to speak out for the first time.”

Poignant poetry and song

Two Galway-based singers, Sinead Nic Gabhann and Ruth Dillon, sang deeply poignant songs at the gathering and Caroline Quigley, author and healer, read a poem she wrote especially for the event.

Ronan Scully read a poem in memory of a friend’s child, who died tragically just days prior to Sunday’s moving ceremony.

“By receiving help in dealing with bereavement from appropriately trained professionals, parents and families can learn to live with their grief and begin rebuilding their lives,” said Ms Hennelly.

The survivors from the Tuam home were invited to the front of the stage where they joined Ruth Dillon for a moving rendition of ‘We Are The World’ at the end of the ceremony.

• A blog post about the quest for truth and justice among the survivors of the Tuam Mother and Baby Home:  http://ciarantierney.blogspot.ie/2017/04/hey-enda-is-it-really-such-long-way-to.html

A blog post about Catherine Corless, a modern Irish hero:  http://ciarantierney.blogspot.ie/2017/04/the-tireless-determination-of-modern.html

 

A charity which provides help and support to families following the sudden or unexpected death of a child has organised a vigil to honour the “Tuam Babies” in Galway on Sunday (7pm).

First Light representative in Galway Emer Hennelly says the idea behind the event at the Circle of Life Garden in Salthill is to honour those children who lost their lives in institutions across Ireland.

The charity, which used to be known as the Irish Sudden Infant Death Association (ISIDA), is holding a Mile in Memory walk in Salthill earlier the same day (12 noon).

The sudden loss of a child is the most unimaginable pain a family can suffer and Emer says it’s important to remember all children who died too young, as well as supporting today’s parents in their darkest hour.

Sunday’s event takes place in a beautiful garden, located near the seafront promenade, which was opened by Denis and Martina Goggin as a tribute to their late son, Eamonn.

The Goggins took a huge interest in organ donation after Eamonn died tragically in a road traffic accident.

It is located between the Salthill Hotel and the Galway Bay Hotel.

First Light have supported families in their darkest hour for 35 years and Emer says that many of today’s parents were deeply moved by the recent confirmation that hundreds of babies may have been buried at unmarked graves in Tuam.

“For 35 years, we have been helping families finding help and support following the sudden or unexpected death of a child. We felt it was important to honour all babies who passed away in Irish institutions,” says Emer.

Service users will take part in the Mile in Memory Walk along the Salthill Promenade earlier on Sunday, at 12 noon. Registration takes place just before the walk at the Galway Bay Hotel.

Emer says that First Light exists to help parents following the tragic or unexpected death of a baby or child.

“By receiving help in dealing with bereavement from appropriately trained professionals, parents and families can learn to live with their grief and begin rebuilding their lives,” she says.

Survivors of Irish institutions, including the Tuam Mother and Baby Home, are especially welcome at Sunday’s event which is expected to last less than an hour.

Two wonderful Galway-based singers, Sinead Nic Gabhann and Ruth Dillon, will sing at the gathering and Caroline Quigley, author and healer, will read a poem she wrote especially for the event.

Find the event on Facebook, and spread the word! https://www.facebook.com/events/163520377504732/

Contact Emer at (086) 3642886 for further information about First Light or about the ‘Honouring the Babies’ event on Sunday.

• Check out my recent blog about the heroic work by Catherine Corless to discover the truth about the 796 “Tuam Babies”: http://ciarantierney.blogspot.ie/2017/04/the-tireless-determination-of-modern.html

Hire a content writer! http://ciarantierney.com/what-i-offer/a-content-writer-in-galway/

The dogged determination of a quiet-spoken local historian to discover the truth about what happened to the Irish children now known as the “Tuam babies” has made headlines all across the world.

Catherine Corless never sought the limelight, but she did want justice for the mothers who were imprisoned in the Tuam home and the children who never had a chance in life.

She has shone a light on our darkness thanks to her tireless research to find out the fate of the 796 “Tuam babies”.

And she has given a voice to survivors of institutional homes who felt they were never worthy of a voice, or an apology for being labelled as “illegitiamate” or “bastards” by an uncaring Irish society.

Many of the survivors have contacted the North Galway historian in order to talk about their experiences as “home babies” in such institutions for the first time in their adult lives.

“I didn’t go looking for survivors. They looked for me. They rang me and called to the house. They just kept coming. We’d sit down and discuss over cups of tea what I could do for them. They have begun to speak out and to find their true voice, which is fantastic,” she told Irish Central this week.

Thanks to Catherine, some of the survivors are now campaigning to find out what happened to their siblings – presumed dead, but with no proper burial ground to show where they are buried.

There are fears now that birth and death records may have been faked so that Irish children could have been adopted by Americans.

Before adoption legislation was introduced in 1952, many Americans sought Irish children for adoption.

Indeed, if it is found that some American children were given false Irish birth certificates after being adopted, it could yet prove to be as big a scandal as that of the “Tuam babies”.

I spoke to Catherine in her North Galway home for a couple of hours this week.

The result was a two part series for IrishCentral.com this weekend.

Here are the two articles I wrote, based on my lengthy interview with Catherine.

Part One: How she did it … http://www.irishcentral.com/news/how-she-did-it-the-heroic-irish-historian-who-broke-the-tuam-baby-home-scandal

Part Two: Tuam babies may have been adopted in large numbers to US http://www.irishcentral.com/news/tuam-babies-adopted-in-large-numbers-to-us-says-historian-who-broke-the-scandal?q=Tuam%20babies

In my opinion, following her tireless work and the obstacles placed in her way, Catherine should be first in line for a ‘People of the Year’ award.

• Read my recent blog post about a dignified ceremony in Galway to honour the women who were imprisoned in the Magdalene Laundries http://ciarantierney.blogspot.ie/2017/03/remembering-maggies.html

Who were the Magdalenes?

They were imprisoned until the 1980s, with the full collusion of the Irish State and even their own families.

They spent years, sometimes their entire adult lives, working in laundries which were run by religious nuns.

Sometimes, not always, they were “guilty” of the crime of having a child outside marriage.

Their children were taken from them and sometimes shipped off to the United States for adoption.

It’s one of the most shameful aspects of modern Irish history.

They called them Magdalene Laundries.

On Sunday, I attended a gorgeous, poignant, moving ceremony to remember these women.

At the graveside, a wonderful man called Peter Mulryan spoke about his search for his missing sister and his childhood in the Tuam Mother and Babies Home.

“If you starve an animal or dog, what we do they look? That’s the way we looked,” he said on Irish television this week.

I wrote about the moving ceremony for Irish Central, based in New York. You can read the article here http://www.irishcentral.com/news/mothers-imprisioned-in-magdalene-laundries-remembered-with-flowers-in-galway

 

Continue reading Banned in the land that made us refugees …

A former newspaper colleague recently confided in me that she never reads any of the comments under her articles whenever they appear on-line in national publications.

Even though she has written brilliantly about her own personal struggle with depression, attracting the admiration of thousands of readers, she has found some of the comments just too hurtful, too ignorant to ever pay attention to them.

By her reckoning, it’s better to ignore all comments than to trawl through them in search of genuinely engaging responses or feedback from readers who have enjoyed – or want to criticise – her work.

One of the Rubberbandits, the satirical comedy duo from Limerick, recently described the comments section of a major Irish news website as a “sewer”.

I got a taste of how the Rubberbandits and my former colleague felt at the weekend when I was commissioned by Irish Central, the US-based website, to cover a Women’s March in Galway on Saturday afternoon.

It was one of almost 700 events taking place across the globe on the same day in solidarity with a march in Washington DC, in which women across America were expressing concern at the Inauguration of the new President of the United States, Donald J. Trump.

This was a man who had boasted about groping women “by the pussy”, who had mocked a disabled reporter, and seemed to have racist and Islamaphobic views about Mexicans and Muslims.

I went to the Galway march as a reporter, with the intention of talking to people – mostly women – about their motives for taking part.

My own views on Donald Trump didn’t count, although I admit I was shocked by Trump’s election victory in the wake of so many divisive comments during the election campaign. Not that I was a fan of Hillary’s . . .

I was hugely impressed by the turn-out at the march. There were hundreds there on a cold but beautiful January afternoon in Galway and it was remarkable to see so many young women at the march – these were not the kind of people who would normally attend a ‘loony lefty’ demonstration in my small city.

The speeches were defiant and there was a real sense of solidarity among the hundreds who turned up.

I quite enjoyed my couple of hours in Eyre Square, talking to peace activists, Irish-Americans, and anti-racist groups who were all horrified or frightened by Trump’s election.

And then I went home to file my piece for Irish Central, which was published online the following day.

You can read the piece here: http://www.irishcentral.com/news/politics/trump-support-sinks-faster-than-the-sun-on-galway-bay

The piece was shared on Facebook 200 times and attracted hundreds of comments.

A day or two later, out of morbid curiosity, I flicked through them and I was shocked by the tone.

Some commentators claimed that the entire piece was “fake news”, that the march never took place at all.

As if a journalist could make the entire thing up after going along to a demonstration, taking photos, and interviewing a dozen participants in the march.

But, no, I was wrong. It was all anti-Trump lies. The march had never taken place, I read, according to commentators who attracted dozens of ‘likes’.

Others attacked the Irish ‘liberals’ for their cheek in complaining about the new President of America, as though politics in the US had no impact on our lives.

That’s news to the thousands of Irish families who have family members in the US, the thousands who rely on US multi-nationals in Ireland for jobs, and those of us who see US troops fly through our local airport every day to bomb children in places like Syria, Iraq, and Yemen.

But, no, I was wrong. I had joined the ranks of these “fake news” proponents so hated by Donald Trump during his divisive election campaign.

For a few moments, I tried to reason with some of them, to point out that I could not possibly have just invented a march which was attended by hundreds of people.

But I was told to “get off my high horse” by those who were clearly enraged that Irish “liberals” would dare to criticise their new leader.

For a few brief moments, I got a taste of this “post-truth” world which seems to have torn the US apart when it comes to social media.

Normally, people only read what they want to read. They spend their social media lives in echo chambers in which everyone agrees with them.

And when someone comes along and threatens their grasp of reality, they are ridiculed, libelled, and attacked. Because anything is better than reading an opposing point of view these days.

Social media allows us to make instant contact with people all over the world, which can be fantastic. Sadly, it also allows people to fabricate and distort the truth, to such an extent than a Facebook user in Virginia or Texas can convince people that a march in Galway never took place.

Before, instead of fact checking, they just move on to the next story. Full of bitterness and hatred towards those who have an opposing point of view.

Because that’s just the nature of the social media sewer when it comes to political discourse in 2017.

If you don’t like someone’s message, just keep repeating the mantra that it’s “fake news”.

Find me on Facebook: http://facebook.com/ciarantierneymedia/

This week I was commissioned by Irish Central to write an article about the loneliness and mental health problems faced by parents whose adult children have emigrated from Ireland.

You can read the article here.

A 2014 report found that women, in particular, experienced loneliness and depression after their children moved overseas.

The loneliness was compounded when the adult children put down new roots and grandchildren did not come ‘home’ to Ireland at this emotional time of year.

Skype calls and Facebook messages don’t make up for not being able to spend time in each other’s company.

I spoke to one of the co-authors of the report, Alan Barrett, who said that emigration no longer seemed to be a big issue now that the Irish economy seems to be in recovery.

I also spoke to three elderly people who have children overseas and came to hugely admire the work of ALONE Ireland, who send out teams of enthusiastic volunteers to visit elderly people in their own homes.

ALONE Ireland recently produced a fantastic video to celebrate the tireless work of their small army of volunteers. They brought an entire cinema to tears when it was screened in a Dublin cinema.

The article was published online yesterday.

What surprised me most following the publication was the sheer vitriol it attracted from readers of Irish Central after the troubles of ‘illegal’ Irish immigrants in the United States were referenced at the start of the article.

Instead of reading about the loneliness of three elderly Irish people – none of whose children are ‘illegals’ – and the care ALONE provides, about 90% of social media comments called on the illegals to be sent home.

To judge by the comments, some Irish Americans seem to know little or nothing of their own troubled history and how their ancestors came to live in America.

There was no compassion, no tolerance, no empathy for the elderly Irish people who never get to see their American grandchildren at Christmas.

Here in Ireland, we have had stories in the media about Irish people in the US who can never return home for family funerals or weddings, because of their ‘illegal’ status.

The irony of course is that all these white English speakers who proclaim their loathing of Irish immigrants are the descendants of immigrants themselves, living on stolen land.

They have a festival called ‘Thanksgiving’ which celebrates the theft of a nation and the slaughter of indigenous tribes.

The ‘illegals’ constituted just a small part of the article, but attracted virtually all of the – 90% negative – commentary on Irish Central.

There was no sense of empathy with the elderly Irish people who might not even have wanted their children to move, illegally, to the US.

Of course, we should not judge an entire nation by a few dozen social media comments, especially a nation as big and diverse as the United States.

But the comments gave me an insight into the kind of mentality which allowed a racist, sexist, Islamophobe to be elected President of the United States.

Fear and loathing of those who are different seems to have replaced the positivity and optimism we used to associate with the ‘American Dream’.

If people have so much hatred and intolerance in their hearts at this time of year, what hope is there for multiculturalism in Trump’s America?

If Irish-Americans have no affinity with the new Irish, how would they have felt if Americans had treated their ancestors in the same way when they arrived on the ‘coffin’ ships from Ireland?

2016 has been a troubling year.

At least in Ireland we still have a sense of community, of caring for the underdog or those who flee poverty and persecution.

Those values seem to be evaporating in the US if one is to judge by the reaction to my article this week.

 

• Hire a ghost blogger: http://ciarantierney.com/what-i-offer/ghost-blogging-2/