Conor O'Mahony

🚨🚨🚨 Q: Is there any scenario in which DOJ would try to block states from certifying the election? AG TODD BLANCHE: Yes, of course. It is not DOJ's intention to improperly interfere with elections or the state certification process, but ...

Prof Mary Donnelly was recently a guest on the Health Research Board’s Health Research Podcast where she discussed hot topics in the field of research ethics such as bioethics, clinical practice, AI governance, data protection and public trust with moderator Dr O’Connell. youtu.be/g0XlPY2OUq0?...

Aaaaand this is why we can’t have satire anymore

The Irish Times view on third-level funding: the shortfall remains - The 2026 budget will make a long-standing problem worse. No one can continue doing more with less indefinitely. www.irishtimes.com/opinion/edit...

Budget 2027: Active travel funding still frozen at 2020 level effectively means it's a 29% cut irishcycle.com/2026/10/06/b...

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich: “The thorough cleansing that we are carrying out now in southern Lebanon is unprecedented. “They have nowhere to return to. Look at how it looks. “And by the way, the world isn’t stopping us.”

UCC School of Law staff were invited to address the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Children and Equality today regarding incorporation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child into Irish Law - Prof Ursula Kilkelly, Dr Aisling Parkes and myself were all in attendance. @lawucc.bsky.social

Says it all. @jvp.bsky.social

A campaign for *MSF* to be banned as a terrorist group (on the paper thin basis of claims about 2 past employees) is the product of the UK Govt being willing to divorce any meaningful conception of societal threat from its use of proscription powers. Govt needs to wake up to the madness of this:

Reform Party might go to the European Court of Human Rights - the court it wants to leave To challenge retrospective legislation ("not the British way") - but retrospective legislation (loss of indefinite leave to remain) is the core of its immigration policy

Ireland's message.

'From School Leaver to Law Graduate' - Anna’s Story At 17, Anna Jakobek left secondary school without a Leaving Certificate. Today, at 25, she has completed a law degree at University College Cork and built a career helping people find work. allaboutcork.ie/from-school-...

As of Cabinet yesterday, one now needs the ability to communicate in order to be considered a citizen. Yet in the first three months of 2026, not a single child in ten counties was given a plan on how the State would deliver them with speech and language therapy. This week’s column @thejournal.ie:

NEW: The San Francisco City Attorney has hit Meta with a cease-and-desist telling it to stop publishing ads with AI-generated child sexual abuse. The letter asks Meta why the same ads keep running. Meta says the ads didn’t run in San Francisco and they are outside the city attorney's jurisdiction

Only 71,850 people have registered to vote in the new Higher Education constituency for the Seanad, despite a potential electorate of between 800,000 and 1,000,000 graduates. The unified 6-seater is open to graduates of over 80 higher level institutions, not just the historic TCD and NUI.

NEW: In one of the most horrifying stories I've ever reported, I found that Facebook is hosting huge quantities of AI-generated videos of violent child abuse -- kids being beaten, burned, and far more But the genuinely shocking thing was how little Meta seems to care futurism.com/artificial-i...

90 years ago, Parliament responded to the rise of Oswald Mosley's Blackshirts by passing the Public Order Act, which banned political uniforms, private militias and the threat of force for political objects. The debates make very resonant reading today. Here's the Liberal Robert Bernays. (Short 🧵)

I need someone to explain why buildings full of computers are entitled to better treatment than human beings.

“WELCOME BACK TO day six of our coverage of Election 2049. Let’s go straight to the National Basketball Arena in Tallaght, and the count in Dublin South West, where the marathon count to fill the ninth and tenth seats is nearing completion…” It could happen, you know, if nobody calls a referendum:

Pick a side.

Tonight, we reveal how water use from data centres almost doubled during the summer, peaking in July when the hosepipe ban was introduced for households. The figures show data centres used over 514 million litres of water between May and July this year. Read on thejournal.ie just after midnight 🔜

Rewilded land remains green amid drought-stricken English countryside, images show

"The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) had previously denied involvement in the January 2024 killing, saying months later that a preliminary investigation found its forces were “not present near the vehicle or within firing range” of the vehicle." www.cnn.com/2026/08/19/m...

📢 Recruitment Opportunity in the OCO The Senior Communications and Engagement Officer (HEO) will support the delivery of the OCO’s communications and strategic objectives to internal and external stakeholders. ⌛Closing Date: 25/08/2026 – 12:00 noon 👉🏼 Apply at: www.ocojobs.com

protection w/ @thebikinglawyer.bsky.social

14 hours later and my mentions are still full of angry treatises about badly behaved cyclists. Bike lanes are not a reward for good cyclist behavior! They are infrastructure proven to make cities safer for ALL ROAD USERS. Whatever way cyclists have wronged you is irrelevant to the discussion!

Thomson Reuters, which owns news agency Reuters, has signed a $125M deal giving ICE access to its databases of personal data. USA Today has partnered with Palantir to gain "actionable intelligence" on its audiences. The media should be opponents of Trump's police state — not collaborators.

If this guy had been born 70 years earlier and 4,000 km to the northwest, would he be the one calling for the killings, or the one that senior Government officials deemed "not worthy of life"?

'If you want to get a job immediately in Brussels, speak Irish and do a law degree' www.irishtimes.com/business/wor... Tuilleadh eolais: www.ucc.ie/en/ck304/

Israel deliberately starting wildfires in southern Lebanon, firefighters say

Horrible things are happening in the West Bank Horrible, it’s not just pogroms, people are being seiged inside their houses, starving to death Ambulances are being blocked by settlers Water pipes are being vandalised People are being kicked out of their homes >

We too easily skipped over the part of the Ceuta story where thousands of young people were manipulated into risking or losing their lives for a lie; to orchestrate images that then led the news agenda for the weekend, and kneejerk reactions from EU Govs And the Irish failures that let this happen

"I think now, after they killed one Israeli, we need to kill all the people in Tal and Sarra, even Jit and Farata," he said. I put it to him that he was equating one Jewish life with hundreds or even thousands of Palestinian lives. "One Jewish life, it's 10 million."

In this short paper, I reflect on the demise of citizens' assemblies in Ireland and propose a new role for deliberative mini-publics in working with the Electoral Commission to 'support' the referendum process in Ireland publications-prairial.fr/droit-public...

Fear of being run over.

Breaking news

Statement by President Connolly on the death of Glen Hansard president.ie/en/media-lib...

"A judicial review is any case taken against any public body that may have broken the law — it's the separation of powers working as intended". Thanks to @cathalmalone.bsky.social for writing this for us www.irishexaminer.com/opinion/comm...

Riding bikes is 10X more important than electric cars for reaching net-zero cities. And that’s just the climate emissions. Doesn’t include the massive public & personal cost difference, the air & noise pollution difference, the massive space difference, etc, etc…Via @theconversation.bsky.social

Mark Zuckerberg's assistant at Meta, Josh Felker, who was responsible for Meta's "digital experiences for kids," was arrested after admitting he tried to sext a 13-year-old during an undercover sting. nypost.com/2026/07/20/u...

In 2021, Meta’s data centre complex in Clonee, Co. Meath, used more water from the mains than Irish Water said was being used by all Irish data centres combined. “Does Irish Water even know how much water data centres are using?”, by @lokapila.bsky.social www.dublininquirer.com/does-irish-w...

One way of seeing climate change in action is looking at 1200 year continuous data from Japan about cherry tree blossoming.

I’m fascinated why kids are supposed to conserve water in Ireland. The entire population drinks just 3-5 billion litres per annum. There are 129 data centres here, each using at least 0.5 million L a >Day< - that’s 182.5 million L per annum. Multiplied by 129 centres = 23.5 billion per annum*.

The CSO has released data on metered electricity consumption for 2025. The extraordinary headline figures: - Electricity consumption from data centres grew by nearly 10% last year, and now accounts for 23% of Ireland's electricity demand.