Gary Cooke's Trailblazers: Eamonn Coghlan by Senior Times

The Football Talking Tour - Ray Houghton by Senior Times

Conor meets Green Party MEP for Dublin Ciaran Cuffe; a familiar sparring partner over the years on TV and radio interviews. They chat about Europe and his work in Brussels, his take on things back home and what his future plans might be.

Steven Smyrl is a professional genealogist who has been at the heart of Irish genealogy for over 30 years. He and Paul go back a long way. They reminisce about how Steven got involved in family history in Ireland and his early days in the profession. They also touch on his work on the unsuccessful campaign to have the 1926 Census released early. But coincidentally funding for the digitisation of that census was announced on the day this podcast went live.

Steven is somewhat taken aback by a compliment paid by Paul, but Paul ploughs on despite Steven's proper show of humility. Protestant dissenting congregations are one of several areas of genealogy and history in which he has particular expertise. His book, Dictionary of Dublin Dissent (Dublin, 2009), is a major contribution to research in that area. His primary work is in probate research. He tells Paul about the television series Dead Money in which he and his genealogist brother, Kit Smyrl, were the stars of the show, tracing some interesting inheritance cases.

Steven is well known for his voluntary work in the field, especially with the Irish Genealogical Research Society and his professional organisation, Accredited Genealogists Ireland. However, few will know that he was instrumental in having the 1939 National Register for England and Wales released. Posterity will thank him for his involvement in having extra information added to death records in the Republic and in Northern Ireland from the 2000s forward. Steven Smyrl is involved in genealogy on all fronts and this chat could have gone on for hours.

Series Producer: Conor O'Hagan

Audio Supervisor: John Hughes

Link to Accredited Genealogists Ireland: https://accreditedgenealogists.ie/

AGI Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/AccreditedGenealogistsIreland

Link to the Irish Genealogical Research Society: https://www.irishancestors.ie/

IGRS Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/IrishGenealogicalResearchSociety

Another crown of musical gems!

Featuring works by Elgar, Mozart, Strauss, Beethoven, Rossini, Schubert, Bach and more.

Presented by John Low.

Produced by Conor O’Hagan

The Irish Newspaper Archives is not just a resource for family historians. It has a much wider audience of academic, social and local historians. It’s an independent Irish business, unconnected to any of the international corporations that control so much online genealogical data. In fact, the Irish Newspaper Archives is a family-run business, so it has its own element of family history. Andrew and Jonathan Martin are part of the team behind the business that was founded by their late father, Alan Martin, in the 1960s.

Today, their mother Annette is another of the four family members currently involved in it.

Andrew and Jonathan tell Paul how their father began what is now the Irish Newspaper Archives by providing microfilming facilities for newspaper publishers and libraries throughout the country, under the name National

Micro Publishing. In the twenty-first century, digitisation allowed for bringing the newspapers online. The Martin family’s passion for their business comes through in the chat. It’s a dynamic enterprise, with current newspapers updated weekly and back issues constantly being added.

Series Producer: Conor O'Hagan

Audio Supervisor: Conor Cullen

Link to the Irish Newspaper Archives: https://www.irishnewsarchive.com/

Link to Irish Newspaper Archives on Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/INArchive

Mairead talks to Professors John Nolan and Riona Mulcahy, authors of a landmark Irish study revealing a diet supplement can slow the onset of Alzheimer's disease.

Michael is back with another 60 Question Quiz

Susan Hood is the librarian and archivist at the Representative Church Body

Library, situated in Churchtown in Dublin. The RCBL is the repository for the

Church of Ireland (Anglican church) within the Republic of Ireland. It holds

parish registers and vestry minute books for many (but not all) locations

throughout the country, either in original form or on microfilm. As Susan

mentions to Paul, the C of I's records often include information relating to

other denominations.

Susan has been familiar with genealogy and with family historians since her

student days, when she gained experience doing summer work at the

Genealogical Office. This led to her publication Royal Roots - Republican

Inheritance (The Woodfield Press, Dublin, 2002), a history of the institution

from the 1850s forward. Prior to 1943 it had been the Office of Arms.

Paul broaches the thorny question of post-Covid opening hours and Susan rises

admirably to the challenge. They discuss how the RCBL publication of parish

registers and older vestry minutes in book form, begun under Susan's

predecessor Raymond Refaussé, evolved into online publication of registers on

the Church Records database on the Irishgenealogy.ie website and the RCBL's

own Archive of the Month. Susan also tells us what's in the pipeline in relation to digitisation.

Series Producer: Conor O'Hagan

Audio Supervisor: Conor Cullen

Link to the Representative Church Body Library:

https://www.ireland.anglican.org/about/rcb-library

Link to RCBL Image of the Month: https://www.ireland.anglican.org/about/rcb-

library/archive-of-the-month

Driving Life with Conor Faughnan Episode 27: former Labour Leader and Tanaiste Joan Burton chats about her life as an adopted child in Dublin, early professional life as a female accountant, her time spent in Africa and then her move into politics and eventually the top of government.