The Irish Passport

Ireland and Europe: what is Ireland’s future in the EU now that its neighbour the United Kingdom is leaving? Is the so-called Irexit at all realistic? Naomi O’Leary and Tim Mc Inerney explore Ireland’s relationship with the continent now and in the future and unpick why Ireland differs so much from Britain in its history …

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Who are Ireland’s elites? That question was once easily answered, but not since independence upended the entire social order! In this episode Naomi O’Leary visits a castle in Dublin that has been the home of one family for 35 generations — and finds the current heir still feels he’s not accepted as one of Ireland’s …

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For decades, Ireland was synonymous with Catholic state control - but the last 30 years have seen a new cultural climate take hold in the country, and a furious backlash has broken out against the legacies of the Church's institutional stranglehold. We'll be looking at how the Church became so powerful in the Irish Republic in the first place, and the reasons behind its dramatic fall from grace in recent times. We'll be talking to the formidable local historian Catherine Corless, who exposed institutional abuse and cover-ups on a massive scale in 2014, and we'll also interview journalists and doctors at the National Maternity Hospital in Dublin, which inspired public outrage when the state almost gave it over to an order of nuns with a very questionable past.

Recent politics have revealed a common lack of knowledge about Ireland and Northern Ireland in the Britain at a time when it is of vital strategic importance. What is behind the blind spot? We call this phenomenon ‘The Knowledge Gap’, and investigate how it came to be by comparing the history courses taught in Ireland …

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Irish: a rare and ancient language that is spoken from the streets of Canada to the corridors of power in the European Union. This episode delves into why the language is such a powerful national symbol for Ireland, its fraught history, and how it's still a point of political strife today.

After the shock UK election result, what you need to know about Northern Irish politics.

What will happen to the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland after Brexit? We discuss how Britain has ignored this problem, and speak to ordinary people on the border about their lives and their fears about any hardening of the border. Naomi O’Leary reports from the border on how Brexit could affect a family of …

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