Springhill families accuse British Govt of 'deliberate silence' over Inquest findings

REBECCA BLACK, Belfast Telegraph and Irish News, May 19th, 2026

The families of five people shot dead in west Belfast have accused the Government of “deliberate silence” following the findings of an inquest.

A coroner concluded almost three weeks ago that soldiers “did not use reasonable force” in the shooting of a Catholic priest, a father-of-six and three teenagers at Springhill/Westrock on July 9, 1972.

Mr Justice Scoffield said that Father Noel Fitzpatrick (42), father-of-six Patrick Butler (38) and teenagers David McCafferty and Margaret Gargan, were unarmed and posed no risk when they were shot. In the case of 16-year-old John Dougal, the coroner said he was unable to conclude whether he was armed when he was shot, but said he was likely running away when he was shot in the back and the level of force used was not reasonable.

The families have said they want a public apology.

Speaking to media at Hillsborough Castle on the same day as the findings, Secretary of State Hilary Benn said he would need to read the full coroner's report, but expressed condolences to the families of the five who died. He went on to describe legacy issues as “complex”, “difficult” and the “unfinished business” of the Good Friday Agreement.

In a statement, the Springhill families accused the Government of “deliberate silence” and “ongoing injustice” over its response so far.

They have contended it has been almost three weeks without any “formal acknowledgment” from the Government, the Northern Ireland Office (NIO), or the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.

“The truth has finally been established in a court of law. Our loved ones were innocent. They were unarmed. They should never have been killed. Yet almost three weeks on, the British Government has chosen to say nothing,” they said.

Public Apology demanded

“That silence is not oversight — it is a continuation of the injustice our families have faced for over 50 years. It compounds the hurt and reinforces the sense that our loved ones' lives do not carry equal weight.”

They have called for a public apology to be made, pointing out the response to the Ballymurphy inquest and Bloody Sunday Inquiry.

“In Ballymurphy and Bloody Sunday, when the truth was established, the Government responded with public apologies.

“The same standard must apply here. Anything less is unequal treatment and a denial of justice.

“We are not asking for special treatment. We are demanding equal recognition, accountability and respect. The British Government must now break its silence and issue a full and public apology,” they said.

“The Springhill/Westrock massacre families have made clear that acknowledgment is not symbolic — it is a necessary step in formally clearing the names of those killed and recognising the failings identified by the court.

“More than 53 years after the events, and weeks after the truth has been definitively established, families say continued inaction only deepens the injustice.”

LETTERS: We need the whole truth about what happened on the border in the 1970s

THE anniversary of the bombings in Dublin and Monaghan on May 17 1974 now passes annually with limited media coverage.

The largest loss of life – 34 people – during a single day in the Irish Republic as the conflict raged in the six counties. An event that will haunt the families involved for their lifetime and now resigned to the small print of our history books.

Despite the passing of five decades, the question of responsibility for the four coordinated explosions on that day remains critical and the failings in the investigation by the authorities in the Irish Republic following this massacre demands explanation.

Allegations of collusion in these attacks between loyalist paramilitaries and agents of the British state must be addressed.

It is important to remember that these bombings were not an isolated incident. A total of 27 explosions and three assassinations took place in the Irish Republic from 1969 until 1976. A total of 46 people were murdered.

The border counties of Donegal, Cavan, Monaghan and Louth with Dublin were attacked.

It may be hard to believe that not a single loyalist paramilitary was detected crossing on either side of the highly patrolled British border at the time of these 30 attacks.

British army incursions across the border during those years were a common occurrence by both uniformed and plain-clothed personnel.

An Garda Síochána records in 1973 noted 47 incursions, in 1974 noted 121 incursions, in 1975 noted 68 incursions, and in 1976 noted 25 incursions until mid-May. It was at this time on May 6 1976 that the controversial SAS incursion occurred.

The loyalist car bomb campaign ended with the final attack in Swanlinbar on May 21 1976. Their campaign from their perspective had achieved an incredible 100 per cent success rate. There appeared to be free passage across the British border in stolen cars for the loyalist paramilitaries with their guns and explosives.

Both the British and Irish governments must reveal all the information at their disposal and open all the files that exist for the years 1971 to 1976.

No more secrets and no more lies. No more conspiracy theories about British state involvement. We all need the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. We have waited too long.

JOE REID, Termonfeckin, Co Louth

First Minister Michelle O'Neill urged to remove social media video “targeting” DUP MLA.

REBECCA BLACK, Belfast Telegraph, May 19th, 2026

The clip posted by Ogra Shinn Féin on Friday shows DUP Pam Cameron appearing to criticise her party colleague Communities Minister Gordon Lyons during a meeting of the Stormont Communities Committee.

It attributes quotes to Ms Cameron, including a reference to a “desperate shameful act by a Communities Minister who's clearly determined to make Irish invisible” during a debate over funding for the Northern Ireland Place-Name Project.

The caption includes the line “Disclaimer: This is not AI.”

Ms Cameron told the Assembly yesterday that the clip was a “complete misrepresentation of the actual facts”.

“Last Friday the official youth wing of Sinn Féin posted a video clip online which they insinuated was a statement made by me attacking the Communities Minister during a committee session,” she told MLAs.

“The post described the statement as not AI, implying it was therefore factual. The post has received many comments and views and its intention is clearly to bring negative unwanted personal attention toward me, it's to intimidate, to humiliate, to gag me, and Mr Speaker it will do nothing of the sort.

“This was a complete misrepresentation of the actual facts.

“I would ask that the First Minister ensures that the post be removed and that Michelle O'Neill distance herself from that potentially defamatory content.”

Ms Cameron said she is “disgusted by the post”. She also criticised the committee meeting, at which Mr Lyons appeared on Thursday, as an “absolute farce”, and claimed there has been a “TikTok theme of pelting words out at the minister and then continually interrupting and speaking over the minister and laughably trying to pretend that it was a form of scrutiny”.

“I must, however, put on record that no other committee member was involved in this other than the Sinn Féin members,” she told MLAs.

“In an era where it's difficult to put anything on social media without facing a barrage of abuse, especially as a woman, I ask the First Minister to call out this dishonest, childish and malicious behaviour.

“Having served on many committees within the Northern Assembly over many years, I have never experienced anything like the debacle which was dressed up as a scrutiny committee last week.”

Sinn Féin has been approached for a response.

Ombudsman RUC-loyalist ‘collusive behaviour’ findings allowed to stand

ALAN ERWIN, Irish News, May 19th, 2026

But notice is added to say watchdog acted beyond her powers in probe into murders

POLICE Ombudsman reports which found collusive behaviour by RUC officers in a series of loyalist murders must include a notice about the watchdog exceeding its legal powers, a High Court judge ruled yesterday.

Mr Justice Scoffield acknowledged the public statements should not be formally quashed or completely withdrawn from publication.

But he held a further form of words was required to reflect previous rulings that former Ombudsman Marie Anderson acted ultra vires (beyond one’s powers) by reaching conclusions which amounted to a determination of misconduct.

He said: “I consider that a strengthened form of notice should be included with the published reports… giving some indication of the court’s core findings.”

The final outcome was reached in a legal challenge by the Northern Ireland Retired Police Officers Association to the contents of three separate reports into Troubles-era killings.

The association has been locked in a long-running legal attempt to have the public statements declared unlawful.

One of the cases focused on a probe into a series of loyalist paramilitary murders in the south Belfast area between 1990 and 1998.

In 2022 Mrs Anderson found evidence of “collusive behaviour” by police in the attacks, which included the February 1992 massacre at the Sean Graham betting shop on the Ormeau Road where UDA gunmen shot dead five Catholic victims.

Legal action was also taken over the report into the police handling of loyalist killings in the northwest region from 1989 to 1993.

A third challenge related to findings in the case of four men wrongly accused of murdering a British soldier in Derry.

Known as the Derry Four, the Ombudsman concluded that RUC officers had unfairly obtained confessions from them for the killing of Lt Stephen Kirby in the city in 1979. The four men later fled Northern Ireland until their acquittal in 1998.

The retired RUC officers claimed Mrs Anderson was legally forbidden from making findings which effectively branded them guilty of colluding in brutal terrorist murders without proper due process.

A Court of Appeal judgment in 2020 restricted her scope to accuse former policemen and women of the criminal offence of collusion with paramilitaries.

Those proceedings related to a previous case taken by retired senior policemen Raymond White and Ronald Hawthorne over the contents of former Ombudsman Dr Michael Maguire’s report into the 1994 Loughinisland atrocity.

Acknowledging her limitations, Mrs Anderson said she had identified conduct within the RUC amounting to “collusive behaviours”.

But the association argued that she misunderstood her permitted role and cannot use that term without establishing a malign motive.

Genie out of bottle

The Ombudsman had wrongly labelled all police working in those areas at the relevant times as complicit with the terrorists responsible for brutal campaigns of murder, it was contended.

Counsel representing the Ombudsman hit back by suggesting the retired officers were becoming “collusion deniers”.

He told the court the Ombudsman had carried out a forensic analysis to reach legally-sound findings, identifying behaviour indicative of collusion without being determinative.

In February last year, Mr Justice Scoffield held that a distinction drawn by the Ombudsman between “collusion” and “collusive behaviours” was either unsustainable or insufficiently clear.

She reached conclusions beyond a proper remit set out by the Court of Appeal in published reports which represented an extension of the Ombudsman’s role beyond its statutory bounds, he found.

Even though an appeal against the verdict is expected, lawyers on both sides were involved in further efforts to decide on any final order required in the case.

In court yesterday, Mr Justice Scoffield indicated there was agreement that the public statements should not be quashed or withdrawn entirely from publication.

“This was a pragmatic view on the part of the applicants, taken, at least partly, on the basis that the statements had been publicly available for some time,” he said.

“It was not possible to put the genie back in the bottle.”

However, he confirmed that a further notice is to feature in the reports.

Making a partial award of costs to the applicants, the judge added: “I consider that the just and proportionate approach.”

You can’t always be everything to everyone, Mary Lou

AOIFE MOORE, Irish News, May 19th, 2026

IT must be exhausting trying to be everything to everyone. Thankfully for Mary Lou McDonald, her shift in this particular charade is almost over.

In recent weeks, any remaining credentials the party had with their left-wing, progressive and younger base in the Republic have surely been done away with.

It’s hard to know where to start, but given this is The Irish News, the most pertinent would probably be that the Sinn Féin leader failed to take an opportunity to condemn internment.

Internment without trial, that ruined lives and communities in our home place, stole lifetimes from men and boys for no other crime than being nationalists, and stole entire lives in the conflict it created, no doubt extending the Troubles. A lot of readers will remember it well.

During the ongoing Dublin Central by-election campaign, celebrity criminal candidate Gerry ‘The Monk’ Hutch suggested he would like to intern another vulnerable population without trial.

On “illegal” immigrants, Hutch said: “I think they should be all interned.

“They should be put in the Curragh camp, in camps, until they’re sorted. Fed, and not given any money, not given any houses. The other people that’s coming in from foreign countries, from India and all that type of stuff, genuine people coming in, bring your toolbox. Youse are more than welcome.

“But the ones that are Somalians and them type of people, no way. Interned.”

Not only stupid, but racist and xenophobic and a number of people, politicians and candidates alike, said so.

Mary Lou McDonald, when asked about the comments at the campaign launch for Sinn Féin candidate Janice Boylan, didn’t.

No comment on comments

She spoke of the need for a “fair” system and said: “I’m not sure that there is any big appetite for big, big congregated settings anywhere in the Curragh or anywhere else.”

And the final hurrah: “We can’t comment on other people’s comments.”

You’d have to wonder what the point is of Leader’s Questions then, or political debate at all, if the leader of the largest opposition party doesn’t want to comment on other people’s comments?

Or, could it be that this by-election is in a seat in Mary Lou’s own Dublin constituency.

Sinn Féin have been losing votes to the right, and she knows she will share a voter base with Hutch himself. Self-interest over Somalians, sorry lads.

If anyone in the Republic knew much or cared about the north, a headline could’ve read: “Sinn Féin leader not able to comment on internment.” One for the ages – the Brits will be delighted.

Unable to call out racism is bad enough, but things got worse for the progressive voters of Sinn Féin last week when they suggested they didn’t trust women either.

The Reproductive Rights (Amendment) Bill was put forward by the Social Democrats with support from all the left parties, who had previously campaigned alongside Sinn Féin to see abortion legalised in Ireland.

In short, it would abolish the condescending three-day waiting period for abortion access, decriminalise abortion provision for medical practitioners, and review the abortion criteria for fatal foetal abnormalities.

Sinn Féin abstained and the bill fell. People will continue to be forced to travel for abortions due to their actions.

They’ve produced their own bill to abolish the three-day wait, a crumb for the left-wing feminists left in the party.

Given their flip-flopping on the issue in the north over the years, I wasn’t surprised, but I know better than to trust people who think they can win over Aontú and People Before Profit voters.

You have to hand it to them. The same people who stood with signs saying “Trust women” couldn’t actually manage it when it came down to the crunch.

Given this is the same party who agreed to a temporary ban on the sale or supply of puberty blockers in the north, I’m unsure why anyone is surprised.

I am sad for the women and medical providers this cowardice will affect. Likewise, I’m sad for the people who lent their vote to a party who promised change.

Progressive people across the country are waking up to the fact that there is no bottom line that matters in Sinn Féin except the one on the border.

Everyone should have known when they flew across the Atlantic to shake hands with the man who has spent billions to rain bombs down on Gaza that they might not be as dedicated to their causes as they said.

In 2024, the Biden administration approved a $20 billion arms sale to Israel, including F-15 fighter jets and tank and mortar shells, while Mary Lou McDonald and Michelle O’Neill gladly embraced him.

Thankfully for the leadership, the jig is up. They can rest easy, the show’s over.

Lyons says Sinn Féin ‘dragging their feet’ on Irish language strategy

CLAUDIA SAVAGE, Irish News, May 19th, 2026

COMMUNITIES Minister Gordon Lyons has accused Sinn Féin of “dragging their feet” on the Irish language, as the row on the issue between the two largest executive parties continues.

In the Stormont Assembly yesterday, the DUP minister produced a letter from Sinn Féin Economy Minister Caoimhe Archibald, claiming she took 13 months to respond to a request from his department on the Irish language strategy.

The communities minister has come under fire in relation to the future of the Northern Ireland Place-Name Project, an academic initiative that provides councils with support in translating English street names into Irish.

Sinn Féin MLAs have accused Mr Lyons of refusing to renew funding for the project this year.

However, the minister has rejected that claim, insisting the work had previously been funded by the Sinn Féin-led Department of Finance and he has made no proactive decision to cut financial support for the scheme.

In assembly questions yesterday, SDLP MLA Mark Durkan asked Mr Lyons about the Irish Language and Ulster Scots strategies, asking what action he will take to “fulfil the executive’s obligations to the Irish language community”.

Mr Lyons said Mr Durkan was right to highlight the Irish language strategy is “an executive strategy”, meaning there was a “cross-departmental working group” established to monitor its progress.

He said ministers were invited to respond to the draft action plans but “not all responded within the specified timeframe”.

“Some ministers have, in particular, expressed reservations about the budgetary implications, and in fact, a final response from the Department for the Economy is still outstanding,” he said.

“And by way of evidence, and because I know that Sinn Féin are very interested in this issue, here is a letter that I received on May 14 2026.

“It’s from the minister for the economy, and in it she says, ‘I refer to your note of the 9 April 2025’ – 13 months after I wrote to her asking about her plans and the work that she would engage in on the Irish language and Ulster Scots strategies, she responded to me 13 months later.

Foot dragging

“We have a Department of Finance minister who would only note the strategy and not give it approval, don’t even get me started on the Department for Infrastructure, but we have had continual delay and feet-dragging from Sinn Féin ministers.

“So I would remind everybody in this house that it is a cross-departmental strategy, both on Irish and Ulster Scots, but if other ministers are not prepared to respond in a timely manner, or not at all, it’s going to be very difficult for the executive to make progress.”

Mr Durkan said Mr Lyons enjoys “pointing the finger of the blame” but that “most people just want to see progress” on the Irish language and Ulster-Scots strategies.

Mr Lyons replied: “My job was to facilitate the work that came back from departments, but Sinn Féin were dragging their feet on that, and that’s a question that they need to ask, why they were not prepared to engage and why they were not prepared to sign off on those things.”

The minister then quoted a statement from Sinn Féin MLA and Communities Committee chairman Colm Gildernew reading “this is the latest example of a deliberate, provocative, and intolerant approach by Gordon Lyons towards the Irish language”.

“Well, let’s be very clear today, the exact same words can justifiably be used about Sinn Féin, because they are the ones that are dragging their feet,” Mr Lyons said.

Maze stalemate is a visible symbol of Stormont’s failures

Pro Fide et Patria, Irish News, May 19th, 2026

DEPRESSINGLY, there are too many features of life under Stormont that have been described as emblematic of its failure to deliver for its citizens.

A hospital system with waiting lists stretching out years, schools struggling to afford ba-sic supplies, and Lough Neagh, source of 40 per cent of our drinking water, turned toxic green after decades of neglect.

The Maze prison site is another very visible symbol of the inability to build on the spirit of partnership embodied in the Good Friday Agreement to improve the lives of everyone who shares this place.

It is a costly reminder too, with figures showing Stormont has spent more than £320,000 just maintaining the listed buildings near Lisburn from 2018 until last year.

It is now more than a quarter of a century since the jail’s paramilitary inmates were released and doors closed on a site that became synonymous with the Troubles, including the 1981 hunger strikes which saw 10 men starve to death.

Among structures that were retained was one of the infamous H-Blocks and the prison hospital and chapel. Two former aircraft hangars also require continued maintenance.

Plans to redevelop the sprawling Maze site at a cost of £300m have been stalled since 2013, when then DUP first minister Peter Robinson blocked an EU-backed plan to build a peace centre over fears it would become a “shrine to terrorism”.

Pattern of failure

A development corporation continues to look after the site in the hope of political agreement, but the stalemate has only continued, at mounting cost to the public purse.

It is a familiar pattern of failure with major infrastructure projects.

Casement Park stadium in west Belfast has been beset with problems and delays, most recently around funding, since proposals for redevelopment were announced more than a decade ago.

Plans to upgrade the notorious A5 road, scene of multiple tragedies on the route linking Derry and Monaghan, date back even further and appear no closer to coming to fruition.

Indeed, Casement Park was intended as a new home for Ulster GAA after hopes to build a multi-sports stadium at the Maze were abandoned.

The TUV’s Timothy Gaston, who criticised the cost of maintaining the site after learning the figures, has called for the prison buildings to bulldozed.

That would clearly be wrong. Whatever anyone’s views on the conflict, the remaining structures are an integral part of a history that has educational value for future generations as well as visitors interested in the story of the Troubles.

But preservation cannot mean paralysis. Parties should not allow arguments over symbolism to become a permanent excuse for inaction.

Failure to unlock the site’s huge potential symbolises the stunted vision of Stormont and the missed opportunities to realise the hope represented by the closure of the Maze prison so many years ago.

Swinney won’t apologise for Sinn Féin ‘move on’ comments

CRAIG PATON, Irish News, May 19th, 2026

JOHN Swinney has “no intention” of apologising after he urged people to “move on” from the Troubles.

The Scottish first minister was speaking to The Herald newspaper last week after his party’s election victory and was asked about potential dealings with Sinn Féin as a result of the three devolved administrations of the UK having pro-independence parties in leading roles.

He recognised his dealings with the party, whose vice president Michelle O’Neill is first minister of Northern Ireland, had caused some “media consternation”, but he added: “I really do think people have got to move on.”

Families of Scots killed in the Troubles hit out at the comments, telling the same newspaper Mr Swinney should apologise.

But speaking to the Press Association yesterday, Mr Swinney said: “I have no intention of apologising for that.

“Sinn Féin are an elected administration in Northern Ireland, and I deal with elected politicians.”

Asked if his language was simply sloppy in his comments to The Herald, he added: “I think the issues that are involved in the peace process have involved people moving on, people have had to move on, that’s exactly what they’ve done, and I’m simply reflecting what’s happened.”

John Swinney has refused to apologise for his comments on Sinn Féin

Following this month’s election, the largest parties in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland support leaving the UK, which has sparked co-operation between the SNP, Sinn Féin and Plaid Cymru.

“I am very happy to take forward collaboration with Sinn Féin and with Plaid Cymru as administrations led by nationalists who want to take forward their agenda,” Mr Swinney said.

“There is a lot that has happened in the years since the Troubles came to an end with the Good Friday Agreement.

“I respect entirely anybody who has suffered as a consequence of the Troubles, I respect what they have experienced and in no way does the political co-operation that I would take forward today undermine the respect I have for those individuals.”

New tapestry honouring women's role in Troubles on show

JESSICA RICE, Belfast Telegraph, May 19th, 2026

A tapestry honouring women during the Troubles has gone on display at St Patrick's Church of Ireland Cathedral in Armagh.

The Quiet Courage was created by the South East Fermanagh Foundation (SEFF), a support group for victims of terrorism, and will be on display until Thursday.

The tapestry was introduced to the public on Sunday following a cross-community service attended by victims' families.

“The Quiet Courage acknowledges the special role of women over the years of the Troubles,” said Kenny Donaldson, director of SEFF.

“It is our view that too often the Troubles have been reflected through a male lens without adequate focus being given to the special role of women.

“Women were the anchors of families and communities and their contributions meant that this place did not descend into all-out civil war.”

Mr Donaldson said they wanted to display the tapestry in the cathedral to symbolise the strength many women drew from their faith as the Troubles raged on.

He added: “Sunday was a very special and intimate service of remembrance, healing and hope, and we thank all at the cathedral, particularly Dean Shane Forster, for the way in which the service was facilitated.

“We developed service content which placed victims and survivors at the heart of proceedings. It was women and girls who shared the reflection, the scripture readings and the prayers and the unveiling of the tapestry.”

Among those taking part was Karen McAnerney. Her brother, 31-year-old businessman Terence McKeever, from Cullyhanna, was killed by the IRA in 1986.

Pupils from The Royal School, Armagh and St Catherine's College were also in attendance.

“I was blessed to share some closing remarks where I focused on values and the common objectives shared across the SEFF family — the core unifying factor being abhorrence of violence and support for the preservation of life,” said Mr Donaldson. “I also issued a challenge to all in attendance and outside of the cathedral to do better, to build real peace and not settle for stand-off.”

Belfastmen - An Intimate History of Life Before Gay Liberation

Diarmaid Ferriter, Irish Times, May 18th, 2026

Focus on individual tales the great strength of this book, as author details back stories and afterlives of those on trial and the consequences of exposure

If a key task of the historian is to illuminate dark corners, Tom Hulme has done that in a literal sense, and with aplomb. This history of male same-sex desire in Belfast from the 1880s to the 1940s uncovers an impressive range of archival material. It includes many interrupted clandestine encounters, but if much of it deals with humiliation, entrapment and the weight of criminal prosecution, there are also degrees of defiance and tenderness.

Hulme lays bare a multitude of voices; he draws heavily, for example, on the revealing diaries of David Harbison Strain, born in 1896, who grew up in the Belfast middle-class suburb of Galwally Park and was part of a family that owned a linen merchant business. After his death in 1969, his papers were deposited in the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, with the inclusion of 43 diaries, “unrivalled in their richness”. The detailed daily entries amount to “a remarkably probing description of contemporary queerness” and the constant quest for partners and sexual encounters.

Hulme also excavates the court records of the period; such a criminal archive reveals much about socio-moral attitudes, but it also requires the researcher to read between lines. The focus on individual stories is the great strength of the book, as Hulme details, where possible, both the back stories and the afterlives of those on trial and the personal consequences of exposure: “My God, what will the wife say?” was the response of one man arrested in the 1890s.

Hulme is interested in “the individual character of each queer man and the interpersonal and intimate dynamics of urban life”. There was much “cruising” for sex in the dockland area of the city, and sailors feature prominently: “I am a naval man, what can you expect!” was the response of a former sailor apprehended for trying to entice a 16-year-old into a park urinal in 1924. There were almost 700 news-boys aged 16 or younger working in Belfast in 1902, and casual prostitution was common. It is also striking how layered the geography of queer Belfast was in the late 19th and early 20th centuries – a network of pubs, cafes, cinemas, parks, public toilets and shops. Woolworths department store was “the queer hotspot of the 1930s”.

Overall, arrests for “gross indecency” or buggery remained low until the late 1950s. There were “whisper networks”, hotels where blind eyes were turned and sometimes class and religious boundaries were traversed: “In August 1925, a middle-class Presbyterian in his mid-forties was discovered having sex with a Catholic labourer of a similar age”.

It is notable that ‘the policing of male sexuality in Belfast was so slack that most queer men were unlikely ever to encounter the legal system in the first half of the twentieth century’

Hulme is also attuned to broader contexts; the evolution of sexology (it was 1948 before a medical profile was used in a queer trial in Belfast), the contemporary vagueness or imprecision over sexuality, and classified newspaper advertisements from many men looking for “chums”. The circle around Strain suggested great enthusiasm about queer romance and a “cross-class queer culture”.

Dangerous and violent world

But it could also be a dangerous and violent underworld featuring moral vigilantes, peeping constables and the prospect of publication of court proceedings. The balance between public shaming and reticence about highlighting “homegrown immorality” was to shift in favour of the commercial advantage of sensational reporting. Yet the expansion of arrests of gay men witnessed in Dublin in the 1930s was not mirrored in Belfast, partly because the same pressure did not exist to forge a new identity given the continuity of the connection with Britain after the creation of Northern Ireland, while “anxious Protestant elites could tactfully ignore the existence of queerness”.

It is notable that “the policing of male sexuality in Belfast was so slack that most queer men were unlikely ever to encounter the legal system in the first half of the twentieth century”. From the 1890s to the 1950s, just over half the men who pled not guilty to same-sex crimes were vindicated after trial or had their charges dismissed.

For those who could invoke authority, standing or respectability, such a mix could work in their favour, while some were indulged when it came to diminished responsibility due to alcohol. Richard Lutton, a middle-aged private secretary to former Belfast lord mayor Daniel Dixon, was discovered having sex with a working-class male teenager in 1904. He escaped prosecution when the judge decided alcohol had made him capable of buggery, but not culpable for it.

Lutton’s contribution to civic and business life gave him protection and he was able to continue as honorary secretary of a unionist club. Neither was it inevitable that a man convicted of homosexual offences would be shunned ever after; sometimes “earning and supporting the wider family could be more important” than the shame of an ex-convict, allowing some to resume their previous roles.

Hulme, writing fluently, has stylishly documented the combination of fear, longing, class, religion, moralism, pragmatism and politics at the heart of Belfast’s history of same-sex desire.

Belfastmen: An intimate History of Life Before Gay Liberation, Cornell University Press. Guideline Price, £20.99

Diarmaid Ferriter is Professor of Modern Irish History at UCD. His latest book is The Revelation of Ireland, 1995-2025 (Profile Books)

Connolly calls for Irish to ‘decolonise’ minds as she meets King Charles

MARK PAUL, Irish Times, May 19th, 2026

King accepts invitation from President for State visit to Ireland

Britain’s king Charles III is set to undertake a state visit to Ireland, with President Catherine Connolly saying he “graciously accepted” an invitation during their meeting in Buckingham Palace in London yesterday.

Connolly, on her first official visit to Britain since being elected last November, said she had a “positive and warm” meeting with the British monarch.

The President said her meeting with the king lasted just under an hour. Her convoy swept through the main gate of Buckingham Palace shortly after 3.30pm, about 10 minutes after the king had arrived himself in his official vehicle.

Later yesterday, the President gave a speech at the Irish embassy in Belgravia during which she warned against “normalising slaughter”, in comments that appeared aimed at events in the Middle East.

Connolly spoke of the Irish need for “decolonisation of our minds” after the State gained independence from Britain over a century ago.

“Our two countries are inextricably linked on so many levels. [Britain is] our nearest neighbour and we share the same seas. For centuries, our history was one of coloniser and colonised with all of the complexity that entails,” said Connolly.

“The decolonisation of Ireland was not only about land and law. It was also about the decolonisation of our minds. That process in itself was challenging, but has, over time, allowed us to take confidence and pride in our culture, our language and our identity.”

She said that the Irish process of “reclaiming our identity” could not have happened without the contribution of the Irish community in Britain who, she said, had sent £4.8 billion home to the State between 1940 and 1970.

“They contributed to the education of children, saved farms, helped keep communities alive and indeed are still very important.”

She said the Government’s strategy for the diaspora was “an acknowledgment of the value of our diaspora and what we owe you”.

The President also addressed the Troubles during her speech.

“We cannot speak about the Irish in Britain without speaking of the Troubles, about what that period meant for people here. Many of you and your families lived the consequences of the horrific bombings,” she said.

“To be Irish in Britain in those years was to carry a weight that was not yours to carry. People lost jobs. People were suspected. Innocent people were convicted.”

She said the Republic would always defend the Belfast Agreement that effectively ended the Troubles “because the alternative is unthinkable”.

Connolly then made reference to current geopolitical strife, including war in the Middle East, when she said that the State would always uphold international law and the United Nations Charter.

“That is why Ireland speaks out in the face of injustice. That is why we will not be silent when international law is treated as optional by those with the power to ignore it. We know what happens when the powerful are unconstrained.”

Normalising war

The President continued: “Normalising war is never acceptable. Normalising slaughter is never acceptable.”

The President met the monarch in London as part of a three-day trip to England, incorporating Irish cultural centres in London and Leeds as well as a trip to the Chelsea Flower Show today.

Earlier, she visited the Irish Cultural Centre in Hammersmith, London, where she met Irish language learners and gave a speech highlighting the Irish contribution to Britain.

NI poets quietly reviving devotional writings in funny and surprising ways

MALACHI O'DOHERTY, Belfast Telegraph, May 19th, 2026

Northern Irish poets have an intense interest in religion. Religious devotional poetry has a long tradition, longer than any other form, in fact. The Psalms of David and the Bhagavad Gita, for instance. And some of the new writing is frankly devout in a way that surprises in this secularising age.

I'm thinking of Deirdre Cartmill's Under The Blue Seraphim (Arlen House 2025).

Can I risk calling some of this work post-Catholic, in that the writers I'm thinking of grew up in Catholic culture and the images from that pervade their work?

Some appear to be conscientious Catholics still.

Cartmill's writings, as if to her dying mother, note: 'Your rosary beads lost in your duvet.'

In The Rain Barrel (Bloodaxe 2019), Frank Ormsby remembers his youth as an altar boy, mischievously reworking the Latin responses: 'Me a cowboy, Me a cowboy, Me a Mexican cowboy.'

Cartmill's collection includes a series of more shamanistic poems, in which she recounts or imagines spirit journeys, accompanied by a wolf, through woods and waterfalls to a temple.

We are in mystical realms here.

She concludes: 'What I searched for was always with me in the forest...'

Micheál McCann's new book, launched last Thursday, is Lives of the Saints (Gallery 2026).

It isn't a devotional work, like Cartmill's, or quite as playful as Ormsby's.

He frankly speculates that the mystical experiences of the saints may have been delusional. Maybe those flights of elation were simply the relief they felt rising from 'sore knees pressed into stone' after hours of tedious praying. Or perhaps not.

‘The colour of madness’

McCann knows his saints and draws on their stories. There's Julian of Norwich, the hermit who saw that everything was already perfect. There's Therese of Avila in her Interior Castle, which he imagines as a house with 'a kitchen the colour of madness'.

In the title poem, he wonders at the fact that none of his own personal acquaintances are likely to be remembered as saints 'in the same way as Brigid or Columba or the Holy Innocents'.

I think he is imagining Columba as gay and yearning for love 'to be opened by somebody, like some apple'.

At the launch of the book in the Crescent Arts Centre last Thursday, he said it was plain from the writings of St Francis that he had gay fantasies about Jesus.

Another local poet who blends basic humour with reverence is Patrick Ramsey with The Way Things Leave, from his privately published collection Mute Fireworks For A Dying King. As the title suggests, the book is a contemplation of mortality, that awkward little business we all have to get acquainted with.

It's a long poem reciting the artefacts of his Belfast working-class, Catholic life, 'plastic covered clotheslines/cheap glass rosaries', each section punctuated by a prayer, proverb or line of scripture, mostly Christian, one Buddhist.

It opens with: 'May I know myself forgiven for all the harm I may have thought and done…'

It is a requiem written for himself and the power of it is in alternating between the ordinary furniture of a life and the prayers.

This is a sequence of litanies. His 'viaticum' or what Catholics call the food for the journey (into the afterlife) includes a family tin of Smash and a Fray Bentos steak pie. And the sequence ends with: 'O Mother of the Word Incarnate, despise not my petitions, but in your mercy, hear and answer me.'

He's contrasting two ways of using language, one familiar and homely and the other sacred and aspirational. The match is operatic.

There is something similar here to what Micheál McCann and Frank Ormsby have done. They've taken the elements of a Catholic devotional life and brought them into the ordinary day.

Another poet who works with Catholic imagery is Maureen Boyle. I should declare an interest here; I am married to her.

In The Work Of A Winter (Arlen House 2018), there is an account of a pilgrimage to Hildegard of Bingen, a poem invoking St Ciaran who could breathe life back into a dead bird and another in the voice of Mary Magdalene, or perhaps a woman trapped in a Magdalene laundry.

The title poem is the imagined reflections of Micheál O Cléirigh, one of the Donegal Four Masters, who transcribed the old texts.

While not a devotional poem like some of Cartmill's or Ramsey's, it empathises with the sentiments of the old monk at prayer. 'I word my mother's prayers/ on these beads made from the seeds of peonies, from/ the garden of the great Abbey of Donegal.'

Of course, Seamus Heaney also drew on Catholic devotional experience in his work, particularly the collection Station Island (Faber and Faber 1984), so there is nothing new to that upbringing providing the material for poets to excavate.

But I have often wondered why our poets were so much more inclined to delve into the Greek and Roman classics for imagery and stories to remake, when the culture we were indoctrinated into was as rich.

Fianna Fáilure - gifting housing to the developers

LORCAN SIRR, Irish Times, May 19th, 2026

The State is increasingly propping up the private sector instead of building social houses itself

In a recent interview, Fianna Fáil leader and Taoiseach Micheál Martin said that his party, which celebrated its 100th anniversary this weekend, had “made a difference” when it took over the housing portfolio, and that it had historically made “very significant achievements” in housing.

The second part of the claim is true. Since the foundation of the State, the same number of social houses has been completed under Fianna Fáil as Fine Gael (including Cumman na nGaedheal before it), and about 30 per cent more private housing.

From Cabra to Cahir and Letterkenny to Leixlip, Fianna Fáil got councils building – mostly by allowing them to borrow. Councils responded by building more than 300,000 houses not just for poorer households, but also for sale to middle-income families. It provided mortgages for the buyers.

Fianna Fáil also facilitated the purchase of council houses from the 1930s onwards, turning hundreds of thousands of local authority tenants into home owners. Councils are still selling hundreds of their houses each year.

Not all of this had positive outcomes – selling off two-thirds of our council housing left the State with a shortage – but it can’t be said that Fianna Fáil didn’t achieve a lot. Large swathes of working-class Dublin houses are testament to that.

Things have changed in recent years, however.

In June 2020, Fianna Fáil’s Darragh O’Brien took over the housing portfolio from Fine Gael’s Eoghan Murphy. O’Brien was replaced by James Browne in January 2025.

Since 2020, the number of new houses completed each year has risen consistently from about 21,000 to more than 36,000. In the same period, the percentage of apartments grew from less than one in five to one in three. Almost none of these come up for sale – 150 new apartments were sold in Dublin 2025 out of more than 4,500 new homes built; in Cork city, it was 11 from almost 1,500 new homes – forcing potential homeowners to look further afield for a house to buy.

The rise in the construction of new housing for investment rather than for use as a home has meant the proportion of new homes available for sale each year is falling. In 2020, about half of all houses appeared in an estate agent’s window for sale; in 2025, that figure was less than one in three.

Top of the boom

In 2025, the average house price-to-income ratio was eight times; in 2020, when O’Brien took over, it was just over seven times. At its peak during the Celtic Tiger it was 8.8 times, so if current trends continue – and there are no signs they won’t, as rising housing output is dependent on rising sales prices – then we are not far off where we were at the top of the boom.

Over the last six years, the average house sale price across the country has increased 47 per cent. In the rental sector, at the end of 2020 the average standardised rent for new tenancies was €1,256 per month. In 2025, this rose to €1,755 per month – an increase of 40 per cent.

Probably the most important indicator of impact on housing policy, but one that ministers talk about as little as possible, is homelessness. The data for homeless numbers is released in the afternoon on the last Friday of every month, which is an indicator of how the news is designed to be buried.

When O’Brien was in opposition and the number of homeless reached 10,000 under Murphy, he said it was “a shameful and saddening example of failed government policy”. (To his credit, he had opposed Murphy publishing the homeless data on a quarterly rather than monthly basis.) When O’Brien took over as minister, the total homeless figure was 8,669. Under his tenure it reached 15,286, and under his party’s successor this number has now reached 17,517 including 5,571 children – an overall increase of more than 100 per cent. This is truly “shameful and saddening”.

On the social housing front, where many of those homeless should be accommodated, the Department of Housing has missed its own output target every year since 2020. Six years ago, local authority “new builds” accounted for 44 per cent of social housing output. Under two Fianna Fáil ministers – a party historically competent at getting councils building houses – this had decreased to 30 per cent by 2025, with councils buying the rest from the market. The State is increasingly propping up the private sector instead of building social houses itself.

Levels of home ownership, that traditional route to middle-class respectability, security and often wealth, have been in decline for years. Ireland now languishes in the bottom half of European countries for owning one’s own home. When O’Brien became minister, the average age to buy a first home was 36. Under his successor, it is now 40 (in Kerry, it is 45).

According to the Central Bank, purchasers of their first home in 2020 had an income of €76,000 and borrowed €232,000. Last year, that had increased to an income of €95,000 and a loan of €318,000.

When the Government begins to see spending on services and infrastructure as an expensive outlay to the State rather than an investment in society, it has all sorts of knock-on effects that end up costing more in the medium term.

The 2020 budget for the Department of Housing was €2.6 billion; this has now risen to €7.8 billion and yet no dent has been put in rising numbers of homeless, house prices or rents. Instead, we see these billions spent accommodating people in the rental sector whom the State would traditionally have been able to house, and on subventions and incentives to the development sector to cajole them to build more.

Arguably, the biggest difference Fianna Fáil has made running the Department of Housing for the last six years is making no difference at all. It has continued Fine Gael’s market-first approach, tucking itself into the slipstream of its Coalition partner’s 1980s, Thatcherite-inspired ideology.

Dr Lorcan Sirr is senior lecturer in housing at TU Dublin