Ciarán Ferrie

This is just great! (And actually the number now is 343,000 followers)

Here's this one neat trick to stop getting speeding fines... slow the f**k down!

The reports this evening are that the players had to vote on whether to play the match or not. Bazunu recused himself from that vote having already made the decision not to play. Of the remaining 22 players, 14 voted to play the match and 8 voted not to. Those 8 will now be in the squad tomorrow for a game they don't want to participate in. It's an awful situation for any of them to be in and it should never have been allowed to develop to this point.

The decision by RTÉ not to partake in Eurovision has no doubt saved the organisation considerable costs and the government was happy to support them in that decision. By contrast, a decision by FAI not to play Israel would have come with a significant financial penalty. And the government failed to offer any support to the FAI to help them make that decision.

There are some parallels with the Eurovision situation. The decision in both cases was to exclude Russia but include Israel, when arguably Israel's crimes are greater. It's hard to know if this a reflection of systemic racism in either organisation - simply that white Ukrainian lives matter more than brown Palestinian lives - or that there are bigger financial stakes in excluding Israel. Or perhaps both. And the response of the Irish government also seems to have a financial motive...

If Jim O'Callaghan really wanted to bring down the number of people granted citizenship each year he would change the grandparent rule which allows third generation USians who've never set foot in Ireland to get an Irish passport, instead of making it harder for people who are living and working here and contributing to the economy.

My 13yo came home from his friend's house earlier talking about "this guy in England with a bin on his head who's winning an election". Who said the youth aren't politically engaged, eh?

Shortly after 10pm this evening, the last of the evening light on Blackrock Diving Tower #Galway

Went to Belfast for the Fleadh today - it is absolutely hopping! They are putting on a great show. It must be surreal for people who remember it in the bad old days.

Once you realise that student housing developers can get short term letting income for the one quarter of the year when students aren't using it, it starts to make sense why so much of it is being built right now. They can earn as much in those three months as they do in the other nine months.

His opening paragraph has a massive hole in its logic.

In 2025, three people were killed after being hit by someone driving a tractor. In the same year, three people died while riding e-scooters, at least two of those were hit by someone driving a car.

"Stopping vehicle growth could save lives, space, and billions in energy costs" Researchers Want To Tax Cars By The Inch To Stop Carspreading | Carscoops https://www.carscoops.com/2026/06/carspreading-car-size-study/

@yrrsinn@chaos.social I don't know where you are based but in Ireland the biggest killer on our roads is cars and other large motorised vehicles. Our government is doing nothing to tackle a rate of serious injuries that has trebled over a period of ten years and is applying poorly thought out regulation on e-scooters in response to a moral panic that is entirely disproportionate to the scale of the issue. We don't really have e-scooter sharing schemes in Ireland.

I missed this Irish Times letter on Thursday - glad to see someone calling this out. "Photos of people enjoying the sunshine do not tell the full story It is surely way past time for presenting heatwaves as benign and welcome opportunities for fun"

I had a weird experience this evening. I was cycling across town from O'Connell Street to my home in Rathmines. It was very busy in the city centre, lots of traffic but I made good progress on my bike. I pulled onto my street and then took a side street to get to the back lane where there's a gate into our back garden. As I got off the bike outside our gate a taxi pulled up on the side road and stopped at the end of the lane. The driver called out, "so that's where you live!" 1/n

@ai6yr@m.ai6yr.org Drive-thru food banks - that could only happen in America, a place where car-dependency is so ingrained you have to feed your car before you can feed yourself.

@GeofCox@climatejustice.social You make a good point, Geof. I've always been very careful to make it clear that I am not against cars, I am against car dependency and forced car ownership. I've advocated for targeted incentives for EVs in Ireland - the system we have had up to now has resulted in a glut of oversized EVs in affluent urban areas while people in more rural car-dependent areas find it harder to avail of the grants. Car ownership is a costly business, forced car ownership is a socially unjust phenomenon.

"To wrap AI into the art of learning when we have overwhelming proof of the harm it does to developing minds is feeding snake oil to the people we should cherish most. We already have counterfeit AI people infiltrating our media: we must not risk sending out young people into a hard world armed only with counterfeit knowledge. We should treat it with the same urgency with which we would treat a wildfire." - Katherine Rundell https://www.theguardian.com/books/ng-interactive/2026/aug/08/i-hate-what-ai-is-doing-to-the-minds-and-happiness-of-the-young-katherine-rundell-on-the-view-from-the-classroom

"Those deaths, and any resulting irrational shifts in policy are the price we now have to pay for a decade of failing to assign real accountability for disinformation to social media platforms, and for not forcing them to do better. And as the EU’s digital rulebook enforcer, a big part of that blame sits right with us here in Ireland." Great analysis of the #Ceuta incident by @LizCarolan@mastodon.ie, emphasising Ireland's own culpability in what happened. https://www.irishexaminer.com/opinion/commentanalysis/arid-41890840.html

@Colman@mastodon.ie @yrrsinn@chaos.social All I'm asking for is some coherence in our approach to road safety. This government is busy doing stuff that won't make a blind bit of difference and studiously ignoring the stuff that would make a difference. I gave evidence at an Oireachtas Justice Committee meeting four years ago on the issue of enforcement, alongside the Gardaí, Dublin Bus and others. The Committee made a whole series of recommendations for actions to improve road safety which have been completely ignored.

Another Seán Henry sculpture, this one alongside the Claddagh Basin

The response from the RSA and the Minister to this is, as usual, appalling No commitment to actually act on this, no mention of enforcement, just expressions of concern and appeals to drivers to be more considerate. Because that always works, right? RTE news : 'Deep concern' as Lollipop people spat at, abused at work http://www.rte.ie/news/ireland/2026/0807/1586860-lollipop-people-abuse/

@Colman@mastodon.ie @yrrsinn@chaos.social We got ahead of the problem when the last government introduced stringent regulations on the specifications and use of e-scooters. I'll say it again, we don't have a regulation problem, we have an enforcement problem. More unenforceable regulation won't improve safety. Enforcing existing regulations will.

Think about it - we already have a ban on anyone under the age of 16 using e-scooters. This recent debate has been happening because of the increasing number of serious injuries among children using e-scooters. Changing the age limit from 16 to 18 does nothing to stop children using them. Bringing in additional legal requirements for helmets and hi-viz clothing also does nothing to stop people who are already using e-scooters illegally.

TIL that Sam Davol, long time member of band The Magnetic Fields, runs a not-for-profit organisation with his wife Leslie which works on activating public space. "Davol’s interest in placemaking was partly inspired by several decades of touring with The Magnetic Fields.'The things I have seen in Europe in particular over the years have deeply influenced the ways I wish New York could be', he says" https://archive.fo/M51Fp Here's a link to their work: https://www.streetlab.org/

@ratcatcher@beige.party @aral@mastodon.ar.al it's just populist nonsense and completely hypocritical. The OPW spends €1.2m every year leasing car parking spaces for civil servants - now that's a real scandal, but you won't ever hear Sinn Féin complaining about it. https://www.thejournal.ie/readme/bike-shed-outrage-car-parks-hypocrisy-cycling-6832794-Oct2025/

Top Government adviser calls for action to roll back ‘gold-plated’ environmental legislation – The Irish Times https://archive.fo/8UxAi Seán O'Driscoll was a director of AIB when it had to be bailed out by the State. He then blamed unions for the banking crash. He was a major shareholder in Barryroe which was refused a permit by Eamon Ryan for an oil exploration project off the coast, faced insolvency, and, in 2023, was taken private by Larry Goodman, with many other investors losing out.

To be fair there is one positive - a prohibition on the sale of scooters to minors and the sale of scooters that do not meet the legal requirements for use on public roads. And some retailers have already pre-empted this by removing those items for sale but it won't stop the sale of e-scooters that are capable of high speeds with easily overrideable speed limiters.

@Anitambyrne@mastodon.ie a friend from Mayo is in Bergamo, Italy. He found the local Irish bar to watch the Mayo-Louth march earlier. It's now full of Norwegians who obviously felt that an Irish bar was the best place to watch their team playing England

@sundogplanets@mastodon.social The appropriation of a Tolkien name is a giveaway that not only is this a bad idea, but it's been done by the worst people.

The good denizens of Wikipedia are doing a superb job in capturing the absurdity of the upcoming UK parliamentary by-election in Clacton... 2026 Clacton by-election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Clacton_by-election

@sothach@mastodon.ie @aral@mastodon.ar.al You'll pay €6,000 for a bog-standard open bike shelter that will accommodate 10 bikes, and that doesn't include the concrete base, lighting, and the cost of applying for planning permission. The idea that you could deliver a safe, secure bike shelter to accommodate 40 bikes for just €7,000 is pure fantasy. https://www.pittman.ie/products/dublin-bike-shelter?variant=54004277936513

@MaryAustinBooks@mstdn.social @Unlikelylass@mspsocial.net When I was growing up it was: "Beans, beans, they're good for your heart The more you eat, the more you fart" I don't think we bothered with another line after that.

@codinghorror@infosec.exchange @thief_of_fire@infosec.exchange @fazalmajid@social.vivaldi.net so yes, that means handing out "free money" to everyone and anyone. But we already do that very successfully in Ireland for some of our most vulnerable people. That's what a civilised society does Children's Allowance is not means tested and ensures that parents have a basic income to help raise their children. Free public transport for all pensioners regardless of personal circumstances helps tackle the isolation and loneliness that comes with old age.

@Natasha_Jay@tech.lgbt This is extraordinary!

@NanoRaptor@bitbang.social My tweet about a boy in the rhino enclosure at Dublin Zoo went stratospheric and made news headlines all over the world. https://www.news.com.au/technology/science/animals/horrifying-moment-man-lifts-boy-into-a-rhino-enclosure-for-a-picture-at-dublin-zoo/news-story/b020ce24871680c0e37c02fe97170096

@arfisk@aus.social @cstross@wandering.shop @quixoticgeek@social.v.st 👏

@codinghorror@infosec.exchange @thief_of_fire@infosec.exchange @fazalmajid@social.vivaldi.net The point about the basic income for the artist is that the socioeconomic benefit exceeds the financial cost. For every €1 spent on the scheme there was a €1.39 return for society. So in effect, yes we have infinite money. The scheme was introduced by the then Green Party Minister for Arts, Catherine Martin, and is part of a broader Green Party policy to introduce a Universal Basic Income for all citizens. https://www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2025/1013/1538224-basic-income-for-the-arts-scheme-socioeconomic-cost-benefit-analysis/

@ben@social.ben.ie Stunning!

Sheaf throwing is a serious business, it seems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheaf_toss

@sinabhfuil@mastodon.ie John O'Regan's wife Phoebe Abbott in the 1911 census https://nationalarchives.ie/collections/search-the-census/census-record/#surname__icontains=Abbot&firstname__icontains=Phoebe&limit=30&id=2976805&c20_year=1911 John himself appears to have died in 1922 but not before fathering six children. He also appears to have written a book https://openlibrary.org/books/OL7224876M/The_German_war_of_1914