If I started this article by saying that before we get into it, we’ll take it handy for the first few sets, any reader from the west of Ireland will instantly recognise the reference to one of our greatest institutions, The Saw Doctors.

The Oireachtas will take its summer break at the end of this week. The reaction will be the same as it is every year. There will be lots of reports of, and discussions about, public outrage.

Volunteers are great. They add so much to the life of our region. They are the show-up, can-do kind of people that every place needs to feel vibrant and alive.

This week marks the anniversary of the greatest battle in the United States’ Civil War. That battle, at Gettysburg, was fought from July 1st to 3rd, 1863, and aspects of its legacy are still causing conflict in the United States today.

All around the region, the sighs of relief can be heard. The Leaving has left. It is done. The process is, of course, hard going for the young person sitting the exams.

Midsummer in the west really is the best. Christmas aside, this is the time of year when those of us away from home especially miss it. Those long days blending into one makes us all yearn to be out and about in the long evening.

When I was a boy, we were all taught that the Irish saved civilisation. It was a history everyone learned, a story set after the Roman Empire fell in 476AD when the last western emperor was deposed. Europe slipped into the Dark Ages.

Be sure you are taking your ease when you read this: a new report from KPMG last week estimated that Dublin requires a €70bn investment in infrastructure by 2040.

Where’s home? For a lot of people that is a very simple question to answer. It’s the place you live, in the place you’re from. When those two places are the same, home is easy to know.

It couldn’t happen, could it? Nigel Farage as the British Prime Minister? No, surely not. Well, following the recent local elections in England, many are no longer so sure. Farage’s Reform Party got 30% of the vote.

We can be stuck on the wrong thing sometimes. When it comes to the health of our democracy, we have been worrying for years about low voter turnout. The last general election caused particular concern. With turnout in that election estimated at ...

What on earth is all this going to do to us? Four more years of this? It really feels like too much already, and we are only a few months in. Trump’s second presidency is so different from his first one.

A downside of the late Easter is that when the sixth years return to school next week, there really is very little time left before the Leaving Cert begins. Yes, the Leaving Cert. Summer is indeed coming.

The west is of course best, but one of the undeniable advantages of living in Dublin is its cultural vibrancy. Whether it is the galleries, or the theatres, or the wide variety of gigs and events, you can usually find something to do of an evening.

How should we describe this move to bring back tariffs? The end of free trade, the death of globalisation, the collapse of our business model - it has been called all those things and to what extent it becomes any of them remains fully to be seen.

Changing the clocks marks the change of the seasons, and it certainly marks a change of mood. That itself is seasonal.  When the clocks change for the winter, everyone is up in arms.

From acorns come oaks. But if you don’t go planting, there will be no trees.

Pope Francis is a remarkable man. It is hard to believe that he was elected as far back ago as 2013. In his 12 years as Pope, he has done what all leaders should aspire to do: he has set the weather.

What a difference a new leader can make. No, not that one – I think we have all probably heard plenty for now about the difference he’s making to the world we thought we lived in. Step forward instead Sir Keir Starmer.

History was my favourite subject in school. As a child, if you left a history book on the ground anywhere near me, it wouldn’t be there long. When people tell me they find history boring I can’t get my head around it.

What has happened to remote working? It was once the hero, celebrated by all. When Covid struck, it was the solution to a lot of problems. All the talk was of which platform was best: Zoom; Teams, Google Meet. Everyone scrambled to get an account.

The details announced last week of ministers going around the world for St Patrick’s Day was received with a little less cynicism than usual. The Ministers from round these parts are part of that caravan.

The people who go back to education later in life are heroes. They really are admirable. They reach a fork in the road and they take a brave decision.

Storm Éowyn left a lot of things in its wake. After days of disruption, cold and frustration, people all along the Atlantic coast and along the Border will be left reflecting on what this miserable experience means.

Fair play to Dara Calleary, who has made it back to cabinet. It was some journey by any standards. ‘Golfgate’ has faded into the past: the front nine of his political career. Now, much more happily for him, starts the back nine.

It all started with George Washington, back in 1789, on the day he became the first president of something new called the United States of America. The idea was that he would simply take the oath of office.

Now that the Christmas season is behind us, it is time to settle the tab. For some that will be paying the much-inflated credit card bill later this month. For some it will mean forswearing treats.

What were the major political events of 2024 and what will they mean for us in 2025? The obvious place to start is here in Ireland where the Government, as we all know, won the election.

Sure the election is over for ages now, they say. Inasmuch as people are still talking about politics, the talk you hear is that the result was clear.

A word this week for readers who live away from home. You could be in New York or Nottingham, New Zealand or Nice, or indeed in any part of the world. There is one of us everywhere these days.

Elections, at least in theory, are about making big decisions on our future direction as a country.

After the ball is over, after the break of morn After the dancers' leaving, after the stars are gone Many a heart is aching, if you could read them all Many the hopes that ...

What kind of election will this be? Will it be an epic or a bit of a damp squib? The signs so far are that it will be pretty routine rather than seismic, but you never know what any election means until at least the votes are counted.

With the election now well and truly under way, candidates are in full campaign mode. They are busily criss-crossing their constituencies – switched on, smiling, suited and booted, shaking hands, saying what they think people want to hear.

News last week about tourist and visitor numbers coming into Ireland provide some food for thought.

I went along last week to see Agreement, the play which depicts the last days leading up to the signing of the Good Friday Agreement.

The day is getting closer. A day which many will say is like nothing we have experienced before. On 5th November, the people of the United States will decide who will be their next president.

Canvassing. In urban areas, it is described as ‘knocking on doors’, in more rural areas it is ‘calling’.

In their song All the way from Tuam, the Sawdoctors describe the world they had come from. Anyone of my generation from the west of Ireland who listens to that song will well recognise the place and people it describes.

With the budget this week splashing the cash, why are so many people cross when so many things are going well? Are they all justified? And if not, whose grievances need serious attention and why? Budget Day these times is an early Christmas.

When to call the election? We all know that a general election must be called before spring, but when exactly that might be is the big political question right now.

At some stage of our evolution, we humans came out of the water. And the signs are on us. As soon as we get back into it, we become animated, playful, and our minds are at ease. Our skins even take on a glow from the water.

When all the counting and choosing Electoral College voters arising from a US Presidential Election is over – the process I explored in last week’s article – the House of Representatives and the Senate meet in joint session on the following January ...

You may just possibly have heard that they are having a presidential election in the United States in November. Alongside all the drama and debate, you might also be wondering exactly how the election process works.

Who doesn’t want to beside the sea for at least part of the summer? In this, the last of three articles exploring some of the sites of Mayo that illuminate our history, we start at the seaside and the end of the 18th century.

Every bit of the Irish landscape has seen a lot of history: as Seamus Heaney put it in one of his poems, ‘every layer seems camped on before'.

Now that he has been in the job for a few weeks, we might start thinking about what kind of Prime Minister Keir Starmer will prove to be – and in a more tribal political sense, what kind of Labour Prime Minister he will try to be.

This week will see a very welcome meeting between Taoiseach Simon Harris and the new British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer. Since 2016, meetings between a Taoiseach and a British Prime Minister have been rare and often fraught.

Best be prepared, for it will be a hard day’s night.

The start of the Leaving Certificate always brings a flurry of comment. On the day it all begins, with English Paper I, the Leaving is the talk of the place. The media is full of it. People everywhere give a shudder at the memory of it.

Just when you thought that was the end of elections in 2024, it looks like they are only beginning. The posters are just down. They will soon be back. The Government has until March of next year to hold a general election.

Nationally, the government won the elections. But in Mayo and indeed in rural Ireland generally, they didn’t just win: they walked it, notwithstanding how well independents did.

What can we expect from the local and European elections? Who will win the battle between the parties, and which candidates will win the battles within them? Just how well will independents do, and what will be the deciding issues and factors? Will ...

Will Labour definitely win an overall majority in the British General Election, and what would that mean? There is no doubt the Tories are on their way out, but it remains to be seen whether the presumption that Labour will win a comfortable working ...

Between now and the end of all our upcoming elections, there will be many opinion polls. There will be national polls, European polls, constituency polls.

There were sparks in Westport last week when posters for certain election candidates appeared around the outskirts of the town.

This week sees the anniversary of the formal surrender by Germany that ended World War II in Europe. Next month we go to the polls in the European elections.

In the run-up to the 1997 British General Election, Tony Blair was asked what his top three priorities would be if elected to government. ‘Education, education, education’ was his response.

For most of this year, we in the West have been cursing in the relentless rain.

Now that Alan Dillon is a Junior Minister, and with less than a year before a General Election, he will be considering how best to make use of the role.

Anyone who has not travelled on the N17 north of Ireland West Airport would hardly imagine the state of it. The ‘national primary road’ from the airport to Collooney has to be driven on to be believed.

Timing in politics can be everything. On March 20th, the day Leo Varadkar announced he was stepping down, Simon Harris was the right person in the right spot at the right moment to inherit.

Why would anyone do it? Would you do it? Would you encourage your son or daughter, or niece or nephew to do it? To do what? To become a politician that is. What? A politician! Chances are that most readers are recoiling in horror.

This week the Oireachtas Committee on Assisted Dying is set to publish its report, in which by majority vote it will recommend that both assisted suicide and euthanasia be made legal in Ireland.

Would you have thought that the DUP would be playing hurling and speaking Irish? ‘No, Never’, you might reply, but they have just done both – and that’s not fake news.

In normal times, the national conventions of political parties in the United States are a routine enough business. The party – be that Republican or Democrat – meets up in some big city for a hullabaloo just before the presidential election.

I first heard the hum of this story about ten years ago, on the Mooney Goes Wild radio programme on RTÉ Radio One. From time to time, the presenters on the programme would talk about bees – and it wasn’t a happy tale.

Life in the West – in ‘rural’ Ireland – is increasingly urban.

As the deadline for the CAO application approaches, my thoughts go back to my own CAO form many decades ago. It is 30 years this year since I applied for a place as a student in Trinity College.

With all the talk of elections in these parts, it could be missed that our nearest neighbour also has a general election on the horizon.

Can you vote in our upcoming elections and referendums? Are you sure? Are all your details correct? What will you say if you show up at the polling booth and there is a problem, or if no polling card comes in the post? Check it out early and there ...

The re-introduction of the wolf to Ireland is probably not high on anyone’s list of New Year’s resolutions.

Over the last few months, I have been writing a series of articles on what we can learn from leaders in different sectors about how to build a better West of Ireland.

These days between Christmas and New Year are the best. All the hullabaloo of Christmas itself is over and things take on a slightly calmer feel. These can be properly lazy days. We should lean into them.

Christmas is on our doorsteps. This is a time when the exile thinks especially of making their way home: long journeys; old memories; the best of days.

I went to see the new film about Napoleon. And just like that great General’s invasion of Russia in 1812, that was my big mistake. Had I not been there with a friend, I would have retreated myself about half way through.

A good news story out of Dublin last week was the launch of On This Day In Mayo, Máirtín G. Ó Maicín’s fine new book. The launch event was a ray of sunlight in an otherwise grim week in the capital.

Corporation tax is beginning to feel a little like that line from Ulysses about Irish history: a nightmare from which we are trying to awake. Receipts from the tax have grown over recent years in a way that is impossible to explain.

Now that the clocks have changed, the five o’clock shadow that is Movember is upon us. Gentlemen, decommission your razers: it is time to cover your stiff upper lip.

Eighty-three per cent of smokers regret starting smoking, according to the HSE. If they had the choice again, they say, they would never take that first puff.