For more than 20 years, I’ve had the privilege of working at Organico. Every day I talk with people who are looking for simple, practical ways to support their health. Some come in looking for Vitamin D to help them through the winter months, others are searching for magnesium to improve their sleep, Vitamin C and Zinc to support their immune system, or a good multivitamin to fill nutritional gaps in a busy lifestyle.

What I see every day is that people are becoming increasingly proactive (and concerned) about their health. They want to take responsibility for their own wellbeing and make informed choices about the products they use.This is why I’ve become involved in the Save Our Supplements campaign.

Over the past few weeks, something quite remarkable has happened. What started as a small group of concerned health food shops has grown into a national consumer campaign. In just five weeks, more than 25,000 people have signed our petition (in stores and online), thousands have shared information online, and we’ve raised almost €10,000 to help spread awareness of an issue that, until recently, very few people knew anything about.

So what is the issue? The European Commission is advancing proposals to introduce harmonised Maximum Permitted Levels (MPLs) for vitamins and minerals in food supplements across Europe.

At first glance, harmonisation sounds like a sensible and reasonable idea. Common standards across Europe can make a lot of sense in many areas. (although strangely we cannot seem to harmonise European electricity prices, insurance, low cost mortgages, car prices etc!)

But the main issue is that nutrition is not something you can harmonise. There are other factors a play which are cultural, nutritional, genetic and geography related. Ireland has a very different relationship with supplements than many other European countries. Because of our rainy, northern latitude, Vitamin D deficiency is a recognised public health issue, with supplementation widely recommended. Irish consumers have also developed a long history of using higher-strength nutrients such as Magnesium, Vitamin C and Zinc safely as part of their everyday health routines.

What concerns me most is not simply the legislation itself, but the fact that the people who will be most affected appear to have had very little opportunity to contribute to it. Nutritional therapists, GPs, health food shops, supplement manufacturers and, most importantly, Irish consumers have not been meaningfully consulted about changes that could significantly affect the products they rely on.

That is why we launched the Save Our Supplements campaign. Our first aim is simply to let people know what is happening. Most of the customers I speak to have no idea these proposals are moving forward. They naturally assume that the supplements they have been buying safely for years will always be available.

The reality is that if these proposals are implemented in their current form, many higher-strength supplements could be reformulated or disappear from shelves altogether.

For me, this is fundamentally a consumer choice issue. This isn’t about whether supplements should be regulated. They already are. Food supplements sold in Ireland are subject to strict food safety legislation and are regulated under both Irish and European law. Consumer safety should always come first.

Equally, if there was evidence that people were being harmed by the products currently available, that would clearly need to be addressed.

But that simply isn’t what we’re seeing. After more than two decades serving customers, I don’t see people experiencing problems because they’ve chosen a higher-strength Vitamin C, Magnesium or Zinc supplement. Nor is there any evidence of a widespread public health problem arising from the products currently available through regulated retailers.

So naturally many consumers are asking: if there isn’t a significant safety issue, why should our choices be restricted?

I also believe Ireland deserves to have its own circumstances properly considered. Our climate, our public health needs and our long history of responsible supplement use are not necessarily the same as those of every other European country. A one-size-fits-all approach may not always produce the best outcome for Irish consumers. 

There also is a hidden knock-on effect in this proposal of higher consumer pricing. Two 500mg tablets of something is always dearer than one 1000mg tablet – so for the customer currently taking one high dose supplement there will be a cost to bear. This cost might seem inconsequential when you are earning €22,000 a MONTH as an EU Commissioner or €11,000 a MONTH as an MEP but for elderly people on the state pension at only €1,297 per month every penny matters!

The proposals could also have significant consequences for Irish businesses. Health food shops, pharmacies and Irish supplement manufacturers have spent decades developing products that meet the needs of Irish consumers. If harmonised limits are introduced without proper consideration of those needs, many familiar products could change dramatically.

I feel this conversation is very important as many people see these proposals as the thin end of the wedge -–a beginning rather than the end of the regulatory process. Once maximum levels are established for vitamins and minerals, there is understandable concern that further restrictions on natural healthcare products could follow in the years ahead.

The SOS Campaign is calling for a meeting with the Minister for Health to ensure that Irish consumers are properly represented as these proposals continue to develop at European level.

The response so far has been incredibly encouraging. More than 25,000 signatures in just five weeks show that this issue matters to people. They want to understand what is happening, they want to have their say, and they want decisions that are transparent, proportionate and based on sound evidence.

If you value the freedom to make informed choices about your own health, I encourage you to learn more. Please visit SaveOurSupplements.ie, where you’ll find clear information about the proposals, our growing petition, and simple ways to get involved. If, having read the facts, you share our concerns, you can also send a message directly to your local TDs and MEPs through the website.

Every signature, every email and every conversation helps ensure that Irish consumers have a voice in decisions that could shape the future of natural healthcare in Ireland. Whatever your views on supplements, I believe that decisions affecting our health choices should be made with us, not simply for us.

On a recent trip to Antwerp my intrepid partner and I found ourselves in hardhats traversing the city’s historic canals. But for flash lights we were in darkness, walking in a line along a canal bed, for the waterways, known as ‘ruien,’ had been vaulted over, enclosed, for many hundreds of years. We were effectively walking underneath the city, traversing the route that canal barges may have once taken, passing under what once would have been bridges and sluice gates.

Being a book-hound, I later found a wonderful tome with photographs of the ruien from the 1800s. There, in sepia, standing tall in the openings of the ruien, were ships, slim one-masters huddled hull to hull along the canal walls; and larger three-masters docked along the Jordaenskai, the quay breasting the River Scheldt. The photographs also showed, amongst the tall ships in the Willemdok, the tall, dark flues of steam ships, for this was the age when both the new and the old mingled together, as famously depicted in William Turner’s ‘The Fighting Temeraire.’

Turner’s painting of 1839, set across the channel on a pearlescent River Thames, shows England’s gallant old warship being towed by a dark-flued tugboat. The warship was at the end of its life, a metaphor for what would soon be the end of the ‘age of sail,’ as the industrial revolution powered ahead. 

Just as steam power revolutionised shipping, the birth of photography began to revolutionise the way that we see. The photographs reproduced in my fortuitous find stand in stark contrast to Turner’s painting. They are not regarded as great works of art, but as traces of moments frozen by a mechanical device. They are the work of a new technology, of a mechanical eye, that would soon vie with the painter’s hand for supremacy in the realm of simulacra, in the realm of reproduction.

Photographs from the 1800s always feel ghostly: stevedores at work rolling barrels along the quay of the Brouwersvliet (the Brewers Canal), passengers and sailors grouped at the Willemdok, boys wading into the Margueriedok at low tide. The latter are seen in a photograph from 1897, and one cannot help but wonder at the lives they lived. For where a painting of the same may have been in some way staged, edited or invented, our attention taken by the brushstrokes and the whimsy of the painter, there can be no doubt in the photograph, of a moment frozen in time, of the hesitancy of one boy and the daring of another, at the light and shadow of a particular time of day, of the longboats, half in the water, beside them. Who were those boys? What lives did they live? Did they survive the Great War? Did they survive the month? Did they know the legend of ‘Lange Wapper,’ the trickster who would lead one into the waters?

‘Lange Wapper’ is a mythic figure in Antwerp, a shape-shifting trickster of the canals who would lure drunks into the murky waters late at night. A sculpture of the trickster graces the forecourt of the Steen, Antwerp’s ancient fortress facing the Scheldt. As in the photographs of the boys, there is no changing the sculpture’s shape. The ‘real’ Lange Wapper is the spirit of calamity, a legend forged, perhaps, to warn a populace against the treachery of Antwerp’s ruien, the malign spirit of the hungry waters that could cut lives unexpectedly short.

Old photographs haunt; they beg stories of past lives. That is not to say that old paintings don’t; in many cases they are far more alive. The main difference is that paintings are hybrid creatures: they tell us as much about the painter as about their subject, bearing as they do the visceral trace of the painter’s hand. A good example here is ‘A view of the Koolvliet’ (the Coal Canal) from 1875, by Jan Michiel Ruyten, which predates a photograph of the same canal from 1881. Working from life, Ruyten had no way of ‘freezing’ his figures; they are approximations, evocations, rendered with deft economy, giving us an authentic flavour of the life of the canal. The photograph, however, is tantalisingly free of that trace, one step removed from human touch, giving it the aura of time embalmed, at once alluring and distant, at once full of life and the knowledge of its passing.

The dialogue between photography, sculpture and painting, has in our own time, of course, a rich history. Think of Any Warhol’s famous screen prints of Marilyn Monroe, of Gerhard Richter’s series of blurred photo realist paintings. Perhaps most moving of all are Anselm Kiefer’s multitude of lead books, the ‘pages’ of which are endowed with photographic prints, seared and emulsified into the lead. Such ‘books’ Kiefer has, over the years, forged into installations: as mobile library shelves, as sculptural stacks, as the ‘cargo’ of lead model ships, which in turn are attached to monolithic canvases. Through the likes of Kiefer the contemporary artist has swallowed the photograph just as the whale swallowed Jonah, only for it to come out again as something new, an artefact transformed. And so here we are again with the ships; this time they are Kiefer’s: lead effigies of WWII, just as Turner’s ‘The Fighting Temeraire’ was an effigy of Waterloo.

Like a swallowtail butterfly, David Geraghty has been slowly and steadily unfolding his wings as a solo artist. His first album, ‘Kill Your Darlings’ saw the light of day almost 20 years ago. Until then, since the mid-1990s, he had been in bands, “with a collective song-writing ethos”. No-one was credited individually. His first ‘real’ band was Juniper, founded by a group of secondary school students in Co Kildare that included Damien Rice. Geraghty was a friend and joined them around 1995. At that time, record contracts for unproven bands were not completely unheard of and Juniper signed a six-album deal with Polygram in 1997. Having earlier released two EPs, they recorded two singles that entered the Irish Top 20. However, disagreements with the record company over the choice of songs caused Rice (who went on to have a glowing solo career as a major singer-songwriter and folk artist) to quit. The rest of Juniper – David Geraghty (guitar, vocals, keys, percussion, banjo, piano, harmonica), Paul Noonan (lead vocals, guitar, percussion, keys), and Dominic Phillips (bass, vocals) – rebranded themselves as Bell X1 in 1999. And they remain the core members to this day, operating as a (song-writing) team, with additional musicians joining for gigs and recordings. 

Bell X1 has maintained a successful presence in Ireland and continues to do so. A multi-platinum selling Indie band with ‘a huge status’ in Ireland, they are also quite popular internationally, especially in the UK and the US. Partly as their music was used as a soundtrack for emotionally charged scenes in popular TV series such as Grey’s Anatomy and The OC. Bell X1 was the first-ever Irish act to headline at Malahide Castle (Co Dublin). It performs at festivals, including Electric Picnic, and large venues across Ireland, including sold-out slots at Croke Park supporting Ed Sheeran in 2015. Intermittently, they sometimes accepted invitations to act as the opening act for massive global bands such as U2, Tori Amos, Hall and Oates. It says on their website that they “treat these megastar opening slots as exclusive, landmark events rather than a regular touring habit”. Over the past 27 years, Bell X1 has released eight studio albums. Six were nominated for major awards (Best Irish Band/Album/Live Performance). The ninth album, Good Bones, was recorded this spring in upstate New York. A first single has been released, ‘But First, Love’. When the full album will be available is as yet unknown. 

The name Bell X1 was inspired by a 1979 book, ‘The Right Stuff’ by Tom Wolfe, which features the Bell X-1 – the historic aircraft that broke the sound barrier in 1947. David Geraghty: “We were looking for a band name at the time, and I think we just kind of went, let’s go with that, it’s kind of cool.” And slightly eccentric, with a technical ‘vibe’ (like naming a band U2 after an American reconnaissance aircraft). It also rhymes with how Bell X1 has navigated its career. Musically, it has often reinvented itself, like the art rock bands of old, experimenting with styles, techniques, accessibility. 

Geraghty’s individual journey was equally eclectic and impulsive. His first two solo albums, ‘Kill Your Darlings’ (2007) and ‘The Victory Dance’ (2009), were recorded under his own name, beautifully accompanied by his vocalist wife, Clare Finglass. Then he switched gears. “After two albums, I moved away from music under my own name. It felt like the right thing to do but in hindsight, I’m kind of sorry I did. Later, I released Inherit (2014) and Monomania (2019) under a different moniker, Join me in the Pines,” he explains during an online interview in June. The next day he will be playing an almost sold-out Live at the Marquee gig in Cork City with Bell X1, which will also play headline gigs at Iveagh Gardens (Dublin) and the Big Top (part of the Galway International Arts Festival) on July 11 and 18. “Expect soaring melodies, sharp lyrics and unmistakable chemistry,” says the festival blurb.

Geraghty has solo gigs lined up in West Cork, Ballincollig, Clonmel, Donegal and at Electric Picnic on August 27. He is due to release his fifth solo album on September 18. As himself. Fittingly so. David Geraghty and music go back a long way. “It’s how my parents met. My dad and a few buddies were in a ballad group. He played banjo and bass guitar. Around the time of the folk revival (Dylan covers and The Mammas and The Papas) they tried to jump on the bandwagon and needed a singer. My mum answered the ad. The rest is history.” He grew up with two siblings in Leixlip (Kildare); the only one that went into music. “It was obvious from a very young age that this guy was not gonna do anything else. Dad taught me guitar chords and my mum printed out lyrics. I was listening to people like Springsteen. I always had an ear for a strong melody and good lyrics. When I was very young, I was really wild. I would have broken space and time if someone had given me Red Bull. Borderline! But aged 12, 13 I calmed down and when we had a family sing-song I’d usually be asked to do something.”

He has a wonderful voice, intense and emotional but suffers from nerves when performing. “I do, actually. I think I took on board the admonishments to “sit down, behave, be quiet” that I heard for years. It had a psychological effect. Lots of self-doubt. After COVID, I had to throw myself into playing music live. Feeling the fear, doing it anyway. Now I’m really glad I did. Especially with the new album coming up.” It is called Komorebi. “A Japanese word describing sunlight leaking through trees. I envisage the forest clearing as nature’s little stage, waiting for something to happen, whether wildlife or human.” He laughs. “I asked ChatGPT, What should I do as a nervous performer? Just for the crack, I wasn’t expecting any insightful human response. But there was one interesting comment: “Your performance during the gig and the song you’re singing might be exactly what somebody in the audience needs at that moment.”  And I went, Jesus, you know what, I never even thought about this. I’m so busy trying to prove something to myself. I never asked, “How is this benefiting somebody else?”

David Geraghty performs: 

July 2 – Connolly’s of Leap; July 3 – The White Horse, Ballincollig; 

July 9 – Clonmel Junction Festival ; 

August 27 – Electric Picnic.

This month Natalie Webb is showing us how to make a huge icecream cone.

“This month’s project will really make your mouth water!”

Materials: 

•  Three sheets of card, one blue, one light brown or yellow, one dark brown.

•  Poster paints.

•  An old sponge

•  Glue  •  Scissors •  Pencil

•  Old plate

•  Brown marker pen

•  Small pom poms (optional)

Draw and cut out a long triangle shape from your light brown or yellow card to make your icecream cone.

Stick your cone onto your blue card then, using a brown marker, draw a criss cross design.

Cut out four disc shapes from your sponge. Don’t worry – they won’t be perfect circles!

Blob four different colour paints separately onto your plate. I used white, yellow, red and pink.

Dab your sponge pieces into the paints, using one for each colour, then press them down above your cone to make your icecream….you can make this as big and colourful as you like!

When you are happy with the result, cut out a little rectangle from the dark brown card for your chocolate flake. Stick this so that it looks like its’s coming out of the top of your icecream.

To finish off I added some “sprinkles” – I got some tiny pom poms and glued them onto the ice cream. It looks delicious….but don’t eat it!

The illegal wildlife trade is the second biggest international crime after drug smuggling, but one hears about it less often. Personally, I think that wildlife smugglers should be punished far more harshly than drug dealers – after all, if someone wants to inject himself with heroin or addle his brain with cannabis, that is his own business, and there is an infinite quantity of such drugs available, but the smuggled animal has done nothing to deserve its horrid fate, and one day its kind will probably be extinct.

Hundreds of animal species are traded illegally, many for spurious Chinese medicine, some for meat, others to become exotic pets for wealthy fools who know little about them. While most people are aware of the slaughter of elephants, rhinos and pangolins for their body parts, it might be surprising to learn that there is also a thriving illegal trade in insects, e.g. rhinoceros beetles into Japan, praying mantises into the USA, butterflies out of Sri Lanka.           

Recently, criminals have been caught trying to smuggle thousands of ants out of Kenya. The particular species were harvester ants, which are popular with collectors because the queens are so big – up to 25 mm in length. On the black market, a single queen ant can make €200. One smuggler, a Chinese national, was caught with 2,000 queens, each caged in a little plastic tube. The same man was apparently behind a similar smuggling operation a year ago, when three foreigners and a Kenyan were caught with 5,540 queen ants; they were each fined just $7,700.

Harvester ants are seed-eaters, and while they carry seeds back to their nest, they invariably drop some, thus helping dispersal. There are many millions of ants in one nest, but only one queen, without whom the colony cannot function, so the collection of queens on such an industrial scale could seriously endanger their survival, as well as upset the local ecology.

Ants belong to the order Hymenoptera, which also includes sawflies, bees and wasps. Ants have been found preserved in amber dating back to the Cretaceous period, when the dinosaurs were still ruling the planet. They are social insects – there are no solitary ant species – and like social bees, they have different castes: queens, males and sterile workers. There are sub-divisions of workers too, such as nurse maids, foragers and soldiers. Ants resemble termites in some ways, and termites are often called ‘white ants’, but they are not at all related. Worldwide, there are over 13,000 described ant species, and no doubt many thousands more; 20 species live in Ireland. Being so small, ants are frequently overlooked, and are often considered pests; they certainly can be in the tropics – leave any food uncovered, and you will soon have battalions of ants marching away with it. But ants are not only important ecologically, they are also fascinating little creatures.

The Sahara silver ant is the second fastest insect, after the Australian tiger beetle. It has been recorded at 3.1 kph which, relative to body size, corresponds to a human running at 720 kph. The reason for the ant’s swiftness is its habitat – it lives in the Sahara Desert, and has to find food quickly before the mid-day sun becomes too hot – 53 degrees kills them. To minimise the effects of heat on their feet, they use only four legs for running, the first pair being raised like arms.

Leaf-cutter ants live in Central and South America. They spend their lives cutting pieces of leaves and carrying them, like large green sails, back to their nests. Each ant can carry a piece of leaf 50 times its own body weight. The leaves are used to nourish a fungus, which is then fed to the ant larvae; different species of leaf-cutter ants use different species of fungus. The adult ants feed on leaf sap.

Many insects store nectar and other sugary liquids in special compartments within their nests – honey bees of course make honeycombs. But honeypot ants use their own bodies to store food. Special types of workers, called repletes, are fed by other workers until their bodies become so swollen with honey that they can no longer move, and they form a sort of living wine cellar. When other ants are thirsty, they tickle the repletes with their antennae until honey is regurgitated. There are many species of honeypot ants in the tropics; Australian Aborigines eat them.

Ants defend themselves in three ways: they can bite, sting or spray formic acid (the name of the ant family is Formicidae). The stings of some species can be painful or even fatal to humans. The bullet ant of tropical America is said to have the most painful sting of any animal. The jack jumper ant from Australia can be fatal to those allergic to ant stings.

Most invasive animals and plants cause problems. Ants, being so small and industrious, are very likely to escape from captivity and wreak havoc. One famous example is what happened on Christmas Island, a tiny Australian territory in the Indian Ocean renowned for its red crabs. These brightly coloured crustaceans live for most of the year in forests, but like all crabs, they must return to the sea to spawn. They do this in unbelievable numbers, marching across roads, getting squashed by cars, puncturing tyres and causing accidents. Once considered pests themselves, the islanders have come to appreciate these crabs; park rangers now help them across the roads, special underpasses have been built for them, and locals drive more carefully. After spawning, the crabs return to their forests, and later, the juveniles follow them from the sea.

Unfortunately, yellow crazy ants, a particularly aggressive species that forms immense super-colonies, were introduced onto Christmas Island in the early 20th century. The ants evict the crabs from their burrows, and eat them; they have killed 10-15 million crabs, perhaps a third of the population. This has changed the ecology of the island, because the plants that the crabs used to eat have now started to take over areas of forest.

I had an alarming experience with red driver ants when I lived in Zambia. I saw them occasionally on the walk to school, and then one day a sticky mass of them appeared in my little garden pond, as the ants made a living bridge to get across it. I just thought that was rather interesting – until they invaded the house.

My maid screamed out: ‘Mpashi!’ [their name in Bemba]. ‘They will eat us!’ The whole veranda seemed to be alive, crawling and crackling, the outside wall covered by millions of ants. We shut the doors and windows, but soon the ants were pouring into the lounge through a hole in the wall. If I had been asleep, they would indeed have started to devour me.

I like and respect ants, but those ones had to go. We filled up buckets of hot water and washed them all into the garden where the birds had a feast.

There are about 60 species of driver ants in Africa; they are called siafu in Swahili. The ones in my garden were probably Dorylus helvolus, but I wasn’t thinking too much about positive identification at the time. They usually live in gigantic underground nests, but when food runs out, they set off in columns, up to 50 million strong. The workers are small, and march in the centre of the column, with the large and very pugnacious soldiers, who have square heads and big jaws, on either side; all are coloured a dark reddish brown. If one is careless when out walking and gets too close to a marching line of these ants, the soldiers will soon be up your legs and biting badly. The Maasai use them as sutures to heal cuts, because once their jaws clamp down, they don’t ever let go. The queens of this species are huge, up to five centimetres long; the clumsy winged males, which are attracted to lights and often crash-land in one’s evening whisky, are not much smaller, and are known as sausage flies.

Globally, most insect species are declining, because of pesticides, climate change, urbanisation, and all of you who insist on mowing your lawns every time the sun comes out. Illegal trading will only make things worse. Few people care much about insects, even though they are by far the most important animals on the planet. Many will not survive. But ants will. One day, when human overpopulation, unnecessary technology and idiotic consumerism render the Earth uninhabitable for higher animals, the ants, with their organisation and vast numbers, will still be here. 

If you’ve spent any time looking into retrofitting an older home in West Cork, particularly fitting a heat pump, you’ve likely come across the advice to insulate first. The general accepted hierarchy for retrofitting your home, and the advice I give my clients, is to first insulate, then look at the efficiency of your heating system, and finally generate your own renewable energy.

It is common sense, really: 75 percent of energy use for an average Irish home is spent on space heating, so it is best to tackle this first by insulating properly. Then, make sure that this heat is generated in the most efficient way, which would usually be some form of a heat pump. Finally, add renewable technologies like solar panels to generate your own electricity.

The Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland (SEAI) has always preached that we should insulate first, and most of their grant rules are set up to reflect this. Before you can even think about qualifying for a heat pump grant, your home’s insulation must meet an exacting level of heat retention, measured by the Heat Loss Indicator (HLI).

Briefly, the HLI is calculated using the BER methodology: by taking the sum of your home’s heat loss through the building fabric, ventilation, and draughts, and dividing this by the floor area. The HLI is a good measure of a building’s insulation levels, though it can penalise smaller homes, something I have written about previously. A value of 2.3 W/K or lower has always been required to avail of a heat pump grant under any of the SEAI schemes. Until now.

SEAI recently launched a new initiative: the R290 High Temperature Heat Pump Pilot Scheme. Under this scheme, it will be possible to fit a heat pump and claim the normal grant funding (up to €12,500) without meeting the strict HLI criteria.

How is a high temperature heat pump different to a normal one? Standard heat pumps are incredibly efficient, but they prefer to provide a steady, low-temperature warmth over a long period, normally with a flow temperature of 35-50 degrees Celsius to underfloor heating or large radiators. Traditional oil or gas boilers, conversely, dump massive amounts of heat into small radiators at temperatures of 65 to 75 degrees Celsius. Try to put a standard heat pump into an uninsulated old farmhouse with small, traditional radiators, and you will probably be a bit chilly while your electricity bill shoots up!

Enter the R290 high temperature heat pump. By utilising R290 (propane) as a natural refrigerant, these next-generation units can absorb substantially more energy from the outside air and compress it more effectively than older synthetic refrigerants. This means they can deliver ‘boiler-like’ flow temperatures of up to 80 degrees Celsius, making them a straight swap for your old boiler.

The efficiency does suffer slightly at these higher settings though. With a flow temperature of 35-50 degrees Celsius, a standard heat pump runs at between 300 and 500 percent efficiency. When the flow temperature goes up to 65-80 degrees Celsius, that efficiency drops to around 200-300 percent – still better than a fossil fuel boiler, but higher on electricity usage.

The pilot offers the same robust level of financial support as other heat pump grants €6,500 for the heat pump itself; Up to €2,000 for central heating system upgrades (such as new radiators); A Renewable Heat Bonus of €4,000 (which I have heard referred to as the ‘boiler scrappage scheme’).

Furthermore, while you still need to publish a pre-works Building Energy Rating (BER) certificate, there is no specific minimum BER rating required to enter, nor is there a post-works BER target to hit. SEAI is actively seeking out properties built and occupied before 2011 that would have historically been rejected for standard heat pump funding.

However, there are a few caveats. The pilot is only accessible under the National Home Energy Upgrade Scheme via a One Stop Shop (OSS), so you cannot just go straight to your local independent SEAI-registered installer. Applications are being routed exclusively through these registered OSS companies.

Secondly, because this is a research focus, the pilot is strictly limited to just 100 homes across the entire country. The portal will only accept entries for a nine-month window to ensure data can be actively captured across the upcoming 2026/2027 winter heating season.

Because the heat pumps will be communicating performance data directly to SEAI via cloud-based platforms at 15-minute intervals, participating homes must have a reliable broadband connection. Homeowners must also consent to having this data gathered for a nine-month period so SEAI can evaluate how these R290 units handle actual Irish winters, tracking indoor comfort levels, running costs, and heating patterns.

So, is a high-temperature heat pump for you? My advice would still be to insulate your house properly first and then fit a heat pump that can work at maximum efficiency. However, there are cases where this pilot makes sense.

A few years back, our own oil boiler packed up. At the time, our house was not yet fully insulated (and still isn’t), so when we decided to fit a heat pump, we had to pay for it entirely out of our own pockets. This pilot would have been a lifesaver in a situation like that. Other great candidates would be homes where a full insulation upgrade is unaffordable, doesn’t make financial sense, or is impractical, as well as smaller or uniquely shaped homes that are unfairly penalised by the standard HLI rules.

As always, if you would like to get in touch about anything in this article or your own retrofit project, feel free to reach out to Ruairí at ruairi@retrofurb.ie.

Talented designer Alice Holliday works from a cosy third-floor atelier on Main Street in Skibbereen. Alice grew up in Castlehaven and her love of fashion and rare sense of style appeared early. Her surroundings, especially nature and the sea, became an inseparable part of her aesthetic.

At the age of nine, Alive already knew she wanted to become a designer. Childhood games with her sister – trying on vintage clothes and putting together improvised fashion shows – became the first steps towards her future profession. Over time, this grew into a clear creative path: making clothes that do not simply decorate a person, but help them express who they are.

Today, Alice works mainly with vintage and upcycled materials, reimagining them and giving them a new life. Her designs are defined by a love of experimentation and sustainable fashion – layering, texture, bold combinations of colour and print.

Look One

This ethereal, nature-inspired outfit captures a sense of joy.

At the centre is an airy, almost weightless dress made from sheer fabric and decorated with bright floral appliqués. The flowers are not just decoration – they create a sense of handcraft and individuality.

The silhouette is soft and flowing, with a fine belt accentuating the waist. At the same time, the layering – the dress worn over denim – adds a modern feeling and a gentle boldness.

It’s a timeless piece created around nature, flowers, light fabric and a feminine silhouette are elements that return to fashion again and again. The accessories also strengthen the look. A bright bag adds energy and focus, while the shoes and sheer socks support the softness and playfulness.

Stylist’s tip: To let dresses like this truly shine, play with contrast. Wear them not only with romantic shoes, but also with more grounded pieces – denim, chunky boots or minimalist accessories. This creates the balance between fairytale and real life that makes an outfit feel modern and stylish.

Look Two

This look feels as though it has stepped out of a fairytale.

The foundation is a layered silhouette. A flowing skirt in a warm terracotta shade creates soft movement and gives the outfit an earthy, natural base. Over it, a dark tunic with a painterly print recalls brushstrokes or floral motifs in a muted palette. This contrast – dark and warm, structured and airy – makes the look visually rich and interesting.

Accessories play a special role. A small bag on a long chain adds a vintage mood. The necklace and hair detail strengthen the sense that the look has been thoughtfully and artistically composed. The red footwear with a large flower is a bold, almost theatrical gesture that brings the whole composition to life.

Stylist’s tip: In a complex, layered outfit like this, it is important to keep a clear focus. Here, that focus is already created by the red shoes. When styling such a look, avoid adding too many more bright accents. Instead, support the colour of the shoes with lipstick or a small detail in the accessories, so the whole outfit feels complete and harmonious.

Look Three

This look is pure fairytale, with a touch of dramatic fashion and ethnic chic. 

The foundation is a black skirt with an ethnic print and a wide leather belt, which emphasises the waist and adds structure. A light mesh layer creates airiness, while the lower layer with ornamental print adds depth and visual interest. This contrast between transparency and dense pattern makes the outfit complex and multi-dimensional.

On the shoulders is a textured white fur cape, which immediately draws attention and adds theatre, luxury and a little fairytale innocence. The printed blouse softly echoes the hemline, creating a sense of unity. The loose sleeves look almost like wings, giving the outfit movement and a delicate, magical fragility.

Accessories are key here. The floral wreath in the hair strengthens the natural theme, while lace gloves add vintage refinement. The layered necklace makes the look more theatrical, and the round bag shaped like an old clock becomes the main narrative accent. The black shoes and sheer tights balance everything without drawing attention away from the main story.

The mood of the look is magical, slightly mysterious, but still warm and feminine.

Stylist’s tip: To adapt such an expressive look for everyday life, you can break it down into separate elements. For example, wear the printed skirt with more minimalist accessories, or replace the fur cape with a calmer jacket. This keeps the character of the outfit, while making it more wearable.

Photographer, stylist, make-up artist and text: Galyna Zaitseva

Clothing and headpieces:
Alice Halliday @alicehalliday alicehalliday.com

With thanks to Violette for providing the clock bag for the shoot.

While this change is outside of our control and will be managed, maybe even embraced in the future, we must allow ourselves to ‘have our moment’ and allow time to genuinely feel uncomfortable feelings. I am not a ‘get on with it’ type of person and very often find it hard to disguise what I’m feeling. The process of anything, as far as I’m concerned, is as, if not more important, than the task. So how something happens is as valuable as the way it actually happens.  The balancing of the process and task is embedded as a principle in community work training and in mindfulness training also. It’s the journey, not the destination that is important.  

But, in this moment, the destination matters too, because we don’t know where the mindfulness groups at Myross Wood will re-locate to. This will take months to figure out but I am relying on patience and trust and will take it one step at a time. And I’m not at all on my own, so many people care, including my weekly drop-in meditation group on Tuesday mornings, people who have been sitting meditating collectively for six years. Everyone offers comfort and potential solutions. My monthly mindfulness peer support for family carers, also in its sixth year, care very much where we will gather in the future.  

This work really matters to me, it supports us through grief, loss and change in our lives, helping us to manage the micro and the macro moments, allowing us to feel real happiness and joy. We are in the process of developing an online communication page and notice board for all carers in West Cork and this is vital work, led by the carers group at Myross Wood.  The empathy and compassion for others in this monthly group is very special to behold. Huge thanks to Cork ETB who have funded this work for a number of years through REACH funding with the welcome addition this year of the Collaboration and Innovation Fund. The work won’t stop, it will need a new venue.

But here now, reflecting over my time at Myross Wood, I have such appreciation for every single person I have encountered along the way.  Whether it was at a weekly mindfulness drop-in session, a themed workshop, staff teambuilding/wellbeing days, last year’s overnight retreat for family carers, or at a fundraising workshop last November to honour Dermot and all the souls. Or perhaps we connected at our monthly mindfulness peer support sessions for family carers, annual reconnect and re-engage programme or outdoor mindfulness in nature sessions.  Thank you every single one of you, from the bottom of a very full heart.

I have an appreciation for the place itself, close to my native Castlehaven, that held us all, surrounded by nature, such a special place connecting us to our very roots. Walking the other day, I had the most magical encounter with a giant hare, who lolloped along the road, stopped and rose up to his/her full height, just looking at me for a couple of minutes before heading off down the path.  I hope so much that the wildlife and nature living there will continue to be supported after CECAS leave.  The many staff and volunteers who supported us over the years deserve a massive mention on this list of gratitude and appreciation. Thank you for the wholesome soup for our carers group and associated events, the homemade cake and most of all the care.

We will deal with what’s happening but it’s ok to pause and take a moment or more, to feel our feelings around the loss of this community space. I will keep people posted in these monthly writings but please keep an eye on my Facebook page for up-to-date information on where we’re heading.  Care by Rachel Holstead feels very apt today.

‘In those moments when you want to care for all the world, / Remember that in you is also the whole of the world. / And you can only begin here – caring for this skin, / These bones, this heart. / Delve deep into caring, and every cell becomes a temple in which to honour the world.’

Mindfulness in June

Our last two drop-in mindfulness sessions at CECAS, Myross Wood, Leap on Tuesday mornings 10-11am, June 16, and 30. €12. Beginners, returners and newcomers are always welcome.

For more information: phone: 087 2700572 or email: susanoreganmindfulness@gmail.com 

f susanoreganmindfulness

www.mindhaven.ie

When I was young, I recall being intrigued by a poster in the Post Office warning farmers that they could be prosecuted for having noxious weeds growing on their land. The full list I have forgotten but it certainly included ragwort, dock and, I think, thistle. We are constantly trying to eliminate weeds from our gardens. Sometimes I find this hard to do because these so-called weeds are often beautiful and were once used widely in folk medicine and for other uses.

Ragwort, with its bright yellow, daisy-like flowers and toxic leaves, was regarded as a fairy plant to be treated with caution. It is known in Irish as Buachalán Buí, with alternative names such as Balcaiseán, Bóthanán, Buafalán, Gaosadán, Coiseog Bhuí and Las San Séan (Plant of St James). In English it has several alternative names including Bohalawn, Fairy Horse, James’ Weed, Ragged Jack, Staggerwort, Yellow Boy, etc.

In ancient Ireland it was believed that ragwort was used like a horse by the fairies to ride around on. Their favourite time for doing this was Hallowe’en and many stories tell of unfortunate people abducted and forced to ride around with them all night, only to wake the next morning exhausted, clutching the ragwort in their hands. However, the fairies could also be more generous. A well-known folktale relates how a fairy host takes a man with them on a magical journey. They give him a special cap and tell him to mount a ragwort as if it were a horse. He finds himself flying through the air and landing in a wine cellar in a foreign country. There he drinks his fill, but the next morning he finds himself alone and is then arrested for breaking into the wine cellar. He is sentenced to be hanged, but before the rope can be put around his neck, he manages to reach into his pocket and put on his fairy cap. He is lifted up into the air and brought back home, to be left standing beside the ragwort at the very spot where he first met the fairies. An old song describes the fairy ride: ‘Is gur shiúil mé na cúig cúigí; Is gan fúm act buachallán buí’ (And I travelled through all the provinces with nothing under me but the ragwort). A Sligo saying reflected the caution generally shown in Ireland towards ragwort: ‘Don’t call it a weed, though a weed it may be, ’tis the horse of the fairies, the booholaun buidhe’.

In the Scottish highlands, it was said that the fairies sheltered beside the ragwort on stormy nights, and also rode astride it on their journeys in the Hebrides, from island to island. Witches and warlocks were also believed to ride around on ragwort stems, as well as the more usual broom. A poem by Robbie Burns describes the devil and his witches and warlocks riding together: ‘Let warlocks grim, an’ wither’d hags / Tell how wi’ you on ragweed nags / They skim the muir (moors) an’ dizzy crags / Wi’ wicked speed.’ In Scotland, after the battle of Culloden, the victorious English are said to have named the garden flower ‘Sweet William’ in honour of their leader, William, Duke of Cumberland. The defeated Scots (who were massacred cruelly by the English) retaliated by giving ragwort the name ‘Stinking Billy’. Alternatively, the Scots maintained that the spread of ragwort throughout Scotland was due to the rampage across the land by the Duke of Cumberland’s troops during the Culloden campaign. Ragwort is the national emblem of the Isle of Man, perhaps because of the island’s nickname, ‘Ynn Ellan Shiant (The Fairy Isle).

Ragwort’s association with the fairies was believed to give it other magical properties. A Donegal folktale tells of a man with fairy power who used to turn a bunch of ragwort into the form of a pig. The man brought the ‘pig’ to a fair and sold it, but as the unfortunate buyer was driving it home, he crossed running water and the ‘pig’ instantly turned back into a bunch of ragwort. In places it was believed to be bad luck to strike a cow with the flowers of ragwort because it meant the ‘wee folk’ would be sure to come and steal the cow’s milk.

Ragwort was called the ‘herba Sancti Jacobi’ (the herb of Saint James) whose feast day is July 25 when the ragwort is in full bloom. Interestingly, in view of the ragwort’s role as a ‘fairy steed’, St James is said to be the patron saint of horses.

Ragwort is despised by farmers because its leaves are toxic to livestock. Despite this, ragwort features in several Irish cures. The leaves were used in many places as the basis for poultices and the juice was used for curing cuts, sores and inflammation, including burns, scalds and boils. Perhaps because of its yellow colour, ragwort was also considered as an effective cure for jaundice. Ragwort was also used for treating coughs, colds, sore throats, rheumatism and sore joints. In West Cork, ragwort was used to make brooms and brushes for sweeping the house. In Scotland and Ulster ragwort was put in with oats when they were stored to keep mice away.

by Cadhla Ó Conchobhair

As the old saying goes ‘a wet and windy May fills the haggard with corn and hay’. I think we could all do with seeing a pleasant summer after a long spring!

We would usually have the calves out to grass by the start of May. The farm sits on a hill and, as those cold northeasterly/westerly winds postponed their turnout, we are counting ourselves lucky to have gotten them out just ahead of the June bank holiday. As I type this month’s article, I can see the calves out my kitchen window, basking in an unexpected two days of blistering sun in the field; they are delighted with themselves and I am happy with them too because they have been very well-behaved outdoors and not gone through any fences.

The hedgerows are looking beautiful, with the whitethorn blossoms, cow parsley and wild bluebells, to name just a few. Even the blossoms are a little later this year, as if they have been waiting for warmer weather too. There is a great buzz about the place and it isn’t just the pollinators that are busy – the silage contractors are like busy bees, going from farm to farm harvesting first cut silage. Our silage ground wasn’t grazed this spring and we spread less organic N because the ground was too wet when we would normally spread it, so we decided to cut it a little earlier than usual, and we hope to have a better quality and heavier crop for the second cut in July. 

Most of the cows had calved by the first week in April with the exception of Cow 728 who, by way of a miraculous conception, calved three weeks later. Paul, our Hereford bull, must have paid a little sneaky visit last season!

After calving season finished, we barely had time to catch our breath before breeding season kicked off, the first round being AI. We used a combination of sexed and conventional straws for dairy replacements on the best cows and a selection of easy calving high DBI beef bulls on the rest. Good old Paul the bull is now spending a few weeks with the cows and will happily oblige if any of the cows do not hold to AI.

The Innishannon Steam Rally takes place over the June Bank holiday weekend, which is always a family favourite event every year; it is like a step back in time with the steam engines, many of which serviced the agricultural sector back in the day. The steam engine revolutionised not just work on farms, but also transport. Upton, where the steam rally is held every year, was once a stop on the West Cork Railway line that connected communities from the city all the way to Bantry. The railway closed, despite fierce local opposition, which included massive petitions, protests and even saw a delegation travelling from West Cork to plead their case. However the then government refused to overturn CIE’s decision to close the West Cork line on April 1, 1961 – how apt for a foolish decision to be enacted on Fool’s Day. 

CIE proceeded to lift the tracks and, because the railway had originally cut directly through many agricultural properties, local farmers purchased back these tracts of land to unify their fields. Over the decades these sections were integrated into active farmlands, roadways and farmyards with other landowners building new houses and businesses.

Because the land was completely broken up and sold off by Iarnrod Eireann, it is no longer state-owned or semi-state-owned land. 

You might be wondering why I am reminiscing about the rail line in the farming section?

Cork County Council and their handling of the proposed Cork-Kinsale Greenway has caused a fierce backlash from the farming community, businesses and homeowners on Cork County Council’s preferred route, which cuts right through farmland, some of which was never even on an old rail route. By all accounts, the process of consultation and communication has not been handled well and farm families on the route are fearful of CPOs (Compulsory Purchase Orders) being imposed on their land. 

DJ Keohane, Chairperson of West Cork ICMSA spoke to West Cork People about these concerns.  Mr. Keohane informed us that he and an ICMSA delegation had met with the Council at County Hall on behalf of their members. He described it as a very “straight talking” meeting, during which they raised the concerns of members who would be directly impacted by this route, as well as the concerns of other farm families farming between Cork City and Bantry. They also expressed fears that, if CCC is allowed to enforce CPOs on the proposed Cork–Kinsale route, their communities could be next on the list.

The Council stated to the ICMSA that it was implementing government policy to deliver greenways, and that Compulsory Purchase Orders would only be used as a measure of last resort.

ICMSA emphasised to the Council that their members were not opposed to greenways, they are opposed to CPO use for greenways, especially when, without proper engagement, the landowner’s livelihood, privacy and the natural biodiversity of the farm may be impacted. “Greenways can only be achieved through voluntary access and proper, on-farm and face-to-face consultations and constructive engagement”. 

Mr. Keohane added that the affected ICMSA members had lost confidence in the engagement process, particularly due to the absence of an impact assessment on the farms and families affected, leaving them feeling they had no control over the future of their family farms.

There are always alternative route options to consider, such as utilising Council-owned land to allow a greenway to run parallel to existing roads, rather than cutting directly through farms and undermining the viability of farming businesses. Projects of this nature can remain in limbo for years, depending on the availability of government funding and shifting Council priorities — a level of uncertainty that no other business sector would be expected to endure.

Reflecting on the meeting, Mr. Keohane said he believes the Council and its consultants acknowledged the concerns raised and accepted that engagement and communication regarding the route should have been handled in a more respectful manner.

This is not just an issue within this county; similar concerns regarding greenways are being raised across the country, leading groups of citizens to bring their protests to Dáil Éireann, where their concerns have been heard by the Joint Committee on Transport, while local TD Michael Collins has also raised the matter directly with An Taoiseach in the Dáil.

As I write, the Minister for Transport, Darragh O’Brien, has engaged consultants to carry out a review of the National Strategy on Greenways, with some elements of the Code of Best Practice National and Regional Greenways expected to be included in the review. Transport Infrastructure Ireland (TII) will oversee the review and Minister O’Brien has said “It is expected that the review of both the code and the strategy will conclude in 2026”.

The importance of personal engagement is often overlooked when decisions are driven by desktop policies and prescriptive procedures developed in an office setting.

No doubt farmers along the old railway line to West Cork will be closely watching how this project progresses. Hopefully, following the review of the greenway process, confidence in engagement procedures can be restored and workable solutions reached.

This year there has been a definite uptick of enquiries into Moneytree Finance from renters who have been given a ‘Notice to Quit’ by their landlord, because he or she intends to sell the house amid the uncertainty created by the recent changes to Irish rental law. Since March 1, 2026, there are now increased restrictions on landlords around rent increases and ending a tenancy, and crucially going forward all new tenancy agreements will become ‘Tenancies of Minimum Duration’ (TMD) lasting for six years, provided the renters are meeting certain standard obligations (for example paying the rent on time). And rather than navigate this new rental world, many ‘small landlords’ (defined as those having three or fewer tenancies) are instead selling up, creating opportunities for some first-time buyers but also great uncertainty for those who are receiving the notice to quit.

Indeed, being told you must leave your rental property can feel incredibly overwhelming, especially amid the serious housing crisis Ireland is currently experiencing. In certain circumstances, however, it can present renters with the chance to buy the house they have been living in themselves. In fact, provided certain criteria are met, there is even a government scheme – the Tenant Home Purchase Scheme – designed for this exact scenario. Below, I will explain this scheme in much more detail.  

The Tenant Home
Purchase Scheme 

In general, mortgages for renters who have been given notice to leave operate in the same way they do for other prospective borrowers. If they are first-time buyers, they can qualify for a loan of ‘up to four’ times their annual income, either single or joint (depending on whether they are applying alone or with a partner), and if they are second-time buyers the maximum loan is up to 3.5 times their annual income. And, as always, whether or not the bank will release the full potential loan will depend on the applicants’ financial profile, bringing factors such as the general cost of living, whether the borrower has any dependents/children and/or loans, and how much they have been saving on top of the rent over the last six months, into play. Like all buyers, renters hoping to purchase their landlord’s house will also need a deposit of at least 10 per cent ‘and’ be able to afford the ‘extra’ fees and charges such as Stamp Duty (one per cent of the purchase price) and legal costs (we always tell people to budget ‘about’ €3,000 for a good solicitor).

Imagine, however, that a renter (let’s call him James) has €30,000 in savings and as a first-time buyer has been mortgage approved for €200,000, giving him an overall budget of €230,000, but the landlord wants at least €280,000 for the house? Here is where the Tenant Home Purchase Scheme can help. An offshoot of the better-known First Home Scheme, the Tenant Home Purchase Scheme operates along similar lines, with the one crucial difference that it can be used to purchase a second-hand house. Indeed, this is the only scenario (a renter buying the landlord’s house) in which any of the government-backed schemes can be used to buy a home that has already been lived in: both the Help to Buy and the regular First Home Scheme are strictly for new-builds only. In the simplified scenario outlined above, James is €50,000 short if he wants to purchase the home he has been living in; provided he meets the criteria, however, and is open to the government holding an equity share in his home (at least for a time), the Tenant Purchase Scheme will give him that €50,000, allowing him to own a property which would otherwise have been out of his reach.

Of course, as already mentioned, certain conditions must be met to avail of the scheme. In terms of the landlord/rental element, the renter ‘must’ have been served with a valid notice of termination, and the tenancy ‘must’ be above board and registered with the Residential Tenancies Board (RTB). Beyond this, though, the scheme operates in similar terms to the First Home Scheme: applicants must be first-time buyers, they must apply to one of the ‘pillar’ banks (Bank of Ireland, AIB, or PTSB) for the mortgage, and they must borrow their maximum amount available, meaning they can’t leave any borrowing power behind them. The maximum eligible purchase price in Cork County is currently €450,000 (in Cork City it is €500,000), and the maximum equity share receivable is 30 percent of the purchase price; the minimum is 2.5 percent or €10,000, whichever is higher. Crucially, those using the Tenants Home Purchase Scheme ‘cannot’ also use the ‘Help To Buy’ tax rebate otherwise available to first-time buyers, as they are not buying a new home but a second-hand one. In terms of cost, participants in the scheme pay nothing at all for the first five years (though they do of course pay their regular mortgage during this period), and then a simple interest charge of 1.75 percent from year six onwards. This then rises again incrementally from years 16 and then 30, up to a maximum of 2.85 percent ‘simple’ interest per year, which would still be one of, if not ‘the’, cheapest loans you could ever get.

In any case, many people will choose to buy back the equity share from the government long before year 30 of the loan, and this can be done in a lump sum and/or over a longer period of time. Buying back the equity is where the most major caveat of the Tenant Home Purchase Scheme lies, however, as it is the ‘share equivalent’ that applicants owe the scheme, not the euro amount they originally received. Let’s again use James as our example: if James takes the scheme’s €50,000 to buy his landlord’s house for €280,000 now, then the equity share of his new home held by the government will amount to 17.86 percent (let’s call this 18 percent to keep things simple!). Now imagine that 10 years passes and James has come into some money, perhaps via an inheritance or just by saving diligently over time, and he decides to buy back the scheme’s equity share – he will owe them 18 percent of his home’s value ‘at that point in time’, which well may no longer amount to the €50,000 he originally borrowed. If James’s home has risen in value to €350,000, for example, he will owe them 18 percent of €350,000, which is €63,000. On the other hand, though, if his home happens to fall in value (a less likely but not impossible scenario), he will owe the scheme ‘less’ than he originally borrowed.

As long as borrowers are willing to abide by the rules and criteria of the Tenant Home Purchase Scheme, and accept the fact that they may end up paying back a bit more than they originally received over time, then the scheme is a viable and useful option for renters who have been given notice and would like to buy the home themselves. Like all the government schemes, it is not perfect, but it does frequently get people into houses that they could otherwise not afford. If you think any of the above is relevant to you and have further questions, or you would like to discuss any mortgage query further, please don’t hesitate to contact Moneytree Finance today! 

It was while reading the compelling story of Puerto Rico’s nationalist failed uprising against American colonialism that I stumbled onto a connection between the leader of the uprising, Pedro Albizu Campos, and Eamon de Valera. Nelson Denis, author of ‘The War against all Puerto Ricans’ wrote that ‘Albizu Campos had helped Eamon de Valera draft the constitution of the Free State’ – which of course is incorrect because Dev and his anti-treaty republicans bitterly opposed it. But like all historians, we carry that most necessary trait – curiosity. While Nelson Denis may have erroneously mentioned the Free State constitution, he certainly was correct that Albizu met Dev, and what’s more, modelled his Puerto Rican revolution on the 1916 Rising. 

It turns out that Campos was something of a child genius and despite his improvised background, gained entry to Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. After serving patriotically and bravely in World War One for the US, he returned to Massachusetts, this time completing his law degree in Harvard in 1921, becoming the first Puerto Rican to graduate from that great institution. It was here in Harvard, where he met Eamon De Valera who of course was engaging in a fundraising American tour between June 1919 and December 1920. There is British Pathe footage of the massive crowds that assembled to meet and support Dev in Boston, where he was welcomed with vibrant enthusiasm by adoring Irish Americans, many first generation émigrés or descendants of The Great Famine.

Swept up by a wave of Irish euphoria, it seems Campos was well placed to meet and learn from Dev about the Rising in 1916, Sinn Fein and the Irish War of Independence that was in full sway at this time. Looking closer at Nelson Denis’s footnotes, he mentions a Puerto Rican writer with Irish heritage – Aoife Rivera Serrano’s, quoting her book ‘Ireland and Puerto Rico; The Untold Story’ in reference to this event. Digging a little deeper, I went in search for more of this, only to find that Ms Serrano has also published (in 2012) a book entitled ‘The Quickening of Albizu Campos: How Fenianism Galvanized the Last American Liberator’. In it she claims that Albizu was influenced by Fenians. They were very active in American circles since 1870, under the flagship of Clan Na Gael, and were the supporting body that organised Dev’s tour of America. In that book she reveals how Campos was initially exposed to ‘members of the American Anti-Imperialist League and Irish American Union, whom Campos encountered in Harvard Library’. From them, Albizu Campos would learn that many Irish soldiers ‘fought for the Union to learn skills they could take back to Ireland in the struggle’, something he would do in his own homeland. Whatever the Irish connection, there is certainly one thing both movements for independence shared – tiny resources against a mighty adversary.

One of his greatest attributes was his rhetorical and oratory skills. At a lecture in the Sanders theatre at Harvard, he was outspoken in support for Irish independence. Lord Miller, a British imperialist nobleman in attendance, admitted ‘it was the most brilliant speech on the matter I ever heard’. Campos would also visit the Irish dominated administrative wards in Boston to canvass for money for Sinn Fein and the Irish revolution. 

The geopolitical situation in 1898 brought into conflict, the once mighty but increasingly brittle Spanish imperialistic powers, with the world’s fastest growing military power, the USA. The Americans also ‘liberated’ the Philippines in that year yet continued to occupy them until finally relinquishing power in 1946. In 1898, they also added Hawaii and Puerto Rico to their imperialistic real estate. The irony in Puerto Rico’s case, was that the Spanish had promised the islanders independence not long before the Americans ‘liberated’ them from Spain. 

Their freedom from Spain was only the beginning of their colonisation by the US. Within a decade of saving them, their Spanish tongue, like Irish, was slowly being obliterated. (The Spanish as we know were as bad a coloniser as any country and had long wiped out the indigenous Taino tongue from memory). An act in 1902, made law that all public office, courts and local government departments use English as a coequal language. By 1909, English had become the dominant language of instruction in schools. Later, The Puerto Rican flag and their national anthem, ‘La Borinquena’, was outlawed under the 1948 Gag Law (‘Ley de la Mordaza’). By 1922, the year Albizu formed the PR Nationalist party, the country was declared a territory by the USA supreme court, as it remains to this day. This means that the protective rights of the American constitution did not apply to the people. Economic hardship already a factor in life, became worse particularly for the sugar cane workers which was the dominant employer. Without the protective rights, they endured colonial taxes, devaluing of the peso all intended to squeeze them out of land ownership, only to be hoovered up by large American corporations, intent on gaining access to the ludicrous cash crop and creating American monopolies. By 1934, 80 percent of the sugar cane farms were owned by American syndicates and it would even get worse.

Albizu became a champion of the workers and, using his lawyer credentials, tried to help the workers and backed their strikes. In an age where communism was growing globally, any nationalist movement that had a socialist agenda as part of its manifesto, was easily tarnished with the stigma and threat of red terror. This is what would happen to Campos and his nationalist party to try to discredit his socialist agenda. Even today, some in Puerto Rico only know him erroneously as a ‘communist agitator’. What Campos was witnessing, was the development of a feudal type grip over Puerto Rico that was not only impoverishing the natives and enriching the Americans, but also attempting to eradicate any sense of national identity. Puerto Rico was ruled by a set of military governors in those days, rather than civic politicians. The most notorious was General Blanton Winship, whose goal was to crush the labour strikes, and to dismantle and destroy the nationalist party, which had been gaining popular support. In moves reminiscent to British rule in Ireland, Winship imprisoned leaders, prohibited public demonstrations and banned speeches at funerals (Campos would have known and understood the power of those such as O’Donovan Rossa’s funeral and Thomas Ashe’s funeral, as powerful catalysts for the Irish revolution movement).

Winship’s iron rule was best demonstrated by the 1937 Ponce massacre, where 17 civilians, including a child of seven, were shot dead and clubbed in the streets while out demonstrating. Over 200 more were injured by the Insular police force sent there to crush it. This too had shadows of the cold-blooded massacre of twelve Irish civilians in Croke Park in 1920, at the hands of the Auxiliaries. In both cases there were false claims by the ruling authorities of shots being fired at the police forces.  Neither were there repercussions for the ruling power. However, unlike Ireland, the Ponce massacre, was erased from popular history, and would have remained so, if it was not for the amateur footage taken by a young film maker, Juan Emilo Viguie.  Despite having actual evidence of the atrocity, he knew to release it publicly would have led to its censorship or destruction by the omnipotent power that was the USA. Albizu and other leaders would be rounded up, exiled or imprisoned. But their spirit would live on and would re-emerge in the 1950 revolution.

Albizu had to painstakingly build up the movement once again that had been savagely suppressed. But worse was to come. It was the era of the Red Scare all over the US, which had created a culture of paranoia against anyone who was un-American. US intelligence agencies increasingly monitored and infiltrated nationalist movements during the early Cold War period. The US was now the global dominant power after World War Two and the nationalist movement was poorly armed and low in numbers. Albizu knew any rising would only be a way to draw the world’s eyes to the cause of freedom and abuses within Puerto Rico, similar to Easter 1916. The revolution was easily put down, not before the town of Jayuya was bombed from the air, the only time the US has bombed its own citizens (again – parallels to the British burning of a British city – Cork in 1920).  What garnered even more attention was how close two Puerto Ricans came to successfully assassinating the president Harry Truman, days later.

Unlike MacSwiney, or Padraig Pearse, or Tomás Mac Curtain – the US would not make a martyr of Campos. He and the other nationalist were not shot but arrested. The men were locked into cells in horrendous conditions in San Juan, in what we must not forget was American territory and under American law. Many of the men were tortured to ‘supply names’ of other nationalists, including methods such as electrocution. It had mirrors of a cold war movie, but it’s not the maligned Soviet’s doing the torturing, but the so called ‘good guys’.  The strangest event were the lesions, headaches and burns Campos was getting, but not from overt abuse. Doctors (selected by the USA) declared he was going mad but when he finally got independent medical attention, via massive international pressure, his wounds were akin to radiation exposure. The United Nations denounced it as torture and demanded his extradition abroad in 1952 but to no avail. The swelling, burns, headaches continued until he eventually suffered a stroke, which silenced the most outspoken voice of Puerto Rican nationalism. By 1956 he was dead and with him a nationalist dream for independence. But unlike the Irish story where from the attempts to silence our martyrs, grew screams for freedom; the echoes of the ghost of Campos, sadly are still only a whisper today.