other – RoI – Extramural Activity

The Occupied Territories

2025-11-182025-12-08Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

Here are three pairs of photos – courtesy of Andy McDonagh/Eclipso Pics – from the Buncrana Road between Coshquin and Bridge End, at the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic.

On the Republic side of the border, two boards are propped up on small trailers. The first reads “Israel/USA kill a classroom of kids every day” with a small drawing of a dove. Prior to the current (nominal) ceasefire, Palestinian children were killed at a rate of one every hour (Save The Children).

The second reads ,”US warplanes out of Shannon” illustrated by a bomber-plane and drops of blood. “Shannon Watch” is a web-site dedicated to tracking miltary activity at Shannon airport. According to RTÉ, 978 US planes used Shannon in the three years of 2022-2023-2024. The government maintains that such visits are not a violation of Ireland’s policy of military neutrality (WP).

From the road-sign just on the Northern Ireland side, “Welcome to ~~Northern~~ Occupied Ireland”.

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Copyright © 2025 Andy McDonagh/Eclipso Pictures (ig | Fb)
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Along The Shannon River

2024-08-032025-03-07Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

Leitrim’s “literary heritage” is recognised by this large mural by Nik Purdy/Blow Designs (ig) in Main Street, Carrick-On-Shannon. Clockwise from top we see portraits and quotes from …

Canon [William] Slator: “You’ll never find more beauty/Peace and welcome all combined/Than along the Shannon River/where your cares are left behind.”

Nora J Murray: “There are silver waters lapping/Under arches grey and brown/When the swans come up the river/To the bridge in Carrick town”

John McGahern: “I think fiction is a very serious thing, that while it is fiction, it is also a revelation of truth.” (2000 interview)

MJ McManus: “The people came to drink the soup/Ladled from greasy bowls/They died in whitewashed wards that held/A thousand Irish souls” (from the poem ‘Eighteen Forty-Nine’)

Susan Mitchell: “No bigger than a bulrush./I beside the rushy Shannon cry./There are no children on the shore./The singing voices sing no more./The sea draws all the rivers down./And love has sailed from Carrick town.” (from the poem ‘Carrick’ – Google Books)

The monument in front of the mural is also to Mitchell.

Purdy also did Committees Of The Rich in Sligo.

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Copyright © 2024 Seosamh Mac Coılle
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Committees Of The Rich

2024-05-212025-12-12Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

“Governments in capitalist society are but committees of the rich to manage the affairs of the capitalist class.” So wrote James Connolly in an August 1914 piece in the Irish Worker entitled ‘The War Upon The German nation’ (marxists.org), in which he contended that Britain was using its remaining area of superiority – military might – in order to crush the now-superior German capitalism, science, and labour. (It’s not clear whether, for Connolly’s purposes, Germany’s is a capitalist society.)

“Big” Jim Larkin is also shown, with his arms outstretched, as seen in the photograph included in We Only Want The Earth.

Nik Purdy/Blow Designs (ig), on the Mall, Sligo, next to The Model.

Also in Sligo: Maud Gonne | Westlife

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Westlife

2024-04-302025-01-08Extramural Activity2 Comments

“Another winter day/has come and gone away/In either Paris and [or] Rome/And I wanna go home” – words from the Michael Bublé-penned song ‘Home’ which boy-band Westlife released on its 2007 album, Back Home. For Egan, Feehily, and Filan, home is, or was, Sligo — the three went to Summerhill secondary school and were together in earlier bands; Byrne (and Bryan/Brian McFadden who was a member of the group from 1998 to 2004 but is not included in the mural) is from Dublin (WP).

“With a career spanning twenty years, Westlife are, Shane Filan, Nicky Byrne, Kian Egan and Mark Feehily. A true pop phenomenon with more number 1 hits than any other act apart from The Beatles and Elvis, Westlife have sold 50 million albums worldwide.”

The mural is behind Gilooly Hall, on Temple Street, Sligo. It was painted in 2015 by Kelan Curran (TAPA).

Previously from Sligo: Maud Gonne.

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How Many Loved Your Moments Of Glad Grace

2023-12-212025-01-08Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

W. B. Yeats’s poem When You Are Old is generally understood to be directed at Maud Gonne, who was born on this day in 1866. Yeats met the actress and activist in 1899, fell in love with her, and proposed marriage four times in the years to follow, each time being rejected. It is as Yeats’s muse — and not for her mysticism or anti-Semitism or Irish nationalism — that she is the subject of this mural in Union Street, Sligo, painted by artist Nick Purdy of Blowdesigns (Fb) in 2018.

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Killarney’s World War II Hero

2022-12-172025-01-07Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

Hugh O’Flaherty – the Scarlet Pimpernel Of The Vatican – is thought to have helped save 6,425 soldiers and Jews who were at large after the fall of Mussolini but prior to the German occupation of Italy and who made it to Rome to see O’Flaherty or the still-functioning Irish embassy at the Holy See. O”Flaherty was raised in Killarney and died in Cahersiveen; he is remembered in Killarney by this mural – painted by Ursula Meehan (ig) in High Street with support from Killarney Art Gallery (web) – and a statue by Alan Ryan Hall (killarney.ie) in Mission Road.

(HughOFlaherty.com | WP | Irish Central)

Be Not Afraid

2021-11-182025-01-06Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

“Greater justice was her ideal and it was her ultimate achievement. Her courage and sacrifice saved many from the scourge of drugs and other crime. Her death has not been in vain.” Veronica Guerin was a Sunday Independent journalist who investigated drug trafficking in Ireland. She was shot and killed in 1996 while sitting at a traffic light on the Naas dual carriage-way by members of John Gilligan’s gang riding a motorcycle (WP).

The bronze bust, by sculptor John Coll, is in the grounds of Dublin Castle (Statues). “Unveiled by the Taoiseach, Mr Bernie Ahern, TD, 22nd June, 2001.”

Lifford Remembers The Hunger Strikers

2021-09-152025-01-06Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

“Fuaır sıad bás ar son saoırse na hÉıreann” [they died for Ireland’s freedom] Although it’s the 40th anniversary of the 1981 hunger strike, this Lifford (Co. Donegal) board includes Michael Gaughan and Frank Stagg who died in English prisons in the 1970s.

If you can explain the flag in the centre, please get in touch. The wide shot, below, includes a call to rally for 100% Redress, No Less.