UK'S PROPOSAL - British PM Theresa May has

asked EU countries to agree to a two-year Brexit transition during which the UK would continue to enjoy unfettered access to the single market while continuing to " honor its commitments" under the bloc's current budget. May said progress made in Northern Ireland in recent years would be protected. Ireland's Taoiseach Varadkar has said previously " Ireland will not design a border for the Brexiters because they're the ones who want a border." Today he  met Theresa May in Downing Street and ask ed her to publicly outline "a clear and satisfactory" proposal for how the Northern Ireland Border will operate after Brexit. 

 

BORDER HANGUP - The Irish border is one of the  three main Brexit issues along with EU citizens' rights and the UK's cost of leaving. The EU has insisted that the UK must make "sufficient progress" on those three issues before it will open talks on trade and the future relationship, but the EU claims that " frictionless trade is not possible outside the single market." However, the British government's proposals call for "a new customs arrangement that facilitates the freest and most frictionless trade possible in goods between the UK and the EU".

   

BORDER PROBLEM - After Brexit, the Ireland / Northern Ireland border will be the only EU/UK land border. Although only 310 miles long, there are 275 roads crossing it, with some roads crossing the border several times because the border twists and turns so much (see example of approx. 5 sq. miles of border crossings between Counties Monaghan and Fermanagh). Most roads don't have markings or signs to indicate a border crossing. Often the only way to know a border has been crossed is when road signs switch from Kilometers (Irish Republic) to Miles (Northern Ireland) or vice versa. Those 275 border roads are more than twice the number of roads crossing the EU's eastern border which is 3,720 long and has only 137 road crossings.

 

INVISIBLE BORDER - Technology can create an invisible border between Northern Ireland and the Republic, Britain's Brexit Secretary David Davis has said. In an update to the House of Commons, Davis said he was quite confident the use of technology can make the Border as " light touch as it is today". However, b oth Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and Irish Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney have said technological solutions alone will not solve the Border issue. 

 

CROSS-BORDER COOPERATION - Under the heading Cross-Border co-operation has paid dividends - but is it in peril? , the Irish Times lists the different ways the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland cooperate. Ireland and the UK are currently partners in three EU-funded cross-border programs worth about $777 million. W hether it's common approaches to the health of cows, the emergency surgery facilities in Our Lady's Children's Hospital, Crumlin, for children with congenital heart disease from across the island, co-funding of a new Dublin-to-Derry road, or working together on cleaning up water, multiple programs that are largely the fruit of the Belfast Agreement are potentially threatened by Brexit. 

 

BANK RE-LOCATION - Toronto-Dominion (TD) Bank, Canada's largest lender by assets, has chosen Dublin as its post-Brexit European hub. The TD Securities arm of the business will establish a bond-trading arm in Dublin, where it already has an office and is part of the bank's growth strategy in Europe. The bank joins other companies that have decided to expand in Dublin following the Brexit vote, including JP Morgan, Citigroup, Barclays Bank, and Berkshire Hathaway Specialty Insurance Company.

 

SEATTLE CONNECTION - One of Lloyd's of London's largest insurance syndicates is to move its European headquarters to Dublin because of Brexit. The XL Group, whose Chief Executive is former Seattleite Mike McGavick, announced plans to move its main European insurance company from Britain to Dublin as a " response to Brexit" and to " provide certainty and consistency" to customers. McGavick is a former CEO of Safeco Insurance and was Grand Marshal of Seattle's 2004 St. Patrick's Day Parade. XL is the second Lloyd's of London insurer to announce EU operations would be headquartered in Dublin. 

WHO'S AFFECTED? - Based on the census figures for 2016, Irish counties with the highest proportion of their workforce in Brexit-affected industries are: Cavan (28%); Monaghan (27%); Kerry (22%); and Longford (21%), while Dublin, Cork and Galway are best insulated from Brexit-related trade declines. Roughly 243,000 Irish workers, accounting for just over a tenth of the employed population, work in sectors likely to be affected by Brexit.

 

LEO INTERVIEW - The New York Times featured an interview by Maureen Dowd with Ireland's new Taoiseach Leo Varadkar under the heading: Move Over DiCaprio and da Vinci - Here's Ireland's Leo. She wrote " He has the delicate tasks of leading Ireland out of the shadow of Britain, as Britain breaks from the European Union and Ireland cleaves to the E.U., and trying to keep relations with Northern Ireland on an even keel as the bitter Brexit divorce grinds on."

 

BREXIT ADVICE - Hugh Coveney, Ireland's Táiniste (Deputy Prime Minister), says " There is an obvious solution, if we really value the peace and prosperity that has brought us this far. And that is for the UK to remain in an extended customs union and single market, or some version of that concept. Taking advantage of the new and comprehensive trade deals the EU is reaching with countries like Canada and Japan." He said Britain, Ireland and the rest of the EU should work towards ensuring an orderly Brexit with a " substantial" transitional period to offer certainty to businesses, and that the UK must remain in the single market and the customs union during the transition.

 

ASHAMED BRIT - A UK Conservative Member of the European Parliament has applied for and gotten his Irish passport as he was ' ashamed to be British in many ways' because of the Brexit vote. MEP Charles Tannock said he was ' virulently opposed to Brexit' and criticized his party's ' arrogance, hubris, petty nationalism and triumphalism'. Qualifying for the Irish passport though his Irish-born grandmother, he said he was even considering not renewing his British passport. The representative from London is one of thousands of British people applying for Irish passports in the wake of the UK vote to leave the EU.

 

AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL - Brexit also causes a problem for air traffic control as Ireland and the UK share a " Functional Airspace Block", part of an EU-ratified agreement that has Irish and UK air traffic controllers working together to manage flights entering and leaving Irish and British airspace. However, when the UK leaves the EU in 2019, it is unclear as to whether it will continue to participate in the agreement which has been in place since 2008. If the UK leaves Europe's single aviation market it will have to make alternative agreements with the remaining 27 member states.

  

BUSINESS CONFIDENCE - A new survey says that business confidence in Ireland is at its strongest in the last year and a half as fears surrounding Brexit and possible US policy changes haven't materialized.  More than three-quarters of those surveyed said Brexit would likely impact on their business but more than half of that number have taken measures to prepare themselves. Most people think that any adverse impact from currency movements or uncertainty related to Brexit has been reasonably contained.

 

GDP RISE - Ireland's Real GDP, the total value of everything produced in Ireland while taking the effects of inflation into account, rose by 5.2% in 2016. That same year, Real GDP in the US was 1.6% while it was 1.84% in the UK and 1.4% in Canada. Meanwhile, Ireland's Consumer Price Index, cataloging the prices paid by consumers for a representative sample of goods and services, rose 0.4% in 2016. 

EGYPT ACQUITTAL - The New York Times reports on the acquittal verdict in Cairo of Irishman Ibrahim Halawa, 21, after a four-year jail ordeal that turned him into one of the most prominent foreigners trapped in Egypt's harsh judicial system. " Mr. Halawa's plight drew broad public sympathy in Ireland and sharp criticism from human rights groups that described his trial, along with that of at least 480 other people, as a travesty, not least because Mr. Halawa was 17 when arrested." 

POLICE COMMISSIONER - Ireland is looking for a new Police Commissioner (Police Chief) after Commissioner Nóirín O'Sullivan resigned. Seattle Police Chief Kathleen O'Toole, Chair of the Commission on the Future of Policing in Ireland, was involved in the hiring of O'Sullivan in 2014 and says that she was surprised then at the lack of international interest in the job. She now believes it is a " great opportunity" and " a very desirable position" for outsiders although she herself is not a candidate for the position. More than half of Irish people think O'Sullivan's successor should be recruited from abroad.

 

TAX RATES - The average Irish worker pays considerably less of their gross income in tax than in the other 34 nations in the OECD. In Ireland, a single, childless worker on a national average salary pays 19% in taxes on income while the OECD average is 26%. But Ireland's progressive tax system is consistently in the top half in taxing salaries of $65,000 and above. People in Ireland start paying the top marginal rate once their income hits twice the average, while in most other countries, you can earn much more before hitting the top rate. In the US, the highest rate kicks in when your income hits eight times the average.

 

AMBASSADOR MULHALL - Ireland's new Ambassador to the US, Dan Mulhall, has presented his credentials to President Donald Trump. The two men discussed a range of issues including immigration and the Irish undocumented in the US, the importance of the two-way bilateral economic relationship, and next year's  St Patrick's Day visit of the Taoiseach to the White House. A native of Waterford, Mulhall was previously Irish Ambassador to the UK.

 

BIDEN VISIT - Former US Vice President Joe Biden did his cousin a favor last week and traveled to his ancestral home in Co. Mayo for a sod-turning ceremony. Biden presided over the official ground-breaking ceremony of the new Mayo-Roscommon Hospice unit where one of his Irish cousins works. Biden previously visited Ireland in his official capacity as US Vice President in June 2016 for a five-day trip accompanied by his children and grandchildren. Biden's great-great grandfather was from Knockmore (near Ballina), Co Mayo, while his maternal great-great grandfather Finnegan in 1850 emigrated from the Cooley peninsula in Co. Louth.

 

TRUMP LAWSUIT - Lawyers for President Trump appeared recently at Kilrush District Court in Co. Clare looking to have a $17,000 judgment against the President vacated. The judgment was secured after a bill sent to Trump before he was sworn in as President went unpaid. The bill was submitted based on work the claimant put into objecting against plans by Trump Doonbeg for a 200,000 ton rock barrier at the Trump golf resort on the west Clare coast. A new hearing has been scheduled for October 31.

 

HOLIDAY PARK - The first sod was recently turned on the new $280 million Centre Parcs holiday resort in Ballymahon, Co. Longford which will cater for up to 2,500 guests and will employ up to 1,000 people in permanent jobs. Center Parcs Longford Forest will have up to 500 lodges, more than 100 indoor and outdoor activities, a spa, a range of restaurants and cafés and a Subtropical Swimming Paradise. Centre Parcs specializes in short breaks in secluded, woodland settings, and has a host of holiday resorts across Europe, including five in the UK.

 

CHE MISTAKE - A huge poster of Che Guevara's image greeted travelers at Miami International Airport for several hours recently as part of an " Irish in Latin America" exhibit at the airport. The Guevara panel was removed as soon as the error was discovered.  The well-known Guevara image was created in 1968 by Irish artist Jim Fitzpatrick but it was not supposed to be exhibited in Miami. The exhibition was sponsored by the Irish Embassy in DC to highlight the contributions of Irish immigrants to Latin American history and culture.

 

ALCOHOL PROBLEMS - Irish budget carrier Ryanair has asked British airports to curb alcohol sales in an effort to address an increase in disruptive passenger behavior caused by excessive drinking. In 2016, there were 421 dangerous incidents recorded, with the majority related to excessive alcohol consumption. Ryanair suggests a ban on the sale of all alcohol in UK airport bars and restaurants before 10 am and that a limit of two drinks per passenger be imposed. Irish and other EU airports are not being asked to introduce similar limits as the issue was most prevalent in the UK.

 

COMMERCIAL VACANCIES - The Co. Donegal town of Ballybofey, with over 28% of all its stores and offices empty, is the town with the most commercial vacancies in Ireland. Located on the south side of the River Finn, Ballybofey is about 33 miles from the city of Derry, and the region has also seen its population shrink in recent times. Meanwhile, Co. Sligo is the Irish county with the highest rate of empty commercial spaces.

 

STARBUCKS SATURATION - Over 20 Cafés in Dublin city center gave out free coffee earlier this month in protest against the spread of Starbucks outlets across Dublin where there are currently 51 Starbucks stores. Standing on O'Connell Bridge " you have line of sight to five Starbucks locations", one Caf é  owner claims. The first Starbucks store in the Republic of Ireland was opened August 2005 at the Dundrum Town Centre, a Dublin shopping mall.

 

OFFICE RENTS - The annual cost of renting an office in Dublin's central business district is now about $74 per sq ft. In 2012 rental costs sank to $36 following the collapse of the property market. The peak of boom-era prices was in 2007 when rates were $72 to $78 per sq ft. The cost of renting offices is lower in Dublin's suburbs, at about $34 per sq ft.

 

AIRLINE PASSENGERS - A lmost 17 million passengers traveled through Dublin Airport in the first seven months of 2017 with London-Heathrow the number one destination or origination point for the majority of those passengers. Dublin has direct flights to more than 185 destinations operated by 47 airlines. 

 

CANADA-IRELAND FLIGHTS - Starting next summer, Air Canada will resume its non-stop Vancouver-Dublin summer service and will also launch direct non-stop flights from Toronto to Shannon and from Montreal to Dublin. Asian airline Cathay Pacific will start a direct Dublin-Hong Kong service from June of next year catering to the 40,000 people who travel annually between Dublin and Hong Kong.

 

FREE HISTORY COURSE - Starting October 9, Trinity College Dublin professors teach a free online Irish history course Irish Lives in War and Revolution: 1912-1923. The 6 week, 5 hours per week course explores the lives of men, women and children living through war and revolution, examining the political and social changes that shaped modern Ireland. Using many original sources, including online textual, visual and aural resources on the revolutionary period, the course engages with the contradictory viewpoints, the contested nature of all history, and the challenges facing historians. Register at  futurelearn.com.

 

CULTURE NIGHT - Thousands participated in Ireland's 12th Annual Culture Night on Friday, September 22 when cities and counties across the island of Ireland, from Belfast to Wicklow, offered FREE access to cultural venues and public spaces for family-friendly entertainment. The programs of free late-night entertainment were part of an all-island celebration of arts, heritage and culture. See photos from Culture Night at  CultureNight.

 

APPLE IMPORTS - 95% of the $120 million worth of apples consumed in Ireland annually are imported. Even in peak apple season in Ireland, the apples on supermarket shelves are more likely to have been grown in New Zealand, South America, China and India, and yet, over 60 varieties of apples are grown on Irish apple farms.

SKELLIG TOURISM - Requests to extend the visitor season at popular tourist destination Skellig Michael have been denied by the authorities. There has been increase in demand from tourists to visit the UNESCO World Heritage site off the Co. Kerry coast following the island's appearance in Star Wars: The Force Awakens where several scenes in the movie were filmed. Depending on weather conditions, the island's normal visitor season runs from mid-May until the beginning of October.

 

PhD BARMEN - Irish workers are the most overqualified in the European Union for the jobs they are working. About one in three workers is at least one educational level above the international norm for the job held. Ireland has one of the highest proportions of young people in Europe going on to third-level education. About 60% of all school-leavers currently go on to attend universities or institutes of technology.

 

BOG RESTORATION - Dating back over 10,000 years, raised bogs once formed extensive wetland over much of the central lowlands of Ireland, and once covered more than a quarter of Ireland's total land area. Now 99% of the original area of actively growing raised bog in Ireland has been lost. At 12 of those raised bogs, efforts are being made to bring them back to life. The Living Bog project covers 6,500 acres of raised bog habitat which supports hundreds of plants and species, and many of Ireland's rarest animals, birds and insects, including the red grouse, the curlew, rare invertebrates, amphibians and an array of plant life. 

 

GINGER MAN - Author JP Donleavy, best known for his novel The Ginger Man, died September 11 at a hospital near his home in Co. Westmeath. Born in New York in 1926 to Irish parents, Donleavy moved to Ireland in 1946 to study at Trinity College. Published in 1955, The Ginger Man was set in Ireland in the late 1940s and sold over 40 million copies. He moved permanently to Ireland in 1969 and for the last 45 years he lived in an 18th-century manor house on a 180-acre estate near Mullingar.

 

FREE DERRY - US civil rights campaigner Jesse Jackson was in Derry recently to formally reopen the Museum of Free Derry. Located in the Bogside, a mainly Catholic area outside the city walls of Derry, the museum records the period from January 1969 to July 1972, the period of the " Battle of the Bogside" the Introduction of Internment, and Bloody Sunday. Jackson said that the museum linked the civil rights struggle in Derry with the civil rights struggles in South Africa and the US, and connects Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King with Martin McGuinness and John Hume.

 

ONEY BROOCH - An Irish-American student in Ireland for the summer was walking on the shore of Oney Island in Connemara in the west of Ireland when she stumbled across a rare artifact from the 12th century, a kite brooch. The brooch, which would have been used to fasten a cloak or shawl, is one of only a few examples of its kind to ever have been found in Ireland and is now with the National Museum of Ireland in Dublin.

ALL-IRELAND GAA FINALS

Hurling Final - game starts at 60:00

Men's Football Final - game starts at 55:00

The main 2017 Gaelic Football, Hurling and Camogie competitions in Ireland have ended

*  In the All-Ireland Women's Gaelic Football Final, Dublin also defeated Mayo who were last year's champions, before a crowd of 46,286, a record attendance at a women's sporting event in 2017.

*  In the Camogie All-Ireland Final, Cork defeated last year's  champions Kilkenny by one point in a pulsating game.  

 

SOCCER GAMBLERS - Two Athlone Town soccer players have been found guilty by the Football Association of offences including manipulating game results to benefit gamblers. The pair have consequently been banned from all football-related activities for 12 months. The investigation was launched following irregular betting patterns involving a game last April. 

 

OLDEST DISTILLERY? - Bushmills in Co. Antrim claims to be the world's oldest whiskey distillery and has the date 1608 printed on its bottles, while Kilbeggan Whiskey Distillery in Co. Westmeath also claims to be the oldest licensed whiskey distillery. Both claims have some legitimacy, although every landowner in Ireland was given a royal license to distill in 1608! The royal license was given to the Kilbeggan area in March 1608, and one month later in April 1608 to the " countie of Colerane", which includes the village of Bushmills. But neither distillery was actually built in 1608.

KILBEGGAN  - Located in the center of Ireland in Co. Westmeath, Kilbeggan's claim to being oldest is based on the fact that Kilbeggan's distillery was built and licensed in 1757, 27 years before Bushmills, but Kilbeggan stopped making whiskey in the late 1950s before starting up again in 2007. For Bushmills, located near the Giant's Causeway, their claim is based on the fact that they are the oldest licensed distillery continuously in operation. The present Bushmills Distillery was built and licensed in 1784, 27 years after Kilbeggan, and that's the year Bushmills Irish whiskey brand was officially given a registered trademark. Whichever of them it is, it is probably  true that one of these distilleries is the oldest licensed distillery, not just in Ireland, but  in the world .

IRISH COFFEE - Irish Coffee was invented in 1942 at Foynes on the Shannon in Co. Limerick where the Flying Boat floatplanes would stop to refuel en route between Europe and America. The drink was concocted one cold winter's night as a warming treat for passengers who were delayed due to bad weather, and the drink went on to become a classic. Foynes was the center of the aviation world from 1939 to 1945 and today's Foynes Flying Boat & Maritime Museum is housed in the original terminal building.

 

JAMAICAN IRISH - In 1641, Ireland's population was 1,466,000 but by 1652 it had dropped to 616,000. According to Sir William Petty who served Oliver Cromwell in Ireland, 850,000 were " wasted by the sword, plague, famine, hardship and banishment." Many of the banished Irish were sent to Jamaica. Some were convicts, many indentured servants and very few of the deportees had committed any great crimes, but deportation was one of the methods used for populating England's newest colonies. In 1656 Cromwell's  Council of State  voted that 1,000 Irish girls and 1,000 young Irish men be transported to Jamaica. Today, 25% of Jamaican citizens claim Irish ancestry, the second-largest reported ethnic group after African ancestry.

 

DOWN SURVEY - The first ever national survey of land in the world was the Down Survey carried out in Ireland between 1656 and 1658. The survey was to help the first Colonization of Ireland, measuring all the land to be forfeited by the Catholic Irish in order to facilitate its redistribution to Merchant Adventurers and English soldiers. Copies of these maps have survived in dozens of libraries and archives throughout Ireland and Britain, as well as in the National Library of France. The detailed maps are now digitized and accessible online for free.

 

ABANDONED VILLAGES - During the 1845-1852 Irish Famine, many thriving villages in Ireland were completely abandoned, included the village of Port, Co. Donegal and Slievemore on Achill Island in Co. Mayo.  In 1847, 17,465 Irish Famine emigrants are documented as having died on board ship while traveling to America. On some ships, the death toll was as high as 30%, mostly from cholera or typhus. Many who died on the journey were buried at sea, while those who died close to land would sometimes be dragged from the ships with hooks as no one was willing to touch the bodies.

 

OLDEST PUB - Sean's Bar in the town of Athlone, Co. Westmeath, is not just the oldest pub in Ireland, but has been recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records as the oldest pub on the continent of Europe, and may well be the oldest pub in the world. Located a block from the bridge crossing the River Shannon and across the street from Athlone Castle, there has been a tavern operating in the same spot since a man named Luain first opened an inn there in 900 AD, 1,117 years ago. The town of Athlone is named for him - Átha Luain, which literally translates as " the Ford of Luain."

 

EMMET ANNIVERSARY - Irish rebel leader Robert Emmet was executed 214 years ago on September 20, 1803 at the age of 25. After his failed uprising that year, Emmet was executed following a one-day trial the day before on a charge of high treason against the king. Emmet is remembered in the US with statues in Washington, D.C., in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park and in the courthouse square in Emmetsburg, Iowa. Places in the US named for Robert Emmet include Emmet, Nebraska; Emmetsburg, Iowa; Emmet County, Iowa; Emmett Township, Michigan; Emmet County, Michigan; and Emmet Park in Savannah, Georgia.