Free State with Joe Brolly and Dion Fanning

Free State is going live this Christmas. Tickets will go on sale this Thursday November 5th for the first (and probably the last) Free State Live show at Vicar Street on Dec 14th. More details to come on what promises to be a very special night.

On today’s Free State, Dion and Joe look at Micheal Martin’s newfound love of talking about unity.
He is ready to talk about a United Ireland. Up to a point. “What has concerned me about this push for a Border poll since Brexit is that it’s partisan, it’s a one-sided advocacy approach,” he said.
But is this better than his previous approach? Do the Happy Lundys, the Protestant group having new conversations about a way forward show a better more hopeful way?
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dara Molloy was ordained a priest but it was a trip to the Aran Islands that changed his life. He talks to Dion about leaving the priesthood, becoming a Celtic monk and why the world needs the spirituality of the Celtic way rather than the guilt imposed by the church that colonised Ireland. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Why does Andy Burnham talk differently about a border poll in Northern Ireland than when he talks about Scotland?
Is he adopting a different tone and if so, why?
On Free State Joe and Dion wonder what reconciliation means and if it should stand in the way of a border poll? If we were to avoid division would we have any election at all? Is there a difference between a routine democratic election and a referendum on subjects that might be divisive? Is the opportunity of bringing real democracy to the north of Ireland the most important consideration in bringing a border poll?
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When the Tory grandee David Davis stood up in the House of Commons and said there were ‘IRA lawyers’ who were ‘more interested in drama than justice’, there was an understandable response.
In 1988 a Tory minister had said that some solicitors in the north were sympathetic to the cause of the IRA. Three weeks later Pat Finucane was murdered in front of his family.
On Free State we ask why there is a certain type of politician who persists with these dangerous and inaccurate terms. We look at what Davis said and why it matters in a world still fraught with danger.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 2006, Elif Shafak was charged with 'insulting Turkishness' because of words uttered by a fictional character in one of her novels. She had been born to Turkish parents in France and grew up in Ankara but now she lives in London. On Free State today, Turkey's most widely read woman writer talks to Dion about exile, the age of anxiety and reaching out for home. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.