United Ireland

04/09/2026

One Ireland for All Irish

04/09/2026

One Ireland for All Irish

‘If we close, all the lights are off in the village’ – warning from rural publican as 110 pubs shut each year on average

27/08/2026

- One Ireland for All Irish

27/08/2026

- One Ireland for All Irish

Cork-based Jean Grainger writes Irish historical fiction books, popular in the US among the diaspora

27/08/2026

- One Ireland for All Irish

Cillian Murphy on what it means to be Irish.

27/08/2026

- One Ireland for All Irish

Could the Norman knight who built Drimnagh Castle in 1240 have imagined it would one day sit near an Aldi?

27/08/2026

- One Ireland for All Irish

27/08/2026

- One Ireland for All Irish

On entering his office, Grandad reaches to the top shelf to fetch his box of memorabilia, his personal collection of relics and photographs that provide for him a timeless portal to years gone by.

He hands me his grandfather’s pocket watch, the cold metal of its dented case sitting snug in my palm. Grandad encourages me to wind it up, as he had done before. My 21st century hands, accustomed to the convenience of the automated digital time of my iPhone lock-screen, don’t feel worthy of the venerable device.

Embarrassingly, I’m not sure whether to turn the stem winder clockwise or anticlockwise, so I try both. Much to my delight, the dormant timepiece’s second hand comes to life, and the steady ticks of its mechanical heartbeat start to measure the passage of time once more.

Grandad recalls how his grandfather proudly donned this portable timepiece during a rather unusual period for Irish timekeeping. The Statutes (Definition of Time) Act 1880 established Dublin Mean Time (DMT) as Ireland’s national standard time.