There wasn’t much good news from Ireland in January, at least that I found in my reading. The three stories on the future of Dublin linked from the last bullet are interesting. Here’s the monthly roundup:

• The COVID-19 death toll surpassed 3,000 in the Republic of Ireland and approaching 2,000 in Northern Ireland. Quarantine and other restrictions are being extended to March.
• In a month-end poll by the TheJournal.ie, 46 percent surveyed said the Irish government is doing a good job at rolling out vaccines as quickly as possible, while 47 percent disagreed. Willingness to take vaccines hit 85 percent.
• Irish Taoiseach Micheál Martin apologized for the state’s “profound failure” in its treatment of unmarried mothers and their babies in a network of Catholic Church-run homes from the 1920s to the 1990s. A government-commissioned report found an “appalling” mortality rate of around 15 percent among children born at the homes, reflecting brutal living conditions. Around 9,000 children died in all.
• Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission is taking legal action against the U.K. government over what it calls the failure to provide abortion access in the region. Abortion was legalized in Northern Ireland in October 2019. (Apparently the commission does not believe in “human rights” for unborn children.)
• Norman Houston, who led the Northern Ireland Bureau in Washington, D.C., through late 2019, died in Belfast, age 62. He was a regular guest at Irish Network-DC events. I always appreciated his candor.
• Horse Racing Ireland reported 2020 attendance declined 91 percent compared to 2019, with on-course betting falling by 89 percent to €7.7 million from €68.3 M. “The continued absence of attendance is having a significant impact on racecourses,” HRI chief executive Brian Kavanagh told Blood Horse.
• In The Irish Times ended the month with three stories about the future of Dublin: David McWilliams says “Covid-19 and Zoom will not finish off Dublin,” arguing the city needs to change from a shopping and work entrepot to a living, artisanal center”; Frank McDonald charges the capital has “shamelessly surrendered” to market forces and the ‘Planning Industrial Complex’’; and Fintan O’Toole writes  the “Georgian core of the city can become a ghost town dotted with a few grand Government buildings and prestige cultural institutions and hotels. Or it can be reimagined and reoccupied as a living and lively public space.”
• See our monthly roundup and annual Best of the Blog archives.

How will the pandemic change Dublin?