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Irish Independent
2 days ago
- Business
- Irish Independent
Ireland's universities among most improved in the world as Trinity retains top place in country's rankings
Trinity College Dublin (TCD) retained its place as Ireland's top institution in the QS World University Rankings for 2026, improving its overall ranking from 87th last year to 75th. University College Dublin (UCD) was ranked 118th, up from 126th a year ago, followed by University College Cork (UCC), up to 246th from 273rd, and the University of Galway, which fell to 284th from 273rd. The University of Limerick, Dublin City University (DCU), the University of Maynooth and the Technological University of Dublin (TUD) made up the rest of the eight Irish universities included in the rankings. Seven of the eight improved on their ranking from a year ago, making Ireland the most-improved country in Europe and the second-most improved in the world, trailing Azerbaijan. This edition of the QS rankings also marks the first time every ranked Irish university has been included in the world's top 800. Further and Higher Education Minister James Lawless said third-level institutions 'play a vital role in delivering education and research' in Ireland. 'This work has been and continues to be pivotal to the success of our country as a knowledge-driven economy,' he said. Their achievements reflect the strength of our higher education system 'I congratulate the institutions that have improved their standing in this year's QS university rankings. 'Their achievements reflect the strength of our higher education system and reinforce Ireland's global reputation for academic excellence and cutting-edge research. 'This progress also reflects the significant investment this Government has made in higher education in recent years, supporting our ambition to build a world-class, innovative and inclusive system that delivers for all.' TCD ranked in the top 100 globally in three indicators: academic reputation, international faculty and graduate outcomes. UCD landed in the top 100 for graduate outcomes and in the top 50 for sustainability, where it was ranked 49th. After rising into the global top 250, UCC also improved in academic reputation, employer reputation and citations per faculty. The University of Oxford was in fourth place, down from third At the top of the rankings, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) retained the number one spot it has held since 2012. In second place was Imperial College London, the same spot it earned last year. The University of Oxford was in fourth place, down from third, and Harvard University was in fifth, down from fourth. QS senior vice-president Ben Sowter said: 'Ireland's outstanding results in the 2026 QS World University Rankings are testament to the dedication of academics, administrators and students across the eight universities from the country included in the ranking. 'The Government has been clear in its ambitions to make Ireland a first-choice destination for international learners in its Global Citizens 2030 Talent and Innovation Strategy and, with every university improving in the international student indicator, the country's campuses are increasingly open and diverse.'
Irish Post
4 days ago
- Business
- Irish Post
Businessman Dermot Smurfit receives honorary degree from Trinity College Dublin
BUSINESSMAN and philanthropist Dermot Smurfit has been awarded an honorary degree from Trinity College Dublin (TCD). The entrepreneur, with his brother Michael, built the family packaging firm, Jefferson Smurfit, into one of Ireland's most successful and internationally acclaimed public companies. Today it is the largest paper and packaging producer in the world. Pictured (l-r) Moira O'Brien, Sir Donnell Deeny, Dermot Smurfit, TCD Provost Dr Linda Doyle, Chancellor Dr Mary McAleese and Linda Ervine (Pics: TCD) Now in his 80s, and retired from executive management, Mr Smurfit continues to invest in businesses and sits as a non-executive director on a number of company boards. He is among Trinity College Dublin's 'most generous benefactors', although he 'does not like to publicise his giving' the college said this week. 'While preferring not to publicize his giving and averse to public recognition, he has been an exceptionally generous supporter of initiatives in health and higher education over decades,' a university spokesperson confirmed as they awarded him an honorary degree of the University of Dublin at TCD. Dermot Smurfit pictured with TCD Chancellor, former president of Ireland, Dr Mary McAleese Anna Chahoud, Public Orator of the University of Dublin, said Mr Smurfit had 'always embraced challenges, including the all-important task of saving companies and jobs. This is a man who cares for people and for a just cause.' "To us, he is an invaluable benefactor and advisor of our University, a member of the Provost's Council, and the generous and vocal supporter, at home and abroad, of the University's commitment to inspire future generations,' she added. Mr Smurfit was one of four people to receive an honorary degree this week. The renowned osteoporosis expert Moira O'Brien, Northern Irish judge Sir Donnell Deeny and Irish language champion Linda Ervine all received the honour from TCD Chancellor Dr Mary McAleese at a ceremony conducted in Latin in the historic Public Theatre. See More: Dermot Smurfit, Donnell Deeny, Linda Irvine, Moira O'Brien, TCD
Irish Independent
4 days ago
- General
- Irish Independent
Wexford to play host to a number of 1798 Rebellion commemoration events
1798 Summer School A series of guided walks and talks will be offered on Saturday, June 21 beginning with a walking tour of Enniscorthy town at 10 a.m. with historian and archaeologist, Barry Lacey, starting from the 1798 Centre carpark. The walk will finish back at The National 1798 Rebellion Centre where three talks covering different aspects of the Rebellion will be presented. The morning walking tour and talks are €10 each or a 1798 Summer School pass, which includes entry to the National 1798 Rebellion Centre exhibition over the weekend, is only €12. Pre-booking is recommended through info@ or 053 9327596. Free parking is available all day. The talks start at noon with a presentation by Dr. Elaine Callinan of Carlow College on the influences of the 1798 Rebellion with the revolutions across Europe and in America. After a short break for lunch or coffee, New Ross historian tour guide Myles Courtney will offer his in-depth talk on the Battle of New Ross at 2 p.m. In the final talk of the day, Dr. Ida Milne, lecturer at Carlow College and TCD, will give us a personal look at the letters of her grandmother's family, the Elmes, who lived near Old Ross until the 1970s. The letters were collected by Ida's father, King Milne, and his uncle, Sam Elmes, and were written intermittently between 1785 and 1817. The letters provide insights into the social and economic landscape in the period prior to the 1798 rebellion. The correspondence also covers events in and around New Ross and Old Ross in late May and early June 1798, the Protestant experience during these troubled times and the divided loyalties of Samuel Elmes's sons, one a yeoman and another implicated with the rebels. Battle of Vinegar Hill Commemoration At 6 p.m. on Saturday, June 21, a commemoration will be held at the Vinegar Hill car park to recognise to battle that took place here on 'The Longest Day' presented in conjunction with the Enniscorthy Municipal District Council. The Enniscorthy Re-enactment Society, accompanied by the Nócha hOcht le Chéile pikemen and the Ballindaggin Pipe Band, will march from the Enniscorthy Gaelscoil to Vinegar Hill in period dress for the commencement of the commemoration. A number of speakers will provide historical context, along with music from the Ballindaggin Pipe Band and other guests. This event is free and open to the public. Rebellion Day is an interactive family day on Sunday, June 22 from 12 p.m.- 5 p.m. on the grounds of the National 1798 Rebellion Centre. Manager Mico Hassett said: 'This community-orientated day brings history to life, offering up-close craft demonstrations and weapons displays, along with traditional music and dancing. It is a fun and educational day that encourages participation.' ADVERTISEMENT Learn more Local Re-enactment organiser, Ray Murphy, also said: 'Re-enactors have the opportunity to pay homage to our past heroes and participate in commemorations and re-enactments throughout the year. The Enniscorthy Re-enactors Society will set up camp in the gardens of the National 1798 Rebellion Centre. Watch out – there may even be a few shots fired!' "Re-enactors will answer questions about the battles and weapons of 1798 throughout the day. Learn about the hand-crafted weapons that were so important in 1798 with blacksmith and wood-working demonstrations and maybe even see the work that goes into making a hand-forged iron pike!' he added. The Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann will bring the Fringe Fleadh to Enniscorthy, providing live trad sessions and Irish Dancing throughout the afternoon. Bring the whole family and make a day of exploring the food and craft stalls. Café 98 will be open with a special festival menu or bring a picnic and enjoy the 1798 Centre grounds. Visit the Centre The Centre will be open for tours from 12 p.m.- 4:15 p.m. and those who have not been in to see the exhibition are encouraged to come inside and take in their interactive history. Café 98 will be open with a take-away menu, coffee, tea, cold drinks, and sweet treats, too. Public toilet facilities are available to all. On Sunday, the carpark at St. Mary's CBS will be open for free parking during Rebellion Day. Deputy Manager Eve Furlong commented: 'The Rebellion Day event is a free, family day out and for those wanting to see the 1798 exhibition, a general admission tour ticket will be reduced to €5 per person or only €10 for up to a family of five, a super value, for the whole weekend. Keep an eye on the Facebook page for updates.' Music funded through the Fringe Fleadh in partnership with Wexford County Council.
Irish Independent
6 days ago
- Politics
- Irish Independent
Obituary: Carmencita Hederman, former lord mayor of Dublin, city councillor, senator and environmental campaigner
She was born Carmencita Cruess-Callaghan on October 23, 1939, into a family in Blackrock, Co Dublin, headed by bacteriological chemist Dr George Cruess-Callaghan and his wife Ita. Carmencita later studied at Trinity College Dublin. Archbishop of Dublin John Charles McQuaid had banned members of his Catholic congregation from attending TCD, but gave Carmencita a dispensation to enrol as a student there. French and Italian were among the subjects she took and she went on to acquire a Master's degree in July 1969. Earlier, in St Patrick's Church, Blackrock, on June 26, 1962, she married William (Billy) Hederman, a respected doctor and surgeon from Croom, Co Limerick, who served as president of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI) in 1990-92. The couple bought a house on Leeson Street while on honeymoon. In April 1968, when a draft city development plan proposed rezoning the area into office blocks, a letter of opposition she wrote to The Irish Times galvanised her neighbours and a group called Upper Leeson Street Area Residents Association was formed, which successfully campaigned to keep the zone for residential-use only. On June 22, 1987, she was elected lord mayor of Dublin, succeeding Bertie Ahern. Hederman garnered support from a 'rainbow coalition' of Fine Gael, Labour, Workers' Party, Progressive Democrats and three Independents, including the late Tony Gregory, and won by a single vote over Fianna Fáil's Ned Brennan, who was tipped as the favourite. The first woman to hold the post in 30 years, during her 12 months in office she played a leading role in Dublin's millennium celebrations of 1988, marking the takeover of the city by the Irish from the Vikings. She was a strong opponent of what she called 'destructive dual carriageways' in the city centre and their effect on inner-city communities. In August 1989, she was elected as an Independent member of Seanad Éireann on the Dublin University Panel along with Shane Ross and David Norris. She found it a difficult place to make significant progress on issues and did not stand in the next general election. Hederman was very interested in running as an Independent candidate for president of Ireland in 1990. Securing a nomination requires the support of at least four local councils or 20 members of the Oireachtas. She discussed the matter at an early stage with then-Fine Gael leader Alan Dukes, who was prepared to consider nominating her if she joined the party and ran as a Fine Gael candidate. 'She would have liked to be a candidate, but she wasn't prepared to adopt the party label,' he said last week. The party later nominated Austin Currie and the successful candidate was Mary Robinson. More recently, in light of events in Gaza, she supported the successful campaign for TCD to divest from Israeli organisations and academic institutions and companies operating in Occupied Palestine and on the United Nations' blacklist. She was a mother of five children and grandmother of nine. Her daughter, Wendy, was elected to Dublin City Council as a Progressive Democrat candidate for the Pembroke area in 2004. She was involved in key local issues, but retired from politics in 2007. Predeceased by her husband Billy in 2016, Carmencita Hederman passed away peacefully at the Royal Hospital, Donnybrook, on May 31.
Irish Examiner
11-06-2025
- Politics
- Irish Examiner
Sarah Harte: The Government cannot continue to pay lip service to atrocities in Gaza
There are many other conflicts in the world, such as the humanitarian catastrophe in Sudan. Yet, we find commonalities in our shared history with the Palestinians. This can be linked to what Fintan Drury, in his new book, Catastrophe Nakba II, terms us being 'indelibly marked by the experience of being colonised by Britain'. The folk memory of the famine that transformed Ireland lives on, when entire communities were wiped out, which perhaps heightens our reaction to the current famine in Gaza, including the nightly images of emaciated children and starving babies. As TCD academic Brendan Ciarán Browne has written, blockaded humanitarian aid trucks waiting to get into Gaza should remind us of British colonial ships laden with crops and livestock departing our shores while our ancestors at home starved. So, we, the Irish people, empathise with the Palestinians. Still, as international agencies operating in Gaza have run out of superlatives to describe the hell there, hard questions are being asked of many European governments, including our own. The Germans are struggling with reconciling the genocidal ideology that paved the way for the mass genocide of European Jews, and their response to the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Many German Jewish writers have objected to the conflation of antisemitism and criticism of Israel (as have scores of intellectual Jewish thinkers), and they have suffered as a result, including being defunded and not awarded literary prizes. Small potatoes, you say, but not if it's your livelihood. In that situation, the moral luxury of commenting becomes costly. Spare a thought for the many Jewish people, who abhor the genocide in Palestine. To ever escape a cycle of violence necessitates acknowledging suffering on 'the other side'. What must that be like, go to bed, turn off the light, and be left trying to square the outsized tragedy of your past, the visceral fear the Hamas attack on October 7 provoked, with knowledge of the massacre and famine in Gaza supposedly carried out in your name? Tide may be turning in Germany The tide may finally be turning in Germany. Last week, its foreign minister Johann Wadephul warned that the fight 'against antisemitism…and full support for….the state of Israel must not be instrumentalised for the conflict and the warfare currently being waged in the Gaza Strip'. He said they are thinking carefully about what 'further steps to take'. They need to hurry up. Of course, many Western countries persist in seeing only what they want to see about the current phase of the Zionist mission. A question that must be posed to the Irish Government is what concrete steps they are going to take to object to the complete annihilation of the Palestinian people? Omar Shaban is the founder of Palthink for Strategic Studies and a senior analyst and development expert with extensive experience in Palestine. Mr Shaban has led humanitarian and emergency programmes for Catholic Relief Services in Gaza for 10 years and worked with UNRWA for another 10. He was born and lives in Gaza. Mr Shaban suggests that the Irish Government request that EU states stop supplying arms to the Israeli military. The Social Democrats in Germany have just called for the German arms exports to Israel to be halted to avoid German complicity in war crimes. Germany is the second-largest weapons supplier to Israel after the US. He asks that the Irish Government work to pressure Israel to open the Rafah crossing with Egypt to allow patients, injured children and their families to be evacuated. It doesn't seem like a lot to ask. He advocates that Ireland works closely with other EU states that share the same position to declare a clear joint statement asking Israel to stop the war immediately and to allow the flow of aid through international organisations such as UNRWA and WFP. This statement should include an ultimatum that if Israel doesn't do this, then the EU will impose trade sanctions. The EU can suspend sections of the EU-Israel Trade Agreement under Article 2. According to European Commission statistics, the EU is Israel's biggest trading partner. Some 34.2% of Israel's imports came from the EU, while 28.8% of the country's exports went to the EU. Of course, practically, that leaves our government with a problem. As reported in The Irish Examiner last week, Ireland is Israel's second-largest trading partner. Israel's exports to Ireland have exploded since 2021. As Patrick Bresnihan and Patrick Brodie exposed, for all our performative statements, meaningful sanctions on the Israeli economy would jeopardise our economic position. As reported, the vast majority of what we are buying are 'electronic integrated circuits and microassemblies,' mainly used in tech and pharmaceutical manufacturing. Ambassador Adel Atieh, who lives in Ramallah, is the director of the European Affairs Department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Palestine. He suggests that if the EU Council fails to take responsibility for reviewing the EU-Israel association agreement, and if the European Commission continues to neglect its legal obligations regarding agreements with Israel, Ireland should consider asking the European Court of Justice to investigate and provide a legal opinion. Furthermore, Ireland should issue a public warning to settlers holding Irish citizenship, urging them to withdraw immediately from settlements due to their involvement in war crimes and crimes against humanity. Mr Atieh says that this stance could encourage other EU member states to adopt similar positions, potentially leading to the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of settlers from the West Bank. This month, the UN General Assembly will vote on granting Palestine full membership status. Even if a US veto blocks Palestinian statehood at the Security Council, the General Assembly retains a critical pathway through the 'Uniting for Peace' resolution. This mechanism allows the Assembly to convene an emergency session when the Council fails to act due to a veto, and to recommend collective measures. Our Government must exert public pressure on other countries to accede to this. Silence of Irish professional bodies Back home on Irish soil, the questions for our government extend to professional medical bodies, including the Irish Medical Organisation (IMO) and the Irish Hospital Consultants Association (IHCA). The management of their relationships with Israeli counterparts and their deafening silence in calling out the genocide, as I've written before, raises serious questions about them. Dr Angela Skuse, a GP working in Inclusion Health in Dublin with homeless people, says none of the Irish medical organisations have issued a statement that includes the words 'genocide' or 'Israel'. Any statements issued have been careful not to 'take sides', and as Dr Skuse said, could equally refer to a natural disaster. 'Why is the medical profession so silent? Doctors are one of the most trusted professions. If we won't speak out and say that it's wrong, that it's a genocide and Israel is committing it — who will?' She adds that hundreds of healthcare workers have been murdered. Trinity College has just ended academic co-operation with Israeli institutions. The medical organisations should follow its lead and expel Israel from the World Health Organization and the World Medical Association. Ultimately, it will never be enough for the Irish Government (or professional bodies) to mouth support for international law from the sidelines. If we do nothing concrete, we engage in a problematic form of empathy or virtue signalling. Just as many Jewish people have the hardest of choices about whether to speak up, we and other Europeans are presented with choices too. The question is, what choices will our Government make in our name?
