IT WAS A week when the nation was saddened by the deaths of six Irish students after a balcony collapsed in California.
That, and more, it’s the week in quotes:
When you look at the papers this morning, don’t you see the faces of your own sons and daughters?
Taoiseach Enda Kenny on the deaths of six Irish students in California.
Everyone is in this together, and it seems as though every person in Ireland is shocked and saddened by the loss of six beautiful, bright people. Lorcán had so much more to give, but his achievements in life far exceeded the time he had. He brought immeasurable happiness and joy to me and so many others, something I am eternally grateful for. He will be in my heart always.
Katie Wolahan wrote a moving blog post about her friend Lorcán Miller (21), one of six people who lost their lives earlier this week.
It was so insensitive, so insensitive it was dissociated with any sense of human empathy and human feeling and any sense of human grief.
Former president Mary McAleese on an article published in the New York Times about the tragedy.
Bertie doesn’t like intellectuals, seemingly. Bertie was a pint man, and your local man, and I know all that life myself. But I just think that he kind of feared things. He said that Brian liked poetry and things like that, but so what? Lots of us like poetry, but you can still knock on doors.
Former Fianna Fáil minister Mary O’Rourke discussed former Taoiseach’s Bertie Ahern’s attitude to her nephew Brian Lenihan.
I was delighted to see the nurses were genuflecting as they brought him his medicine.
Joe Brolly on popping in to see Michael Lyster in hospital.
Well, we have a political movement that has a single historic explanation for why your country is facing such terrible oppression; it’s either Versailles or the Treaty of the Union. You have a particular group of people who are responsible for this it is either the English or the Jews.
English historian David Starkey faced strong criticism for comparing the Scottish National Party to the Nazis.
It’s not horrible at all. It’s no more degrading than any other form of work – I mean, I worked in a bank for nine years and that was horrific. That was corporate prostitution.
Laura Lee, a sex worker based in Glasgow, went head-to-head with RTÉ presenter Ray D’Arcy.
It felt like the whole country was giving Sebastian a big hug.
The parents of Sebastian McLoughlin, who passed away after battling a brain tumour, on the support they received from the public.
I was on a GAA pitch with my then five-year-old and I got a phone call from one of the conspirators saying that they were going to ambush Enda next week. I passed it onto my news desk, but even as I said ‘thanks for that’, I thought it’s not much of a fucking ambush if you’re telling political writers in the Sunday Independent that you’re going to ambush the dear leader in the next week.
The contribution of John Drennan, former political editor of the Sunday Independent, to TheJournal.ie’s oral history on the attempted leadership heave against Enda Kenny in 2010.
I definitely am not white. Nothing about being white describes who I am, so what’s the word for it? The closest thing that I can come to is, ‘if you’re black or white’, I’m black. I certainly feel more black than white.
Rachel Dolezal, the US local civil rights leader forced to leave an African-American advocacy group after her white parents went public spoke of how she identifies as black.
I basically live on my own. I got up [on Monday] morning and got dressed at 5 o’clock thinking I was going to work until I realised when I got to the door that the job was gone. So I came into town and just passed the time away and was just bored stiff – my head was just gone. It’s going to be hard.
John Crowe, a Clerys worker for 43 years, only found out he had lost his job when he turned up for work on Monday.
We were just playing around in the waves, and I felt a hit on my left calf. I thought it felt like a big fish, and I started moving away. And then the shark bit my arm, off.
Hunter Treschl rather calmly described being attacked by a shark.
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