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    Prestigious U.S.-Ireland Mitchell Scholarship Paused Amid Funding Woes

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    More than 300 American students have benefited from the George J. Mitchell program, founded after the Good Friday Agreement, but it has been halted indefinitely.Last month, 12 American students flew across the Atlantic to begin the prestigious George J. Mitchell scholarship program in Ireland and Northern Ireland. They are living in cities and towns including Cork, Belfast and Dublin, studying subjects like biotechnology, history and engineering.But they could be the last cohort in the program, as organizers announced earlier this year that they had paused selection for coming years because of funding difficulties.The program sent its first students to the island in 2000, in the wake of the Good Friday Agreement that forged peace after decades of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland known as the Troubles. Named for then-Senator George J. Mitchell, who lead the talks, it has brought nearly 300 students to Ireland since its inception. The scholarship covers the full cost of tuition for a year, accommodations and a stipend for living expenses and travel.Organizers said the difficulty in securing long-term funding for the program raised questions about the changing relationship between the United States and Ireland, although the countries still benefit from close ties, particularly when compared to other small European countries. The scholarship has an overall budget of around $1 million, according to its latest annual report.Simon Harris, Ireland’s taoiseach, or prime minister, is in Washington on Wednesday for a two-day visit to meet with President Biden and to attend an event marking 100 years of bilateral diplomatic relations between the two nations.For a small country of just five million, Ireland has an outsized status in the American psyche because of the large numbers of immigrants in centuries past, the deep involvement of Irish Americans in the founding of the Irish state and more recently, America’s involvement in the peace process in Northern Ireland.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘The Spark’: How Irish Kids Created the Song of Summer

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      Think you can stop what they do? I doubt it.It started with the beat, Heidi White said.On a March day at The Kabin Studio, an arts nonprofit in Cork, Ireland, Heidi, 11, and a group of other children were trying to write a rap with the help of Garry McCarthy, who is a music producer and Kabin Studio’s creative director. It was part of a weekly songwriting program.“It’s a safe space for young people in the community to come create music, hang out and just to make bangers,” Mr. McCarthy said.On this day, the group was trying to write an anthem for Cruinniú na nÓg, a government-sponsored day in Ireland devoted to children’s creativity, scheduled for June 15. Everyone was feeling a little shy and the ideas weren’t exactly flowing, Heidi said.“Then Garry had put on a drum-and-bass beat, and suddenly it was like a switch flipped and everyone started getting involved,” she said. “It was like magic.”That infectious beat has also captivated viewers around the world. The group’s song, “The Spark,” has become a sensation on social media, hailed by some on TikTok as an early contender for song of the summer. (This isn’t first time a tune made for social media tune has been praised as such. See here: A 2023 earworm about margaritas.)What could have easily sounded grating to adult ears — think Kidz Bop — is instead unrelentingly catchy. The song’s accompanying music video, which culminates in all of the kids rapping, loudly, in unison on the top deck of a bus, is utterly charming.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Agreement’ and ‘Philadelphia, Here I Come!,’ Two Irish Imports

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      “Agreement,” at Irish Arts Center, and “Philadelphia, Here I Come!,” at Irish Repertory Theater, have a timeless feel, rooted in their eras and resonant in ours.In more placid times, it would be downright bizarre to classify Owen McCafferty’s political drama “Agreement” as feel-good entertainment.In these fraught, belligerent times, though, there is comfort, even a twinge of hope, in the play’s retelling of the knotty negotiations that finally made an enduring peace possible in Northern Ireland. Part of the United Kingdom, it was long violently divided between Catholics and the Protestant majority, with republicans wanting the region to join the predominantly Catholic Republic of Ireland and unionists vehemently opposed. After decades of blood-soaked warring — and bitter, sectarian score-keeping about who did what to whom — the Good Friday Agreement pointed a different way forward.It sounds like the makings of theater for wonks, doesn’t it? Seven politicians holed up together in Belfast in April 1998, battling their way toward consensus as the clock ticks down. Tony Blair, the British prime minister, has a family vacation to get to in Spain, so they need to complete the deal by Thursday. In Charlotte Westenra’s impeccably acted production for Lyric Theater, Belfast, the group blows past that deadline and a delirious dream ballet erupts — all of these exhausted people suddenly dancing.“Agreement,” at Irish Arts Center in Manhattan, is generally less colorful than that, and its barrage of contentious details can be overwhelming. But really, negotiations are stuck on the same few specifics: power sharing, economic cooperation, the decommissioning of paramilitary weapons and the release of prisoners.The show’s most teasing joke is having the career pacifist John Hume (Dan Gordon), the gentlest pol in the room, ask the audience whether there’s any need for him to explain an elusive central point yet again. Whereupon he does not clarify.“You all get it, don’t you?” Hume says, moving briskly along. “And if you haven’t — pay attention!”In the rushing current of this play, what buoys us isn’t the particularities but rather the personalities. Mo Mowlam (Andrea Irvine), the flagrantly unpretentious British secretary of state for Northern Ireland and the only woman in the mix; Gerry Adams (Chris Corrigan), the leader of Sinn Fein, the political wing of the Irish Republican Army, who turns out to be good for a wisecrack at a urinal; Bertie Ahern (Ronan Leahy), the Irish premier, freshly in mourning for his mother and showing up anyway — this is a charismatic bunch.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Who Is Leo Varadkar?

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      Mr. Varadkar, who said on Wednesday that he would step down as Ireland’s prime minister, has had a career of firsts. His resignation came as a surprise.When Leo Varadkar said on Wednesday that he was resigning as Ireland’s prime minister, the surprise announcement ended a chapter in the career of a politician who has twice led the country, but whose party faces a struggle in elections next year.As Mr. Varadkar ascended to the role in 2017, his identity — as the country’s first openly gay leader and its first with South Asian heritage — was viewed as evidence of Ireland’s rapid modernization. At 38, he was also its youngest leader.Mr. Varadkar was born in Dublin to an Irish mother and a father born in India. Before embarking on a career in politics, he trained as a doctor. During a referendum campaign in 2015 on the legalization of same-sex marriage, Mr. Varadkar, who at the time was health minister, announced that he was gay, a measure credited with bolstering the “Yes” vote.By the time he became prime minister, or taoiseach, Mr. Varadkar’s party, Fine Gael, had been in power for six years and was facing a crisis over domestic policy, including issues like health, education and housing. In an election in 2020, the party slumped to third place and formed a coalition with its rival center-right party, Fianna Fáil, and with the Green Party to hold onto power.As part of the coalition deal, Mr. Varadkar resigned as leader and was succeeded by Micheál Martin, the leader of Fianna Fáil. After a stint as deputy prime minister, Mr. Varadkar returned to the top job in December 2022.Speaking in Dublin with cabinet members behind him on Wednesday, Mr. Varadkar trumpeted what he described as his government’s achievements on domestic issues and singled out moves to enshrine personal rights.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Biden and Irish Leader Use St. Patrick’s Day Visit to Address Gaza

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      Prime Minister Leo Varadkar, at the White House, referred to his own country’s struggles when saying that “the Irish people have such empathy for the Palestinian people.”President Biden on Sunday used what is normally a festive St. Patrick’s Day celebration at the White House to acknowledge the growing international concern, including among the Irish, over the humanitarian situation of Palestinians amid Israel’s military action in Gaza.“The taoiseach and I agree about the urgent need to increase humanitarian aid in Gaza and get the cease-fire deal,” Mr. Biden said alongside Leo Varadkar, Ireland’s prime minister, or taoiseach, an outspoken critic of Israel’s war against Hamas in response to the Oct. 7 terrorist attack. As hundreds of Irish American leaders and government staff members applauded, Mr. Biden said that a two-state solution for Israel and the Palestinians was “the only path to lasting peace and security.”The celebration in the White House, with plenty of green dye, shamrocks and Guinness, is typically a chance for Mr. Biden to break from speeches about foreign policy and threats to American democracy to celebrate his Irish American heritage. But during his trip to the United States, Mr. Varadkar made clear that he would raise his concerns over the war in the Middle East with the American president.The prime minister in a way was speaking to a domestic audience back in Ireland, which, given its own history of resistance to British rule, is one of the more supportive European nations to Palestinians. Ireland was the first European Union nation to call for a Palestinian state and the last to permit the opening of a residential Israeli embassy.“Mr. President, as you know, the Irish people are deeply troubled about the catastrophe that’s unfolding before our eyes in Gaza, and when I travel the world, leaders often ask me why the Irish people have such empathy for the Palestinian people,” Mr. Varadkar said. “The answer is simple: We see our history in their eyes.”While Mr. Varadkar said that he supported the administration’s efforts to secure a deal for a temporary cease-fire in exchange for the release of hostages, he also directly called out Israel’s bombing tactics. While Mr. Biden has struck a sharper tone recently with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, the White House has said there are no plans to leverage military aid to Israel.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Bar Built for ‘Banshees of Inisherin’ Is For Sale

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      A bar set built for “The Banshees of Inisherin” was discarded in a backyard after filming, then resurrected by a pub in Ireland. It’s up for sale.It’s a quiet Thursday evening in Ireland’s rural midlands, and Mee’s Bar in Kilkerrin, County Galway, is hardly buzzing. The large space is mostly dark, the stools are mostly empty, and out front, on the only road through town, most cars roll by without stopping — foreboding features that have marked many an Irish country pub for dead.Still, even in this tourism drought between Christmas and St. Patrick’s Day, a man raises himself from the counter and wanders toward the pub’s backyard. He just needs to see it, he says.The “it” is nestled under a tin overhang, with bright yellow walls and a hand-thatched roof, a shrine to a fictional Irish darkness: the salvaged set of J.J. Devine’s, the claustrophobic bar that served as a main stage in “The Banshees of Inisherin,” the Academy Award-nominated 2022 film set on an isolated island off Ireland’s west coast.It’s a bizarre but charming juxtaposition in this quiet beer garden. Where’d the set come from? How’d it get here? Why in Kilkerrin, hours from the sea or any “Banshees”-related setting? Just — why?The set of the fictional pub had been discarded on a property on Achill Island off the coast of Ireland before it was brought to Kilkerrin.Clodagh Kilcoyne/ReutersMusician Niamh Ni Bheolain chats with friends in the pub.Clodagh Kilcoyne/ReutersWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Northern Ireland Has a Sinn Fein Leader. It’s a Landmark Moment.

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      The idea of a first minister who supports closer ties to the Republic of Ireland — let alone one from Sinn Fein, a party with historic ties to the Irish Republican Army — was once unthinkable. On Saturday, it became reality.As Michelle O’Neill walked down the marble staircase in Northern Ireland’s Parliament building on the outskirts of Belfast on Saturday, she appeared confident and calm. She smiled as applause erupted from supporters in the balcony. Yet her determined walk and otherwise serious gaze conveyed the gravity of the moment.The political party she represents, Sinn Fein, was shaped by the decades-long, bloody struggle of Irish nationalists in the territory who dreamed of reuniting with the Republic of Ireland and undoing the 1921 partition that has kept Northern Ireland under British rule.Now, for the first time, a Sinn Fein politician holds Northern Ireland’s top political office, a landmark moment for the party and for the broader region as a power-sharing government is restored. The first minister role had previously always been held by a unionist politician committed to remaining part of the United Kingdom.“As first minister, I am wholeheartedly committed to continuing the work of reconciliation between all our people,” Ms. O’Neill said, noting that her parents and grandparents would never have imagined that such a day would come. “I would never ask anyone to move on, but what I can ask is for us to move forward.”The idea of a nationalist first minister in Northern Ireland, let alone one from Sinn Fein, a party with historic ties to the Irish Republican Army, was indeed once unthinkable.But the story of Sinn Fein’s transformation — from a fringe party that was once the I.R.A.’s political wing, to a political force that won the most seats in Northern Ireland’s 2022 elections — is also the story of a changing political landscape and the results of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which ended the decades-long sectarian conflict known as the Troubles.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      D.U.P. in Northern Ireland Breaks Political Deadlock After Nearly 2 Years

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      The Democratic Unionist Party walked out of government in 2022 over post-Brexit trade rules. But on Tuesday, the party said it would return to power-sharing after negotiating with the British government.The Democratic Unionist Party, the main Protestant party in Northern Ireland and one of its biggest political forces, said on Tuesday that it was ready to return to power sharing after a boycott of almost two years had paralyzed decision-making in the region.After an internal meeting that stretched into the early morning, Jeffrey Donaldson, leader of the party, known as the D.U.P., said at a news conference that he had been mandated to support a new deal, negotiated with the British government, under which his party would return to Northern Ireland’s governing assembly.“Over the coming period we will work alongside others to build a thriving Northern Ireland firmly within the union for this and succeeding generations,” Mr. Donaldson said. He added, however, that the return to power sharing was conditional on the British government’s legislating to enshrine a new set of measures that had not yet been made public.The decision by the D.U.P., which represents those who want Northern Ireland to remain part of the United Kingdom, will be welcomed by many voters frustrated by the political stalemate, as well as by the British and Irish governments, which have both put pressure on the party to end the deadlock.But it could also herald a seismic shift in the territory’s history, opening the door for Sinn Fein, the Irish nationalist party, to hold for the first time the most senior political role of “first minister” rather than “deputy first minister.”Sinn Fein is committed to the idea of a united Ireland, in which Northern Ireland would join the Republic of Ireland, rather than remain part of the United Kingdom.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      ‘I’ve never been more optimistic’: Biden’s farewell speech in County Mayo – video highlights

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      Joe Biden concluded his visit to Ireland with a passionate riverside address to tens of thousands of people in his ancestral town in County Mayo. The US president turned his farewell speech in Ballina into a celebration of Irish and American values, saying: ‘My friends, people of Mayo, this is a moment to recommit our hearts, minds and souls to the march of progress.’ Biden landed in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and met the UK prime minister, Rishi Sunak, before embarking on a four-day tour More