Seamus McKenna has never been short of opinions. Now he’s putting them on Substack. Subscribe here to be entertained, stimulated and, from time to time, challenged:

Growing up in Waterford, and a voracious reader from the youngest age, Seamus McKenna early on developed the urge to write. He spent several years practicing as a Civil Engineer, all the while writing, and being published in newspapers and magazines.

In time, he gained an MBA from Trinity College Dublin (TCD), and combined that with his engineering qualification to operate as a business analyst with a number of multi-national companies, including Shell Oil, based overseas.

In the early 2000s he came back to Ireland to participate in the so-called Celtic Tiger, where his professional and writing skills allowed him to submit the most sublime proposals to financial institutions so that he could take part in property development. Rapid growth, and an ever more elevated lifestyle, followed, right up to the onset of the Global Financial Crisis of 2008, when everything collapsed. He spent the next ten years in intense legal battles with the aim of holding on to his home. He also published his first book, a best-selling treatment of algorithmic Foreign Exchange trading, called The Omicron Forex Trading Manual (2012).

In 2023 he obtained an MA in Creative Writing from Dublin City University (DCU).

He has broadcast on RTE (Irish national broadcaster) Radio 1’s Sunday Miscellany
(new writing for radio).

Now he has downsized, in all respects, and, while no longer living the high life, is comfortable. This means he can devote all his time to his first and only love, which is writing, both in fiction and non-fiction.

The Considine brothers, Rudi and Gus, are at war.

Their father, Malachi, has died in a ‘freak accident’. But is there such a thing as a freak accident? When Rudi attempts to grab Gus’s inheritance there’s a real prospect of human blood appearing on the Hawthorne Meats slaughterhouse floor. Enter Cosgrave, a solicitor with expensive tastes, and Toomarood, the banker with an eye to making money outside of his day job. Mix in the ‘free’ energy device, after experts have stated that the promoters are suffering from long-term, severe self-delusion. Does this all make up a catastrophe waiting to happen?

How will Gus’s childhood friend, Raymond Quinn, his partner, Kaarina, and their children, be able to deal with him being placed under an exit ban in China because of his part in a pyramid scheme that has defrauded Chinese small investors? Is Gus really the nice guy everyone thinks he is? His activities as a ‘celebrity butcher’ might suggest otherwise. Does Rudi go too far by defrauding Quinn senior and his business partner through the use of a shadow company?

Is Rudi capable of murder?

And Rudi’s wife, Penny – whose side is she on?

Treachery hangs over this story of the pressures and tensions, both personal and commercial, of Celtic-Tiger era Ireland, especially when that edifice is destroyed in the Global Financial Crisis of 2008.

For Rudi, the payback from Gus and Raymond is severe indeed.

For more than four decades one Irish voice has spoken out, consistently, courageously, and with piercing clarity, against the intertwined power of Church and State in Ireland.

The Reconstitution of Ireland gathers those letters, published in The Irish Times over 47 years, tracing a nation’s transformation from repression to modern enlightenment.

Through letters and memoir, this book revisits the Ireland that silenced women and shamed the vulnerable, that tolerated Mother-and-Baby homes, Magdalene Laundries, systemic abuse, and moral hypocrisy, and follows the country’s long, painful emergence into a liberal, self-aware democracy.

Each letter captures a moment in Ireland’s ongoing moral reckoning: the struggle for divorce, abortion rights, secular education, and freedom of conscience. Alongside these are reflections on global issues, from Barack Obama to Ukraine, revealing a mind deeply engaged with the wider world.

Witty, incisive, and often prophetic, The Reconstitution of Ireland is both a personal memoir and a living chronicle of a nation rethinking its soul, and rebuilding it from within.

“Not to be missed by anyone interested in how Ireland developed over the past fifty years.” — The International Review of Books.

In the spring of 1975, Engineer Anton Quigley arrives to assist in the construction of an offshore gas rig platform in what was then highly judgmental southern Ireland.

He falls for Helen Peavoy, a courageous teacher. But her real love is the enigmatic Ned Rocket, a member of Sinn Féin, the political wing of the Irish Republican Army (IRA). When she becomes pregnant by him, her world spirals. Then a terrible outrage is committed by the IRA; everyone’s loyalty is tested. Anton must confront his feelings, and struggle internally to maintain his integrity.

Will genuine true love overcome the turmoil?