Description

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.