Taoiseach
The Taoiseach is the prime minister and head of government of Ireland. The Taoiseach is appointed by the President upon the nomination of Dáil Éireann, the lower house of the Oireachtas, must, in order to remain in office, retain the support of a majority in the Dáil; the word taoiseach means "chief" or "leader" in Irish and was adopted in the 1937 Constitution of Ireland as the title of the "head of the Government, or Prime Minister". Taoiseach is the official title of the head of government in both English and Irish, is not used for other countries' prime ministers; the Irish form, An Taoiseach, is sometimes used in English instead of "the Taoiseach". Outside of Ireland, the Taoiseach is sometimes referred to as the Prime Minister of Ireland. Leo Varadkar TD is the current Taoiseach. Varadkar is the youngest Taoiseach in the history of the Irish state, having taken office at the age of 38. Under the Constitution of Ireland, the Taoiseach is nominated by a simple majority of Dáil Éireann from among its members.
He/she is formally appointed to office by the President, required to appoint whomever the Dáil designates, without the option of declining to make the appointment. For this reason, it is said that the Taoiseach is "elected" by Dáil Éireann. If the Taoiseach loses the support of a majority in Dáil Éireann, he/she is not automatically removed from office but, rather, is compelled either to resign or to persuade the President to dissolve the Dáil; the President may refuse to grant a dissolution and, in effect, force the Taoiseach to resign. The Taoiseach may lose the support of Dáil Éireann by the passage of a vote of no confidence, or implicitly through the failure of a vote of confidence. In the event of the Taoiseach's resignation, he/she continues to exercise the duties and functions of his/her office until the appointment of a successor; the Taoiseach nominates the remaining members of the Government, who are with the consent of the Dáil, appointed by the President. The Taoiseach has authority to advise the President to dismiss cabinet ministers from office, advice the President is required to follow by convention.
The Taoiseach is further responsible for appointing eleven members of the Seanad. The Department of the Taoiseach is the government department which supports and advises the Taoiseach in carrying out his/her various duties. Since 2013, the Taoiseach's annual salary is €185,350, it was cut from €214,187 to €200,000 when Enda Kenny took office, before being cut further to €185,350 under the Haddington Road Agreement in 2013. A proposed increase of €38,000 in 2007 was deferred when Brian Cowen became Taoiseach and in October 2008, the government announced a 10% salary cut for all ministers, including the Taoiseach; however this was a voluntary cut and the salaries remained nominally the same with both ministers and Taoiseach refusing 10% of their salary. This courted controversy in December 2009 when a salary cut of 20% was based on the higher figure before the refused amount was deducted; the Taoiseach is allowed an additional €118,981 in annual expenses. There is no official residence of the Taoiseach.
In 2008 it was reported speculatively that the former Steward's Lodge at Farmleigh adjoining the Phoenix Park would become the official residence of the Taoiseach. The house, which forms part of the Farmleigh estate acquired by the State in 1999 for €29.2m, was renovated at a cost of nearly €600,000 in 2005 by the Office of Public Works. Former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern did not use it as a residence, but his successor Brian Cowen used it "from time to time"; the words Tánaiste are both from the Irish language and of ancient origin. Though the Taoiseach is described in the Constitution of Ireland as "the head of the Government or Prime Minister", its literal translation is chieftain or leader. Although Éamon de Valera, who introduced the title in 1937, was neither a Fascist nor a dictator, it has sometimes been remarked that the meaning leader in 1937 made the title similar to the titles of Fascist dictators of the time, such as Führer and Caudillo. Tánaiste, in turn, refers to the system of tanistry, the Gaelic system of succession whereby a leader would appoint an heir apparent while still living.
In Scottish Gaelic, tòiseach translates as clan chief and both words had similar meanings in the Gaelic languages of Scotland and Ireland. The related Welsh language word tywysog has meaning, it is hypothesized that both derive from the proto-Celtic *towissākos "chieftain, leader". The plural of taoiseach is taoisigh. Although the Irish form An Taoiseach is sometimes used in English instead of "the Taoiseach", the English version of the Constitution states that he or she "shall be called... the Taoiseach". In 1937 when the draft Constitution of Ireland was being debated in the Dáil, Frank MacDermot, an opposition politician, moved an amendment to substitute "Prime Minister" for the proposed "Taoiseach" title in the English text of the Constitution, it was proposed to keep the "Taoiseach" title in the Irish language text. The proponent remarked: It seems to me to be mere make-believe to try to incorporate a word like "Taoiseach" in the Eng
Killarney
Killarney is a town in County Kerry, southwestern Ireland. The town is on the northeastern shore of Lough Leane, part of Killarney National Park, is home to St Mary's Cathedral, Ross Castle, Muckross House and Abbey, the Lakes of Killarney, MacGillycuddy's Reeks, Purple Mountain, Mangerton Mountain, the Gap of Dunloe and Torc Waterfall, its natural heritage and location on the Ring of Kerry make Killarney a popular tourist destination. Killarney won the Best Kept Town award in 2007, in a cross-border competition jointly organised by the Department of the Environment and the Northern Ireland Amenity Council. In 2011, it was named Ireland's tidiest town and the cleanest town in the country by Irish Business Against Litter. Killarney has featured prominently in early Irish history, with religious settlements playing an important part of its recorded history, its first historical settlement was the monastery on nearby Innisfallen Island founded in 640 by St. Finian the Leper, occupied for 850 years.
Innisfallen or Inishfallen is an island in Lough Leane. It is home to the ruins of Innisfallen Abbey, one of the most impressive archaeological remains dating from the early Christian period found in the Killarney National Park; the monastery was founded in 640 by St. Finian the Leper, was occupied for 850 years. Over a period of about 300 of these, the monks wrote the Annals of Innisfallen, which chronicle the early history of Ireland as it was known to the monks; the monks were dispossessed of the abbey on 18 August 1594, by Elizabeth I. The location of the monastery on the island is thought to have given rise to the name Lough Leane, which in English means "Lake of Learning". According to tradition the Irish High King Brian Boru received his education at Innisfallen under Maelsuthain O'Carroll. Maelsuthain has been credited as the possible originator of the Annals, it is possible for tourists to visit the island during the summer months, with boats leaving from Ross Castle throughout the day.
Aghadoe, the local townland which overlooks present day Killarney, may have begun as a pagan religious site. The site has been associated with the 5th century missionary St. Abban, but 7th century ogham stones mark the first clear evidence of Aghadoe being used as an important site. According to legend, St. Finian founded a monastery at Aghadoe in the 7th century; the first written record of a monastery dates from 939 AD in the Annals of Innisfallen where the Aghadoe monastery is referred to as the "Old Abbey."Following the Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland in 1169, the Normans built Parkavonear Castle at Aghadoe. The castle was intended as an early warning outpost due to its views of the entire Killarney valley and lakes region. Ross Castle was built on the lake shore in the late 15th century by local ruling clan the O'Donoghues Mor. Ownership of the castle changed hands during the Desmond Rebellions of the 1580s to the Mac Carty Mor. Muckross Abbey was founded in 1448 as a Franciscan friary for the Observantine Franciscans by Donal McCarthy Mor.
The abbey was burned down by Cromwellian forces under General Ludlow in 1654, today remains a ruin. Killarney was involved in the Irish War of Independence; the town, indeed the entire county, had strong republican ties, skirmishes with the British forces happened on a regular basis. The Great Southern Hotel, was for a while taken over by the British, both as an office and barracks, to protect the neighbouring railway station. One notable event during the war was the Headford Ambush when the IRA attacked a railway train a few miles from town. However, divisions among former colleagues were quick to develop following the truce and treaty, Killarney, like many other areas, suffered in the rash of increasing atrocities during the Civil War. A day after the Ballyseedy Massacre, five Republican prisoners were murdered in Killarney by Free State forces. Killarney's tourism history goes back at least to the mid 18th century, when Thomas, fourth Viscount Kenmare, began to attract visitors and new residents to the town.
The date of 1747 was used in recent 250-year celebrations to honour the history of Killarney tourism. A visit by Queen Victoria in 1861 gave the town some international exposure. Killarney benefited from the coming of the railway in July 1853. British trade directory publisher Isaac Slater noted that there were three hotels in the town in 1846 but by 1854, one year after the coming of the railway, James Fraser named seven hotels and described their locations:the Railway Hotel opposite the Railway Station. In 1858, Irish born Victorian journalist, Samuel Carter Hall named O'Sullivan's Hotel and the Innisfallen rather than the Hibernia and Torc, but Isaac Slater named the Hibernia in 1846. At the time he was writing, tours of the Ring of Kerry were an industry and Killarney was considered the starting point of the hundred and ten mile circuitous route, he was fascinated by the horses' endurance on the two-day trip, leaves cl
Canada
Canada is a country in the northern part of North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic to the Pacific and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering 9.98 million square kilometres, making it the world's second-largest country by total area. Canada's southern border with the United States is the world's longest bi-national land border, its capital is Ottawa, its three largest metropolitan areas are Toronto and Vancouver. As a whole, Canada is sparsely populated, the majority of its land area being dominated by forest and tundra, its population is urbanized, with over 80 percent of its inhabitants concentrated in large and medium-sized cities, many near the southern border. Canada's climate varies across its vast area, ranging from arctic weather in the north, to hot summers in the southern regions, with four distinct seasons. Various indigenous peoples have inhabited what is now Canada for thousands of years prior to European colonization. Beginning in the 16th century and French expeditions explored, settled, along the Atlantic coast.
As a consequence of various armed conflicts, France ceded nearly all of its colonies in North America in 1763. In 1867, with the union of three British North American colonies through Confederation, Canada was formed as a federal dominion of four provinces; this began an accretion of provinces and territories and a process of increasing autonomy from the United Kingdom. This widening autonomy was highlighted by the Statute of Westminster of 1931 and culminated in the Canada Act of 1982, which severed the vestiges of legal dependence on the British parliament. Canada is a parliamentary democracy and a constitutional monarchy in the Westminster tradition, with Elizabeth II as its queen and a prime minister who serves as the chair of the federal cabinet and head of government; the country is a realm within the Commonwealth of Nations, a member of the Francophonie and bilingual at the federal level. It ranks among the highest in international measurements of government transparency, civil liberties, quality of life, economic freedom, education.
It is one of the world's most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, the product of large-scale immigration from many other countries. Canada's long and complex relationship with the United States has had a significant impact on its economy and culture. A developed country, Canada has the sixteenth-highest nominal per capita income globally as well as the twelfth-highest ranking in the Human Development Index, its advanced economy is the tenth-largest in the world, relying chiefly upon its abundant natural resources and well-developed international trade networks. Canada is part of several major international and intergovernmental institutions or groupings including the United Nations, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the G7, the Group of Ten, the G20, the North American Free Trade Agreement and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum. While a variety of theories have been postulated for the etymological origins of Canada, the name is now accepted as coming from the St. Lawrence Iroquoian word kanata, meaning "village" or "settlement".
In 1535, indigenous inhabitants of the present-day Quebec City region used the word to direct French explorer Jacques Cartier to the village of Stadacona. Cartier used the word Canada to refer not only to that particular village but to the entire area subject to Donnacona. From the 16th to the early 18th century "Canada" referred to the part of New France that lay along the Saint Lawrence River. In 1791, the area became two British colonies called Upper Canada and Lower Canada collectively named the Canadas. Upon Confederation in 1867, Canada was adopted as the legal name for the new country at the London Conference, the word Dominion was conferred as the country's title. By the 1950s, the term Dominion of Canada was no longer used by the United Kingdom, which considered Canada a "Realm of the Commonwealth"; the government of Louis St. Laurent ended the practice of using'Dominion' in the Statutes of Canada in 1951. In 1982, the passage of the Canada Act, bringing the Constitution of Canada under Canadian control, referred only to Canada, that year the name of the national holiday was changed from Dominion Day to Canada Day.
The term Dominion was used to distinguish the federal government from the provinces, though after the Second World War the term federal had replaced dominion. Indigenous peoples in present-day Canada include the First Nations, Métis, the last being a mixed-blood people who originated in the mid-17th century when First Nations and Inuit people married European settlers; the term "Aboriginal" as a collective noun is a specific term of art used in some legal documents, including the Constitution Act 1982. The first inhabitants of North America are hypothesized to have migrated from Siberia by way of the Bering land bridge and arrived at least 14,000 years ago; the Paleo-Indian archeological sites at Old Crow Flats and Bluefish Caves are two of the oldest sites of human habitation in Canada. The characteristics of Canadian indigenous societies included permanent settlements, complex societal hierarchies, trading networks; some of these cultures had collapsed by the time European explorers arrived in the late 15th and early 16th centuries and have only been discovered through archeological investigations.
The indigenous population at the time of the first European settlements is estimated to have been between 200,000
Maurice O'Sullivan
Muiris Ó Súilleabháin, Irish pronunciation:. Fiche Blian ag Fás was published in Irish and English in 1933; as one of the last areas of Ireland in which the old Irish language and culture had continued unchanged, the Great Blasket Island was a place of enormous interest to those seeking traditional Irish narratives. Ó Súilleabháin was persuaded to write his memoirs by George Thomson, a linguist and professor of Greek who had come to the island to hear and learn the Irish language. It was Thomson who encouraged him to go into the Guards, rather than emigrate to America as most of the young people did. Thomson edited and assembled the memoir, arranged for its translation into English with the help of Moya Llewelyn Davies. While Fiche Blian ag Fás was received with tremendous enthusiasm by critics, including E. M. Forster, their praise at times had a condescending tone. Forster described the book as a document of a surviving "Neolithic" culture; such interest was tied up with romantic notions of the Irish primitive, thus when Ó Súilleabháin tried to find a publisher for his second book, Fiche Bliain faoi Bhláth, there was little interest, as this narrative departed from the romantic realm of turf fires and pipe-smoking wise-women.
Dylan Thomas commenced, but did not finish, a filmscript of Twenty Years a-Growing. Following the death of his mother when he was six months old, Ó Súilleabháin was raised in an institution in Dingle, Co. Kerry. Aged eight, he returned to Great Blasket Island to live with his father and the rest of his siblings, learnt the native language, he joined the Garda Síochána in Dublin in 1927 and was stationed in the Gaeltacht area of Connemara, where he kept up contact with Thomson. In 1934, Ó Súilleabháin settled in Connemara. Ó Súilleabháin drowned on 25 June 1950, while swimming at Knocknacarra off the Connemara coast. Fiche Bliain ag Fás. Baile Átha Cliath: Clólucht an Talbóidigh. 1933. P. 381. Twenty Years a-Growing. Trans. Moya Llewelyn Davies & George Thomson.. New York City: Viking Books. 1933. P. 303. Vingt ans de jeunesse. Trans. Raymond Queneau. Paris, France: Gallimard. 1934
Atlantic Ocean
The Atlantic Ocean is the second largest of the world's oceans, with an area of about 106,460,000 square kilometers. It covers 20 percent of the Earth's surface and about 29 percent of its water surface area, it separates the "Old World" from the "New World". The Atlantic Ocean occupies an elongated, S-shaped basin extending longitudinally between Europe and Africa to the east, the Americas to the west; as one component of the interconnected global ocean, it is connected in the north to the Arctic Ocean, to the Pacific Ocean in the southwest, the Indian Ocean in the southeast, the Southern Ocean in the south. The Equatorial Counter Current subdivides it into the North Atlantic Ocean and the South Atlantic Ocean at about 8°N. Scientific explorations of the Atlantic include the Challenger expedition, the German Meteor expedition, Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and the United States Navy Hydrographic Office; the oldest known mentions of an "Atlantic" sea come from Stesichorus around mid-sixth century BC: Atlantikoi pelágei and in The Histories of Herodotus around 450 BC: Atlantis thalassa where the name refers to "the sea beyond the pillars of Heracles", said to be part of the sea that surrounds all land.
Thus, on one hand, the name refers to Atlas, the Titan in Greek mythology, who supported the heavens and who appeared as a frontispiece in Medieval maps and lent his name to modern atlases. On the other hand, to early Greek sailors and in Ancient Greek mythological literature such as the Iliad and the Odyssey, this all-encompassing ocean was instead known as Oceanus, the gigantic river that encircled the world. In contrast, the term "Atlantic" referred to the Atlas Mountains in Morocco and the sea off the Strait of Gibraltar and the North African coast; the Greek word thalassa has been reused by scientists for the huge Panthalassa ocean that surrounded the supercontinent Pangaea hundreds of millions of years ago. The term "Aethiopian Ocean", derived from Ancient Ethiopia, was applied to the Southern Atlantic as late as the mid-19th century. During the Age of Discovery, the Atlantic was known to English cartographers as the Great Western Ocean; the term The Pond is used by British and American speakers in context to the Atlantic Ocean, as a form of meiosis, or sarcastic understatement.
The term dates to as early as 1640, first appearing in print in pamphlet released during the reign of Charles I, reproduced in 1869 in Nehemiah Wallington's Historical Notices of Events Occurring Chiefly in The Reign of Charles I, where "great Pond" is used in reference to the Atlantic Ocean by Francis Windebank, Charles I's Secretary of State. The International Hydrographic Organization defined the limits of the oceans and seas in 1953, but some of these definitions have been revised since and some are not used by various authorities and countries, see for example the CIA World Factbook. Correspondingly, the extent and number of oceans and seas varies; the Atlantic Ocean is bounded on the west by South America. It connects to the Arctic Ocean through the Denmark Strait, Greenland Sea, Norwegian Sea and Barents Sea. To the east, the boundaries of the ocean proper are Europe: the Strait of Africa. In the southeast, the Atlantic merges into the Indian Ocean; the 20° East meridian, running south from Cape Agulhas to Antarctica defines its border.
In the 1953 definition it extends south to Antarctica, while in maps it is bounded at the 60° parallel by the Southern Ocean. The Atlantic has irregular coasts indented by numerous bays and seas; these include the Baltic Sea, Black Sea, Caribbean Sea, Davis Strait, Denmark Strait, part of the Drake Passage, Gulf of Mexico, Labrador Sea, Mediterranean Sea, North Sea, Norwegian Sea all of the Scotia Sea, other tributary water bodies. Including these marginal seas the coast line of the Atlantic measures 111,866 km compared to 135,663 km for the Pacific. Including its marginal seas, the Atlantic covers an area of 106,460,000 km2 or 23.5% of the global ocean and has a volume of 310,410,900 km3 or 23.3% of the total volume of the earth's oceans. Excluding its marginal seas, the Atlantic covers 81,760,000 km2 and has a volume of 305,811,900 km3; the North Atlantic covers 41,490,000 km2 and the South Atlantic 40,270,000 km2. The average depth is 3,646 m and the maximum depth, the Milwaukee Deep in the Puerto Rico Trench, is 8,486 m.
The bathymetry of the Atlantic is dominated by a submarine mountain range called the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. It runs from 87°N or 300 km south of the North Pole to the subantarctic Bouvet Island at 42°S; the MAR divides the Atlantic longitudinally into two halves, in each of which a series of basins are delimited by secondary, transverse ridges. The MAR reaches above 2,000 m along most of its length, but is interrupted by larger transform faults at two places: the Romanche Trench near the Equator and the Gibbs Fracture Zone at 53°N; the MAR is a barrier for bottom water, but at these two transform faults deep water currents can pass from one side to the othe
Inishvickillane
Inishvickillane or Inishvickillaun is one of the Blasket Islands of County Kerry, Ireland. Referred to by Blasket islanders as "The Inis", Inishvickillane was intermittently inhabited during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, by one or more families. There are extensive ruins of ancient stone buildings and a house was built in the 1970s by Taoiseach Charles Haughey, who owned the island and used it as a holiday home. Inishvickillane will be the first land in Europe to experience the Solar eclipse of September 23, 2090. Apart from Tearaght and some rocks, this island is the most western land of Ireland. Inishvickillane holds important seabird colonies, being notable for northern fulmar, European storm-petrel and Atlantic puffin. A herd of red deer was introduced to the island by Haughey
Inis na Bró
Inishnabro is one of the Blasket Islands of County Kerry, Ireland. Inishnabro is separated from Inishvickillane by a narrow sound, rises to 175 metres, has an area of 41.3 hectares. Early in 1970s, the U. S. commercial space pioneer Gary Hudson proposed using Inis na Bró as the launching site for a new rocket system. The proposal only became public in 2003, when Irish Government files from the period were released under the 30-year rule
