Seamus Duke’s 5 big stories of 2025
Catherine the Great!
At the start of the year the presidential election appeared to be Mairead McGuinness’s to lose. However, as we all now know following her withdrawal on health grounds, the campaign evolved into one big fiasco from start to finish. Except of course, if you were in the Catherine Connolly camp.
Fianna Fáil decided they would field a so-called celebrity candidate, Jim Gavin, which proved a disastrous decision, because the former Dublin team manager was totally unsuited to the political scene. That call could cost Micheál Martin his job.
Fine Gael panicked when Mairead McGuinness had to pull out, and their new candidate, Heather Humphreys, proved that she was not suitable either.
In fairness to Catherine Connolly, the Galway woman had all her ducks in a row from early in the campaign. She garnered lots of support on the left. Connolly performed well in the debates and looked a winner from a long way out.
The election threw up some huge issues. In a major opinion poll, over half of those who responded felt they had no candidate to vote for, hence a huge number of spoiled votes materialised (almost 13%). The fact that Jim Gavin’s name was still on the ballot paper despite his withdrawal from the race added some farce to the situation.
Many people will maintain now that the nomination process will have to be reviewed for future elections. The fact that the turnout was just over 46% should set alarm bells ringing among the political classes.
In the end, Catherine Connolly was elected President with a landslide victory. She will do a good job and will not be afraid to have her say when it’s appropriate. But the campaign was one to forget for the political establishment.
Hope rises from the rubble
The hardest thing about watching the slaughter in Gaza was the helplessness. Every night we watched it on the TV News and every night dozens of innocent people were being slaughtered, with homes and other buildings being levelled to the ground.
Humanitarian aid was blocked and the population was starving as well as being under attack and in fear for their lives. The watching world felt powerless.
The only people the Israelis would listen to were the Americans, but the US was reluctant to interfere. In fact it was only when President Donald Trump appealed to Prime Minister Netanyahu that some sort of a truce was agreed.
What Hamas did on October 7th was barbaric, but to kill almost 70,000 people and starve two million more was a totally disproportionate and particularly brutal response.
It remains to be seen what the future is for the people of Gaza. They are returning to mountains of rubble. Their country is virtually destroyed. It has been a catastrophic and devastating two years for them.
The winds of change
It’s very clear that climate change is an increasing threat to our world. We have seen devastating storms and extreme weather events all over the globe in 2025.
We had our own extreme weather event in January 2025 when Storm Éowyn hit our shores. The damage that was caused on that night in January was incredible. All one has to do is take a drive out to Mote Park outside Roscommon Town to see what happened there. That beautiful forest was almost totally levelled. In fact it’s frightening to study the carnage there.
In the wake of this ferocious storm, there were trees down everywhere, roads blocked all over the country, and almost a million people left without power. We were probably very lucky that the worst of the storm happened at four or five o’clock in the morning. If it happened during the day there would almost certainly have been many fatalities.
Unfortunately, it looks like we are going to have many more big storms in the years to come. The two biggest economic powers in the world – the USA and China – appear to have no interest in doing anything of note about climate change. Until they change their attitude, nothing meaningful will be achieved.
Guess who’s back?
No day has passed since he was inaugurated in January 2025 without US President Donald Trump being a major part of the bulk of the news bulletins on radio, TV, in the newspapers and on social media.
He has torn up the political rule book. Now, anything goes. No one is safe. For a man who always said he had little or no interest in party politics, he has made some waves over the past 12 months.
There is not enough space in this whole magazine to detail all Trump has done (or made pronouncements on) this year… ranging from the tariffs to immigration, crime, wars around the world, the economic situation, his ongoing spat with the Democrats, climate change, etc.
The fact that he often appears to say the first thing that comes into his head – regardless of who he insults – is one of the most notable characteristics of what has been an incredible year in ‘Trump land’.
The US president is capable of holding one view on any issue on a given day and then taking the complete opposite view the following day. The only predictable thing about Donald Trump is his unpredictability.
There are also rumblings that he may even seek to serve a third term. Don’t rule it out!
The crisis that never ends
In November of 2025 the Government published yet another housing plan. It remains to be seen whether this latest initiative will work or not.
The statistics tell us that the population of this country has increased by one million in the past 15 years. All these people have to be housed. Successive governments have tried to address the problem with little or no progress achieved.
We are one of the wealthiest countries in the world and yet we have over 16,000 people homeless. We should all be ashamed of that statistic. In addition, our well-educated young people are leaving the country because they cannot afford to rent or buy. Surely there are progressive, bright people in authority that can come up with a solution to this crisis? If it costs a lot of money to solve it, then so be it.
