The Deirdre O'Shaughnessy Podcast

Heatwaves have always happened, but in the context of our changing climate and an El Nino year, how do we cope, and what do we need to do?Meteorologist and author Joanna Donnelly  is the guest on today's podcast, explaining the terms we use around unseasonal weather and what El Nino means for our weather.Heatwave could cost taxpayers millions more as melting roads force changes to resurfacingHeatwaves are exposing Ireland's weakest linksEurope's record-breaking heatwave cost more than 10,000 lives in June

American mother of one Jamey Carney is the eighth woman to die violently in Ireland this year.Her body was discovered in her Killarney home just one day after that of Adina Constantin in Portlaoise, whose husband has been charged in connection with her death. Gardaí have launched an international manhunt in their investigation into Ms Carney’s killing.Since the murder of Ashling Murphy in 2022 prompted widespread outrage, 40 women have died violently in Ireland.Women’s Aid, the National Women’s Council of Ireland and politicians across the spectrum have highlighted their concern at what Taoiseach Micheál Martin referred to this week as the femicide figures “going in the wrong direction”.Irish Examiner Southern Correspondent Liz Dunphy has been covering this story and joins Deirdre on today’s episode. Killarney murder: Jamey Carney's cousin says 'no indication' she had safety concerns'Societal response' required to fight epidemic of violence against women, says TaoiseachNumber of women violently killed ‘not going in the right direction’, says TaoiseachHusband charged with murder of his wife in Portlaoise

With Bessborough in the news due to controversial building plans, those who survived the notorious institution are telling their stories in unprecedented numbers. Cork County Councillor Dominic Finn is one of three ‘Bessborough babies’ who sits on the local authority – a remarkable statistic, but one that he believes just shows how common adoption was in Ireland in the 1970s.In today’s episode, he tells Deirdre O’Shaughnessy about his happy childhood as one of four adopted children in Cobh, his search for his birth family, and how grateful he feels to have escaped the fate of so many less fortunate Bessborough babies.Read Dominic’s interview with Irish Examiner reporter Sean O’Riordan here: Cork councillor adopted from mother and baby home reunited with birth parents and six siblingsThe Deirdre O'Shaughnessy Podcast: Paving over Bessborough's missing babies

This is series 2 of An Irishwoman’s Diary from The Deirdre O’Shaughnessy Podcast, search in your podcast app for An Irishwoman’s Diary to find the six-episode Series 1.  Bridget Coll’s story reads like fiction — a thriller even — just as the many words used to describe her don’t seem to fit together: nun, lesbian, teacher, militant, law-changer, even “home-wrecker”.This “tiny woman with a fierce heart” from Fanad Co Donegal protested in Chile and made legal history in Canada. But at home in Ireland, her story isn’t so well known.Clodagh Finn: Bridget Coll — nun, lesbian, law-changer, and militant

This is series 2 of An Irishwoman’s Diary from The Deirdre O’Shaughnessy Podcast, search in your podcast app for An Irishwoman’s Diary to find the six-episode Series 1.  A precursor of Cabaret, the show about ‘a bad girl with a heart of gold’, became the go-to show in Dublin for a brief period in the 1950s, against all the prevailing morals of the time.Asked later why it hadn’t been banned, as JP Donleavy’s The Gingerman was, Archbishop John Charles McQuaid pointed out that the character of Sally Bowles wasn’t Irish, and therefore didn’t present a threat to the morality of Irish women.The star of both shows was Genevieve Lyons, an actor, theatre maker and writer who lived a very unconventional life. Her performance as Sally Bowles caused a brief craze for berets in fashion starved Dublin, and she wrote many books – one, about the famine, owed its name to Princess Margaret.In this episode Clodagh Finn recounts the story of a self-described “lunatic traveller” who though often penniless followed her creative dreams.Clodagh Finn: The Irish woman who made ‘Cabaret’ a hit in Ireland long before the Broadway musicalAn Irishwoman's Diary series 1: Meet the Irish women who left their mark on history 

This is series 2 of An Irishwoman’s Diary from The Deirdre O’Shaughnessy Podcast, search in your podcast app for An Irishwoman’s Diary to find the six-episode Series 1.  Once described as “Ireland’s ablest female journalist”, the exploits of war correspondent Gertrude Gaffney have been largely lost to history.Her travels throughout Europe – on the front in the Spanish Civil War, in Gdansk as the Germans approached, and at the Maginot line in 1940 – were chronicled in the Irish Independent.Clodagh Finn shares the story of this incredible journalist whose work brought the sights and sounds of World War Two right onto kitchen tables throughout Ireland.Clodagh Finn: Gertrude Gaffney — intrepid war correspondent and Ireland’s ‘ablest woman journalist’An Irishwoman's Diary series 1: Meet the Irish women who left their mark on history

This is series 2 of An Irishwoman’s Diary from The Deirdre O’Shaughnessy Podcast, search in your podcast app for An Irishwoman’s Diary to find the six-episode Series 1.  Countess Joan Fitzgerald was a pivotal figure in medieval Ireland, immensely wealthy and powerful, but as a woman it was her marriages that defined her power.From the immensely wealthy Fitzgerald family – the Desmonds of Munster, who owned ten castles, her first marriage at age 16 was to James Butler, an Ormond of Kilkenny, aimed at linking the two great Houses.His death by poisoning caused some concerns in London – she was too powerful to be left to her own devices – and she was married off to an Englishman, Sir Francis Bryan, who was referred to by Henry VIII as his ‘Vicar of Hell’.She chose her own third husband from among her own allegiances, and made peace between the warring Ormonds and Desmonds, later being described by Queen Elizabeth as ‘the angel of peace’. The peace she negotiated fell apart just a month after her death.Read Clodagh’s column here: Clodagh Finn: Formidable medieval women deserve much more recognitionAn Irishwoman's Diary series 1: Meet the Irish women who left their mark on history

 This is series 2 of An Irishwoman’s Diary from The Deirdre O’Shaughnessy Podcast, search in your podcast app for An Irishwoman’s Diary to find the six-episode Series 1.She competed in three separate Olympic games; competed for Ireland in hockey, tennis, sailing and cricket, and even won the support of Eamon deValera who sought her out to compliment her “fine race” at Trinity College in the early 1950s.But Maeve Kyle fought against all the odds, including her own in-laws, when she decided to compete in the Olympics despite having recently become a mother for the first time.A letter writer to the Irish Time described her as a “disgrace to motherhood” , but she blew off the criticism to become a popular sporting figure and the backbone of athletics in Ireland for many years.Irish Examiner columnist Clodagh Finn joins Deirdre to discuss the woman who became known, rather inaptly, as ‘The Kilkenny Kitten’.Read Clodagh’s column here: Clodagh Finn: They called Maeve Kyle a disgrace to motherhood — then she became an Irish Olympic iconAn Irishwoman's Diary series 1: Meet the Irish women who left their mark on history