Una and Andrea's United Ireland

Just as the Leitrim community was able to relax after winning it's fight against onshore fracking, another threat to the county strikes - the hunt for gold. A few weeks ago, a group called Treasure Leitrim was formed when it emerged a company called Flintridge Research was seeking a prospecting licence for gold and silver in north Leitrim near Manorhamilton. We're joined by Jamie from Treasure Leitrim to find out what's going on, if there's an actual difference between prospecting and mining licences and what the granting of a prospecting license would mean, not just to the community but to the direction of our country going forward as a 'resource' hunter. Also, LOADS of Fave Bits - we're excited about a lot at the moment, but also an equally large amount of things to Get In The Sea and Drive us BANANAS! Enjoy xo

Waterford's approach to dereliction has dramatically decreased the number of families living in emergency accommodation, and homelessness more generally. By utilising a rarely talked about scheme, derelict and vacant buildings are being transformed into social housing. So why can't this happen everywhere else? We're joined by Fine Gael Senator John Cummins to discuss this success story. Also, Andrea is not entering the metaverse any time soon, and Una is binging on D.A. Pennebaker documentaries.

Have you waited for clubs and gigs for so long, you're feeling weird about not rushing out to them? How can we cope with anxiety and overwhelm as places open back up? Our favourite psychotherapist Sarah Gilligan joins us for calmness, coping mechanisms, and capacity tips. Plus, Una discusses what it was like at the eviction on Prussia Street in Dublin 7, and the capital loses two more beloved cultural spots.

'water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink' This famous line from Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem seems perfectly apt when we're (still) talking about student accommodation. Following a heap load of frustration communicated from UCD SU's Ruairí Power to Owen Keegan, CEO of DCC about the change of use of PBSA to short term student lets, Owen Keegan suggested, perhaps, the SU could build their own. In this ep, we're down at the protest organised by the UCD SU at DCC HQ talking to the students affected by this accommodation crisis and ensuing glib remarks. We're also throwing the budget in the sea and rediscovering the Home & Away theme tune. And most importantly, we're finally back together.

EPISODE 115: Ireland's Corporate Tax Rate Conundrum by Una & Andrea's United Ireland

Why does it feel we have to keep protesting for the things that should be a given in a society? 1: Somewhere To Live Killian Woods predicted a rent strike in a recent Byline episode because of the crazy housing crisis. Within that crisis, there's another arc that perfectly illustrates why trying to find somewhere to live is so difficult. Empty purpose built student accommodation being granted change of use rather than lowering the prices. We're talking to Dublin Inquirer's Laoise Neylon about a recent article she wrote: “Providers of Purpose-Built Student Accommodation Have Been Saying There’s a Lack of Demand for It” while students have been making 200km round trips to lectures cos they can't find anywhere affordable to live. What gives? 2: Parents Being There For The Birth of Their Children There's a #MarchForMaternity on Wednesday at 1pm at the Dail because even though most things have reverted to some sort of 'normality', restrictions remain in place in maternity hospitals across the country. We'

Stephen Carroll is the Business Editor of France24. In this episode of Byline, we talk about his career in broadcast news, from starting out as a radio reporter in Dublin, to presenting young people's news for RTE, to producing and editing global breaking news stories for Sky News, working at the BBC World Service, and for the past decade working as a television journalist in Paris for a French public broadcaster, reporting on Brexit, Davos, and the personal and professional impact of the Bataclan massacre. Settle in for a fantastic insight into broadcast news from our man in Paris.

As Ireland continues to be home for many Big Tech HQ's, the responsibility for enforcing privacy laws lies with us too. This week, the Irish Council for Civil Liberties released a report that suggests Ireland is failing to enforce these laws on these companies. The report comes on the back of a recent case with WhatsApp where the Irish Data Protection Commissioner's suggested fine of 30-50 million was pushed back on by our EU counterparts in the European Data Protection Board (EDPB), which oversees the GDPR and ended up coming in at 225m. Obviously financial penalties are but a thorn in the side of big tech, and enforcement of the privacy laws with order's to bring data systems into compliance is much more pertinent. To discuss this report and to offer suggestions on what needs to happen to bring Big Tech under control is Dr Jonny Ryan, Senior Fellow at ICCL and the Open Markets Institute and co-author of the report.

Last night Eoin O'Broin launched his new book, Defects: Living with the Legacy of the Celtic Tiger. Today, bus loads of mica redress campaigners have arrived at the Fianna Fáil think-in in Cavan. In this bonus episode, we talk to the Sinn Fein spokesperson on housing and TD Eoin O Broin about his new book where O Broin examines the personal stories of people living in defective homes, as well as the legislative and political context that gave rise to scandals such as breaches of building regulations in fire safety, pyrite, and the ongoing mica scandal.

Housing For All launched last week and there were some easy wins for the government that were kicked down the road, like tackling the vacancy and dereliction problem that is currently rampaging through the country. The most sustainable and sense filled solution is to obviously use what’s already built - but you simply have to look at the hashtags #DerelictIreland & #DerelictDublin to see the amount of buildings that are just being left to rot. But here at United Ireland, we don't like to just give out, we love to look at solutions and action. Step forward Lauren Tuite from D8 Developments, a social enterprise in Inchicore that turns empty properties into beautiful and affordable spaces where people can live and work. We were also extremely interested to hear about Lauren's research regarding the correlation between car usage and dereliction. We're also talking Mighty Zapponela; The Guardian's edit (or slashing) of an entire section of Judith Butler's interview calling out TERF hatred; and some Motel Ma

Everything is a dance at the moment. Government are dancing between vaccine rollout, reopening plans and warnings from immunologists that it's too early, the events and entertainment industry are dancing on the spot and it's safe to say we are all dying for a dance. So we're talking to the man fighting for our right to dance - Sunil Sharpe from Give Us The Night - about the reopening roadmap. What does it mean for ppl trying to roll out events, what will the pilot event look like and will it in fact pilot anything, and maybe most importantly, what does the future hold for clubs and dancing in Ireland going into the future? Plus, the Texan abortion ban, land speculation on co-living plans and why can't ministers manage to figure out how to free up space on their phones without deleting govt business from their phones and what FOI really means?

Sarah Schulman is one of the most influential and important queer writers and thinkers in the world. Writing and creating across multiple forms, from novels to non-fiction books, plays to screenwriting, her clarity of thought and depth of research illuminates both the causes and the effects of the often under-interrogated systems that influence our lives, from familial homophobia to urban gentrification. Her latest book, Let The Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP New York 1987-1993, is a huge piece of work and an essential piece of documentary, memoir, oral history, and journalism that examines the incredible successes of ACT UP during the height of the AIDS crisis in New York. The book has been lauded in the New Yorker, the London Review of Books, and the New York Times has called it "a masterpiece". In this episode, we talk about her career, her new book, and what the pandemic revealed about the future of cities.

It ended with a tweet. Last night, DCC announced the end of pedestrianisation on Capel Street and Parliament Street, by way of a tweet outlining how successful it had been. There was no consultation with the businesses surviving because of the pedestrianisation, or the people living there enjoying their traffic free life. We're talking to the landlady with the biggest, blondest wigs since Peggy Mitchell - the Queen of Ireland, Panti aka Rory O'Neill, about the frustrations of running your business on the whims of tweets, the exhaustion of having essential changes to the city based on outrage and public pressure rather than a vision for how the city can be better and how having a city run by elected officials with no power needs to be overthrown. The City Revolution is a coming......

Ok. Ok. We always try our best to provide solutions and things you can do about the subjects we're covering but understand that it can sometimes not feel like enough or all a bit overwhelming. Which is why we're so excited to be talking to Catherine Cleary and Ashe Conrad-Jones who were feeling like that too and started Pocket Forests - a special method of planting small biodiverse forests in urban areas. We'll also be talking about the events industry shit show, Owen Keegan's interview & more Build to Rent shenanigans. So dive in and get your Vitamin Tree!

Killian Woods is a senior business reporter with the Business Post. His reporting on housing has provided readers with a detailed, complex, and global picture of the forces at work that contribute to and benefit from Ireland's housing crisis. In this episode of Byline, we go behind the scenes of Killian's work, as he discusses the seemingly insurmountable disfunction of the current crisis as it has been created by misguided government tinkering. From empty luxury apartments across the capital, to the reasons so much student accommodation is being built, from the return of short-term lets to his prediction of how the stress and strain of this all will likely end up in a rent strike. Also, we discuss the incredible and bizarre story at Johnstown Estate in Enfield, and the infamous estate in Maynooth that kicked off another piece of government intervention earlier this year.

It's clear from the IPCC report that shit has hit the fan. But it's also true that we can still do something about it. Which is why we're especially pleased to be joined by Dr. Paul Behrens, author of The Best of Times The Worst of Times: Futures from the Frontiers of Climate Science, a book that lays it all out but also has alternating optimistic chapters of what we can do. We're also talking about wealthy shoppers apparently absconding from town because 3 roads were pedestrianised; robot trees in Cork; new lobby groups for Data Centres which leads to an Una Rant™ about time being called on lobbying aka legal corruption. Lean in listeners, lean in (not in a Sheryl Sandberg way though). Also, isn't it so great the Luas is still free?

Half of the world is starting to consider the pandemic coming to an end. The other half, the poorer half, can't afford access to the vaccine and won't start vaccinating till 2023. The phrase "None of us is safe until all of us are safe" couldn't be more true when we live in such an interconnected world trying to fight a virus that can mutate and respread, even to those who are protected. So we're talking to Robbie Lawlor from Access to Medicines Ireland about the importance of equitable access to not just COVID 19 vaccines, but to patented medicines across the board. How do medical IP's work, how do they hold back innovation and what can we do to ensure fair access to medicines for people who need it. Log on to https://peoplesvaccine.ie/ to sign the petition, tweet your politician and join the conversation with #PeoplesVaccine

This week we're talking to Niall Davidson from Allta Summer House and architect & artist Rae Moore about how the pandemic has led them towards creating temporary restaurants and cultural venues. Does the temporary nature of their creations allow for more freedom to experiment, a wider scope of creativity and will there be more of this sort of thing coming down the line as we emerge from pandemic living? Also DaBaby is in DaBits; Dizzee Rascal drops to 40,000 people and we're still living with cages at pilot events and maternity restrictions *still* remain in place.

With the greater Dublin area becoming the largest hub for data centres in Europe, this massive boom in huge industrial sites went unnoticed for a while, but is increasingly heating up. Literally. We're joined by Dr Patrick Bresnihan of Maynooth University to talk about wtf is going on with data centres in Ireland, tech companies buying wind farms, and what data degrowth may mean in the future. Plus, Andrea inspires with her new no-work-Sunday business plan, and Una reminisces about going out in gay bars with the Book of the Week.

As the dust settles across Dublin Bay South, we wander through the day after the weekend like disorientated England football fans, and discuss Fianna Fáil's road to nowhere, Fine Gael's self-awareness vacuum, and how Ivana Bacik's election win doesn't necessarily mean a Labour resurgence. Also: populist tweets, the fading aesthetic of 20th century campaigning tactics, and a humiliated far-right.