In the last few minutes, Dublin airport has joined Cork and Shannon in reopening to airline traffic. Shannon and Cork reopened earlier this morning. The IAA has announced the reopening:

The Irish Aviation Authority (IAA) has announced that as a result of the ash cloud continuing to move away from the South East of Ireland, it is lifting restrictions within Irish airspace except for a block off the south coast of Ireland. This effectively means that Dublin Shannon and Cork Airports will be open for flights.

Flight restrictions into Northern Europe still prevail. Parts of British airspace will be closed until early tomorrow morning, barring a clearing of the ash cloud from the skies.

Update – 11:07am: Channel 4 is reporting that long-haul flights to Gatwick are being diverted to Glasgow, as Heathrow and Stansted remain closed until 1am tomorrow morning.

Update – 12:17pm: Quickfire status on European airspace that remains affected by the ash cloud.

Airspace over Northern France remains closed until 8pm. Dutch airspace closed until 6am tomorrow morning. Danish airspace will be closed until midnight. Belgian airspace will remain closed today.

Flights to and from Finnish airports have been affected. Finland is expecting a new cloud of volcanic ash to arrive tomorrow morning, so restrictions look set to continue into the weekend.

Krakow airport has closed as well. It was scheduled to host arrivals for the state funeral of former President Lech Kaczynski. Airspace in Poland, Austria, Latvia, Lithuania and the Czech Republic has been closed.

The IAA is sober about the Volcano Ash Cloud Monster:

The cause of the closure relates to the ash cloud from a volcano in Iceland, which is heading towards Ireland. It is not safe for aircraft to fly into volcanic dust as it can cause engines to shut down and other electrical faults. The volcanic ash cloud is also causing severe restriction in UK Airspace.

The IAA advises that customers contact their airline for further information. They are monitoring the situation and they will make another statement at noon.

Updates from the airlines:

Aer Lingus

Aer Lingus has cancelled all flights from Dublin. Customers need to search using their flight numbers on the Aer Lingus website. AL press release page doesn’t include live news alerts and it’s buried in the back of the site. Disappointing.

Update: Finally a news page on flight disruptions is live!

Ryanair

Customers should track flight status on Ryanair’s live flight information page, but it has announced the following disruptions:

• From 09:00hrs (local) no further Ryanair flights will operate to/from the UK
• From 10:00hrs (local) no further Ryanair flights will operate to/from Ireland
• From 11:30hrs (local) no further Ryanair flights will operate to/from Norway, Sweden and Denmark

Live Travel Information

Customers might find it useful to keep track of flight arrivals and departures on the Dublin Airport Authority website as well as AA Roadwatch’s alerts.

Photo via Aer Lingus

Sean Quinn continued his media blitz – we all saw him call Prime Time last week ya – in today’s Anglo-Celt. Quinn had a number of interesting things to say on the state of Quinn Insurance’s business to the Anglo-Celt’s Sean McMahon:

We will come up with a plan and we have more than one plan in mind… which will safeguard all the jobs in the area and get us back into motion. It might take a wee while to achieve that

….

If we don’t resume trading in the UK by next week, there will have to be lay-offs.

….

There has been innuendo suggesting there is something wrong here or something that has not been known. There is nothing there. It was dealt with in September/October 2008, when I was forced to resign as chairman.

Just back from the scene of the fire and grabbed the following video.

Windows in the building were blown out and emotions were running high in the crowd.

Luas red line services were disrupted with inbound trams ceasing at Smithfield. No reports of injuries at present.

More about the reshuffle to come, but check out Harney’s left hand. Broken. Wonder what happened in NZ. A spot of extreme sports for her birthday maybe?

News alert this lunchtime, there’s a bomb alert at the Passport Office in Molesworth Street. The Gardaí have evacuated the building and sealed off the street and are investigating. It’s more woe for the queue of hundreds of people that has  formed since this very early this morning.

Update: 1:48pm – The bomb alert has ended. The incident was a hoax alert. The queuers are back waiting outside the Passport Office.

(If you prefer the ScribbleLive view of the liveblog, check out the SL page)

Yesterday’s Sunday Business Post carried a story alleging that Bishop of Clogher, Joseph Duffy was involved in an internal church investigation of clerical sexual abuse. On this morning’s Today with Pat Kenny, Bishop Duffy refuted the paper’s claims that he was involved in internal investigations.

Whether the Sunday Business Post allegations are true or not, the upper echelons of the Irish Catholic Church on are the backfoot now like never before. Allegations of hush-hush agreements to copper-fast the silence of children that survived the ravages of clerical abuse have shaken the little faith that many people had in the Catholic Church.

Bishops, never known for radical departures from the Vatican’s hymn sheet, are company men. They are the most company of company men.  Could we point out radical bishops that has risen through the levels as a radical priest?

Just like any massive, multinational organisation navigating through the levels of the Catholic Church comes with only with politiking and keeping on message. And that message comes from Rome. A message that sieves through Canon Law and drips down the hierarchy.

So when I read and hear people say they are appalled that Bishops were not only aware of about cases of clerical abuse but questioned children and silenced without parental company and supervision but why should they expect action ?

A thinking, feeling, moral person would hope that the humanity of any and all people that find themselves presiding in a secret meeting to silence children about the horrors of clerical abuse would be moved to seek justice for that kids. To report wrong-doing. To stop rape. To protect children in the community. To be moral.

This is 180 degree turn from reporting to superiors and adhering to a central message of hierarchy. Right?

The strict adherence to hierarchical reporting up is the instinctual reflex of the Institutionalised. Such are the obligations of a company man.

Ignoring the legal system of host nations to peer into the back of their thousand-year-old copybook of Canon Law for their own rules. Again, the mantle of a company man is heavy.

So when the Pope Benedict points a finger of blame for clerical abuse at the door of secularism, one has to draw breath.

In recent decades, however, the church in your country has had to confront new and serious challenges to the faith arising from the rapid transformation and secularization of Irish society.

Fast-paced social change has occurred, often adversely affecting people’s traditional adherence to Catholic teaching and values.

All too often, the sacramental and devotional practices that sustain faith and enable it to grow, such as frequent confession, daily prayer and annual retreats, were neglected. Significant too was the tendency during this period, also on the part of priests and religious, to adopt ways of thinking and assessing secular realities without sufficient reference to the Gospel.

Benedict goes onto blame the Second Vatican Council or rather, our interpretation of its teachings:

The programme of renewal proposed by the Second Vatican Council was sometimes misinterpreted and indeed, in the light of the profound social changes that were taking place, it was far from easy to know how best to implement it. In particular, there was a well-intentioned but misguided tendency to avoid penal approaches to canonically irregular situations.

He finishes with a flourish:

It is in this overall context that we must try to understand the disturbing problem of child sexual abuse, which has contributed in no small measure to the weakening of faith and the loss of respect for the church and her teachings.

Now, I could go on and on about where blame should lie. But blaming secularism, a societal device that enables the laws of men to enact a modicum of justice for abuses committed seems blind, angry and without base.

Secularism is the belief that the functions of religion and state should exist in entirely different spheres. For the purposes of society, secularism says that social order does not belong to religion, but rather should be within the responsibility of the state.

Benedict uses the word secularism in error here – what he means is that people no longer hang on the trappings of Catholicism. Mass attendance is down in the extreme. Observance of holy days are under threat. These are visible signs not of secularism, but of a tide of people moving away from the church.

Moralising and secularism trigger lots of interesting questions:

• Were the Pope’s attacks on secularism coming from Islam, they would be tagged as fundamentalist. Is there any difference?
• Moving to the moral authority of the church, how can Pope Benedict blame the modern movement of secularism when agents of his church have across the levels of ministry and through the generations, abused, covered up and moved and silenced victims of clerical abuse?
• How can Pope Benedict expect people to trust an organisation that ignores the laws of nations?

The choice is simply. Where do you stand? Does church rule or does state?

Here’s the history of selected Paddy Power’s year of election odds versus the Live Register figures for the end of 2008 through to 2010:

Not forgetting the banking crisis of September 2008, Budget 09 in December 2008, the Emergency Budget in April 2009 and the bite of negative equity throughout.

Paddy Power is also quoting the follow odds on the next minister to resign:

• 4/6    Mary Harney
• 11/4  Eamon O Cuiv
• 6/1    John Gormley
• 6/1    Noel Dempsey
• 16/1  Mary Coughlan
• 16/1  Brendan Smith
• 20/1  Brian Lenihan
• 33/1  Dermot Ahern
• 33/1  Michael Martin
• 33/1  Mary Hanafin
• 33/1  Eamon Ryan

Odds from Paddy Power, Live Register figures from the Central Statistics Office

Two more people have died from the H1N1 (Swine Flu). The HSE has confirmed this afternoon that these male  patients had underlying medical conditions and were from the east of the country. This brings the total number of confirmed cases of Swine Flue deaths to 24.

The HSE and the Minister (all the way from New Zealand) extend their condolences to the families of the patients.