Bordering on the Absurd 🛂🇮🇪

So, What’s the Craic?

The Craic is back on this fine Friday evening, stuffing your inbox with Irish news and a wee bit of nonsense. The Craic is the weekly newsletter from Shift, the app for the Irish and Culturally Irish globally. Want the Shift? Get the app here. Want a friend to have The Craic every week, ask them to sign up here.

🚨Shift App Update ☘️ We have been busy improving the Shift app and ironing out the kinks so there’s a new version arriving on your phones later today! In the background, we’ve been designing the next wave of top-secrety app updates coming in January. We can’t wait to show you, but alas we must. Most exciting for us is with just two weeks in, we’ve just passed 500 registered users on the app, and we’ve got over 150,000 views on social media. Thank you for being, what we say in the tech world, an “early adopter”! A quick reminder to everyone outside the US & Canada: We are not live in app stores outside of North America yet - so the download links won’t work for you. If you’re in Ireland (or anywhere else) scoot on over to our beta sign-up page to request early eccess. And if you haven’t yet downloaded the app that’s taking over the world, make sure to click here right away!

News from Home

Delete, delete, delete. Perhaps this isn’t an Ireland-only story, but everyone on this side of the Pond is going a bit mad over the new rules on tourists presenting their social media – five years of it – at US border control. Ostensibly, we are told this is about terrorism, and you know, that suggests most ‘normal’ people have nothing to worry about, but the fear is the interpretation of it. We’ve all liked and shared a post calling a politician a gobshite down the years, so what if that’s perceived as a threat? This could all get messy for the World Cup next summer.

Going Down. On the flip side of border control, the number of immigrants coming to Ireland has fallen dramatically by around 16% overall. The new data covers the period from April 2024 to April 2025. While the debate on accepting asylum seekers is as heated here as anywhere, it is interesting to note that immigration from the US to Ireland is breaking records, rising by 96% year on year. It’s more than just Rosie O’Donnell, then. About 6,000 Irish emigrated to the US in the same period.

Pint Picket. Some of the workers at Diageo’s (owner of Guinness) Belfast plant have walked out at the beginning of an eight-day strike, with news reports claiming it could lead to shortages on St Patrick’s Day. Now we aren’t tinfoil-hat types, but if we’d a penny for every media report down the years that says something-or-other threatens Guinness shortages…But we might stock up with a few cans. Just in case.

The Craic Recommends. Shift will be your spot for finding the best Irish pubs globally, but we thought we would give a little shout to one of our favs, Ireland’s Four Courts in Arlington, Virginia. Irish pubs are often the best spots for the Irish and Irish-ish to watch the football (not the egg-ball kind), “The Courts” is up there with the best. In fact, they’ve been named one of the top 10 soccer (sigh) bars in America. Team Shift headed down recently to run one of our trial pub partnerships (yes, we do have different clothes) during the World Cup Finals Draw. It’s always special at the Four Courts, especially for occasions like this, even though God only knows what that World Cup draw was all about. 🙃 Big thanks to The Courts’ Dave Cahill for getting us in on the action, and to Fox 5 DC for interviewing Vivienne and Paul.

The Irish Influence

Stepping out of a famous parent’s shadow can always be difficult. And in the acting world, you’ll often be accused of being a nepo baby. We are glad to see that Domhnall Gleeson, son of Brendan, is starting to get the recognition he deserves as a Hollywood leading man. Along with the wonderful Maura Tierney, Gleeson is to receive a prestigious Oscar Wilde Award next year in LA. The awards celebrate the influence of Irish and Irish-American artists on the film industry, and of course, we’d say it’s by far the most important event in Oscar season every year. The US-Ireland Alliance does a lot to foster relations between the two nations, including the George Mitchell Scholarships. Oh, and if you want to see the infamous sketch Domhnall is referring to in the interview below, it’s here.

Cúpla Focal

Bóithrín {boh reen} – little road. We chat a bit below about the importance of understanding Irish through Irish context, and Bóithrín, which is the Irish term for a small, rural road – often with grass growing in the middle – is a lovely example of that. The anglicized “Boreen” does exist, but as the great Brian Friel points out, meaning can be lost in translation.

Blast from the Past

40 years ago today, Ireland’s first-ever mobile phone call was made. The occasion, when the then-Minister for Communications, Jim Mitchell, called broadcaster Pat Kenny and engaged in a bit of banter, was filmed for all to see. But could anyone have predicted what would happen once Pandora’s Box was opened? Irish mobile users have one of the highest screentime rates in Europe, and we could all do with cutting down a bit, except for using Shift, obviously. Oh, by the way, huge fans of Kenny’s 1980s-Wall-Street-banker glasses in the video of the historic phone call below. Outstanding. We need to bring those back.

And One Last Thing….

We’ll never stop banging the bodhrán for the Irish language in this newsletter, while recognizing that it faces challenges and an uphill struggle to flourish again. One of those challenges is how to derive meaning from Irish words. By that, we mean that some phrases don’t always translate into English, which impacts how people learn. A remedy has arrived in the form of a groundbreaking monolingual online Irish dictionary from Foras na Gaeilge. It means that dictionary definitions for Irish words are given in Irish. It might not sound like the most earth-shattering news, but An Foclóir Nua Gaeilge (The New Irish Dictionary) is the first of its kind. It removes barriers to learning, but it can also serve as a preserver and cultivator of the Irish language. The dictionary was unveiled by our new President, Catherine Connolly, last week.

👏 Now, finally, get on into the app, and give us an aul 💚 like on our newsletter link. Tell us what you think about today’s stories, and let Jack know he’s doing a great job. ;)