I miss BigChoc and reading about Germany. I find it really interesting to read about how other countries are doing things. I'm sorry to hear you went through a bad patch BCF, if you're reading.
I often take long breaks from the nitty gritty of politics when my stress levels become too high and it leads to anxiety, which is something I have to be careful about as I have been in very poor mental health at times in my life.
The support on these threads for peace in Northern Ireland has been overwhelming.
Feel free to discuss Ireland's response to Covid-19 or any other internal policies, everyone in Ireland does. We love talking about politics. I feel no need to defend Irish politicians just because they're Irish politicians, or defend the government of Ireland just because they're the Irish government and I too am Irish, albeit with some British ancestry.
We could talk about the beef and dairy industry, or the housing/rental/homeless crisis, or the Irish language as a compulsory subject in schools and its demise as a native language, or the mix of public and private healthcare, or the dependence on tech and pharmaceutical companies in the economy, or the cost of the state pension age, or Golfgate and its implications, or if there are no secrets among friends, even official ones, or why more and more people are voting for or considering voting for Sinn Féin, or the mother and baby homes scandal, or the lack of public transport in rural Ireland, or if benefits are too high or too low, or if religion should be taught in schools, or if tax is too high or too low for employees and employers, or if the VAT rate should be increased or decreased, whether there should be a carbon tax or if it's unfair on those forced to commute by car due to the lack of affordable housing and suitable public transport, whether cronyism is a huge problem or not, whether fascism is on the rise, whether direct provision is working as a solution, whether carbon emissions are horrific, whether people should be allowed build homes on their own land or if single dwellings are destroying the landscape of rural Ireland, whether the government should have direct control of planning applications or it should go through the process in councils, whether there should be stiffer penalties for cutting hedgerows outside of permitted times, or should there be no time when it's not permitted, whether teachers and nurses get paid too much or not enough, or any other thing you wish. Might be a bit irrelevant on a Brexit thread though.