The three transparent election lies even politicians can’t pretend to believeThe extremely self-conscious uncoupling of the two centre-right parties is so obviously an act, it’s like a game of cards in which the stakes are matchsticks. But Sinn Féin isn’t much betterTue Nov 19 2024 - 06:00
The Routledge History of Irish America: A vast and comprehensive study of all aspects of the Irish-American experienceVigorous and critically minded history proves that the shifting and sometimes contradictory ‘social construct’ of Irish America cannot be reduced to one singular identitySat Nov 16 2024 - 05:00
We have entered a no man’s land, an age of dizzying transitionsThe far right has been much better than the left at giving voters the illusion that it has an accurate map across these liminal spacesTue Nov 12 2024 - 06:00
An unhappy Ireland prepares for a general electionThe expansion of the State is no longer a lefty position in Irish politics. It is pretty much everybody’s positionFri Nov 08 2024 - 06:00
Donald Trump’s openly authoritarian instincts are about to be unleashedIt is no longer possible to batten down the hatches and think 'this too will pass'Thu Nov 07 2024 - 02:30
What has happened to the cowboys who built defective apartments? Absolutely nothingNo prosecutions, no financial costs, no names and damn all shameTue Nov 05 2024 - 06:25
Fintan O’Toole: Trump 2.0 will see US become a fascist state, tempered by senility and greedFintan O’Toole: Fintan O’Toole: US voters have had had ample warning as the former president has set out his intentions quite explicitlyTue Oct 29 2024 - 08:00
Sinn Féin responds to child abuse more or less as the Catholic hierarchy didDress Cardinal McDonald and her bishops in episcopal robes and it’s a movie we’ve all seen beforeTue Oct 22 2024 - 06:00
Fintan O’Toole: Politicians are in a long-distance relationship with the consequences of their decisionsTake Ireland’s top manufacturer of insulation - not Kingspan, but the HSE. It creates layers of impenetrable padding between political decision-makers and the consequencesTue Oct 15 2024 - 06:00
I take no pleasure in saying that Hamas is winningIsrael is putting all its eggs in Donald Trump’s grubby basket, banking on an alliance with a man whose friendship tends to be more toxic than his enmityTue Oct 08 2024 - 06:00
Government has a windfall of cash but no coherent sense of how to spend itWe have a windfall – but the golden apples seem to have fallen on our heads. Our governing culture has lost its great get-out clause: ‘If only we had the money…'Mon Sept 30 2024 - 12:15
It’s all eyes on the election now and children don’t have a voteHey, kids – we have a roadmap. Just hang on in there and try not to get too angry and ashamed about being poor in a rich countryTue Sept 24 2024 - 06:00
Ireland fixates on the ghosts of the past, and is blind to the abuses still happeningSomehow we can only feel pain of abused and abandoned children in safe retrospect, when it is brought to light after decades undergroundTue Sept 17 2024 - 06:00
Schools sexual abuse inquiry: It was open season on children’s bodies. These men did what they likedWe called the predatory paedophile in my school Little Plum. We all learned early the required habits of toxic silenceTue Sept 10 2024 - 06:00
The cataract bus is, like all great Irish inventions, the fruit of carelessness and clientelismThe bus to Belfast for cataract surgery is a brilliant bit of political entrepreneurship, but it clouds the reality that healthcare is a right and we, the public, pay for all these treatmentsTue Sept 03 2024 - 06:11
Behind Kamala Harris’s megawatt smile at the convention, I saw a ruthless machine at workThe Democrats have generated an equal and opposite reaction to their own culpable inertia, a unity of purpose that makes them much more like the Republicans. It’s not always pretty to watchTue Aug 27 2024 - 06:11
How apt that Democratic convention marks the passing of the last old-style Irish Catholic politician The 1968 convention was the last hurrah for a phenomenon of huge importance in our own history: the Irish-American political machine. How apt that this week’s convention will mark the reluctant end of the career of Joe BidenTue Aug 20 2024 - 06:15
One law for megarich provocateur Elon Musk, another for the poor idiots who followThe eejits who get caught have been hooked by algorithms engineered by social media companiesTue Aug 13 2024 - 06:00
Fintan O'Toole: Ireland has gone from an emigrant society to an immigrant-emigrant societyIreland has become far better at creating jobs, and like every other place where there are work opportunities, it attracts people who want to make a better life for themselvesTue Aug 06 2024 - 06:00
With all the confidence of a hostage in a ransom video, Catherine Martin began dismantling RTÉ No one in Government has put forward any justification for hollowing out RTÉ. But, in an age when trusted information has never been more vital to the defence of democracy, that is what it is doingTue Jul 30 2024 - 06:00
Joe Biden has ended the agony. The Democrats now have a fighting chance to save the American republicTo watch a good man, a remarkably effective president and a courageous battler against adversity reduced to such frailty was unbearableMon Jul 22 2024 - 12:56
The far right is just a Farage away from breaking through in Irish politicsProtofascist ideas are at least as prevalent in Ireland as in other Western democracies and the reactionary, nativist mindset is well established here. All the movement is lacking is a leaderTue Jul 16 2024 - 06:00
For his already fanatical devotees Trump’s survival will add to his messianic appealThat Trump became a victim of the very violence he has done so much to validate will not provoke either him or his fans to think again. It will merely serve to fortify a mindset in which America is already at war with itselfMon Jul 15 2024 - 05:59
Welcome to adventure holiday politics ... white-water rafting with Brexit, bungee jumping with TrumpTo put it crudely, a big part of the appeal of Brexit was scale. It felt like a very big thing to do, just as, later in 2016, electing a celebrity non-politician to the White House felt bigMon Jul 08 2024 - 11:03
Fintan O’Toole: Democrats and their media allies pretended everything was fine. It’s not fineFintan O’Toole: If the Democrats persist with Joe Biden, the United States is in imminent danger of being handed back to a Trump who is vastly more malign than he was in 2016Tue Jul 02 2024 - 06:30
Cathal Crotty’s suspended sentence another example of how judicial system is failing womenThe administration of justice for violent men is out of kilter with our values and we can no longer suspend disbeliefTue Jun 25 2024 - 06:00
Failure to prevent destruction of records is a further insult to those whose identities were stolenTo treat these records with such contempt is to repeat the contempt shown by Church and State to thousands of women and childrenTue Jun 18 2024 - 06:00
Sinn Féin was the shock absorber of Irish politics. It’s worn outLocal and European elections: Don’t be fooled by the Coalition parties’ electoral success. The right is risingMon Jun 10 2024 - 14:27
There’s one fundamental reason why we have a housing crisisThe wealthier the State has become, the more money it shells just to find homeless families a bed for the nightTue Jun 04 2024 - 06:00
Ireland is poor at innovation, but a world-class producer of complacency and self-satisfactionIt’s not about the failure of lone geniuses to have eureka moments in the bath. It’s not caused by the lack of work ethic. It’s about the collective environmentTue May 28 2024 - 06:00
Tony O’Reilly’s secret past shaped his need to play the life of an Ascendancy landlordIt’s hard to avoid the belief that something of his anomalous origins must have been present in what O’Reilly becameMon May 20 2024 - 12:00
Dublin portal reminds us that our capital has an uneasy edge of wildnessFintan O’Toole: The erection of the portal linking night-time inner city Dublin to daytime New York was a heroic act of denialSat May 18 2024 - 06:00
One of the two main museums dedicated to memory of Great Famine has disappeared. That’s astonishingThat the world’s largest collection of visual art and printed materials relating to the Great Famine is in storage in America is a grim story of what happens when a nation fails to take ownership of a central part of its own historyTue May 14 2024 - 06:00
A hard Border is now a patriotic cause - and we laughed at the British for that kind of nonsenseGiving these gifts to the 'Ireland is full' mob borders on the insane.Tue May 07 2024 - 06:00
Catastrophic decline of wild Irish salmon is another of the slow scandals of Irish lifeOver the last few decades, we’ve driven the salmon from our rivers, recklessly but ruthlesslyTue Apr 30 2024 - 06:00
Have we ditched the Stardust-era stereotype that the working classes are wild and reckless?Both reports unknowingly unleashed demons of prejudice that were hidden in the Id of the Irish establishment.Tue Apr 23 2024 - 06:00
We are facing the terrifying result of the West’s three stupid mistakes in the Middle East In Jerusalem and Tehran, there are people who pray for ArmageddonMon Apr 15 2024 - 13:09
If Israel succeeds in Gaza, it will drag the West down with itIsrael is the child of the very international order it is now helping to destroyTue Apr 09 2024 - 06:00
Fine Gael’s choice to replace a property-owning democracy with a rent-paying one has unsettled a generationAnd that’s just one of the big problems Simon Harris will face as taoiseachTue Apr 02 2024 - 06:00
Simon Harris has risen without trace, another case of survival of the smoothestHis trajectory is proof that however you get to the top in Irish politics, it is not by fixing thingsTue Mar 26 2024 - 06:00
Fintan O’Toole: Neither Leo Varadkar, nor anyone else, could be a ‘saviour’ of Fine GaelHis faith in ‘simple market dynamics’ provided no real answers to Ireland’s long-term questionsSat Mar 23 2024 - 06:00
Lidl wants MetroLink redesigned so it can build apartments. And can you pay the bill please?There’s an interesting thing about this massive development: it doesn’t exist. It is an outline drawing of a possible notionTue Mar 19 2024 - 06:00
Invited to replace a potent 1930s vision with a wishy-washy 2020s gesture, voters said noWhat has taken the place of Catholic doctrine as a governing ideology is a passionless managerialismMon Mar 11 2024 - 15:00
If the care referendum is such a progressive change, why was the process such a travesty?Even if the Government’s wording were not so wretched, there would be good grounds to vote against it to protest against the process of its creationTue Mar 05 2024 - 07:00
Catherine Martin can save her political career and do something big for Irish democracyRTÉ is a toxic brew whose commercial business and profit-seeking push stale content, ads and inflated salaries at the expense of public serviceTue Feb 27 2024 - 07:00
When so many RTÉ witnesses fail to show up, the joke’s on usOireachtas committees are paper tigers. Why would anyone worry too much about what they think of them?Tue Feb 20 2024 - 06:00
I’m about to turn 66 and the pension policies for people like me are bizarreNow I’m about to turn 66, the Government wants me to delay taking my State pension. So why penalise me for not taking it?Tue Feb 13 2024 - 06:00
Fintan O’Toole: Dee Forbes’s illness has implications that radiate far beyond MontroseIt is an absolute requirement of democracy that those who exercise such power are accountableTue Feb 06 2024 - 06:00
Idea that article 41.2 had no real-life consequences is rubbish. Just ask the Aer Lingus ‘girls’What’s most extraordinary is that women themselves accepted that paid work was a male prerogativeTue Jan 30 2024 - 06:00
Fintan O’Toole: We trusted Ivor Browne with our darkest secrets. He was one of Ireland’s great liberatorsFew did more to remove the barriers that separated mentally ill people from the rest of societyThu Jan 25 2024 - 17:05
