Fintan O’Toole: On a wing and a prayer – how the IRA and the church banished abusersSinn Féin has managed another kind of exiling – its past is another countrySat Mar 14 2015 - 00:04
Fintan O’Toole: How Ireland is dis-integrating‘The Irish Times revealed recently that 80 per cent of immigrant children are already concentrated in just 23 per cent of primary schools’Tue Mar 10 2015 - 05:43
Fintan O’Toole: How hopes raised by the Constitutional Convention were dashed‘All it’s really done is to polish up the sign on the gates of institutional democracy: abandon hope all ye that enter here’Tue Mar 03 2015 - 05:00
Culture Shock: Putting women’s writing on the wall‘The Irish Times’ is publishing a poster of Irish women writers as a rebuke to the familiar men-only Irish Writers version. It’s a joke with a serious pointSat Feb 28 2015 - 01:00
Modern Ireland in 100 Artworks: 1931 – Guests of the Nation, by Frank O’ConnorThe Cork writer’s stark story compresses into a small frame the bitter truth of conflicts everywhere: if you get to know someone, it gets hard to kill themSat Feb 28 2015 - 01:00
Fintan O’Toole: ‘Hello same-sex marriage. . . Bye Bye Mammy’ could be No campaign messageSuch a message should be countered by ‘Hello Reality’ – the 30,000 men who bring up childrenTue Feb 24 2015 - 13:45
Modern Ireland in 100 Artworks: 1930 –High Treason, Court of Criminal Appeal: The Trial of Roger Casement, by Sir John LaveryThe society portraitist’s depiction of the moment Roger Casement was sentenced to death shows two countries’ opposed but intertwining historiesSat Feb 21 2015 - 01:00
Fintan O’Toole: attempt to divide us into pro- and anti-familyArticle 41 of the Constitution, dealing with ‘The Family’, is nothing more than the rhetorical cover for a cruel, hypocritical, sexist system that failed even in its own stated aimsTue Feb 17 2015 - 13:27
Fintan O’Toole: In the battle over Greece’s debt, German idealism is pitted against Greek realism‘Those who believe the evidence are heretics. Angela Merkel is the pope; Alex Tsipras is Galileo’Tue Feb 10 2015 - 07:56
Modern Ireland in 100 Artworks, 1928 – the Sam Maguire Cup, by Hopkins & HopkinsInspired by the Ardagh Chalice, the Sam Maguire Cup is the holy grail of Gaelic football. Could its lineage stretch back to the real Holy Grail?Sat Feb 07 2015 - 07:00
Fintan O’Toole: When it comes to Irish debt, the State puts on the rich mouth‘Last year, Greece paid €8 billion to service debts of €315 billion. Last year too, Ireland paid €7.5 billion to service debts of €214 billion. So it cost us almost as much to service €100 billion less. Why?’Tue Feb 03 2015 - 06:00
Fintan O’Toole: Children are the collateral damage of austerityAusterity is a form of child abuse visited on the most vulnerable in societyTue Jan 27 2015 - 13:48
Culture Shock: In saving Jews from the Nazis, Hubert Butler saved Ireland from shameAs we mark Holocaust Memorial Day, it’s worth remembering that what our great essayist did was illegal – not just in Nazi Europe but also in Ireland, where Jews were not allowed to compete with the Irish self-image as the Most Oppressed People EverSat Jan 24 2015 - 01:00
Modern Ireland in 100 Artworks: 1926 – The Plough and the Stars, by Seán O’CaseyAudiences expected a play about liberation; what they got was a scabrous, unromanticised depiction of the Rising’s failingsSat Jan 24 2015 - 01:00
Fintan O’Toole: Syriza’s way or Frankfurt’s way? There’s only one answer for IrelandRecklessness is not confined to the far left – the euro zone’s orthodoxy has been demonstrably recklessTue Jan 20 2015 - 12:31
Fintan O’Toole: Time to lift veil on Saudi Arabia’s hijacking of IslamSaudi Arabia has spent $100 billion in recent decades spreading an extremist ideologyTue Jan 13 2015 - 13:30
Modern Ireland in 100 Artworks: 1924 – Eve of St Agnes window, by Harry ClarkeArtist’s imaginative stained glass transcends the straitened State from which it sprangSat Jan 10 2015 - 14:00
Fintan O’Toole: Reboot and be damned – a temporary little arrangement?Eddie Hobbs is from Mars and Lucinda Creighton is from Venus, hence the fuzziness of their new party’s agenda on everything from the role of the State to farming subsidiesTue Jan 06 2015 - 12:01
Fintan O’Toole: Coalition’s seismic shift turns into shifty sidestepReceding prospect of €64bn taxpayers put into banks being managed at European levelWed Dec 31 2014 - 11:33
Fintan O’Toole’s cultural highs and lows of 2014Lisa Dwan’s series of performances was startlingSat Dec 27 2014 - 01:00
Modern Ireland in 100 Artworks: 1922 – Ulysses, by James JoyceJames Joyce showed that universal experiences were to be found, not with gods or heroes, but in mundane urban livesWed Dec 24 2014 - 10:00
Fintan O’Toole: ‘When I close my eyes and think of Christmas . . .’Why I could never forget the year of that knitted circus and the hands that made itTue Dec 23 2014 - 12:01
Fintan O’Toole: How gang of four runs the countryEconomic Management Council epitomises failure of ‘democratic revolution’Tue Dec 16 2014 - 12:19
Modern Ireland in 100 Artworks: 1921 – Back to Methuselah, by George Bernard ShawShaw’s vast cycle of plays, a combination of ‘creative evolution’ and satire, predicted that the ‘war to end wars’ would be merely the first in a series of conflictsSat Dec 13 2014 - 12:00
Is the swing to Independents/Others a positive or destructive energy?‘What’s needed is a genuine bottom-up movement that is a means for citizens to take back their democracy’Tue Dec 09 2014 - 12:01
Culture Shock: We’re big enough to handle the truth about our historyIreland’s Great Hunger Museum in Connecticut is facing up to challenge of commemorating the Famine in a manner that is empowering and liberatingSat Dec 06 2014 - 06:00
Fintan O’Toole responds to Pat Rabbitte and Jan O’Sullivan’s criticism‘What does create negativity and cynicism is promising change and then shoring up the status quo’Wed Dec 03 2014 - 19:33
What’s the Big Idea? It’s time for the State to consider a real democracyOpinion: In 92 years, Ireland has seen no more than four ambitious projects for radical changeWed Dec 03 2014 - 16:28
Why teachers shouldn’t have to grade their own pupilsFintan O'Toole: ‘52 per cent of the youngest teachers are in temporary jobs. And how do you get a permanent job? By marking your students as hard as they deserve or by ensuring that your charges are all stellar performers?’Tue Nov 25 2014 - 14:16
Losing its grip: why the Irish political system can no longer guarantee stabilityOpinion: What we are seeing are the signs of a slow slide towards an ungovernable StateTue Nov 11 2014 - 12:01
100 artworks: a century of creativity‘Modern Ireland in 100 Artworks’ is a new series on key pieces of art and literature from 1916 to today. Here, Fintan O’Toole introduces the first of them, James Joyce’s ‘A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man’Sat Nov 08 2014 - 01:00
Modern Ireland in 100 Artworks: 1916 – A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, by James JoyceJames Joyce’s first novel, published not in Dublin but in New York and London, is an intensely Irish bookSat Nov 08 2014 - 01:00
Culture Shock: Our museums and galleries must stay free for allThe National Museum of Ireland is being forced to consider charging for entry. Can no areas of life be recognised as priceless?Sat Nov 08 2014 - 01:00
The Irish Water debacle: why the State is heading towards being ungovernableOpinion: The public revolt against water charges is about injustice, and it’s justifiedTue Nov 04 2014 - 12:01
Never mind the evidence, feel the ‘truthiness’ of what Gerry Adams saysFor Sinn Féin’s leaders, things that appear incompatible can be resolvedTue Oct 28 2014 - 12:00
Fintan O’Toole: Tough questions for Adams on child protectionOpinion: SF wouldn’t tolerate evasive answers from other party leadersTue Oct 21 2014 - 12:58
Why the signs of economic recovery are nothing to crow about‘Given that a recovery was always going to happen, it has been a long time coming. And the damage done is profound: €200 billion of public debt passed on to the next generation’Tue Oct 14 2014 - 13:34
Culture Shock: Exhibits A and B in the fight for artistic freedomWith ‘The Death of Klinghoffer’ and Brett Bailey’s installation, the Metropolitan Opera and the Barbican have censored themselves rather than stand their ground. But when you throw hysterical protesters a bone it simply whets their appetite for fleshSat Oct 11 2014 - 01:00
Fintan O'Toole: What will politicians do without patronage?Opinion: Our machine politics is fuelled by the belief (often erroneous) that votes are exchange commodities, given in return for personal benefitsTue Oct 07 2014 - 16:40
It’s time the State treated our cultural institutions with respectAfter the John McNulty debacle at Imma, we need to close some of the loopholes in the way board members are appointedSat Oct 04 2014 - 01:00
Does appointment of McNulty to board of Imma meet seven principles of public office?Opinion: ‘The big issue is that there are standards that should apply to every office-holder’Tue Sept 30 2014 - 12:01
Culture Shock: Death by a thousand cuts – the terrible way we treat our national library and national museumThese precious institutions came from a 19th-century optimism about the spread of literacy and enlightenment. Now nobody with any power gives a damn about themSat Sept 27 2014 - 01:00
McNulty appointment a brazen defiance of democratic accountabilityAnalysis: The sheer extent to which old politics has been given a new life is remarkableThu Sept 25 2014 - 14:34
Four things that haven’t changed since the crashOpinion: Ireland is still one of the best little countries in the world in which to be a shysterTue Sept 23 2014 - 12:01
Culture Shock: Dirty minds and no holy families in Eamon Kelly’s KerryWe might think of him as a seanchaí who had come down from a mountain and been transplanted to Dublin with his stories intact, but he was nothing of the kindSat Sept 20 2014 - 01:00
Scottish referendum: Musings of a reluctant nationalistThe electorate has already sent a message: the current political settlement of strong oligarchies and weak democracies cannot standTue Sept 16 2014 - 01:00
Culture Shock: Beckett’s Irish women finally have a distinctly Irish voiceLisa Dwan gives astonishing performances of ‘Not I’, ‘Footfalls’ and ‘Rockaby’Sat Sept 13 2014 - 01:00
Ian Paisley: a firebrand who learned to compromiseBigoted yet brilliant, Paisley had to move away from a world of absolutesSat Sept 13 2014 - 00:58
What kind of new state could Scotland be?Opinion: ‘National freedom isn’t another word for nothing left to lose. It’s another word for no one left to blame – no one, that is, except yourself’Sat Sept 13 2014 - 00:01
