Why Ireland became the only country in the democratic world to have a constitutional ban on abortionOpinion: Sectarian, paranoid, apocalyptic ideology gave us the eighth amendmentTue Aug 26 2014 - 12:01
Culture Shock: Wake up, Minister. You can help save Daniel Libeskind’s Bord Gáis Energy TheatreMinister for Arts Heather Humphreys has nothing to say about the sale of our finest performance space. Whatever happens, it mustn’t be sold to Live NationSat Aug 23 2014 - 01:00
To pull down one government was extraordinary, to pull down two is inexplicableDecisions made to the benefit of Goodman group haunted his political careerFri Aug 22 2014 - 01:00
160,000 reasons to take action on abortionOpinion: ‘Constitutional provisions on abortion are just the detritus of the ecstatic picnic of theocracy’s final fling’Tue Aug 19 2014 - 12:01
Nama refuses €20m civic bid for Bord Gáis theatreNew Beginning’s offer to place theatre in trust for ‘artistic and cultural life of the State’ turned down in favour of private investorsSat Aug 16 2014 - 01:00
Murfi and Murphy, the Eric and Ernie of ‘Ballyturk’The relationship between words and movement in Enda Walsh’s new play, in which two weirdly innocent men are trapped in an endless knockabout farce, is more seamless than in any Irish dramatist since BeckettSat Aug 16 2014 - 01:00
John Bruton represents Fine Gael values – and those values are in deep troubleOpinion: No one in Fine Gael seems even slightly uncomfortable that Bruton gets €134,728 from the taxpayer but still works as a well-paid representative for Irish and European interest groupsTue Aug 12 2014 - 12:01
‘We don’t believe enough in the future not to stuff ourselves with what’s in front of us now’Tue Jul 22 2014 - 12:01
Bord Gáis theatre sale ‘barbarous’, says Harry Crosbie‘The artistic community of Ireland should come together to stop this sale,’ says theatre ownerSat Jul 19 2014 - 01:01
Selling our largest theatre: the public case for a cultural jewelThe country’s largest theatre is up for grabs, caught in crossfire between Nama, the banks and developer Harry Crosbie. But there is a solution with long-term benefit for the citizenSat Jul 19 2014 - 01:00
Jimmy Savile: he was very, very strange and utterly familiar – a living double takeDan Davies has written a detailed, scrupulous and assiduous book, but even it can’t illuminate the darkness at the heart of Savile’s crimesThu Jul 17 2014 - 01:00
Latest cuts for coalface charities cruel and unnecessaryOpinion: Small organisations doing vital work are being allowed to fall through the cracksTue Jul 15 2014 - 12:01
That great ideal, liberated from its capture: Just FreedomReview: Philip Pettit’s challenge to conservative ideas of freedom can invigorate democracy and the republicSat Jul 12 2014 - 01:34
Culture Shock: In the political game, the arts is for losersWith the arts portfolio reduced to little more than a junior ministry, and one of our finest venues being flogged by Nama, the current cabinet reshuffle shows how little the Government values our cultural assetsSat Jul 12 2014 - 01:00
Trashing the concept of a public service‘Customers’ are being asked to collude in the impoverishment of the men who collect their binsTue Jul 08 2014 - 12:01
Culture Shock: Damning Abbey report reveals clear creative deficitFew of the Abbey staff, and none of the senior staff, are theatre artists or writers, directors or designers. This ‘contrasts clearly’ with comparable theatres internationallySat Jul 05 2014 - 01:00
Why is the story of Fr Michael Cleary still the subject of denial?Opinion: ‘The fact is that the Dublin diocese knew about Cleary’s situation almost two years before it became a public scandal’Tue Jul 01 2014 - 09:50
Archbishop rebukes priest who cast doubt on Cleary fatherhoodDiarmuid Martin strongly dissociates himself from Fr O’NeillTue Jul 01 2014 - 01:00
Culture Shock: Let’s not make Samuel Beckett the Tupac of literatureShould Faber have published ‘Echo’s Bones’, a ‘new’ story? As the director Robert Scanlan puts it, there is more ‘Beckett’ floating about in unpublished autographs and typescripts than there is published Beckett in printSat Jun 28 2014 - 01:00
The phone-hacking scandal undermines independent journalismOpinion: What we see in the Coulson case is a grotesque parody of journalistic independence: the freedom of the press in thrall to commercial greed, editorial laziness and political powerThu Jun 26 2014 - 12:01
Church won’t have to kick out the awkward teachers because it won’t let them inOpinion: As a quid pro quo for not being allowed to fire teachers on religious grounds, the church is being given reinforced control over who is employedTue Jun 24 2014 - 12:01
Culture Shock: Irish writers don’t hate Ireland. It’s just tough loveOur novelists have taken on themselves the job of evoking the place as it is rather than as it wishes to beSat Jun 21 2014 - 01:00
Ireland’s portrayal of itself as the purest, holiest or richest country has brought us lies and exclusionOpinion: Why Irish delusions of being the ‘best’ gives the worst resultTue Jun 17 2014 - 14:00
Lost Burgess essay on ‘Dubliners’ to be publishedNovelist's manuscript will appear in the Irish Times tomorrow to mark centenary of Joyce bookFri Jun 13 2014 - 01:00
If shame has gone, why do we use secret abortions in England to preserve the myth of holy Ireland?Opinion: In an Irish Times article in 1964, Michael Viney referred to ‘the secret-service mother-and-baby homes’ run by religious orders in IrelandTue Jun 10 2014 - 12:01
Eight ways for Labour to give itself a chance of revivalProgressive budgets are as intrinsic to social democracy as Mass is to CatholicsTue Jun 03 2014 - 12:07
Mash-ups, gender benders . . . Seen them all beforeThe hipsters who regard Conchita Wurst’s Eurovision win as significant don’t realise that the song contest is just an antiseptic vestige of vaudevilleSat May 31 2014 - 01:00
From tragedy to farce: Labour’s big mistakes in 1918 and 2011Opinion: Sinn Féin’s pre-democratic past hasn’t gone away, you knowTue May 27 2014 - 14:13
Culture Shock: The great art and terrible example of theatrical suicidesGreat theatre tends to give suicide a power and a glamour it must not be given in society. With ‘Four Last Things’, Lisa Tierney-Keogh attempts to make a play about a suicide that does not give the act meaning and drama but still works as theatreSat May 24 2014 - 01:00
Ballyhea protests on bank debt show collective self-respectOpinion: Diarmuid O’Flynn’s election would be the right kind of shock: an electrifying suggestion that Ireland is not supineTue May 20 2014 - 12:01
Culture Shock: Belfast Project is a crisis in Irish academiaEveryone involved – Boston College, the interviewers, the interviewees and those against whom allegations were made – has been left feeling enraged, betrayed and bewilderedSat May 17 2014 - 01:00
There’s no ‘crisis’ in the Garda, just a carnival side-showThe underlying failures of Irish democracy keep popping up through different holesTue May 13 2014 - 12:01
Culture Shock: How the undead have moved from macabre to mainstreamHalf a century before Dracula, vampires featured heavily in Irish political discourse, as avatars for English rule or the depredations of the landlord classSat May 10 2014 - 01:00
McConville case signals pressing need for independent commission of inquiryThere are two ways of dealing with the legacy of these atrocities: all or nothingTue May 06 2014 - 01:00
Culture Shock: One hundred years of solitude and paragraphs that span centuriesBehind almost everything in MacLeod’s stories is the great wrenching of the Highland Clearances, the sense of a people violently uprooted from its land and flung down on the other side of the great oceanSat May 03 2014 - 01:00
Trainee teachers are warned career prospects depend on religious faithOpinion: State is openly advertising and supporting this discriminationTue Apr 29 2014 - 12:01
Culture Shock: Shakespeare conspiracy theories are a comedy of errorsCue the chorus of denials that this mere provincial actor could be the author of the greatest works in the English languageSat Apr 26 2014 - 01:00
Children firstTo stand by the Republic is to stand by children. To do otherwise would be reneging on the good fightFri Apr 25 2014 - 01:00
The people are smart. Why can’t they be trusted to make decisions?The Anglo trial showed ordinary people can make intelligent decisions, yet they have no real say in the political sphereTue Apr 22 2014 - 12:01
Culture Shock: Stark lesson of imposing market values on third levelAs State support has been cut drastically – a fall of 25 per cent in five years – students are increasingly situated as paying customers and the colleges as providers of a productSat Apr 19 2014 - 01:00
Good Irish v bad Greeks?Opinion: The importance of following Miss Prism’s logicTue Apr 15 2014 - 12:01
Why evict the Factory? Because the arts have no place in IrelandAn independent hub for film-makers in the Dublin Docklands has been given notice to quit its space, which has gone from derelict to desirable in only four yearsSat Apr 12 2014 - 01:00
Something sensational!Opinion: Head of Prison Service shows how accountability should workTue Apr 08 2014 - 12:01
Culture Shock: The Nazi past that causes a cultural problemIt is hard to overstate Martin Heidegger’s cultural influence. Now that the philosopher’s notebooks show him to have been a thoroughgoing Nazi, we’re going to have to rethink how we use his ideasSat Apr 05 2014 - 01:00
Three sorrowful mysteries of the Garda taping sagaOpinion: ‘I pray that my faith will withstand these unworthy doubts’Tue Apr 01 2014 - 12:01
If institutional Ireland were a stick of rock, the words ‘loyalty is prized above honesty’ would run through it. Irish authorities always choose loyaltySat Mar 29 2014 - 01:00
Culture shock: From meth to mettle, Bryan Cranston stands tall as LBJWe know from the brilliant knockabout of ‘Malcolm in the Middle’ and the rawness of ‘Breaking Bad’ that Cranston can act with his body, but doing it on stage is much more of a high-wire actSat Mar 29 2014 - 01:00
‘Disgusting’ a big word that feels almost physicalOpinion: Garda Commissioner’s position untenableTue Mar 25 2014 - 10:32
Culture Shock: The Irish film industry needs belief, strategy, and . . . actionJust as with the rest of the economy, there has never been a coherent long-term Government strategy for developing an indigenous industrySat Mar 15 2014 - 01:00
Why the Taoiseach should not join the St Patrick’s Day paradeOpinion: Our Irishness is pluralist and non-sectarianTue Mar 11 2014 - 15:11
