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
Private memories, public traces: a tribute to Seamus Heaney‘Seamus Heaney: The Music of What Happens’, an exhibition at Emory University in Atlanta, was intended to be a living celebration of the poet and his work. Instead it has ended up as a fitting memorialSat Mar 08 2014 - 01:00
US success proves European disciples of austerity wrongOpinion: None of the horrendous consequences predicted by hawks has come to passTue Mar 04 2014 - 12:01
Culture Shock: A catalogue of disasters: what’s in store at the National LibraryWhat should be one of the most attractive jobs in Ireland is one that any sane and suitable person would think twice about acceptingSat Mar 01 2014 - 01:00
Shatter’s personal integrity makes the reality of this crisis far worseOpinion: We should not worry that a police force can step out of line but about whether we have the mechanism to deal with this situationTue Feb 25 2014 - 12:01
Outside Mullingar, and beyond the edge of awfulnessAll the hokum that had been happily discarded became, in Martin McDonagh’s hands, a workable proposition again. It didn’t occur to me that an intelligent American dramatist such as John Patrick Shanley might look at those plays and miss all the layers of mockery and irony and manipulationSat Feb 22 2014 - 01:00
Gay people no threat to a robust institutionOpinion: The idea that marriage is under threat is crucial to the mindset of those opposing gay marriageTue Feb 18 2014 - 12:01
Culture Shock: What Conor McPherson needs to do to be a great playwrightThe gifts on show in his plays, including ‘The Night Alive’, at the off-Broadway Atlantic theatre, make him an important figure in Irish theatre – the most obvious successor, in fact, to Brian Friel and Tom Murphy. Except that he can’t quite seem to believe in themSat Feb 15 2014 - 01:00
University fees the Princeton wayAs funding moves away from a consumerist model based on loans, students at one of the top US universities either pay their own fees or get a grant from Princeton itselfSat Feb 15 2014 - 01:00
A columnist’s job confers some privileges, and obligationsOpinion: With the megaphone comes a duty to protect freedom of expressionTue Feb 11 2014 - 12:01
Full equality often has to wait while mainstream opinion catches upOpinion: Gay men and lesbians shouldn’t have to care whether Iona Institute members love them or not, writes Fintan O'TooleTue Feb 04 2014 - 13:18
Garda chief’s answers leave us all with questionsOpinion: A crisis has been created between the police force and the State it is meant to serveTue Jan 28 2014 - 12:01
Culture shock: ‘Cruel’ and unusual? The facts of the Abbey storyJust what form of public accountability will the National Theatre tolerate?Sat Jan 25 2014 - 01:00
No matter how bad the times, the State always has enough to pay consultantsOpinion: Having survived the Great Crash, those who charge by the hour know that nothing will ever disturb their tranquillity againTue Jan 21 2014 - 12:01
Panel raises doubts about Abbey Theatre’s ‘world-class’ statusSome productions did not reach ‘acceptable' professional presentation standardSun Jan 19 2014 - 09:55
Abbey confidential: outside experts unimpressed by our national theatreAn internal report by international assessors suggests the Abbey Theatre needs to stage much better productions if it really wants to be world classSat Jan 18 2014 - 01:00
Top appointment at Irish Water does not suggest thirst for public service reformOpinion: It’s simple – if you’ve been in charge during a major screw-up you don’t get promotedTue Jan 14 2014 - 12:01
Ireland’s rebound is European blarneyIn a column written for the New York Times, Fintan O’Toole argues that Ireland is suffering to maintain an unreal image of slimmed-down perfectionMon Jan 13 2014 - 15:18
Culture Shock: The sacrifice of Culture Ireland will come home to roostFiona Shaw is making a key speech on Tuesday, at the Association of Performing Arts Presenters’ jamboree. Bizarrely, the State’s official body for cultural exports won’t be at this key annual eventSat Jan 11 2014 - 01:00
The idea that art and culture are about rebranding is an insult to artistsOpinion: Cultural vibrancy is the opposite of bland positivityTue Jan 07 2014 - 12:01
We’re brilliant at Plan B - what we need to do some work on now is Plan AOpinion: Plan B is fecking off, and we’re the world champions at fecking offTue Dec 31 2013 - 12:01
10 things I loved in 2013, from ‘Breaking Bad’ to ‘riverrun’'The final episodes of Breaking Bad had the suspense and spectacle of a great action thriller, the psychological depth of a fine novel, the rush towards a calamity of a Greek tragedy'Sat Dec 28 2013 - 01:00
Culture Shock: Peter O’Toole – a great actor undazzled by his own starThe late actor’s approach was sceptical, cool, intellectual. He was, at his best, almost a meta-actorSat Dec 21 2013 - 01:00
Three key truths about the bailout which we are only learning nowOpinion: Minister crumbled under the threat of financial terrorism from TrichetTue Dec 17 2013 - 12:01
Culture Shock: This people’s revolution is dulled by dutyThe National Theatre is obliged to commemorate the 1913 Lockout, but Jimmy Fay’s production of ‘The Risen People’ should have asked a basic question first: why go back to James Plunkett’s text rather than approach the subject with wholly new eyes?Sat Dec 14 2013 - 01:00
For richer, for poorer, we should create a society for allWe need a sober optimism, not a self-deluding and cult-like adherence to compulsory success storiesFri Dec 13 2013 - 01:00
The ugly sound of a howl of joy haunts Sinn Féin’s account of IRA killingsOpinion: The horrible things done during the Troubles cannot be undone, but they should not be lied aboutTue Dec 10 2013 - 12:01
Nelson Mandela: Prometheus unboundHis achievement was to make his country fit for ordinary men and women to live in freedomFri Dec 06 2013 - 00:55
The nation’s children will go on paying the cost of the bailout for some timeOpinion: The gap in health between the best-off and worst-off children has doubled in the three years after the bank guaranteeTue Dec 03 2013 - 12:01
The Gate KeeperFor 30 years Michael Colgan has been the dominant figure behind the Gate Theatre, combining business acumen, a taste for avant garde drama and the instincts of a brazen and irrepressible showmanSat Nov 30 2013 - 01:00
Technology has not created leisure but the sense of never being free of workOpinion: Obsessive devotion to one’s job is toxic, not just to oneself but to family and friendsTue Nov 26 2013 - 12:01
Culture Shock: A history of Irish drama in 10 foodsBrendan Behan said every time there was a crisis at the Abbey, someone put on a pan of rashers. But are there any rashers in Irish plays?Sat Nov 23 2013 - 01:00
