We know all about the fear of ‘unvetted’ single male migrants. We were their chief exporterHow do young male asylum seekers in Ireland now compare to their Irish migrant counterparts in England in the 1960s?Tue Jan 16 2024 - 06:00
Gemma O’Doherty’s The Irish Light has embraced rabid foaming-at-the mouth antisemitism Hatred of Jews is not a ‘response’ to Israeli violence, but the mass killing of Palestinian civilians creates a space in which it can show itself in all its naked savageryTue Jan 09 2024 - 06:00
For over 30 years there was one column I was never able to write, but now it would be utterly unremarkableIreland has a history of keeping secrets that was not a genetic quirk – it was an institutional impositionTue Jan 02 2024 - 06:00
We have two Christmases: the one we experience and the one we rememberChristmas is better expressed through poetry, not prose. Prose typically deals in the raw stuff of lived experience, while poetry is strained through memoryMon Dec 25 2023 - 05:00
Fintan O’Toole: It was hard, in 2023, to avoid despair. Yet avoid it we mustAmid a litany of awful global news, from climate disasters to war in Ukraine and Gaza, Ireland remained remarkably stable and successfulSat Dec 23 2023 - 06:00
Slaughter of innocents cannot be easy for the perpetrators, but their tears are for themselvesFor the commanders and politicians who give the orders, the killing of children is the ultimate expression of power. It shows the absolute loyalty of the foot soldiersTue Dec 19 2023 - 06:00
Referendum wording does not remove conservative 1930s doctrine. It reinforces itProposed wording for gender equality referendum is worse than useless: a gesture that indicates the lack of intention to give women the chance to be fully equal citizensTue Dec 12 2023 - 06:00
Could Conor McGregor be Ireland’s Donald Trump? Absolutely He has a fervent fan base, a genius for personal branding and the toxic narcissism that is the political style of our timesTue Dec 05 2023 - 06:00
Irish fascism is not a reaction to immigration or poverty. It’s not even newIt is grossly unfair to inner city communities to stigmatise them as the sources of a shameful night in DublinTue Nov 28 2023 - 06:00
These pitiful thugs are not us. They do not act for us, speak for us or burn buses for usDublin riots: While humanity is capable of the worst atrocities, it is not defined by them. We are – really – better than thisFri Nov 24 2023 - 08:05
Two US hotels should have plaques reading ‘Conservative Ireland died here’Radioactive fallout from two separate detonations in American hotels drifted over the Atlantic and settled on Ireland. This was history as chaos theoryTue Nov 21 2023 - 06:00
In Ireland we barely talk about immigration. It’s easy to see whyWe should be able to discuss the fact that one in five people originates from elsewhereTue Nov 14 2023 - 06:00
Ireland is taking a risk with its stance on Gaza, but someone has to Insisting on one standard in a world of double standards makes for difficult moments with friends and allies, but it is easier than twisting in the windTue Nov 07 2023 - 06:00
Fintan O’Toole: Israel seems set on declaring peace in a blood-soaked wasteland of rubble and dustWhat will remain after Israel’s fury is spent? Collective punishment is not justice. Scorched earth is not security. Desolation is not peaceTue Oct 31 2023 - 06:00
Ireland is weirdly entwined with the idea of a Jewish homeland, but not in the way many imagineMilitant Irish nationalists prefer to forget that two future right-wing prime ministers of Israel were profoundly inspired by the IRATue Oct 24 2023 - 06:00
Fintan O’Toole: An Israeli government obsessed with humiliating Palestinians has left its citizens undefendedAll that levelling Gaza will achieve in the longer term is to remind Israel itself that it borders on an abyssTue Oct 17 2023 - 06:00
Refusing to address someone by their preferred pronouns may not be unlawful, but it is rudeWithholding someone’s chosen name has long been a way of asserting power over them: it’s why all the Irish were Micks, Paddies or BridgetsTue Oct 10 2023 - 06:00
For years, Ireland has been doing something just as economically stupid as BrexitConsigning children to poverty is morally and politically wrong. But it makes no fiscal sense eitherTue Oct 03 2023 - 06:15
This column is not what the mainstream media want you to hearIf Russell Brand says he’s the victim of a conspiracy theory and Rupert Murdoch insists he’s rebel outsider, so-called ‘mainstream media’ must be the true countercultureTue Sept 26 2023 - 06:15
By playing the part of a predator, Russell Brand convinced us he couldn’t be oneBrand would have us believe it’s not just his reputation but reality itself that is at stakeMon Sept 18 2023 - 13:10
Varadkar could yet leave a mark of decency and justice. Here’s howOn October 10th, Michael McGrath could stand up in the Dáil and release 40,000 Irish children from the prison of povertyTue Sept 12 2023 - 06:30
Fintan O’Toole: The West must help Ukraine to define victory differentlyIf Putin died tomorrow, there’s no chance a democratic peacenik would replace him. The war has reshaped Russian society in ways that make autocracy even more secureTue Sept 05 2023 - 06:15
Sinn Féin has what might benignly be characterised as deep ambivalence towards the StateFintan O’Toole: The way to protect democracy is always through more and deeper democracy: more checks and balances, more effective means of calling those in power to accountSat Sept 02 2023 - 06:00
Fintan O’Toole: The only difference between a good migrant and a bad one is timeOver time, strange people who came among us after terrible journeys ceased to be so strange. They became known, human, individual; not a threat but an enrichmentTue Aug 29 2023 - 06:30
Seamus Heaney, by Fintan O’Toole: His death 10 years ago was ‘the end of a great eloquence’Benign but not bland, temperate but not soft, the late poet is irreplaceable as a public figureSat Aug 26 2023 - 05:30
Fintan O’Toole: RTÉ has grappled with the same dilemma since the 1960sBroadcaster has grappled with the same dilemma since the 1960s: to be a national jukebox or a national broadcasterTue Aug 22 2023 - 06:30
Fintan O’Toole: Five things that the HSE is getting wrongAlmost two decades of HSE ‘reforms’ have not made the slightest improvement to its collective cultureSun Aug 20 2023 - 06:00
Fintan O’Toole: The only thing Tubridy seemed truly sorry for was himselfHe has held stubbornly to a fiction, so stubbornly that it seems he might actually believe itSat Aug 19 2023 - 06:00
Fintan O’Toole: All my life there have been climate warnings. We’re ingenious at ignoring themClimate change has been fully understood for decades. It has been perfectly possible not to grasp or feel itTue Aug 15 2023 - 06:00
Fintan O’Toole: Everywhere you look, Ireland has stark physical deficitsTo adapt what Brendan Behan once said about Dublin Bay, you don’t swim off Ballyvaughan, you just go through the motionsSat Aug 12 2023 - 06:00
Fintan O’Toole: Farmers’ denial of climate reality has been shaped by the parties they support Farmers are in strange denial about the climate emergency partly because political parties, especially Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, have shaped their attitudesTue Aug 08 2023 - 06:00
Fintan O’Toole: Ireland can be proud of itself only if it can confront its shameful deedsDruid’s magnificent new staging of the O’Casey trilogy should be a source of national prideSat Aug 05 2023 - 06:00
Fintan O’Toole: Sinéad O’Connor’s honesty was a curse for her but a blessing for usThe singer shattered our perfect circle of denial about abuse and trauma. If you had been abused and traumatised, you were probably half-cracked and since you were half-cracked, who could believe you?Tue Aug 01 2023 - 06:28
Fintan O’Toole: Our habit of jetting off to sun holidays won’t end well. Just ask IcarusWe jet into the mind-melting heat because our minds are melted by habitudeSat Jul 29 2023 - 05:00
Fintan O’Toole: A tiny area of Dublin is Ireland’s most segregated districtThe poorest part of inner-city Dublin is the triangle formed by the Customs House, the Royal Canal and the LiffeyTue Jul 25 2023 - 06:10
Fintan O’Toole: Why is the State investing billions in projects that depend on goodwill of property owners?There is one phrase that does not appear anywhere in Government’s outdoor recreation strategy: ‘right of way’, the great unmentionableSat Jul 22 2023 - 06:00
Fintan O’Toole: How to survive a scandal and get everyone to forgive youAbout 1,500 years ago, Ireland’s monks solved one of the great problems of humanity: how to atone for sinTue Jul 18 2023 - 06:30
Fintan O’Toole: Is any given act a potential war crime only when the other side does it?Ireland is uncomfortable with any criticism of US actions, even when they are wrongSat Jul 15 2023 - 05:00
Fintan O’Toole: In the end, Ryan Tubridy resorted to the Father Ted defenceThe broadcaster had three tasks in the most important live show of his careerWed Jul 12 2023 - 06:06
Fintan O’Toole: RTÉ bureaucrats fantasised they could turn themselves into Broadway impresariosThe broadcaster piddled away €2.2m on the Toy Show vanity project, while showing an increasingly obvious disdain for its cultural remitTue Jul 11 2023 - 06:21
Fintan O’Toole: RTÉ must change or dieCatherine Martin has been a quietly revolutionary minister for the arts, the best we’ve had since Michael D Higgins a quarter of a century agoSat Jul 08 2023 - 05:00
Fintan O’Toole: Noel Kelly is not Ryan Tubridy’s Father Confessor. He’s his attack dogI don’t believe in the pernicious myth of the starving artist – everybody is entitled to enough money for a dignified life. But too much money is as corrosive as too littleTue Jul 04 2023 - 06:30
A Thread of Violence by Mark O’Connell: A brilliant exercise in the uncannyBook about double murderer Malcolm Macarthur is an exercise in the uncannySat Jul 01 2023 - 05:00
Fintan O’Toole: RTÉ abandoned the public interest during Covid and capitulated to Tubridy’s tone-deaf demandsThis sorry episode shows how far the crassness of consumer culture has eroded the instincts of good citizenshipSat Jul 01 2023 - 05:00
Fintan O’Toole: Ryan Tubridy chose silence instead of speaking out. An extended silence should followRTÉ broadcaster had a moral duty to call out falsehoods he was uniquely placed to discern. But in his telling, it was all a matter for somebody elseTue Jun 27 2023 - 06:00
Irish neutrality: A tiny Riverdance of angels dancing on the head of a Fáinne pin Fintan O’Toole: How do we define Ireland’s ‘security’ in an age of climate chaos, mass migration and the rise of authoritarianism?Sat Jun 24 2023 - 05:00
Fintan O’Toole: Murky links between your iPhone, our tax take and companies drilling in CarlowThe genius of globalised capitalism is to make us forget that everything is connectedTue Jun 20 2023 - 06:45
Fintan O’Toole: The demise of the Kinahans will usher in another equally vile crewIf the War on Drugs is a giant trial conducted across the globe for over half a century, the empirical results are incontrovertible: drugs have won the war hands downSat Jun 17 2023 - 05:00
Fintan O’Toole: The ominous difference between Boris Johnson and Donald TrumpThe masters of political bombast, who mass-mobilised self-pity, are now eerily in synchTue Jun 13 2023 - 05:15
Fintan O’Toole: Giving Christian Brothers ownership of their sordid history adds insult to injuryState courts committed children to these hellholes, religious orders should not have control of filesSat Jun 10 2023 - 05:00
