Irishness is determined not merely by genetics`When", asked Pat Kenny on Friday night as he introduced an interview with the footballer Tony Cascarino "is an Irishman not …Tue Nov 07 2000 - 00:00
Debris on runway to privatisationThis day last week the most smug group of people in Ireland was to be found at gate B31 in Dublin Airport, and I was among them…Tue Oct 24 2000 - 01:00
Education rights a key to Budget dilemmaCharlie McCreevy is about as likely to ban horse racing and banish bookies from our shores as he is to take advice from this …Tue Oct 17 2000 - 01:00
His master's voiceThose who worry that everything that makes Ireland different is being submerged in the flood tide of global modernity, may find…Sat Oct 14 2000 - 01:00
Child abuse: the State is found guiltyIn 1919, the revolutionary Dail adopted its famous Democratic Programme which read in part: It shall be the first duty of the…Tue Oct 10 2000 - 01:00
Cost of lining up with the rich boysOver the summer, one of the media's favourite good news stories was the arrival in Killybegs of the most spectacular addition…Tue Sept 26 2000 - 01:00
Coillte fails to see State woods for private treesThis week, Eircom, a former State company now chaired by the distinguished former EU commissioner and current Fianna Fail grandee…Tue Sept 12 2000 - 01:00
The winner is barefaced mendacityNext week, RTE television will start a new series of its very enjoyable Reeling In the Years archive programmeTue Sept 05 2000 - 01:00
When bigotry takes on a life of its ownFor the peace process to work it was necessary to sustain certain myths about Northern IrelandTue Aug 29 2000 - 01:00
To `know' and not to know factsA long time ago, when I was a philosophy student at UCD, a great deal of time was spent on the question of knowledgeTue Aug 22 2000 - 01:00
Train driver mystique no longer makes senseForty years ago, if you asked any 10-year-old boy what he wanted to be when he grew up, "train driver" would have been up there…Tue Aug 15 2000 - 01:00
`Dubya' has character of a hypocriteWhat, in these justifiably cynical days, should we expect from politicians? Does that hoary old notion "character" matter any…Tue Aug 08 2000 - 01:00
Art has not reflected our griefOver five years ago, in April 1995, a huge fertiliser bomb demolished half of the nine-storey Alfred PTue Aug 01 2000 - 01:00
`Martyrs' to the cause of wrongdoingNo matter how often you encounter it or how much you think you've become used to it, one aspect of public life in Ireland never…Tue Jul 18 2000 - 01:00
Where good governance is homelessA fortnight ago, as it ran out of excuses for its tolerance of sleaze and cronyism, the Government came up with two new lines…Tue Jul 11 2000 - 01:00
Key to the mystery of FF fundingIn September 1992, Fianna Fail gave the beef tribunal a list of financial contributions it had received over the previous decade…Tue Jul 04 2000 - 01:00
FF's strange treatment of £100,000In May 1989 Mark Kavanagh was contacted by his namesake, Paul Kavanagh, and asked to make a contribution of £100,000 to Fianna…Wed Jun 28 2000 - 01:00
People insist on real sense of fairnessThe sharpest of all Irish political commentators, George Bernard Shaw, pointed out the problem with the Golden Rule of doing …Tue Jun 27 2000 - 01:00
Arthur gets a cat scan of healthcare systemWho says there's a crisis in the health service? Last week, the youngest member of my family, Arthur, was alarmingly illTue Jun 20 2000 - 01:00
The mundane tragedy of drug deathsIt shouldn't have taken the arrival of a mysterious new illness to get those of us who work in the media to pay attention to …Tue Jun 06 2000 - 01:00
The stadium playing field must be levelWhen Frank Dunlop was giving his explosive evidence to the Flood tribunal, what he had to say about his involvement in a plan…Tue May 23 2000 - 01:00
Immigration has benefited BallyhaunisThe high-pitched labyrinthine chant of the muezzin as he calls the faithful to the mosque across the fields and trees of a typical…Tue May 16 2000 - 01:00
Policing may be crucial last momentIn Northern Ireland, policing has been such an emotive subject that it has seeped even into the poetryTue May 09 2000 - 01:00
Haunted by the demons of our own devisingLast year Seamus Heaney wrote a superbly succinct two-line poem called The Catechism for the National Federation of Campaigns…Tue May 02 2000 - 01:00
Huge rises for bankers rather than public apologyLast summer a young man was caught urinating on the street in front of an AIB cash dispenser in central DublinFri Mar 31 2000 - 01:00
Dangers in census move to include race queryI read recently that the next Irish census will probably, for the first time, ask people questions about which race they belong…Fri Mar 24 2000 - 00:00
St Patrick lucky there was no FF to greet him in AD 432What exactly do we celebrate on Saint Patrick's Day? The obvious things of course: the arrival of spring, the pleasure of a day…Fri Mar 17 2000 - 00:00
Where Irish theatre and history meetThinking back in old age on his early nationalist potboiler Cathleen Ni Houlihan, W.BSat Mar 11 2000 - 00:00
Dockland scheme does not reach high enoughI spend a fair amount of time in Manhattan and when I'm there I live right beside one of the great Irish artistic achievements…Fri Mar 10 2000 - 00:00
A blind eye was turned to organs sacrilegeJust after my first son was born, I was standing, dazed, in the hospital corridor, my mind still struggling to catch up with …Fri Mar 03 2000 - 00:00
Abuses of power by pillaging politiciansThe course of history has thrown up two different kinds of invaders. One, the most successful, is the coloniserFri Feb 25 2000 - 00:00
SF must not remain a prisoner of fantasyHere is the government of Ireland writing in December 1927 to John Hearn, head of the American Friends of the Irish Republic, …Fri Feb 18 2000 - 00:00
Bertie's big dream and the private fund-raisingAs a sad, middle-aged fantasist with an irrational and increasingly unrewarded devotion to Nottingham Forest, I know only too…Fri Feb 11 2000 - 00:00
IRA thinks it has sole right to veto the political processGeorge Mitchell's book Making Peace was written with the candour of a man who thinks he is reviewing events that have been safely…Fri Feb 04 2000 - 00:00
Cancer care a symptom of a failing health policyThis is the way it works: do a bad job and you get promoted; do a good job and you get shiftedFri Jan 28 2000 - 00:00
Letterfrack reports show controlling mentalityThe debate on institutional child abuse in Ireland has been distorted by a striking absenceFri Jan 21 2000 - 00:00
Could house price rises lead to the end of social apartheid?Societies, like the truth, are rarely plain and never simpleFri Jan 14 2000 - 00:00
Irish victim mentality of the powerful is absurdTowards the end of the last century, or to put it more plainly, shortly before Christmas, I had a letter from Dermot DesmondFri Jan 07 2000 - 00:00
Humanity trying to cope with a century of changeIt is not hard to celebrate the passing of the 20th centuryFri Dec 31 1999 - 00:00
Three signs that the old certainties have goneProfound change happens so seldom in Irish politics that it can be hard to recognise it when it doesFri Dec 17 1999 - 00:00
Evading the unpalatable truth about sexual abuseFor some people, denial is just a river in Egypt. For others it is part of the discredited jargon of psychoanalysisFri Dec 10 1999 - 00:00
Moriarty's inquiry takes us back to Telecom dealFor a while now, we've known that Charles Haughey was happy to take money from rich businessmen while he was TaoiseachFri Dec 03 1999 - 00:00
Cooney has at least posed right questionWhen I was a small boy, I once served Mass for the then archbishop of Dublin, John Charles McQuaidFri Nov 26 1999 - 00:00
A guilt-free American tour of poor old IrelandLast week in New York I went to see a press preview of the film based on Frank McCourt's Angela's AshesFri Nov 19 1999 - 00:00
Creating the blueprint for a new moralityI was asked last week to talk to a conference in Ennis organised by the redoubtable Father Harry Bohan and to address the question…Fri Nov 12 1999 - 00:00
All we can do is rememberLeslie Jarvis taught leatherwork in Magilligan prison and was therefore a legitimate targetSat Nov 06 1999 - 00:00
Revisiting tax amnesty is only route to justiceIn the review of their joint Programme for Government, Fianna Fail and the Progressive Democrats this week declared their determination…Fri Nov 05 1999 - 00:00
Partnership rooted in a goal to moderniseThe single most important factor in the extraordinary growth of the Irish economy in recent years is social partnershipFri Oct 29 1999 - 01:00
Pomp and quirksEarly in 1990, a BBC crew made a fly-on-the-wall documentary on the attempts of the playwright Vaclav Havel to become president…Sat Oct 23 1999 - 01:00
