Fintan O’Toole: Ireland is now demonstrably less politically corrupt than EnglandPandemic test of Irish political culture finds it more honest than 20 years agoTue Jan 11 2022 - 01:00
Fintan O’Toole: When and why did ‘flats’ become ‘apartments’ in Ireland?When words are being manipulated, something is being obscured. In this case, it is the loss of a sense of communityTue Jan 04 2022 - 01:00
Fintan O’Toole: If 2022 is to be different, we need to act sooner on predictable eventsWe can change the sense of being trapped inside a familiar story by responding to what we already knowSat Jan 01 2022 - 06:00
Fintan O’Toole: It’s the first birthday of the Brexit hole and they have to keep diggingThose who sold it are slithering away from responsibility for its consequences. Those to whom it was sold are left to bear themTue Dec 28 2021 - 01:00
Fintan O’Toole: 2021 – a year of miracles and disappointments in a new Age of ReasonTriumph of science is the big story this year, but we still struggle with the truthFri Dec 24 2021 - 06:00
Fintan O’Toole: This Christmas, remember what children give to usThey deserve medals from the State for being heroes throughout the pandemicTue Dec 21 2021 - 01:00
Fintan O’Toole: Believers in a united Ireland without trade-offs are as bad as BrexiteersIrish Times poll shows widespread belief that Irish unity can be achieved without sacrificeSat Dec 18 2021 - 06:00
Fintan O’Toole: Assange persecution is to scare off more inquiries into US secretsCharging journalists with spying is a favourite trick of authoritarian regimesTue Dec 14 2021 - 01:00
Fintan O’Toole: The three anti-vaccine types – egoists, paranoiacs and fascistsIf we understand why people won’t get jabbed, we might be able to reach some of themSat Dec 11 2021 - 06:00
The Irish Times books of the year: Fintan O’Toole’s favourite titles of 2021Seeking inspiration for a book to read or give as a gift? This selection could help youTue Dec 07 2021 - 06:00
Fintan O’Toole: If Eta can say sorry, why can’t Sinn Féin?Basque terror group and IRA were blood brothers but only one has accepted responsibility for pain it causedTue Dec 07 2021 - 01:00
Fintan O’Toole: Brexiteers’ absurd admiration for Michael CollinsBrexiteers ignore the most obvious effects of the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921Sat Dec 04 2021 - 06:00
Fintan O’Toole: The virus keeps changing. Our system for dealing with it is stuck in the pastResponsibility for management of the pandemic is fragmented and lacks accountabilityTue Nov 30 2021 - 01:00
Fintan O’Toole: Ireland’s crack cocaine epidemic has consequences far worse than any viral pandemicMuch of what was eventually achieved in the State’s drugs policy the 1990s is now being reversedSat Nov 27 2021 - 06:00
Fintan O’Toole: Official messaging on pandemic a messCoalition has swung from obsessive control of the message to what is now a free for allTue Nov 23 2021 - 01:00
Fintan O'Toole: EU knows making political polluter Britain pay for actions is vitalIreland didn’t want this, but Brexiteers have a deep belief that someone else should paySat Nov 20 2021 - 06:00
Fintan O’Toole: Why all the dithering on antigen testing in Ireland?Fear that negative tests will create a false sense of security assumes we’re all a bit dimTue Nov 16 2021 - 01:00
Fintan O’Toole: Other countries yearn for the good old days. Not IrelandThe Ipsos Global Trends survey suggests Irish people don’t think like the rest of the worldSat Nov 13 2021 - 06:00
Fintan O’Toole: Boris Johnson is running out of people to betrayIreland’s pact with the British prime minister on the North was a deal with a deceitful cheatTue Nov 09 2021 - 01:00
Fintan O’Toole: If only we could fight climate change like we fight warsPolitical systems tackled great threats before – can that resolve be generated without war?Sat Nov 06 2021 - 06:00
Fintan O’Toole: A very basic truth is being dodged - the public realm has to be policedFeeling unsafe is one of the reasons 95% of Irish women say they need a carTue Nov 02 2021 - 01:00
Fintan O’Toole: 'Cop26 is not a chance for global leaders to make history. It is much bigger'This is a unique opportunity to reshape humanity’s relationship to the natural worldMon Nov 01 2021 - 01:38
Fintan O’Toole: Humans are just apes who burn stuff. Now we must put out the fireCop26 delegates have the power to create a turning point in the evolution of our speciesSat Oct 30 2021 - 06:00
Fintan O’Toole: The ancient art of slander has been rebornLocal paper liable for every claim it publishes, but social media liable for nothingTue Oct 26 2021 - 16:45
Fintan O’Toole: Disaster movie now playing on the big screen of EarthChallenge for Cop26 is that humans have an in-built bias towards optimismSat Oct 23 2021 - 06:00
Fintan O’Toole: What is this country if it allows torment of children with scoliosis?Children are still in agony, and forced to display their suffering on the airwavesTue Oct 19 2021 - 01:00
Fintan O’Toole: Pandemic has shown foolishness of taking cheap workers for grantedThose who do tough physical jobs, now called ‘key workers’, are in short supplySat Oct 16 2021 - 06:00
Fintan O’Toole: There is unease about openly saying Facebook a potent enemy of democracySocial media platform we use to talk to our families also facilitates tyrannyTue Oct 12 2021 - 01:00
Fintan O’Toole: No faux ruins for us. We mass manufactured the real thingWhy is the taxpayer solely responsible for the failures of private builders and manufacturers?Sat Oct 09 2021 - 06:00
Fine Gael’s ideas for a national holiday are put to shame by CanadaCanada is facing up to historic institutionalised violence against children. Why can’t Ireland?Tue Oct 05 2021 - 01:00
Fintan O’Toole: Fantasy that Britain can pick new neighbours is meeting realities of tradeIn Brexit’s war on geography, geography was always going to winSat Oct 02 2021 - 06:00
Fintan O’Toole: Ireland makes a fetish of corporation tax because it is too scared to be normalBy making the 12.5% corporate tax rate the test of our sovereignty, the State sends out a message of fear to the worldTue Sept 28 2021 - 01:00
Fintan O’Toole: My personal history of modern IrelandWe Don’t Know Ourselves is the story of Ireland’s growth since the 1950sSat Sept 25 2021 - 06:00
Fintan O’Toole: Fine Gael’s virtuous self-image is at odds with realityParty’s self-perception as the paragon of propriety actually encourages bad behaviourTue Sept 21 2021 - 01:00
Fintan O’Toole: Nationalists must have an honest conversation with themselves on a United IrelandThe biggest mistake is to confuse what Irish people say they want with how they regard what happens in the real worldSat Sept 18 2021 - 06:00
Fintan O’Toole: Government cannot walk and chew gum at same timeSláintecare debacle shows State lacks political will and sense of what to doTue Sept 14 2021 - 01:00
Fintan O’Toole: Pandemic has shown the real wonder drug is moneyThe lie that giving cash to poor people makes them lazy has been exposed by CovidSat Sept 11 2021 - 06:00
Fintan O’Toole: Ministers not only corrupted but stupefied by powerEntitled Coveney and Varadkar behave lawlessly with informationTue Sept 07 2021 - 01:00
Schooldays I’ll never forget: Fintan O’Toole on the head brother and the flying condomThe brother’s incredulity released itself in a volcano of rage. ‘Who threw this?’Mon Sept 06 2021 - 06:00
Fintan O’Toole: The deepest wounds of 9/11 are those the US inflicted on itselfBy dividing the world into bad guys and good guys, the US did bin Laden’s workSat Sept 04 2021 - 06:00
Beautiful World, Where Are You: Fintan O’Toole on Sally Rooney’s tense, very risky new novelReview: Even when the characters in Rooney’s third novel are overwrought, her writing never isThu Sept 02 2021 - 13:45
Fintan O’Toole: We need schools for messers, dreamers and misfitsGreat explosion in English rock music was unintended result of art schoolsTue Aug 31 2021 - 01:00
Fintan O’Toole: Sinn Féin must acknowledge the disaster it helped inflict on the Irish peopleSinn Féin seeks to exercise power on both sides of the Border. It must account for how it uses powerSat Aug 28 2021 - 06:00
Fintan O’Toole: The West had all the clocks but the Taliban had all the timeBelief in inevitable progress is an illusion; as is the brutal fantasy of an eternal IslamTue Aug 24 2021 - 01:00
Fintan O’Toole: Poverty is an expensive luxury we can no longer affordWhy fund the consequences of poverty instead of investing in its outright elimination?Sat Aug 21 2021 - 00:00
Fintan O’Toole: Only humans could have screwed up an entire planetary system the way we haveWe are in charge of the planet, but not in control of ourselvesTue Aug 17 2021 - 01:00
Fintan O’Toole: Shocking news, Irish people may be sanest in EuropeThe low level of anti-vaccine sentiment is a very good sign for our democracyTue Jul 27 2021 - 01:00
Fintan O’Toole: Marino shows us what the State could do on housing a century agoA new development in the city is a microcosm of 250 years of control of land in IrelandSat Jul 24 2021 - 06:00
Fintan O'Toole: Ian Bailey deflects us from the reality of violent misogynyThere are 40 unsolved murders of women in Ireland since 1996. The obsession with one case is a way of avoiding this truthTue Jul 20 2021 - 01:00
Fintan O’Toole: Southgate’s properly patriotic football team has wrong-footed Boris JohnsonGareth Southgate’s team chose decency and dignity over the toxic ‘Ingerland’ identitySat Jul 17 2021 - 06:00
