Fintan O’Toole: British will soon pick at the scab that will form over BrexitDilemma of continental influence that led Britain to join EU returns as it leavesTue Dec 29 2020 - 01:00
Fintan O’Toole: Trump has unfinished business. A republic he wants to destroy still stands2020 in review: Donald Trump will continue to unleash racism, nativism and a fear of governmentSat Dec 26 2020 - 06:00
Fintan O’Toole: Way pandemic has unfolded makes mockery of punishment and rewardIt seems that the virus is playing a cruel game with our efforts to do the right thingTue Dec 22 2020 - 01:00
Fintan O’Toole: Ireland should go along with fiction that UK's Brexit damage limitation is victoryDon’t gloat at Britain, the once-powerful free country that has made itself weakSat Dec 19 2020 - 06:00
Fintan O’Toole: Don’t buy your children a digital device for Christmas. Read to themTwo-thirds of Irish children are not read to at home. This is not progressTue Dec 15 2020 - 03:00
Fintan O'Toole: There is no good Brexit option for Johnson this weekend - only lesser evilsBritish premier can concede to the EU or foist pain on the most vulnerableSat Dec 12 2020 - 02:04
Fintan O’Toole: Jokey-but-serious one-upmanship behind Britain's Brexit talks approachBrexit talks dragged on because Johnson’s regime has been playing its own gameTue Dec 08 2020 - 01:00
Fintan O’Toole: All the main actors in the Troubles tell partial, distorted and deceitful storyThe British, loyalists and Sinn Féin each have their reasons for distorted storytellingSat Dec 05 2020 - 06:00
Fintan O’Toole: How does defence of trans rights become search for women to blame?Trans people’s enemy is patriarchy, not feminismTue Dec 01 2020 - 01:00
Fintan O’Toole: To counter vaccine sceptics, we must understand themVaccine suspicion has a long-standing imaginative power that’s hard to overcomeSat Nov 28 2020 - 06:00
Fintan O’Toole: Our Government should be a fox. It is actually a snakeIn a fast world, our slow government gradually digests issues it swallowed years agoTue Nov 24 2020 - 01:00
Fintan O’Toole: Ireland can be the middle island between the EU and Biden’s USThe crises of 2016 posed huge difficulties for Ireland but have left us in a better placeSat Nov 21 2020 - 06:00
Fintan O’Toole: Collapse of Vote Leave gang comes too late to save Brexit-addled BritainCollapse of Vote Leave gang not timely enough to save Brexit-addled BritainTue Nov 17 2020 - 01:00
Fintan O’Toole: Joe Biden is the US’s mourner-in-chiefHaunted by intimate and public grief, he is the most Gothic figure in US politicsSat Nov 14 2020 - 06:00
Fintan O’Toole: Biden is a Kennedy-era figure come back to heal a wound that never closedUS president-elect is a second coming of the lost moment of the KennedysTue Nov 10 2020 - 01:00
Fintan O’Toole: The big danger is if Joe Biden believes everything is okayTrump is not going anywhere, and Biden cannot proceed as if democracy is savedSat Nov 07 2020 - 05:20
Fintan O’Toole: At 2.23am, the US president launched an attempted coupTrumpism is alive and kicking – and openly contemptuous of democracyWed Nov 04 2020 - 10:11
Fintan O’Toole: Voters can get Trump out of office and our headsThe president’s success in forcing himself into our thoughts will be his downfallTue Nov 03 2020 - 06:24
Fintan O’Toole: Defeat for Donald Trump will shape our worldWhat is at stake when the US votes on Tuesday? Almost everythingSat Oct 31 2020 - 06:00
Fintan O’Toole: Knock-knock joke on house parties is a Covid charadePassing a law on house parties that clearly cannot be enforced erodes public authorityTue Oct 27 2020 - 01:00
Fintan O’Toole: Donald Trump’s campaign has a joyful new message – ‘I’m alive!’The same cannot be said for the 220,000 Americans the virus has killed so farSat Oct 24 2020 - 06:00
From the past to modernity: images of Ireland transformingMartin Parr’s work portrays socio-cultural shift from conformismSat Oct 24 2020 - 05:00
Fintan O'Toole: State bumbling along with ad hoc decision-making as Covid crisis worsensWe are bumbling along with ad hoc arrangements created in a panic last MarchTue Oct 20 2020 - 01:00
Fintan O’Toole: Trump has failed to restore blue-collar America’s lost paradisePresident who promised to bring back coal oversaw its steepest ever declineSat Oct 17 2020 - 06:00
Fintan O’Toole: Budget must stop spread of inequality in Irish societyCovid pandemic is amplifying divisions inherent in having two different economiesTue Oct 13 2020 - 01:00
Fintan O’Toole: Trump has not sacrificed himself for his people. Quite the oppositeIf Aids was Trump’s Vietnam, Covid-19 is his director’s cut of Apocalypse NowSat Oct 10 2020 - 06:00
Fintan O'Toole: Trump's illusion of immunity has been exposed by the virusCovid-19 reveals the great weakness of authoritarianism: the leader’s bodyTue Oct 06 2020 - 01:00
Fintan O’Toole: Catholicism is right at the heart of epic US presidential electionTrump’s biggest political achievement is his alliance with Catholic AmericaSat Oct 03 2020 - 06:00
Fintan O’Toole: My father wanted to die and I promised to help himIn the end, if we cannot choose to die, we cannot choose to liveTue Sept 29 2020 - 01:00
Fintan O’Toole: Covid-19 pandemic might be good for the arts – eventuallyCurrent scenario heightens our perceptions and new artists will emerge from itSat Sept 26 2020 - 06:00
Fintan O'Toole: Ireland's young and working classes are in the Covid-19 firing lineLack of mandatory sick pay means people have no choice but to go to work when they feel ill and this helps coronavirus spreadTue Sept 22 2020 - 01:00
Fintan O’Toole: It is June 24th, 2025 – and Brexit has workedBut the reality is that the Brexit fantasists have failed. Only the disruptors are still standingSat Sept 19 2020 - 06:00
Fintan O'Toole: English nationalism is too naive to know its limitsBecause the Brexiteers cannot articulate the force that drives them, they cannot set its boundariesTue Sept 15 2020 - 01:00
Fintan O’Toole: There is no utopian alternative to the Leaving CertSix months ago, schools and colleges closed. What have we learned since?Sat Sept 12 2020 - 06:00
Fintan O’Toole: Johnson's breaking of Brexit pledge is smart-arse duplicity‘Oven-ready’ policy tactic had secret addendum – ‘we’ll go back and edit the cookbook’Thu Sept 10 2020 - 19:54
Fintan O’Toole: It’s not the public that has Covid fatigue – it’s the StateThere are worrying signs that those managing the pandemic are losing the ability to concentrate on what mattersTue Sept 08 2020 - 01:00
Fintan O’Toole: 10 key moments from six months of lockdownThe firm early decisions, the mis-steps, the reopenings as the country grappled with Covid-19Sat Sept 05 2020 - 06:00
Fintan O’Toole: Absence of Covid defences at Dublin Airport is startlingLack of testing and adequate tracing stand in stark contrast to situation in CopenhagenTue Sept 01 2020 - 01:00
Fintan O’Toole: Golfgate’s sleepwalkers aren’t stupid. They have a different problemWhat is truly beyond comprehension is that they did not even think politicallySat Aug 29 2020 - 06:00
Fintan O’Toole: The Oireachtas golf event broke webs of mutuality that bind Irish societyWe must not allow controversy destroy social capital that has kept us goingTue Aug 25 2020 - 01:00
Fintan O’Toole: Turning a blind eye to meat plants a very old habitThe obvious threat of meat plants becoming vectors of Covid-19 infection was not met with robust actionTue Aug 11 2020 - 01:00
Fintan O’Toole: Supreme Court calls time on government waffleIn throwing out State’s Climate Mitigation Plan, judges have done a real service to Irish democracyTue Aug 04 2020 - 01:00
Fintan O’Toole: To keep schools open, the Government needs to start learning quicklyWhy are problems entirely predictable in April only being addressed now?Sat Aug 01 2020 - 06:00
Fintan O’Toole: Brexit is like having to listen to someone else’s dreamsThe epic story of liberation has become mesmerisingly tediousTue Jul 28 2020 - 01:00
Fintan O’Toole: Newstalk’s Irish Times ban is a classic case of ‘cancel culture’Cancel culture isn’t new, just a new term for an old concept of cynical hypocrisySat Jul 25 2020 - 06:00
Fintan O’Toole: Lack of preparation for reopening schools is terrifyingWith just five weeks to go, the Department of Education has no ‘clear picture’ of what is neededTue Jul 21 2020 - 01:00
Fintan O’Toole: If Brexit is so great, why is Britain acting like it’s not happening?Our neighbours are still struggling to believe that Brexit is a real-world eventSat Jul 18 2020 - 06:00
Fintan O’Toole: Jack Charlton allowed us to accept the English part of our IrishnessThe two countries’ hybrid urban culture was a truth universally unacknowledgedTue Jul 14 2020 - 01:00
Fintan O’Toole: In the US, the 19th century is coming to a very slow endThe unfinished business of slavery, emancipation and Civil War is still playing itself outSat Jul 11 2020 - 06:00
Fintan O’Toole: Young Micheál Martin had courage to face dark truthsIn 1999 the then minister for education made brave choices. Does he still have it in him?Tue Jul 07 2020 - 01:00
