Fintan O'Toole

Let this sink in: a hospital that gets €100m a year in State funding is sticking two fingers up to the State’s Sláintecare policy

As Irish politics becomes more fragmented and unstable, a merger of FF and FG starts to make sense

It feels like we’re in that strange hiatus now. Fianna Fáil has no ground beneath its feet

Despite the tech industry’s efforts to squash concern about the devastating climate impacts of AI, resistance is growing

Why are Hutch and Ahern so bothered about immigrants from Congo and Somalia? Because they are shorthand for ‘Darkest Africa’

Steve Hilton recognised early that oligarchic fascism could be dressed up as anti-elitism. And the signs were there at a Macroom cattle fair in 1992

We have a political economy in which the only currency is the decibel

With its disastrous housing policies, Fianna Fáil has lost touch with its own successes

Every pressure group now knows it can be the unstoppable force that meets the moveable government

The organisers of the fuel protests had neither the right nor the authority to speak on behalf of ‘the people of Ireland’

Fuel protests have seen big wheels driven over democratic norms

The US president isn’t making this stuff up – it’s making him up

We are seeing something new in human history: the relishing of annihilation as entertainment

A journalist using AI-generated quotes in articles about AI is like a doctor injecting one virus in the hope of curing another

A deep economic crisis, shocking terrorist attacks in EU cities plus an unprecedented wave of refugees would lead to a far-right surge that the EU may not survive

From ‘silence, guile and cunning’ to ‘don’t go’, here’s some advice for the Taoiseach on how to survive the Shamrock Ceremony

Someone needs to tell him the truth or swathes of the world could be turned into Gaza writ large

Mind-blowing documentary on RTÉ shows the parallel planet of Ireland’s cattle monarchy continues to exist

Fintan O’Toole’s analogy between the decline of the Catholic Church and the potential fall of the British monarchy is clever

Abusers did not bring down the hierarchy here, it was down to the repeated cover-ups by bishops

In Ukraine ‘the issues are clearer’, and we cannot know who would have won in Spain with no intervention

Inside Politics podcast with Hugh Linehan

Sinn Féin is rightly proud of republicanism’s role in the fight against fascism in Spain. So why is it now opposing assistance for Ukraine?

Jeffrey Epstein and his friends were culture warriors – the war they waged was against women

If we want to understand why democracy is in such trouble, we can learn plenty from the careers of two men who were once stellar figures in democratic politics

We’ve made ourselves dependent on American capitalism but for America it’s a hugely lucrative dependency

Voices from across Irish life choose a single thing the Government should – and could – try to accomplish in its second year in office

Road Safety Authority requests show our TDs are not doing the jobs they are elected to do

Steve Bannon’s boasts are not just those of a marginal blowhard – they chime with the fully official American claim on the hemisphere in which we live

Capturing Maduro and putting him on display is US president's version of a Roman emperor’s triumph, entertainment for a senile king

Racism and xenophobia are begrudgery writ large. They divide humanity into an Us and Them

The Gaybo Christmas call was a necessary national ritual, one that turned private pain into public joy

For the opium lords of 1839, think the tech bros of 2025. For opium, think algorithms

The displacement of Israel from Asia to Europe is neither innocent nor inconsequential

British photographer always persevered in his belief that there is humanity in humour and humour in humanity

The bourgeoisification of the Irish workforce is a remarkable phenomenon

Roisín O’Donnell’s Nesting, Helen Garner’s How to End a Story and Liadan Ní Chuinn’s Every One Still Here are among the year’s top choices

Now we are caught in a Catch 22 of our own making on migration and infrastructure

A nocturnal Count Jeffrey continues to hover at the window of Donald Trump’s White House bedroom

Traditional suburbs such as Crumlin are now far beyond the means of the working-class families they were built to house