Michael McDowell

Government plans to push through remaining stages of legislation without hate speech elements against backdrop of dispute over meaning of terms used

Ireland’s chief rabbi says Israel is not waging a war of retaliation. But the Israeli government’s stated policy is that the war is one of the destruction of Hamas’s military and governing capabilities

The terror that posed as SPHE education in the past was undoubtedly deeply harmful to adolescents

The Bill became a lightning rod for the debates over limits on free speech

Elements relating to hate speech to be shelved but gender definitions to remain despite opposition including by Michael McDowell questioning idea of legislating for ‘multiplicity of subjective genders’

Like Britain, we suffer from advanced administrative sclerosis, but we’re in complete denial

A proposal to charge asylum seekers with jobs €15 or €25 a week for accommodation is a pathetic response

Idea that local authorities can deliver housing faster than building contractors is daft ideological posturing

Independent Senators have been trying to see OPW plans to transform the beautiful members’ library at Leinster House into a ‘main committee room’ for the Dáil, to no avail

A railway was built from Dublin to Cork with little more than a shovel and a pick in the 1840s. Today the Shannon pipeline project will take 15-20 years from conception to completion - and that’s if all goes well

It is idle to debate whether ‘Ireland is full’. But it is not idle to acknowledge the glaring truth that Ireland is in no position to accept 25,000 homeless migrants claiming asylum every year

Former US president lauds Russian leader while being profoundly hostile to the European Union

Suggestions and criticisms

A new strategy review document favours building a surface railway to serve Dublin airport by linking it to the Dublin suburban network at Clongriffin

Michael McDowell: The future of the United States is now at stake as never before. Bound up in that is the viability of liberal democracies around the world in the face of totalitarianism

British and American systems do not quake at the thought of governments losing votes via their supporters who disagree with the majority

Depending on one’s point of view, Minister for Housing’s landmark creation is either a dangerous folly or an architectural gem

Minister for Justice says new procedure ‘just and fair’ in process used less than 10 times since 1956

With reform repeatedly promised and not delivered, the only way to fix the lack of Seanad reform it is at the next Dáil election

Senator describes 747-page Bill as ‘telephone directory’ and a ‘massive supertanker coming to dock in a very small port’

Labour Senator warns of ‘fundamental flaw’ as Upper House debates third largest Bill in history of State

Sloganeering about “populism” is over the top when discussing real peoples’ real concerns for their city

Michael McDowell: The recent debate proved Biden is well past his political sell-by date and urgent action is required to prevent the unthinkable of Donald Trump reclaiming the White House

Self-inflicted economic, diplomatic and strategic damage will be blamed on Rishi Sunak by Tory media and not on Michael Gove, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss or the Brexit-cheerleading media itself

The question needs to be asked why Ireland, on the geographical periphery of the EU, is facing 30,000 claims for international protection each year

The mutual backslapping between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael marked a watershed moment in Irish politics, but voters need more choices than just a hard-left coalition or the status quo

Successive ministers in the department have failed utterly to appreciate this fact

Michael McDowell: Democracy has never hung on such a fraying thread since the dark days of the 1930s

Referendums are not mere political games. What we now know happened should have political consequence

A recently announced Dublin taskforce is typical of the campaign to counter falling support for Harris's government

What exactly will it be illegal to say in future that it is not currently illegal to say? Nobody seems to know

While the Rwanda option remains on the UK’s statute book, Irish courts will be obliged to refuse deportation of migrants refused asylum to the UK

TD Verona Murphy was scandalised by the allocation of school buses in Kilkenny, but her fellow Senators and TDs were in a more celebratory mood with May Day, Mary-Lou’s birthday and Lyric FM all on the list

Discussion of gender identity among children and adolescents has become much more prominent in the last decade. Questions remain about the extent to which schools should deal with such complex issues

Compromise should never be a dirty word in any true democrat's lexicon, says former tánaiste as he unveils plaque to War of Independence hero, Sean O'Donoghue

The Irish State now has fewer than 10,000 trained military members that it could call up in the event of an emergency

Expectation is Dáil and Seanad will vote in favour of opting into pact, but volatility of views on immigration issues means outcome is far from certain

Independent Senator Michael McDowell said he was ‘most anxious’ that the ‘very serious constitutional consequences’ of the pact be investigated

A massive black hole has opened up between the Oireachtas and the EU legislative process

Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu may have calculated that widening the conflict frames him as someone fighting an existential war for Israel’s survival