Ireland's political and cultural magazine
The received narrative in a democracy is that there is an inherent adversarial relationship between politicians and civil servants on one side and journalists on the other. The job of the diligent journalist is to pursue transparency by scrutinising policy; they should hold government to account through critical engagement in order to arrive at the […]
Village is loth to get into the salaciousness that drives the professional classes in decadent Dublin. Nevertheless the integrity of the judiciary, and indeed the perception of that integrity, has to be beyond doubt and a story unfortunately came our way which challenged it, anonymously, and was accompanied by affidavits submitted for in camera family proceedings. […]
Gerard Convie is a man who wears sober ties and measures his words. He worked for the County Council in Donegal, once Ireland’s most beautiful and wildest county, as a senior planner for nearly 24 years. He has claimed that during his tenure in the Council planning irregularities were perpetrated by named officials at the highest […]
January The Minister for Health, Leo Varadkar, reveals he is gay to a receptive Miriam O’Callaghan, becoming the first openly-gay government minister in Ireland. The Irish economy is not some kind of exemplar, says President Michael D Higgins, controversially but magnificently. Mahon tribunal reverses its finding of corruption against Ray Burke because the tribunal never […]
Whistleblower says key witnesses and evidence omitted from Banking Inquiry and prepares for a public battle.
The Treasury boys are back. Without Treasury. Great. Richard Barrett is reported to be deploying two billion euro of investment in property and Johnny Ronan has paid Nama back and is back in business all over town. He’s even found time to make reference to Nazi slogans in pinpointing the injustice done to him by […]
Two recent events highlight the true nature of the ongoing Irish economic recovery. Firstly, ahead of the infamous Ireland-Argentina Rugby World Cup match, the press office of the main governing party, Fine Gael, produced a rather brash infographic. Charting projected growth rates in real GDP for 2015 across all Rugby World Cup countries, the graph put […]