Politics

Review by Michael Smith Enda Kenny’s former legal adviser has published a book. Jennifer Carroll MacNeill tells “the inside story of the process by which judges were chosen over the past three decades, both in cabinet and in the Judicial Appointments Advisory Board”. Barrister (and former solicitor), Dr Carroll Mac- Neill has worked as a […]

Christopher Hitchens, no stranger to contrarian positions, once wrote a remarkable polemic called ‘The Trial of Henry Kissinger’ impugning Kissinger for being as guilty as any common war criminal of crimes against humanity. In evidence Hitchens proffered his inculpation in the murder of democratically-elected Chilean president Salvador Allende. After General Pinochet assumed power Kissinger told […]

Isn’t it nothing sort of remarkable that the Irish Independent failed to explore the extraordinary role played by Michael Noonan and his officials in the Department of Finance in the Project Eagle affair until just after the votes were counted in the February election? While the newspaper had covered the story over several months it […]

It’s a couple of years since I observed somewhere or other that, if Enda Kenny chose to have an election in the springtime of 2016, he would fight it not against Micheál Martin and Gerry Adams but against Pádraig Pearse and Joseph Mary Plunkett. So it has come to pass, although this meaning of the […]

It’s hard to remember now. It is more than a month ago. Who remembers the delayed European Commission Country Report on Ireland, the one that got postponed until after the February election so it would not influence the voters? There was all sorts of hype about the timing and what the European Commission was or […]

After the General Election the political vista remains hazy. A minority Government led by Fine Gael but backed by Fianna Fáil looks the most likely after Fianna Fáil’s churlish rebuttal of Fine Gael’s Partnership Proposal. Before the election, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil said they refused to go into coalition with one another. Sinn Féin […]

On March 8 this year – International Women’s Day – Dubliner Victoria Curtis posted a photograph of her recently bruised face on Facebook, and wrote: “This is what misogyny looks like. This is what being a faggot looks like. This is what happens women on Saturday nights walking home with their friends. This is what […]