Ireland's political and cultural magazine
Paschal Donohoe is a decent man: modest, cultured, the cleverest man in the room, according to a senior Fianna Fáil figure who spoke to Fiach Kelly in the Irish Times recently: the man other politicians envy, and a safe pair of hands. At 43, he has graduated with first-class honours from Trinity college, lived abroad, pursued a […]
Brexit brings a threat of the North accelerating in a race to the bottom in terms of the environment and employment, cutting costs in order to get economic advantage. In the face of this, much depends on when or if Devolution is reinstated. There is a particular concern on environmental matters because the EU has had […]
Ireland has a dreadful, inequitable, dangerously failing healthcare system. The State’s answer is the likes of healthy Ireland, which runs a public campaign that, in essence, throws the responsibility for health on to individuals – who seemingly just need help from an initiative to ‘empower and motivate them’. February saw the launching conference – hosted by […]
Real justice requires access to justice, which requires effective access to courts, which requires that courts be accessible without the threat of prohibitive costs. Some 90%, or an even higher percentage, of people in Ireland have no realistic access to justice, due to the prohibitiveness of the costs associated with legal actions via the courts. The […]
The Annual ritual surrounding the budget will come to an end on Tuesday 10 october when finance minister, Paschal Donohoe, unveils his first package of tax and spending proposals since his appointment earlier this year. Don’t expect too many surprises though, as most of the expected initiatives have already been well aired through inspired leaks from various […]
This is a saga of sadness, a tragic tale of three ‘whiches’, a fairy ‘which’, a whichsoever ‘which’ and a wicked ‘which’. In initiating each of three referendums, David Cameron said, “You have a choice, ‘this’ or ‘that’, which do you want?”. So all three ballots were binary, and while the first two delivered what he […]
The recent General Election was a very good one for Sinn Féin. We increased our number of TDs from 14 to 23. That’s a 65% increase – a success by any standards. Importantly, Sinn Féin also further increased the geographical spread of the party. There are now very few regions in the State in which […]
What is meant by the Rule of Law and is such a concept honoured in Ireland today? I believe that the rule of law though arguably an unqualified good is not being adhered to in this state save mostly by the judiciary and that the legal system and erratic observance of legality by state officials renders our […]
The story of an election is much more than a few headlines, but the Irish Times front pages mercifully, if languidly, devoid of the kind of blatantly partisan positioning seen elsewhere, provide in hindsight a neat narrative of the campaign, with the slow realisation that Fine Gael was in trouble, the lack of a clear alternative […]