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Una Mullally

Una Mullally

The Irish Times

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Bring back the cheap bedsit. It should never have gone away

Studio apartment rents should be capped at €500 a month in cities, and at €300-€400 where they exist in towns and villages. This is still...

15.04.2024 20

The Irish Times

Una Mullally

Why independent coffee shops are in trouble: ‘Big chains can weather these increases. We can’t’

Small independent hospitality businesses in Ireland are asking for a very simple thing. They say they need a VAT rate of nine per cent to help them...

08.04.2024 10

The Irish Times

Una Mullally

Spend money locally, fix our water and tackle vacancy: Five priorities for local politicians

Local elections are mostly about local concerns, which is understandable. But that doesn’t mean they should only be about small thinking. Here are...

01.04.2024 20

The Irish Times

Una Mullally

Simon Harris’s vacuous ‘live, laugh, lead’ online persona leaves me cold

In the end, what resonates is the unfulfilled potential of an era that promised so much. Leo Varadkar came to power as the country was engulfed in a...

25.03.2024 10

The Irish Times

Una Mullally

Redesigned Temple Bar represents a failure of the imagination

A few days before St Patrick’s Day, I found myself in Temple Bar. I was walking from Smithfield to The Irish Times office on Tara Street, through...

18.03.2024 10

The Irish Times

Una Mullally

Five lessons from the referendum defeats

Failures of the Yes-Yes campaign, especially those of the Government, are writ large across the emphatic result of Friday’s referendum. Complexity...

11.03.2024 10

The Irish Times

Una Mullally

Una Mullally: Catherine Martin might just survive this crisis. But that doesn’t mean she should

Throughout her ministerial career, Catherine Martin has been seen as a positive force for the arts in Ireland. She has leadership of a department that...

06.03.2024 10

The Irish Times

Una Mullally

A reckoning for RTÉ must not mean everyone else is off the hook

What would happen to any public body, government department, local authority, or publicly funded entity were they subject to the granular scrutiny...

04.03.2024 5

The Irish Times

Una Mullally

An anti-Government protest vote in the referendums would be a mistake

We are reaching the closing stages of a referendum campaign that has so far failed to capture the public’s imagination. Nevertheless, it’s...

26.02.2024 10

The Irish Times

Una Mullally

The drip-feed of information from RTÉ is just not good enough

On Sunday, July 9th 2023, Rory Coveney announced his resignation as director of strategy of RTÉ in a statement. “I met with Kevin [Bakhurst] over...

19.02.2024 9

The Irish Times

Una Mullally

The ghost office is here. By 2025, 34 soccer pitches’ worth of space will lie empty in Dublin

The facts of office vacancy in Dublin are well known. It is going to get worse. Where are the policies to address this huge issue? Last Friday,...

12.02.2024 7

The Irish Times

Una Mullally

Five reasons support for Sinn Féin has slumped in the latest poll

Support for Sinn Féin has fallen six points in the latest Irish Times/Ipsos B&A poll to its lowest level in three years, and the party is losing...

08.02.2024 10

The Irish Times

Una Mullally

Immigration keeps the country running. Why is it being framed as something to be ‘tackled’?

For those who monitor far-right activity, extremism, disinformation and hate, and track its tactics and playbook, what has been happening in Ireland...

05.02.2024 20

The Irish Times

Una Mullally

Una Mullally: With every journalist killed in Gaza, a window closes

Irish artist Emmalene Blake — also known as ESTR — completed a mural in Dublin recently with artist Holly Pereira. It’s a painting of...

29.01.2024 10

The Irish Times

Una Mullally

Why we should declare Irish pubs a cultural asset

January presents a month-long version of a saying my grandfather, Pesh, used to reach for, looking out across the fields of Ballaghanea being drenched...

22.01.2024 10

The Irish Times

Una Mullally

St Stephen’s Green shopping centre is about to be replaced with a monument to blandness

Once in a while – all too frequently, actually – a new plan for a “redevelopment” in Dublin city centre comes along that is so deflating and...

15.01.2024 10

The Irish Times

Una Mullally

If you’re planning a nice meal out, do it before May 1st

May 1st, 2024: it’s a date looming in the psyche of the Irish hospitality industry. That is the deadline Revenue set for paying back tax debt (VAT,...

08.01.2024 10

The Irish Times

Una Mullally

What voters need from Sinn Féin in 2024 is less attack dog, more vision

2024 will be a bumper year for elections. More than 40 per cent of the world’s population will hold national elections across more than 40...

01.01.2024 10

The Irish Times

Una Mullally

The number that tells the story of Ireland in 2023: 3,000 people queueing for food vouchers

The end of the year compels one to take stock. Even if you’re trying to avoid reflecting on choices, decisions, mistakes and actions, there is...

26.12.2023 100

The Irish Times

Una Mullally

In two of the great liberal democracies, freedom of speech stops at Israel

If there’s one thing you read this week, make it Masha Gessen’s piece in the New Yorker, In the Shadow of the Holocaust. Gessen, one of the finest...

18.12.2023 10

The Irish Times

Una Mullally

Thirty ways to immediately improve life in Dublin

Arguing about Dublin isn’t going to get it anywhere. What can be offered though are solutions of various kinds. We already know the answers to...

11.12.2023 20

The Irish Times

Una Mullally

Waterford’s vacant housing record is better than Dublin’s. What can it teach the capital?

When it comes to improving street life, having more eyes on the street, increasing footfall for local businesses and building thriving neighbourhoods,...

04.12.2023 8

The Irish Times

Una Mullally

Dublin is broken: On edge, leaderless and abandoned by Government

“A few hundred people turned the city upside-down.” I was speaking to a friend who lives in Dublin 1 and got caught up in the riots on Thursday...

27.11.2023 10

The Irish Times

Una Mullally

Out of the horror of Gaza, a shared humanity is emerging

It can be difficult to consider or hypothesise about the long-term impact of what has been happening in Gaza, because the immediate situation is so...

20.11.2023 20

The Irish Times

Una Mullally

RTÉ needs to recognise what it’s good at, and do more of it

The French writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry said: “If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks...

18.11.2023 9

The Irish Times

Una Mullally

Spotify’s new deal for artists is a cruel and shallow money trench. There’s also a negative side

The news that the music streaming platform Spotify is fiddling with its royalty model was welcomed with as much enthusiasm as, to quote Billy...

13.11.2023 10

The Irish Times

Una Mullally

Una Mullally: The murder of Ashling Murphy changed Ireland, but violence against women is relentless

Only one person knows why he did what he did on January 12th, 2022. And only he knows why he dragged Ashling Murphy’s family through a trial, having...

11.11.2023 9

The Irish Times

Una Mullally

There have been more road deaths so far this year than in all of 2022. Something’s badly wrong

As of last Friday, 157 people had died on Irish roads so far in 2023. This already surpasses the 156 killed on our roads in all of 2022. That figure...

06.11.2023 9

The Irish Times

Una Mullally

Public baths, a haven for wildlife - the river Liffey could thrive if we showed it some love

When the album Kid A by Radiohead was released in 2000, I recall the exact moment one of the song’s lyrics stopped me in my tracks. On How To...

30.10.2023 30

The Irish Times

Una Mullally

The Liffey is important to Dubliners. So why don’t we show it some love?

When the album Kid A by Radiohead was released in 2000, I recall the exact moment one of the song’s lyrics stopped me in my tracks. On How To...

30.10.2023 10

The Irish Times

Una Mullally

Ursula von der Leyen’s solo run on Israel has damaged the EU

It seems trivial to talk about the European Union’s reputation at this moment but it does matter. As Israel geared up to drop countless bombs on...

23.10.2023 10

The Irish Times

Una Mullally

The US and EU have given Israel a free pass to flatten Gaza

At some point during one of the pandemic’s lockdowns, I reminisced about places I had travelled, and thought about where, once the opportunity was...

16.10.2023 10

The Irish Times

Una Mullally

Dandy and fierce: The incalculable loss of LGBTQ+ trailblazer Edmund Lynch

Last week, the trailblazing Irish LGBTQ activist Edmund Lynch died. His impact on Irish queer life was huge. He was one of the founding members of...

09.10.2023 10

The Irish Times

Una Mullally

Leo Varadkar needs better cultural reference points than Benefits Street

There are a lot of silly plot holes in the Dáil, plenty of shoddy lines, and a sense that we’re in a constant cycle of “Haven’t I seen this one...

02.10.2023 10

The Irish Times

Una Mullally

Why did it take a blockade at the Dáil for us to take the threat of the far right seriously?

Hopefully last Wednesday’s chaos outside Leinster House will be a turning point in countering hate on our streets. Now we have footage of a...

25.09.2023 10

The Irish Times

Una Mullally

Una Mullally: Mary Lou McDonald understands that vulnerability can be a strength

As summer turns to autumn, and politicians dust themselves off in preparation for returning to the Dáil and the Seanad, political messaging in...

18.09.2023 10

The Irish Times

Una Mullally

More gardaí on the streets of Dublin won’t repair its broken soul

Owen Keegan recently retired from heading up Dublin City Council. “All dictatorships must come to an end, even benevolent ones,” Fine Gael...

11.09.2023 10

The Irish Times

Una Mullally

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