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Diarmaid Ferriter

Diarmaid Ferriter

The Irish Times

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The curtain is coming down on Ireland’s soft power in the US

In January 2020, Joe Biden, then seeking the Democratic nomination for the US presidency, dismissed a request from BBC correspondent Nick Bryant in...

previous day 10

The Irish Times

Diarmaid Ferriter

The electoral cycle decides the budget, while the fiscal advisory council is ignored

In June 1954, TK Whitaker, then assistant secretary at the Department of Finance, wrote a note to outgoing Minister for Finance Seán MacEntee: “I...

04.10.2024 10

The Irish Times

Diarmaid Ferriter

Instead of gushing over Joe Biden, Simon Harris should denounce US funding of Israel

Timothy Smiddy, an economist from Cork who advised the Sinn Féin delegation that negotiated the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1921, found himself at the...

27.09.2024 10

The Irish Times

Diarmaid Ferriter

Our Wild Atlantic Way may be about to get much wilder

Visitors and writers captivated by the Irish coast have often commented on the coexistence of beauty and tragedy. It was both the harshness and...

20.09.2024 10

The Irish Times

Diarmaid Ferriter

Our Wild Atlantic Way may be about to get much wilder

Visitors and writers captivated by the Irish coast have often commented on the coexistence of beauty and tragedy. It was both the harshness and...

20.09.2024 7

The Irish Times

Diarmaid Ferriter

Forelock-tugging to Trump in Doonbeg showed how far Ireland will bend for US dollars

In 2014 Donald Trump was welcomed to Ireland with a red carpet at Shannon Airport. What had the charlatan, blowhard clown done to merit such a...

13.09.2024 10

The Irish Times

Diarmaid Ferriter

Sinn Féin’s housing policy ignores that climate change is already here and now

A meeting in the Mansion House in Dublin 100 years ago this month under the auspices of the Dublin Christian Citizens’ Council sought to highlight...

06.09.2024 10

The Irish Times

Diarmaid Ferriter

Social media is destroying young people’s mental health. Why do we keep tiptoeing around this reality?

More than a quarter of a century ago, the headline from a Financial Times article on the development of mobile technology suggested that the “New...

30.08.2024 20

The Irish Times

Diarmaid Ferriter

Nell McCafferty lived outside society’s norms and she never stopped challenging them

Nell McCafferty was part of a remarkable generation of women journalists who felt compelled to upend expectations. The changing political environment,...

23.08.2024 20

The Irish Times

Diarmaid Ferriter

Kneecap’s use of Irish is perfectly in tune with Eoin MacNeill’s vision

This summer marks the centenary of the announcement by minister for education Eoin MacNeill that the teaching of Irish would be made compulsory in all...

16.08.2024 10

The Irish Times

Diarmaid Ferriter

When the Annie Murphy revelations came out, people wore Eamonn Casey T-shirts. How little we knew

Oh, how we laughed in the summer of 1992. The T-shirt vendors made hay while the Bishop Eamonn Casey revelations shone. “Wear a condom just in...

26.07.2024 10

The Irish Times

Diarmaid Ferriter

Ireland isn’t full: Our population could surpass its pre-famine peak in 33 years

It is 70 years since Kerry writer Bryan MacMahon found himself the target of considerable hostility in his own locality. His sin was to contribute to...

19.07.2024 30

The Irish Times

Diarmaid Ferriter

Keir Starmer may love Ireland, but he won’t be ‘sucked in to the Irish bog’

As Britain woke up to a new political dawn last week, optimism was expressed that a prolonged, sour era of Anglo-Irish relations is over. It would be...

12.07.2024 10

The Irish Times

Diarmaid Ferriter

Trump ticks enough boxes to ensure debate about American fascism will continue

American scholars and journalists have long debated their country’s national identity. Twenty years ago, the Harvard political scientist Samuel P....

05.07.2024 10

The Irish Times

Diarmaid Ferriter

This isn’t about guardians of Ireland’s rural soul versus the Gonzaga Greens - it’s about us all

Studying ecology was the preserve of a privileged few in Ireland in 1979. Eamon Ryan was one of them, as was Ciarán Cuffe, both then students at the...

21.06.2024 20

The Irish Times

Diarmaid Ferriter

RTÉ reporters were like a political Micheál Ó Muircheartaigh, but no one addressed the big issue

The length of some of our ballot papers on polling day last week generated considerable comment. Twenty-eight inches is certainly notable, as was the...

14.06.2024 10

The Irish Times

Diarmaid Ferriter

Many Irish men and women fought in the second World War fought for reasons far removed from ideology

During the second World War, British prime minister Winston Churchill found opportunity in the House of Commons to refer to the “large numbers of...

07.06.2024 10

The Irish Times

Diarmaid Ferriter

Climate change should dwarf every other issue yet momentum is stalling

In this newspaper’s property supplement 25 years ago this month a feature article warned of the prospect of a “dream home” turning into a...

31.05.2024 30

The Irish Times

Diarmaid Ferriter

Ireland’s recognition of Palestinian state suggests a greater independence in the formation of foreign policy

On Wednesday, when announcing Ireland’s formal recognition of the state of Palestine, Taoiseach Simon Harris made much of the Message to the Free...

23.05.2024 60

The Irish Times

Diarmaid Ferriter

A simple question stopped Ireland in its tracks: why were so many children incarcerated?

Twenty-five years ago this month, Mary Raftery stopped us hurtling smugly towards the close of the 20th century. The economy was booming, the...

17.05.2024 60

The Irish Times

Diarmaid Ferriter

No line can be drawn under the Troubles for grieving families

There will be commemorations this month of the devastating impact and legacy of the Dublin and Monaghan bombings 50 years ago that killed 33 civilians...

10.05.2024 30

The Irish Times

Diarmaid Ferriter

We hardly need reminders of how little the Tories think of Ireland

We hardly need further reminders of how little the British Tories think of Ireland, but unfortunately we have more, courtesy of former prime minister...

03.05.2024 50

The Irish Times

Diarmaid Ferriter

Themes in McGahern’s That They May Face The Rising Sun have never been more relevant

As a book reviewer, Hilary Mantel was captivated by John McGahern’s final novel That They May Face the Rising Sun, published in 2002: “This is a...

26.04.2024 60

The Irish Times

Diarmaid Ferriter

Ramping up home building isn’t impossible - we’ve done it before

Tá Éire ag Forbairt (Ireland is Building) was the confident title of a gleaming brochure issued by the first coalition government in 1949. It sought...

19.04.2024 30

The Irish Times

Diarmaid Ferriter

United Ireland: money should not be the deciding factor but nor should it be ignored

In dealing with the stubbornness of Northern Ireland prime minister James Craig in November 1921, UK prime minister David Lloyd George sought to...

12.04.2024 10

The Irish Times

Diarmaid Ferriter

How do you explain to a dying child from Gaza that this is within the accepted limits of Israeli aggression?

Did those who have masterminded the Israeli assault on Gaza ever sit down and decide what number of deaths would be acceptable? 10,000? 20,000? 33,000...

05.04.2024 20

The Irish Times

Diarmaid Ferriter

Will TikTok taoiseach Simon Harris succeed in his promise to fight populism?

In his book Ruling the Void (2013) the late Irish political scientist Peter Mair suggested “the age of party democracy has passed”, with political...

29.03.2024 20

The Irish Times

Diarmaid Ferriter

Leo Varadkar did not fulfill his promise for ‘people who get up early’

Speaking as taoiseach in June 2018 at the annual commemoration of one his predecessors. John A Costello, Leo Varadkar looked back and forward....

21.03.2024 10

The Irish Times

Diarmaid Ferriter

In a tumultuous world, we should be wary of taking even our robust democracy for granted

“Sacred heart o’ Jesus take away our hearts o’ stone, and give us hearts o’ flesh.” These were the words uttered by Juno after the death of...

15.03.2024 10

The Irish Times

Diarmaid Ferriter

Despite all the focus on RTÉ, there is disappointingly little political will to decide on a new funding model

Right from the start, politicians were tetchy about Irish public service broadcasting and uncertain of their role in relation to it. One hundred years...

08.03.2024 20

The Irish Times

Diarmaid Ferriter

Heading for the referendums does the electorate know what it is voting for?

Speaking in the Dáil in October 1922, Minister for Home Affairs Kevin O’Higgins commented on what was one of the interesting features of the...

01.03.2024 20

The Irish Times

Diarmaid Ferriter

Lightening the sectarian load associated with sport will take more than funding for Casement Park

In June 1953, over 25,000 people attended the blessing and opening of the new GAA ground in west Belfast, Roger Casement Park. The stadium was...

23.02.2024 10

The Irish Times

Diarmaid Ferriter

No, it’s not the economy, stupid. Only one issue matters now

It is now 35 years since Roger Garland was elected the first Green Party TD. It was the third time Garland had run in the Dublin South constituency...

16.02.2024 20

The Irish Times

Diarmaid Ferriter

John Bruton was more complex than his ‘nice, straightforward, violently anti-IRA’ reputation suggests

Sometimes even experienced civil servants can be sloppy in crafting words. In May 1997, John Holmes, private secretary to Tony Blair, less than a week...

09.02.2024 10

The Irish Times

Diarmaid Ferriter

Mary Lou McDonald’s claim that Irish unity is ‘within touching distance’ is a wild exaggeration

Sinn Féin president Mary Lou McDonald made much reference to history this week. In response to the DUP’s decision to resume its place in the...

02.02.2024 30

The Irish Times

Diarmaid Ferriter

March 8th referendums: Is history about to repeat itself?

Perhaps we haven’t moved as far away from 1937 as we might think. The forthcoming referendums on the constitutional articles relating to women and...

26.01.2024 10

The Irish Times

Diarmaid Ferriter

Let’s be real about the Páirc Uí Chaoimh renaming controversy: money has always been part of the GAA

––Like many in Cork and well beyond, I would not like to see Páirc Uí Chaoimh rebranded to meet the requirements of funding from SuperValu. But...

19.01.2024 30

The Irish Times

Diarmaid Ferriter

Is it any wonder so many Irish people don’t want to end up in a nursing home?

In 2020, Dublin poet Rachael Hegarty, like so many sons and daughters of dementia sufferers, fretted as the Covid pandemic restrictions began to bite:...

12.01.2024 80

The Irish Times

Diarmaid Ferriter

Does Jeffrey Donaldson have the political imagination to end the Stormont stalemate?

As prime minister of Northern Ireland a century ago, James Craig faced a 1924 that required a delicate political balancing act. With the first Labour...

05.01.2024 10

The Irish Times

Diarmaid Ferriter

There was more to Lady Augusta Gregory than her relationship with Yeats

The voluminous journals of the playwright, folklorist and patron of the arts, Lady Augusta Gregory, contain a wealth of detail on her relationship...

29.12.2023 10

The Irish Times

Diarmaid Ferriter

In Dublin, there was always, amid dark days, music being made and sung

I had not expected to find myself back in Dublin’s Pro Cathedral. I sang there from 1982-6 with the Palestrina Choir as a far-from-angelic...

22.12.2023 10

The Irish Times

Diarmaid Ferriter

State’s economic compass has always been swayed by force of politics

In 1939, Trinity College Dublin established a chair of applied economics for Joseph Johnston. A prolific author, one of Johnston’s best known books...

15.12.2023 10

The Irish Times

Diarmaid Ferriter

Shane MacGowan captured what it was to struggle on the margins of a place that didn’t want you

It seems appropriate that Friday’s funeral cortege of Shane MacGowan will pass through some of the streets of a Dublin fraught, raw and struggling...

08.12.2023 30

The Irish Times

Diarmaid Ferriter

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