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Fintan O&x27TooleThe Irish Times |
Once might be carelessness; twice begins to look like unconscious bias. To come to terms with the full import of last week’s inquest verdicts of...
What happened on Saturday night was something the world has not seen before: it was the first time Iran directly attacked Israel from its own...
In 1991, the Israeli writer Ari Shavit, who was then 34, reported for his annual stint as a reserve soldier. When told that he was to serve as a...
It is no great insult to Simon Harris to say that he is very unlikely to be up to the job of rescuing Irish political conservatism. It’s not clear...
On Thursday, in the prime slot on Morning Ireland, Neale Richmond drove the first big tank on to the succession lawn. He started the logroll of Fine...
In May 2002, just after Fine Gael under Michael Noonan had suffered its worst defeat in a general election since 1948, a young party activist gave his...
Things in Ireland that merit the adjective “breath-taking”. The Cliffs of Moher on a wild Atlantic day. The light radiating from a snow-covered...
To understand why the Government suffered such humiliating defeats in last week’s referendums, we have to look at both the close-up and the wide...
Easy listening is music for people who don’t like music. And the wording of the referendum on care is social democracy for people who don’t like...
Instructions for the governance of RTÉ: 1. Procure a goblet-like liturgical vessel. 2. Obtain a toxic substance. 3. Place poison in chalice. 4. Offer...
The tribunes of the people are not too proud to beg. Last week, Niamh Smyth, the impressive chair of the Oireachtas Joint Committee looking into the...
I’m well aware that on the spectrum of interesting things, sex is at one end and pensions at the other. But since I reach pensionable age this week,...
Dee Forbes is unwell. In normal circumstances, respect for her privacy would oblige us to leave it at that. But these are not normal circumstances....
In 1968, everything was groovy. Hey Jude and Jumpin’ Jack Flash were on the radio and 2001: A Space Odyssey was blowing everyone’s mind. Meanwhile...
In June 1966, the chairman of what was then called the Dublin Health Authority, Joseph Connolly, ceremonially toppled one of the big grey stones that...
“Roscrea Is Full” says the sign held up by residents of the North Tipperary town protesting against the housing of asylum seekers in Racket Hall...
“Unvetted“, unattached single male migrants are a terror to their host society. Especially when they are gathered together in hostels with no...
A widely distributed freesheet newspaper called The Irish Light comes unbidden through my letterbox. It is edited by former Irish Independent...
I have very few unpublished thoughts. If you write newspaper columns once or even twice a week for over 30 years, almost everything that happens to...
I have a theory that when Irish writers describe Christmas in prose it is in general quite glum but when they evoke it in poetry it is rather magical....
Why do men kill children? Because it’s hard. Men who kill children prove to themselves and their superiors that they are hard men. Hamas murdered...
In my Catholic childhood I noted that there were some ostentatiously holy people who would genuflect properly in church, bending down on the right...
Long before he entered politics, Donald Trump climbed into another sweaty ring: the world of pro wrestling. As the host of WWE’s huge WrestleMania...
As the physical debris of a shameful night in Dublin is cleared from the streets of the inner city, perhaps we can also begin to clear the mental...
It is after midnight and I am writing in the dark. A few hours after the dreadful events in Dublin, nobody really knows anything. Except that there...
There is something both surreal and entirely apt about the way, thirty-odd years ago, Irish history happened in liminal spaces in American hotels. The...
If we think of what large-scale immigration looks like, I suppose most of us would refer back to the United States in the late 19th and early 20th...
At the United Nations general assembly, countries are seated in alphabetical order, which means that Ireland usually finds itself stuck between Iran...
In his history of a Roman invasion of northern Britain, Tacitus gives the Caledonian chieftain Calgacus a famous speech. Of the Romans, he says...
In a parallel universe, James Joyce wrote a sequel to Ulysses that ends with the hero Leopold Bloom’s death as a citizen of the new state of Israel....
The great political philosopher Hannah Arendt told us that the worst thing to be in the modern world is stateless. She knew what she was talking...
Is it, as the South East Technological University (SETU) claims, “unlawful” to refuse to address someone by their preferred name or use their...
In the run-up to next week’s budget, we will be blinded with billions. There’s one big number we really should be thinking about, though: €20...
We need a new name for what you and I are involved in now – writing or reading articles on The Irish Times website or in the printed newspaper. For...
Last July, on his YouTube and Rumble shows Stay Free, Russell Brand interviewed the far-right governor of Florida Ron DeSantis. It is a crossover...
Ignore the political kites that always darken the sky at this time of the year. Don’t get distracted by all the leaks, spins, special pleading and...