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![]() Justine MccarthyThe Irish Times |
While womanising ex-bishop Eamonn Casey was attending first Communions as a Catholic curate in England in 2001 – the year Limerick diocese...
Leo Varadkar’s announcement that he is quitting politics brings the number of departing TDs to 28, including four who have been elected to the...
Until Joe Biden started tottering – you know that quickened walk he does at a precarious tilt as if an aide has put batteries in his shoes? –...
She is identified as “M” in the Supreme Court judgment of February 26th this year. The sketch it paints of her life could hang in a hall of...
Cathal Crotty picked on the wrong woman. That is to be his enduring punishment. Instead of atoning behind bars for his crime before anonymously...
It wasn’t just the ungraciousness of Clare Daly’s departure from the election count centre after losing her European Parliament seat that left the...
The prize for biggest blooper in the orgy of postelections analysis goes to Neale Richmond. The Fine Gael Minister of State from Dublin Rathdown was...
The image that will endure after this week’s parliamentary elections in India is not of incumbent prime minister Narendra Modi claiming victory in...
Keep an eye on Marian Agrios’s tally when votes in the local elections are counted next week. For how many votes she gets – if any – may tell us...
Wednesday was a breezy day. A gentle wind had been ruffling the leaves on the silver birches since early morning. It tap-danced across clotheslines...
The voice on the radio sounds chillingly detached. “The death will occur of your loved one. They will die tragically in a preventable car crash...
Television pictures of euphoric Gazans celebrating in the southern city of Rafah last Monday after Hamas announced it was agreeing to a ceasefire...
Lionel Shriver writes novels. She called one of them We Need to Talk about Kevin. It was scary. Lots of people bought it. Her new book is called...
During goodbye drinks for a former colleague some years ago, the departing journalist took me aside to offer friendly career advice. If you want to...
Remember when we emerged en masse from behind our front doors, flung open our windows, and stationed ourselves on our balconies and at our garden...
Some Yes advocates for last month’s referendums on care and the family privately confess they feel so bruised by the personalised abuse they...
Here’s an audience-generating idea for impoverished RTÉ. Now that the curtain has come down on Dancing with the Stars for another year, it’s time...
Signs of starvation are becoming visible now in the faces of Gazans. In the news pictures, we see how their cheek bones protrude sharply under eyes...
The night before the referendums polls opened, a nephew in South Africa sent a screenshot of a television news report that Ireland was about to vote...
For as long as audiences find ventriloquists entertaining, our politicians will never be out of work. Their talent for speaking not only out one side...
Eleanor Roosevelt said women are like tea bags because “we don’t know our true strength until we are in hot water”. There is something else we...
Nothing encapsulated the momentousness of what is afoot on this island as vividly as a road trip two women shared last weekend. It was the day of the...
For anyone who thinks marriage is a sentence, not a word, the French have a solution. It surfaced when a young Franco-Irish couple recently visiting...
Joe Biden has blamed Iran for the killing of three US soldiers in Jordan last Sunday on the entirely logical and credible premise that “they’re...
The last time Ian Bailey rang me he said he had a cracking story about a national personality who, he alleged, had indulged in a sexual orgy. Ring...
In the treasure trove that comprises John Charles McQuaid’s papers lies a note from the then Catholic Archbishop of Dublin to his buddy, Taoiseach...
The heat from the sun was fierce. There was nothing for it but to plunge, once again, into the cooling sea before flopping back down on the beach...
Enoch Burke is still doing time in Mountjoy jail. He has already done more than 200 days and seems likely to set a record for time served for contempt...
Stuck for a new year resolution? Convinced yourself that smoking and jam doughnuts are actually good for you and, sure, you’d only be dicing with...
Snootiness goes against the native grain. Try it, and see how quickly you get pulled back down to what the communal spirit level deems to be your...
A long time ago in Bethlehem, so the holy Bible says, Mary’s boy child, Jesus Christ, was born. Glad tidings reached King Herod of Judea that the...
Dáil Éireann’s linguistic stylebook, entitled the Salient Rulings of the Chair, contains a list of insulting nouns that TDs are not allowed to...