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Justine Mccarthy

Justine Mccarthy

The Irish Times

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Why are so many journalists leaving to work for the Government?

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...

latest 4

The Irish Times

Justine Mccarthy

Four years ago, we were clapping health workers in the street. Now we’re reducing their benefits

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...

12.04.2024 10

The Irish Times

Justine Mccarthy

Politicians demonising NGOs is fodder for extremists

Some Yes advocates for last month’s referendums on care and the family privately confess they feel so bruised by the personalised abuse they...

05.04.2024 20

The Irish Times

Justine Mccarthy

Sudden stampede to the right by our politicians can only benefit democracy

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...

29.03.2024 7

The Irish Times

Justine Mccarthy

We know what’s going on in Gaza, and won’t be able to say we didn’t

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...

22.03.2024 20

The Irish Times

Justine Mccarthy

We may see a united Ireland with a DUP taoiseach sooner than a Constitution free of sexist language

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...

15.03.2024 9

The Irish Times

Justine Mccarthy

Catherine Martin’s colleagues should praise her honesty, not criticise her for going on TV

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...

01.03.2024 10

The Irish Times

Justine Mccarthy

Yulia Navalnaya and Nikki Haley embody a single truth: sometimes the act of opposing is enough

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...

23.02.2024 10

The Irish Times

Justine Mccarthy

Michelle O’Neill and Emma Little-Pengelly are filling the crater history put between them

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...

16.02.2024 30

The Irish Times

Justine Mccarthy

Trust the romantic French to come up with a pragmatic solution on ‘durable relationships’

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...

09.02.2024 10

The Irish Times

Justine Mccarthy

If Leo Varadkar goes to the White House, it can’t be for a quiet word about Gaza

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...

02.02.2024 10

The Irish Times

Justine Mccarthy

Ian Bailey could never resist having his name in a newspaper, ideally the headline

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...

26.01.2024 10

The Irish Times

Justine Mccarthy

Article 41.2 of the Constitution is a patronising pat on the head for women. It needs to go

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...

19.01.2024 9

The Irish Times

Justine Mccarthy

By caving into protests about asylum seekers, the Government has torched its own principles

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...

12.01.2024 6

The Irish Times

Justine Mccarthy

Keeping Enoch Burke locked in a cell, wallowing in his martyrdom, serves no one

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...

04.01.2024 10

The Irish Times

Justine Mccarthy

Just reaching out about those odious Americanisms and infuriating academic affectations . . .

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...

29.12.2023 20

The Irish Times

Justine Mccarthy

It’s okay to gloat a little about our artistic accomplishments. They are the creative fruits of a period of social turmoil

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...

22.12.2023 10

The Irish Times

Justine Mccarthy

Nothing can justify this massacre of the innocents in Gaza. No politics. No history. No revenge

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...

15.12.2023 10

The Irish Times

Justine Mccarthy

Irish politicians throwing around terms such as ‘scumbags’ and ‘thugs’ is a slippery slope

Dáil Éireann’s linguistic stylebook, entitled the Salient Rulings of the Chair, contains a list of insulting nouns that TDs are not allowed to...

08.12.2023 30

The Irish Times

Justine Mccarthy

Leo Varadkar has tacitly approved Ben Dunne’s fleecing of Irish citizens

Funerals are sacrosanct junctures for society when the usual human activities of badmouthing and gossiping are temporarily suspended. It’s a custom...

01.12.2023 5

The Irish Times

Justine Mccarthy

In the Israel-Hamas war, history and propaganda repeat themselves

Evening prayers had ended and the sermon had just begun in the al-Maqadmah mosque on the northern outskirts of Jabalia refugee camp when an explosion...

24.11.2023 50

The Irish Times

Justine Mccarthy

Molly Martens didn’t just kill her husband, she assassinated his reputation

There was a moment during Molly Martens’s sentencing hearing for the voluntary manslaughter of her husband, Jason Corbett, when doubts about her...

17.11.2023 10

The Irish Times

Justine Mccarthy

The world needs a Mahatma Gandhi to lead us away from the abyss

There used to be a fad in the 1970s for forecasting the exact day and time the world was due to end, imminently. As a teenager, I sat alone in...

10.11.2023 6

The Irish Times

Justine Mccarthy

Justine McCarthy: Erstwhile imperialists’ defence of Israel’s merciless slaughter makes a mockery of democracy

“I write at a moment of great anguish for the world,” Craig Mokhiber began his letter of departure as the director of the United Nation’s human...

03.11.2023 50

The Irish Times

Justine Mccarthy

Babies and children being slaughtered in Gaza are nobody’s enemy

His name was Omar Shamallakh. His life on earth lasted two months. In his photograph he is wearing a little-boy-blue babygro. He looks cared for and...

27.10.2023 4

The Irish Times

Justine Mccarthy

Two wrongs do not make a right, they make a vortex of horror

During the slaughter at the Nahal Oz kibbutz last Saturday, terrified residents hiding from Hamas killers pleaded for help on their WhatsApp group....

13.10.2023 60

The Irish Times

Justine Mccarthy

Don’t worry Mr Moneybags, the Government won’t rock the yacht on Budget Day

One Christmas many moons ago, the panto taught us children a lesson about the trickery of an optical illusion. That year, a motorcar was wheeled on to...

06.10.2023 10

The Irish Times

Justine Mccarthy

Ireland has museums for dinosaurs, country life and rugby. It’s time we had one for women

Just before the first Covid-19 shutdown in the spring of 2020, Epic, the Irish emigration museum, wheeled an empty plinth into the middle of...

29.09.2023 10

The Irish Times

Justine Mccarthy

Spinal surgeries scandal a painful reminder of how Ireland continues to fail its young

Ireland is a land rich with children’s fairy tales. There once was even a president of the country whose wife, Sinéad Bean de Valera, wrote books...

22.09.2023 10

The Irish Times

Justine Mccarthy

Reverse snobbery about rugby is every bit as nauseating as plain old snobbery

A pleasurable journey to south Kerry was rudely interrupted by a begrudger last Sunday. The radio had been serving up a banquet of sports coverage...

15.09.2023 30

The Irish Times

Justine Mccarthy

Vera Pauw’s unforgivable sin was to stand up for herself

Well, that lasted all of a nanosecond. One moment, Vera Pauw is a hero, making sports history for Ireland and leading the St Patrick’s Day parade as...

08.09.2023 10

The Irish Times

Justine Mccarthy

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