What are the chances of an early general election?
Here are three uncomfortable truths. First, despite furious public protestations to the contrary, both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael strategists are privately reconciled to the fact that neither of them is likely to have any chance of forming a government after any early election unless one of them does a coalition deal with Sinn Féin. […]
There is no way that the UK could leave the EU without a deal
Emmanuel Macron visited Germany hoping to persuade the weak and embattled Chancellor Merkel to join with France in his plan for a new Euro zone budgetary regime. He received a luke-warm reception for his plans and left with a fig-leaf statement of agreement in principle for a very diluted version of what he was proposing […]
We must reimagine Dublin – it cannot continue to grow as a low rise sprawl
Instead of tabling a motion of no confidence in the Housing Minister, the member of Dáil Éireann would be far better employed establishing a forum on the future of Dublin – a forum which would consider how the city of Dublin and the neighbouring counties are to be governed in future, a forum which would […]
The Brussels establishment should tone down the rhetoric and concentrate on what works in Europe
“When in Rome, do as the Romans do” is a well-used counsel to observe the local tradition or to defer to those with practical experience. This week, it has taken on a slightly different meaning. It is a counsel against heavy-handed foreign intervention in the political affairs of the Italians. Guenther Oettinger, the EU’s Commissioner […]
Boris Johnson has been weakened by his privately recorded indiscretions
In the age of mobile phones which can so quickly be turned into covert recorders, the very idea of Chatham House rules ( the convention that a speaker at an event may not be quoted for what is intended to be off-the-record discourse) is somewhat suspect at best and extremely dangerous at worst. So Boris […]
People these days often have only a dim and fading appreciation of the circumstances that brought us to this moment
The outcome of Friday’s referendum marks, I hope, the beginning of the end of a particularly fraught period in Irish politics and law. If the Eighth amendment had never been made in 1983, the complexity of all the issues surrounding the circumstances in which a pregnancy may be ended would most likely have been reflected […]