Ireland’s corporate tax policy is no “sacred cow”
Emmanuel Macron, in the course of his successful election campaign, cited Irish corporate taxation policy as an issue which he believed that a refocused EU might address. This opinion is hardly startling, given Macron’s enthusiasm for rekindling the campaign for further EU integration. When you consider the French electoral system, its shortcomings become apparent. Rather […]
No monopoly on imagination or flexibility in Ireland’s response to Brexit
The warm and attentive reception given to Michel Barnier by the two Houses of the Oireachtas underlined the seriousness of Brexit as an issue for Ireland and the Irish hope that the UK’s departure from the EU will take place on terms that will not set back the political settlement on this island and the […]
The peace process must now largely be seen as military capitulation disguised as a political transformation
In an intriguing recent radio discussion on BBC last week, John Ware, presenter of a Panorama programme on Stakeknife and Kieran Conway, a self-described former Provo intelligence officer and author of “Southside Provo”, discussed the significance of the now accepted belief that Fred Scappaticci was simultaneously a British spy and the IRA’s chief counter-intelligence interrogator, […]
We need a realistic and honest debate on the type of Europe we aspire to now
The draft EU guidelines for negotiating Brexit are a welcome first offer in the process by which the departure of the UK from the European Union will be negotiated. It is, of course, a little artificial for a negotiating strategy to be developed in public and in the full gaze of the other party to […]
Real reconciliation with the orange in our tricolour must mean more than just indifference
When I wrote here last week about the spirit of the “Chuckle Brothers” being needed for a resolution of the impasse that has left Northern Ireland without a government and without a functioning assembly, I was not conscious that Martin McGuinness was about to join Ian Paisley in eternity, although I knew he was very […]
Brexit may not deliver a united Ireland soon, but it’s a challenge that should unite us all
One of the perennial problems in discussing the future of Northern Ireland is that the discussion of itself has a seriously polarising effect on the two main communities there. The underlying conflict of aspirations comes to the surface, however peacefully, and the process of normalising relations between those two communities is set back. On the […]