There is a way to unblock Ireland’s infrastructural logjam
Listening to Sean O’Driscoll, chairman of the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI), and member of the Government’s infrastructure taskforce, interviewed recently raised my hopes for a dawning realisation at Government level of the infrastructural crisis we face. Our administrative and legal procedures simply cannot overcome or unlock the logjam in time to prevent very serious damage […]
Trump is trying to “Make America Hate Again”
Back in my youth we were taught in Latin class about the problems faced by Rome because of neighbouring wetlands known as the Pontine Marshes. Although Romans did not fully understand how malaria infected humans, they connected the marshes with illness and death. Their combined engineering skills failed to drain the marshes and it was […]
EU cannot ignore what’s happening in Poland and The Netherlands
The apparent collapse of the Dutch coalition government – caused by Geert Wilders withdrawing his party’s support over the issue of migration and asylum seeking – is another indication that there are very dark clouds on the horizon for the European continent’s future and security. Taken together with the results of the Polish presidential election, political developments and prospects in a growing number of member […]
For all his bragging, Trump knows he has little leverage with either Putin or Netanyahu
Donald Trump loyalists point to the fact that he has never initiated a war in either of his two terms as US president. That suggestion is true insofar as he has scrupulously avoided new deployments of US ground forces in potential conflict zones across the world. This does not mean that Binyamin Netanyahu is not being armed and […]
Migration policy is the EU’s biggest weakness and Donald Trump is aiming to exploit it
The result of the Romanian presidential election run-off, in which the centrist Nicusor Dan beat far-right populist George Simion by 53.6 per cent to 46.4 per cent, will be a cause for some relief. It offers hope that Trumpism can be resisted by centre democrats in the member states of the EU. The possibility that Romania would turn away […]
Military axis of Russia, China and North Korea will test what the West stands for
“Up Periscope”. We are all familiar with these words from wartime movies. They signify that those who have been tensely awaiting events are about to reconnect through a narrow aperture with the wider world. In the fast-moving world of international politics, diplomacy and trade, sometimes there is urgent need to survey where we are, while […]