The squalid conditions in RTE’s Nightmare to Let don’t need a public inquiry,but for those responsible to just do their jobs
The words “shocking”, “shameful” and “scandalous” are so often thrown about in public discourse that they sometimes lose their true meaning. But all three apply to the facts uncovered by the Primetime Investigates programme broadcast by RTE on Thursday in relation to the behaviour of some landlords and all local authorities as regards the squalid, […]
The Constitution of Ireland is no barrier to regeneration
As we approach the centenary of the destruction of the Customs House, then the seat of Ireland’s Local Government Board, by the forces of Dáil Éireann in 1921, it is perhaps time to consider afresh the role the rebuilt Customs House has played in the newly independent Ireland for the last hundred years as the […]
We need the re-instatement of democracy – however imperfect – in the North right now
When you come to think of it, there is something deliciously ironic about vigorous support now being loudly offered by Sinn Féin to the cause of Catalan secession. That a prosperous north-eastern province of a country, wealthier than and claiming to be culturally and historically distinct from the rest of the country, should assert the […]
The hard-line Tory brexiteers are baying for political and economic disaster
In 2000, Michael Gove, then Home Editor of The Times, attacked the Good Friday Agreement in a Centre for Policy Study paper “The Price of Peace” from a deeply Tory/Unionist perspective. He was, of course, perfectly entitled to do so, especially at a time when the Provisionals had not yet disarmed and long before the […]
There is a horrible logic to a pre-emptive strike on North Korea
Donald Trump, as I have written here before, is itching for a military confrontation with “somebody, anybody”, to enable him to take on the mantle of Captain America – and to re-establish America’s “greatness” in arms. He recently threatened to annihilate North Korea in a speech to the UN General Assembly. And this week he […]
The European project belongs to the member-states that comprise it – not the other way round
Scarcely had our new best buddy, Guy Verhofstadt, landed back in Brussels when his name appeared on a draft resolution in the European Parliament proposing that Northern Ireland should remain part of both the Single Market and the Customs Union after the UK leaves the EU. This, the parliamentarians argued, was the only way in […]