Green policies are increasingly divorced from reality

Eamon Ryan chose this week to make two eye-catching pronouncements. He first hinted that he was contemplating a change in the Government’s renewable energy target (currently 70% by 2030) to 80% by 2030. We weren’t told whether this had been agreed between the parties in the coalition. Then he indicated that he was considering creating […]
Is there room for another political party?

There is a very different tone to RTE’s advertising these days. Apart from exhortations to buy a TV licence “brought to you from the Government of Ireland”, there is a plethora of state or semi-state advertising covering a vast spectrum of campaigns from “Your Mental Health” and sexual harrassment to winter windscreen wiper maintenance, from […]
NDP is a smokescreen for political incoherence

The Government’s published national development plan is, in reality, a smokescreen for complete incoherence in their different parties’ approaches to many hugely important issues. The idea that various component parts of the so-called plan will have to compete among themselves to attract Government approval, prioritisation and financing is, frankly speaking, a joke. So too is […]
Low corporation tax rate is about pragmatism not inferiority

I have to politely differ with opinions recently published here on the issue of Ireland’s corporate tax regime. I do not think that we have a comparatively low corporation tax rate because we suffer from any national inferiority complex. Nor do I think that we collectively fetish-ise that regime. Still less do I think that […]
A rail feasibility study is always good for a positive headline

These pages used to accommodate intermittent comical pieces in which Myles na gCopaleen posed as an exasperated steam engine savant and generously handed out highly amusing technical advice to railway operators, engineers and engine drivers on optimal operation of mainline steam locomotives. I hope I am not becoming a bore on the subject of government […]
Trump, like the Taliban, may be on way back in

In a year’s time, the US will be facing into mid-term congressional elections. If the Democrats were to lose their narrow majority in the House of Representatives and/or their razor thin majority in the Senate, President Biden’s term in office might well be converted into a one-term lame duck presidency paving the way for a […]