Stop glamorising spray-paint vandalism by calling it art
During a recent early evening taxi journey along Camden Street, Wexford Street, Redmond’s Hill, Aungier Street and Dame Street, I was struck by the vibrancy of the pedestrian traffic and the number of businesses getting ready to play their parts in Dublin’s nightlife. I was aware that concerns had previously been expressed about night-time disorder […]
Nostalgic fantasies about rail won’t change reality that we need roads
I was heartened when John FitzGerald, a self-confessed railways fan, wrote in his column that the recently published strategy for the development of rail services across the island of Ireland lacked a serious cost/benefit basis for many of the projects envisaged. The strategy document seemed to adopt a 30-year time horizon for some of its more ambitious projects. I […]
Where’s the sense of urgency to end the housing crisis?
The good news is that up to €8 billion in finance is to be allocated to the Land Development Agency (the LDA) to kickstart an accelerated home-building programme — subject to Cabinet, and presumably, Dáil approval in the near future. The bad news is that it has taken five years since the LDA was established to […]
Trump is a repugnant embodiment of all that is worst in America
We all know that Donald Trump did his level best or worst to prevent the result of the 2020 election – which he clearly lost – from being carried into effect. The published bill of indictment on which he now faces trial by jury in Washington DC is an impressive document in terms of clarity […]
Right-to-housing referendum would not lay a single brick
Sometimes it seems that the classical notion of the separation of powers in our democracy is slowly liquefying into a veritable soup of hopeless inability to run the country. Montesquieu, an 18th-century French political philosopher, saw powers of government or the political authority of the state as properly divided into three channels – legislative, executive […]
How did Barrett’s tiny National Party amass €400,000 in gold?
After all the controversy about Renault money and RTÉ, it was surprising that “fiat currency” should now enter the political arena at the instance of Justin Barrett, the ceannaire of the National Party. Apparently the extreme-right micro-party had stashed away gold bars with a face value of more than €400,000 in what he described as a “party vault” […]