Politicians losing touch with public opinion on issue of migration
Sooner or later, we in Ireland are going to have a mature national conversation about migration, free from a suffocating anxiety not to fit into glib political characterisations which bear little relation to reality. When the most recent Census revealed that on the night it was taken up 35 per cent of those enumerated in […]
The entire system of criminal justice is in crisis
Policing in Dublin is in crisis. It took an orgy of destructive rioting and looting to bring a significant visible Garda presence back to the streets. But for years, a general sense of disorder, low grade criminality, violence and hooligan impunity has been developing. Social media showed desperate shopkeepers and their staff fending off opportunistic […]
Hard to see how a Bloody Sunday Bridge advances bridge-building
“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” The question posed in Juliet’s famous soliloquy comes to mind in the context of current controversies about re-naming places and institutions. In particular, the decision by Dublin City Council to rename Clonliffe Bridge as “Bloody Sunday Bridge” […]
Supreme Court selection is no business of judges
Professor Oran Doyle of TCD’s law school wrote recently in the Irish Independent about the significance of the Supreme Court hearing to be held this week into the constitutionality of the Judicial Appointments Commission Bill. In broad terms his article seemed supportive of the Bill. The central issue in the debate so far is the […]
An early election must have its attractions for Leo Varadkar
The announced departure from the political stage of Frances Fitzgerald has happened well in advance of the European and local elections due next June. Her party has plenty of time now to select a candidate for the Dublin constituency. But who would they choose to run for what used, in any event, to be a […]
How far will Sunak’s government go to deny the slaughter in Gaza?
Looking at what is happening in Britain in the context of ongoing destruction of innocent civilians in Israel and Gaza, I am left wondering how far the Sunak administration will go in denying the obvious truth that what is now being done to the Palestinians in Gaza is as wrong and as barbaric as what […]