Can Joe Biden devise a strategy to pull ahead of Trump?
This is election year in the United States. As things stand, the Democrats look set to nominate Joe Biden and the Republicans seem on course to select Donald Trump to contest the election in November. And in such a contest the odds currently favour Trump. Can Biden devise a strategy to pull ahead of Trump? If he thinks that […]
Before Metrolink becomes a money pit, let’s look at alternatives
It was reported recently that enabling works on the site of the new National Maternity Hospital on the campus of St Vincent’s hospital are to commence shortly. Some €46 million has been earmarked for these works which consist of removing staff from existing buildings and carrying out of groundworks for the new building. The public procurement process […]
Biden’s reputation for decency now seems hollow
As I watched footage of Palestinian men of all ages stripped of their clothing and blindfolded, with their hands tied behind their backs, being herded on to open lorries by masked Israeli soldiers, feelings of revulsion and amazement welled up within me. Where had I seen similar images before? The obvious answer was in grainy […]
Judicial Appointments Act is still somewhat of a dog’s dinner
The Supreme Court ruled that it is constitutional for the Oireachtas to prohibit by law the Government from filling any vacancy in judicial office from the Chief Justice to District Court judge unless the person appointed appears on a short list drawn up by the Judicial Appointments Commission. But it appears that the Bill (now […]
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 […]