State’s energy policy generated by pie-in-the-sky politics
It has been “bleedin’ obvious” that Ireland would need to bridge the electricity generating gap with gas-powered generation for the foreseeable future. When I was a member of the Oireachtas committee dealing with energy during the last Dáil, I repeatedly sought acceptance of that fact –and its implications – by departmental and state agency witnesses […]
Sinn Féin move on non-jury courts not all it seems
In the murky world of the dirty war known as “the Troubles”, there is no murkier character than the participant known as Stakeknife. A leading member of the IRA in Belfast, he joined the Provisionals at their inception and wormed his way up through the organisation, playing a leading role in the IRA’s Civil Administration […]
New Dublin transport strategy a sick joke
The publication of the Greater Dublin Transport Strategy 2022-2042 in draft form for public consultation is, I am afraid, a sick joke on the people of the greater Dublin metropolitan area. It consists of 160 pages of waffle, aspiration, euphemisms, evasions, bullet-point wish-lists, and vague blather about urban planning, transport values and all sorts of […]
Bedsit ban offers a warning on future income supports
The Pandemic Unemployment Payment (“PUP”) was a wholly necessary and socially just intervention by the State to help the most economically vulnerable survive the calamitous effects of the lockdowns. Some may argue that it was unfair at the edges, insofar as deserving cases between jobs and other similar exclusions were harsh. Others claimed that PUPs […]
Sinn Féin needs reality check on historic prosecutions from Troubles
The killing in 1974 of John Patrick Cunningham, a 27 year old man with the mental age of a child and an ingrained fear of British army patrols, was utterly wrong and indefensible. Even if one allows for the fact that he may have aroused suspicion and was running away from his killers, there was […]
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 […]