We have entered a no man’s land, an age of dizzying transitions
The far right has been much better than the left at giving voters the illusion that it has an accurate map across these liminal spaces
An unhappy Ireland prepares for a general election
The expansion of the State is no longer a lefty position in Irish politics. It is pretty much everybody’s position
Donald Trump’s openly authoritarian instincts are about to be unleashed
It is no longer possible to batten down the hatches and think 'this too will pass'
What has happened to the cowboys who built defective apartments? Absolutely nothing
No prosecutions, no financial costs, no names and damn all shame
Trump 2.0 would be fascism tempered by senility
Fintan O’Toole: Fintan O’Toole: US voters have had had ample warning as the former president has set out his intentions quite explicitly
Sinn Féin responds to child abuse more or less as the Catholic hierarchy did
Dress Cardinal McDonald and her bishops in episcopal robes and it’s a movie we’ve all seen before
Fintan O’Toole: Politicians are in a long-distance relationship with the consequences of their decisions
Take Ireland’s top manufacturer of insulation - not Kingspan, but the HSE. It creates layers of impenetrable padding between political decision-makers and the consequences
I take no pleasure in saying that Hamas is winning
Israel is putting all its eggs in Donald Trump’s grubby basket, banking on an alliance with a man whose friendship tends to be more toxic than his enmity
Government has a windfall of cash but no coherent sense of how to spend it
We have a windfall – but the golden apples seem to have fallen on our heads. Our governing culture has lost its great get-out clause: ‘If only we had the money…'
It’s all eyes on the election now and children don’t have a vote
Hey, kids – we have a roadmap. Just hang on in there and try not to get too angry and ashamed about being poor in a rich country
Ireland fixates on the ghosts of the past, and is blind to the abuses still happening
Somehow we can only feel pain of abused and abandoned children in safe retrospect, when it is brought to light after decades underground
Schools sexual abuse inquiry: It was open season on children’s bodies. These men did what they liked
We called the predatory paedophile in my school Little Plum. We all learned early the required habits of toxic silence
The cataract bus is, like all great Irish inventions, the fruit of carelessness and clientelism
The bus to Belfast for cataract surgery is a brilliant bit of political entrepreneurship, but it clouds the reality that healthcare is a right and we, the public, pay for all these treatments
Behind Kamala Harris’s megawatt smile at the convention, I saw a ruthless machine at work
The Democrats have generated an equal and opposite reaction to their own culpable inertia, a unity of purpose that makes them much more like the Republicans. It’s not always pretty to watch
How apt that Democratic convention marks the passing of the last old-style Irish Catholic politician
The 1968 convention was the last hurrah for a phenomenon of huge importance in our own history: the Irish-American political machine. How apt that this week’s convention will mark the reluctant end of the career of Joe Biden