The United States was bracing for a ferocious winter storm this weekend. As our Washington Correspondent Keith Duggan observes, the looming weather event seemed like “a providential opening to the country’s 250th year and a bleak political atmosphere that feels inescapable.”
It gave us a metaphor, too, for the state of America’s relationships in the world after a week that underlined the profound transatlantic rupture that has emerged over the course of the second Trump presidency. The US president’s retreat – in a rambling, menacing speech at Davos – from his threat to seize Greenland by force cannot mask the loss of trust between Washington and its allies. If the postwar “rules-based international order” is not over – it never really existed in the first place, Canadian prime minister Mark Carney suggested in his own speech from the Swiss mountain resort – then it is certainly fraying.
Where that leaves Ireland is a question considered by several writers this weekend. “Trump’s relentless denigration of the EU is not something that can be sidestepped by Irish political leaders,” our leader column argues. “Taoiseach Micheál Martin may still argue that Ireland can be a transatlantic ‘bridge’, but that brings with it the danger of appearing sycophantic in the face of American bullying, and of Ireland subjugating the status and unity of the EU to its economic and political self-interest.” In their public comments on Trump’s belligerence, as Jack Horgan-Jones points out, there was a notable gap between the measured words of Martin – who eventually made it to Davos after a long journey by plane, car and foot – and Tánaiste Simon Harris, who offered a spiky parallel commentary on events from the TV and radio studios of Dublin. Harris “would throw any of us under the bus for a headline”, a Fianna Fáil minister says to Jack.
Our coverage of these extraordinary events was led this week by Jack Power in Brussels, Eoin Burke-Kennedy in Davos and Derek Scally, now back in Berlin after spending recent weeks in Denmark and Greenland. As details of the Greenland “deal” Trump claims he agreed with Nato began to emerge, Derek writes, the mood in Denmark shifted from anxiety to irritation.
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Further afield, our China Correspondent Denis Staunton spent the week in Taiwan. He found a country enjoying the fruits of a thriving economy but also an unmistakable air of unease, “as the island feels threatened by Beijing and fears abandonment by the United States under Donald Trump.”
What happens when a state body’s budget receives a large and sudden boost? Money is wasted, if two of our big domestic stories this weekend are any guide. In his investigation into the beneficiaries of Ireland’s rising defence spending – one country and one company are gaining the most – Conor Gallagher unearths the story of 27 light armoured vehicles bought by the Defence Forces in 2010 at a cost of €20 million. The army has quietly retired the vehicles, which proved “disastrous” in the field. One vehicle drove an annual average of 540km, the rough equivalent of one full fuel tank a year.
Ellen Coyne writes about another rapidly-growing organisation. Ireland’s Arts Council, which disperses money to artists and cultural groups, saw its funding rise from €80 million to €134 million in just three years after the Covid pandemic. Its staff numbers more than tripled, going from 47 to 146. That unplanned expansion contributed to an “unstable environment”, according to an expert review prompted by a botched €6.7 million IT project. The review pointed the finger at a divided group of senior managers, a staff who had their concerns ignored and a board where nobody shouted stop.
What to do about Enoch Burke? That’s the question troubling Ireland’s superior court judges, according to Mary Carolan, as they mull the case of the evangelical Mayo teacher who has been jailed and fined several times for contempt of court but seems undeterred by any punishment the courts can come up with.
Elsewhere on irishtimes.com this weekend, we asked artists, activists, students and others to come up with one thing the Government could and should do in 2026. Read the responses from Fintan O’Toole, Maria Steen, Joseph O’Connor and many others. In his weekly column, Mark O’Connell writes that it took Elon Musk, of all people, to make him start feeling almost defensive about Ryanair.
In Sport, Gavin Cummiskey interviews Ireland goalkeeper Caoimhín Kelleher, our culture section includes Nadine O’Regan’s conversation with Blindboy Boatclub, and our Magazine cover feature is on motherhood after 40.
Enjoy the weekend,
Ruadhán Mac Cormaic
Editor
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