Kathy Sheridan

Yes, there’s a whiff of pixie dust about the bonanza of payments, but child benefit rightly holds a special place among mothers of all incomes and life choices

The afterlives of political leaders are often greater measures of their character than their times in office are. It’s hard to let go - just watch former leaders who lack the grace to dial down the wise-after-the-event pronouncements

Donald Trump’s gibberish is being played down as news outlets make him sound sane and rational

Ultimately it comes down to the free market, to supply and demand and what people are willing to pay - because they’re superfans or want to be seen. But people exhausted by the relentless hustle have had enough

What kind of global mindset allows preposterous, insecure leaders in Sudan, Israel, Iran, Afghanistan, Russia and elsewhere to cock their legs on their own populations and the wider world?

Complaints that Harris won’t agree to a sit-down interview miss the point: these elections are about anything but issues and policy

We will miss those two weeks of uncomplicated joy which felt like a holiday for the heart

Minister for Justice is exploring ways to ban protesters from wearing masks with the intention to intimidate others and frustrate efforts to identify them

Despite the rain, the cheese, the sneers and the sheer length of it, it was impossible not to feel moved. Like it or not, Thomas Jolly created the most inclusive event in the history of sport

Trump has promised to use a speech to ‘bring the country together’. Just imagine if he mustered the moral courage to say violence is never acceptable and he will accept the results of the election

If not now, if it’s too soon for a woman president, if the stakes are too high this time, when will it be her time?

Complaints about feeling collectively demonised amid allegations cannot be entertained given the pledge of the Defence Forces to the people

Conservative Party faces losing so badly it won’t have enough seats to mount an official opposition. No wonder Tories are suddenly panicking about democracy

The European Parliament is an increasingly powerful institution from which a huge share of our laws and regulations derive – so why do some politicians seem to regard it as expensive training wheels?

I gave the most obnoxious candidate 27, then started down from number 1. But a final review revealed I had awarded two number 12s

There are two responses to the harassing of the Taoiseach in Mayo. Some despair at the protesters, others ask why Harris ran scared

Gardaí are seeing ‘a huge rise in the level of aggression’ at anti-immigration protests despite a sharp decline in such gatherings

Time was in the US when ‘common sense’ informed the notion that the Irish were violent, drunken apes responsible for driving down wages and taking all the jobs

Finding that a third of respondents believed it was definitely or probably true that a “small, secret group of people is responsible for making all major decisions in world politics” should dent some general complacency

One startling fact: the number of Independents elected to the Dáil in recent years has exceeded the combined number elected to all other EU member state parliaments