Category: Politics
Online Hate Speech Laws Are Coming to Ireland
After the last number of years of looking across the Irish sea in abject horror at the police state the UK is rapidly becoming, it seems that the reaper has finally come for us too, just as we always knew...
Aontú: Friend or Foe?
The Potential of Tóibín-ism: Ten years since the economic crash, Irish politics is a graveyard of parties that have attempted to fill an imagined political vacuum. Reports of the death of our two (and a half) party state have been...
The Catholic Right Needs to Unify in Order to Survive
Political commentators often espouse the view that the ‘Catholic Right’ in modern ireland is a coherent bloc with political heft. A bloc with influence enough left over to bring about much of what it seeks in policy. This is a...
Fine Gael’s Housing Crisis
Ireland’s ongoing housing crisis has provided a discordant note to the official government narrative that we are somehow living in a golden age. The figure of 10,000 homeless is only the tip of the iceberg. For a generation of renters...
A Vanishing Ireland
The Great Famine of the 1840s was undoubtedly the most catastrophic event in Ireland's history. With an estimated one million dead and another million lost to emigration, the population of the island fell by around 25% in the space of...
Populism in Our Local and European Elections
A populist is defined as “a member or adherent of a political party seeking to represent the interests of the ordinary people.” This may be one of the most abused terms in the history of politics. We in Ireland suffer...
The New Gender Recognition and Education Bills are Ideology Not Policy
Recently, RTE’s Prime Time saw the programme tackle gender identity; an increasingly contentious issue in Irish society. Despite offering various perspectives, the show was attacked by transgender activists, who started the hashtag ‘TurnOffPrimeTime.’ Such hashtags should be viewed as an...
Ireland’s Approach to National Security is in Dire Need of Overhaul
If there is one area of public spending nobody seems to care about, it is arguably the most important and the least ideological. We can argue until the cows come home on the merits, the costs and benefits of State...
The Necessity of the Irish Nation-State
I find truth in the observation that from the 1960’s onwards the scholars and thinkers of Ireland, and those unfortunate enough to unwittingly consume their opinions, elevated the external and the imported over the domestic and native. Persuaded by the...
Why The Good Friday Agreement Will Fail
“Secular liberals and socialists expected tribal passions would gradually disappear, while improved means of communication and a better scientific understanding of the universe would take its place. But it turned out not to be so.” - Leszek Kolakowski Ireland’s Fukuyama...