Glossy message of St Patrick’s Day ministerial trips hard to reconcile with reality As the second century of an independent Irish foreign policy dawns, questions must be answered about the country’s place in the worldFri Feb 17 2023 - 05:00
Brendan Behan’s papers are in New Jersey. Surely they belong in his native city?Working-class Dublin was intrinsic to the creative output of a highly individual writer who was born a century ago this weekFri Feb 10 2023 - 05:00
The racism that has always lurked within the Irish has been exposedThe absence of significant racial minorities for most of the State’s history meant an intolerance lay dormantFri Feb 03 2023 - 05:00
Diarmaid Ferriter: From An Cailín Ciúin to Camhs, our sorry history of child neglectFailure to take proper care of children has been a longstanding and grave failure of the Irish State and despite much apparent progress, the failure remainsFri Jan 27 2023 - 05:00
Diarmaid Ferriter on Enduring Ruin: Scenes, sounds and smells of Ireland’s revolutionary decadeVolume cleverly employs a range of sources to capture both the physical carnage and those at the centre of it as both perpetrators and victimsSat Jan 21 2023 - 05:00
Diarmaid Ferriter: The perception of traditional music and of what constitutes authenticity has been transformedFrom Séamus Begley and Tony MacMahon to Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin to Riverdance, Irish music has grown immeasurably in status, range and confidenceFri Jan 20 2023 - 05:00
Diarmaid Ferriter: Banshees of Inisherin a dark twist on myths of western islandsAccolades for McDonagh’s film put international spotlight on Inis Mór and Achill Island as he continues to tap into a tradition of which he claims to be no partFri Jan 13 2023 - 05:00
Diarmaid Ferriter: For over a quarter century, winter headlines have warned of hospital crisesEnduring trolley overcrowding in A&E departments has come to be seen as an inevitable part of the system rather than an intolerable failureFri Jan 06 2023 - 05:00
Violence of 1923 extinguished the idealism of a nascent State Seán O’Casey’s Shadow of a Gunman raised fundamental questions about violence and challenged the founding myths of the new StateFri Dec 23 2022 - 00:00
In 1989, the idea of a rotating taoiseach was treated as a joke. We’ve come a long wayA concept once regarded as a foolish recipe for instability could now prove itself to be a perfectly stable, sensible method of centrist governmentFri Dec 16 2022 - 05:00
Republicanism, Crime and Paramilitary Policing in Ireland: Diarmaid Ferriter on a brief but well-researched bookThe first in a series of short books provides important context for the different phases of the relationship between Irish republicanism and crimeThu Dec 15 2022 - 04:34
Diarmaid Ferriter: We have not yet reached an era of mature Civil War commemorationThere is no unanimity on how or when to mark a grim chapter of our history, but there are some hopeful signsFri Dec 09 2022 - 05:00
Diarmaid Ferriter: Were the first 100 years of the State a success or failure?Democracy’s endurance suggests we got more right than wrong, but there are long shadowsFri Dec 02 2022 - 00:00
Intense religiosity of State’s founders is overlooked Whatever divided a people ravaged by civil war, they had their faith in common and, with that, a special regard for men of the cloth and their roleFri Nov 25 2022 - 05:00
Diarmaid Ferriter: Civil War executions remain ugly legacy of State’s foundation Narrative of political responsibility and need to face down anti-treaty republicans endures. However, most of the 81 anti-treaty soldiers executed were of low rankFri Nov 18 2022 - 01:05
No room for complacency about the fundamentals of America’s basic democracyDespite the Republicans making fewer gains than expected, it remains to be seen if the party will continue down the Trumpian pathFri Nov 11 2022 - 05:00
Much of discord in Northern Ireland rooted in failure to integrate schoolsChildren will need to be educated together if there is to be any chance of a united Northern Ireland, never mind a united IrelandFri Nov 04 2022 - 05:00
Diarmaid Ferriter: Sunak will need a strong sense of history to have any hope of succeedingThe Tory class prefect has just replaced the class clowns in the top job; he must not allow nostalgia or ‘the fear of failing’ to cloud his judgmentFri Oct 28 2022 - 05:00
Taxpayer picks up construction industry’s bill once againThrough boom and bust, lobbyists for the construction sector have always made demands of the StateFri Oct 21 2022 - 05:00
Diarmaid Ferriter: Church’s insecurity during Civil War set in train its move toward authoritarianismClergy were unsure about their role in a state born out of violence and racked by divisions, so they built a culture of obedience and deferenceFri Oct 14 2022 - 05:00
Diarmaid Ferriter: It is in unionism’s interest to engage in dialogue on Irish unityEvents make it clear continued denial of any need to adapt will damage the unionist causeFri Oct 07 2022 - 04:20
Diarmaid Ferriter: How Ireland ended up with its antiquated licensing lawsSoon to be reviewed 1935 Public Dance Halls Act was a church and State attempt to legally control moralityFri Sept 30 2022 - 04:45
Pension age fudge just another reason for the young to emigrate Fear of ‘grey power’ will see younger generation burdened with cost of Government’s refusal to face up to funding the State pensionFri Sept 23 2022 - 05:00
Diarmaid Ferriter: Echoes of 1974 in today’s cost-of-living squeezeOil crisis and spiralling inflation pushed up the cost of living and sank the Fine Gael-Labour coalition government’s prospects of re-electionFri Sept 16 2022 - 05:00
Diarmaid Ferriter: Long-enduring democracy does not guarantee good governmentIrish State has failed to deliver a wider social contract in the 100 years since the third Dáil sat for the first timeFri Sept 09 2022 - 05:00
Diarmaid Ferriter: Queen Elizabeth saw the ups and downs of Anglo-Irish relationsMonarch’s reign associated with some of darkest days and strains of relations, but also, towards its end, a satisfying resolutionThu Sept 08 2022 - 21:48
Gorbachev could not control the forces he unleashedHe had no choice but to try to reform the Soviet Union but he was naive, particularly in imagining nationalism was no longer an issueFri Sept 02 2022 - 05:00
Our TDs want to be landlords, so why doesn’t the State? Some 35% of members of the Oireachtas are landlords or landowners, wildly out of step with the country at largeFri Aug 26 2022 - 05:00
Diarmaid Ferriter: Commemorating Michael Collins has been tricky for all political partiesApproaching his legacy without bias is a noble aim but beyond Martin and Varadkar sharing a platform, the habits of a century will hardly be brokenFri Aug 19 2022 - 05:00
Diarmaid Ferriter: Greece burns while the tourists fiddle with their phonesThere are no shortage of ambitious targets being outlined in both Greece and Ireland to reduce carbon emissions, but stubborn national myopia also persistsFri Aug 12 2022 - 05:00
Diarmaid Ferriter: Liz Truss has yet to show any interest in or understanding of IrelandWhen Tony Blair was elected 25 years ago, he was heavily engaged with the politics of Northern Ireland. Now we have a Tory elite that couldn’t care lessFri Aug 05 2022 - 05:00
David Trimble understood that unionism had to changeUUP leader took a difficult path and in the end, even unionism’s most entrenched enemies of change adopted his approachFri Jul 29 2022 - 05:00
Cathal Brugha: ‘An Indomitable Spirit’ — a sympathetic if not uncritical reappraisalDiarmaid Ferriter on a nuanced portrait of a man who ‘fought and died in a civil war that he opposed’Sat Jul 09 2022 - 06:00
Diarmaid Ferriter: Reconstruction of records destroyed in Four Courts a sign of political maturityBoth sides in the Civil War sought to lay the blame for the destructiuon of the public records office on each otherFri Jul 01 2022 - 05:00
Ireland urgently needs to learn lessons from its past to survive inflation surgeThe lessons of history must be heeded as politicians grapple with a price spiralFri Jun 24 2022 - 05:00
Diarmaid Ferriter: The 1922 election set an important precedent for the century that followedThe election was overshadowed by the Civil War but its significance should not be forgottenFri Jun 17 2022 - 01:00
Protocol impasse the latest chapter in well over a century of Tory misuse of the Irish questionManagement of the Conservative Party has always taken precedence over the stability and welfare of Northern Ireland that is supposedly essential to the `integrity of the UK’Fri Jun 10 2022 - 05:00
United Nation: The Case for Integrating Ireland: Thoughtful if over-optimisticFrank Connolly draws on nuanced reflections about likelihood and logistics of unitySat Jun 04 2022 - 06:00
Diarmaid Ferriter: Inflationary lessons of Richie Ruin should be heeded by GovernmentAs Fine Gael minister for finance in 1973-1977 Ryan presided over a period of high inflationFri Jun 03 2022 - 05:00
Diarmaid Ferriter: It seems life and liberty cannot be balanced in the USHistory teaches that we should not expect any meaningful moves on gun control in the USFri May 27 2022 - 05:00
Diarmaid Ferriter: Brexit ineptitude shows Anglo-Irish relations have come full circleBritish politics today is poisoned by Brexiteers inept in the art of statecraftFri May 20 2022 - 01:00
Diarmaid Ferriter: How the Irish became Britain’s oldest, loneliest ethnic groupDiarmaid Ferriter on Catherine Dunne’s reissued An Unconsidered PeopleTue May 17 2022 - 06:18
Diarmaid Ferriter: Would Brexit fallout push EU to advocate for Irish unity?European Union vocal and financially generous in support of peace processFri May 13 2022 - 01:00
Despair, defiance and democracy: Ireland in 1922Part of the challenge of this year’s centenary is to confront the silences around 1922Tue May 10 2022 - 06:01
Diarmaid Ferriter: Concerns over new NMH are understandable given Irish historyPlenty of reminders on church power, especially when it came to women’s welfareFri May 06 2022 - 01:00
Diarmaid Ferriter: Turf-burning row exposes myopic localismAmid the mock horror among rural politicians, issue of global warming fails to registerFri Apr 29 2022 - 01:00
Diarmaid Ferriter: Green Party concern on turf not snobberyA notable level of double speak exists about measures needed to tackle climate changeFri Apr 22 2022 - 01:00
Diarmaid Ferriter: Psychology of Putin seems horribly simpleBloodlusting Russian leader reveres strength regardless of human tollFri Apr 15 2022 - 01:00
Spare a thought for Griffith amid centenary of Collins’s deathWorking-class Dubliner did not fall in combat but covered for others at crucial timesFri Apr 08 2022 - 01:00
Diarmaid Ferriter: Superficiality cloaks desire for united IrelandDespite SF claim to speak of little else, call for unity weakens before tax and symbolsFri Apr 01 2022 - 01:00
