25 years of Irish life through the columns of Fintan O’TooleThis is an introduction from a special supplement marking 25 years of Irish Times columns by Fintan O'Toole. To see more of the supplement, including themes such as emigration, the rise and fall of Fianna Fail, the dynamics of terror and the bubble and the bust, see the link to our digital edition belowWed Nov 20 2013 - 06:00
Oct 16th, 1998: Turning the Famine into a corporate celebrationThose in positions of power and authority in Ireland seldom take responsibility for the state of its political institutions and corporate culture. One of the reasons for this failure is that, in Ireland, the Establishment is always someone else. All the insiders like to think of themselves as outsiders.Wed Nov 20 2013 - 06:00
I have never sought to be someone who is contrarian or purposely ‘provocative’Opinion: It is important to believe that you are writing for citizens who want to live in a fairer and better societyTue Nov 19 2013 - 12:01
Culture Shock: ‘Love/Hate’ needs to go to the wire – and steal, not borrowThe fourth series of RTÉ’s gangland drama was missing something crucial: the politics of ‘The Wire’ and the strong female world of ‘The Sopranos’Sat Nov 16 2013 - 01:00
Goodman centre stage for first grand inquiry of tribunal eraLarry Goodman coverage, 1989-1994Wed Nov 13 2013 - 01:00
Why fencing in our high mountain pastures is really the height of follyOpinion: For walkers, there are now problems where there were none beforeTue Nov 12 2013 - 12:01
Culture Shock: Never mind the Nazis. What about Ireland’s own stolen treasures?A beautiful Buddha on display at the National Museum has a resonance in Irish literature: Leopold and Molly Bloom mention it in ‘Ulysses’. But it is as much a piece of loot as any of the 1,400 works by Picasso, Chagall, Matisse, Renoir, Munch, Dix and others that have been uncovered in MunichSat Nov 09 2013 - 01:00
It’s time for Gerry Adams to bow out, and take his fictional counterpart with himOpinion: Sinn Féin is now a significant, and in many ways constructive, part of the democratic processTue Nov 05 2013 - 12:02
Culture Shock: Disgraceful, disgusting, disreputable: it’s high time to ban the censorship boardSat Nov 02 2013 - 01:00
Irish mastery of doublespeak has led us to a tragic endpointThe Germans need to be hearing Message A: Ireland is in dire trouble. They’re getting Message B: Ireland is grandTue Oct 29 2013 - 12:00
Culture Shock: The Irish family – proceed with cautionIn ‘The Hanging Gardens’, at the Abbey Theatre, Frank McGuinness attempts the highly unusual feat of creating a convincing nuclear family on an Irish stage. Its failure is not entirely surprisingSat Oct 26 2013 - 01:00
Blueprint for a smarter societyIreland performs brilliantly at a community level but functions poorly as a society. How can we apply our small-scale success to the whole country?Sat Oct 26 2013 - 01:00
Clueless coalition is just brave enough to go for all the easy optionsOpinion: If the Government is not following the FitzPatrick plan, what plan is it following?Tue Oct 22 2013 - 00:01
Culture Shock: A daring reinvention of ShakespeareCamille O’Sullivan’s version of ‘The Rape of Lucrece’, for the RSC, creates a wholly new piece of Shakespearean theatreSat Oct 19 2013 - 01:00
It is in Ireland’s interests to stop blocking a tax on financial transactionsOpinion: The financial services lobby is by far the most important and powerful in IrelandTue Oct 15 2013 - 12:02
Culture Shock: Dublin Theatre Festival: Ambitious, extravagant and a little reckless theatreThere’s something magnificently defiant about the scale of the productions of ‘The Critic’ and ‘The Threepenny Opera’Thu Oct 10 2013 - 19:30
Reform is not abstract: misgovernment does real, tangible harm to our citizensOpinion: Three stories from the past week – about Phil Hogan, the HSE and developer Tom McFeely – show the need for actionTue Oct 08 2013 - 12:01
Culture Shock: A fearless plunge into pure performanceOlwen Fouéré’s ‘riverrun’ is a highlight of Dublin Theatre Festival 2013Sat Oct 05 2013 - 01:00
Say No to Seanad abolition and the Coalition’s reform charadeOpinion: There is no intention to create a single-chamber parliament that will hold the executive to accountTue Oct 01 2013 - 12:02
The Price of Power: Inside Ireland’s Crisis Coalition, by Pat LeahyLeahy exposes the undermining of cabinet government by a Coalition gambling that it can clean up the mess by the next general electionSat Sept 28 2013 - 01:00
It’s Ireland’s best public theatre, and it needs our supportWith its extraordinary Monto cycle, which includes the searing Laundry and, at this month’s Dublin Fringe Festival, the remarkable Thirteen sequence, Louise Lowe’s Anu Productions has become a kind of alternative national theatre, exploring the legacy of coercive institutionalisation, sexual exploitation, poverty, social collapse and the heroin epidemicSat Sept 28 2013 - 01:00
Writer Mary O’Donoghue wins ‘Legends of the Fall’ short story competition‘The Sweet Forbearance of the Streets’ chosen from more than 300 entries to Irish Times competition for fictional reflections on Ireland after the crashFri Sept 27 2013 - 18:41
Nine failures of the blanket bank guarantee – and its sole ‘success’The benefits we were promised five years ago have proved illusory. The costs have been locked in for decadesTue Sept 24 2013 - 12:01
Culture Shock: Two Samuel Beckett plays in a car park? UnmissableThe cast of Sarah Jane Scaife’s Dublin Fringe Festival productions of ‘Rough for Theatre I’ and ‘Act Without Words II’ are superb. They use the difficulties of the site to stage productions that are even better than Peter Brook’sSat Sept 21 2013 - 01:00
If you can’t win the scientific argument, suppress itEvidence on effect of sea lice heavily contestedMon Sept 16 2013 - 16:31
Culture Shock: Lippy’s explosive theatrical experimentBush Moukarzel’s show, a centrepiece of Dublin Fringe Festival, takes the biggest risk imaginable in the closed-in world of modish theatre-making: he adds the explosive element of reality, in the strange and horrible deaths of an aunt and her three adult nieces in Co Kildare in 2000Sat Sept 14 2013 - 01:00
A programme of meaningless Dáil reformGuillotine practices will undermine plansTue Sept 10 2013 - 12:00
American spirit is often best expressed in acts of political defiance of authorityOpinion: Manning may join Thompson, Parks and Luther King in pantheon of heroesTue Aug 27 2013 - 12:01
Culture Shock: George Bernard Shaw’s sympathy for the devilThe writer used his play Major Barbara to try to work out his feelings about poverty and power, capitalism and injustice. He couldn’t stop himself getting tangled up dramatically, but the result at the Abbey Theatre is a richly enjoyable productionSat Aug 24 2013 - 01:00
It is not ‘self-hatred’ to point out that our Constitution is not being respectedOpinion: McDowell’s criticisms verge on the creepily authoritarianTue Aug 20 2013 - 12:01
Clare’s Flaggy Shore: where nothing is black and whiteOur Going Coastal series continues with a stroll along a part of Co Clare with serious literary credentials, in a landscape that has its own natural poetryMon Aug 19 2013 - 01:00
Breaking the rules on Beckett, to fantastic effectThe playwright would have been deeply unhappy about Pan Pan’s production of Embers – part of this year’s Edinburgh International Festival – but it’s an intense, imaginative, mesmerising experienceSat Aug 17 2013 - 01:00
Who will be the last to suffer for the mistake of austerity?This faith-based construction of economic ‘reality’ is no less ideologically driven than the Soviet five-year plansTue Aug 13 2013 - 12:01
Culture Shock: Forget Brando – this is the true heart of A Streetcar Named DesireEthan McSweeny’s excellent production of the Tennessee Williams play, at the Gate Theatre in Dublin, recognises that its tragedy lies almost entirely with Stella and BlancheSat Aug 10 2013 - 01:00
Three cracked pillars of a failed stateFacing up to State’s failure can allow us begin againTue Aug 06 2013 - 01:00
Nine things you can do in Ireland that almost certainly won’t land you in jailA country that can’t protect its citizens from the effects of wrongdoing is not a RepublicTue Jul 30 2013 - 12:50
Fictions for Our Times (video)Fintan O’Toole introduces Legends of the Fall, a new short story series beginning in the print edition of The Irish Times on SaturdayFri Jul 26 2013 - 16:40
An inquiry is needed into why a regime of impunity still exists in this stateAnglo tapes showed minds untroubled by the slightest hint of criminal consequencesTue Jul 23 2013 - 13:00
Credit unions the only Anglo bondholders the Government has faced downMoney that could not be lent out during boom was moved for safety to banksTue Jul 09 2013 - 13:00
Oireachtas inquiry into banks would not answer questions that need to be answeredLet us not have another charade that only demonstrates our institutional weaknessTue Jul 02 2013 - 12:00
The smartest guys in IrelandThe most unsettling aspect of the Anglo Irish Bank tapes is not the executives’ swearing, greed or arrogance. It’s that we know they were right to assume they could get away with anythingSat Jun 29 2013 - 01:00
Culture Shock: From Russia with love pieced together in poetryA mosaic in St Petersburg immortalising the relationship between the great Russian poet Anna Akhmatova and the artist Boris Anrep re-creates an image in the most unlikely place: the Cathedral of Christ the King in MullingarSat Jun 29 2013 - 01:00
Proposed jail sentence for women who have an abortion is self-righteous and hypocriticalDeputies may be voting for law while hoping there is no prospect of its implementationTue Jun 25 2013 - 12:00
