Skin colour query sours the censusA fortnight from next Sunday, I will sit down with my census formTue Apr 04 2006 - 01:00
The real 'Fighting Irish' storyIn a very interesting letter to this newspaper last Thursday, the New York-based publisher Niall O'Dowd took issue with my criticism…Tue Mar 28 2006 - 01:00
Sad state of our flitting leadersI feel so ashamed. There I've been, all these years, blaming them for their behaviour, showing no sympathy, being cruelly judgmental…Tue Mar 14 2006 - 00:00
Our feral tribalism unleashedIn June 1934, two lorry-loads of political activists, composed, as the Irish Independent put it, "largely of Protestants and …Tue Feb 28 2006 - 00:00
Leave Jerry McCabe in peaceOn June 10th, 1996, just after an IRA gang killed Garda Jerry McCabe and tried to kill his colleague Ben O'Sullivan, the Sinn…Tue Feb 21 2006 - 00:00
Sometimes we seek to be insultedIn the 28th canto of Dante Alighieri's 14th-century poem, The Inferno , widely regarded as one of the keystones of European civilisation…Tue Feb 07 2006 - 00:00
ReviewToday's review is of Play About My Dad at the Project Arts Centre, DublinSat Feb 04 2006 - 00:00
Record we cannot be proud ofIt was, in the words of Mary O'Rourke, "political correctness gone wrong"Tue Jan 17 2006 - 00:00
Kids need a future, not token giftThis is the time of year when we think above all about children, about their need for love and security, about their capacity…Tue Dec 27 2005 - 00:00
Budget's poverty of visionIf not now, when? If, when a government has more than €50 billion to spend on running the State and €4Tue Dec 13 2005 - 00:00
Playing to a new world orderTheatre 2005: All this week, Irish Times critics look back on the past year in the arts and give their verdict.Mon Dec 12 2005 - 00:00
A lot hangs on outcome of disputeOf all the reasons why the dispute at Irish Ferries really matters, perhaps the least important has to do with industrial relations…Tue Nov 29 2005 - 00:00
A culture that failed to see evilIt looks like some kind of crude anti-clerical satireTue Nov 01 2005 - 00:00
The strut of power gave them a sense they could do whatever they liked, wherever they likedNearly a decade ago, the mother of one of the boys abused by the parish priest of Monageer Fr James Grennan told the Pat Kenny…Sat Oct 29 2005 - 01:00
Preparing for biggest battle yetIt is not hard to understand why, at the Fianna Fáil Ardfheis over the weekend, the Taoiseach announced the return from next …Tue Oct 25 2005 - 01:00
Comparison with Nazis is absurdLast week, when I read in the online edition of The Irish Times about Fr Alec Reid's claims that Ulster unionists treated the…Tue Oct 18 2005 - 01:00
The best of Times, the worst of TimesJournalism: Most people who worked with Conor Brady during his editorship of The Irish Times between 1986 and 2002 saw him as…Sat Oct 08 2005 - 01:00
Engaging reflection on lifeBrontë/ Project Arts Centre: From its stunningly dull title and from the blurb in the Dublin Theatre Festival programme, Polly…Thu Oct 06 2005 - 01:00
Is racism at work here?In the current debates about immigration into Ireland, the key word is "integration"Tue Oct 04 2005 - 01:00
For-profit hospitals unhealthySome time in November 2002, the then minister for finance, Charlie McCreevy, had a meeting with a constituent of his, a GP in…Tue Aug 23 2005 - 01:00
O'Donoghue proposes radical reform at AbbeyMinister for Arts John O'Donoghue is proposing the most radical change in the governance of the Abbey Theatre since its foundation…Tue Aug 16 2005 - 01:00
State must stand up to oil mogulsLast week, as anyone who drives a car already knows, the price of a barrel of Brent North Sea crude oil rose to an all-time high…Tue Aug 16 2005 - 01:00
Feminazi cartoon thinkingMost of American right-wing broadcaster Rush Limbaugh's invective is seen for what it is: the misanthropic rantings of a hate…Tue Aug 09 2005 - 01:00
Sinn Fein's silence on IRA killingHarry Feeney was standing in the doorway of his house on Quarry Road in the Brandywell in Derry on November 14th, 1973.Tue Jun 28 2005 - 01:00
Stung into poetryBiography: In the preface to his engaging and illuminating account of what he believes to be a crucial year in Shakespeare's…Sat Jun 25 2005 - 01:00
Ireland - simply the worstHovering around much of the Irish debate on the crisis in the European Union is a smug belief that Old Europe has a lot to learn…Tue Jun 21 2005 - 01:00
A cynical political gestureThere's the 15-year-old boy with Asperger's syndrome, an autistic disorder, who was served with an Antisocial Behaviour Order…Tue Jun 14 2005 - 01:00
ReviewsLady Windermere's Fan Gate Theatre, Dublin Take out a dozen scintillating lines, and, if you were told that Lady Windermere'…Thu May 19 2005 - 01:00
M3 and the uglification of IrelandIn Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, the Mock Turtle proudly proclaims his learning in the different branches of arithmetic: "…Tue May 17 2005 - 01:00
Martin should resignI have always regarded Micheál Martin as the most intelligent and progressive member of the CabinetTue Apr 26 2005 - 01:00
Standards were lower in 1979The sense of loss generated by the Pope's death has many sourcesTue Apr 12 2005 - 01:00
ReviewsWorstward Ho, Public Museum, Cork: There are some very good arguments against the staging of Samuel Beckett's prose works, especially…Fri Apr 08 2005 - 01:00
Shaking off trappings of empire'The Papacy," wrote Thomas Hobbes in the 17th century, "is nothing other than the ghost of the deceased Roman Empire, sitting…Tue Apr 05 2005 - 01:00
Walking all over our rightsFew notions generate as much hypocrisy and cant as that of private propertyTue Mar 22 2005 - 00:00
Let's count the cost of real wasteLater today the Travers report on the illegal charges levied on more than 300,000 people in nursing homes will be published.Tue Mar 08 2005 - 00:00
Myth of IRA's role exposedLast weekend, like the weekend before, Gerry Adams was out on the circuit, honouring the IRA deadTue Mar 01 2005 - 00:00
Legacy of 30 years of thuggery"My vote was out of recognition for Sinn Féin's efforts in the peace processTue Feb 22 2005 - 00:00
Lessons of the HolocaustThere are two kinds of absence, and the tension between them is part of the memory of the HolocaustTue Jan 25 2005 - 00:00
Cherish all the childrenOne of the most eloquent moments at the funeral Mass for Robert Holohan was when the great Cork hurler, Seán Óg Ó hAilpín, read…Tue Jan 18 2005 - 00:00
What the IRA is really fighting forIn 1923, shortly after it had won the civil war, the Free State government had a 40-foot-high Celtic Cross erected on Leinster…Tue Jan 11 2005 - 00:00
Disasters not beyond our controlIn March 1964, an earthquake measuring 8.5 on the Richter scale hit western AlaskaTue Jan 04 2005 - 00:00
No way to start health revolutionThough you wouldn't know it from the amount of media attention given to the issue, the biggest single change in the governance…Tue Dec 14 2004 - 00:00
Time for US to see realityI lived on and off in the United States for three years in the late 1990sTue Nov 02 2004 - 00:00
Our Third World healthcareHere are some extracts from reports on hospital conditions in developing countries: "The South African Human Rights Commission…Tue Oct 26 2004 - 01:00
What is a 30-year-old apology?The Floral Hall at Belfast's Bellevue Zoo was a particularly ironic place to dump the body of a childTue Oct 19 2004 - 01:00
The salvation of home grown theatre?Dublin Theatre Festival suggests Irish drama's future lies as much outside the national theatre as within it, writes Fintan O…Wed Oct 13 2004 - 01:00
Are we now party to kidnap?On the night of December 18th, 2001, a small private Gulfstream 5 jet landed at Bromma airport near the Swedish capital Stockholm…Tue Sept 28 2004 - 01:00
Let the subscriber bewareLast week, Eircom announced proudly that it has 73,000 customers for its broadband services and expects to have 100,000 by the…Tue Aug 31 2004 - 01:00
