Labour not convincing us at pollsThree items in yesterday's Irish Times fed straight into a left-wing agenda: the number of people living on below half the average…Wed Jul 18 2001 - 01:00
A disturbing report into the facts of livingMost of us with an interest in equality issues have been familiar with the contours of inequality in Irish society: the huge …Wed Jul 11 2001 - 01:00
IRA's word on arms is not brokenIt is not true that republicans have broken either their commitments on decommissioning under the Belfast Agreement or the undertakings…Wed Jul 04 2001 - 01:00
Hard to find a `healthy' poll optionIt would be a "remarkably healthy development" if the people of South Tipperary voted against Fianna Fail next SaturdayWed Jun 27 2001 - 01:00
Absence of democracy at heart of EUMichael McDowell's robust challenge on Monday night to the visionary Euro-blather raised important questions about the European…Wed Jun 20 2001 - 01:00
Statesmen led way on how to voteThere are political commentators so soaked in cynicism that they claim the people of Ireland pay no attention to the utterances…Wed Jun 13 2001 - 01:00
O'Malley TV series is a disgraceThey got around to almost suggesting that Charles Haughey was responsible for the Iran-Iraq war in the third of the television…Wed May 16 2001 - 01:00
FG needs to explain its rapid rise to richesMichael Lowry's £150,000 loan from David Austin in 1996, and the peculiarities concerning it, merely deepen wonderment over Fine…Wed May 09 2001 - 01:00
Parting from Miley and looking at life after `Glenroe'I arranged to meet Mick Lally in the Camden Court Hotel, Dublin, and when I got to the hotel there was a bespectacled Miley Byrne…Sat May 05 2001 - 01:00
A whiter than white O'Malley won't washSome of the central questions concerning Des O'Malley's role in the 1970 Arms Crisis were avoided in Sunday's RTE programmeWed May 02 2001 - 01:00
Lynch did not approve arms importationThe Minister for Justice, John O'Donoghue, is said to be engaged in a review of the papers on the Arms Trial to determine whether…Wed Apr 25 2001 - 01:00
Questions remain for O'Malley to answerThere may be a simple explanation for Des O'Malley's directive of October 7th, 1970, to claim privilege over the original statement…Wed Apr 18 2001 - 01:00
Fine Gael financing questions need replyFine Gael, like Fianna Fail, has been mired in the muddy mix of politics and money. It too has been crucially compromisedWed Apr 11 2001 - 01:00
Bruton silent on key point on donationsThree weeks ago I wrote in this column about Fine Gael's finances, how the party had been virtually bankrupt before it returned…Wed Apr 04 2001 - 01:00
Policy on bridges is off the railsLast year in Ireland, road vehicles crashed into railway bridges on 105 occasionsWed Mar 28 2001 - 01:00
Why Gilligan could in fact be innocentWhat is it with The Irish Times and its liberal agenda? Last Friday it deplored the failure of the Special Criminal Court to …Wed Mar 21 2001 - 00:00
Source of FG wealth must be scrutinisedFine Gael was out of office for over seven years from 1987 to late 1994Wed Mar 14 2001 - 00:00
Time for Moriarty to examine FG financesIn June 1995, during the course of the Wicklow by-election, Denis O'Brien made a donation of £15,000 to the Fine Gael campaign…Wed Mar 07 2001 - 00:00
Time to pay Africa for past wrongsGoree Island feels more Mediterranean than African, with its narrow streets, occasional plazas, colonial architecture and bougainvillea…Wed Feb 28 2001 - 00:00
From ardent republican to defender of EUProinsias De Rossa is trimmer (hill-walking in Wicklow and around Brussels), more relaxed and less abrasiveSat Feb 24 2001 - 00:00
A consensus choice who is determined to be effective, independent (Part 3)VB: The commission has got off to a bad start with the row over the other appointments to the commissionSat Feb 17 2001 - 00:00
A consensus choice who is determined to be effective, independent (Part 1)He looks and sounds like a Fine Gael grandee, and his politics matches that profile, at least on Northern IrelandSat Feb 17 2001 - 00:00
A consensus choice who is determined to be effective, independent (Part 2)VB: How did your appointment to the High Court in 1979 come about?Sat Feb 17 2001 - 00:00
FG's leader must score high on nice fella factorShortly after her success in a by-election in 1994, I was placed beside Kathleen Lynch from Cork at an Oireachas press gallery…Wed Feb 07 2001 - 00:00
Hectic life in politics, busy life afterVB: Is your 75th birthday a significant milestone for you?Sat Feb 03 2001 - 00:00
The problem with Bruton and his partyThe Fine Gael website is chock-full of policy positions and statementsWed Jan 31 2001 - 00:00
Considering what it means to be a TravellerVB: When did you first become conscious of being a Traveller, of being different from the rest of Irish society?Sat Jan 27 2001 - 00:00
Days of the untouchables not numbered"There are no untouchables," said Mr Justice Smyth in the High Court on Monday when adjudicating on Liam LawlorWed Jan 17 2001 - 00:00
New year resolution to simple questions?Groucho Marx once visited a renowned clairvoyant in ChicagoWed Jan 03 2001 - 00:00
No whisper of challenge to ClintonAs President Clinton urged his audience in Dundalk last Tuesday night to commit themselves to peace today, tomorrow and every…Wed Dec 20 2000 - 00:00
Budget day is nothing but a ritualistic shamOne of the last remaining parliamentary dinosaurs will be on display in the Dail this afternoonWed Dec 06 2000 - 00:00
Politicians fall back on shaky principlesAlmost nobody resigns from Irish governments. Certainly almost nobody resigns on a matter of principleWed Nov 29 2000 - 00:00
The `flow' that is only a trickleMr Deasy in Joyce's Ulysses is headmaster in the Dalkey school where Stephen Dedalus taughtWed Nov 22 2000 - 00:00
Fairness is the loser in US politicsTheodore White won a Pulitzer Prize for The Making Of The President 1960, and in that book he romanticised the presidential election…Wed Nov 15 2000 - 00:00
Largesse and egalitarian hypocritesBono has campaigned internationally for the forgiveness of Third World debtWed Nov 08 2000 - 00:00
Soft money funds Bush and GoreThe two main parties in the United States election campaigns may have raised half a billion dollars - and most of this illegally…Wed Nov 01 2000 - 00:00
Wake up and smell the injusticeHe was one of the student radicals of the 1960sWed Oct 25 2000 - 01:00
Qualms in Labour over FF curiousRuairi Quinn's hand-wringing on whether to return to government with Fianna Fail after the next election is curiousWed Oct 18 2000 - 01:00
Moral blindness still alive and wellThere is a Room of Silence at the Brandenburg Gate in BerlinWed Oct 11 2000 - 01:00
I was not wrong on O'FlahertyFour weeks ago, this column was publicised on the front page of the newspaper with the words "I was wrong about O'Flaherty"Wed Oct 04 2000 - 01:00
Cutting out traffic jams at a strokeTraffic jams are one of the great national problems of contemporary IrelandWed Sept 27 2000 - 01:00
Hauliers acted like a militiaOn RTE's Six-One television news last Friday, in a report on the road hauliers' disruption, there was a feature on a truck carrying…Wed Sept 20 2000 - 01:00
Bishops bow to shrill demands of feministsIrish Catholic bishops have decreed that several much loved passages from the New Testament epistles are no longer to be read…Wed Sept 13 2000 - 01:00
Anger over O'Flaherty was ignoredWhen Charlie McCreevy offered to nominate Hugh O'Flaherty as vice-president of the European Investment Bank (EIB) it seemed to…Wed Sept 06 2000 - 01:00
More talk, less action is what we really needJohn Boland was a doer and not a talkerWed Aug 23 2000 - 01:00
Irish Rail's troubles are self-imposedA central issue, if not the central issue, in the rail dispute involving the ILDA is that from the outset the vast majority of…Wed Aug 16 2000 - 01:00
Try the zero cost way to tackle trafficTwo years ago a large part of the lawn of Leinster House was dug up and plastered over with tarmacadamWed Aug 09 2000 - 01:00
Mystery of the missing adviserAlmost exactly three years ago (on July 15th, 1997) Charles Haughey first gave evidence to a tribunal at Dublin Castle, the McCracken…Wed Jul 26 2000 - 01:00
