Diarmaid Ferriter

Participants will undoubtedly focus on the presidential election campaign, which is a short-term diversion from long-standing and worsening social issues

The unions have over 86,000 members between them. If they stopped working, the strike would soon end

An iron response to Israel’s war crimes will not come from America. Britain and and EU member states are also compromised

Candidates may mean well in vowing to act on big social issues, but the reality of being president is different

Radio: The phone-in canvasses so many people that it might just qualify as a poll of voting intention for the entire country

Much has changed since partition ‘marooned’ Northern nationalists, but much has stayed the same

Early 20th century republicans revered his contemporary critics but their grandparents lived through the era of O’Connell as ‘the Liberator’ and champion of Catholic emancipation

The essential mission of anyone who takes the past seriously is “to make human understanding more profound”

Moygashel fire is bitterly ironic given how central the migrant experience is to Ulster’s history

Presidential elections generate an acute interest in who and what we would like to symbolise our Republic

Sarah Moss, Joseph O’Connor, Wendy Erskine, John Banville, Éilís Ní Dhuibhne and other authors and reviewers choose their top reads for the holidays

There’s an opportunity to turn it into a building that can generate pride, and improve the perception of a space widely regarded as deficient and devoid of imagination

Researchers in the 1930s found that in some cases it was acceptable to beat a childless wife for being ‘barren’. Fifty years on, there’s no happy ending

AIB said this week it owes an ‘immense debt of gratitude’ to the Irish taxpayer. Indeed it does

What was deemed politically unacceptable by British imperialists a century ago is permitted today at hideous cost to the people of Gaza

Airlines will not reduce their carbon footprint if they dramatically increase the number of flights, whatever they say about cutting emissions per passenger

England is accustomed to seeing rivers as a filthy threat, but we can’t let the same thing happen here

The relentless focus on trade has skewed any determination to confront the terrifying echoes of the 1930s. Europeans should be much more vocal about it

Committed socialist and feminist lived through a time when attitudes to women in Irish society were decidedly narrow

Expect book burnings soon to further scapegoat the “enemies of the nation”

Ireland has no equivalent of the Swedish concept of Allemansrätten (everyone’s right to roam) or the 225,000 km of public rights of way in England and Wales

The personal experience he vividly outlined on RTÉ television in 2009 was part of the reason Francis’s visit to Ireland nine years later was so different from the previous Irish papal visit

There are too many wrecked teachers out there; too many hate their jobs; too many depart prematurely

In a country where many utility companies treat their customers with contempt and consumers pay 42 per cent more for goods and services, life admin can be eviscerating

Church leaders are at last embracing much-needed change

The language has become coarser but it is striking how fuelled by testosterone the Dáil has always been

Ireland was never pure, but our 21st century ‘new order’ - with women human trafficked into the sex trade and much focus on toxic masculinity - is alarming

Pope Francis’s pontificate has been about evasion as well as empathy, and he has made it clear holy orders are reserved for men

The Irish approach to foreign policy should not be to exaggerate our purity or indulge dictators, but neither should we parrot criticisms of our neutrality from miliary aligned states

Donald Trump’s presidency has also generated a new focus on questions of identity and doubt in Europe

Continuity of ‘implacable social systems’ witnesses the refloating of an old focus on the back garden

Families have different views on the Omagh inquiry, but what they all hold sacred is the need for their loved ones’ stories to be heard

Enduring power of ‘permanent government’ - the Civil Service - may explain why only ex-ministers speak frankly after leaving government

Technical challenges and cost of extensive underground cabling would be enormous but ESB needs to produce a plan to cope with scale of climate change

Parties involved in present government formation talks owe debt of gratitude to former FG leader, says Prof Diarmaid Ferriter

The outgoing US president will also be remembered for disastrous foreign policy choices, including his refusal to curb the excesses of Israel

The consequences of business as usual are ever more frightening, particularly in relation to climate change

Attitudes to her have been reductive, shaped by the mores of the time and her failed marriage

MacBride asked ‘if those vested with authority and power practice injustice, resort to torture and killing, is it not inevitable that those who are victims will react with similar methods?’

How to achieve the perfect Christmas tree, the perfect table setting, the perfect family time: don’t bother trying. Reject perfection is all its greedy, grabbing guises