Opinion

Friday 27 April 2018

Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin. Photo: Gerry Mooney

Don't expect any tea or handshakes when bond between 'the lads' ends

Just before voters went to the polls in 2016, Enda Kenny and Joan Burton went for tea in Dublin's Grand Canal Dock.

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar delivers a lecture on the Future of Europe before the Wilfried Martens Fund at the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium. REUTERS/Yves Herman

Comment

Shona Murray: The only way forward is for strict red lines to dissolve

The penny is finally dropping that the UK's red lines on Brexit will have to dissolve significantly if it is to leave the EU in an orderly way, and for Irish priorities in the North to be taken seriously.

Analysis

Eilish O'Regan: This quick-fix remedy will do nothing to solve underlying issues in system

The desperation felt by thousands of public patients on waiting lists who are in failing health and in pain is harrowing.

In this photo provided last Tuesday by the North Korean government, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un claps while watching a performance of a Chinese art troupe with his wife Ri Sol Ju, left, and Song Tao, right, head of the ruling Communist Party’s international department, at East Pyongyang Grand Theatre in Pyongyang, North Korea. Photo: AP

Comment

Kim's nuclear u-turn

On the face of it, North Korea's surprise announcement yesterday to suspend its nuclear and missile tests and shut down its atomic test site showed that Kim Jong-un is making the right gestures ahead of next week's summit with Moon...

Eoghan Harris

Our President should look again at our bloody past

Last February 26 I hoped here that President Higgins would seek a second term as he was best fitted to give us a pluralist position on the coming centenaries of the War of Independence and Civil War.

Martin to pay Ahern peace process tribute after TV walkout

We now have a gig economy in which young people across a broad spectrum of professions — from teaching to retail — live pay cheque to pay cheque. Stock picture

Comment

If we don't kill dreaded gig economy, it will kill us

There was a time, not that long ago, when the word gig still held a certain rock star resonance. When I got my first writing job, a year after college, my friends and I proudly trumpeted that now I had a gig, as opposed to something as tediously permanent and pensionable as a career. We were children of the Celtic Tiger and we took a lot for granted.

There are genuine concerns about the rights of cyclists delivering takeaways, but much else in common debate is just plain wrong. Photo: PA Wire

Dan O'Brien

Calls to make employment great again? That's Trumpian nonsense

There have been bigger gains in employment over the past 18 months than in the first 75 years of this State's existence. That stark fact says more...

Former first lady Barbara Bush. Photo: Getty Images

Ruth Dudley Edwards

Not for nothing was Barbara Bush known as 'The Enforcer'

Barbara Bush, tougher than her husband and known to her family as 'The Enforcer', is probably the most popular of all ex-US first ladies of recent times. Jackie Kennedy is remembered across the globe for elegance and tragedy, but she was not loved. Rosalynn Carter worked hard and was a noted campaigner on issues of mental...

Abused: Alex Skeel was too terrified to report abuse from his girlfriend Jordan Worth who was jailed for seven years

Analysis

Those partners from hell who abuse and hurt their men

A man was standing on the golf course when he saw his wife marching towards him and his friends. When she arrived, she threw a plate of food at him with full force. The reason? He hadn't come home in time for dinner.

Declan Lynch

Beyond country, beyond pop, beyond even mad pop

I think it was the proprietor of one of the great dancehalls of Ireland - the Sound of Music Club, in Glenamaddy (to which there are of course "four roads") - who once divided all the music he had witnessed into three categories. There was "country'n'western", there was "pop", and there was "mad pop".