When Henry Ford dreamed up his revolutionary V-8 engine with its entire eight cylinders cast in one block, his team of engineers told him to a man it was not possible. "Produce it anyway," he replied.
There is a hollow piety around "homelessness". We have introduced a moral cordon sanitaire between us and them. As if dignity and respect hinge on owning property. When we speak of the...
Park Brexit blues for as long as you possibly can. Do not let the huge volumes of autumn rain, presaging another gloomy winter, get to you.
The details which have emerged in the High Court, and are further reported on in this newspaper today, of a protection racket related to the provision of much-needed social housing in...
Turn it into a hotel - that was the brutal judgment of the taxi driver taking me to Parliament Buildings, Stormont, as we in the North near 1,000 days without government.
One never knows what one will find in a "last ditch", but after becoming despairingly lost in the Brexit maze, hope was not on the top of anyone's list.
For some time Brexit has degenerated into a succession of meetings to set an agenda for more meetings about meetings.
There is a pressing case budgets ought to be multi-annual, but Budget 2020 had to be all about the here and now.
If there is one area in which we have been consistently standing in our own way, it is climate change.
Budget Day offers every government an opportunity to set out its stall and show us what it really thinks.
On the face of it, there are good grounds to launch an impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump. The evidence to date seems to be categoric, although we must await all available...
In times of political turbulence there is always a presumption the prospect of imminent disaster will snap everything back into perspective. But with a week and a half to find a deal that would avoid...
There are many voices in Taoiseach Leo Varadkar's ear as final touches are put to the Budget, but the one that roared was that of nature.
Promises are only as strong as those who make them; thus those made by Theresa May were doomed to dissolve from the time she delivered them.
If Brexit was a place, it would be a black hole with the power to distort perception, time and space all at once, an inescapable twilight zone where we are trapped by "non-papers", "non-starters" and...
For generations, discussion of history in these islands stirred anxieties about awkward national skeletons tumbling onto classroom floors.
For some soccer enthusiasts John Delaney was a popular leader of the Football Association of Ireland (FAI) who helped many local developments. Others held a less benign view of the man who was...
At moments of great political change or upheaval, such as that through which many parts of the world are now living, it is reassuring indeed to find that the institutions, new and old, which were put...
Budgets were designed originally as control mechanisms but if mishandled they can easily become traps, especially in times of uncertainty. So if the public is somewhat cynical about...
There is nothing stable in the world; uproar's your only music, wrote Keats.
Any political vision must have a trajectory through reality, but the pendulum of thought on Brexit has been suspended for too long between sense and nonsense.
If Boris Johnson has done nothing else, he has given us a new benchmark for epic failure. He has also left us with an indelible case study on the destructive force of unchecked ineptitude when...
UN climate change pledges are a little like the massive vapour trails left by the squadrons of jets flying world leaders in to New York; they hold the attention fleetingly, before being forgotten.
The kidnap of and attack on Kevin Lunney, the chief operating officer of Quinn Industrial Holdings, has been widely and rightly condemned, but as his friend and colleague, Liam McCaffrey asks in...
We have been here before - but in very different times. In the latter end of the 19th Century, the Guinness family donated vast sums of money for slum clearance and the building of artisan homes...
The abduction of businessman Kevin Lunney and the attack on him were both vicious and sinister. Garda Commissioner Drew Harris was forthright in his depiction of the incident, and how it represents...
It had all the ingredients for a happy, fun-filled day in the heart of the country. Blessed sunshine graced the fields of Carlow as more than 100,000 people from country and town showed up for a...
Appropriately, the women Gaelic players have brought down the curtain on another sporting summer feast of hurling and football. And, as we take a moment to gather breath, the Irish...
The recorded remarks of a national politician at a public meeting to address concerns in relation to the location of a direct provision centre for asylum seekers in Co Galway are deeply disquieting and...
Leo Varadkar has laid down two important markers. Firstly, he believes the next general election should happen in May of next year. Secondly, if the Dáil numbers put his party at number two behind...
They are not called 'cuckoo funds' and 'vulture funds' for nothing. But these entities are a continuing feature of our screwed-up property market, which is inflicting all kinds of injustices...
It was always going to be a "Brexit Budget" on October 8. The only outstanding detail - which we now know definitively - is that it will be prepared as a "no-deal Brexit Budget".
Phil Hogan went to Brussels under a cloud this time five years ago. As the author of two unpopular taxes - one of which did not fly at all - he was characterised as a "busted flush" in Irish...
It is often hard to find the right side of the line between assertion and aggression. But in fairness to Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, he found the right side of that line yesterday as he played host to UK...
It is important to keep one salient point in view today as the UK prime minister, Boris Johnson, visits Dublin for his first face-to-face meeting with Taoiseach Leo Varadkar.
While the extraordinary events in the UK in relation to Brexit are, at one level, an amusing spectacle for some, these events are nonetheless deeply troubling for many people in Ireland as various...
For now, Boris Johnson's "sunny uplands" view of a problem-free post-Brexit has been temporarily eclipsed by the inconvenience of representative democracy. But only for now.
If Brexit was conceived - as it sometimes seems - purely as an experiment by a cabal of ill-advised politicians to outsmart reality, they have come undone for now. Their zeal for their project...
If history is about keeping score, looking back at what happened in Westminster to Boris Johnson yesterday will not be marked down as his finest hour.
When efforts to forge a key to break a deadlock seem futile, the temptation to make a bolt for it - if you will pardon the pun - can be irresistible.
Once again, the men in green and gold showed that when it comes to the big game, you undervalue Kerry football at your peril. On the day, they missed a penalty and two good goal chances,...
Trying to figure out the mind of Boris Johnson has become an obsession among European leaders, but it is a fruitless task, because everything he says seems to contradict a previous utterance.
Dickens liked to refer to Westminster as the national cinder heap. Remainers, who saw many of their hopes in ashes this week, would probably agree.
Playing dumb is not the best avoidance technique in the face of imminent confrontation.
Convention dictates a UK prime minister must first draft four letters before taking the nuclear option. The ritual demands a full briefing on all threats before various defence chiefs hand over the codes.
So much about Brexit has been phoney, it can be difficult to keep hold of reality.
The reason our healthcare system has long been something of an outlier within Europe is because private care can be had in public facilities. This advantages those with money in that they may...
The fires burning in the rainforests of Brazil serve as an apt metaphor for fragility in our world order. When meetings like the G7, established to promote agreement and strength in unity, present more...
When the Taoiseach threatened to veto the EU-Mercosur trade deal unless the Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, took action to combat the raging fires threatening the Amazon rainforest, it was...
Writing of Las Vegas, novelist Ian Fleming identified a new school of architecture he called: 'The Gilded Mousetrap School.'
