The "squeezed middle" did not volunteer to be interminably trapped between a hard landing and a Government wrecking ball, but that is pretty much how it has played out. Tasc, the State think-...
Let us be honest. Nobody, least of all its principals, quite expected this strange hybrid-minority Coalition to last the greater part of three years.
The Fianna Fail leader, Micheal Martin, has said that his party has been criticised on an "almost daily basis" for extending the confidence and supply deal which supports the Fine Gael-led minority...
When nothing is at stake it's easy to see how waste on a grand scale can go unnoticed. Testament to this is the number of failures in political management in tandem with a total absence of...
We had hoped Poland's foreign minister was a different drummer marching in another direction when he broke ranks with the EU band, suggesting last month that Ireland has "treated the UK...
It will soon be a year since the controversy over cervical cancer began.
Few sights are as satisfying to the Opposition and the public as the self-flagellation of a minister.
In industrial relations, as in other aspects of life, no one can know their own worth until it is reflected back to them through some recognition from another.
Men and women in business face many risks and hazards. Those who persist never lack the courage to tackle the big challenges. Often they can cope with adversity but sometimes they cannot avoid...
While the analysis published today which shows that the rate of inflation in the accommodation rental sector has slowed significantly in the last almost full year is welcome news, it is still too early to...
If. A big if. The Taoiseach caveated his support for his Minister for Health by noting he had not been provided with all of the information that would be regarded as reasonable.
It's an ill wind that blows no one any good.
'The truth is rarely pure and never simple," wrote Oscar Wilde in 'The Importance of Being Earnest'.
The definition of insanity is said to be doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
Simon Harris had his trademark furrowed brow at the ready for the RTÉ 'Six One News' last night. The Health Minister frequently deploys the facial expression to show he is concerned. Very...
A new law to improve protections available to victims of domestic violence under both the civil and criminal law has been introduced, with a creation of a new offence of "coercive control".
Robert Oppenheimer, one of the fathers of the atomic bomb, said: "Any man whose errors take 10 years to correct is quite a man."
Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe prides himself as being prudent. It is an admirable thing for the Government to bend the knee at the altar of frugality. Yet the evidence of its adoption of a...
Many have compared Theresa May's peregrinations to 'Alice in Wonderland', but this is unfair, as even the most ardent lovers of fantasy will still insist on a story having a beginning, middle and an end.
Deaf to the increasingly abrupt dismissals of endless entreaties to "bin the backstop", Theresa May has assumed the guise of a latter-day Lord Cardigan, intent on another charge of the Tory Light...
Hardened bluffers appreciate there comes a point when you have to go all in to get out; and so the Brexit stakes are at their highest today in Westminster.
In an article published last week, 30 of Europe's leading intellectuals, including the Irish author Colm Toibin, issued a rallying cry against the "false prophets" of populism which have placed Europe...
In the darker days of the Troubles, Seamus Heaney wrote about "the voice of sanity getting hoarse". Whatever about sanity, we must at least demand a voice of clarity and truth at the 11th hour on...
According to Aesop's Fables: "A doubtful friend is worse than a certain enemy. Let a man be one thing or the other, and we then know how to meet him."
Concealed in a musty recess of Government Buildings there must be a hobgoblin with a rank sense of humour relishing off-colour jokes at the public's expense.
Have we become so used to viewing Brexit as a drunk staggering from one side of the bar to the other, that we have stopped thinking about what happens should he fall flat on his face? If so,...
The tumultuous and momentous sitting of the first Dáil a century on is being marked all over the country.
As the negotiations on Brexit enter a crucial and, probably, defining phase, the need for calm heads and wise counsel has never been more essential. The options available to the United Kingdom and the EU have been narrowed and more clearly defined by recent events in the House of Commons to the point that one of three outcomes now look likely: the current withdrawal deal, heavily rejected in the Commons last week, is revived and somehow secures the necessary majority support; the UK crashes out of the EU on March...
Suspension of reason can sometimes be a good thing, especially in theatre, and such escapism has an end - but not in Brexit.
It was John F Kennedy who pointed out: "If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich."
Any delusions we had of putting the prospect of a hard Border to bed forever have been stripped away in Westminster. Truth doesn't change according to our ability to stomach it.
You know you are in a dark place when the argument centres on whether you were destroyed or merely defeated.
Theresa May's date with EU fate comes tomorrow and all the omens appear rather discouraging. She is most unlikely to get the necessary MPs' approval for her unloved EU-UK divorce deal and is...
The suspected arson attack on a former hotel on the Leitrim-Roscommon border that was to open as a centre for asylum seekers has been rightly and widely condemned.
Those scratching their heads attempting to make sense of President Trump's behaviour can't agree on much.
Theresa May need only look in the driver's mirror to understand why the engine of government has come to a spluttering stop with backbenchers at the wheel.
If it's true the next best thing to solving a problem is finding some humour in it, then fair play to Tory Environment Secretary Michael Gove. He skittishly compared MPs waiting for something better than...
In the US infantry, it was said that anything under 10 miles was "almost there..."
Bad news for many is that the holidays definitely end with a thud today. Worse news is that we still have all that Brexitology to garnish our January blues. Worst of all, there is no end in sight.
There has been much doom-saying over recent months, a sense that we are somehow fated to repeat the mistakes of the relatively recent and raucous past. It is not without reason. This...
Even at this late hour there appears to be no end to what one British newspaper has described as the hallucinogenic phase of Brexit. Notions of clean breaks, with £39bn (€43bn) in the back...
He paid the price for being premature, but Enda Kenny's jarring 'Keep the recovery going' mantra has come to pass.
Governments with an unhealthy preoccupation with appearances develop a destructive habit of distorting realities.
New years are supposed to be about novelty, fresh starts and frontiers. If the Government had a foundry for panel-beating the dents out of promises that have been overturned, it would be very...
Just as we are beginning to emerge from the aftershocks of a harsh economic decade, we understandably dislike hearing that hints of economic storm clouds are yet again detectable...
The scandalous overrun in the National Children's Hospital is the latest example of the cost of such major State capital projects spiralling out of control. Now heading for €1.73bn, when IT and...
They say the work of diplomats continues even as others fight - clearly not everybody needs to be in the firing line.
A female British prime minister greatly at odds with her difficult and inflexible Irish counterpart.
Inertia is a disastrous response to an alarm bell. Yet since 2001, when a study from the Department of the Environment first suggested that 27pc of our coastline was at risk from coastal erosion,...
GK Chesterton loved to recall the "beautiful intentional paradox" on which Christmas is built; the celebration of the homeless in every home.
