One of the rather more desperate attempts by Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil to recoup lost ground to Sinn Féin has been to focus on the latter party’s apparent track record in voting against proposals to build housing developments. Sinn Féin has indeed pursued inconsistent policies, as we shall see, but the political reality is […]
The claim that all improvements in living conditions are illusionary distractions was pioneered first by Lenin in What is to be Done? and updated as part of new left ideology in the 1960s by Marcuse and the Frankfurt School of Marxism. It still forms the basis of current identity politics in which the traditional working […]
Bombshell?
The Economic and Social Research Institute has this morning published a paper by one of its economists Kieran McQuinn on the likely short term future of the housing market in Ireland. The paper is largely technical regarding budgetary projections, but its main focus is on how state intervention in the housing market could be increased […]
An ESRI report published today examines the persistence of poverty among families with children. The report, The Dynamics of Child Poverty: Evidence from the Growing Up in Ireland Survey, is based on thousands of families in two cohorts of those with children aged 0 – 9 years in 1998 and 9 – 18 in 2008. […]
NGO: The National Women’s Council of Ireland Purpose: Self-appointed spokespersons for every woman in Ireland, including women who were born male. Funding: Almost €1,000,000 (in 2018) per year from the taxpayer, another €90,000 or so from the EU and foreign groups. Just €15,000 in voluntary donations. Expenditure: Some €700,000 on 14 employees, and another €100,000 […]
Our housing policy is a mess from left and right. Time to put people first again. Housing is a central issue for any society. Ensuring that people have somewhere to live, and that where they live is of tolerable standards, is fundamental to any viable community. How to provide it is one of the most […]
Two of the best known writers of the 1950s in the United States were Whitaker Chambers, the exposer of Communist Party/Soviet penetration of the American administration and author of Witness; and Ayn Rand who wrote the bestselling novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. Both remain betes noir of the left, but they had little in […]
I was ten in 1974. It was the year that I mainly remember for the fact that Dublin won the All-Ireland and I had been at my first big game – although not my first ever game – in Croke Park, when they beat Cork in the semi-final. The other main memory I have is […]
While the Climate Change Bill attracted most of the political attention this week – with just 12 TDs voting to oppose the legislation at second stage – of equal significance was a vote also taken on Wednesday evening on a motion regarding Project 2040 comprising of the National Development Plan and Framework. The private members […]
An Taisce has once again succeeded in annoying many people over its ongoing objection to a proposed cheese processing plant in Kilkenny. The project which will potentially create a large number of much needed jobs has been approved by Kilkenny County Council and An Bord Pleanala and survived a High Court challenge last week. However, […]
A report on Sky News Australia last night has added another dimension to the debate over the origins of the Covid-19 panic. This follows the claim which Gript covered last week that the virus had been artificially created in a laboratory in Wuhan, and then escaped into the general population. None of this implies that […]