To be fair, they won’t have much choice in the matter. If Ireland keeps spending money like a drunken sailor, then sooner or later, Brussels will step in and tell them that they have to stop, for the sake of the wider eurozone. That might suit Irish politicians just fine, though, since they’ll be able […]
It goes without saying that the big problem with Northern Ireland is that almost everything in it is, or has been, completely corrupted by tribal politics and whataboutery. A wrong committed by one “side” can, and will, inevitably be matched by a wrong committed by the other. The history of that place is alive, and […]
Irish liberals have spent the last half decade accusing everyone remotely to the right of Karl Marx of being a “Nazi-Fascist-Far-Right-Uber-Hitler.” But now that label has been levelled at the government and their lockdown, that comparison is too far and simply beyond the pale. The controversy came when Mattie McGrath TD of the Rural Independent […]
On Sunday night I heard a commotion out on the road. Rambunctious voices were passing and one was singing “football’s coming home.” At first I thought England had won the European cup, then I looked up the result and the reason for the celebratory atmosphere became clear. How things have changed. When Ireland made the […]
President Higgins, for all of his life, has been a man of the left. Although his views on international affairs have not always aligned with his personally expressed support for civil liberties, he has, nonetheless, always taken the side of personal freedom in political discussions in Ireland. His biography on the official website of the […]
Boris Johnson’s two chief scientific advisors, Professors Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance, were in front of the media yesterday to face a grilling on Johnson’s plans to fully re-open the UK next week. The assembled media (doing their job, to be fair) were very eager to poke holes in the plan, and extract quotes about […]
Some people, including many readers, will be downcast by this, or angry, or feel that their suspicions have been validated. Personally, though, it is not something that overly concerns me, for reasons set out below. If it is necessary, then sign me up: Pfizer says it plans to meet with top U.S. health officials Monday […]
As we noted last week on Gript, the result of the Dublin Bay South bye-election, where the media set the posh against the privileged, was never going to be much of a surprise. The constituency is one of the wealthiest areas in the country. As far as gated houses and disposable incomes are concerned, DBS is not so […]
As new delays and price hikes to the National Children’s Hospital are announced, it’s worth looking back to 2016 at the broken promises and false assurances of then-Health Minister Leo Varadkar. The hospital, which had been planned since 1993, and was originally to be completed by 2014, only received planning permission from An Bord Pleánala […]
The author is a senior executive working in the energy sector in Ireland whose identity is known to Gript. We have agreed to provide him anonymity so that he can speak freely. As our inexorable march towards an all wind and solar electricity system gathers pace the island of Ireland is careering towards a winter […]
In 1962, President John F Kennedy committed to “an across-the-board, top-to-bottom cut in personal and corporate income taxes.” The tax system, he argued, “exerts too heavy a drag on growth; it siphons out of the private economy too large a share of personal and business purchasing power; it reduces the financial incentives for personal effort, […]
It would not really be accurate to say that Mayo played Leitrim in a Connaught Championship game yesterday afternoon. It would be more accurate to say that Mayo held a training session, while 15 Leitrim men stood on the pitch, and admired them. At half time, the score was Mayo 3-11, Leitrim four points. Sport […]