Fintan O'Toole

In allowing himself to appear as the creature of Michael Lowry, the Taoiseach seems oblivious to the damage he is doing to his own character

It’s hard to see how super juniors bringing “their own memos” to cabinet meetings for decision by Government can be lawful

In the grey zones between deal and no deal, nothing will be written down for prying eyes to discover under FOI. We are back in the land of the unknown knowns

What happened to the need to end commuting and presenteeism? Or to our gratitude for healthcare workers or our resolution to change how we care for older people?

There is a statute of limitations on civic virtue as Lowry is openly embraced as the power broker of the new government

When it comes to predicting the future, you might as well ask an astrologer as a rational expert

My family spent Christmas 1997 in New York. I recently found the letters that my then seven-year-old’s classmates wrote to him

Author repeats success with sequel to his debut The Spinning Heart, which won award in 2012

The idea that the Green Party was making us all go too far too fast is the exact opposite of the truth

There were soon much more exotic ways to be a teenager than going into violent hysterics for Dickie Rock, but for a time, he filled the gap between who Irish teenagers were and who they were supposed to be

The Irish Times columnist has made a new documentary about his life for RTÉ. Here he looks back on a career that he began as the Michelangelo of Tipp-Ex

What audiences are told before gigs at St James’ Church says it all: turn off your phone and just be in the moment

The State is entering a holding pattern, circling a future somewhere between high anxiety and extraordinary opportunity

State’s short-term future is shaped simultaneously by wild optimism and existential anxiety

The extremely self-conscious uncoupling of the two centre-right parties is so obviously an act, it’s like a game of cards in which the stakes are matchsticks. But Sinn Féin isn’t much better

Vigorous and critically minded history proves that the shifting and sometimes contradictory ‘social construct’ of Irish America cannot be reduced to one singular identity

The far right has been much better than the left at giving voters the illusion that it has an accurate map across these liminal spaces

The expansion of the State is no longer a lefty position in Irish politics. It is pretty much everybody’s position

It is no longer possible to batten down the hatches and think 'this too will pass'

No prosecutions, no financial costs, no names and damn all shame