Fintan O'Toole

So many of the aspirations that fuelled the creation of the State quickly curdled into pious rhetoric at odds with reality. The future was just an attic in which we dumped all our present failures

Potent phrase is a touchstone of Irish-American identity. But it is a distorted and retrospective term which does a disservice to migrants drowning at sea

Biden plays a low, slow game, and he hopes the coverage from Ireland will drip steadily into the subconscious of some swing voters

Leaving David Trimble out

A critical moment

Recognising the values and goodness the Catholic Church brought to Ireland

Questioning traditions

Seamless merging of US president’s sense of Irishness with his Catholic faith at odds with how we now see ourselves

Political theatre helped to disguise the fact that the Belfast Agreement was a conjuring act to wipe the memory that most of it had already been agreed long ago

Have we used the past 25 years as well as we should have? Undoubtedly not

The typical offenders are not the rough soldiery but well-educated members of the officer class

From Chrysal to My Dream of You to The Pale Gold of Alaska, these neglected books are all worthy of your time

Donald Trump is revelling in this mad episode which trivialises the serious state of US democracy

If the wafer of the Host was the Church’s miraculous object, Intel’s wafer was the Pentium chip – the beating pulse of the IT revolution

The media played a large role in justifying the invasion of Iraq 20 years ago

Perhaps we should contemplate the terrifying idea that Andy Farrell has achieved what he has for Ireland not in spite of being English but precisely because he’s English

The Burke family believe what Bunreacht na hÉireann says we’re all supposed to believe. Let's drop God from our Constitution

You can cancel people who make stupid comments on social media. Or you can take a measured approach

By my mid-20s I owned a home, had a third-level education and a white-collar job. It’s very different for that age group today

Opinion: There will be no Westminster revolt over the Windsor Framework

In the violent circumstances of its birth, the State acquired habits that were very hard to shake off

Northern Ireland protocol row has been a reality distortion field – it has made realities seem illusory and illusions seem real

The toxic ideas of a century ago have seeped back into currency. A third of Americans now say they believe in the Great Replacement

Children’s titles take up 19 of top 20, as Rooney’s latest novel is most borrowed adult title

Supporting Ukraine is costing the US a mere 5.6% of its annual military budget. In return, it gets to degrade Russia’s military capacity by 50% – so far

As a living relic of old indecency. Bertie Ahern is a valuable reminder of how things used to be in Ireland

Attorney General’s report on nursing home charges masks basic question of how a democracy should respond to violation of constitutional order in layers of evasion

Costs of carbon reduction should not be ‘shared’ equally but must be borne mainly by the rich

Department of Health did not challenge those who refused to pay nursing home fees. It hammered only those who were too poor to hire a lawyer

Fintan O’Toole: If a Border poll is going to happen, it will be crucial the proposition is not just a slogan

The poorest people in Ireland now have a standard of living 63% higher than their counterparts in Britain

This country has often allowed the rights of those who believe they are acting in God’s name to trump those of students

Edifice of private responsibility has been demolished, replaced with a facade of public liability still costing the Government billions

The least the democratic world owes to the dead in Ukraine is the determination to stop sleepwalking towards its own destruction. There’s five big things we have learned from Putin’s folly

Protests against refugees are fuelled by misinformation and a residual element seeking to hate an ‘Other’

Is there a generation that is potentially open to the idea of very radical change? Almost certainly

Why is the culture so resistant to positive change? Three historical reasons suggest themselves

Birds animate our physical world but so many species in Ireland are rapidly winging it towards extinction

In a country sensitised to child abuse, we seem oddly reluctant to accept that official neglect is also abusive

State joined the EEC immediately after the bloodiest year in the history of the Troubles