Fintan O'Toole

Finatan O'Toole columns

Fintan O’Toole: Abortion is one of the unstated issues behind Joe Biden’s trip to Ireland

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

Sat Apr 15 2023 - 05:00

A glaring omission

Leaving David Trimble out

Fri Apr 14 2023 - 02:00

An inclusive Northern Ireland

A critical moment

Thu Apr 13 2023 - 03:30

The church’s contributions

Recognising the values and goodness the Catholic Church brought to Ireland

Thu Apr 13 2023 - 02:00

Biden’s visit to Ireland

Questioning traditions

Wed Apr 12 2023 - 04:00

Fintan O’Toole: JFK embodied an idea of what Ireland aspired to be, Biden embodies an idea of what we used to be

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

Tue Apr 11 2023 - 05:00

Fintan O’Toole: Shape of Belfast Agreement was in many respects as predictable as a rabbit in a magician’s hat

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

Sat Apr 8 2023 - 05:00

Fintan O’Toole: We must reclaim the great democratic spirit of the 1998 Belfast Agreement

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

Fri Apr 7 2023 - 05:00

Fintan O’Toole: Irish Army’s culture of misogyny is a disgrace and must end here

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

Tue Apr 4 2023 - 05:00

Ten Irish literary gems to read before you die, chosen by Roy Foster, Fintan O’Toole, Lucy Caldwell and more

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

Mon Apr 3 2023 - 05:00

Fintan O’Toole: Those who despise Trump have allowed his real crimes to be overshadowed

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

Fri Mar 31 2023 - 15:32

Ireland in the 1980s was a dire place - but then our new patron saint arrived

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

Tue Mar 28 2023 - 05:00

Fintan O’Toole: How journalists were complicit in one of the great con jobs of modern times

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

Sat Mar 25 2023 - 05:00

It took a working-class lad from Wigan to make me like rugby

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

Tue Mar 21 2023 - 00:00

Fintan O’Toole: Burke family values are reflected in Irish Constitution

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

Sat Mar 18 2023 - 05:00

Fintan O’Toole: Gary Lineker debacle is all part of the continuing saga of Britain eating itself

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

Tue Mar 14 2023 - 05:00

Fintan O’Toole: You have to be middle-aged before you can become middle-class in Ireland

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

Sat Mar 11 2023 - 05:00

Fintan O’Toole: What unionists should really be fretting about is their love for Britain is increasingly unrequited

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

Tue Mar 7 2023 - 05:00

Fintan O’Toole: A cold-blooded continuity links Kerry Babies scandal and Ballyseedy massacre

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

Sat Mar 4 2023 - 05:00

Fintan O’Toole: DUP must confront truth that its own actions detached North from British mothership

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

Tue Feb 28 2023 - 05:00

Fintan O’Toole: People screaming abuse at asylum seekers are not stupid. They do it because they enjoy it

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

Sat Feb 25 2023 - 05:00

Harry Potter and Sally Rooney among most borrowed library books last year

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

Thu Feb 23 2023 - 14:35

Fintan O’Toole: The West is pursuing different agendas in Ukraine

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

Wed Feb 22 2023 - 05:00

Fintan O’Toole: Why it is so good to have Bertie back about the place

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

Sat Feb 18 2023 - 05:00

Fintan O’Toole: At every stage of this extraordinary saga, the State knew it was acting unlawfully

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

Tue Feb 14 2023 - 05:00

Fintan O’Toole: Well-off Irish people do the most climate damage and must pay the price

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

Sat Feb 11 2023 - 05:00

Fintan O’Toole: State has a habit of paying up to the strong and harassing the weak

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

Tue Feb 7 2023 - 00:01

Fintan O’Toole: Ireland still lacking the sense of shared space needed for unity to become a reality

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

Sat Feb 4 2023 - 05:00

Fintan O’Toole: The ‘great national drama’ of Brexit has lapsed into sullen silence

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

Tue Jan 31 2023 - 05:00

Fintan O’Toole: Enoch Burke is no freak. His extreme logic was part of Irish education for years

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

Fri Jan 27 2023 - 05:00

Fintan O’Toole: Irish ‘moral hazard’ means being bailed out by the State if you build a slum

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

Tue Jan 24 2023 - 05:00

Fintan O’Toole: Putin’s gamble was based on his contemptuous estimate of the democratic world. He was wrong

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

Sat Jan 21 2023 - 05:00

Fintan O’Toole: Ireland faces a rising threat from a far-right that is growing in ambition

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

Tue Jan 17 2023 - 05:00

Fintan O’Toole: Is the State producing higher levels of education than it can employ?

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

Sat Jan 14 2023 - 05:00

Fintan O’Toole: Ireland’s dysfunctional health service crushes idealism and rewards cynicism

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

Tue Jan 10 2023 - 05:00

Fintan O’Toole: We have taken flight from deep link with birds

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

Sat Jan 7 2023 - 05:00

Fintan O’Toole: Elevation of child poverty to national priority a genuine political breakthrough

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

Tue Jan 3 2023 - 05:00

Fintan O’Toole: Half a century on we can see the benefits of Ireland joining Europe’s top table

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

Sat Dec 31 2022 - 05:00

Fintan O’Toole: I don’t miss the Ireland that required us to marry in secret

Ireland’s present is not perfect but its past was grim, one of hypocrisy and economic failure

Tue Dec 27 2022 - 00:00

Fintan O’Toole: Musk’s tantrum capitalism explodes myth of buccaneering libertarianism

Rampant egomania is not creation. It is not even, in the jargon of neoliberalism, creative destruction. It is merely destruction

Tue Dec 20 2022 - 05:00

Fintan O’Toole: The kids who were knowingly impoverished by austerity policies will pay the price for decades

After the great Irish banking and property crash of 2008, the sinners got three Hail Marys but the innocent had to stay on their knees for five years

Sat Dec 17 2022 - 05:00

Fintan O’Toole: We speak the cúpla focal of United Irishese

Big difference between believing ‘in’ something and believing you are then required to do something about it

Tue Dec 13 2022 - 00:00

Fintan O’Toole: Ireland has had one big idea in the last 64 years

Ireland has been working on a model of attracting big US corporations, but the rules of attraction are changing fast

Sat Dec 10 2022 - 05:00

Fintan O’Toole: In many ways the Irish State has still to create itself

For the first 50 years after independence there were good arguments against the utility of the State; but then came two transformative moments

Tue Dec 6 2022 - 05:00

Fintan O’Toole: Impossible to think of Cromwell in Ireland without acknowledging catastrophe

Cromwell had the intelligence to understand the need for doubt but not the capacity to practise it

Sat Dec 3 2022 - 05:00

Fintan O’Toole: State risks being complicit in conspiracy of silence unless it acts on religious orders’ records

If the public is liable for what the orders did, their records cannot be regarded as private. They’ve been paid for already

Tue Nov 29 2022 - 05:00

Fintan O’Toole: Has there ever been such a concentration of sheer idiocy on the world stage?

The World Cup has turned into a death rattle for the era when carbon was king

Sat Nov 26 2022 - 05:45

Fintan O’Toole: Everybody found ways not to know what they knew about institutionally sanctioned abuse

Decades of shame-filled silence lie behind delayed reactions to institutionally sanctioned abuse

Tue Nov 22 2022 - 05:00

Fintan O’Toole: Ireland should not need heroines like Vicky Phelan

State’s savage imperative of self-disclosure meant Phelan had to make her private illness a political matter

Sat Nov 19 2022 - 05:00

Fintan O’Toole: Time to revisit the role of John Charles McQuaid

McQuaid was rigorously consistent – in ensuring that abusers were protected from the law and allowed to carry on destroying young lives

Tue Nov 15 2022 - 05:00

Crosswords & Puzzles

Crosswords & puzzles to keep you challenged and entertained

The Irish Times ePaper

France 2003

Rugby World Cup: match analysis, interviews, fixtures and results

Stardust

Inquests into the nightclub fire that led to the deaths of 48 people

Family Notices

Weddings, Births, Deaths and other family notices

Fintan O'Toole

YOU MAY ALSO LIKE...

Subscribe

Support

About Us

Irish Times Products & Services