All posts by Donal Horgan

Will Anyone Acknowledge Ireland’s Rental Pressure Zone Failure?

With 5,405 eviction notices issued in Q3 of 2025, it looks like 2026 is going to be a particularly grim year for renters in Ireland. The Residential Tenancies Board (RTB) reported a 35% increase in eviction notices being issued over...

/ 13/01/2026

David McCullagh: “So back to the 1930s….?”

The thing is McCullagh is no random RTÉ cub news presenter. He is, of course, an historian and published author in his own rite. His quip revealed a deeper institutional bias not just at RTÉ but within the political establishment...

/ 28/11/2025

Fine Gael’s Housing Crisis

Ireland’s ongoing housing crisis has provided a discordant note to the official government narrative that we are somehow living in a golden age. The figure of 10,000 homeless is only the tip of the iceberg. For a generation of renters...

/ 30/03/2019

RTÉ and the Case for Reforming Public Service Broadcasting

No sooner had the toys from this year’s Late Late Toy Show been tidied away than the RTÉ suits were turning their attention to the real business of the night – the audience rating figures. It may term itself as...

/ 16/01/2019

Can Irish Journalism Save Itself?

With its pre-budget calls for VAT reductions on newspapers and taxpayer funded schemes, the recent NewsBrands Ireland #JournalismMatters campaign sounds more like a plaintive SOS than a viable plan for the future of the Irish newspaper industry. The scale of...

/ 24/11/2018

Language, Spin and Irish Politics

“It seems that our public life is now to be dominated by spin and that plain speaking is elided in favour of meaningless public relations speak.” - Mr. Justice Peter Charleton In his latest report on the Disclosures Tribunal, Mr....

/ 17/10/2018

Welcome to the Metrostate

Just over one hundred years ago, Patrick Pearse famously stepped out of Dublin’s GPO to read the Proclamation to a somewhat bemused Dublin populace. Pearse’s reading of the Proclamation is generally viewed as the founding act of a new independent...

/ 12/09/2018