Ciarán O’Connor’s Iranian Bots: Time for Irish Media to Register ISD as Foreign Agents
The Irish Times op-ed pages have long enjoyed the rare distinction of irritating both left and right, largely through its habit of quietly importing the anxieties of British securocrats and repackaging them as native concerns. From ritualised scoldings about Ireland’s...
Murphy Versus Molnárfi: Has Fuel Protests Broken Back of Left Populism
Dublin enters its third day of partial blockade and slow moving motorcades from hauliers and farmers alike as the government ponders the deployment of the Defence Forces to clear vital arteries. Responding to price spike in the wake of the...
Ellen Coyne’s Fringe: Women’s Coalition on Immigration Leaves IT Flummoxed
If Ellen Coyne was trying hard not to sound startled this week then it clearly isn’t working. The Joe.ie turned Irish Times corridor whisperer took to print and podcast to passively aggressively condemn the launch of Women's Coalition on Immigration...
After the Iran Energy Shock, Will Ireland Reconsider Green Absolutism?
Seven years on from the green-wave of 2019 that reshaped Irish energy policy the nation is staring down the (rather empty) barrel of a fuel crisis driven by turmoil in the Middle East. Over a week since Operation Midnight Hammer...
DoJ: No Obligation For Ireland To Issue Visas After EU Trade Deal
The Department of Justice has sought to play down suggestions that the EU–India free trade deal will automatically open the Irish labour market to increased migration, stressing that control over visas and employment permits remains firmly in national hands. In...
Kinahan to Clonskeagh: Understanding Ireland’s Dubai Connection
Sean McGovern’s belated extradition is perhaps the latest episode in a fifty-year-long love-in between the Republic of Ireland and the UAE. A Kinahan henchman who benefited from the Drimnagh to Dubai ratline that facilitated gangland's top brass since the Regency...
The Yookay’s Years of Lead: Will Reform Rupture the British Security State?
Should Keir Starmer fall on his sword in the aftermath of the Mandelson Affair, it would make seven the number of prime ministers to have been in and out of Downing Street within ten years of the Brexit vote. So...
Irish Art’s UBI Moment: Don’t Put Artists on the Subsidy Leash
The pandemic years tilted the stage in ways that the everyman can barely perceive, particularly in the power relationship between the Irish state and the media. A slew of emergency subsidies and support schemes quietly rewired incentives and normalised state...
How to Stop an Irish Boriswave
What Happened and What's Next? Right-wing condemnation abounded online this week upon news of the signing of a new cooperation agreement between the EU and India with explicit mention of steaming migration between Europe and the subcontinent. In the works...
Imperial America: Ireland and Washington’s Expanding Biometric Border Regime
The rupturing of transatlantic relations continues to define the diplomatic calendars of both Iveagh House and European capitals with scant attention being paid to moves by Washington to hoover up the biometric data of EU citizens. Referred to by policy...