All posts by Ned Gubbins

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...

/ 05/03/2026

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...

/ 13/02/2026

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...

/ 10/02/2026

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...

/ 29/01/2026

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...

/ 23/01/2026

Simon On Substack: Will the Tánaiste’s Dog whistling Bury Right-Wing Populism?

Asylum: The Centre Strikes Back If centrist and centre-right promises to hem in mass migration had ever carried real policy weight, London would today remain overwhelmingly native-born thanks to Tory and New Labour promises. Readers should assess Tánaiste Simon Harris’s...

/ 10/01/2026

Maduro in Chains: How Should Ireland React to the End of Multilaterialism

The liberal multilateral world is ending not because it was defeated by a rival vision, but because it could no longer reproduce the conditions that made it believable.

/ 04/01/2026
© European Union, 2025

Babiš and Bertie: Why Fianna Fáil Didn’t Follow Their Czech Counterparts into Populism

Prague’s Populist Paladin The boom could be back in Prague with Czech voters opting to return neoliberal businessman turned populist kingpin Andrej Babiš to power despite desultory claims of Russian interference. A Slovak who made his fortune creating the agri-chemical...

/ 17/12/2025
Houses of the Oireachtas from Ireland

The O’Callaghan Compact: Is Ireland Already Reneging on the EU Migration Pact?

If the state succeeds in scaling its systems, reception centres, and so on, Ireland could stabilise its asylum regime and integrate smoothly into the EU’s new migration framework. If it fails, the country risks slipping into an uncomfortable halfway house...

/ 10/12/2025

Justizposse! Bogus Shoplifting Case Dropped Against AfD MEP as State Lawfare Intensifies

A long-running criminal case against former Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) MEP Gunnar Beck has collapsed in spectacular form at a German district court, bringing an end to a series of accusations that had shifted dramatically in scope over two years. ...

/ 03/12/2025