The betrayal of basic ethics goes so deep only the criminal law can root it out

The banks’ rip-off of customers is not a scandal. It is either a miracle or a crime

George Bernard Shaw knew that the rich are no better than the poor. But though the argument seemed settled then, it now rages more(...)

Tubridy interview with Branson avoided issue of ‘fun’ manhandling of women

Blacklisting ‘The Irish Times’ is an exercise in distraction but it raises important questions

Culture Shock: The ‘Bailegangaire’ writer produces both realism and myth

Atrocities are tolerable when they are fed by a very profitable consumer industry and the fantasies of power it creates

Like the Ireland of his time, Cosgrave’s achievements were a function of his limitations

Eighth Amendment needs to be finally uprooted, not fertilised with yet more equivocations

Despite their deal, the Conservatives are cutting the ground from under their ‘mates’

Theresa May and Brexiteers both insist on a damaging binary view of the UK and Europe

Political solution needed as building industry cannot solve permanent emergency

Fintan O’Toole: Who’d want to be associated with his views on rape? Not advertisers

George Hook’s rape comments are the result of the station’s flagrantly sexist strategy

Martin Keane’s tales of getting the inside track show gap between rhetoric and reality

Leo Varadkar must show steel and support Jeremy Corbyn over Theresa May

Fintan O'Toole: A reimagined republic should define the new Irish identity

We have moved beyond the shame and glory of the past, but have yet to invent our future nation

Ireland’s old markers of land, nationality and religion fail to reflect changes in society

Globalisation, migration and Catholicism’s decline have undermined stories of ourselves

The Brexit position paper feels more like an early move in the blame game than a credible plan. But this is not a game, it’s deadl(...)

Brexit has made Irish unity more likely, but we need to reunify people first

Fintan O’Toole: The artists’ tax exemption scheme has become an embarrasment

British politicians’ time-wasting and ignorance has shifted the balance of power

Cod-Darwinism touted by those who dismiss gender equality does not stack up

If he had stuck with straight misogyny, he would have been fine

Instead of being the last act in a long-running farce that made a mockery of our democracy, the money we paid should be used for a(...)

Governing policies mean that homeless families are now too poor for social housing

Brazen lie underpins republican evasions about 1974 bombings that killed 21

Government meets rugby event deadline but misses one on homeless children

If response to Brexit is just ‘good riddance’, the EU may sleepwalk into its own demise. Our ‘Europe’s Future’ series concludes

System punishes working class misdeeds but turns blind eye to middle-class crime

No Is Not Enough lays out the case against Donald Trump in an accessible but unoriginal way

The Terry Wogan statue in Limerick is a case of a good artist producing bad art

Lessons from bailout show State cannot take goodwill of our European allies for granted

Obfuscating Garda Commissioner has taken unaccountablity to a new level in Ireland

Decades of deriding public service has led the UK and US into political anarchy

Fintan O’Toole: Have shock tactics had their day?

Conservative party thinks of England as it clasps Democratic Unionists to its bosom

Arlene Foster’s DUP will tie British government into believing three impossible things

Gracious Irish political theorist says ‘it’s the message that counts, not the messenger’

Fintan O’Toole: In all of this panic there has been a deep undermining of the idea of political authority

Beckett’s ‘Textes Pour Rien’ convey a sense of being cut adrift from life, from existence itself. Actor Lisa Dwan conveys this abs(...)

Both parties offer versions of an imagined past but Labour’s at least yearns for something real

Fintan O’Toole: Attacks on civil society are futile. Humans have a great capacity to just carry on

China grasps opportunity to be at the forefront of epic battle for planetary survival

Obsequiousness towards Brussels technocracy is as bad for Europe as it is for Ireland

Manchester attack shows if you want to force horror into people’s minds, it is better to attack children

Netflix documentary speaks to Ireland’s uncertain relationship to Catholicism

To home owners with health insurance, the Fine Gael leadership contest is an interesting political battle. To the disaffected citi(...)

The story of a massive donation to the DUP is like a John le Carré novel – but voters need facts, not fiction

Trump’s instinctive gamble has always been that his fans would be happy to live vicariously through him

Blasphemy, Dáil prayer and maternity hospital rows prove the Republic has lost its way

Culture Shock: Colm Tóibín is right to say the Arts Council cnuas plan is ‘oddly North Korean’

Jesus once told nuns to sack pregnant teachers. So why has he changed his mind?

US president could have got cross-party support but chose reality TV-style conflict instead

Maternity hospital debacle a symptom of public services as favours, not rights

Seeing ourselves as opposites used to be a bad idea. Now it might be a necessity

There is prima facie evidence banks carried out a huge fraud. Where are the Garda?

In a culture that swings between tedium and hysteria, art is a democratic necessity

US strikes are a result of the president’s belief that the world must be shaped by his moods

Garda Commissioner survives because Government is asking absurd question

No one in the British government has the courage to be a true patriot

When the UK triggers article 50 Ireland will have to do the thing it hates most: pick a side

After Trump and the Brexiteers betray their voters, who will channel the anger?

A vast system of Catholic repression has left Irish society with four toxic habits of mind

There is tacit racism in the appeal to Trump to make Irish migrants a special case

The Taoiseach should speak as passionately as he did when denouncing the Vatican in 2011

Steve Bannon – Trump’s brain – believes in a single US culture. His white-nationalist ideology gives that notion some sinister ech(...)

Journalists must learn how to cope with a government narrative of danger and decline

After stepping down from Justice, Brian Purcell was handed a plum job at the HSE

The realisation you live in a State in which people with huge power over you will go to such lengths sends a shiver down the spine

In Jordan’s convoluted, overly elaborate fantasy, the best moments are the poignantly human ones, writes Fintan O’Toole

The Irish desire to be in the know makes it easy for abusive institutions to traduce whistleblowers

The explanation for the false file on Garda whistleblower Maurice McCabe defies belief

Drama and conflict are not mistakes – they are the lifeblood of the genre he inhabits

Donald Trump’s chaotic signing of grandiose orders has the air of a deluded despot’s last days, not his first

A leading light of the Irish avant-garde conjures up her father’s wartime experiences

Unionist party’s idiocy and sleazy behaviour threatens Northern Ireland’s foundations

Move to leave the EU feeds into the British taste for celebrating disasters as triumphs

US president’s cabinet is like a punk band with members chosen for inability to perform

Never mind ‘cash for ash’, the party has trashed Northern Ireland’s vital interests

As deputy first minister he showed the same determination with which he led the IRA

First published on January 1st, 1998, this essay helped revive interest in a once neglected but now highly-regarded Irish writer

Like most viruses, fascism adapts to changing environments and it’s just as deadly

Ireland’s greatest conservative revolutionary forced the state to alter the way it saw itself

For the Irish, silence is a way of dealing with, and surviving, traumatic exile

Gardaí have yet to investigate how thousands were tricked into switching mortgages

It could be the year of anarcho-authoritarianism – or the world may come to its senses

But his standing as a public intellectual is coloured by his relationship with Haughey

We live in a post-postwar world but the lessons of history must not be forgotten

Fintan O’Toole on poet Vona Groarke’s elegant, moving meditation on the pain of lost love

Culture review 2016: Seanad National Museum land grab shows depths of philistinism in our political culture

Beneath the seasonal franticity is something fragile, fleeting and precious

Technology has helped big lies breed and multiply. Grand-scale political lying can go hand in hand with violence, oppression and c(...)

INM pensions scandal shows there is no unacceptable face of Irish capitalism

Time and again, those of us who pay property and water taxes are made to feel like fools

Upper chamber’s arrogance shows nothing but contempt for the National Museums

The Ryanair boss could sweep to power with help from complacent establishment

Ireland was one of the worst EU countries at preserving fairness in face of recession