The Republic is a rich, young, stable country. So why is it so dysfunctional?

Our climate cheques are bouncing but we still think we are an exceptional people

There are very real ways in which there is no such singular place as Ireland

‘Granny grant’ a symptom of political culture that refuses to build decent public services

Using the 1950s State electricity model would be a sin against the new orthodoxy

Contingency plan was to scare Brussels but really only echoes with ‘Don’t panic!’

Use of WB Yeats by politicians and media is an index of how bad world has become

Extension of Brexit deadline beyond March 2019 is now a vital Irish interest

The humiliation of Trump is the greatest revenge drama since ‘Hamlet’.

When Britain joined the EU it realised the stakes. Now it is mired in petty politicking

Second thoughts are the essence of democracy. The Brexit promised in 2016 has vanished so it is time to ask the people again

Best possible Brexit outcome is the worst of both worlds, a state neither in nor out

Cutting the numbers of migrants will not stop the rise of the far-right because the anxieties it exploits are ultimately not about(...)

What can the far right offer in return for people surrendering democratic power?

The Victorian notion of charity is dying, along with Catholicism and Anglophobia

Babies in cages were no ‘mistake’ by Trump but test-marketing for barbarism

The Anglo Irish Bank boss was inflated by people’s need to believe in his magic money

Pressure is mounting for top bankers’ pay limits to be lifted. It should be resisted

Our national symbol is no longer the Tricolour but a big sign saying ‘12.5%’

The truth is that the Brexiteers don’t give a flying frig for Ireland, North or South

The last Magdalene laundry, which shut only in 1996, should become a memorial centre

Enshrining ‘Amhrán na bhFiann’ in law is out of tune with radically altered identity

The authoritarian version of Catholicism is over. In other forms it is alive and well

Ireland is too ambiguous to sustain culture wars. Post-vote, we need to win the peace for social justice

Ireland has voted No to tribalism and fear in overwhelming decision to remove the Eighth

Twenty years ago we voted for a new vision of Irish nationalism. Don’t let Brexit drive us back

We cannot vote to impose on others what we do not really know ourselves

This is the text of O’Toole’s eulogy delivered at the service in the Mansion House

In 1983, the conservative Catholic John Healy could also be a staunch opponent of the Eighth Amendment

Writer of ‘A Whistle in the Dark’ and ‘Conversations on a Homecoming’ dies at age of 83

Our Republic still exists in the long shadow of shame. Why would it not?

Anti-abortionists depend on pagan England to uphold their vision of a holy Ireland

Ireland has failed to create a health service owned by people and not vested interests

The former taoiseach resigned 10 years ago this weekend. We assess his legacy

Women’s health is a matter of faith and the medical and political authorities must be believed without question

Constitutional ban means Ireland too extreme even for mainstream social conservatives

If Brexiteers knew anything about Irish food they would keep their mouths shut

I was 18 when asked to help a girl get an abortion. I knew it was not about me, it was about her

The rich were only pretending they cared about prudence, law and family values

The party is implicated in what appears to be a serious undermining of the voting process

The blowhard president is poised to bumble into a major military conflict

Effect was arguably to break silence on abortion and make it more acceptable

Essential reading: From bleak pictures at border towns, to the threat of a return to a raw and recent past

He has long seen himself as a victim of widespread media and political efforts to do him down

Decency shouldn’t have to be defined as manly. Belfast rape trial shows what can happen if it isn’t

King’s murder 50 years ago in Memphis represented an irreparable loss to humanity

King delivered this speech on April 3rd, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee. He was shot next day

Why has Save the 8th hired consultant at heart of Trump-Mercer-Brexit data nexus?

Before the Brexit vote back in 2016 the party hired the firm’s AggregateIQ stablemate

Leo Varadkar’s sycophantic US speech was a travesty of Irish culture and history

The Irish culture of my childhood defined Ireland as whatever England was not

We need to take the reactionary threat seriously without taking seriously the grandiose self-image of the reactionaries

The Taoiseach prefers strategic communications to communicating a strategy

Recent history shows the UK cannot deliver a smooth and invisible border

Momentous EU text on the Border has left the DUP and the Tories praying for a miracle

Tory hardliners are driven by a bizarre and contradictory economic determinism

Brexit’s true believers have just realised the treaty makes the hard Brexit they desire virtually impossible

From penalty shoot-outs and the Falklands to Rory McIlroy and bendy bananas

Scholars and critics will use this fine book as the diving board from which to plunge into the fascinating depths of the great Iri(...)

Ten years ago, integration was an imperative. Then the our Republic did nothing

Plan isn’t visionary but €725m might rescue some national institutions from years of neglect

National Development Plan: €75m a year will go a long towards making the main national cultural establishments fit for purpose

A campaign to get Ireland to follow Britain out of the EU is doomed to fail

Having to make rape claim to access abortion services recipe for deceit and hypocrisy

Even the worst Brexit will be nothing like the catastrophe of the Hundred Years War

Behind the College Green bus ban is old-fashioned class discrimination

Ex-Garda chief shed no light on strategy of impugning McCabe’s motives at tribunal

Fintan O’Toole on Christopher Fitz-Simon’s edition of the great theatre director’s delightfully lively letters

Those who favour Eighth Amendment repeal will have to show why it will not lead to ‘screening out’ of people with disabilities

As Donald Trump was sworn in a year ago, few believed he’d be as bad as they feared

The A&E crisis could easily be solved in Catholic hospitals by turning away infidels

The HSE’s grotesque winter festival has become as regular as Christmas

As a father of globalisation Peter Sutherland leaves a problematic legacy

The Crash – 10 years on: Is Ireland a wiser and better-governed place than it was in the years of folly and frolic?

The last moments of ‘The Italian Job’ are a perfect metaphor for the UK in 2018

Fifty years ago the world was on the brink of revolution. Then the right struck back

Nothing will be quite the same after Trump, Weinstein and Brexit

Eighth Amendment law about locking up women and doctors really is step too far

Decades of demonisation made the EU a natural fit in the search for an 'oppressor' to revolt against

Crumlin shook off the negative stereotypes of my youth, but he is bringing them back

The DUP’s brinkmanship and manoeuvring have exposed Britain’s powerlessness

If the UK mirrors customs union, why bother leaving EU in the first place?

Drama of Border talks shows how well EU protects members. Is there a lesson there?

Political damage of McCabe saga rooted in instinct to punish troublemakers

It is not just the Department of Justice that is ‘dysfunctional’. It is Irish democracy

350 years after his birth, Swift’s savage indignation can still reach right into our hearts

‘We have to assume withholding of the emails from Charleton was deliberate’

Our politicians are indulging in high-wire acts when they should be playing poker

An alliance decades in the making is threatened by an utter lack of progress over the post-separation border

The weirdness of this political crisis is that so far it is all cover-up and no crime

We’ve lost our exotic allure without replacing it with the attraction of efficiency

Men and boys are victims both of abuse and of the toxic idea of masculinity that fuels it

The UK’s move may result in a return to the pointless rituals of inspection at the Border

Fintan O’Toole: Ireland has sold its soul but is getting a very good price for it

Cattle disease outbreak showed how State can use every sinew to solve a crisis

Trump – one year on: The president plays a character, one whose divisiveness his supporters adore

A case taken by an actress against a Trinity student in 1747 gives the lie to the notion that there was a time when sexual harrass(...)

Men’s treatment of women will not change unless boys are taught manners

Fintan O'Toole: Shaw changed not what people thought but the way they thought

Fintan O'Toole: It would be easier if the men who do these things were not men but beasts