Comment: We removed the Good Friday alcohol ban for capital. It was a mistake
Some of the best house parties of my college years were on Good Friday.
Paulie Doyle
Comment: The trouble with Experts
Years before my job with The Ditch, I worked freelance for Irish and British magazines. The subjects I was assigned were often interesting, but putting together articles could be mechanical.
Comment: The true nature of the Irish-US relationship can't be denied
There’s a revisionist Irish history that goes like this.
Comment: In this house, Chaim Herzog is a hero
I like to work The Sopranos into classes I teach. Earlier this year, while teaching a module on narrative studies, I played one of my favourite scenes for some undergraduates.
Comment: Taking things Seriously
I knew things were about to get pretty Serious when I saw Stephen Collins. The Irish Times columnist had written yet another piece explaining we’d better start acting like adults because our betters in Europe and the United States aren’t looking at us favourably right now.
Comment: You don’t need to be left to know the establishment lies about Catherine Connolly
Ivan Yates was at least honest about the tactics he would need to use to get a candidate like Heather Humphreys elected president.
Comment: The right is unified in opposing the worthy successor to Higgins – Sinn Féin should support her
The political right hates Michael D Higgins – with good reason.
Comment: Jim O'Callaghan is delivering the kind of cruelty against migrants promised by the extreme right
About two weeks ago in Tallaght a gang of young men brutally attacked a man from India as he walked down the street. Falsely accusing him of behaving inappropriately towards children, they ripped off his clothes and left him lying naked and bloodied on the pavement.
Comment: The Independent's 'misleading and self-promoting chronicle' of Veronica Guerin's death
On this day 29 years ago investigative journalist Veronica Guerin was driving on the Naas Road. As she waited at a red light a motorbike carrying two male passengers appeared next to her. They’d been tracking her after a court date about a speeding offence earlier that day.
Comment: Why did it take Micheál Martin almost two years to state the obvious?
He finally said it. After 19 months of avoidance and prevarication, taoiseach Micheál Martin acknowledged in Dáil Eireann what the public has known since October 2023: the state of Israel is committing genocide in Palestine.
Comment: Brendan McDonagh couldn’t fix a housing crisis he profits from and helped create
When I was 22 I applied for a job in Dunnes Stores, Rathmines. During the interview in a small office above the supermarket, a manager looked at my CV. “Seems fine – can you start tomorrow?” I was in luck. They needed someone.
Comment: The housing crisis is an attack on the possibility of community
A few years back I was spending a lot of time in a house in the Liberties. It was the residence of a woman I was dating and her roommate. I use the word residence because it didn’t feel like a home – it felt like the landlord might choose, at any moment, to turn it into an Airbnb.