What a trooper - Denis O’Brien riding shotgun through the radioactive land that is our economy to bring us the good news of recovery and redemption. The masses have waited and are not disappointed. The band plays in the main square, the children toss rose petals on the pot-holed ground and the [...]

Just when you despair of sensible commentary in our media, along comes someone like Carl O’Brien, Social Affairs Correspondent of the Irish Times. Writing today, he puts the educational challenges facing society into context - and not a very hopeful one considering the level of political debate surrounding the tuition fee controversy. [...]

Fidel Castro once said that in the classless society there would be no need for universities because all society would be a learning experience. I don’t think he was being literal, just posing the possibility of an educationally and democratically enriched society. It certainly makes a sharp contrast with the debate over education [...]

You probably missed this piece on RTE:
RTE Reporter (on the rooftop of a manufacturing plant, helicopter in the background): We are with Tuck McGrath, CEO of Irish Enterprises. Mr. McGrath, why are you closing your company down and moving to the Far East.
Mr. McGrath: We had a great company - high [...]

The rain conjures up many things for people: depression, wet clothes and dreams of a sunny Mediterranean village with cheap wine and grilled prawns.  I share in that but there are a few more inter-related things I’d like to raise:  wild-eyed environmentalists, greedy public sector workers and falling profits for insurance companies.
I live in a [...]

What a dog’s dinner. Education Minister, Batt O’Keefe, flew his ‘bring back tuition fees’ kite. It was immediately shot down by the Greens, the PDs and, even, Minister Hanafin. Then the PDs were shot down by Minister Mary Harney who thinks its a good idea to, at least, debate tuition fees. Is [...]

It was only a matter of time before the business sector opened up another front in the recession wars. Hamburger king Pat McDonagh of Supermac has accused the Government of ’strangling entrepreneurship’ and ‘criminalising business’. And just how is the vile Government doing this?
‘Bureaucracy, legislation and regulation’.
But Mr. McDonagh is just getting started.
McDonagh [...]

The bloggers over at Dublin Opinion are forever uncovering gems. Their latest little dig, courtesy of Conor, brings us ‘Charley’s March of Time’- an animated promotional film produced by the British Labour Government to explain the introduction of social (or national) insurance back in 1948. This was the foundation of the modern [...]

So, ‘curbing’ public spending growth is the only option. Thus spake Paul Tansey in last Friday’s Irish Times. Working from figures supplied by the Department of Finance, he attempts to show how public spending has ‘ballooned’ and now it has to be popped.
Let’s go through his apocalyptic presentation of numbers and see if [...]

Ah, the Sabbath and one is put in mind of Iris Robinson’s insistence that Governments must pursue God’s law. Now I don’t pretend to know more than the next congregant but I do have a particular background, having been engaged with American southern Christian fundamentalism in my early years. Yes, I learned the ‘good book’ [...]