Okay, let’s keep in mind my caution about the current polls… but the most recent one this weekend from the Sunday Business Post was - despite showing no variation from the previous one, bar a 1% increase for Sinn Féin and a 1% decrease for the Independents, pretty telling in its own way.
Firstly the fact [...]

John Barry is Associate Director of the Institute for a Sustainable World and Reader in Politics both at Queen’s University Belfast.  He was educated at University College Dublin and the University of Glasgow.  From 2003-2009 he was co-chair of the Green Party in Northern Ireland and was a key figure in the creation of an [...]

This is the paper that the economist Michael Burke gave at the Irish Unity Conference in London last Saturday. Some of the points made by Michael were discussed in Seumas Milne’s post in The Guardian’s Comment is Free site today. As readers may know, Michael, a former senior international economist with CityBank, is a regular [...]

There’s another angle on the George Lee saga that is as interesting to media watchers as any consideration of whether he was ‘frozen out’ of Fine Gael or a victim of his own ego.  Let’s put aside too whether Enda Kenny wasted a brilliant talent or had simply expected Lee to take a little time to settle into politics [...]

So George Lee has resigned.  No doubt this will fill newspaper columns and blog posts with analysis of what this means for Fine Gael, Enda Kenny (will he be pushed?, the Government and, of course, George.  So far the one question that has not been answered - and not raised much either - is:  what [...]

An interesting comment on the allegations surrounding Gerry Adams brother was added to a piece on the topic on Irish Left Review a couple of weeks ago. It’s one of three comments, but is of considerable utility in pointing up some of the problems implicit in the issue…
“It would be unworthy of a left-wing blog [...]

I was horrified to read Suzanne Breen’s latest instalment in her brave solo exposition of what is one of the most disturbing stories to emergence from behind the Iron Curtain of the Sinn Féin spin machine in recent years. Two women, the first a former national secretary of Ogra Shinn Féin and niece of Joe [...]

When the world financial system looked as if it might collapse in the autumn of 2008, many people assumed that there would have to be drastic changes in the wake of the crisis. Nothing would ever be the same again: the neoliberal philosophy which had spawned the financial meltdown was now irreparably damaged, and a [...]

The proper meaning of class, as it is used in an analysis of political economy and sociology internationally, is not much discussed in Ireland either in academia or more broadly, despite the overriding fact that so much of how the economic crisis has played out and how the government here has chosen to deal with [...]