Ian O'Doherty

Michael D Higgins has tried to blame the hidden hand of Israel for his own diplomatic gaffe.

To the surprise of nobody and the disappointment of only a few, the Irish government has finally accepted reality and dropped its hugely controversial plans to introduce stringent hate speech legislation. Under its original proposal, the Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hate and Hatred Offences) Bill 2022 was so broad that it made Scotland’s

Is Ireland the most anti-Semitic country in Europe? Most Irish people would vehemently disagree. But if you asked: ‘is Ireland the most anti-Israeli country in Europe?’ then many people here would actually take the question as a compliment. Hating Israel is not just acceptable in Ireland, it has become virtually mandatory. The latest evidence for

If it sometimes seems this column keeps returning to the vexed and infamously complicated issue of euthanasia, that’s because it’s a vexed and infamously complicated issue which won’t be going away any time soon.

There’s less than a week to go, and how do you feel? Tense, nervous headache? A sense of increasing doom and desperation at the prospect of the Very Bad Orange Man returning to 1500 Pennsylvania Avenue? Perhaps you’re looking forward to next week’s US presidential election with an almost vindictive sense of gleeful schadenfreude as the cultural elites and the right-on brigade quiver with fear at the prospect of a second term for Teflon Don.

Ireland has a problem with America. Irish politicians and the country’s establishment would, of course, deny this. They would point to the fact that 35 million Americans claim Irish descent, and that the Irish and American governments enjoy their own version of a ‘special relationship’, involving an annual presentation of a shamrock at the White House