Shane Ross

The invisible elephant was back, trundling around the Dáil's committee room last week.

The left’s awake. Down in Galway West, they have been celebrating the colossal vote of Labour candidate Helen Ogbu in last weekend’s by-election.

Confession time: I have always admired Michael Healy-Rae. His brother Danny is a taste I have yet to acquire. I frequently crossed paths with both of them during our time in the Dáil together.

I am a brutal driver. My relationship with my car has always been troubled. I blush to my roots when I reflect on how I was not long ago made minister for transport, the arbiter of most of Ireland’s rules of the road. Few less appropriate appointments have ever been made by a taoiseach.

I am a brutal driver. My relationship with my car has always been troubled. I blush to my roots when I reflect on how I was not long ago made minister for transport, the arbiter of most of Ireland’s rules of the road. Few less appropriate appointments have ever been made by a taoiseach.

Andy Burnham, the man poised to save Britain's Labour Party from extinction, is no messiah.

Big Jim is on manoeuvres. When Ireland’s EU presidency opens peacefully on Wednesday, it will mark the intensifying of domestic political hostilities.

Kevin Bakhurst looked every inch the undertaker on Thursday. The soft-spoken RTÉ boss with the Bambi eyes appeared at his first Public Accounts Committee (PAC) meeting since the scandals of 2023.

Benjamin Franklin, one of America's founding fathers, was famous for darkly observing that “in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except