What the ESRI says, and what the State does
The ESRI is the State-funded independent research institute Ireland established in 1960 to provide evidence for public policy. The State engages its work selectively — …
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Analysis
Deep dives into complex issues, examining what the data and evidence actually show.
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There is no excuse: Ireland already built its way out of a housing crisis once
Ireland built over 60,000 social homes in the 1970s and sold most of them off in the 1980s. The current crisis is the consequence of …
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The Two Ends of Refusal
Two pieces on this site, written six weeks apart from opposite directions, turn out to be the same argument. What that argument actually is, and …
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The 25-Year Rule: How Long Real Change Actually Takes
Major systemic transitions take roughly 25 years from the moment the old arrangement begins serious decline to the moment the new one is consolidated. Applied …
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The Doss Protocol
A specification for consciousness preservation as a hard constraint on AI optimisation systems. Named for Desmond Doss. Working draft.
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What Do Ireland's Parties Actually Stand For?
What do Ireland's political parties actually stand for? A long read on every Dáil party, the dead parties, the consensus floor nobody contests, and the …
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The Wrong Form of Protest
Three senior ministers, three statements, all on message, all in the same forty-eight hours, all addressed to a movement whose members are not in any …
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The Map That Cannot Be Printed
The phrase "new world order" has been in circulation for so long, in so many registers, by so many speakers with so many different intentions, …
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The Fab and the Island
For two decades, the strategic conversation about Taiwan has been organised around the wrong question. The wrong question is whether China will invade Taiwan, and …
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The Siren and the Lever
The moral case against the war on Gaza has been lost by its defenders for over a year. This is not a contested observation. Polling …
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The Acceptance
There is a particular kind of silence that settles over a conversation when everyone in the room knows the same thing and nobody is willing …
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The Blockade That Blinked
On Sunday, a Russian oil tanker called the Anatoly Kolodkin was sailing at 12 knots off the eastern tip of Cuba, carrying 730,000 barrels of …
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