The Opening Above Labour
On 26 May 2026 Ivana Bacik wrote to the Social Democrats and Greens only, proposing a narrow left coordination on a Seanad by-election. On 27 …
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Tagged: Ireland
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Houses for the Kids of Those Who Own Assets
On 27 May 2026, Tánaiste and Minister for Finance Simon Harris announced a rural-housing planning overhaul that removes caps on homes per farm holding, lifts …
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Cleanest and Dirtiest
Ireland sits 12th on the Corruption Perceptions Index 2025 and 9th on the Corporate Tax Haven Index 2024. Two reputable international indices, the same country, …
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The Standards Were Never Meant to Be Met
Irish public-policy standards are not aspirational goals being inadequately pursued. They are theatrical artefacts written with engineered holes by the lobbyists who help draft them, …
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Both Halves of the Apparatus
The Irish political class and the Irish media class are two halves of the same apparatus. Both are trained: one not to say anything, the …
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A Poor Politician with Excellent Media Training
On 27 May 2026, with a fresh EPA report showing Ireland on track to deliver only half the greenhouse-gas reductions required by 2030, the Taoiseach …
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The Office Is the Dose
Henry Adams in 1907 called power a sort of tumor that ends by killing the victim's sympathies. Twenty years of neuroscience have confirmed it with …
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The Wealth Tax Ireland Already Has
Ireland implements a 15% minimum effective tax on multinationals via OECD Pillar Two. The same logic applied to individuals worth over 100 million euros is …
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What the Finance Minister Already Knew
Paschal Donohoe reviewed Piketty's Capital and Ideology in The Irish Times in March 2020 and concluded Piketty triumphs. The Irish political class has read the …
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Ireland's defence is cyber, and the politics needs to catch up
Three quarters of Northern Hemisphere subsea cables pass through or near Irish waters. The Defence Forces have just signed a €60 million Thales sonar contract …
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Three years to house everyone: a working financing model
A working financial model for ending Irish modern homelessness in approximately three years: capital cost, financing terms, the transition profile, and the comparison with continuing …
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The shape of access: what 84,178 lobbying returns tell us about Irish public policy
84,178 returns across 11 years on the Irish lobbying register. The access patterns are visible in the data. Business lobbies dwarf labour and civil society. …
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