One of the great political fallacies of the past half century is that the “triple lock” is some great obstacle to the participation of our Defence Forces in international peace and security operations. The triple lock has, as the name suggests, three components: (i) government

My recent article published in the Sunday Independent: There is no shortage of political pundits who are happy to regularly disparage the holding of constituency clinics by TDs. But, for every one of them, there are several thousand more members of the public see these

What happened in Cherry Orchard last Monday night was shocking, but it was not surprising. It was not surprising to those of us who have warned for months that chronic anti-social behaviour is on the rise and going unchecked. It was certainly no surprise to

August is so regarded as a slow news month that folks call it the “silly season.” The time of year when idiotic political statements get a prominence they wouldn’t otherwise attract. But even this basic fact of political life cannot explain last week’s grotesque series

When I called for a mid-term review of the Programme for Government (PfG) little did I expect the Taoiseach and Tánaiste to respond as indignantly as if I’d demanded they abstain for a month from foreign travel and soft-focus interviews. But that’s what happened. Opening