Category: Newswhip

Last week, Richard Bruton launched the Internet and Games Competitive Start Fund, so naturally on such an occasion the government would put on its best face and showcase the latest in internet technologies. Displaying its 21st century credentials, the government information service at merrionstreet.ie even uploaded a youtube video of the event, featuring Bruton getting…

Saint Patrick was a gentleman, he came from decent people; In Dublin town he built a church and put on it a steeple. On 17 March the world celebrates Irishness, but who was Saint Patrick? The bare details of his life are known, but have been added to over the centuries as legends and myths…

Queen Elisabeth II is no longer barred from a northside Dublin pub, but her planned official visit to Ireland could bring greater hazards. British monarchs have not always fared well in Ireland. Henry II, the first English king to come to Ireland, did quite well out of his adventures here, but his successors were not…

Fine Gael are pressing ahead with their plans to replace television licenses with a broader “content tax” to be paid by “all households and applicable businesses, regardless of the device they use to access content.” The programme for government agreed between Fine Gael and Labour promises to “examine the role, and collection of, the TV…

Reports from Europe that plucky Enda Kenny held firm under pressure from the French and Germans to surrender Ireland’s low corporation tax rate in return for a cut in the interest rate paid on IMF/EU funds to help it bail out its ailing banks, misses the point. The demands to Ireland are in contrast to…

The Industrial Development Authority (IDA) gets a lot of praise for its worth attracting jobs to Ireland, but looking behind the numbers, but that’s not its primary mission. It’s all about tax. In its latest annual report (for 2009) the IDA touts its headline figures: 125 new foreign investment projects in Ireland; €500 million invested…

Mary Coughlan “is in trouble”, but is “battling to keep the seat”. Martin Mansergh is “fighting for his political life”. He “faces an uphill battle”. There’s a “dogfight for the final seat” in Dun Laoighaire. Nonsense. We are pan narrans, the storytelling apes. Culture, ultimately, is about storytelling. We make sense of the random by…

So you think your vote won’t make a difference? It’s not hard to see why, with opinion polls showing Enda Kenny a dead certainty for taoiseach, but is it that simple? For some, it might appear that the only question left to decide today is whether Enda Kenny leads an overall Fine Gael majority government,…

Two weeks ago, it was Michael Lewis writing for Vanity Fair. Today, the Wall Street Journal turns its eye to Ireland. Guy Chazan is the international energy correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, and as far as we can tell, an Englishman, so the bible of American high finance sent him on a trip across…

Ask any science fiction fan who their favourite Doctor is, and you pretty much narrow down their age. Your Doctor is the actor who played the enigmatic time traveller when you were about seven years old. For me, it’s Tom Baker. For the tenth doctor, David Tennant, it’s Peter Davison. But no matter who your…