So I got it in the end. I worked through the pandemic, I was involved in all sorts of decisions about how to protect public health, I became really proud of how Ireland responded to the curse of covid.

'I can barely think of anything redemptive or uplifting that happened in 2023. It was, in all sorts of ways, the worst of years'

When it comes to immigration and asylum seekers, we have to strip away — again and again — the rhetoric from the reality.

Connemara is one of the least likely places to ever be associated with the phrase ‘no room at the inn’, writes Fergus Finlay

I never thought it would be possible to utter the phrase ‘Sinn Féin, the law and order party’ in a sentence without everyone falling around the place

The far-right don’t want you to read the bill because they want you to believe it’s the forerunner of a police state

Forget all the talk about resignations, we must look into the reasons people feel anger

Some years ago, back when I worked in Barnardos, my colleague Meriel Reeves told me that David Norris had asked her for a favour (I think they had a personal connection). He was distraught, he said, because his barber had just retired.

Day after day it gets worse, more merciless, more shaming. It could be a spiral into hell

Any public inquiry into how the emergency was handled may reveal mistakes were made but it was done with honesty, good faith, and unremitting hard work