Partition built sectarianism into the polity of Northern Ireland. But it is through the Good Friday Agreement — not a border poll — that we will progress to a future built on consent 

Everyone is hemmed in by the pandemic, longing for our proper turn to come so that vaccination will make some normal life possible again. That’s why most of us are so nauseated by this carry-on

That Noeline Blackwell one — the woman from the Rape Crisis Centre — drives me crazy. I can’t listen to her on the radio without getting angrier and angrier.

I don’t know whether I’m previous or late. I want to wish you a happy Mother’s Day and a happy St Patrick’s Day, and I’m stuck slap bang in the middle of both of them. There was a lot of Mother’s Day going on all around me at the weekend.

The highly-privileged medic, a son of Ireland's president, stole babies from vulnerable mothers only to hand them over to his fee-paying patients, complete with false birth certificates

What was easily dismissed not so long ago as a few headbangers came dangerously close to tipping over the edge into really serious violence, writes Fergus Finlay

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, … it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us … I’m not talking about ...

The party of Abraham Lincoln looked exactly like the old and feeble German leaders who stood by while Hitler marched to power, writes Fergus Finlay

I don’t remember economists worrying about the mental health of people borrowed up to their eyeballs in the Celtic Tiger, writes Fergus Finlay