Partisan • Patriotic • Internationalist
The previous public sector pay deal, Public Service Agreement, delivered 10.25% pay increases over effectively 3 years in 7 phased payments plus a local bargaining payment of 1% to be agreed by the sectors within the public service. This final element, meant to provide for local bargaining to resolve specific […]
Across Ireland, north and south, immigration has become one of the defining political issues of recent years. From the racist violence witnessed in Belfast to protests outside accommodation centres and anti-immigration demonstrations across the country, a familiar political argument is repeatedly advanced. Migrants are blamed for housing shortages, overstretched public […]
Elbridge Colby, the US Under Secretary of War for Policy, took to Twitter in April to celebrate the EU stepping up to the plate, declaring that “NATO must no longer be a paper tiger”. He said: “Germany is now taking the leading role in this. After years of disarmament, Berlin […]
The Communist Party of Ireland expresses its solidarity with the workers and families affected by the announcement that up to 500 jobs are to be cut at Aer Lingus. The Communist Party supports trade unions in opposing compulsory redundancies but urges unions to demand nationalisation. These proposed redundancies are not […]
The Government’s Summer Economic Statement sets Budget parameters for 2027: an €8.5 billion package, involving €7 billion above the 2026 expenditure ceiling and €1.5 billion of tax measures. The €1.5bn announced for tax measures likely signals changes to income-tax bands, thereby preventing what is known as ‘fiscal drag’ – when […]
Two grassroots protest campaigns are currently challenging the deep complicity of Irish sporting institutions in normalising the Israeli state’s ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people. The Allianz Amach or Drop Allianz campaign, rooted in Cumann Luthchleas Gael (GAA), and the Stop The Game campaign, targeting the Football Association of Ireland, represent vital and courageous […]
The recent rioting and pogrom in Belfast was met with the trite, facile interpretations and responses we have grown all too used to hearing. Proffered explanations ranged from attributing the violence to trouble-stirring social media postings, to loyalist paramilitary intervention, to lax border controls accommodating freeloading, dangerous foreigners (invariably dark-skinned). […]
As we move into the summer, developments demonstrate continuing instability and geopolitical reorganisation of global capitalism. Throughout May and June, inflation remained stubbornly above target. As the business press reports, capitalists are no longer assuming an automatic return to the ultra-low-inflation world that characterised the 2010s; access to cheap capital […]
The dystopian fiction of imperialism, which began with Jack London’s Iron Heel, has returned with a vengeance in the 2020s, increasingly recognised in international literary awards. From Paul Lynch’s Prophet Song (2023 Booker Prize) to Ali Smith’s Gliff (2026 Dublin Literary Award), novelists imagine futures that feel uncomfortably close to the present. Yet where Lynch’s […]
There are now over two thousand entire homes available for short-term rental sa Ghaeltacht, in the very same areas where the Irish language is so threatened and supposed to be protected. And as the likes of Airbnb grow year on year — with an increase of 88% in the number of […]
Rioting, violence, racist attacks, attacks on homes, forcing people out of communities, thuggery, attacks on workers took place over a few nights from 9 June, largely concentrated in Belfast and in loyalist-dominated areas. Thanks to decent people, across all communities, and organised opposition, it did not spread much or last […]
We are witnessing a full-court press of business lobbying against workers’ rights – specifically, for the focus of this article, but against so-called ‘gold-plated’ regulations more generally. Pay Transparency is meant to be legislated for and in place from June by the Government in Dublin. However, they have now said […]
A recent article in the Belfast Telegraph informed its readers that 400,000 people in the 6-counties – that is, 26.5% of the area’s population – were using antidepressants.[1] In other words, does this mean that three out of every four residents of that dysfunctional political entity are able to get through the […]
The Defence (Amendment) bill 2025 was published just over a year ago and still the likes of Martin, McEntee and Bryne are getting away with telling lies about what the bill actually means for Irish neutrality. There is virtually zero public discussion by either politicians or the media about the […]
Sixty-five years ago, the Belgrade summit marked the beginning of the Non-Aligned Movement, the largest political grouping of countries in the world after the United Nations. At the height of national liberation struggles in the post-World War II world, a vision of “struggle against imperialism, colonialism, neo-colonialism, racism, and all […]
Bob Quinn was an Irish television producer who, after falling out with the RTÉ hierarchy in the late 1960s, found himself living the life of an artist in Connemara at a time when it was one of the most economically deprived regions in Europe, with a wife and young child […]