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Diarmaid Ferriter

Diarmaid Ferriter

The Irish Times

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Ramping up home building isn’t impossible - we’ve done it before

Tá Éire ag Forbairt (Ireland is Building) was the confident title of a gleaming brochure issued by the first coalition government in 1949. It sought...

19.04.2024 10

The Irish Times

Diarmaid Ferriter

United Ireland: money should not be the deciding factor but nor should it be ignored

In dealing with the stubbornness of Northern Ireland prime minister James Craig in November 1921, UK prime minister David Lloyd George sought to...

12.04.2024 10

The Irish Times

Diarmaid Ferriter

How do you explain to a dying child from Gaza that this is within the accepted limits of Israeli aggression?

Did those who have masterminded the Israeli assault on Gaza ever sit down and decide what number of deaths would be acceptable? 10,000? 20,000? 33,000...

05.04.2024 20

The Irish Times

Diarmaid Ferriter

Will TikTok taoiseach Simon Harris succeed in his promise to fight populism?

In his book Ruling the Void (2013) the late Irish political scientist Peter Mair suggested “the age of party democracy has passed”, with political...

29.03.2024 10

The Irish Times

Diarmaid Ferriter

Leo Varadkar did not fulfill his promise for ‘people who get up early’

Speaking as taoiseach in June 2018 at the annual commemoration of one his predecessors. John A Costello, Leo Varadkar looked back and forward....

21.03.2024 10

The Irish Times

Diarmaid Ferriter

In a tumultuous world, we should be wary of taking even our robust democracy for granted

“Sacred heart o’ Jesus take away our hearts o’ stone, and give us hearts o’ flesh.” These were the words uttered by Juno after the death of...

15.03.2024 10

The Irish Times

Diarmaid Ferriter

Despite all the focus on RTÉ, there is disappointingly little political will to decide on a new funding model

Right from the start, politicians were tetchy about Irish public service broadcasting and uncertain of their role in relation to it. One hundred years...

08.03.2024 10

The Irish Times

Diarmaid Ferriter

Heading for the referendums does the electorate know what it is voting for?

Speaking in the Dáil in October 1922, Minister for Home Affairs Kevin O’Higgins commented on what was one of the interesting features of the...

01.03.2024 10

The Irish Times

Diarmaid Ferriter

Lightening the sectarian load associated with sport will take more than funding for Casement Park

In June 1953, over 25,000 people attended the blessing and opening of the new GAA ground in west Belfast, Roger Casement Park. The stadium was...

23.02.2024 10

The Irish Times

Diarmaid Ferriter

No, it’s not the economy, stupid. Only one issue matters now

It is now 35 years since Roger Garland was elected the first Green Party TD. It was the third time Garland had run in the Dublin South constituency...

16.02.2024 10

The Irish Times

Diarmaid Ferriter

John Bruton was more complex than his ‘nice, straightforward, violently anti-IRA’ reputation suggests

Sometimes even experienced civil servants can be sloppy in crafting words. In May 1997, John Holmes, private secretary to Tony Blair, less than a week...

09.02.2024 7

The Irish Times

Diarmaid Ferriter

Mary Lou McDonald’s claim that Irish unity is ‘within touching distance’ is a wild exaggeration

Sinn Féin president Mary Lou McDonald made much reference to history this week. In response to the DUP’s decision to resume its place in the...

02.02.2024 30

The Irish Times

Diarmaid Ferriter

March 8th referendums: Is history about to repeat itself?

Perhaps we haven’t moved as far away from 1937 as we might think. The forthcoming referendums on the constitutional articles relating to women and...

26.01.2024 10

The Irish Times

Diarmaid Ferriter

Let’s be real about the Páirc Uí Chaoimh renaming controversy: money has always been part of the GAA

––Like many in Cork and well beyond, I would not like to see Páirc Uí Chaoimh rebranded to meet the requirements of funding from SuperValu. But...

19.01.2024 9

The Irish Times

Diarmaid Ferriter

Is it any wonder so many Irish people don’t want to end up in a nursing home?

In 2020, Dublin poet Rachael Hegarty, like so many sons and daughters of dementia sufferers, fretted as the Covid pandemic restrictions began to bite:...

12.01.2024 50

The Irish Times

Diarmaid Ferriter

Does Jeffrey Donaldson have the political imagination to end the Stormont stalemate?

As prime minister of Northern Ireland a century ago, James Craig faced a 1924 that required a delicate political balancing act. With the first Labour...

05.01.2024 9

The Irish Times

Diarmaid Ferriter

There was more to Lady Augusta Gregory than her relationship with Yeats

The voluminous journals of the playwright, folklorist and patron of the arts, Lady Augusta Gregory, contain a wealth of detail on her relationship...

29.12.2023 9

The Irish Times

Diarmaid Ferriter

In Dublin, there was always, amid dark days, music being made and sung

I had not expected to find myself back in Dublin’s Pro Cathedral. I sang there from 1982-6 with the Palestrina Choir as a far-from-angelic...

22.12.2023 10

The Irish Times

Diarmaid Ferriter

State’s economic compass has always been swayed by force of politics

In 1939, Trinity College Dublin established a chair of applied economics for Joseph Johnston. A prolific author, one of Johnston’s best known books...

15.12.2023 10

The Irish Times

Diarmaid Ferriter

Shane MacGowan captured what it was to struggle on the margins of a place that didn’t want you

It seems appropriate that Friday’s funeral cortege of Shane MacGowan will pass through some of the streets of a Dublin fraught, raw and struggling...

08.12.2023 10

The Irish Times

Diarmaid Ferriter

The far right is not strong in Ireland. It’s up to social media platforms to keep it that way

Much of the political reaction to last week’s Dublin riots smacks of performative outrage. It has been widely asserted that the events have pushed...

01.12.2023 5

The Irish Times

Diarmaid Ferriter

Ireland saw ‘bad books’ and ‘immodest fashion’ everywhere, but was blind to homegrown hells

One hundred years ago this week, poet WB Yeats was basking in the afterglow of his Nobel Prize win. Head of government at the time WT Cosgrave...

24.11.2023 10

The Irish Times

Diarmaid Ferriter

Ridley Scott’s crude dismissal of historians is galling

British film director Ridley Scott has been enjoying himself with a good bout of historian bashing as he promotes his new film, Napoleon. Asked by a...

17.11.2023 10

The Irish Times

Diarmaid Ferriter

Ridley Scott’s ‘shut the f*** up’ to historians is galling

British film director Ridley Scott has been enjoying himself with a good bout of historian bashing as he promotes his new film, Napoleon. Asked by a...

17.11.2023 10

The Irish Times

Diarmaid Ferriter

Irish leaders’ condemnation of Israeli attacks are too piecemeal and punch-pulling to be meaningful

Michael Davitt, the founder of the Irish Land League in 1879, travelled to Kishinev in the Russian empire in 1903 and identified similarities between...

10.11.2023 10

The Irish Times

Diarmaid Ferriter

Fear of storms ‘lies deep in Irish psyche’ - and with good reason

Climate change will ensure the word “unprecedented” wears thin. It was used abundantly this week as the water levels rose to frightening levels in...

03.11.2023 8

The Irish Times

Diarmaid Ferriter

Diarmaid Ferriter: Paddy Cosgrave’s downfall highlights dangers of constructing arguments on social media

When introducing his 1994 book Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century 1914-1991, renowned historian Eric Hobsbawm expressed concern that “the...

26.10.2023 5

The Irish Times

Diarmaid Ferriter

RTÉ is in enough trouble without politicians feasting on its carcass

Writing about RTÉ almost 20 years ago in his book RTÉ and the Globalisation of Irish Television (2004), Farrell Corcoran – who was chairman of the...

20.10.2023 10

The Irish Times

Diarmaid Ferriter

Only safe prediction is that civilians will suffer most in Israel-Hamas war

Providing historical context for contemporary war is not about justification or side taking. Interpretations of long-standing hatreds do not stay...

13.10.2023 10

The Irish Times

Diarmaid Ferriter

Leo Varadkar gets ready to channel his inner Éamon de Valera

One of the more memorable election slogans in Irish political history was used by Fianna Fáil in the summer of 1943, as it issued a warning:...

06.10.2023 9

The Irish Times

Diarmaid Ferriter

The beauty of rugby is that it has always recognised Ireland’s complex identities

In July 1966, one of Ireland’s rugby legends, Jack Kyle – who had been the team’s star player when it won the triple crown in 1948 and was...

29.09.2023 10

The Irish Times

Diarmaid Ferriter

Diarmaid Ferriter: North or South, no line can be drawn under the Troubles

In 2017, poet and writer Kapka Kassabova published a moving account of the impact of the border zone between Bulgaria, Turkey and Greece under the...

22.09.2023 10

The Irish Times

Diarmaid Ferriter

Dublin Marathon runners deserve more than a medal inscribed with a facile, syrupy misquotation

In July 2010, Dublin was designated a Unesco city of literature. It was a fitting tribute, suggested this newspaper’s literary correspondent at the...

14.09.2023 10

The Irish Times

Diarmaid Ferriter

Diarmaid Ferriter: Problems in Irish education go far beyond Leaving Cert grade inflation

There are many ingredients boiling in the pot of Irish higher education and the broth looks far from satisfying. As students begin or return to...

08.09.2023 10

The Irish Times

Diarmaid Ferriter

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