Elaine Byrne: There is apparently no room in Irish public discourse for any criticism of Europe. Instead, it seems, we should be grateful for their guidance The Sunday Times Published: 17 April 2011 Buried deep in the BBC website is an entry entitled “common Irish slang”. This guide for would-be British visitors to Ireland helpfully [...]

The prospects for default? Elaine Byrne in the Irish Times February 18 2010 I WROTE some of my first opinion pieces for The Irish Times during the 2007 election. I had just finished college and was working for the United Nations. Living abroad offered me the opportunity to look at Irish elections with a different [...]

We are distracted from the only game in town – the European summit in March – as the world views us as a country under foreign rule, writes ELAINE BYRNE in the Irish Times February 4 2011 “IRELAND IS well on the way to bankruptcy.” That’s the verdict of an acquaintance of mine who is [...]

OPINION: Bizarre week in politics has overshadowed need for public debate on EU-IMF bailout 28 January 2011, Irish Times IT HAS been an odd week. The Taoiseach is no longer president of his party but remains leader of the country. The Greens have resigned from government but still vote with the Government. The resignation of [...]

Candidates disillusioned with the establishment are beginning to drift towards one another. Irish Times January 21 2010 THE ESTABLISHMENT of Nama in late 2009 focused minds and ultimately led to several meetings in a well-known solicitor’s office in Dublin city centre. The only item on the agenda was to explore the formation of a new Irish [...]

Irish Times editoral November 17 2010 Was it for this? In memory of September 1913 by William Butler Yeats What need you, being come to sense, But fumble in a greasy till And add the halfpence to the pence And prayer to shivering prayer, until You have dried the marrow from the bone? For men [...]

Will the terms of reference for the Irish Banking Inquiry be as wide as that of Iceland? The Irish public does not have any such opportunity to engage in an inquiry which from the outset is perceived to lack legitimacy because of the decision to hold the investigation in private, unlike similar inquiries in the [...]

Loyalty to Fianna Fáil and its leader was Brian Lenihan snr’s lodestone. His son must take a new direction, writes ELAINE BYRNE in the IRISH TIMES April 27 2010 ‘WILL THE Taoiseach indicate when the legislation on wandering horses will be introduced in the House?” When Brian Lenihan made his first, rather unremarkable, Dáil contribution [...]

Who will be accountable when we discover, like in Iceland, that no global bogeyman was to blame for our banking collapse? asks ELAINE BYRNE in the IRISH TIMES 14 April 2010 THE SPECIAL investigation commission, established by the Icelandic parliament, published its nine-volume 2,300-page report yesterday into the causes of Iceland’s ecnomic collapse. It found [...]

RENEWING THE REPUBLIC: This series has shown a thirst for political reform coupled with an uncertainty about how to achieve it, writes ELAINE BYRNE in the Irish Times April 3 2010   ACCOMPANYING THIS series has been an image of our national flag, contorted at the centre by a knot. The narrative embarked upon by [...]