In The News

Another report, another disturbing finding about governance at one of Ireland’s best known, and well-funded charities, the Peter McVerry Trust. Between 2022 and 2023, the charity paid near €1.7m to Lavelle Solicitors, whose managing partner Michael Lavelle is a brother of McVerry director Richard Lavelle. The finding is contained in a report from the Approved Housing Bodies Regulatory Authority (A...

Irish house prices are overvalued by up to 10 per cent, the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) has warned, adding that an increasing number of households are carrying “elevated” levels of mortgage debt. That's not a large percentage when compared to the Celtic Tiger property bubble - so why is the think-tank cautioning it could still mean a 'painful correction'? Economics correspondent,...

On Wednesday, December 4th, Brian Thompson (50), the UnitedHealthcare chief executive was murdered in cold blood outside a hotel in Manhattan. The manhunt to find his killer ended on Monday when the chief suspect, 26-year-old Luigi Mangione, was arrested as he sat in a McDonald’s in a railroad town in Pennsylvania. He has been charged with murder. From the moment the CCTV of the shooting went vira...

Lara Marlowe met Bashar al-Assad twice during his early years as president of Syria. The writer and journalist also interviewed the dictator's father, Hafez, who seized power in the 1970s and groomed Bashar to assume the presidency before his death in 2000. The regime collapsed on the 7th of December after 13 years of civil war, which claimed the lives of at last 560,000 Syrians and made refugees...

Four years ago, Sinn Féin changed the landscape of Irish politics by securing the highest share of first preference votes in the 2020 general election and breaking Ireland’s two-party system. The question among many voters in those weeks before the pandemic hit was not if Mary Lou McDonald would become taoiseach of this country, but when. Jump forward four years, and the party has emerged from the...

Veteran republican Marian Price has initiated legal action against streaming giant Disney+ over the TV series Say Nothing, based on a book of the same name by Patrick Radden Keefe, which her lawyers say depicted her as being involved in the murder of Belfast woman Jean McConville. Lawyers for Price, who was jailed for her part in the IRA’s London bombing campaign of 1973, said the allegation was “...

When a taxi driver told Irish Times economics correspondent Eoin Burke-Kennedy that there was a ghost train station under Terminal 1 in Dublin Airport he was intrigued. The architects who designed the terminal in the late 1960s were smart enough to future-proof it – to incorporate into their plan a vast underground train station because, surely it wouldn’t be long before a metro would connect the...

South Korea’s unpopular President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law late on Tuesday in a move that surprised citizens and parliamentarians. His attempt to ban political activity and censor the media saw armed troops force their way into the National Assembly in Seoul. The martial law order was lifted just six hours later and there is now a move to impeach Yoon if he doesn’t resign. But what does...

Joe Biden has granted his son Hunter Biden a full and unconditional pardon following his criminal conviction on tax and gun charges. The US president's only surviving son was due to be sentenced this month. The 82 year-old had repeatedly stated he would neither interfere in the judicial process nor use his presidential power to pardon him. So why the u-turn and what will the fallout before Democra...

Last week, Mayo farmer Padraig Nally, the man who was jailed for less than a year for the manslaughter of an intruder in his home near Lough Corrib in 2004, died. He was 81 years of age. Two decades ago, his shooting of John ‘Frog’ Ward became one of the most divisive murder cases in Ireland. Nally was sentenced to six years’ imprisonment for the manslaughter of Ward. However, his conviction was q...

The count continues with seats in several constituencies throughout the country still to be filled. As it stands, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are in pole position to form the next government. The Greens have suffered a near wipeout, retaining just one seat; while Social Democrats and Labour have outperformed expectations. In today’s episode we’re bringing you coverage from our colleagues over on the...

Angela Merkel's eagerly anticipated memoir lifts the lid on parts of her childhood, her private meetings with world leaders and what she thought of Ireland and the bailout. But only partially. In fact, for those who are wondering what her personal reflections are on some of the most consequential decisions she ever made, they're likely to be left as disappointed as Irish Times Berlin correspondent...

In the early hours of Wednesday morning, a ceasefire between Israel and Hizbullah came into effect. The deal was announced the day before with US President Joe Biden saying he hoped it would mean a "permanent cessation of hostilities".  But what does the truce actually entail? And with both sides launching attacks right up until the ceasefire deadline, is the will there to keep the peace? Iri...

The cost of living is repeatedly mentioned as one of the main issues to the forefront of voters' minds in the run up to the General Election. In the US, president-elect Donald Trump made the economy one of the pillars of his campaign, regularly promising to "make America affordable again." But the reason for price spikes across the industrialised world are complex. So how realistic is it that any...

Twenty years ago, autism in Ireland was still seen as a relatively rare condition. Studies at the time suggested around seven in 10,000 schoolchildren were being diagnosed as autistic. Today, research suggests as many as one in 20 schoolchildren may have autism or a similar developmental issue. So, why are so many more children being diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders compared with two decad...

The Irish branch of the Church of Scientology has been going into an international protection asylum centre in Dublin and recruiting the refugees living there for all types of work, from cleaning parks to handing out anti-drug leaflets on the streets of the capital. The men are not paid, instead they are given a “certificate” which they are told will help them in their asylum applications. Many of...

Nikita Hand has won her civil case against MMA fighter Conor McGregor. The 35 year-old Dublin woman alleged he raped her in the penthouse suite of The Beacon Hotel in December 2018. The jury, believing her account of assault, found in her favour; returning a verdict yesterday evening after six hours of deliberations. McGregor has been ordered to pay Ms. Hand almost €250,000 in damages. But why has...

Donald Trump's choices for the top roles in his administration include TV doctor Mehmet Oz, former WWE exec Linda McMahon, Kristi Noem the South Dakota governor who shot the family dog and pet goat. And billionaire businessman, Howard Lutnick, who thinks the presence of multinationals in Ireland is a barrier to 'making America great again.' Norman Ornstein is a political scientist and resident sch...

It's been one year since anti-immigration protests spiralled into full-scale rioting on the streets of Dublin. The issue has dominated the headlines this year, forcing political parties to take a clear position on how they would deal with the rise in international applicants coming here. That said, the issue hasn't eclipsed housing, health and the cost-of-living on the doorsteps in this General El...

Fine Gael is doubling down on its support for a General Election candidate who was filmed punching a man in the head. John McGahon was 28 years-old and a Fine Gael councillor, at the time of the altercation outside a pub in Dundalk six years ago. Now he’s running for a seat in the Dáil – which Taoiseach Simon Harris defended on Monday night’s Leaders Debate. But questions remain about ho...

In April 2015, William Maughan and his pregnant girlfriend Anastasija Varslavane disappeared without a trace.  Noone has ever been charged in connection to their murder, but this week a new development is bringing fresh hope to the victim’s families. Irish Times crime and security editor Conor Lally has the latest.   Presented by Sorcha Pollak. Produced by Suzanne Brennan. Hosted on...

On October 6th, 2020 in a school outside Paris, teacher Samuel Paty gave a lesson on freedom of speech – the same lesson he had given several times before which involved showing drawings of the prophet Muhammad – to a class of teenagers. He was later beheaded outside the school in a savage attack that shocked France. The assailant Abdoullakh Anzorov, the young man of Chechen origin who wielded the...

President-elect Donald Trump has confirmed that Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, will co-lead a newly-created Department of Government Efficiency, with a mission to slash spending by $2 trillion. It hasn’t gone unnoticed that its acronym is DOGE, the cryptocurrency favoured by the tech billionaire. It’s one of a raft of nominations this week, with Dalkey woman Gail Slater, who worked behin...

Postmortem sperm retrieval is a procedure whereby the sperm of dead men is extracted in the hours following their death and stored for potential future use. The practise is banned in many countries while regulated in others. Usually, the gametes are used by the spouse of the dead partner to posthumously conceive a child. But in Israel, it's increasingly being used by parents of Israeli Defence For...

On the 9th of November 1995, Josephine "Jo Jo" Dullard disappeared on her way home from a night out and was never seen again.   The Kilkenny woman's disappearance was initially treated as a missing persons case, but it was later upgraded to a murder investigation in 2020. On Monday, a 55 year-old man, who is a member of a well-known family in the Kildare-Wicklow region, was arrested by G...