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Justine Mccarthy

Justine Mccarthy

The Irish Times

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Irish politicians’ lack of urgency contrasts poorly with Trump’s up-and-at-it attitude

24.01.2025 10

The Irish Times

Justine Mccarthy

Both Michael Lowry and Elon Musk know the kingmaker is more powerful than the king

17.01.2025 10

The Irish Times

Justine Mccarthy

We won’t realise how much we’ll miss Michael D Higgins as President until he’s gone

Michael D Higgins has rung in his last new year as Ireland’s President. Before the end of 2025, somebody else will be climbing into bed in Áras...

03.01.2025 3

The Irish Times

Justine Mccarthy

If I have my way, 2025 will have no manspreaders, bagspreaders or texting pedestrians

I’m doing a Julius Caesar this new year. That chap really had it sussed. Having decreed that every year would commence on January 1st, he turned...

27.12.2024 4

The Irish Times

Justine Mccarthy

Irish Government needs to stay resolute in the face of Israel’s slanderous claims of anti-Semitism

Israel’s foreign minister is anti-Catholic. That is why he decided to shut the Israeli embassy in Dublin. To him, Ireland is a culturally and...

20.12.2024 5

The Irish Times

Justine Mccarthy

Fianna Fáil needs to explain why it can’t talk to Sinn Féin if it will talk to Michael Lowry

More women might enter politics, ventured the American writer and academic Maureen Murphy, if it wasn’t so much trouble having to put make-up on...

13.12.2024 40

The Irish Times

Justine Mccarthy

Sherin’s mother prays she won’t be left lying in the street to be eaten by scavenging dogs

When the order to evacuate came from the Israel Defense Forces, Wael Abu Dalfa realised that his mother – nearly 80, frail with hunger and barely...

06.12.2024 2

The Irish Times

Justine Mccarthy

Behind Micheál Martin’s reputation for decency is an unsentimental ruthlessness

Even Lazarus could not match the miracle Micheál Martin has pulled off by managing to drag himself out of the political grave and his entire party...

01.12.2024 3

The Irish Times

Justine Mccarthy

Conor McGregor was facilitated by a culture of entitlement and cheered on by adoring fans

Oh, how the mighty have fallen, or so one might have thought as two Irish sports stars awaited their fate in separate courtrooms in the past week....

29.11.2024 9

The Irish Times

Justine Mccarthy

Forget politicians’ pre-election promises - here’s my 10-point manifesto

The word “manifesto” derives from Latin via the Italian “manifestus”, meaning “obvious”, a fact providing ample grounds for any voter to...

22.11.2024 4

The Irish Times

Justine Mccarthy

What’s the point of an election if it inevitably means the same parties get back in?

Ireland’s hotchpotch of left-wing parties ought to stop whingeing about Fine Gael’s and Fianna Fáil’s presumption that they will form the...

15.11.2024 1

The Irish Times

Justine Mccarthy

Thanks a bunch, America. Love, women everywhere

Thanks a bunch, America. You’ve left no room for doubt that, yet again, your presidential preference is for anybody but a woman. Yup, even if the...

08.11.2024 50

The Irish Times

Justine Mccarthy

Had Mary Lou stuck with Fianna Fáil, she could be closer to becoming first woman taoiseach

Mary Lou McDonald was narrating the plotline but it was Pearse Doherty’s face that told the whole astounding story of Sinn Féin’s pre-election...

18.10.2024 4

The Irish Times

Justine Mccarthy

Biden privately pronounced Netanyahu ‘a f***ing liar’. Yet America keeps sending him weapons

Nearly five months of human slaughter have gone by since the International Criminal Court was asked to issue arrest warrants for Israel’s prime...

11.10.2024 10

The Irish Times

Justine Mccarthy

What is it about Phil Hogan that makes him indispensable to Fine Gael leaders?

What might a Fianna Fáil-Fine Gael merger look like? Exactly like Phil Hogan — big, strategic and born to survive. If ever a person embodied the...

04.10.2024 4

The Irish Times

Justine Mccarthy

If you laughed at the one about the Leinster House bike shelter, you’ll love the one about the loo rolls

True-life Irish jokes stretch credulity more than the old Paddy-goes-to-London gags. They’re not half as funny either, despite the awfully low...

06.09.2024 6

The Irish Times

Justine Mccarthy

Ireland’s lousy summer: ‘The people are great,’ says the German tourist. ‘But I couldn’t live here.’ I know what she means

The view out the window in Margaret and Jim’s B&B is sublime. If only we could see it. There is an exceptional cruelty in knowing west Cork is...

30.08.2024 30

The Irish Times

Justine Mccarthy

Musk’s lack of interest in truth shows why Government must act on media ownership

Elon Musk was the star attraction at last December’s Atreju festival in Rome, an annual gathering organised by the Italian prime minister Giorgia...

16.08.2024 10

The Irish Times

Justine Mccarthy

Moronic marriage of loyalists and ‘Irish patriots’ revives Troubles-era nightmares

One February afternoon in 1992, two UDA sectarian killers burst into Seán Graham bookmakers on Belfast’s Lower Ormeau Road and sprayed the place...

09.08.2024 3

The Irish Times

Justine Mccarthy

Because of Lavinia Kerwick, Ireland learned about the trauma of sexual crime

Lavinia Kerwick’s brown eyes are blue with disappointment. Those eyes never could lie. “My trust in everyone is gone now. I am just so sad,” she...

02.08.2024 2

The Irish Times

Justine Mccarthy

Derry O’Rourke: They called him God, and the room where he molested them the ‘chamber of horrors’

They called him God. That tells a story in itself about the coach who devastated their childhoods. For Derry O’Rourke, in their young eyes wide...

31.07.2024 2

The Irish Times

Justine Mccarthy

The sting of the crosier is dead and buried with Eamonn Casey’s secrets

While womanising ex-bishop Eamonn Casey was attending first Communions as a Catholic curate in England in 2001 – the year Limerick diocese received...

26.07.2024 3

The Irish Times

Justine Mccarthy

Justine McCarthy: With Ireland on a knife edge, it’s a bad time for a brain drain from the Dáil

Leo Varadkar’s announcement that he is quitting politics brings the number of departing TDs to 28, including four who have been elected to the...

19.07.2024 3

The Irish Times

Justine Mccarthy

Michael D Higgins is proof that age is not Joe Biden’s biggest problem

Until Joe Biden started tottering – you know that quickened walk he does at a precarious tilt as if an aide has put batteries in his shoes? –...

12.07.2024 10

The Irish Times

Justine Mccarthy