Daniel Finn is features editor for Jacobin and the author of One Man’s Terrorist: A Political History of the IRA. He is on the editorial board of New Left Review.
Bertie Ahern’s evidence soon took a melancholy turn when he appeared before the Mahon Tribunal of Inquiry into Certain Planning Matters and Payments after resigning as Ireland’s taoiseach. ‘I was out working, out doing my job as a political leader of this country, working my butt off,’ he said. ‘Not trying to make other than my own income and the few sums of...
It’s difficult to fathom the enthusiasm for armed struggle among hardline Republicans: if the British establishment wasn’t prepared to withdraw in 1972, when the Provos killed a hundred soldiers and wounded more than five hundred, why would they capitulate now to groups incapable of fighting a war at that pitch?
There seems to be one clear message from last Friday's voting in Ireland: people liked their Celtic Tiger, and now that it's gone, they want somebody to pay. Elections for the European Parliament were held alongside local council polls, and there were a couple of Dublin by-elections thrown in for good measure, so the opportunities to stick it to the ruling coalition were delightfully varied. Fianna Fáil had an awful day, their worst since the 1920s. They were overtaken by Fine Gael on a national scale, but the details of the defeat must have made it particularly galling for Ireland's one-time vote-harvesting machine.
There was an awfully genteel protest organised by the Tax Justice Network in Jersey earlier this year. The TJN had joined up with a group of Jersey campaigners who would like the island to wean itself off its dependence on the more creative aspects of modern finance. Christian Aid have estimated that Southern countries lose at least $160 billion every year in unpaid taxes as a result of dodgy...
When the Swedish furniture giant IKEA decided to build one of its cavernous stores in Dublin, Ireland’s property boom was at its extravagant peak. By the time of the grand opening at Ballymun on 27 July – there was a log-cutting ceremony – thousands of unsold apartments stood empty within a few miles of the place. Yet the slump hasn’t put a stop to IKEA’s gallop. On the first morning of business, a few hundred people turned up before it opened, hoping to be the first to get their hands on the self-assembly bookshelves. So far, on average, 15,000 people have crossed its threshold every day. The canteen served 137,000 Scandinavian meatballs in one week.
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