The price of Irish unification has now been put at €20 billion over twenty years – the bill to be picked up by the Irish taxpayer. (Although these figures, as estimated by economist John FitzGerald, son of Garret, are disputed by some.) But as Ireland is reckoned to be one of the richest countries in…

The Government’s monumental defeat in the referendum showed how truly out of touch they were with the Irish people. The aftermath saw many calling for Fine Gael to get back to its Christian democratic roots with critics saying that too much time has been spent appeasing the woke brigade and too little on bread and…

It is just a month since the resounding defeat of the two referenda put to the voters by the government, but one wonders has the government learned anything. Last Saturday, at the SIPTU Early Years conference in Liberty Hall, Minister for Children, Roderic O’Gorman, doubled down on ignoring stay-at-home mothers and families who wish to…

What is happening to a lot of our young people? The Annual General Meeting of the Irish Medical Organisation last weekend heard that in the last three decades the number of young people presenting at the Mater hospital in Dublin after self-harming has increased fivefold. Addressing the conference, Prof. Matthew Sadlier, a consultant psychiatrist, blamed…

Pope Francis opened up about tensions between himself and the private secretary of his predecessor Benedict XVI, German Archbishop Georg Gänswein, who he said made things “difficult” for him. Speaking to Spanish Journalist Javier Martinez-Brocal with ABC Español, Francis addressed comparisons between himself and Benedict, saying such comparisons are normal, and that even Benedict was…

In a new document published Monday, the Vatican presented a “seamless garment” approach to human dignity, uniting Pope Francis’s progressive social agenda with the traditional moral and ethical concerns of his predecessors. Closely associated with the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of Chicago, the “seamless garment” approach to life issues in the Church consists of a…

Michael Sanfey   In a lecture delivered last month at the European University Institute in Florence, European Central Bank Executive Board member Isabel Schnabel referenced the importance of ‘creative destruction’, a concept associated with the Austrian political economist Joseph Schumpeter. It means that in a well-functioning system, productivity is boosted by the exit of inefficient…