In all my years away from home, perhaps the most consistent line of division between urban and rural Ireland has been on one-off houses.

There’s a particular Irish talent for moral outrage that conveniently stops at the point where it might cost us something.

Generally speaking, the thing about the American people is that they are very much like ourselves.

Podcasts from the idiotic to the sublime now pepper the airwaves.

The recent Western People article by Brendan Hoban (May 12, 2026) calling for a “flexible approach” to school divestment reflects a debate Ireland has now been having for so long that many parents have simply stopped believing meaningful change is ...

Despite what you might think of Donald Trump and the people who elected him, America is a great country. It just is and there is no way of getting away from the fact. Now, of course I was in California and the state is not America.

All across the region, like swallows, our young people have returned for the summer. Going away is a tale as old as time in our part of the world. Each generation experiences it a little differently, but the basic elements don’t change.

There are times when I think back to when I was a moody teenager during a family holiday in a damp Bundoran resort. On one of the least wet days, we were packed into the Nissan Vanette and headed off to a remote Glencolmcille.

There was a funeral I recall from a few years back - a handyman, a good man, the kind who'd give you a day's work for nothing and never mention it again.

Once bishops could be seen but not heard, apart from the regular interventions of the famous bishop of Cork, Connie Lucey, an outspoken and combative character whose main platform was the Confirmation circuit.