Politics

Sinn Féin has abandoned its left-wing alternative to capitalist, market-driven forces in favour of a centrist drive for acceptability.

Ian Paisley junior was undoubtedly provocative and perhaps even inflammatory in his call for the Police Service of Northern Ireland to investigate the trouble on the pitch at Omagh during the recent Tyrone versus Dublin National Football League match.

If Mary Lou McDonald has become the smiling, attractive face of Sinn Féin in recent years, then Toireasa Ferris promises to be the legs.

Fine Gael, according to itself at least, wasn't being xenophobic in recently raising the issue of extra child welfare payments to the non-resident children of EU nationals working in this country, the €1,000 per annum that the Government is going to pay parents of the under-sixes.

Pragmatic or cynical? Take your pick as to how you would describe this State's foreign policy, as enunciated by both the Government and our president, in relation to China, Saudi Arabia and the United States.

Vincent Browne interviewed Garret on the occasion of this 80th birthday in 2006 for Village magazine. The interview is republished here from the Village archive, which is part of Politico's subscription magazine archive. Subscribe here.

(An edited version of the speech delivered n the Dail by Garret FitzGerald, then leader of the Opposition, on 9 December 1979, on the nomination of Charles Haughey as Taoiseach).

Although in politics for just 27 years years, Taoiseach for just over five years, Garret FitzGerald has been and remains involved in public affairs in Ireland for over 50 years, as a politician, a columnist and campaigner. He has had a very considerable influence on Irish politics, far more than that attaching to his period as Taoiseach, on Church-State relations, on Northern Ireland, on transport, on our involvement in the European Community, on foreign affairs.

The leadership of the Republican movement and of Sinn Féin are facing an acute internal crisis as a result of the...

The community platform made up of 28 organisations committed to fighting poverty and inequality have agreed that the next social partnership agreement must be judged on four key tests. "Social partnership is meaningless unless the most marginalised in society are given a voice and unless the outcomes of social partnership results in real outcomes for them", said Sean Regan from the Community Workers Co-op. The community platform tests highlight how despite being one of the richest countries in the EU, Ireland also remains the most unequal.