Facebook is a great way to get a discussion going, even now and again to have a good old argument. I tend to be more of a broadcaster than a reader — these golden words (or at least the link to them) go up on Facebook every week.

Constancy about values has never mattered more. Moral leadership has never mattered more.

If I ask you a week from now to outline the four main features of the budget, you’ll struggle to remember two of them, writes Fergus Finlay

Last week the independent Senator Tom Clonan wrote a powerful article here about people with disabilities. The headline on his piece, based on a phrase he used, was “Disability rights are in freefall”.

We need to enact the hate speech bill now. And we need to regulate the hell out of the internet access enjoyed by the haters. We should tolerate no more listening to twaddle on these subjects.

Sometimes the memories are all you take with you into older age. And then dementia comes after them, stripping them away one by one

I’m sorry to swim against the ride of conventional wisdom, but enough already. We don’t need more TDs. We need better politics. Our parliament is over-stuffed, over-male, over-middle class.

We watched a great little Irish movie on the telly the other night. Called Herself, it’s a movie full of hope and ambition, recovery and friendship.

I’m in Hudson Park, trying to banish negative thoughts, when something Vicky said occurs to me. Vicky is my daughter, and she works in backroom politics (not quite my backroom, alas, but that doesn’t stop her being a progressive and deep thinker).

It makes a villain out of no one, but would, I suspect, be genuinely inspiring to a lot of girls and younger women — and boys too

Our present Government is getting closer and closer to an election in which it will be attacked every day for its failure to address the quality of life issues that beset us.

We must learn how to implement better to avoid going down the road that Trump and Johnson put their countries on

I am in awe of the bravery shown by Ciara Mangan, who waived her anonymity to speak openly about Shane Noonan, the man who raped her.

Libraries, and librarians, don’t just transform young lives. They offer shelter, comfort, warmth to older people, poorer people, lonely people

The biggest job is the restoration of RTÉ’s authority. That will never come again from any sense of entitlement among its leading lights

We all know who needs better protection from the law, and it’s not comfortable middle-class senators

Twenty-four minutes. Twenty-four painful, empty minutes. That’s precisely how long RTÉ devoted to RTÉ during the first half of RTÉ’s flagship radio news programme This Week on Sunday.

Unless our President knows something I don’t know (always a possibility!), he uttered some terrible rubbish last weekend

Boris Johnson and Donald Trump will hold special positions in the pantheon of people who built political careers on the entirely false premise that they were on the side of underdogs

While there has been discussion around the ageing population of our country, there are positives that can be taken from Census 2022 data

There is room for some modest tax changes, but there are far more important issues than that around

In some cases the fear appears to be spontaneous, in too many others it is being stoked and fomented in the name of some perverted nationalism

I haven’t been back there for a while, years actually. But I’ve been reading about it constantly, listening to stuff about it, taking what I thought was a keen interest.

Tánaiste's tirade was over the top — but we must also turn our attention to the torrent of toxicity we endure online nowadays

It is men who have created the systems and the rules and the culture and the mores that belittle and demean women

You may not have heard of Pat. If you were from Cork, mind you, and took an interest in what was going on around you, you would have

The Dublin Rape Crisis Centre's "We-consent" campaign is a conversation we don’t just need to have — we have to have it. Especially men.

I can’t recall when an Irish government last sat down to make an important decision, knew they were going to hurt an awful lot of people, and went ahead anyway, writes Fergus Finlay

No interest can now be served to try to charge somebody new, after all these years

I don’t begrudge Ahern or Blair a day in the sun for the agreement they signed, but if it is to be seen as ‘their’ work it would be a complete travesty

'Circling around each other like the two lads in ‘The Banshees of Inisherin’, doing as much self-harm, creating as much collateral damage' — FERGUS FINLAY on the DUP and the Conservatives

The worst thing you can do is try to be inclusive, celebrate difference, try to understand how easy oppression is — do all that and you’re woke

They may not often achieve their demands, but marches are important to create the sense that people, together, are on the move.

REPUTATION matters. It matters to individuals, to companies, perhaps above all to countries. It matters enormously to charities and to any organisation that depends on the trust of people who support them, work for them or depend on them.

She will be remembered as one of the most consequential education ministers we’ve ever had

We live, sometimes, in an ugly State. I’ve written that here before on a few occasions, and I find myself sometimes despairing about whether it’s something that can ever be fixed.

Maybe the lesson we need to learn from our next-door neighbour is that some things never change

People who have been discriminated against for years are being encouraged to march and demand discrimination against others

It'd be good to see fitting retribution for some of the world's most vile chancers. Inspired by his daughter — and by the works of Gilbert and Sullivan — FERGUS FINLAY has a little list... 

It's a dark mysterious place, the Tomnafinnoge wood. It’s near Shillelagh in County Wicklow, and it’s famous as one of the last remnants of the ancient oak forests that used to cover most of that part of the county.

I love a game that makes 9-year-olds giggle. Mikey is 9, and he introduced us to a card game on Christmas night called Kids Against Maturity.

I’ve flown through world wars, uprisings, and pandemics. Why do I have this sense of foreboding that things are getting worse, especially for children?

Did you ever hear of Godwin Swift? No, nor me neither, until I stayed in his house this past weekend. And I have to admit I’d never heard of Longwood either, where Godwin’s house is located.

Anyone who loves him- or herself more than anyone else will invariably end up alone