It’s winter solstice on Sunday, so get ready for Grianstad 🌞 - register for a free ticket - you’ll receive an email on Sunday with the audio - check your local sunset time, head out to watch the light, press play 30 mins before sunset - listen wherever you are in the world, headphones ideally

The body of James O’Neill, who was found dead in the Phoenix Park in Nov 2023, lay “unidentified” in a Dublin morgue for over a year despite having nine forms of ID in his pocket. Solicitor representing the O’Neill family describes the case as “baffling”.

It’s winter solstice on Sunday, so get ready for Grianstad 🌞 - register for a free ticket - you’ll receive an email on Sunday with the audio - check your local sunset time, head out to watch the light, press play 30 mins before sunset - listen wherever you are in the world, headphones ideally

"Palestine Action-affiliated hunger strikers are likely to die without David Lammy’s intervention, lawyers representing the prisoners have said."

United left can’t wait for the next election. It needs to build a housing movement

Register for free tickets to Grianstad 2025, an immersive solstice audio experience. Sunday December 21st, sunset, wherever you are.

I wrote about The Complex in Dublin, the latest in a long list of arts spaces and venues for culture under threat of closure in the Irish capital.

Reviewed CMAT’s show in Dublin.

“RTÉ will not participate in the 2026 Eurovision Song Contest, nor will RTÉ broadcast the competition. RTÉ feels that Ireland’s participation remains unconscionable given the appalling loss of lives in Gaza and the humanitarian crisis there.”

Agallamh anseo le Peadar Ó Goill. Bíonn Scéal ar fáil san Irish Times gach Máirt.

Had a chat with @louisemcsharry.bsky.social on her podcast about some big changes happening in her life. I’m full of admiration for Louise’s openness and vulnerability, and I hope what we spoke about might start a broader conversation in Ireland and elsewhere.

Ireland has one of the best and most genre-diverse music scenes in the world, but there’s a lack of clear and well-resourced funding pathways. Many musicians are dealing with constant financial precariousness. I wrote about the need for a large, dedicated music fund distributed at a local level.

Excited for this!

Must-read: "Politicians should be careful about what the lobbyists wish for – the latter’s cures often make things worse. The planning system is a key part of democracy and the legal system is how citizens hold power to account. Tinker with them at your peril" www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2025...

Very sad to hear Margaretta D'Arcy has died. Besides her relentless anti-war activism, her book on the women protesting in Armagh Prison, Tell Them Everything, is such an important piece of writing. She was also key to springing Kate Millett from institutional confinement in Clare in 1980.

Wrote about the massive energy requirements of AI data centres in the context of Ireland’s previous data centre development “boom” and squeezed electricity grid.

I’ve written something on John Collison’s Op-Ed and environmental democracy Next time you’re out in Dublin, check if you’re being “socially de-risked” by a friendly face from his think-tank elajucd.com/2025/11/21/o...

Great piece by Anna Cafolla on Ireland's brilliant alternative and independent music scenes.

Was the Department of Justice using experimental chatbots to give immigration advice? It has now retired its asylum chatbot Erin, but has infused Tara, the non-asylum immigration chatbot with AI. Read more here www.dublininquirer.com/was-the-depa...

Paschal Donohoe quitting the Irish government is a huge blow to Fine Gael. Whatever you think about him / his politics, he was the most important figure in the party, and many people who don't even like FG at least believed he was smart. He was also perceived as a heavyweight, unlike Harris.

Looking forward to speaking at @irelandsedge.bsky.social in Dingle next weekend. I'll be talking about corporate gentrification in Dublin City, agus fás na Gaeilge sa chultúr. Loads of great speakers including: Ed Caesar, Dr. Mohammed Abu Mughaisib, Caoimhe Butterly, Roisin Kiberd + more.

Brilliant piece by Malachy Clerkin on the everlasting gift of Troy Parrott’s epic winner.

I’m hosting a conversation this evening in Temple Bar about community-first public space design in relation to Drury St in Dublin. Tickets are free, more details here ⬇️

🇮🇪

TROY PARROTT KING OF IRELAND

You can now watch Roisin Agnew’s film The Ban on the New Yorker website.

Excited to announce the first book on my press. Plan Life Go, by Julie Fogarty, Sliver Editions, Spring 2026. An incredible debut memoir rooted in 1990s Dublin's explosive rave scene and devastating heroin epidemic. Design by Matt Lambert. More details here ⬇️ www.sliverpress.com/editions

President Catherine Connolly’s inaugural speech. “As I speak, I am acutely conscious of the 165 million people currently forcibly displaced from their homes and countries due to war, famine and climate change. We cannot turn back the clock nor close our eyes to these realities.”

President Catherine Connolly has called for action on war, genocide and climate change, saying the normalisation of war “has never been and will never be acceptable” to Ireland, a nation with a long tradition of neutrality and peacekeeping. #VMNews

Whatever about companies being over-valued etc., there's a fundamental issue at the heart of this: AI data centres cannot be built at the necessary scale in the time required, because the energy to power them does not yet exist. It's very simple: physical infrastructure reality meeting AI fantasy.

FAI votes to suspend Israel from all Uefa competitions

Great piece on Dead Centre and Emilie Pine’s Good Sex in the NYT.

Was delighted to use some of my speaking time at the Irish Landscape Institute’s conference in Dublin yesterday to screen Louis O’Flynn-Martin’s short film, City In Crisis, and to talk about prosocial urban design. It’s a great piece of filmmaking that offers a skateboarder’s view of the city.

NEW: The End of the Line: the centrepiece of Saudi Arabia’s Neom gigaproject - a 500m tall, 170km long wall-like building intended ultimately to house 9 million people - can’t get out of the ground, say more than 20 former Neom architects, engineers and senior executives. ig.ft.com/saudi-neom-l...

Outsourcing / hollowing out of RTÉ continues as bosses close its in-house doc unit. "Instead of a return to the core values of our public-service remit, we have dramatically increased commercialisation, with whole swathes of the organisation now being primed for outsourcing." - union spokesperson

How Elon Musk boosts the British right.

“All’s Fair makes Sex and the City 2 look like a Mike Leigh film about bag ladies who live in the woods and own ferrets.”

Regarding the rightward turn FG & FF are taking on all kinds of immigration, here's a piece I wrote Nov 2019 on far-right rhetoric entering mainstream Irish politics. "This is a pattern: extreme rhetoric is heard, listened to and begins to seep into mainstream politics until it becomes part of it."

One of the many reasons this is a bad idea.

There’s a huge gulf between levels of fear of Dublin city centre, and levels of crime, a new survey shows. The City Centre Crime Victim Survey was commissioned by Dublin Inquirer and carried out by Amarách Research.

There’s an essay here on the role of good design/typography in successful campaigns!

An incredible result, an inspiring campaign that is already having an impact elsewhere, and instructive lessons for progressives everywhere. Great work New York!

Wrote about the Irish presidential election and its general political context for Foreign Policy.

Update on Translations in Dakar - Caitlin Kelly has a piece in the Guardian about it:

“There is a question that hovers over Irish politics: what will the parties of power do when they start to panic about losing it? Last week, after their joint debacle in the presidential election, we got the grim answer: turn on immigrants.” - @fotoole.bsky.social

Loved this piece on Grano, one of the best restaurants in Dublin.

The so-called "red tape" that needs cutting is Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael's chaotic housing policies that created and then compounded the housing crisis. Zero point trying to blame anything or anyone else, or trying to pretend that the financialisation of housing isn't a core ideological failure.

I wrote about Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil’s rightwing signalling in the wake of their presidential election failures. If they persist in pursuing such a strategy, they will not attract disaffected voters, but dig a moat around themselves on increasingly eroding soil, until the sides collapse.

The Irish Times view on the attack on asylum seekers in Drogheda: premeditated and deeply shocking