Irish Times Inside Politics

All agree that the scale of Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán’s defeat in yesterday’s general election is hugely significant, for Hungary, Europe and beyond. But what exactly does the result mean? To find out Hugh talks to two journalists covering Hungarian affairs, Daniel Nolan and Ivan Nagy. They discuss how Orbán's populist playbook ran out of steam, why JD Vance's recent visit backfired...

Ellen Coyne and Jack Horgan-Jones join Hugh Linehan to look back on the week in politics:It was becoming clear towards the end of last week that protests over the price of fuel were coming. But the scale of what has unfolded seems to have caught the Government by surprise. Then there were missteps in the handling of the situation throughout the week. Now the battle lines have been drawn and...

In the final instalment of our series on Labour’s time in government from 2011 to 2016, things get darker as it becomes clear economic progress will not be enough for voters to forgive the party for its role in austerity.Labour’s poor showing in the 2014 local and European elections leads to a change at the top. But Joan Burton’s leadership does not revive Labour’s fortunes.Then, when the...

Inside Politics is coming to Galway in May for a live recording. Get your tickets here.In part two of this three-part series on Labour's harrowing experience in government from 2011 to 2016, Pat Leahy and Hugh Linehan follow the story of the first three years of that austerity-delivering coalition. As punishing budget after punishing budget was delivered, Labour struggled to retain its political...

Inside Politics is coming to Galway in May for a live recording. Get your tickets here.When Labour came to power in 2011 Ireland was in the depths of an economic crisis that had several more years to run. Their coalition with Fine Gael spent the next five years struggling to fix the economy while satisfying the EU and the IMF, who had bailed us out.But it was Labour, led by Eamon Gilmore to its...

Oliver Sears, founder of Holocaust Awareness Ireland, joins Hugh to talk about his growing alarm at the rise of anti-Semitism in Ireland and what he sees as the failure to take it seriously. They discuss whether the political response to Israel's actions since October 7th 2023 has complicated that debate. The conversation covers questions such as where legitimate criticism of Israel ends and...

This week the Government decided to unveil a €250 million package to help citizens meet the elevated cost of fuel. And this could be just the start of a series of new efforts to keep down the cost of living. After ending such supports in the last Budget, it seems there is a limit to the Government’s ability to resist helping when times get tough and the money is there. But what will happen when a...

Seán Lemass is remembered as the man who changed Ireland.Several opinion polls have noted Lemass as the country's most admired taoiseach.He never left any papers of autobiography, but rather twenty-two hours of private interviews.Hugh speaks to Irish Times reporter Ronan McGreevy who has gathered these lost interviews and collated them into a memoir in Lemass's own words.Produced by JJ Vernon and...

Eoin Drea is a senior researcher at the Wilfried Martens Centre, the official think tank of the European People’s Party (of which Fine Gael is a member), and an occasional contributor to the opinion pages of The Irish Times, where he is often critical of Ireland’s approach to Europe. Recently he wrote that “Ireland’s recent hissy fit at not being invited to a pre-EU summit meeting in Belgium...

Ellen Coyne and Jack Horgan-Jones join Hugh Linehan to look back on the week in politics:· Israeli strikes on Iranian natural gas infrastructure marked an escalation in the US-Israeli war on Iran. With global oil and gas prices climbing, could we soon see Government measures to offset the cost to consumers?· Opposition parties were less than impressed by Taoiseach Micheál Martin’s showing during...