Fintan O'Toole
Fintan O'Toole (b. 1958) is a columnist, assistant editor and drama critic for The Irish Times, which he joined in 1988. He also writes for the New York Review of Books. He was and continues to be a strong critic of corruption in Irish political life. He is the author of Enough is Enough : How to build a new Republic (2010).
Updated: 16 November 2010
In the midst of an economic crisis still in constant flux, it would be pointless for the Irish to vote Yes on the May 31st referendum on the fiscal compact, which for the moment is but a collections of penalties for misbehaving signatories. Come back later, argues Fintan O’Toole. 
Ireland will be the only country to put the EU fiscal compact to a popular vote. But what is really on the table, denounces columnist Fintan O’Toole, is that neo-liberal ideology is being raised to the status of unbreakable law. 
How can citizens be forced to pay out €15 million for a shopping centre in a foreign land while seeing their own health services shut down due to budget restrictions? Such is the absurd situation the Irish face right now, a columnist deplores. 
The Irish may be furious over the EU/IMF bailout, massive budget cuts, and the fact that billions of public money are still being poured into its toxic banks, but it is nevertheless voting in a new government that will see through the measures taken by its predecessor, writes columnist Fintan O’Toole. 
With the Irish debt crisis top of the agenda as finance ministers gather in Brussels, Irish columnist Fintan O’Toole warns that a bailout for the economically crippled country cannot work without a shake-up of its political institutions. 
A nation is reeling from the findings of the Child Abuse Commission in which rape and sexual molestation were "endemic" in Irish Catholic church-run industrial schools and orphanages. Fintan O'Toole in the Irish Times wonders how a society could have consigned children "to a system of terror."