Una Mullally

3 days ago | irishtimes.com | Una Mullally

In a promotional video posted online by the Department of Agriculture, Michael Healy-Rae, Minister of State with responsibility for forestry, foregrounded his personal experience having planted a “forestry plantation” in his early twenties. He also recently purchased more forestry. It can be rare for a minister – junior or senior – to have especially relevant expertise to bring to the role they’re given, but in this case, Healy-Rae has literally got his hands dirty.

1 week ago | irishtimes.com | Una Mullally

If I told you that you could book a last-minute ticket from Dublin to New York for a fare of €15, you’d probably think I was mad. Welcome to transatlantic travel in 2025. When I checked last week, the price of a return airfare in the month of May on that route with Aer Lingus was €30. The taxes, charges and carrier-imposed fees on top of that fare totalled €368.58, meaning the real price for the customer was €398.58, which was still a bargain.

2 weeks ago | irishtimes.com | Una Mullally

In the aftermath of a UK court ruling on the definition of woman as that defined by “biological sex”, one of the legal challenge’s funders, the author JK Rowling (who also writes under the name Robert Galbraith), posted a photograph to social media. For a good while now, Rowling’s antagonism on the issue of trans rights has inflamed a discourse that makes rational discussion difficult.

3 weeks ago | irishtimes.com | Una Mullally

The Easter bunny did not come early for Fine Gael this year. A devastating Irish Times/IPSOS B & A poll for the party before the weekend confirmed that, as I’ve written previously, Fine Gael made the same mistake with Simon Harris as it did with Leo Varadkar. The party convinced itself that the personal ambitions of an individual member would connect with the broader public. Varadkar’s leadership was electoral kryptonite. Now the self-declared “new energy” has failed to materialise.

1 month ago | irishtimes.com | Una Mullally

A while ago, I was turning the corner of Smithfield Square in Dublin on to the Luas stop when my jaunt came to a bruising halt. This is a corner recently given over to yet another ugly office block. Directly across from it, another ugly new office block looms, with giant “TO LET” signs in its windows. The whack I earned came from a metal box planted close to the corner, positioned far from eye-level, as though an intentional obstacle.