Welcome to IT Sunday, your weekly briefing of some of the best Irish Times journalism for subscribers.
A string of price hike announcements for electricity and gas customers in Ireland has seen the cost-of-living crisis remain at the forefront of the news agenda in recent weeks. Cliff Taylor this weekend looks toward the upcoming budget, one which he says will be seen as a rescue mission for households seeing spending power slashed as prices continue to surge.
“Households will be better off after the budget than they will be before it — there will be a lot of ‘give’ and not a lot of ‘take’. But most will still be worse off than they were before the energy crisis started because inflation has taken such a heavy toll on their spending power,” writes Taylor. Read the full piece here.
Earlier in the week Fiona Reddan also looked forward to Budget 2023, examining what we can expect in various key categories, from housing to tax measures. Separately, on the issue of rising costs and the factors behind rising electricity costs in particular, Conor Pope has this explainer: why are energy bills going up by so much?
Sinn Féin’s Eoin Ó Broin writes in the Opinion section that when it comes to housing, the over-reliance on the private sector to meet social and affordable housing demand has come back to bite successive Governments, with a vengeance. Calling for a “paradigm shift” in housing policy, the Sinn Féin housing spokesman lays out his party’s approach to the issue, which he says would include increased investment in “the delivery of at least 20,000 social and affordable homes every year”.
Russians this weekend paid final respects to the last leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, in a ceremony held in Moscow without much fanfare and with the notable absence of president Vladimir Putin. In his column, David McWilliams is writing about the time he met Gorbachev, and the impact he indirectly wound up having on this country: “Money and talent flooded into Ireland as an indirect result of the decisions taken by the last leader of the Soviet Union, perhaps changing this country more profoundly than many of our home-grown political leaders,” writes McWilliams. “When I met him, I was struck by the kindness in those brown eyes, a kindness that prevented him from using the military to crush protest, a kindness that is lamentably absent in today’s Russian leadership.”
Fuelled by climate change, the incidence of tick-borne Lyme disease is rising in Ireland and across the northern hemisphere — and often leaving a trail of long-term debilitating illness. Kevin O’Sullivan asked the experts about the disease, and its growing numbers: already this year there is evidence of a record number of ticks translating into record number of bites in Ireland, according to infectious disease expert Prof Jack Lambert. Until there is better education for GPs and consultants in Ireland on the complexities of tick-borne infections, backed by better diagnostics and investment in research to improve understanding of these conditions, “patients will continue to be left undiagnosed and untreated”, he warns. Read the full piece here.
Ken Early this week examined the recent fortune of Newcastle United under manager Eddie Howe, and the part that money — and the club’s Saudi owners — have played. That he’s “doing a great job” is generally accepted following the club’s performance in the latter half of last year’s league, but a £90 million January transfer injection didn’t hurt the effort. Early writes: “Playing for a state-owned club is good for the salary and maybe the medal collection; the trade-off is that people don’t take your achievements very seriously, tending to see your success as the outcome of the club’s brute financial power rather than the excellence of the players and coaches.”
This week Trish Murphy responded to a reader going through IVF whose husband doesn’t seem to be taking the process as seriously. The reader, who has taken on the lion’s share of responsibility for the process, writes: “I feel he doesn’t care too much about it as we have one child, and that’s enough for him. I don’t think he understands how important this is for me and how much his comments and inaction make me feel like I’m flying solo.” Read Murphy’s advice here.
Finally, Roe McDermott is also advising readers in her weekly column, this time responding to a man having an issue with his long-time partner. “I met my partner 18 years ago. On paper he is the perfect guy (charming, witty, smart, good cook); unfortunately it turns out he’s in some sort of open relationship, while I’m not. We clearly should have discussed the kind of relationship we wanted when we started dating, but maybe by shyness, we didn’t.”
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