Welcome to this week’s IT Sunday, a selection of the best Irish Times journalism for our subscribers.
In a week that saw further doom and gloom on living standards and the latest round of tech job cuts, David McWilliams writes that things have been tricky for the 371,206 Irish citizens born in Ireland’s Renaissance period between Euro 88 and USA 94. “Many left school just as the economy collapsed in 2008 ... Tens of thousands then emigrated and when they came back, found themselves slammed by a pandemic just as their careers were taking off. Locked out of the property market, many are living back in the box room with parents who have become enormously wealthy over that same period ... This generational divide is the defining economic issue of our times.” McWilliams argues it has never been so expensive to be a 30-something in Ireland.
McWilliams notes how many 30-somethings are stuck renting amid the current housing crisis. In her personal finance column, Fiona Reddan examines what relief the changes introduced in Budget 2023 could provide now they’re starting to kick in, including for those same renters in the form of a new tax credit. There’s also an increase in social welfare payments coming for many.
Brianna Parkins began a new finance column this week with this piece offering advice on how best to insulate yourself from economic shocks that could be in store this year. If you’d like to read more about the issues that affect your pocket try signing up to On the Money, the new weekly newsletter from our personal finance team exclusively for Irish Times subscribers. You can read the latest edition of the newsletter here.
It’s Chinese New Year today and our correspondent in Beijing Denis Staunton wrote this week about how the spectre of Covid-19 lurks in the background as millions of people travel for the festivities.
To mark the holiday, restaurant critic Corinna Hardgrave went to Nan in Dublin with a Chinese friend of hers and enjoyed a variety of dishes that wouldn’t normally make it into her order.
This week, Fintan O’Toole argues that Ireland is facing a rising threat from a far-right that is small but growing in confidence and ambition. “The question to be answered is: how much of this agitation is ‘about’ real issues and how much of it is an exploitation of real issues for purposes that have, at heart, nothing much to do with them?” he asks.
Meanwhile, in the aftermath of several protests against local accommodation for asylum seekers in various parts of Dublin, Justine McCarthy writes that districts where protests are becoming regular events have a common denominator: they are what were traditionally called working-class areas and these are the communities bearing the brunt of the refugee burden. “This double standard provides a fertile breeding ground for xenophobic provocateurs such as those on the far-right who have been mustering the protests,” she writes.
Europe Correspondent Naomi O’Leary visited Sweden recently to mark the start of the country’s six-month presidency of the European Union and found that while there she was asked six times about Ireland’s position on defence. The invasion of Ukraine caused a dramatic shift in attitudes about defence in Scandinavia, leading to Sweden and Finland applying to join Nato and Denmark choosing by referendum to end its opt-out from EU co-operation on defence. People in Stockholm were curious about whether the Irish public is also debating the issue, she writes.
Our three-day series looking at the challenges facing GAA clubs in both rural and urban areas as Irish society changes began with this piece from Seán Moran and Gordon Manning. “Urbanisation and rural decline are phrases that have entered the GAA conversation to become as prevalent as chatter on championship structures or black cards. Because Ireland’s population shift impacts every club on the island, it is profound and potentially detrimental.”
In one of the articles in the series, Gordon Manning spoke to members of Na Rossa in Donegal, where the second men’s team was scrapped about a dozen years ago. Now they are struggling to maintain just one. “We are basically living on a year-to-year basis,” Na Rossa chairman Declan Bonner tells Manning. “Look, nobody is going to come back anytime soon. And it’s not just here but in the wider Donegal area, a lot of lads are moving to Australia again. It’s frightening to see what is happening.”
The series concluded this weekend with a look at Ranelagh Gaels in Dublin, one of the fastest-growing clubs in Ireland, but which nevertheless still does not have a pitch to call its own.
In her latest advice column, Roe McDermott helps a reader who has just been dumped by a guy they had been seeing for four months for what the reader says was “being too needy”. The reader says other exes have said similar things to them before and they don’t know “why I keep embarrassing myself by falling for these guys”. Roe says that the main issue is for the reader to stop blaming themselves and to halt negative self-talk. Read her full advice here.
As always, there is much more on irishtimes.com, including rundowns of all the latest movies in our film reviews, tips for the best restaurants in our food section and all the latest in sport. There are plenty more articles exclusively available for Irish Times subscribers here.
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