Welcome to this week’s IT Sunday, a selection of the best Irish Times journalism for our subscribers.
As Ireland get ready to face Scotland in a crunch test of their Grand Slam ambitions, Johnny Watterson goes through the fractious history of the fixtures down the years and how a bit of needle has developed between the two sets of players in recent times. From targeting Conor Murray to the World Cup bid disappointment, the two countries have definitely had their moments. You can read all our Six Nations coverage here.
Earlier this week the Government decided to lift the ban on rental evictions at the end of the month, despite warnings from housing charities over a ‘wave’ of evictions and rise in homelessness. In his analysis of the decision, Pat Leahy writes that extending the ban would have been the easy option – but Government chose to take a risk. You can read all of our eviction ban and housing crisis coverage, here.
In a week when teacher Enoch Burke’s dispute with Wilson Hospital School came to a crescendo in the Four Courts, Mary Carolan looks at how this could drag on for some time yet. She writes: “Legal sources have estimated the costs incurred by Wilson’s Hospital School in dealing with various pre-trial applications since last August is now into six figures and, after the full trial is heard, could be €500,000 or more.”
In his weekend column, Fintan O’Toole reflects on the middle class, and how the story of modern Ireland is essentially about the rise of the urban middle class. And the reason the place feels so unsettled right now is the unravelling of what “middle class” came to mean here, he writes.
Meanwhile, in the ambience of a west Kerry bakery, David McWilliams is listening to four local women gossiping away about the filthy weather. It would be easy to slip into the notion that rural Ireland, in economic terms, is an unchanged, undynamic place. However, it’s rural Ireland on the rise, McWilliams writes, and this shift should be incentivised.
There’s no avoiding the fact that it’s now more expensive to buy your first home than it was this time last year. Yes, property prices continue to rise, albeit at a more muted pace, with price growth of 7.8 per cent reported in the year to December – a deceleration from the 15 per cent reported earlier in 2022. But if you are considering saving for a house this year, Fiona Reddan outlines everything you need to know about funding it. 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, which will be issued every Friday to Irish Times subscribers. You can read the latest edition of the newsletter here.
In his Smart Money column, Cliff Taylor examines how congestion charges work elsewhere and what it might mean for us in Ireland after it emerged it was one of the measures being considered to cut down on car usage.
In Tell Me About It, Trish Murphy advises a woman whose daughter is “26 and is so mean... she calls me names, she insults me . . .When she was 13, I became sick and had a late stage cancer diagnosis. She has referenced that in the past – that everything was great until l I got sick”. Read Trish’s response, here.
And finally, in her advice column, Roe McDermott advises a reader in a relationship that is “caring, fulfilling and exciting in many ways . . . However my partner has said recently that while he cares about me and I make him happy, he doesn’t love me - should I leave or wait?”. Roe’s response is 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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