In The News

So now we know, the World Cup play-off fixtures have been announced: Republic of Ireland will play Czech Republic away on March 26th, and if they win, they will play Denmark or North Macedonia in Dublin on March 31st.

Northern Ireland will play Italy away, and if they win, they will be away again to Wales or Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The playoffs are knockout matches so it could all end on March 26th, but what if it doesn’t?

Can...

The Epstein files are a vast cache of documents which include legal files, witness testimonies and flight logs, collected during an extensive US Justice Department investigation into the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and his now jailed associate Ghislaine Maxwell. Epstein died in prison while awaiting trial having been charged with running a network of underage girls for sex.

President Donald Trump co...

There has been a sense for some time that Minister for Finance Paschal Donohoe’s next move was never going to be to some other role in Leinster House.

Instead it has long been expected that his side gig as President of the Eurogroup since July 2020 would lead to a top job on the financial world stage - the IMF was mentioned regularly. The question was when might he hand in his notice.

Yesterday Donohoe announced that he had r...

Like a whole generation of young Irish men, John Mackey emigrated to the UK in the 1950s in search of work.

At 87 and living alone in north London, the Kilkenny man who never married was sociable, charming and always dapper in his trilby hat. He was beloved by his nieces and nephews.

On May 6th he headed to his local supermarket for some shopping and, as he’d increasingly stopped cooking for himself, a takeaway of chips and s...

We're happy to share an episode Early Edition, a new podcast from The Irish Times that brings you four of our top stories in under ten minutes. Find it in your podcast app and hit follow to get updates each morning from Monday to Friday. On today's episode:

Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Harris asked his Polish counterpart for help in resolving a child abduction case involving a young girl with dual Irish-...

For generations, Irish speakers north and south of the Irish Border have fought to keep their language alive. And today, what was once dismissed as a fading tongue is undergoing an exhilarating and vibrant revival.

The Republic’s newly elected president Catherine Connolly has made it clear the Irish language will play a central role during her time in office and says she wants to see the native tongue of this island flourish.

In hard hats and high-vis jackets, Taoiseach Micheál Martin, Tánaiste Simon Harris and Minister for Housing James Browne looked the part at Thursday’s launch of “Delivering Homes, Building Communities, 2025-2030″, the Government’s latest grand plan to tackle the housing crisis.

By 2030, it is committed to delivering 300,000 new homes. It’s an ambitious target.

But who is going to build these new homes and how can that target ...

Few conflicts have caused as much horror and devastation to people’s lives as Sudan’s civil war. And yet, the country’s ongoing death and destruction remains largely unnoticed, and often ignored, by the rest of the world.

An estimated 150,000 people have been killed, and 14 million people displaced, since the country was plunged into civil war in April 2023 after a power struggle broke out between the country’s army and a powerf...

Last Friday, two men appeared before Portlaoise District Court as part of a Garda investigation into an alleged terrorist plot by an extreme right wing group to attack Galway Mosque.

The two men were arrested on Co Laois on Tuesday during a cross-Border antiterrorism operation and were charged with possession of explosives.

A video found by gardaí on one of the men’s phones revealed a ‘practice’ recording of what the extreme ...

On Monday, the COP30 climate summit officially opened in the Brazilian city of Belém at the gateway to the Amazon rainforest.

Brazilian organisers have insisted this will be the “COP of implementation” where measures needed to combat the climate crisis will take precedence over more promises and never-ending negotiations.

This year’s global summit marks a decade since the highly lauded Paris Agreement – the landmark agree...

For most people, the process of buying a house can be quite disheartening. The lack of housing supply across the country means houses often sell for way above asking price and usually after an excruciating bidding war.

While the Government promises to address the supply issue, is there anything that needs to change about the way we buy houses? 

In the UK, a major reform of the house-buying system has been proposed by t...

Every November, Irish Times restaurant critic Corinna Hardgrave looks back at her year to produce a list of the top 100 restaurants across the country.

This year, with the help of the writer Joanna Cronin, readers are treated to a plethora of options for every occasion from new and quirky eateries to heritage restaurants which have stood the test of time.

It’s also an exciting period for the Irish dining scene.

In February...

On Tuesday New Yorkers elected socialist and Democratic Party candidate Zohran Mamdani as mayor. Mamdani, the city's first Muslim and African-born mayor and the youngest in over a century, was harshly criticised by President Donald Trump throughout the campaign.

But his win, along with the election of several other Democrats in races across the country, has forced Trump to start taking seriously the threat of a Democratic resur...

On Saturday, the story broke that broadcaster and former Fine Gael politician Ivan Yates had provided interview and debate coaching to Fianna Fáil presidential candidate Jim Gavin before he dropped out of the race.

This was at a time when he was co-presenting the political podcast Path to Power and doing stand in shifts on Newstalk radio.

The story gained momentum in the days that followed as news emerged that senior Fianna F...

On Monday afternoon, in a packed courtroom at Dublin’s Circuit Criminal Court, former Kilkenny hurler DJ Carey was sentenced to five and a half years in prison for fraud. 

In July, the disgraced sportsman pleaded guilty to ten counts of deception involving thirteen individuals. 

It’s a stunning fall from grace for the Kilkenny man, who was once the most celebrated hurler in the country. 

For years, Carey spu...

There are many things An Garda Síochána know about the woman whose skeletal remains were found in 2021 during the construction of a greenway in Co Cork.

They believe the woman was 70 years or older when she died, that she was 157cm tall and had a large frame. They think she wore dentures made in the 1960s while she also suffered from arthritis. Carbon dating suggests she died between 1985 and 1987.

What they don’t know is her...

Saipan: it’s the one word that can, even 23 years later, cause a row and Irish football fans still divide into two camps.

When it comes to events in Saipan where the Irish team were acclimatising before heading to Japan for their first game in the 2002 World Cup, everyone has an opinion. You’re either Team Roy or Team Mick.

A new movie that captures the simmering tension and eventual blow up between Republic of Ireland manage...

In the early 1970s Mary ‘May’ and Seamus ‘Shay’ McGee were parents to four young children. On her second and third pregnancies, May had experienced complications so severe that her doctor advised that her life would be in danger if she had any more children.

The GP prescribed a diaphragm and spermicidal jelly to help prevent pregnancy. These had to be imported and were seized by customs with the couple told that if they attempte...

In early September, worshippers gathering for dawn prayers at several locations across Paris discovered a gruesome and spiteful scene – bloodied pigs’ heads discarded on the doorsteps of their mosques. A deeply offensive act, Muslims are forbidden from eating pork and consider pigs to be unclean.

Soon after, a farmer in Normandy in northern France, who had seen news reports of the dead animal heads appearing around the city, con...