Full coverage: Politics

For the umpteenth time, the French president has heralded a “new method” of government. This time, a hung parliament is forcing him to go through with this promise.

This time, French voters have clearly chosen to move their elections away from the post-WWII battleground between centre-right and centre-left. The constitutional implications and the lessons for democracy are profound.

Businessman Paul Mackay battled Charles Haughey over his finances and was a founding member of the Progressive Democrats. More recently, he has sought to highlight the massive erosion in value at the Irish Credit Bureau. He tells his story to Tom Lyons.

Former EU Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier now runs the international campaign of presidential candidate Valérie Pécresse. He sat down with The Currency in Paris to discuss British and unionist attitudes to the NI Protocol, changing the EU, corporation tax and identity politics.

Divisions on the far right and on the left favour French President Emmanuel Macron’s re-election chances in two months’ time. Can the Gaullists return and challenge Macron's stance as the last man standing against extremism? Thomas Hubert reports from Paris.

The government has provided some answers to the questions surrounding the financial structure of NBI, including conditions for the debt funding provided by private investors and the calculation of fees paid to a company controlled by David McCourt.

Soon after I started to work in government, a very senior official confided that the reason the civil service rules the roost in Ireland is that the political system is “immature”. Regardless of who is in the next government, it is time for politics to assert its primacy.

In a special podcast following COP26 and the publication of Ireland’s Climate Action Plan, four of The Currency’s writers focused on climate change discuss the vast distance left to cover between official discourse and reality – and its implications for the role of the state.

Humanity’s latest experience of climate change was the Little Ice Age in the 17th century, which resulted in widespread upheaval and loss of life – but also led to the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution, with lessons on the role of the state.

Under the us-versus-them approach favoured by conspiracy theorists, no policy decision can ever be made. Yet it underpins a lot of the reaction to the Government’s Housing for All plan among those who won’t settle for a step in the right direction – only a full leap into Nirvana.