“I’ll tell you this, as long as I have breath in my body, I’ll be in that fight, on behalf of the country that I love and I believe in, against those that want to tear it up.”
So said British prime minister Keir Starmer, who is waking up this morning having survived a day that could well have ended his political career. At a parliamentary party meeting with Labour colleagues last night, Starmer managed to emerge as a man fortified by the direct challenge to his leadership. Which, as one of the stories on our front page details, came from Anas Sarwar. The leader of Scottish Labour, who was previously an ally of Starmer’s, called on him to go.
Though he has survived for now, Starmer is the first world leader to have his career genuinely threatened by the fallout from the Epstein files – files he does not appear in, relating to the notorious paedophile whom he never even met. He will still have to survive the release of the “Mandelson files” – which may include embarrassing correspondence between the now disgraced former British ambassador Peter Mandelson and (obligatory Cork reference) Morgan McSweeney, the Downing Street chief of staff who resigned on Sunday.
The “fight” that Starmer was referencing at the parliamentary party meeting last night was that with Reform UK – which poses an existential threat not just to Labour, but to the established order of British politics. Mark Paul has a timely report in today’s paper from a Maga-style Reform UK rally.
The diabolical tentacles of the Epstein files have touched and tainted everything from the royal family of Norway to megalith financial institutions such as JP Morgan Chase and even to the British monarchy – which has been enduring unprecedented heckling in recent days over the latest revelations about the former prince Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor.
The victims, reduced to heads covered by redacted black boxes in photographs where grubby hands are grasping their waists, have been relegated in a story that is now about the fates and fortunes of the global elite.
Though our own politicians are mercifully absent from the main cast of diabolical influencers who feature in the files, the fallout from one of the world’s most ghastly child sex abuse scandals may still affect us here. The most immediate and likely way is through a change in the leadership of the British government.
Starmer’s resignation would force the Irish Government to watch one of the most collegiate prime minister in recent years, in Anglo-Irish terms, walk out of Downing Street. As Pat Leahy reports in the aforementioned front-page story, Starmer had been working hard with his Irish counterparts to try to repair that fractured, post-Brexit relationship between major Governments on both sides of the Irish Sea.
Though Starmer would be replaced with another Labour colleague, who should think similarly in terms of major policies, one of the notable aspects of Starmer’s premiership has been a studied focus on international relations. If the British Labour parliamentary party is thirsty for a change in direction, it is likely that his successor may not place as much importance on nurturing a warm relationship with Dublin.
The other way that the Epstein files could affect Ireland may seem more nebulous and abstract, but with the wrong confluence of factors it could become altogether very real as a global political theme. The Epstein files are a dark vindication for conspiracy theorists, revealing that there really was a high-powered worldwide network of people motivated at best by financial greed and at worst by abusive tendencies. It has exposed the darker side of capitalism and the global, largely unregulated financial networks that run the world. Populist and, yes, conspiratorial ideas may now grow faster than ever before.
Irishman detained by Ice
Turning to the politics of America now, you may have seen a story in yesterday’s newspaper about Seamus Culleton, an Irishman living in the United States for more than 20 years who has been held by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) officials since being arrested last September.
The story said: “He was arrested on September 9th, 2025, and has been in an Ice detention facility in Texas for nearly five months, despite having no criminal record, ‘not even a parking ticket’. In a phone interview from the facility, he said conditions there are ‘like a concentration camp, absolute hell’.”
We have an updated story in today’s newspaper about how Culleton is now calling on the Taoiseach to raise his case with president Donald Trump during the St Patrick’s Day visit to the White House next month. It is hard to see how Micheál Martin could not, given the high-profile concerns about the way the US is enforcing its own immigration policies.
Culleton’s story is one of many emerging from the heavy-handed and highly controversial practices of Ice – which is even giving some anti-immigration Republican voters deep buyer’s remorse. The plight of children detained and reportedly traumatised by Ice has been particularly troubling. Jon Favreau, the former speech writer for Barack Obama, posted last night that Culleton’s story was “absolutely insane” and “monstrous”.
Back at home
And now we move to a special section of this morning’s digest, devoted to the industrious Harry McGee, who seems to have single-handedly covered almost all the big domestic stories for us today.
Last night, he filed a story about how senior civil servant Garret Doocey is expected to be named as the new “housing tsar” by the Government today.
Doocey is currently the assistant secretary general of the Department of Transport with responsibility for land transport investment and public transport policy.
Earlier on yesterday Harry was in Portrane, north Dublin, where local residents have long been raising concerns about homes at risk of falling into the sea.
He’s reporting how Fingal County Council is proposing to mitigate this risk with the installation of seven new “fishtail groynes”. No, me neither. But Harry, who correctly observed that these sound like Harry Potter characters, explains that the “fishtails” are “large concrete structures that are shaped like a Y. They will each extend outwards to sea by approximately 70 metres, with the two arms extending to about the same distance. They will be placed about 135m apart and will be buried under the sand at the beach end.”
He also spoke at the same press event to Kevin “Boxer” Moran for a story with our colleague Marie O’Halloran, which reveals that homes built on floodplains in the future will be afforded no Government protection. “If you build on a floodplain, then I won’t protect you,” Moran said.
And finally, Harry has also teed up today’s Cabinet meeting, which will formally approve the lifting of Dublin Airport’s passenger cap.
Best Reads
Conor Lally has a troubling report, which is our splash today, on how Garda suspensions more than doubled last year “with a growing number of members now suspended after allegations of gender-based violence”.
Fintan O’Toole interrogates what the Epstein files tell us about the war that is still being waged on women, and how the victims of Epstein and his co-conspirators were treated “as currency in an elite gift economy, passed around as tokens of status – to be granted the right to use their bodies was to be in with an ultimate in-crowd, a charmed circle of mutual enrichment and reciprocal advancement”.
If I can be so uncouth as to recommend one of my own stories, I’m writing today about the tragic case of 19-year-old Oliver Mullaney, who died almost 35 years ago in what the Army had described as an “accidental” shooting at a barracks in Co Kildare. The Defence Forces tribunal is now planning to order the disclosure of all files relating to Mullaney’s case.
If you’re fortunate enough to choose your restaurants based on Michelin stars, or if you just like the mouthwatering spectator sport of it all, Conor Pope has a run-down of the Irish eateries that made the cut at the “glitzy” Michelin party in Dublin last night.
Playbook
Cabinet meets this morning, and Harry’s story has a look at what Ministers will be bringing and considering.
The Dáil kicks off as usual at 2pm with Leader’s Questions. The schedule for the day looks like this:
2pm: Leaders’ Questions
2.34pm: Order of Business and Questions on Policy or Legislation
3.04pm: Bills for Introduction: Waste Management (Single Household Waste Collection Service) Bill 2026 – First Stage
3.09pm: Taoiseach’s Questions
3.54pm: Government Business: International Protection Bill 2026 – Second stage
7.18pm Private Members’ Business (Sinn Féin): Harassment, Harmful Communications and Related Offences (Amendment) Bill 2026 (Second Stage)
9.18pm Parliamentary Questions: Oral – Tánaiste and Minister for Finance
10.55pm Topical Issues
11.55pm Dáil adjourns
In the Seanad, the day will play out like this:
2.30pm Commencement Matters
3.30pm: Order of Business
4.45pm: Government Business: Health Information Bill 2024 – Second Stage
6.30pm: Government Business: Statements on apprenticeships
8pm: Government Business: Statements on Storm Chandra
9.30pm: Seanad adjourns
It’s a busy Tuesday in the committee rooms, with the Housing Committee holding two sessions on the complex and devastating issue of defective concrete blocks. You can see the full schedule here