Features

Sustained economic growth is an achievable objective. However, the Celtic Tiger model of economic development comes at a price

Photo: EOIN Ó BROIN

The Mary Nelis Column

ARE the SDLP and the Alliance Party serious players in progressing peace on this island? If they claim to be the parties of moderation, why have they singularly failed to support the implementation of the most important outstanding issue in the Good Friday Agreement: the devolution of policing and justice?

Busting Thatcher's dream

THE BBC docu-drama, Breakout, screened on Monday night, 22 September, lifted the lid on the planning of the 1983 Great Escape from Long Kesh. Billed as "the "story of the 1983 Maze Prison escape, the most audacious since Colditz", the film-makers spoke to three of the main planners of an escape that saw 38 republican POWs carry out one of the most sophisticated and courageous IRA operations conceived in the course of the war.

Photo: Bobby Storey, Brendan ‘Bik’ McFarlane and Gerry Kelly outside Long Kesh

Cúlchaint LE EOGHAN Mac CORMAIC

BHUEL, nuair atá an deannach ina luí i ndiaidh an cinnidh a thóg Foras na Gaeilge an tseachtain seo, is dócha nach mbeidh nuachtán laethúil Gaeilge clóite fós beo ar an oileán seo an bhliain seo chugainn. Dé Aoine seo chuaigh thart, ag cruinniú an Fhorais i mBéal Feirste pléadh rún a mhol maoiniú a chur ar fáil do nuachtán seachtainiúil Gaeilge agus dá bhrí an rúin sin cuirfear deireadh le maoiniú nuachtáin laethúil Gaeilge ó luath i 2009.

More than a game BY MATT TREACY

The most disappointed people I heard from after Tyrone's win on Sunday were not Kerry people but chaps from Derry and Armagh, one of whom said that he wouldn't be able to go back to South Derry until Christmas until after the neighbours' celebrations had hopefully died down. So much for the great Ulster love-in!

Media View BY FRANK FARRELL

YOU KNOW things are serious when The Irish Times decides to come over all republican in its mission to save the Irish people from their foolish 'No to Lisbon' vote. But the Times is nothing if not Eurocentric, and with most analysts and Government spinners concluding that a second Lisbon referendum will be held in 12 months' time, the message from 'The Paper of Record' is that all and every disingenuous argument as well as threat must be deployed against the irredeemably nationalist Irish people.

Remembering the Past

Less than two years after the end of the 1981 Hunger Strike the British prison, judicial and political systems in Ireland were shaken to the core when 38 IRA prisoners broke out of the H-Blocks of Long Kesh. The September 1983 breakout proved that the British policy of criminalising republican prisoners was well and truly smashed and that republicans were resilient and resourceful.

The Fifth Column

An Phoblacht's famous weekly satirical column.

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