The four longest-serving republican prisoners in the current phase of the struggle, Hugh Doherty from Donegal, Joe O'Connell and Harry Duggan from Clare, and Eddie Butler from Limerick, were among five republican prisoners finally released this week under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement, after 24 years in prison. A fifth republican POW, Liam Quinn from San Francisco, was also released by the Dublin government after 19 years of imprisonment, as was miscarriage of justice victim John Kinsella. Free article

The RUC failed to respond to a violent attack on a 19-year-old Downpatrick woman by her former boyfriend which happened in full view of surveillance cameras and an RUC squad car, Sinn Féin Down District councillor, Paddy McGreevy has revealed. Free article

The British government's refusal to enact amnesty legislation is blocking the search for the graves of nine people executed and buried by the IRA during the 1970s and early 1980s. Free article

The British Ministry of Defence spent over £1 million defending Paratrooper Lee Clegg, it has emerged. Free article

``Peace - Jobs - Opportunity for all'' proclaimed one of the banners that adorned Mackies Engineering plant for the visit of Bill Clinton in December 1995. That was back when people used to still talk openly about the peace dividend. Now, nearly four years on, promises of a peace dividend for the Irish economy and particularly for Six-County nationalists have been glossed over. Free article

Just returned from a weekend in Euskal Herria, Sinn Féin Press Officer Eoin O'Broin gives his view of the developing political progress, six months after ETA's historic ceasefire. Free article

Twelve Dublin sites were affected by industrial action taken by scaffolders this week. There were also work stoppages in Cork, Limerick, Kilkenny, Kildare, Carlow and Kerry. The stoppages are part of campaign by scaffolders to secure substantial wage increases. Free article

The whole island of Cobh is in a storm of protest against the ESB, which intends to run a power line across the north side of the island. Every one of the farmers who farm the land and who are expected to accommodate the ESB in their designs to put 84 150-foot-high pylons to carry a 220 KV power line from Aghada to Raheen, have declared that there is no way they will allow the ESB onto their land to build these pylons. Free article

Newry and Mourne Council is the second nationalist council to warn the unionist-dominated Northern Ireland Housing Council (NIHC) that it will boycott the body if it doesn't give places to nationalists. Free article

Sinn Féin representative for Dublin South East Inner City, Daithí Doolan, has expressed concern at news that a 22-acre site in Dublin has been sold for private development. Free article