MEMBERS of the Ballymurphy Massacre Committee have returned from a successful trip to America and a lobby of the Obama administration, the US Congress and Irish-American organisations for an international independent investigation and a Congressional hearing into the Parachute Regiment rampage in August 1971 in which 11 people were shot dead.

In the three days following the... Free article

IT WAS toward political, financial, cultural and linguistic sovereignty that Irish men and women sacrificed their lives in the GPO nearly 100 years ago. Perhaps the reason we feel the loss of sovereignty so sharply after the IMF's financial takeover is because, unlike Iceland and Greece, we don't yet collectively speak our own language.

The 20-year plan to promote the further use... Free article

ASSEMBLY Agriculture & Fisheries Minister Michelle Gildernew MP has expressed her concern about the welfare of migrant workers in the agri-food sector at Christmas and the New Year.

Speaking today she said:

Migrant workers play an important part in the production and processing of the food we will be eating over the Christmas season.

Many of them will have been able to return... Free article

THE new Bank of Ireland charges will hit the least-well-off customers, are an affront to the Irish people who have pumped billions into the bank and should be blocked by the Finance Minister, Sinn Féin Finance spokesperson Pearse Doherty TD has said.

He said:

These charges are designed to target the least-well-off customers.

Pearse Doherty added:

This is exactly the type of... Free article

THE Health Service Executive Service Plan for 2011 and the Government’s four-year cuts plan will devastate health services, Sinn Féin Health & Children spokesperson Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin TD has warned.

The Cavan/Monaghan TD pointed out that the HSE has now admitted that the real scale of cuts to the health services is higher than the €765m announced in the Budget and estimated... Free article

THERE have been for many years now journalists and opinion columnists in Ireland and Britain who just don’t like Sinn Féin. I get it. It is not for them. They either fear the politics of the party, are opposed to the ideas of socialist republicanism, don’t agree with the Sinn Féin interpretation, or perhaps just can’t move past the years of conflict in Ireland and have... Free article

STUDENTS at universities in England, Scotland and Wales home in the North for Christmas have been urged to make sure they’re on the electoral register so they can vote against the ConDem Coalition’s cuts and student fees.

Students are being encouraged to ensure they are on the electoral register and to get on to the permanent postal and proxy list for upcoming Assembly and... Free article

THE purchase of electricity provider NIE by the ESB is a sensible move and points to the need to pursue a truly all-Ireland economy, Sinn Féin’s Assembly spokesperson on the Economy has said.

Mitchel McLaughlin MLA said:

We live on a small island of only six million people yet we have massive duplication of services and service providers which inevitably costs money to the two... Free article

ERIC CONWAY has written offensive letters to newspapers in which he asserted that an ill-defined group called the “liberal/feminist commentariat” were, amongst other things, “quite sanguine/blasé over Bethany House”, where I was resident from 1941-45.

Inadequacies in the treatment of women and children in the Bethany Home have been raised by the following TDs and senators:... Free article

MI5 HEADQUARTERS at Palace Barracks in Holywood, County Down, was picketed this week after Wikileaks revelations that MI5 is holding files on the 1989 murder of civil rights lawyer Pat Finucane by a UDA death squad. Pat's family has called for the release of the information held by MI5.

The British state has previously never acknowledged possessing files and information on... Free article