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

CHERYL COLE has a book, a record and a lot of shampoo to sell. Dannii Minogue also has a book, a perfume and it seems you couldn’t open a newspaper or magazine without a glimpse of her with a clutch bag and in a cocktail dress as one of the Christmas faces of Marks & Spencer. (Oh, and Matt Cardle is the nominal winner.)

Simon Cowell is systematically taking over the world... Free article

A CALL by IBM workers for a better redundancy package for staff whose jobs are being exported to China has been backed by Dublin West Sinn Féin representative Paul Donnelly.

Paul said the workers are being given "a raw deal":

I fully support the workers of IBM who are fighting for a better redundancy deal from the company.

It is not acceptable that the workers are only being... Free article

THE rise in the use of Section 24 stop and search powers by the PSNI has been questioned by Derry City Sinn Féin Councillor and local District Policing Partnership member Elisha McLaughlin.

The latest report given to the North’s Policing Board shows a rise in the use of Section 24 of the Justice and Security Act powers since suspension of the use of stop and search powers under... Free article

IT IS IMPORTANT that the North’s new Parades Commission does not repeat the mistakes of its predecessor, Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams said before a meeting at Belfast City Hall on Monday night with the unionist North and West Belfast Parades Cultural Forum. The Sinn Féin leader also called for the Orange Order “to come into the real world” by talking to the Parades... Free article

I STOOD in front of the gates to his long driveway. The £5m house, inside a two-acre walled garden, was huge for a one-parent family (with no family) but I smirked with satisfaction at the fact that the council had forgotten to take down the sign.

When I was growing up, my mother always instructed us never to speak ill of the dead.

Why should we not speak ill of the dead?... Free article

THE story was on Page 9 of my newspaper. It wasn’t a huge story yet the headline which contained the words ‘prisoner transfer’ viscerally threw up a lot of emotion and anger about the way things had been and need not have been.

The headline was based on a crass comment from an English Tory:

MP links prisoner transfer to British loan for Ireland.

It was reported that, as a... Free article

DUBLIN Sinn Féin is holding a rally at the gates of the Dáil, Kildare Street, Dublin 2, on Wednesday 15th December in opposition to the IMF/ECB loan approved by the Fianna Fáil/Green Party Government.

The IMF/ECB loan deal is being voted on by TDs on Wednesday.

Wearing uniforms of James Connolly's Irish Citizen Army, Dublin Sinn Féin activists will carry a banner bearing the... Free article