Stieg in the tale

IT WAS ONLY when comments from friends and colleagues that they were either “doing the Millennium” or “I had to stay up and finish Millennium” got to double figures that I realised something was up and maybe I was missing important stuff. It was a bit like those teenage years when schoolfriends were re-reading Lord Of the Rings and I had barely finished The... Free article

YOU THINK you’re angry, do you? Reading the paper, watching Brian Cowen on TV, seeing the bankers, developers and financial gurus who got us into this mess get off scot-free while everyone else gets it in the neck makes you a little mad? Peeved perhaps?
I’m so mad I’ve started randomly setting things on fire.
I stand outside Brian Lenihan’s house in the pouring rain, just watching... Free article

THE revelation that child homelessness in the 26 Counties has increased by 60% over the last three years has been described by Sinn Féin deputy leader Mary Lou McDonald as “horrific”. The Dublin Central Sinn Féin representative said:
“Just last week two former members of The Commission of Taxation said that €2.5billion could be saved in reforming or abolishing just 131 of the... Free article

Fair City’s homeless Bob joins street appeal

BY LUCINDA McNALLY
Communications Officer, Focus Ireland

TV STAR Bryan Murray’s character, ‘Bob’, was homeless in RTÉ’s Fair City. Now the actor is taking the issue from the screen to the street as he calls on people to volunteer for Focus Ireland’s ‘Key to a Home Collections’ on November 19th to 21st.
Bryan joined Fair City cast... Free article

BY DECLAN KEARNEY
National Chairperson, Sinn Féin

THE chances are if you’re reading this you are not a member of Sinn Féin.
You probably have at least a passing interest in republican politics; you may even have played a previous active role in the republican struggle, depending on your age.
If so, read on.
The savage nature of this recession is seriously hurting Irish families... Free article

THE European Parliament has voted in favour of extending both maternity and paternity leave across Europe.
The proposal calls for the minimum period of maternity leave to be extended from 14 to 20 weeks fully paid. It also approved an entitlement to paid paternity leave of two weeks.
The vote has been welcomed by the European Parliament group of which Irish MEP Bairbre de Brún is... Free article

BY the time you read this, RTÉ will have announced  John Hume  the winner of its TV series, Ireland’s Greatest. Each of the five finalists was the subject of hour-long documentaries, broadcast from September onwards.
Michael McDowell made the case for Michael Collins, Dave Fanning for Bono, Joe Duffy for James Connolly, Miriam O’Callaghan for John Hume and David McWilliams for... Free article

Learning from Ireland to help build peace in Colombia

g  BY PEADAR WHELAN

A COLOMBIAN peace activist and director of the biggest-selling left-wing journal in his country, Carlos A Lozano Guillen, made a fact-finding visit to the Six Counties in recent weeks and met Sinn Féin Junior Minister Gerry Kelly as well as representatives of the SDLP and the unionist parties.
He was keen... Free article

Centenary of ‘Irish Freedom’ newspaper

THE first decade and a half of the 20th century saw a flood of new publications including weekly and monthly journals and newspapers reflecting the political and cultural revival known as ‘Irish Ireland’. These papers reflected the rebirth of the Irish language, the growth of the labour movement, the emergence of feminism and the renewal of... Free article

Damaged goods: dealing with the legacy of childhood trauma

g  BY JACK MADDEN

WHEN we think of children and trauma, we comfort ourselves with a few universal ‘truths’: children are resilient, they develop coping mechanisms, they will ‘get over it’.
Armed with these ‘truths’, adult protagonists, whether to a domestic row or armed warfare, carry on regardless of the impact on... Free article