19 March 1998 Edition
Dúirt siad...
Anybody who deals in the evil trade of heroin deserves the full rigour of the law.
Sinn Féin Councillor Christy Burke on the conviction of his cousin for heroin dealing.
Today's was a positive engagement.
Gerry Adams after meeting Tony Blair. Thursday 12 March.
A cloud on the horizon of the major Dáil parties came in the shape of Sinn Féin's showing. The party's high-profile performance within the Northern Ireland talks process was clearly impacting on public opinion south of the border, as well as making life extremely uncomfortable for the SDLP.
Denis Coughlan, the Irish Times Chief Political Correspondent, after the two Leinster House by-elections. 13 March.
The RUC Inner Force - which was in turn, controlled by an elite corps of RUC officers, the Inner Circle - routinely assisted the loyalist death squads to assassinate republicans and Catholics whom the committee had selected for eliminations.
Seán McPhilemy in his book The Committee. Ireland On Sunday, 15 March.
Speak with any of the Irish emigrant chaplains working in the United States and the hidden cost of being uprooted from family and soil is borne out by high levels of alcoholism, dysfunctional lives and a deep and abiding loneliness and displacement that no amount of wealth can alleviate.
Niall O'Dowd on economic emigration from Ireland and its human cost. Ireland On Sunday, 15 March.
In fact republicans will exploit any situation, without any twinge of conscience, to humiliate the British authorities and advance their own cause. The government must impose stricter conditions for releases of this kind, otherwise it raises questions about whether `health grounds' is just a tactic to facilitate releases for political reasons.
UUP MP Ken Maginness on the release of Roisín McAliskey. Sunday Times, 15 March.
I have to say that there's an air of unreality about what the British prime minister is saying, although I fully understand that he does feel the need at this time to hype up the prospects of an agreement.
Martin McGuinness on Tony Blair's assertion that a settlement is imminent. Ireland On Sunday, 15 March.
It would not take a genius to see that the primacy of London's policy is not about agreement in the North but about winning a referendum that both re-equips Trimble post Articles 2 and 3, and giving an all-Ireland democratic mandate to London to deal with paramilitarism.
Tom McGurk. Sunday Business Post, 15 March.
Is he formally accepting on behalf of Fianna Fáil (The Republican Party) that the land on which the Gaelic footballers of Derry and Tyrone and Armagh train at night is British? Or is he telling the farmers on the shores of Lough Neagh and in the Glens of Antrim that they are neither living in Britain or Ireland - in escence that they are almost stateless persons? And why on earth is he affording the power inherent in the principle of `consent' to a geographic entity which has no basis in Irish history, and whose legitimacy has never been accepted in our law, by our parliament or in our courts?
Editorial in the Sunday Business Post. 15 March.
Civility is not a sign of weakness.
President Clinton quoting President Kennedy in urging the Ulster Unionists to talk to Sinn Féin. 17 March
Sinn Féin Councillor Christy Burke on the conviction of his cousin for heroin dealing.
Today's was a positive engagement.
Gerry Adams after meeting Tony Blair. Thursday 12 March.
A cloud on the horizon of the major Dáil parties came in the shape of Sinn Féin's showing. The party's high-profile performance within the Northern Ireland talks process was clearly impacting on public opinion south of the border, as well as making life extremely uncomfortable for the SDLP.
Denis Coughlan, the Irish Times Chief Political Correspondent, after the two Leinster House by-elections. 13 March.
The RUC Inner Force - which was in turn, controlled by an elite corps of RUC officers, the Inner Circle - routinely assisted the loyalist death squads to assassinate republicans and Catholics whom the committee had selected for eliminations.
Seán McPhilemy in his book The Committee. Ireland On Sunday, 15 March.
Speak with any of the Irish emigrant chaplains working in the United States and the hidden cost of being uprooted from family and soil is borne out by high levels of alcoholism, dysfunctional lives and a deep and abiding loneliness and displacement that no amount of wealth can alleviate.
Niall O'Dowd on economic emigration from Ireland and its human cost. Ireland On Sunday, 15 March.
In fact republicans will exploit any situation, without any twinge of conscience, to humiliate the British authorities and advance their own cause. The government must impose stricter conditions for releases of this kind, otherwise it raises questions about whether `health grounds' is just a tactic to facilitate releases for political reasons.
UUP MP Ken Maginness on the release of Roisín McAliskey. Sunday Times, 15 March.
I have to say that there's an air of unreality about what the British prime minister is saying, although I fully understand that he does feel the need at this time to hype up the prospects of an agreement.
Martin McGuinness on Tony Blair's assertion that a settlement is imminent. Ireland On Sunday, 15 March.
It would not take a genius to see that the primacy of London's policy is not about agreement in the North but about winning a referendum that both re-equips Trimble post Articles 2 and 3, and giving an all-Ireland democratic mandate to London to deal with paramilitarism.
Tom McGurk. Sunday Business Post, 15 March.
Is he formally accepting on behalf of Fianna Fáil (The Republican Party) that the land on which the Gaelic footballers of Derry and Tyrone and Armagh train at night is British? Or is he telling the farmers on the shores of Lough Neagh and in the Glens of Antrim that they are neither living in Britain or Ireland - in escence that they are almost stateless persons? And why on earth is he affording the power inherent in the principle of `consent' to a geographic entity which has no basis in Irish history, and whose legitimacy has never been accepted in our law, by our parliament or in our courts?
Editorial in the Sunday Business Post. 15 March.
Civility is not a sign of weakness.
President Clinton quoting President Kennedy in urging the Ulster Unionists to talk to Sinn Féin. 17 March