IN media terms it was the non-event of the year, upstaged by the death of a world pop idol, Michael Jackson. The UVF and Red Hand Commando announced that they had destroyed all their weapons, a claim backed up by General John de Chastelain. The UDA/UFF on the other hand has failed so far to destroy all its weapons and the General is quoted as saying he looks forward to the day when that process will be completed and all unionist weapons 'will be put beyond use'. Without splitting hairs on the use of language one wonders what happened to the 'D' word so beloved by the media and unionist politicians in respect of the furore over the issue of IRA weapons. Has decommissioning gone out of business. Free article

THERE is a particularly annoying side-effect to recessions that doesn't get as much attention as it should. The growth in celebrity economists, who gleefully appear on everything from RTÉ's Prime Time and Six One News to sensationalist and tacky TV3 doomsday programmes, is a true stomach-churning accompaniment to any economic downturn. Economists are a strange breed. They do not practice an exact science, so it is rare to find two who agree. Free article

IT'S 1.17am and I am sitting at my kitchen table typing away. Exactly four weeks ago I was doing the very same thing - in a panicked attempt to get the last of the canvass issues followed up in time for the post later that morning. That day we had completed the last of our canvassing and after a few months of 17-hour days I was happy to work into the early hours as it was nearly all over and by Saturday the hard slog would hopefully prove to have been worth it. Free article

BANDON, County Cork, is another of those areas that saw a breakthrough for Sinn Féin in the local elections when Rachel McCarthy (26) was the first woman ever to take a council seat in the town for Sinn Féin. The McCarthys always had republican tendencies and when Rachel was only 17 both she and her father joined Sinn Féin. "The family was having a meal in the Munster Arms Hotel in Bandon," Rachel recalls, "and there was a Sinn Féin meeting going on upstairs. My dad suggested we go up and sit in for a while. It was out of that meeting that we came to join the local Charlie Hurley Cumann in Bandon and we never looked back." Free article

PAT FITZERALD made a breakthrough for Sinn Féin in Tramore, doubling the party's representation on Waterford County Council when he took a seat in the local elections. Pat tells ELLA O'DWYER about some of the factors involved in that success, including upset at the European Union and the Irish Government's handling of indigenous industries. Free article

MADGE McCONVILLE, from Belfast, has been one of the most respected republican women to have stood with the people and the prisoners in the struggle for Irish freedom. Madge passed away on 4 May. As a tribute by grateful comrades from many generations to this courageous woman, we reproduce extracts from the graveside oration delivered at her funeral by Sinn Féin Cllr Fra McCann. Free article

NED O'Keeffe eh? What could you do with him? He has been harassed, ridiculed, chased and cursed since he went on Cork local radio last week and announced he couldn't be bothered doing anything for the people of Rathcormack because they don't vote for him in sufficient numbers. Being not too far from the Carney homeland, the text messages and outraged phone calls were coming in thick and fast. Free article

THERE was an amusing incident in a certain hostelry after last Sunday's Leinster final when one Kilkenny chap suggested that maybe the Cats had been kind towards Dublin and that, had they wished, they could have beaten them by far more than six points. To which someone responded, "Well, you had better enjoy this one because you won't beat us again." Cue general amusement all round. It was possibly not meant as a serious comment but it does accurately reflect the ambition of the current Dublin team and its management. Anthony Daly was part of a generation of Clare hurling folk who ended the long dark days of being Munster's "whipping boys", as he so eloquently put it after they beat their mortal foes from Tipp in the 1997 Munster final. Free article

THE Society of the United Irishmen drew support from a number of prominent people in the professional classes of Dublin. Among the foremost of these republicans was William James MacNeven, a doctor and scientist. MacNeven was born in 1763 in Ballinahowne, Aughrim, County Galway. The family of Mac Cnáimhín had been associated with the region for over 600 years and an ancestor was killed in battle as a chief in the army of the King of Connacht, Ruairí Ó Conchubhair, in 1159. Free article