Issue 2 - 2024 200dpi

15 April 2010 Edition

Leadership for real change

15 April 2010

As the Westminster General Election campaign hots up it is clear that Sinn Féin is providing the real leadership in politics in the Six Counties. A strengthened mandate will see the party's strategy for equality and unity boosted right across Ireland. Free article

Use election to strengthen republican mandate for equality and unity

15 April 2010

In the first of a series of public meetings across the Six Counties in the course of the Westminster General Election campaign, Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams addressed hundreds of people in Derry's Guild Hall on Tuesday 13 April. He launched a scathing and detailed attack on the dire leadership and double standards of the SDLP and urged people to further strengthen the Sinn Féin mandate. We carry here an edited version of Gerry Adams's speech. Free article

Death of teenager renews anti-racist efforts in Ireland

15 April 2010

Sadness, mixed with a sense of shock, marked last Saturday's rally in Dublin as over 1,500 people marched through the city to demonstrate their revulsion at the killing of 15 year old Toyosi Shittabey in Tyrellstown on Good Friday. The suspicion that racism factored in the brutal stabbing has appalled people of every race in Ireland. "I'm a teacher", said Anthony Wilkie of the Teacher's Union of Ireland, who was standing with a placard at the Garden of Remembrance where the rally began before finally moving onto the Dáil. "I've been involved in teaching kids of every race, Arabs, people from the Philippines and black and white children. If you heard of this happening to an Irish child abroad how would you feel? Teachers are shocked. Toyosi was doing his Junior Cert" Free article

Rank and file will decide on Croke Park deal

15 April 2010

THE SIPTU leadership may have thrown a lifeline to the Croke Park public sector pay agreement between the Government and ICTU by urging its acceptance on Tuesday - the same day that the Irish Nurses and Midwives' Organisation's NEC recommended its rejection - but the argument still has to be won amongst rank file union members reeling from attacks on living standards while bankers get away with daylight robbery. Free article

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Economic and Social Research Institute predictions

15 April 2010

The ESRI produces research on economic and social change, research that is used to inform public policymaking in Ireland and throughout the European Union. The organisation publishes its findings quarterly in reports entitled Quarterly Economic Commentaries. The Spring report, published on Tuesday last, will bring cold comfort to the thousands of people lining the dole queues in Ireland. The ESRI are not predicting a growth in employment in the coming year and while the report predicts a 1% decrease in unemployment, that will be down to the forecasted emigration of 100,000 people by this time next year. Free article

Landscape changes as education reform moves forward

15 April 2010

The ambitious reform of the education system in the Six Counties, driven by Sinn Féin, has made several decisive political steps forward in recent months. On 1 March the North's Commission for Catholic Education published its post-primary review reiterating its position that academic selection should be completely phased out of Catholic-sector schools by 2012. Free article

Policing and justice transferred

15 April 2010

Welcoming the successful transfer of policing and justice powers, Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams pointed out that "for the first time since Partition, there is a justice minister accountable to a locally elected assembly". Speaking shortly after the Assembly vote accepting transfer on Monday 12 April, the West Belfast MLA said the transfer was something many people had said would never happen. Free article


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