With elections to local councils and the Stormont Assembly due to take
place within a week, Sinn Fein is coming under pressure from the
unionist parties and the mainstream media to turn its back on the IRA.
The new 26-County Health Minister Dr James Reilly has cleared out the
board of the Health Service Executive (HSE), claiming the dramatic
shake-up will improve services and accountability.
This year Irish republicans mark 95 years since the Easter Rising. It is
also the 30th anniversary of the 1981 Hunger Strike. Each event was a seminal moment in the struggle for Irish freedom, and
each changed the course of Irish history for the better.
A number of elite public servants continue to be paid up to one million
euro ($1.46m) in annual salary and associated benefits, despite the
economic demise of the 26 Counties and the arrival of the IMF.
A senior UVF unionist paramilitary was left in critical condition after
being stabbed outside a busy north Belfast supermarket, apparently by a
feuding rival.
With all of the mainstream political parties unanimous on three key
issues -- the need to defeat dissident republicanism, safeguard the
Six-County political institutions and oppose cuts to the British
subvention -- only the call for an all-island referendum has caused a
stir in the Assembly election campaign.
A “humorous” menu prepared for an Irish delegation dinner during the
Anglo-Irish Treaty negotiations in London in 1921 has been sold in
Dublin for a four-figure sum.
On Easter Sunday all over Ireland, republicans gather in tribute to
those who died in Ireland’s struggle for independence. This Easter
republicans have much to be proud of and much to be concerned about.
Policing in the North is once again in crisis after the chief executive
at the Police Ombudsman's office suddenly quit, blaming senior
government officials for interfering in the office's investigations.
The mother of a six-year-old boy shot in the head during the conflict
has expressed her frustration after the police Historical Enquiries
Team (HET) dismissed evidence of loyalist involvement in the death.
The Fine Gael/Labour government in Dublin declared last week it had
"passed" a review of its economic progress by its International
Monetary Fund and European Union creditors without any penalty.
Messages from Sinn Fein's Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness precede a
list of the mnain points from Sinn Fein's manifesto for the 2011
Assembly election in the North.
Sinn Fein has offered to meet with “the militarist factions” to outline
the party’s strategy for advancing republican objectives and in its
belief in “the futility of armed actions”.
There are 218 candidates in total for the 108 Six-County Assembly seats
up for grabs in the election on May 5, spread over the traditional 18
six-seater constituencies.
The state-operated bank NAMA is to provide mortgages for home-buyers in
the 26 Counties -- despite acknowledging that house prices are likely
to fall further.
A furore has arisen after the PSNI allowed motorists to drive past a
van containing what was described as a 500 pound bomb on Thursday
evening last week.
Any activity that Sinn Fein organises to mark the British royal visit
next month will not involve picketing of events and no “confrontation
for the sake of it”, the party’s deputy leader Mary Lou McDonald has
said.
A woman who became embroiled in Britain’s ‘Dirty War’ has received High
Court permission to bring anunprecedented legal actionagainst Freddie
Scappaticci, the reputed British double-agent known in the media as
‘Stakeknife’.
For almost a decade, simple acts of resistance by the community in
Erris have met with bullying, threats, intimidation, vilification and
casual violence at the hands of both Gardai and Shell’s private army
IRMS.
A recording of Gardai police laughingly planning to rape two
environmental protestors, including a US citizen, has renewed attention
on the policing operation to secure the construction of a hugely
controversial onshore gas refinery in County Mayo.
British forces in Ireland are said to be increasingly concerned at the
technical capacity of breakaway IRA groups following Saturday’s killing
of a PSNI man in a limpet-mine attack in County Tyrone.
The family of high-ranking Sinn Fein official Denis Donaldson who was
murdered for being a spy believe his PSNI Special Branch handler has
secret information that could help the Garda murder investigation.
Former Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan has said proposals to share
the cost of Ireland’s collapsed banking system with those European banks
who had funded their lending practices as “a form of economic
treason.”
Sinn Fein’s electoral strategy began 30 years ago during the 1981 hunger
strikes,
beginning with Bobby Sands’s historic win in Fermanagh/South Tyrone, 30
years ago this week.
On Sunday, The News of the World, Martin McGuinness and a number of
others politicians said the people who killed young Kerr were completely
out of touch with reality. It depends on how you see reality.
The coalition government parties have reneged on promises made during
the general election by refusing to share the losses of Ireland’s banks
with those who sought to profit from their reckless lending.
Waves of political and official condemnation have followed the killing
of a member of the PSNI in a targeted ‘dissident’ bomb attack in County
Tyrone on Saturday.
The family of Derry man Kieran Doherty have called on the PSNI to
reveal any information they have on MI5’s involvement with him prior to
his death in February last year.
Sinn Fein’s newly elected TDs are to take part in a series of
pre-election events as the party presents itself as an effective
all-Ireland party, in contrast to the SDLP.