Letter to the Editor
Wednesday, 18th April 2012
Anxiety is clearly mounting following the recent award of 450,000 euro to a survivor of symphysiotomy. However, to imply, as corporate lawyers have done, that casualties of the surgery should now be denied access to the courts on the ground of undue delay in bringing a claim is outrageous. Healthy young women, many expecting their first child, were often invalided for life, unknowingly, in these covert operations.Patient consent was not sought. This involuntary surgery was often done under general anaesthetic. Silence surrounded the unhinging of the pelvis. Hospital midwives nursed women as though they had not had surgery, forcing them to walk on their boken bones: a wider passage had to be made for nine or ten babies to be able to come through, even if the mother never made a full recovery. Almost every woman was discharged from hospital,
Hereditary seat culture stultifying growth?
Wednesday, 11th April 2012
Dear Editor,
We are often told by the political pundits here in Ireland that we get the politicians we deserve.
In looking back over the last four decades of our politics, this claim is clearly arrant nonsense. We certainly have not got those we deserve – but rather sadly, we have got the politicians we have voted for.
As things stand, we are not much more than two years away from the next set of elections – euro and local.
All of our parties are turning their thoughts to candidate selection for these jousts. In them, those same parties could improve our political talent and culture all at once – simply by agreeing a covenant to remove, for once and for all, the hereditary-seat culture that has stultified the growth of leadership capital in our country.
One gets an insight into this matter in a
With friends like these
Wednesday, 11th April 2012
There comes a certain point where you have to question what exactly the Government is thinking. Naturally enough this happens more and more these days when decisions are being made about what to do with ever decreasing resources that the Government has on its hands. We are all used to hearing about this and that that is going to be cut or services in our local hospital that must be reduced or teachers at the local school being left go. Then you hear of something and you have to ask yourself whether you've heard it right. Those of a pensionable age who are under new rules not able to access a pension are being asked to go onto the live register for the time until they are able to qualify for the new pension that is being brought in at
Tramore parents
Wednesday, 11th April 2012
"Shock, disbelief, distress and bewilderment" of Tramore parents
As an ordinary parent of four children who currently attend Gaelscoil Philib Barún in Tramore, I want to attempt to convey the sense of shock, disbelief, distress and bewilderment which parents,staff, pupils and the wider Tramore community experienced following the announcement by the Department of Education and Skills of the five year school building programme on March 12th last.
All of the people associated with Gaelscoil Philib Barún have never had a sense of entitlement at any stage over the past 27 years in the campaign to have a permanent building erected on the site that your department own. However, I do not feel that it would be beyond any person's reasonable expectation to see that this school would have been somewhere on this latest list. The fact that it was excluded is a scandal.
Now that the initial shock has subsided, the parents and friends of the school
The Sexing up of pre-teens
Wednesday, 11th April 2012
Dear editor
Let me begin by relaying to you something I heard on the radio today: "Come on rude boy boy, can you get it up? Come on rude boy boy is it big enough?"
I don't think anyone would need to stop to uncover the meaning of this song. Come to think of it, I heard this on the radio yesterday as well, and the day before that and probably the day before that. I don't intend on being a prude, but is anybody else not sick of constantly being hounded with Rihanna's, and similar artists, profanities on a day to day basis? Not only is the music repetitive enough but it attains constant airtime so this music, that makes me want to bang my head off a wall, gets played over and over and over again. Are we as a
A Changing Ireland
Wednesday, 4th April 2012
The recent figures released by the Central Statistics Office relating to the data compiled from the census makes for interesting reading. Perhaps the most interesting figure that we now have is the fact that the population of Ireland is at its highest in 150 years. It has been commented on more than one occasion that we have been enjoying somewhat of a baby boom in the last number of years but the increase in population also has to do with the ever increasing numbers of people that have come into this country and made it their home. Although the CSO might give out the facts and figures that have been collated from the Census the real questions are what will the policy makers do with all of these numbers and how will they plan out the development of the country
The Mahon Tribunal
Wednesday, 28th March 2012
So what exactly were people's reactions to the findings of the Mahon Tribunal? Of course at first there was shock but there was almost a sense as well as if people were expecting it. That does not mean to say that people liked what was uncovered but after so many years of hearing bad news heaped upon bad news when it came to financial mismanagement of the country were we really so surprised that some politicians seemed to be involved as well? In many ways the entire thing is entirely shaming. Perhaps it is a result of coming from such a small country where a person's reputation means an awful lot but finding out that several leaders of our country were involved in dubious activities is a terrible thing. And that it means other people in other countries know this
Motion on Household Charges to go before Waterford County Council
Wednesday, 28th March 2012
Dear Editor
I intend to bring this motion before the next meeting of Waterford County Council. The meeting will be held on Tuesday 10th April 2012.
The motion is in connection with the household charge. Section 14 of the Local Government (Household Charge) Act 2011 - 'gives local authorities the power to require utility companies to supply information relevant to the collection of the household charge'.
The motion is to undo the work of the Dept of Environment . . . by asking the council not to use the power given to it by the Act.
I have been also informed by the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner that his office is in contact with the Dept. of Environment . . . with a view to agreeing a code of practice which would limit the amount of data to be provided and deal
Important, not vital
Wednesday, 21st March 2012
When you stand back and try to examine all the brouhahas surrounding the controversy over the Presidential Frontline debate on RTE and the tweet that supposedly cost Sean Gallagher the Presidency you have to wonder whether all the fuss is really worth it. Of course it is worth it for Sean Gallagher and for those that are closest to him and maybe even for those that voted for him but in the overall scheme of things you might wonder whether most people give it a second thought. What most people remember from the debate is Gallagher's use of the word 'envelope', one of the most tainted words in Irish politics, and how the audience and the viewers reacted when he used it. If anything put paid to his chances for the Presidency it was that word. But now we have
Changed Times?
Wednesday, 14th March 2012
If there was one thing more heart breaking then seeing the long lines of people queuing at the three jobs fairs that were held recently in Dublin, Galway and Cork it was definitely listening to the people's stories as to why they were so desperate to try and get a job and leave Ireland. The raw emotion when the men and women spoke to journalists was palpable as they described what their lives were now like and just how important it was for them to get a job, any job. To see grown men with tears in their eyes as they spoke about the devastation they felt at having no work and no money was heart breaking. That all of the men interviewed previously worked in the construction industry came as no real surprise. All of them had held down
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Google AlertWhen a company which has it's European Headquarters here in Ireland is called 'evil' and 'immoral' by M.P.s in The House of Commons you tend to sit up and take notice. The particular company that was being referred to was Google and the reason it had enraged M.P.s in London was because even though it has a big operation there and conducts a lot of business there it pays no corporate tax. It does this by having all of its financial transactions finished here in Ireland. And the company here is …
