Léargas

Kids are the same everywhere. They are great craic. I remember visiting Phola Park, a vast squatter camp not far from Soweto in South Africa in the summer of 1995. The conditions were appalling. Families were living in one room structures made from pieces of battered corrugated tin held together with bits of wire and rope. There was an overwhelming sense of great poverty. Very few had employment of any kind. Health care was basic. There was one water tap and a row of outside latrines. And it was all covered in dust. But the people had a huge sense of pride in their contribution to the end of apartheid and the election the previous year of Madiba (Mandela), as President of a new free South Africa. Their living conditions might have been primitive but their hearts were huge and the welcome they gave our small delegation of Shinners was mighty. They danced and sang and their voices soared in exuberance over the barren landscape around them. There were kids everywhere. Hundreds running ar...

Bill Clinton’s pulling power has not been diminished by his years out of office. If anything he is more popular today in the USA that when he was President. The Clinton Global Initiative is his event. It is branded with the Clinton name and it reflects his values and ethos and politics, especially in seeking to help disadvantaged people and communities around the globe. The CGI is held each year to coincide with the full meeting of the UN General Assembly. Consequently, it is a magnet for current and former Prime Ministers, Foreign Ministers and Presidents and political leaders, who arrive in New York wanting to network with others and happy to share a high profile platform to talk on the major issues of the day. This is my seventh year at the CGI. When former President Clinton established it in 2005 he invited this blog to be a member. I was happy to join and to travel there each year to participate in the discussions and to listen and learn from others. The CGI is an innovative proje...

Joseph Smyth, mise and Terry O Sullivan The first thing you notice when you get out of the car at the South Street Seaport in New York are the massive sailing ships. The Peking, built in 1911, with its four enormous masts and rigging is an impressive sight and dominates the landscape. And there are other sailing ships dating from even earlier times. The South Street Seaport sits on the site of the original port of New York and part of it is Pier 17. That was my destination last Wednesday evening. Me and your man were on our way to Harbour Lights, a restaurant, where the Irish Echo was holding an event to honour Irish America’s labour legacy – Irish Labour 50. The Pier is now a tourist centre and part of a designated historic area which includes a Museum, exhibition galleries, a working 19th-century print shop, an archeology museum, a maritime library, and much more, including a small fleet of privately owned sailing ships. Harbour Lights looks out over the East river and at night is li...

Martin McGuinness has been my friend for almost 40 years. He is a remarkable and gifted human being and a great leader and a patriot. It will be a great honour for me to propose Martin McGuinness to contest Presidential election on a broad, republican, citizen-centred platform. He will make an excellent President of Ireland. Ireland is a partitioned country. The consequences of that have been deeply damaging for the people of this island. In the north a unionist one party regime ruled and abused citizens for 50 years. Unionist repression and a society in which Catholics were treated as second class citizens led to a civil rights campaign for justice. When that was attacked by the state there followed decades of conflict. Martin McGuinness played a huge role in bringing that conflict to an end. The southern state was run by a conservative political and business elite whose greed and corrupt practices ultimately led to the current dire economic crisis. As a result there is now a climate ...

Todd Allen, John Fitzgerald, Tom McGinnis, Desi Macken, Gerry Adams, Larry Downes, Tom Boyan, John Kitrick This blog has met the Irish everywhere. From Britain to Australia, from all parts of Europe, to the USA, from the Middle East to South Africa. Some have been first generation. Others have been the sons and daughters of previous generations forced from Ireland for economic and social and political reasons. Persecution, sectarianism, repression, hunger all played their part. Among the 70 plus million in the Irish diaspora scattered around the globe there are many who take a deep interest in developments in Ireland. They seek to play a helpful role. Many times this is in small personal ways. Over recent decades they have positively contributed to the search for peace. This has been especially true of the Irish in America, Britain and Australia. Friends of Sinn Féin in America was established in 1995. It raises funds for the party. It has done sterling work in that time. Consequently...

Sinn Féin banners outside Belfast's Waterfront Hall where the party will be holding its Ard Fheis this weekend. Yesterday was the start of International Suicide Prevention Awareness Week. It runs until next Saturday, World Suicide Prevention Day. Regrettably in my years as a public representative I have spoken to people at risk; to their families and the bereaved families of suicide victims; and to health professionals working on this issue. It is clear that this is a problem which is getting worse. The World Health Organisation estimates that “Every year, almost one million people die from suicide; a "global" mortality rate of 16 per 100,000, or one death every 40 seconds”. That’s equivalent to a population the size of Dublin dying each year from suicide. WHO also calculates that in the last 50 years “suicide rates have increased by 60% worldwide”, and that it is now among the three leading causes of death among those aged 15-44 years. Recently Pieta House, a suicide cri...