Léargas

The nurse was very kind. And very, very professional. I was in the Royal Hospital in Belfast. I had come directly from speaking at Fra Fox’s funeral and before that Terry Enright’s funeral. They are two of the good guys. Anyway I was to have surgery on my eyes. For months now they have been sore. The problem is the lower eye lids were growing inwards. It’s a condition called Entropion. It’s very irritating because the lower eye lash brushes against the cornea. Sometimes this can damage your vision. So surgery was prescribed. It’s a fairly straightforward procedure which takes a few hours. I had opted to get both eyes done in one go. The surgeon was brilliant. So were all his team. And I am very grateful to them for their professionalism, skills and generosity. The operation sounds very gruesome. It’s carried out under local anesthetic. All the little injections around the eye really sting and smart. Essentially I suppose what happens is that the surgeon cuts into the off

The past couple of years have been very important ones for Sinn Féin. Across the island successive elections have seen the party grow from strength to strength. During this time Sinn Féin’s political message has been clear, coherent and consistent. Whether in government in the north or opposition in the south it is about protecting public services and families on low and middle incomes; it is about fair taxes, investing in jobs, and growing the all-Ireland economy. Sinn Féin is the only all-island party – a United Ireland party. Others, like Fianna Fáil, have engaged in the rhetoric of republican politics and a united Ireland for decades, but have no vision or strategies or policies to advance it. Sinn Féin’s approach is rooted in our core republican values and our vision of a new Republic for this island. We believe in citizens and in citizens rights protected in legislation. Partition has failed the people of Ireland, north and south, the unionists and the rest of us. A ne

Nationalists and republicans familiar with the frequent bias and official and unofficial censorship that was the rule in British media coverage of the north over three decades will not have been surprised by that media’s current coverage of the Israeli assault on Gaza. The BBC has especially and justifiably come in for considerable criticism of its’ reporting. Six years ago an independent group chaired by Quentin Thomas of the British Home Office, produced a report into the BBC’s coverage of the ‘Israeli-Palestinian conflict’. It concluded that there were ‘identifiable shortcomings, particularly in respect of gaps in coverage, analysis, context and perspective.’ The report was binned and the effect of that has been obvious in the current reportage of the violence in that region. Palestinian citizens ‘die’. Israeli citizens are ‘killed’. Countless images are used of rockets being fired from Gaza but no comparable reports are given of the huge arsenal of weaponry, including

  Martin Ferris TD, Rita O Hare, Jennifer McCann MLA and mise I was in the USA and Canada for a few days for a series of Sinn Féin events. My first stop was Manhattan. The media images of the damage wrought on New Jersey and New York by the super storm Sandy became very real with the succession of accounts from friends of the damage they and their families had suffered. I listened to good, solid Irish American activists, some of whom I have known over many years, and who had lost everything or whose families had suffered dramatically from the violence of Sandy. For some their homes were gone. Others face months of major rebuilding. Many had been without power – no lighting, no heating - for over a week through bitter cold weather. As I arrived in New York Mayor Bloomberg was urging citizens with no power to go to the shelters for heat. Another nor-wester was blowing in and the temperature was dropping. Imagine elderly people trapped in their homes at the top of ta

The protection of children is once again a major focus of debate in the southern state because of a planned referendum on Children’s Rights that will be held this Saturday. The referendum proposes a new Article – 42A - to the Irish Constitution and the deletion of the current Article 42.5. In summary this referendum is about protecting the most vulnerable in society – children and young people - and ensuring that the law is shaped to protect them while imposing a legally binding duty on the state to provide the strategies, policies, services and resources needed to achieve this. The referendum is the outworking of a debate on children’s rights in the south that goes back decades. It also reflects the concerns raised as a result of a succession of damning reports - including the Ryan Report; the Ferns, Cloyne and Murphy reports, as well as the scandal of the Magdalene Laundries - that have exposed the horrifying extent of child abuse – both physical and sexual – inflicted on

Dé hAoine bhí mé i Leitir Ceannain ag Oireachtas na Samhna. Is ceiliúradh é an Oireachtas ar raon leathan do na healaíona dúchasacha. Bhí lá go hiontach agam ag bualadh le cairde, comhleacaí agus cuid mhór Gaeilgeoirí. D’úsaid Sinn Féin an seans straitéis an pháirtí agus an Gaeilge a phlé, leathanach facebook nua ‘Cabaire’ a sheoladh, agus seimineár faoi ‘Thodhchaí na Gaeilge’ a reachtáil. Thíos seo é mo focail ag seoladh an leathanach facebook. “ Mar Éireannaigh is breá linn bheith ag caint, ag cúl chaint, agus i ndáiríre is breá linn ar fad ‘gossip’. Mar daoine, táimid fiosrach go nádúrtha. D’fheadfá rá gur cruthaíodh Facebook agus na meán sóisialta dúinne. ‘An Cabaire’ is ea acmhainn do na meán sóisialta . Cruthaíodh an leathanach ‘facebook’ seo nuair a thuig Sinn Féin an luach, agus an gá a bhí ann le spás a chruthú, áit go bhfeadfadh daoine le leibhéal éagsúil Gaeilge cumarsáid agus caidreamh le daoine eile agus iad ar a gcompord le seo. Is spás é gur