Search Results for 'Irish Defence Forces'

The State has issued an apology to the relatives of three victims who were killed by a landmine explosion in the Lebanon 22 years ago.

The 2011 Leinster and All Ireland Championship has been a historic one for Danesfort GAA Club, with an unprecedented three players from the club playing in all three championship matches to date.

Fine Gael’s Galway West Deputy Seán Kyne has expressed concerns at the delay in amending the Civil Registration Act to allow for the registration of the deaths of Irish people who die abroad. In May and June of 2010, the Galway-based Bring Them Home campaign group met with the then Minister for Social Protection, Éamon Ó Cuiv, who committed to a review so the legislation could be changed.

Tributes have been pouring in following the death on Wednesday this week of recently retired Chief of Staff of the Defence Forces, and Roscommon native, Lieutenant General Dermot Earley.

From humble beginnings in 1996, the Military Vehicle Club of Ireland (MVCI) has grown to become one of the largest clubs in Ireland. To date, the club has approximately 80 members, most of whom have one or more vehicles in their collection.

The recent very sad and tragic death of a brave young Royal Marine Robert McKibben really brought home to everyone in the Westport area the stark reality of war. Robert’s parents, sisters, brother, his girlfriend, relations and friends were truly devastated, as were his comrades in arms from the Royal Marines and indeed his former comrades from the Irish Defence Force. All who knew him were deeply shocked and numbed by his death. It is fair to say that the whole region was saddened by the news of his tragic death and it was no surprise that St Mary’s Church in Westport was packed for the funeral, or that it brought the town of Westport to a standstill as the cortege moved through the town in what was one of the saddest funerals on record.

Noel O’Callaghan, Regt Sgt Major, Sector South, Chad, reports from the mission base of the Irish Battalion in Camp MINURCAT in Chad, where 44 members of the 4 FAR from Columb Barracks, Mullingar are currently based.

Week II

If anyone thought that all a country need do to preserve its freedom when its neighbours are at war is to proclaim its neutrality, then they have only to look hard at what happened to several European countries at the beginning of World War II. Ladies and gentleman of the whinge brigade, neutrality isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.

On the evening that France and Britain declared war on Germany, September 3 1939, the 13,500-ton liner SS Athenia, chartered by the Cunard Line, and bound for Montreal with 1,418 passengers and crew was torpedoed, without warning, 250 miles northwest of Malin Head in the North Atlantic*. The following day the Norwegian vessel, Knute Nelson, was steaming towards Galway with 367 shocked and injured survivors, and asked that the city be prepared to receive them. Other survivors were picked up by British naval vessels and brought elsewhere for treatment, but in total 112 passengers and crew were killed in the attack, 28 of them Americans sailing for home as war was declared in Europe.