Search Results for 'Seanad'

St Paul’s Secondary School in Oughterard, which had been forced to remove some of its students and staff from decade-old prefabs after its roof started caving in, has welcomed the news that funding to construct permanent classrooms has been approved.

Fears about the future of the maternity unit at Mayo General Hospital continued to grow as new details emerged this week about the confidential draft review of services that is under way at hospitals in the west and northwest.

With three weeks to go to polling, there is much to play for across each of the three Galway city electoral wards. Poster campaigns are now in full flow and candidates are falling over each other for the affections of voters on the doorsteps.

Early morning July 17 1938, Douglas Corrigan, a young aviator, climbed into a small and rather battered nine-year old Curtiss Robin monoplane, at Brooklyn airfield New York. He was cleared to fly to California. It was a misty overcast morning. Instead of turning east, he headed out over the Atlantic. Twenty-eight hours later, surviving on two chocolate bars, two boxes of fig bars, and a few gallons of water, he landed in Baldonnel airport, Dublin, to everyone’s amazement. He was immediately christened ‘Wrong Way’ Corrigan, and the world press loved him. The New York Post printed its headline back to front to join in the fun. Especially as it emerged that Corrigan’s plane had many modifications made to it, including two large petrol tanks strapped in front of the cockpit, allowing him to only see out sideways. One of the tanks leaked on the way over. He had to slash a hole in the floor to allow the fuel out.

A report published last week by Teagasc, ‘Indexing the Economic Strength of Rural Towns in Ireland’, has been described as a serious “wake up call” by councillor Harry Barrett. The report, which measured the economic strength of 302 small and medium sized towns in Ireland, ranked them in order, and found Castlebar ranked 248 out of 302 of the towns measured; the higher number indicating the weaker the town. Ballina came in at 287 out of 302 towns measures, while Westport featured at a much stronger 45 out of 302.

“Ireland took the bullet for the EU” over the collapse of the continent’s economic and banking institutions, and now “it’s pay back time”, as younger generations should not have to face a future of “austerity in perpetuity”.

THERE WAS a time when a photograph of Mick Wallace must have marked the bull’s eye of the dartboard in Justice Minister Alan Shatter’s office. That dartboard must be overcrowded these days with pictures of political foes and the Minister running out of enough darts to throw at them all.

The much loved and admired politician Nicky McFadden (51) was laid to rest in Coosan yesterday, Thursday March 27. 

Campaign groups have vowed to continue their fight to maintain psychiatric beds at St Brigid’s Hospital in Ballinasloe, after a motion aimed at saving the 22-bed psychiatric unit was defeated in the Seanad on Wednesday.

As the Seanad debated the removal of psychiatric beds from mental health units, including St Brigid’s Hospital in Ballinasloe, campaign groups vowed to continue their fight until an independent review is granted.