Search Results for 'Junior Minister'

What a week it’s been for Kilkenny. We have lost our junior minister in one fell swoop and I think the whole county is aghast. Nobody expected it.

There can be few jobs more unpalatable right now than being a Fianna Fáil election candidate - or even a Fianna Fáil canvasser - in the run up to June 5. The party is facing a drubbing at the polls. And whatever doorstep hostility has been there over the past two weeks, it will be nothing as compared to the anger when next month's pay cheque leaves Sean Citizen with a huge hole in what is available to him to pay his bills.

The members of Ballina Town Council took time out before their monthly meeting to congratulate Dara Calleary on his promotion to Minister of State within the Department of Enterprise, Trade, and Employment. Starting off the congratulations was Town Mayor, Michelle Mulherin. She told the meeting: “I would like to congratulate Dara on his promotion to the position of Junior Minister. It is a great achievement for him and his family and he has been handed a very apt portfolio.”

Fianna Fáil is privately admitting that the party has lost its North West EU seat, one of the few EU seats the party was certain it would be able to hold onto in the June elections.

In a pre-election whistle-stop walk-about of Kilkenny City, Taoiseach Brian Cowen told the Kilkenny Advertiser that St Luke’s Hospital A+E in Kilkenny has been lauded as a model of best practise for other hospitals around the country.

Back over the past decade when the birds didn’t get the auld sniffles and when pigs never flu, there was an affliction that struck this country. It was called PNH1SG or to give it its full name Paddy Never Had It So Good. It was a contagious condition that spread like wildfire. It was a strain of the other virus AF1WSLE (Arragh Feck It We’ve Suffered Long Enough). It was a deadly ailment that spread in conditions of affluence — as such it was a sort of gout for the Nineties and Noughties.

Fine Gael Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs Spokesperson Dep Michael Ring has called on Junior Minister John Curran to keep his commitment to reopen the Scheme of Community Support for Older People. Dep Ring said many older people do not feel safe in their own homes and the Government has a duty to reinstate this relatively inexpensive but important scheme.

Maire Geoghegan-Quinn has become the first Irish woman and the first Galwegian to be appointed as an EU Commissioner for Ireland, although her elevation to the job is already shrouded in controversy.