Search Results for 'Sinn Fé'

It was not a day when our local politicians covered themselves in glory. A debate on where some elected members of the Galway County Council would sit in the newly refurbished council chamber was succinctly summed up by Republican Sinn Féin representative, Tomas O Curraoin, who labelled the whole matter a joke, and likened the behaviour of some councillors to small children. "If kids were in junior infants, they would be arguing about where they were sitting," he said

From early Tuesday morning 140 members of the international, national, and local press gathered at the media centre at NUI Galway in anticipation of the first stopover of the royal visit.

A precocious and cleverly witty Trinity student in a yellow waistcoat, Oliver St John Gogarty, was to become a close friend of Sinn Féin's founder Arthur Griffith. At its first historic meeting, November 28 1905, Gogarty proclaimed against the 'tyranny of the British government', in the grand manner of a Cicero addressing the Roman senate. But so moving and compelling were his words that when Griffith reported the meeting in his newspaper The United Irishman, Gogarty's speech was the only one he quoted. And he did so at length.

County Buildings became the focal point for one of the most visual protests against the handing over of €1.25 billion by the Government to unsecured bondholders in the now dead bank Anglo-Irish Bank.

A rally was held at Galway Airport yesterday by local members of Ógra Shinn Féin who are calling on the Government to take action to stop the brain drain and increasing emigration, and to get the country back at work.

A TNS mrbi poll of the Galway West constituency, commissioned by Fianna Fáil, will make uneasy reading for the party as it shows it’s second seat is in danger.

“It’s time for the politicians to be honest with the people in the area, for example with the sewerage scheme in Belmullet. We have been promised this basic bit of infrastructure for years and when the money was there we didn’t get it. But now the promises will be trotted out again come the election about it, but even if there is funding for it there, because of the polluter pays principle there are businesses in Belmullet who are going to have to contribute millions towards it to get it going. It’s time our politicians were honest with the people about this.”

Catherine Connolly, Donal Lyons, Niall Ó Brolcháin, and John Mulholland look set to retain their seats in Galway City West but there will be a major battle between Fianna Fáil, Labour, and Independents for the fifth seat.

I was surprised to learn recently that I shared a theatrical experience with the journalist and commentator Fintan O’Toole. Years ago Fintan went to the toilet during one of the many intervals in John Arden’s The Non-Stop Connolly Show (it was non-stop for an amazing 24-hours). The toilet was just behind the stage. When Fintan came out, the performance had restarted, and he was on stage. The audience applauded the embarrassed young Fintan.