News

CLARE County Councillors haven’t yet prepared the local authority’s budget for next year but at the November meeting of the council some members indicated their support for a drop in the cost of commercial rates.

A NEW sense of hope and confidence is needed to rebuild Irish society and the economy, according to President Michael D Higgins.

EVEN the best-laid plans can be disrupted by the Irish weather. Gusts of high wind, combined with rain, led to a few last-minute changes in the arrangements for the inauguration of Michael D Higgins at Dublin Castle on Friday.

ENNIS County Councillor Johnny Flynn was asked to explain why he made a submission to the Draft Ennis and Environs Development Plan Variation No.2, when he had removed himself from all discussions on the draft plan due to “a potential conflict of interest”.

A ferry service linking Ballyvaughan and Galway City “requires an ongoing subsidy in order to operate successfully”, a feasibility study has shown.

MICHAEL D Higgins has often quoted Sean O’Casey’s belief that poverty was a disease that got into a man’s bones. “And no matter what that man becomes afterwards, it never leaves him,” President Higgins has stated.

Do you ever wonder why so many people don’t bother to vote at elections? They may, of course, be ill; they may be abroad on holidays or they may be otherwise indisposed. Some of them are probably too lazy to bother going to their nearest polling booth to register their vote.

I recently watched footage of Gaddafi’s last moments at the hands of rebels in Libya. The images are shot on mobile phone and of an extremely graphic and disturbing nature. The treatment meted out to the former dictator would seem to have been on a par with that dispensed by his own hired thugs during his reign.