The idea that tighter regulation will prevent a repeat of bank failures is naive . . . We have to detoxify the culture of inequality, whereby there is a class with wealth and power and then everyone else, writes VINCENT BROWNE
On 2 September, Minister Mary Harney launched the first ever All Ireland Traveller Health Study. The minister herself acknowledged that there was 'no good news' in terms of Travellers' life expectancy.By Sara Burke.
Some of the key findings in the report are:
Mary Harney says prescription charges will raise money and "discourage the overuse of medication". By Sara Burke.
Ten years ago Mary Harney, then tánaiste and minister of trade, enterprise and employment made her political position clear.
"Geographically," she said, "we are closer to Berlin than Boston. Spiritually, we are probably a lot closer to Boston than Berlin." She firmly articulated the then government's chosen economic model which "had a clear tax-cutting agenda" and went on to say that "this model works".
Journalist James Brabazon's recollections of his exploits in the war zones of Africa in the company of the infamous mercenary Nick du Toit make for some exciting if occasionally gut-wrenching reading. By Edward O'Hare.
Mary Harney is a politician without a party, a minister without a mandate. She has been in government for 13 years, the Minister for Health for nearly six years. Despite the demise of the PDs, their ideology prevails. The Minister does not understand that free market economics does not apply to running a health service. By Sara Burke.
Mary Harney has overseen the most 'radical' reform of the Irish health system since 1970 with the foundation of the HSE.
Ireland has guaranteed the assets and liabilities of a large part of its banking system. Parts of this banking system are, to use a technical term, dead. That is, these parts of the banking system will no longer provide credit (for a profit) to the real economy (plumbers who need overdrafts to pay their workers and buy materials).
Those who have ruined the country came through a mostly Catholic schools system without any sense of being part of a society
IN HIS speech in Rimini last week Diarmuid Martin said: "School catechesis, despite the goodwill of teachers, does not produce young Catholics prepared to join in the Christian community. Sometimes, after 15 years of catechesis, young people remain theologically illiterate." He might have been referring to me.
Action needed to counter inequality if we are to exit economic recession. By Siobhan O’Donoghue.
Irish society remains deeply unequal despite massive wealth creation during the Celtic tiger years. It is estimated that a mere 5% of the population hold 40% of the wealth in Ireland.
Perhaps we in Ireland are now contemplating “God’s afterlife” in a supposedly post-religious world. Book review by Emer Nolan.
An incredibly subtle work which reveals much about the human condition, Adam Foulds's second novel about the poets John Clare and Alfred Tennyson is a tour de force of sustained imaginative power. By Edward O’Hare.