Forum

G aelscoil Cholmcille has been in temporary accommodation in a football club in Santry in North Dublin for the last nine years because the much-promised primary school has never been built. The rooms in this club are very small and each year the classes get bigger which results in chronic overcrowding. It is impossible for two adults to walk past each other in the very narrow corridor upstairs without bumping into one another. Recent hearing tests for the children had to be carried out in this corridor as there simply was no room available in the building.

HUNTING

Fianna Fáil

Morris Tribunal Report

Criminal Justice Bill and ASBOs – an attack on our civil liberties

Woodstown: a new national monument and Waterford victory

Time for action

On 19 April 2005, the editor of the Standard, one of the few remaining independent newspapers in Zimbabwe, was arrested in connection with a story alleging that ballot boxes had gone missing during the recent parliamentary elections. Such incidents continue to be commonplace in Zimbabwe, where, with the aid of some of the most authoritarian legislation in Africa and a politicised judiciary and police force, the government has suffocated the independent press.

Racism and Soccer

An ASBO (in the UK) is a civil order made by the court to protect the public from anti-social behaviour defined as 'behaviour which causes harassment, alarm and distress'. They are applicable to anyone over 10 years old and involve the court making an open-ended order which restricts the actions and behaviour of the individual with a view to protecting the community from further anti-social acts. Although an ASBO is a civil order, breach is a criminal offence, which on indictment, has a maximum penalty of five years imprisonment.