Society

Robbery is becoming a way of life in Ireland with over £8 million stolen last year and the armed robbery proceeds showing a major boost this year.

The Angelus was deferred for 25 minutes while homage was sung to Michael Conlon at the November meeting of Cork County Council. Successive councillors of all political creeds tolled a litany of despair at the resignation (duly accepted) of their beloved County Manager, and noon had long since come and gone before they turned in intercession to the nearest other person to God. The Angelus was recited in full by the assembled councillors, the manager, the secretary and the pious press under the sorrowful gaze of a crucified Christ nailed to the wall above them.

Quite the most enjoyable reaction to the recent march against violence against women, and the speech I made at the end of it, was the letter sent to me under plain brown cover by a woman from Longford. "Only in the past six months have I had' peace with my Beast (sic), After 23 years of hell I hit him back with a brush, good and hard".  By Nell MCCafferty

The pubs have been shut for almost half an hour. The early editions of the Sunday papers have been on sale since long before the cinemas emptied. The lines of taxis in O'Connell Street are beginning to dwindle. In countless doorways on main streets and in back alleys Dublin's teenage working class lovers are facing the perennial problem:

Inga Saffron writes on the sub culture of the Dublin taxi world

Anthony Cronin, writer and journalist, surveys wet wet summer of 1978 from Puck Fair to the Leeson St. discos

DUBLIN City and County Councils are spending a total of £25 million in a mammmoth plan to save the Liffey. The Government granted much of the money after the Water Pollution Act of 1977 gave local authorities power to carry out mecessary improvements in their own areas. The plan invollves a new drainage and treatmet works, a new sewerage tunnel, pumping station, and ancillary works. All this will come into operation in the early eighties.

A caravan bought for £20 standing on a patch of waste ground can seem like heaven after a year in the Sherrif Street flats. That was the McCann family's verdict when they moved to the corner of Hadddington and Norththumberland Roads in January this year..

WHEN the Dalkey School Project opened the doors of its new school to the first hundred pupils at the beginning of this month, it became the first multi-denominational national school to be recognised by the Department of Education since 1922, with the exception of those for some handicapped children. For those involved, it represents a triumph over prejudice, intolerance and polite stone-walling on' the part of the Coalition Government lasting four long years.

Marianne Heron unravels the bewildering complexity of Irish marriage law