Columns - Irish Examiner

Editorial

Resignation at Stormont - Impasse rooted in a violent past

IT is hard not to think that in a society that had enjoyed stability and peace for longer than Northern Ireland has that Sinn Féin’s Martin McGuinness might have felt compelled to resign as Stormont’s deputy first minister over Democratic Unionist Party leader and first minister Arlene Foster’s repeated refusal to stand aside during an investigation into the renewable heating incentive scandal.

Tue, 10 Jan, 2017

Fish farms indicted on sea trout - Debate is over

A GOVERNMENT scientific agency, Inland Fisheries Ireland, has just published the result of 25 years of research involving more than 20,000 sea trout taken from 94 river systems in Ireland or Scotland at varying distances from salmon farms.

Tue, 10 Jan, 2017

Brexit ‘muddled thinking’: Unconvincing

Anyone who still believes that Britain might quit the EU in an organised, clear way, one more easily described as a “soft” exit rather than a “hard” one, cannot have been reassured by prime minister Theresa May’s interview yesterday.

Mon, 09 Jan, 2017

Renewable energy developments: Solar farms grey area is unhelpful

It is essential that Ireland cuts its dependence on imported energy. We still bring in something around 90% of our needs, a figure that makes us more vulnerable than is prudent in an increasingly fractured world.

Mon, 09 Jan, 2017

Lies in our connected world: Never easier to spread propaganda

It makes a good parlour game to speculate what propagandists of the past — Lenin, Castro, de Valera, Collins, Pearse, Carson, FDR, Churchill or John Charles McQuaid — might make of fake news and the opportunities our susceptibility, our deep- yearning need to be told what we want to hear, might offer. 

Mon, 09 Jan, 2017

Treated like idiots as that’s how we behave

WHEN record end-of-year tax returns, up 5% to €47.86bn, were announced in recent days, it was also pointed out that this small country’s interest bill was €6.74bn, a little more than 10% of the bank bailout. 

Sat, 07 Jan, 2017

Let’s agree to salmon farms — but on land

SALMON farming is one of the most divisive enterprises in Ireland today. That division is reflected all across the Atlantic seaboard, where stocks of wild salmon and sea trout are falling at an alarming rate.

Sat, 07 Jan, 2017

Concussion tackled

THIS weekend the new rules enacted on Wednesday designed to make rugby safer, faster and hopefully a better spectacle will be applied in top-level competition for the first time. 

Sat, 07 Jan, 2017

Annual crisis at our hospitals: A&E chaos is symptomatic of indecision

IT is impossible not to feel considerable sympathy for the besieged nurses, doctors and ambulance staff trying to deal with the escalating crisis at accident and emergency wards. 

Fri, 06 Jan, 2017