Articles in the Comment Category

Many apocalyptic predictions in diverse ancient cultures converge around the year 2012. The prevailing worldview, founded in rationality and increasingly secular in emphasis, has long since consigned these dire forecasts to the superstitious fringes of thought – although they have surfaced, and will do so increasingly as this New Year progresses, in various forms of our popular culture. Nonetheless, sober political and economic analysis pictures the year ahead, if not in ‘end of the world’ terminology, in terms of such gloom and uncertainty as to strongly suggest ...

Newspapers, and media outlets generally, are often castigated for foregrounding bad news at the expense of the good. It’s an age-old complaint, but one that seems to have added force nowadays. Given the fact that there is little break in the cloud cover of global economic gloom, it can be argued that being bombarded relentlessly by news negativity can sustain and even deepen the mood of depression and demotivation it is all too easy for people to fall prey to – and that such a phenomenon can even ...

The prevailing uncertainty over the future of the euro creates a problematic climate for shoppers and businesspeople in Co Monaghan as we enter into the Christmas period. The economic circumstances of the country are difficult enough when viewed purely in terms of the recent national Budget and the additional pressures for household expenditure that its provisions have generated. We have been subjected to tough Budgets in this country before – not just in recent years but back within the living memory of many of us, before what have ...

“I’m sick of hearing about the Budget!” There’s a good chance that if readers haven’t made the above comment themselves, they’ll have heard it in recent days from a family member, work colleague or friend. Budgets, like all other big news stories these days, incite overkill in the media. The mainly grim announcements made by Minister for Public Expenditure Brendan Howlin and Minister for Finance Michael Noonan have been so analysed to death, and then pathologically dissected even further by pundits and soothsayers, that even the most ...

The statement by the Economic and Social Research Institute downgrading Ireland’s 2012 economic growth forecast from 2.3% to 0.9% puts a context on next week’s Budget that the Government will hardly welcome. The ESRI are strongly of the view that the depth of the crisis afflicting the eurozone is such that it will seriously undermine the efforts of individual economies within that zone to achieve the ambitions for fiscal recovery they are setting themselves. The message seems to be that no matter what the Government decide to do ...

The intention of Minister for Finance Michael Noonan to add 2% to the VAT rate in December’s Budget is bad news for the businesspeople and shopping public of Co Monaghan and the wider southern Border region. Minister Noonan’s rationale for the decision is that such a revenue-generating exercise is more preferable than an increase in direct taxation, and that something of the measure’s impact can be mitigated by the exercise of consumer choice. Certainly any addition to the arduous burden being borne by the PAYE sector would be ...

The commissioning by Monaghan Co Council of a helicopter to take aerial photographs of the severe flooding which afflicted the county a number of weeks ago may have generated some passing concern at Monday’s meeting of the authority as to the cost value of the exercise (see story, page one), but the evidence produced and circulated at the meeting conveyed much more graphically than words the gravity of the plight which some of our communities were plunged into by this severe weather event. The visual evidence also contextualised the ...

At some stage during their apprenticeship to the profession, the tyro journalist is usually taken aside by a grizzled colleague and imparted the mantra: “If in doubt, leave out.” The cautionary phrase is a summation of good common sense habits that those who labour productively in the newspaper vineyards soon acquire, often painfully through neglect of its inherent principles. It teaches the need to verify information, separate rumour from fact, and satisfy oneself as to the veracity and reliability of sources. It also embodies the principle of ...

The many Co Monaghan residents and businesspeople engaged in extensive clean-up operations at the present time after this week’s severe flooding will undoubtedly be the focus of widespread community support and practical assistance. It is always a heartening by-product of emergency situations of this type to witness how the characteristic of altruistic neighbourliness – often regarded as being hunted near to extinction by the social changes that have happened in Ireland in recent decades – reasserts itself unbidden with commendable force and effectiveness. The victims of flooding in ...

The sound and fury of the Presidential election campaign is almost at an end. On Thursday next, October 27, the people go to the polls to decide who the occupant of the office will be – and also to reach a determination on two important referenda that have been regrettably neglected as a focus of analysis and debate in favour of the noisy campaign shouting and media infatuation generated by the race for the Áras. The Presidential contest has been unprecedented in many respects. The number of ...