Articles in the Comment Category

Many of the people who attended last Friday’s 2010 graduation ceremony for the students of the Monaghan Institute of Further Education and Training will have gone home feeling uplifted.  In addition to seeing family members of their own and their peers celebrate significant educational attainment and take an important step forward in their working or academic lives, they heard a number of compelling addresses that struck a positive counterpoint to the bleak vista of the economic landscape that had been built up around them in the course of the year. Tara ...

At a time of incessant gloom and unceasing turmoil in the national economy, when all news seems to be bad news and the ability to absorb it reaches saturation point, the public can easily grow inured to calamity, and can be slow to react or assign the appropriate consideration when a new threat to the quality of their lives and to the community good stealthily emerges. This is one obstacle facing those in the Irish postal service who are at present seeking to galvanise local political opposition to proposals in train ...

Two relatively small but significant matters brought to light at the conclusion of Tuesday night’s Joint Policing Committee meeting in Monaghan Town provide much food for thought. Fine Gael public representative Tommy Hagan drew attention to complaints he had received about young people cycling at speed along the footpaths of the town and the danger this illegal practice posed to themselves and pedestrians.  Colr Hagan also voiced concern about the risks to both the participants and others arising from the growing habit of youngsters skateboarding on the newly paved centrepiece of ...

The tributes that the retiring Monaghan Co Manager Declan Nelson received at Monday’s meeting of Monaghan Co Council, and those he has been paid at local authority and other forums since news of his imminent departure from the role emerged, are well merited. The ten years that have encompassed Mr Nelson’s period of service to Co Monaghan have been marked by considerable infrastructural development and the realisation of a number of long nurtured initiatives.  That this decade of progress, perhaps unprecedented in the county’s history, matched Mr Nelson’s tenure as Co ...

It would be difficult to identify a more efficiently functioning and effective mechanism of public sector administration in our locality than that operated by Co Monaghan Vocational Education Committee.  Evidence of its excellence in the delivery of services is readily available in communities where its schools and centres are located, and is reflected in the proceedings of its monthly public meetings which are reported regularly in our news columns. Tuesday’s announcement that the Monaghan Committee is to be amalgamated with that of Cavan as part of a stringent rationalisation programme unveiled ...

It will be informative to hear the comments of the members of Monaghan Co Council in a number of weeks’ time on the new ‘Economic Strategy and Implementation Plan’ for the county presented to them at their October meeting on Monday.  The councillors were compelled by their schedule to forego debate on the strategy after it was formally presented to them, but they have been anxious to acquire what has become over their recent meetings a much anticipated document upon which the members of the Co Development Board and many ...

We live in regicidal times. During the late 1970s and early 1980s a feature of this newspaper was a popular and often provocative weekly opinion piece penned by Fr Des Wilson, who was then prominent in community activism in the North.  One of Fr Wilson’s most commented-upon articles advanced the contention that there was a still pronounced tendency in society towards regicide – the killing of the king, or the king figure – particularly during periods of strife or instability.  To very compelling effect, Fr Wilson applied to the landscape of ...

The impact made by the “Don’t Pour Your Dreams Away” alcohol awareness campaign being targeted at young people in the Monaghan area to coincide with this week’s announcement of the Junior Certificate examination results merits being closely monitored. The initiative has adopted some interesting approaches in order to bring the message about the dangers inherent in alcohol abuse home to its target audience. The views of young people themselves have informed how the campaign is being conducted.  If that influence can be discerned in the provocative catch-line and high-impact poster which spearheads ...

Water, water, everywhere, Nor any drop to drink. The lament of Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner has taken on unsettling contemporary relevance with the awakening realisation among its consumers and its guardians that, despite the seeming copiousness of the resource, potable water is in fact a precious and far from inexhaustible commodity. Ensuring that it is available in adequate quantity, and to a quality in compliance with ever more exacting statutory requirements, is a demanding and expensive task for the local authorities and private group schemes charged with these responsibilities. Worthy of commendation, then, ...

At a time when a considerable effort is being made to enhance the urban environment of Monaghan Town, the negative publicity for the county capital generated by its being ranked 47th out of the 53 towns surveyed in the annual Irish Businesses Against Litter league table published this week arrives inopportunely (see story, Page One). The IBAL survey is not, we would suggest, the most authoritative analysis of the cleanliness or otherwise of the towns upon which it chooses to cast its spotlight. It has long been a criticism of ...