Articles in the Comment Category

There was a time when no politician be they of national or local livery – nor even the humble presspersons whose lot it is to record the pronouncements and prognostications of the political class – could traverse even a short distance of public thoroughfare without being posed the question in our title. The fate of what was once Monaghan General Hospital and now merely Monaghan Hospital was a pressing public preoccupation in our circulation area for decades. From the time of then Health Minister Barry Desmond’s notorious “close and dispose” ...

increasing occasions over recent times, and particularly in our own Co Monaghan area this week, the weather has served notice on humanity that it still holds primacy over our lives to a governing extent only slightly mitigated by our technological and societal development. While some continue to question with Luddite stubbornness the legitimacy of the evidence for global warming and climate change, extreme weather events are becoming a worryingly frequent feature of the 21st century. When even the temperate nature of the Irish climate, oft described in terms akin to the ...

 The first thing that the Co Monaghan students who received their Leaving Certificate results yesterday merit is, of course, congratulations.   They have reached a significant staging post in the maturation journey and will look back upon the day or two past and the hectic weeks ahead of decision-making and preparation for their next life steps as seminal ones in their lives – not life-defining perhaps, but significantly life-altering.   Equally as important as commendation is support, whether students have attained their examination goals or whether they have fallen short of them.  Achieving the ...

It is sometimes interesting to see ourselves as others see us – but not nearly as fascinating as when we get an opportunity to put “the others” under our own microscope. This was the opportunity afforded to Northern Standard journalist Cianna McNally when she visited Strasbourg last week along with colleagues from the Irish regional press for an insight into the workings of the European Parliament. From our perspective as a Border county grappling with both the real and imagined challenges presented by the UK’s Brexit referendum decision ...

Although it was not its assigned purpose, a fascinating and at times troubling picture of life at the coalface of agricultural production in this country emerged from the proceedings of a major gathering of the industry’s practitioners and advisers in Monaghan Town last week. The all island farm safety conference was a co-ordinated attempt by agencies North and South to assess the unacceptably high level of Irish farm fatality and serious injury and test strategies for the problem’s address. The perception of farming as a profession encompassing inevitable dangers that will always ...

An important IFA-organised seminar held in Monaghan last week served as a timely reminder of the abiding importance of our county’s poultry industry as a contributor to both the local and national agricultural economy. Those unfamiliar with the extent of activity in the sphere and who may have nurtured an impression of torpidity if not decline in its local operation given the fate that befell Monaghan Poultry Products and some of the country’s other processing outlets over recent years would have been taken aback at the buzz of activity that presaged ...

The politicisation of the issues raised by EirGrid’s plans to construct their North-South electricity interconnector project using overhead pylons is a process that has been ongoing for some time. The outcomes of last Wednesday night’s public information meeting convened by the Co Monaghan Anti-Pylon Committee in Aughnamullen should therefore be viewed more as a potent accelerant to the process rather than its instigator – a slow-burning Hallowe’en firework that will cast scintillating sparks of speculation into the air the closer we come to the finalisation of the date for the imminent ...

The news that the majority of Gardaí being redeployed to the Co Louth area in a determined strategy to bolster security and deal with serious criminality there are to be taken from the Cavan/Monaghan Division has provoked understandable alarm among politicians and the public. The need for a highly visible and forceful response to the murder of Garda Tony Golden and the persistent menace posed by dissident paramilitary activity and the activities of organised criminal gangs in the Louth part of the Border region is self-evident. Added to the continuing efforts ...

As election-accented Budgets go, the income and expenditure package delivered to the Dáil on Tuesday by Minister for Finance Michael Noonan and Minister for Public Expenditure Brendan Howlin was avuncular rather than indulgent in the nature of its giving – the sort of modest but sentimental present that two sensible uncles might have bunched in to buy you rather than the shiny and lavishly impractical bag of gifts you’d got from more eccentric relatives (Charlie McCreevy comes to mind) around this time before. Although Budgets are not normally proofread for traces ...

A presentation to Monday’s meeting of Monaghan Co Council by a Dept of Communications representative that conjured up a vision of a nation wrapped in an all-encompassing comfort blanket of cutting-edge broadband availability five years from now was received with what could best be described as a wary welcome from the local authority’s elected men and women. But you only look a gift horse in the mouth if you’ve let a few cart horses park themselves in the thoroughbred stables – and our Co Councillors had heard too many panacea-promising pitches ...