Articles in the General News Category

By Veronica Corr An interim examiner was appointed to Celtic Pure at the company’s request in the High Court last week. National media reports stated that Mr. Justice David Barniville, having read an independent expert’s report, felt that the company had a good chance of surviving as a going concern, if the examiner could come to an arrangement with creditors on its behalf. It was also reported that the company had claimed that its sales for August were down 75% and that it had to absorb an estimated €3 million ...

Peter Hughes The establishment of a Monaghan base of operations by electrical and mechanical engineering contracting firm MDE Installations represented a huge vote of confidence in the town and county with the challenges of Brexit looming, Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation Heather Humphreys said on Friday. The Cavan/Monaghan Fine Gael TD and Cabinet member was present in the company’s new office facility on the first floor of Bogue’s Business Park on Monaghan Town’s Dublin Road to perform the official opening of the premises, a development that will expand the ...

• Members of the Co Monaghan Disability Network get the message across at the Ability Event showcase held at the green space in front of Monaghan Courthouse on Thursday last. The event showcased the achievements and aspirations of the members of the various disability support services throughout the county that are aligned to the network. “The abilities on display here today show that people with disabilities are active and equal citizens,” Francis McCarron of Monaghan Integrated Development, which supports the activities of the network, told the event, which attracted the ...

Peter Hughes Several Departments of Government were working together to offer every possible support to the 68 workers made redundant at the LacPatrick (formerly Town of Monaghan Co-op) premises at Coolshannagh in Monaghan Town last Friday, Minster for Business, Enterprise and Employment Heather Humphreys TD has told the Northern Standard. Lakeland Dairies, whose merger with LacPatrick was announced last year and approved by competition authorities in March of this year, announced the redundancies on Friday in a statement detailing what it described as “a plan for the adjustment of processing ...

A two-page advertisement by EirGrid in the August 29 edition of the Northern Standard giving updates on the state of progress of its controversial north-south electricity interconnector project, and rationale for its need, has been decried as “propaganda” by the Co Monaghan Anti-Pylon Committee. The committee, representative of landowners affected by the development and campaigners for the project to be realised using undergrounded infrastructure, issued the following statement to the Northern Standard in which they take issue with several aspects of the content of the EirGrid promotional and information material: It ...

• Political reaction to dairy plant redundancies Cavan/Monaghan Sinn Féin TD Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin has issued a strongly-worded condemnation of the decision on Friday by Lakeland Dairies to issue redundancy notices to 68 employees at the LacPatrick (formerly Town of Monaghan Co-op) processing plant at Coolshannagh in Monaghan Town. Deputy Ó Caoláin posed the question of whether Monaghanbased shareholders were aware of the threat to the future of the range of activities carried on at the Monaghan plant when they voted for the merger with Lakeland Dairies back in October. The ...

Whether it’s the beef crisis or Brexit or job losses or the interconnector issue, one thing shines through very clearly from the variously grim-shaded clouds surrounding the major news stories vying for local, national and international attention this week: the art of constructive dialogue seems to be becoming a vanishing one. Hopefully the emergence this week of a new representative entity for the beef farmers conceived to give them an effective voice in any resumption of the discussions towards resolving the crisis in their sector will help defrost the climate sufficiently ...

Fianna Fáil Spokesperson on Brexit Lisa Chambers has called on the Government to outline to Irish citizens what its plan for a no-deal Brexit is. She made the call following UK Prime Minister Boris Johnston’s plans to extend the suspension of the British Parliament until mid- September, thereby reducing the amount of time MPs have to block a no-deal Brexit. Deputy Chambers said, “It is really concerning to see British politics further disintegrate as we approach the Brexit deadline of October 31. If Prime Minister Johnson seeks to suspend parliament ...

With less than 9 weeks to go to Brexit, Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation, Heather Humphreys TD, has directly appealed to businesses to accelerate their preparations and urged them to avail of the wide range of State supports on offer to help them do so. The Cavan/Monaghan Fine Gael TD made the appeal on a visit to North Dublin fruit and salad producer Keelings, a familyowned business which has used a number of State supports to assist in Brexit preparations. Minister Humphreys said that the Government’s suite of Brexit ...

Michael Fisher With just nine weeks to go before a possible no-deal Brexit that would take Northern Ireland out of the European Union, the Border Communities Against Brexit (BCAB) group has announced details of a major public meeting in Clones on the realities of the return of a hard border on the island of Ireland. BCAB spokesperson Paul Gibbons told The Northern Standard: “It is now clear that the British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is on a reckless course to inflict a no-deal Brexit, resulting in the return of a ...