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    Closure through Disclosure

    It is not a question of whether there was a Garda smear campaign against Sergeant Maurice McCabe. Rather, it is a matter of who planned and orchestrated it. For the first time since his prolonged agony began in 2008, McCabe was given the opportunity to speak publicly of his mistreatment by Garda management and some […]

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    Nama, the drama

    Nama was inevitably going to be controversial. Set up to acquire loans from the Irish banks that had recklessly provided the finance for an almighty property boom and needing to be rescued when the inevitable happened, Nama was the vehicle created to work through getting some of the money back. In 2009 the property market […]

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    Council to get €2.6m for site once valued at €28m

    Yet another controversy over its land disposals has hit Wicklow County Council following a decision by Councillors to hand over a valuable town-centre site in Bray to developer, Paddy McKillen junior. On Monday 15 January, Councillors voted to dispose of the 0.9 hectare Florentine site in Bray to Navybrook Ltd for €2.6m. The site has […]

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    Dr Pat and Harassment at the Museum

    ‘Gogglebox’ added a new face to its ever-deepening stable of television viewers last October. Pat Wallace, alongside wife Siobhan, joined TV3’s Irish rendering of BBC’s extremely popular vicarious Big Brother-style television inversion. Before then Dr Pat Wallace was notable mostly for his heroic record on the controversial Wood Quay archaeological dig from 1974 when speaking […]

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    It's different up here

    Justice is not a motif found emblazoned around Donegal. Its outing accounts for much in my home town of Bundoran and elsewhere in the county. In particular the power the late sean McEniff had over local governance is very unsettling – through politics and wealth. He was Fianna Fáil’s longest-serving councillor and perhaps its richest […]

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    Seeking Justice for the Force

    Some books have their genesis in the craziest places, but the origin of ‘A Force For Justice’ is pretty mundane. I was at home one May evening in 2013, minding the kids when I got a call from a number I didn’t recognise. Answering these kind of calls is always a gamble. It could be […]

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    Funny Man

    Sinn Féin’s disowning of West Tyrone MP Barry McElduff was unprecedented. The party has always previously defended erring members in public, then quietly dropped them. I must declare an interest: I know McElduff. When my late mother was ill, his constituency office was very helpful. He ran an excellent constituency service, for people across the […]

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