Look after the little things this Christmas

Thu, Dec 23, 2021

Look after the little things in life. Because one day the time will come when you realise they are the big things. And there is no better time to find this out than at this time of the year. And no better year than in the beast of a year we have just had.

Need for increased patience as retail staff feel the brunt of frustration

Thu, Dec 16, 2021

There is a greater need for patience among the general population this year. You can feel a tension that did not exist last winter. Last year in the quest for the ‘meaningful Christmas,’ there was some expectation, some risk, a releasing of tensions as people knew that beyond the peaked mountains of the ‘meaningful Christmas,’ vales of great possibilities abounded. The vaccine was on the cusp of general release and people were working out when they might expect to receive the manna from heaven that it represented.

Roads and routes — and the way we’ll move a decade from now

Thu, Dec 09, 2021

Decisions, often the long awaited ones, come along like buses. You wait interminably wondering if one will ever arrive and then, out of the ether, come along several. It is an apt analogy this week because for the past while, Galway city and county has been awaiting decisions which have a lot to do, if not so much with buses, then with ways in which we are set to move around for the rest of this century.

Time to start seeing the invisible homeless

Thu, Dec 02, 2021

There is an easy-held perception of homelessness that it comes about after a longrunning series of catastrophic events; that one’s life must have been on a spiral before they land at rock bottom; without a place to call their own, or a light to guide them in the tumble downwards.

Remembering lives lost on our roads this Sunday

Thu, Nov 18, 2021

It is the worst possible nightmare. Responding to a knock on the door to find a garda outside. A sense of dread. A feeling of disbelief. No greater pain.

Counting our blessings as festivities return

Thu, Nov 11, 2021

There are always times in a day when we need to down tools, even for a minute, stare into space and let our minds wander. Better still, look out a window and watch the world go by.

We still need to be careful

Thu, Nov 04, 2021

While some might have felt it ok to throw caution to the wind in recent weeks following the recent easing in restrictions, the latest figures presented this week show that there are still significant grounds to be cautious when it comes to contracting Covid 19.

Time to protect the heart of the city

Thu, Oct 28, 2021

In an ideal world, Eyre Square should be the beating heartbeat of our city. It should be a place that reverberates with the soundtrack of the city; it should be a showpiece for the delights that await everyone who happens upon it.

Some new freedoms which we must respect

Thu, Oct 21, 2021

While we had suspected for a few weeks that tomorrow would not bring the widescale lifting of restrictions promised back in late summer, there is still a significant shift in what we should or shouldn’t do. None of us are too surprised that everything was dropped and life resumed as per pre-pandemic, especially at a time when our local hospital is under severe pressure because of a Covid outbreak affecting two wards.

Cautious optimism as our lives return to new normal

Thu, Oct 14, 2021

Slowly, if tentatively, we are returning to a life more reminiscent of pre-Covid times, but with necessary adaptions.

Social media outage gave us a glimpse of a life without

Thu, Oct 07, 2021

For five hours on Monday night, the world was thrown back in time a little. Not for the first time in the past few years have we lost something which we had taken for granted. And it bothered people.

Time to be sound, not silly

Thu, Sep 30, 2021

A community is formed by the willingness of all to share in the responsibility for upholding the common good. Now, more than ever, we are aware of what the common good is. Now more than ever at any time in history, we know what the enemy is. Now, for the first time perhaps, the whole world shares a common enemy — an enemy that can be defeated the same way in Colombia, Canberra, California or Clifden.

When it comes to decisions, we need one for the road

Thu, Sep 30, 2021

In the heady days before the commencement of lockdown, several hundred people spent about a month in the ballroom of the g Hotel for the long running and comprehensive oral hearing into the impact of the proposed Galway City Ring Road.

Welcome back students — let Galway shape you and you shape it

Thu, Sep 23, 2021

Just as if to show that nothing much changes, there was heavy traffic too on the first morning I came to college in Galway 36 years ago this week. The September sun was shining, and a band of us packed into the back of a mate’s car were winging our way to a new city and new life. As we swung around by the Galway Shopping Centre, the local radio station WLS was blaring out We Built This City (on rock and roll) and life seemed good.

Time to stand up for standards

Thu, Sep 16, 2021

Last Sunday evening around teatime, a shrill blast of a whistle blew around a small patch of Dublin’s northside. In the seconds that followed, a horde of maroon-clad athletes let the realisation hit them that they had just won a second All-Ireland camogie title for Galway in the space of three years. It might have been a third but for the onset of the pandemic, but there is time ahead for that one.

The importance of ‘can see, can be’

Thu, Sep 09, 2021

Someone once said that everybody in life should be a role model, not only for their own self-respect but for the respect from others. On one hand, I am loath to burden people in public life with the pressure of being a role model. I recall the American basketball player, Charles Barkley saying he wasn’t a role model. “Just because, I can dunk a basketball, doesn’t mean I should raise your kids,” he said.

And now, it’s over to us

Thu, Sep 02, 2021

There has been so much light at the far end of the tunnel for the last while, that it must be bathed in gates of paradise-style rays of illumination at this stage, given all the hope and patience that we have endured since the spring. One would have thought that after the Government announcement on Tuesday evening, that there would be universal welcome for it all, but instead, the reaction has been tempered. The world has been scarred by all of this and it will take time to get used again to full venues, to full trains and buses. There is.

Motorway crash a reminder of the fragility of life

Thu, Aug 26, 2021

As a community, we come together not just physically, but in our minds, to mark the occasions that bring extreme of emotions to us all. When our sports teams win, we line the streets, we roar at our televisions, we don the colours to send a powerful energy to those who wear those colours in the heat of sporting battle. When our athletes make us proud at Olympic Games, we honour them and the families and mentors who have brought them to this stage.

Contrasting fortunes on this World Humanitarian Day

Thu, Aug 19, 2021

Joy was unbridled and superlatives flowed as all in Mayo glowed in Sunday's glory. Not even rare old Dubliners could begrudge Mayo this long-awaited victory.

We need both hands on the stick to combat climate change

Thu, Aug 12, 2021

There are some battles in life that we enter with a half hearted desire to win. Conflicts that we deem as not mattering because we have not made the real connection between them and our lives. We have tended to do it with strife, with modern famine, with the abuses of human rights. That if it does not affect us really, that it is something we ought not get involved in. Until it comes to our own doorstep, we have a tendency to look away or move on. This week’s IPCC report on the impact of climate change and our role in creating it should act as a wake up call to the world…and when I say the world, I don’t mean the world out there, but the world around us.

E-paper

Read this weeks E-paper. Past editions also available from within this weeks digital copy.