Demand for empathy at all-time high as country lurches into another scandal

Thu, May 31, 2018

The empathy of the Irish people has been tested over the past few days, weeks, months.

Ballinasloe residents and businesses asked to conserve water

Thu, May 31, 2018

Irish Water, working in partnership with Galway County Council, is appealing to households and businesses on the Ballinasloe Regional Water Supply Scheme to conserve water for the foreseeable future, as demand on the scheme has increased by more than 40 per cent in recent days.

Using Forex trading to deliver that emergency income stream

Mon, May 21, 2018

At the beginning of the year, the Central Statistics Office delivered the promising news that unemployment in Galway had dropped by 12 percent over the past year. It was most likely as a consequence of this that the percentage of people going it alone as self-employed or sole proprietors also dropped, particularly when compared with the rest of Ireland.

Farewell to a chronicler of our social history

Thu, May 17, 2018

When I started working in Tuam more than three decades ago, I came to the place like someone informed; It was as if I was watching a TV series having already seen the pilot episode. For me, very nook and cranny, every corner boy, every solicitor’s clerk, every waistcoated business owner, every side street had a side story about which there was a yarn or a saga. And for the best part of my many years there, I was enthralled and charmed and indeed shaped by the hundreds of characters who were citizens of the town, but who just as easily might have been characters in any one of Tom Murphy’s plays.

As I became more at one with the place, you would get to see and feel the formative breezes that led Murphy’s writing decades earlier; the decreasingly oppressive role of Church and State, the desire to flee into the hands of emigration, the talking from the side of the mouth, the beautiful juxtaposition of snobbery and poverty that created the tensions that you find in all of his wonderful work.

A weekend of journeys

Thu, May 10, 2018

The weekend used to be a great time for ‘the spin.’ In the days when having a car was a novelty, “sit in, sit in,” would be the mantra, as families would pile into the car on a Sunday afternoon for a drive made with no end in mind, the act of travelling seemingly more important than any pre-determined destination. Weekends became associated with journeys, spins to nowhere in particular, visits from unannounced visitors, a series of movements that kept us all connected, grounded, and with a strong sense of where we were from, and what lay out of sight, just over the hill.

Public are enraged by the lack of disclosure

Thu, May 03, 2018

It sits there. On the desk. In your bag. In your hand.

Will anyone be held accountable for Dunmore foster care lapse?

Thu, Apr 26, 2018

Images of child abuse come to us through grey-tinted windows. In our mind’s eye, they happen in a black and white world, with a smell of cold and talc and warm breath in an Ireland where the rain is incessant, washing down the gutters and the windows, gathering up shreds of hope, carrying them along to a drain where they disappear. And through the glass, just before the net curtains swing back to obscure the view in this miserable world, there is just enough time left for those without voice to witness that washing away.

If you wait for the right time, you wait forever

Thu, Apr 19, 2018

Weeks pass by in the flash of an eye. There is such order to what we do now, that we become enslaved to the routine so that on Monday you do Monday things, on Tuesday, Tuesday things, and so on, until before you know it, you’re back doing Monday things again.

A great citizen whose legacy will be felt in Galway for generations

Thu, Apr 12, 2018

A city is a patchwork quilt of faces, opinions, cultures, sounds, smells. It only becomes what it is through the juxtaposition of all of these things. From the difference which it has to other places, a difference created by the choices we make in terms of the type of place we want to live in. I think of this every week when the team and I here at the Advertiser sit down to put together a newspaper that we hope touches in some respect a variety of the issues and areas that go to make up Galway. A pot pourri to match the pot pourri that surrounds us all.

Food glorious food

Thu, Apr 05, 2018

Once it was just one of the basic needs of life, a fuel to survive, but food and our attitude to it has certainly changed course many times.

No need to stock up, the pubs are open after 90 years

Thu, Mar 29, 2018

Tomorrow, for the first time in nearly a century, Galwegians can join their fellow Irish citizens and, if they choose, head to the pub.

The price to be paid for mild voyeurism

Thu, Mar 22, 2018

I remember long ago in the mists of time, being stuck in a marketing class and being told about the power of subliminal advertising. How the ad with the sound of a can of cola being opened was sending a message to the brain to tell us that we wanted to quench our thirst there and then. How the colours in certain global brands stirred some desire in us, a desire undetected until it was pointed out.

Science needs more rock stars like Hawking

Thu, Mar 15, 2018

They say that those who live in the shadow of death are those who live most. Those who have opportunity taken from them are those who see the greater wonder in the things that others just take for granted. And that is so true. It is only when you are faced with losing something that you start to miss it the most. At times like that, it hard to focus on the positive, to reach out and see a light when there is but a dim torch in the distance.

In the last week, I have spoken to a friend who is seriously ill, and we spoke about the journey that lies ahead for him. We tried to get beyond the terror and the regret, the practicalities, and the outcome. A generally positive chap, now he is aiming to look past the illness, to embrace it like an odd companion, like a stranger who sits beside you on an interminable bus journey.

The humanity of the brave

Thu, Mar 08, 2018

Every day, it passes over where I work and where I live.

West feels left out being an onlooker on national weather drama

Thu, Mar 01, 2018

Like fading divas on an operatic stage, it has been a strange, although welcome, feeling this week not be the default centre of attention when it comes to adverse weather in this country. For the best part of two decades now, the west has been the owner of the weather monopoly.

If a rogue tide or a heavy gust of wind was spotted on the map at all, we were sure it was coming our way.

What does the future hold for casinos in Ireland?

Mon, Feb 26, 2018

This is a question that many have been asking in recent times, and particularly in the aftermath of the 2013 Gambling Control Bill and the 2015 Betting Amendment Act, and it is by no means an easy one to answer. But before it is attempted it would be a good idea to take a look at the history of gambling in Ireland in general to put the current role played by casinos into context.

Last thing Michael D wants is a coronation

Thu, Feb 22, 2018

We all think we know Michael D (President Higgins to the rest of ye).

What’s with all the doubling up of dates?

Fri, Feb 16, 2018

As if there aren’t enough days in the year.
Three hundred and sixty-five of them. At least.

Time to enjoy that stretch in the evenings, fuel the saneness

Thu, Feb 08, 2018

Every year, the smell of thick gloss blue and grey paint would fill the evening sky, as the work continued past dusk.

We had three lake boats; solid timber boats, not fibreglass. Every autumn they’d come in off the water and be left in our back garden. Upturned, left to dry for the winter, to drip dry; to get some rest from heavy waders from heavier anglers pounding on them as they navigated the currents of Mask. Now, for four months, they could rest, relax, rejuvenate. Their timbers could stretch and get ready for a new coat, a new season.

A woman who helped shape the place we all love

Thu, Feb 01, 2018

Galway, as we know it, did not just happen by accident. As a signifier of a wider context, what we associate with the city came about because of coincidences of time and place and ability and the juxtaposition of character.

E-paper

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