History in the making this weekend

Thu, Mar 02, 2023

History will be made in Galway this Saturday when the first ever senior Galway United football team will play in the Women’s National League. The development brings to an end the uncertainty that beset the women’s game in Galway last Autumn when it was announced that Galway WFC would not be applying to play in this year’s league.

Our Galway Ukrainians - displaced but not down

Thu, Feb 23, 2023

Next Monday (February 27) marks the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

In those 356 days, the stark reality of war in our time has been laid bare. Thousands killed, millions displaced, towns, villages and homes destroyed, and a country stripped of its right to exist.

A dark week for the city

Thu, Feb 16, 2023

We are a nation of communities. We take what is common about us and use it to identify ourselves as being part of a people, a place. As communities, we take joy in the things that mark us out. When our community is marked out in terms of sport and achievement, we take pride in walking behind that banner. Success for our communities, our villages, our towns is marked by the satisfaction it gives us.

It is this sense of who we are and what we are that enables us all to contribute and enjoy society.

Distance does not lessen our duty to help those devastated by earthquake

Thu, Feb 09, 2023

I have always loved the cool interior of a church on a warm day. Wherever I am in the world, there is a relief to be found there in among the shadows and age-old flagstones and the marble. In materials built to last, there is a nice chill that adds to the sense of weightlessness you find in places of solitude and reflection.

The enormous lift of February

Thu, Feb 02, 2023

I am writing this on Wednesday evening as I return from the funeral of an old friend who died in the way that has come just too much the norm in the last while. The erosion of childhood memories leaves one deflated. There has been much death since the turn of the year, twenty per cent more this year that for the corresponding period last year.

Why do we make people invisible?

Thu, Jan 26, 2023

I suppose I am not unique in thinking that the times when I have been the most lonely in my life have not been solitary, but those when you are among crowds and invisible. It is the sensation you get in large cities, when you are invisible in plain view.

Stretch in the evening gives us hope

Thu, Jan 19, 2023

It was Emily Dickinson who wrote that ‘hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul - and sings the tunes without the words - and never stops at all.’

It is hope that has preserved us over the past few years. The dashing of it, the despair of it, and the eventual realisation of it, when the world and every community within, faced the bleakest of circumstance the likes of which we had never known.

Let us not force our politicians to avoid public engagement

Thu, Jan 12, 2023

I don’t think that our politicians should have to alter their footwear in the morning to ensure they are wearing something comfortable to enable them to make a quick getaway.

Let’s be having you for Galway’s big century

Thu, Jan 05, 2023

When Galway was on the cusp of becoming an EEC city fifty years ago this month, it had yet to attain the cultural and technological economic status that has defined it in the interim, plucking it from being a large provincial rural town to a city.

Over the next decade after EEC membership was attained, Galway benefited from the presence of many exceptional characters on the political, the cultural, and the economic front. Even on the religious and sporting fronts, the region was well blessed with larger than life characters whose presence ensured that this neck of the woods punched above its weight in terms of prominence.

Playing it by year — who knows what 2023 holds?

Thu, Dec 29, 2022

They say that an optimist stays up until midnight to see the new year in. A pessimist stays up to make sure the old year leaves. So it will be for many of us this weekend when we bid a glad farewell to another year and welcome in the latest instalment — another chapter in the book of life.

Look after the little things this Christmas

Thu, Dec 22, 2022

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 with that, a quarter of a century flew by

Thu, Dec 01, 2022

It had been more than 24 years since I spoke to Martin Costello of Corofin, until I saw him again yesterday. The last time we spoke, was in the kitchen of his home where I documented the heartache he was feeling at the horrific killing of his sister Eileen Costello-O’Shaughnessy. I remember then, as a young reporter, seeing the impact that grief could have on a person.

Time to mind those who mind us

Thu, Nov 24, 2022

They say that tyranny and anarchy are never far apart. Especially if we continue to turn a blind eye to the growing trend of the acceptability of grievous assaults on our emergency services.

It is only a few short years since front line workers were being rightly lauded for the actions they took to ensure that society could operate in unfamiliar times. When the hospitals were out of bounds, when we were advised to isolate, they played a key role in keeping society operating.

A woman you don’t meet every day

Thu, Nov 17, 2022

They say a society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit.

Over there — the challenges facing the EU in these times

Thu, Nov 10, 2022

It’s Wednesday evening and I type these words in a quiet corner of the Berlaymont in Brussels. Outside the evening is a grey November, not quite frosty yet, but winter is on the way. And perhaps a sort of winter is on the way for the institution in whose building I am working.

Winter is here when the market lands

Thu, Nov 03, 2022

I always notice that temperatures in Galway seem to drop by about ten degrees when the Christmas Market is upon us. I used to think that those Siberian stallholders brought the cold over with them when they unpacked. As if a cloud of winter chilliness would escape from their crates of goods and envelope us all in a coldness, sated only by the mulled wines and the hot treats of the stalls.

Summertime, wintertime, and more drinking-time

Thu, Oct 27, 2022

It is perhaps appropriate that on the week that is in it, the end of summertime and the beginning of wintertime, that legislation should provide us all with a new time — drinking-time.

Galway needs to take a long hard look at itself

Thu, Oct 20, 2022

I’m a great believer in taking a look back to the past to understand the present and plan for the future. To see if a culture pervades that will enable you to set targets, to develop and to progress.

Passing of a mayor with a glint in his eye

Thu, Oct 13, 2022

Cities and places are the products of those who live there, who shape the communities, who by their deeds and actions influence the way things get done. Galway, having had its own makeover from a provincial trading town to a city of affluence and attitude, is a patchwork quilt formed from the colourful threads of all those who have come here and made an impact.

We all need heroes like Browne and Crean and Weekes

Thu, Oct 06, 2022

There was a strange juxtaposition in Galway Port this week. The Marine Institute’s shiny new super-bád, the Tom Crean purred its way out of the harbour, ready to shimmy its way down to Kerry where it will be officially unveiled today.

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