Search Results for 'Ray Burke'

University of Galway has announced the winners of the 2023 Alumni Awards to be presented at a gala banquet on Friday June 16, 2023. The Alumni Awards recognise individual excellence and achievements among the University’s 128,000 alumni worldwide. These awardees are leaders who have demonstrated impact and excellence in their fields on a local, national, and international level.

Week III

The Decade of Centenaries Programme was initiated in 2012 and complements the on-going programme of annual State commemorations. For 2022, Galway City Council has secured funding of €50,000 for an exciting programme of Decade of Centenaries events. Following an open call in January the City Council has approved a range OF project proposals from community led groups, the Local Heritage Office, the City Museum and local Libraries.

Galway Public Libraries has announced the launch of ‘1922: Nora Barnacle & James Joyce: The Galway Story’, in conjunction with Dublin City Libraries and its One Dublin One Book Initiative.

THIS YEAR marks the centenary of the publication of James Joyce’s groundbreaking work of modernist fiction, Ulysses, but while that book, and its author, are profoundly rooted in Dublin, Joyce himself had Galway connections.

In June 1858 Galway town was in a fever of wild speculation and excitement. Its vision for a magnificent transatlantic port off Furbo, reaching deep into Galway Bay, where passengers from Britain, and throughout the island of Ireland, would be brought to their emigration ship in the comfort of a train, now faced being scuppered by the apparent criminal intent of the two local pilots.

New plans projected over a 20 year period will see the inner lands of Galway harbour developed into an attractive commercial and residential area, while reclaimed land from the sea will push out harbour facilities into deep water to accommodate shipping connections to European ports and elsewhere. It is a long over due and worthwhile plan, but it pales almost into insignificance compared to the vaulting ambitions the Galway merchants schemed in the mid 19th century.

The Joyces finally arrived in Zurich on 17 December 1940 exhausted after weeks of torturous negotiations with the German, Vichy-French and Swiss authorities. They had sought refuge in Switzerland during World War I, now they hoped to do so again. To add to the stress of it all they had to leave their daughter Lucia behind in a psychiatric hospital in Brittany which was behind German lines. Joyce hoped that once settled in Zurich he could use all the influence he could muster to have her follow them to safety.

Insider has been a keen observer of the political scene for well over 40 years, and, up until recently, thought he had seen and heard it all. There were many contenders for the ‘Brass Neck’ award over the years - from Charlie Haughey’s ‘doing the State some service’ to Ray Burke’s ‘line in the sand’ to Bertie Aherne's ‘won it on the horses’.

We have finally jumped from 2017 to 2018 and even though I am compiling this on January 4, it seems as if half the country has not yet gone back to work. There is a general air of ‘let us wait until the children go back to school’, which will be next Monday. So for the moment there is still the remnants of festivities around.