Slugger O'Toole1d
Month: February 2025
I confess to being a big fan of the Netherlands. Their pragmatic nature appeals to me—things just seem to work there. You arrive at Schiphol airport, and there is a train station in the actual airport ...
Slugger O'Toole10d
Road deaths – An acceptable level of violence?
Between 1969 and 2001 3,532 people died during the troubles. During the same period 7291 died on the roads. The Troubles are ...
Slugger O'Toole5d
Open Sunday – discuss what you like…
I help to manage Slugger by taking care of the site as well as running our live events. My background is in business, marketing and IT. My politics tend towards middle-of-the-road pragmatism, I am not ...
Slugger O'Toole9d
Belfast City Council declines to adopt Armed Forces Covenant
An acrimonious debate at Belfast City Council which has been running for several weeks finally climaxed on Monday night as ...
Slugger O'Toole11d
Micheál Martin’s hard track through the harsh and unforgiving Alps of Irish politics…
Micheál Martin (a day later than scheduled because of some stormy weather in the Dáil) the man who many pundits once ...
Slugger O'Toole8d
Should MLAs be paid more?
For five years, the Independent Financial Review Panel (IFRP) set wages and expenses for politicians in the assembly. But the ...
Slugger O'Toole11d
The Belfast Private Hospital Approval Raises Big Questions About Public Sector Failures…
News that Belfast City Council has approved a planning application for a private hospital comes at a time when delays ...
Slugger O'Toole4d
Growing Support for Irish Re-unification
The North and South series is a collaboration between The Irish Times and ARINS (Analysing and Researching Ireland North and South), a joint research project of the Royal Irish Academy (RIA) and the ...
Slugger O'Toole7d
A New Ireland: Finding Common Ground Beyond Borders…
Last week on the same day I was involved in two very interesting conversations about the way forward for this island. I had lunch with a young Belfast-born, Dublin-resident solicitor called Ross Neill ...
Slugger O'Toole6d
Weekly Bulletin. What you need to know this week.
On Monday (3 February) Sinn Féin President Mary Lou McDonald TD was in Parliament Buildings to announce a significant reshuffle of the party’s front bench at Stormont. The move followed confirmation ...
Slugger O'Toole9d
Stormont could do worse than develop a Sláintecare approach to health service reforms.
I was on Nolan this morning discussing how the Secretary of State Hilary Benn had hit a few nerves yesterday on the first anniversary of the restart of Stormont when he laid out the abysmal Health ...
Slugger O'Toole9d
London daddy says no more money. Sort yourselves out…
Grand Poobah Hilary Benn has hurt the feelings of some of our local politicians by pointing out that it’s up to them to make some, what do you call them? I think decisions?? From the BBC: In a speech ...