Meeting before the withdrawal of her candidacy it was decided to rule out participation in Mid-Ulster because of the then candidacy of the political prisoner Róisín McAliskey. The intervention of such prisoner-candidates has a long and honourable history in Irish politics. The meeting had hoped other political groupings would take note.

It was emphasised that contrary to reports there have been no meetings or understandings with any other political interests and there would not be. Consideration of all constituencies is continuing.
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The case involves the harassment of members of the nationalist community by loyalists at her DANI office. The most fundamental question was how her private secretary Alvina Saunders could remain in her position despite being convicted of harassment of nationalist colleagues at an industrial tribunal.

The nationalist woman who brought the case against Saunders has since been transferred as Britain’s bullying Baroness plays musical chairs with members of the oppressed community and simultaneously washes her hands of the sectarianism in her department.
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Bhí chuid dena tuismitheoirí ó Bhaile Breac (Co Bhaile Átha Cliath), Mhánuat, Inis Coirthe agus Cluain Eois chun an tAire a thógáil os chomhair na cúirte de bharr a seasamh uafásach ag iarraidh ordú cúirte a chur uirthi agus codarsnacht Rialtas Bhaile Átha Cliath go ginearálta a chur os chomhar an phobail agus iad ag diúltiú aitheantais dosna Ghaelscoileanna. Dúirt urlabhraí ón Roinn Oideachais ar Márta 7 go mbeadh aitheantas oifigiúil dosna Gaelscoileanna i gceist ón lá sin amach. Níl gá le rá go raibh na tuismitheoirí iad féin ar bharr an dhomhain faoin réitheach agus gach chreidiúint tuillte dóibh.

Dúirt Réidín Mhic Airt, Cathaoirleach Bhun Scoil Bhaile Breac go raibh ionadh uirthi agus a coiste go léir cé chomh tobann’s a tháinig an deascéal. Cuireadh ceist uirthi mar gheall ar an bhfáth a ndearna an tAire casadh ‘U’ mar sin. Dúirt sí nach mbeadh aitheantas ar bith fós ach amháin go raibh Ollthoghcháin Theach Laighean ag druidim linn go luath.

D’aontaigh sí gur cleas cliste polaitiúil ab é an casadh ‘U’. Breathnach ag mealladh vótaí ina ceantair fin agus an Rialtas ar an smaoineamh chéanna. Ach tá tuairim láidir thart timpeall ceantair Bhaile Breac go bhfuil an tAire Breathnach lán de shotal ach go háirithe faoin ár dteanga féin. Suim dá laghad níl aici inti, agus ba chóir dí imeacht.

Tá aitheantas oifigiúil tuillte ag gach Gaelscoil sa tír gan aon saghas feachtas nó brú a chur ar na ceannairí chun í a fháil. Cearta beatha atá ann ár dteanga féin a fhoghlaim ar ár gcéad lá ar scoil.

Comhgháirdeas arís dosna tuismitheoirí agus lucht tacaíochta na leanaí go léir. Obair iontach déanta!
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But if all 15 do so the implications are worse. The spending cuts to meet the 3 per cent budget deficit, and 60 per cent debt rules, could lose Europe another 12 million jobs.
— Stuart Holland, Irish Times, January 1997.
[Provisional Sinn Féin] has accepted the Mitchell Principles.
— ex-AP/RN editor, Michael Mac Donncha, writing in that paper on February 27 last. The Provo leadership are now prepared to disarm and disband their military wing. Such is the price of constitutionalism.
Like Johnny Adair, the Belfast UDA leader, [Billy] Wright was suspected of involvement in a massive catalogue of violence but like Adair he was never brought to book for his alleged crimes. The RUC, unable to pin anything on either of them, did however manage to summon the skill and imagination to incriminate them when they became political threats; Adair to the 1994 loyalist cease-fire and Wright to the 1997 Drumcree protest. Food for thought.
— Ed Moloney, Sunday Tribune, March 9, 1997.
. . . [British soldier] Stephen Restorick was on the alert for danger. John Slane was a father of 10 children, he was standing in his kitchen at nine o’clock on a Friday night, he was filling babies’ bottles with milk for his twin infant daughters when he was confronted by two gunmen who shot him five times in the chest at point blank range. Both deaths were tragic, but one was far less lamented than the other, far less vigorously denounced, far less movingly reported in the media. But that’s because John Slane was only a Catholic man from a Catholic area of Belfast.
— Brenda Power, Sunday Tribune, March 23, 1997.
. . . it is exceedingly incorrect to express any comprehension of the incendiary sense of injustice and inequality experienced by the Catholic populations of northern ghettos. But there’s a sign over the gateway to the Dachau concentration camp museum which translates as a warning that those who refuse to acknowledge history are destined to repeat it.
— Brenda Power.
The Celtic tiger is decidedly mangy and undernourished.
— Colm Rapple, Sunday Business Post, March 23, 1997.
They will have no exclusiveness, they tell us, and open out their ranks to all who like to enter, and no questions asked . . . As a result they get what they want, a ‘broad platform’, so broad in fact is it you can neither discover where it begins or ends. For our part we are for a narrow platform, a platform so narrow that there will not be a place on it where anyone not an uncompromising enemy of tyranny can rest the soles of his feet. And yet broad enough for every honest man.
— James Connolly, writing at the centenary celebrations of 1798, quoted in the Irish Times, March 25, 1997.
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