Ireland – Page 221 – Slugger O'Toole

Less Irish unity, more Irish cooperation, please

Andy Pollak on August 26, 2009, 12:35 pm

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[This is taken from A Note from the Next Door Neighbours, the monthly e-bulletin of Andy Pollak, Director of the Centre for Cross Border Studies in Armagh and Dublin] I think it would be fair to say that something like 90% of people in the Republic of Ireland never think about Northern Ireland these days, other than, very occasionally, as a place to go to do some cut-price shopping. The North doesn’t even enter their consciousness. A striking example of …

Cunningham agrees to confiscation order for €343,520

Pete Baker on July 28, 2009, 7:21 pm

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Ted Cunningham, who received a 10 year sentence for attempting to launder more than £3million from the Northern Bank robbery, has consented to a confiscation order for €343,520 which he is to pay to the Irish State. The Irish Times report notes “Cunningham, who had been granted free legal aid by Judge Murphy, is appealing both his conviction and his sentence to the Court of Criminal Appeal but it may be next year before the appeal is heard.” The report …

Turning Orange marches into a tourist event

Andy Pollak on July 15, 2009, 4:42 pm

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[This is taken from A Note from the Next Door Neighbours, the monthly e-bulletin of Andy Pollak, Director of the Centre for Cross Border Studies in Armagh and Dublin] This is the Orange marching season. It is a traditionally a time of heightened inter-community tensions in Northern Ireland, when tens of thousands of Catholics and middle-class Protestants flee the province in order to avoid the ‘Twelfth’ and its accompanying displays of sectarian triumphalism. In the late-1990s the Portadown Orangemen’s insistence …

Knitting the island’s relationships back together again

Andy Pollak on June 25, 2009, 4:46 pm

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I’ve been thinking about knitting recently. It seems a good image for what those of us in the Centre for Cross Border Studies, Cooperation Ireland and other North-South ‘reconciliation’ bodies are trying to do: knitting damaged relationships between people and communities on this island back together again. Knitting is an activity usually done by women: it is slow, painstaking, meticulous, unglamorous and utterly unthreatening. When done well it produces articles of great beauty, which are at the same time useful, …

WANTED – Idealistic person to work for £45,000 per year

Andy Pollak on May 26, 2009, 9:13 pm

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[This is taken from A Note from the Next Door Neighbours, the monthly e-bulletin of Andy Pollak, Director of the Centre for Cross Border Studies in Armagh and Dublin] It didn’t come home to me how appallingly uncompetitive the Republic of Ireland has become until the Centre for Cross Border Studies interviewed candidates for the job of Deputy Director (Research) last month. Several youngish residents of the Republic working as middle-ranking officials and researchers with state bodies and earning in …

An unsung hero of cooperation from East Belfast

Andy Pollak on April 29, 2009, 9:26 pm

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[This is taken from A Note from the Next Door Neighbours, the monthly e-bulletin of Andy Pollak, Director of the Centre for Cross Border Studies in Armagh and Dublin] George Newell is a community worker in a deprived area of East Belfast. He is also well-known in Drogheda, Monaghan and Donegal for the large numbers of working class Belfast Protestants he has brought across the border to experience life in the once feared and hated Irish Republic. He never appears …

10 year sentence for laundering Northern Bank robbery cash

Pete Baker on April 24, 2009, 9:14 pm

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Cork-based money lender Ted Cunningham has been sentenced to 10 years after being found guilty of attempting to launder more than £3million from the Northern Bank robbery. RTÉ report here. His son, who pleaded guilty to one charge, received a 3 year suspended sentence. BBC NI’s Dublin correspondent Shane Harrison provides a report on the whole proceedings. Adds The iol report’s worth looking at. And From a separate iol report Pleading leniency, defence counsel Ciaran O’Loughlin SC told the judge …

The express train which has lost its momentum

Andy Pollak on March 30, 2009, 9:06 pm

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[This is taken from A Note from the Next Door Neighbours, the monthly e-bulletin of Andy Pollak, Director of the Centre for Cross Border Studies in Armagh and Dublin] For the past 10 years I have been travelling on the Dublin-Belfast Enterprise express up to four times every week. It is with genuine relief at the end of a hard week of cross-border cooperation that I collapse onto the homebound train from Newry to Dublin with a cup of tea …

Cunningham found guilty of laundering Northern Bank raid money

Pete Baker on March 27, 2009, 5:00 pm

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Previous post on the trial here. Archived post on the Northern Bank robbery here. The BBC reports the verdict. The RTÉ report adds – “Following four hours and 40 minutes of deliberation, the jury of seven men and five women found Cunningham guilty on all 10 counts by majority verdicts.” As the iol report notes Ted Cunningham, from Farran, Co Cork, in the Irish Republic, was found to have handled more than £3m (€3.3m) in stolen bank notes in the …

“in light of the business I was in it was not unusual for me..”

Pete Baker on March 14, 2009, 3:13 am

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As I said previously, “There’s still some way to go in the trial of Ted Cunningham on charges of laundering money from the Northern Bank robbery”. But he has been giving evidence today about his claim that “two men drove from England in a four-wheel drive to deliver the €800,000 to the churchyard 100 yards from his home in October 2004.” Which would have been before the Northern Bank robbery.. From the iol report. Tom O’Connell, prosecution senior counsel, asked …

Better phones, better insurance, bad banks

Andy Pollak on February 27, 2009, 8:31 pm

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[This is taken from A Note from the Next Door Neighbours, the monthly e-bulletin of Andy Pollak, Director of the Centre for Cross Border Studies in Armagh and Dublin] Nine years ago I wrote an article1 for the Irish Times recounting my travails, having moved from Dublin to Armagh to work for the Centre for Cross Border Studies, when I tried to open a cross-border bank account, buy a mobile phone which I could also use to ring Southern numbers, …

“that was perfectly understandable..”

Pete Baker on February 25, 2009, 7:13 pm

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There’s still some way to go in the trial of Ted Cunningham on charges of laundering money from the Northern Bank robbery but, in the meantime, here’s a revealing quote from a report of yesterday’s evidence. [Det Sgt Gerry McCarthy] said he had asked Mr Cunningham to describe the man from whom he received money four times in January and February 2005, but that he did not pursue him about identifying the man as it was clear that Mr Cunningham …

Still bloggin’ after all these years..?

Mick Fealty on February 24, 2009, 8:17 pm

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Before the time for thanks moves on, thanks to Shane Hegarty in the Irish Times for mentioning Slugger as one of Ireland’s must read blogs… He calls us “The granddaddy of Northern Ireland’s politics and culture blogs…” Now I mind the time (as my Uncle Seamus might say) when there was no such partition in the blogoshere… You got your Irish bloggers where you could find them… In my recollection the earliest blog I remember was Sean McCann who started …

Trial hears of off-camera interview

Pete Baker on February 13, 2009, 8:27 pm

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At the time Mick noted that Phil Flynn, former Vice President of Sinn Fein and confidante of then Taoiseach Bertie Ahern was not included among those charged in connection with the Garda investigation which led to Ted Cunningham’s trial on money-laundering charges and he has publicly denied any involvement. He was, though, a non-executive director of Cunningham’s money-lending company Chesterton Finance. Whether he was on Cunningham’s Christmas card list isn’t clear although Cunningham has met several other high profile figures. …

A cross-border priest helping to heal a divided people

Andy Pollak on January 22, 2009, 2:36 pm

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[This is taken from A Note from the Next Door Neighbours, the monthly e-bulletin of Andy Pollak, Director of the Centre for Cross Border Studies in Armagh and Dublin] Rev. Sean Nolan, parish priest of Errigal-Truagh in north Monaghan, is another of those tireless and unsung heroes of cross-border cooperation and reconciliation we rarely hear about. Like his unionist friend Billy Tate1, he was toiling in this often stony field long before it became fashionable or fundable. Errigal-Truagh has three …

Jury sworn in for Northern Bank money-laundering trial

Pete Baker on January 15, 2009, 12:38 am

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Officially charged last March, today saw the jury sworn in and “not guilty” pleas entered in the case of Timothy (Ted) Cunningham and his son Timothy John Cunningham Junior – who, combined, face a reported 24 charges. The Irish Times details seven of the charges relating to the attempted laundering of money – £3,010,389 – “knowing or believing it represented the proceeds of the robbery at the Northern Bank cash centre, Donegall Square West, Belfast.” The trial is expected to …

Cross-border shopping can be the new patriotism

Andy Pollak on December 23, 2008, 3:57 pm

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[This is taken from A Note from the Next Door Neighbours, the monthly e-bulletin of Andy Pollak, Director of the Centre for Cross Border Studies in Armagh and Dublin] There has been a lot said and written about cross-border shopping and patriotism in the weeks running up to Christmas. As a person with a passing interest in both subjects (the latter mainly on the terraces at Lansdowne Road), I wonder if I might add my two ha’apence. Irish Finance Minister …

Island of Ireland economy still a viable option

Andy Pollak on November 25, 2008, 2:20 pm

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[This is taken from A Note from the Next Door Neighbours, the monthly e-bulletin of Andy Pollak, Director of the Centre for Cross Border Studies in Armagh and Dublin] The economies on this island are now in dire straits, in common with every other economy in Europe and North America. The governments in London and Dublin are struggling to cope with the short-term management of the worst international financial crisis in nearly 80 years. There is little or no time …

“This was the biggest irritant between us and the Northern Ireland Office..”

Pete Baker on November 10, 2008, 3:09 am

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Just a quick point about The Observer’s extracts from Henry McDonald’s recently published book Gunsmoke and Mirrors – How Sinn Féin dressed up defeat as victory. Mary Alice Clancy’s study of the Bush administration’s Northern Ireland policy between 2001 and 2006 may have been under-reported, but it wasn’t un-reported – as John Ware would confirm [And Paul Bew – Ed]. But it has never been just about those “dreary steeples”. From The Observer article Clancy said that those she spoke …

Does the border matter in a time of recession?

Andy Pollak on October 29, 2008, 2:19 pm

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[This is taken from A Note from the Next Door Neighbours, the monthly e-bulletin of Andy Pollak, Director of the Centre for Cross Border Studies in Armagh and Dublin] One just can’t avoid the economy these days. By now it is old news that at the end of September and in early October the world was on the edge of a financial precipice not seen since the Wall Street Crash in 1929. The government of the Republic, whose banks and …