Healthy economy like ours can afford to hike welfare payouts
Protecting those people most in need should be a priority for politicians in a compassionate society, writes Willie O’Dea In an extraordinarily blase series of remarks after a pre-Budget forum with NGOs, the Minister for Social Protection dropped the strongest hints yet that she was
Leo needs to think again about the leaky, old FG spin machine
Last week, a secret internal Fine Gael memo intended for limited circulation somehow managed to find its way into the public domain. It almost had echoes of Watergate. All that was missing was the darkened car park and a mysterious, shadowy source inside the administration
Public Meeting in Limerick on the Housing Crisis
Fianna Fáil is holding a public meeting on Housing on Monday, March 26th at 8pm in the Strand Hotel, Ennis Rd., Limerick. The meeting forms part of a series of regional events on the housing crisis we are currently engaged in. Willie O’Dea TD
Curse of Brexit can’t be broken by wishful thinking
Theresa May and her ministers are about to learn that the old saying ‘May you get what you wish for’ is meant as a curse, not a blessing. No sooner had the current Brexit talks started in Brussels than we saw a succession of Tories
More than 1400 over 75s kept waiting longer than 24 hours in University Hospital Limerick Emergency Department in 2017
The abject failure of Fine Gael’s health strategy was laid bare this week with new figures from the HSE showing that 1453 people over the age of 75 were kept waiting over 24 hours in University Hospital Limerick Emergency Department so far this year. The
We are all counting cost of the Cabinet’s three weakest links
In 2012, I commented in the Sunday Independent on how ministers in the Fine Gael/Labour government fell into one of three categories: high-flyers, passengers or weak links. I suggested that the weak links, specifically O’Reilly, Shatter, Burton and Hogan, each had the potential to cause