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LAST UPDATE | 15 Dec 2020
RESIDENTS IN THE Larkhill area of Sligo town are being urged to keep their windows and doors closed due to a fire involving asbestos.
Emergency services were called to the blaze in a small domestic garage shortly before 5am this morning.
Sligo County Council said that a small number of houses were evacuated as a “precautionary measure.”
Households within an 150-metre radius of the fire have been asked to keep their doors and windows closed.
“The fire has been contained and the asbestos material has been dampened down,” a spokesperson for the council said.
Fire services and gardaí are attending the scene. Gardaí said that no injuries have been reported at this time. The Health and Safety Authority will carry out an inspection at the site.
Larkhill Road is closed in both directions and diversions have been put in place. People were earlier urged to take extra care in the area as smoke may have affected visibility.
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Well said Minister
Slightly prejudiced if you as me. But maybe i’m picking him up on nitty gritty stuff because i just don’t like him!
when he says ‘all normal ordinary and sane people don’t want to go back to this’ is it just me or do I sense that he is been ignorant (again) when it comes to mental health issues?
Ie, with the use of the term regarding sane people.
Without elaborating too much more on this, I think you’ll understand where I’m coming from.
This murder was wrong on all accounts and like a majority of people I too totally condemn this act!
@ Russell sanity is a legal term, they don’t normally use it in mental health work
@johm mc – Thank you for clearing that up. I was just going on the fact that shatter (everything) stated that any ‘sane’ person would not want to go back to the bad old days.
I for one am clinically/mentally sane, BUT I just thought it slightly towards the ignorant end to throw it in as a wholly expression.
I understand your comment, and I’m willing to take that on board, at least. ;-)
PS, I must admit that a vast majority of us don’t want to go back there either!
To much to lose.
I don’t particularly like Shatter, but he is spot in with his statement. These are not republicans. They are criminal thugs.
Criminal thugs isn’t nearly strong enough! These people are evil to the core. No sentence they receive from the courts could ever be enough for the murdering, callous, pathetic examples of humanity.
I just checked the SF site, and I saw no comment from them denouncing this stupid act of thugs…
Have they issued a statement yet?
Martin mcGuinness denounced it on television yesterday along Peter Robinson.
Thanks Les…
Funny how they have nothing up on the website yet though.
Darren to be fair SF can hardly be accused of being sympathisers of these groups. They have engaged with some of them to bring them in from the cold. I am very critical of SF but to be fair tot hem they are proactive in the non violent political system.
But they still have shite like this on their online store: http://www.sinnfeinbookshop.com/the-peoples-army-ira-framed/
Funny how when I checked their website, I found this:
http://www.sinnfein.ie/contents/24867
Maybe you should get your facts right.
Darren I don’t know why you are so uptight about what the Shinners have to say about the dissidents. The dissidents absolutely hate SF with a passion and see Adams/McGuinness as having sold out to the Brits. They have even gone so far as to issue death threats against them. Yet every time there is an attack by dissidents in the North people seem to get into a tizzy about what SF thinks. Whether this is due to not being aware of the current political situation in the North or just trying to throw enough mud at SF in the hope that some sticks I really despair at people bringing up the same tired “links” between SF and violence.
The simple fact of the matter is that the Shinners have moved away from violence and seem to be making inroads into the political sphere. If members of OnH/RIRA ever met Adams or McGuinness down a dark lane some night it ain’t going to be pretty.
What about the Labour Party? Have they denounced it on their website?
Hi Darren, i just went onto your web-site and i noticed you haven’t issued a strong condemnation yet. Have you and your party got something to hide?
Most normal party web-sites have strong condemnations up at this stage, just wondering what is up with yours and why you are throwing shapes at SF over this. I understand that some of your current party members were involved in criminality/corruption. Not you personally, but some of your colleagues.
Don’t play politics with this poor mans murder. It should be and has been condemned by all reasonable people. Yes, SF have a condemnation on their web-site. But to try and make political gain off this is just sick.
It seems the more reactionary SF supporters have misinterpreted my posts.
I was only asking if SF had in fact denounced the crime like they have been known to do over the last few years. I was surprised that I could not find it front and center on their site and in the media.
Hope this clears it up a bit….
Darren, Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness have both issued statements condemning the murder. Has your party leader (FFailure) issued one yet? He was quick to make statements during the commemoration last week saying everything in the North was being held up by the DUP and SF. Like i said, trying to score Political points off the murder of a prison officer is just sick. And I am not a SF member. I am from the North, living in the South for over 2 decades. I know you asked me before to leave the 26 counties on another thread, but hell, i love it here, this Island is my home.
Cal, you’re confusing me with someone else. Not a FFer, and don’t give a monkey’s about the counties.
I will honestly say that SFs policies on fiscal issues are stupid, but I have recently come to respect their no nonsense approach to these thugs… you just read what you wanted from my posts, not what I actually meant.
Read my posts again, and see that I didn’t intend the meaning you took from them..
.
Of course they have
So what will the justice system do about it? 6/7 years is the nick with half of that suspended?!
Just because the vehicle has a republic reg. plates doesn’t necessarily mean they were from the republic. I think you’ll find the p.s.n.i. will want a word first.
‘..you have some of the same individuals flying under different flags..’.
Very true Minister.
And, as anyone who has tried to keep track of the alphabet soup of rotating acronyms over the last half-century will be aware, many of these flags are hoisted by various branches of the British secret security services. Sometimes on instruction from over beyond, and sometimes as rogue elements serving their own piratical ends. Often as agent provocateurs with little other interest than the cynical continuance of their hefty ‘security’ budgets.
The one thing we can be sure of is that this act serves no conceivable Irish republic that the vast majority of us would wish to live in.
Conspiracy bull.
Even if they wanted to cause disorder, I doubt that MI5 would kill one of “their own” prison officers. More likely they’d attack prominent loyalists, discrediting the republican movement and sparking off a turf war. However even then, it’d just drive up the cost of managing the north for the British government, which is exactly what they don’t want right now.
Fiachra, engage the brain before releasing the clutch on your keyboard.
For starters, you underestimate the cynicism of MI5 and its multiple shell manifestations, indicating your ignorance of the history of the last fifty years and their well recorded infiltrations and instigations. Not least their calculated collusion with loyalist torture and death-squads. You are also apparently ignorant of the far from monolithic structure of both the British government and its ‘security’ services. Internal wars are far from unknown.
The history of Fenianism back into the 19th century is relpeat with examples of double-agent provocations and atrociities, not just on this island. And a little history of Britannia’s gentle ways, from Kenya to Cyprus through India and Hong Kong might fill a few of your cranial gaps.
Pupeteers seldom sully their lily-whites with forensic evidence.
Less with the knee-jerk reflexology, and more with reading whats written.
@Damien, The Northern Ireland intelligence was run by the police force with very little help/assistance from MI5 until the mid 70′s. The success of the IRA bomb campaigns forced the British Intelligence services to refocus their efforts on domestic terrorism where previously it had almost entirely been focused on subversion (miners strike, unions etc) and communism threats.
The thing about discussing conspiracy theories is that it is nigh on impossible to disprove them as any evidence against the theory just becomes a facet of the conspiracy. The burdon of proof should rest with those who are making the claim.
I’m all for scepticism, spelt either way.
And, of course, we all know secret services NEVER indulge in anything so below board as conspiring.
I am NOT proposing a conspiracy for this act, merely responding to the Minister’s statement with a little context.
Is there a virulent pandemic allergy to information on this issue?
Lack of context is precisely what feeds the ignorance that made it so difficult to get out of the rut of the politics of the latest atrocity and get the beginnings of a peace process on track.
There remain those, on all sides, who wish to return us to that fratricidal rut. That includes those who fashion comfortable careers from the machinery of ‘security’. They can often tap deeper resources than the amateurs they
manipulate.
@Damien Good response, An ethos of clarity and openness can only be a good thing, I just hope that whatever incedents occurred in the past can be consigned o the history books so that we (both North and South) can move forward and treat these thugs as the criminals they are
Shatter constantly comes out with this nonsense yet does nothing about these people just like he’ll do nothing about the skanger knacks who attacked the fire and ambulance services. He doent care about the irish people. Hes more interested in handing out irish passports to foreigners.
What a bloody obvious statement. Please tell us Shatter when murder is justified.
As long as politicians and the mainstream media refuse to acknowledge the facts of the situation these murders will continue. The troubles dragged on for 40 years because of political censorship and a compliant media only repeating political spin. If anyone wants to prevent the next assault on a prison officer they must answer honestly, the question. “Why was DavidBlack targeted” if you want more attacks just continue with the spin
Maybe just me, but that sounds like a threat?
Tell us what this man did to deserve to be gunned down?
“Why was David Black targeted”? Officially because some people oppose political engagement with the British and Irish governments on any subject other than the establishment of a united Irish republic. The difference between the republican dissident groups or individuals (allegedly responsible) and the PIRA is that the PIRA had political and community support in Northern Ireland and a credible political strategy, whereas the others have nothing but blind ideology and arrogance that violence alone will change the popular opinion of the majority of NI and force a change in the British and Irish governments’ policies.
Or simply, they’re just faceless, murdering thugs.
@Tom
I’m old enough to remember the sectarian/racist apartheid that ignited the last phase of this long attrition against the underclass in the 6 counties.
Peaceful marches against decades of discrimination, abuse, exclusion, vilification and a blind-eye from a southern state smugly exporting its surplus citizens to maintain a complacent mirror of northern sectarian monocular rigidity were met with thuggery, vicious violence and eventualy a murderous fussilade in Derry followed by a state collusive cover-up which sparked a determination that if the Orange reich and its Tory brethren would not tolerate peaceful change they would be met with their own medicine. The IRA terror was cultivated to pre-empt civil rights and equality for Catholic/Nationalists who were hypocritically claimed by our constitution.
The airbrushing dynastic victors of the south refused(and refuse) to admit that there was a continuity of old patterns all round(not good for one’s self-elevation to moral altitudes).
The green Tory FF/FG, and complacent Labour red-thumbs will demonstrate the unpallatable nature of this assertion.
I write as someone who has argued against the ‘armed struggle’ since it smouldered back to life in the sixties, but who also had to contain considerable anger at the hypocritical posturing and denial of our self-serving southern state and its minimalist thumb-twiddlers to this day.
The shooting was initiated as state terrorism. The IRA fell into the trap. And seem to have both fought and thought their way through it. There are those who wish to see another generation re-snared.
It is a fact that there is an ongoing conflict in The prison where he worked,
Involving body searches, this has not been an issue in mainstream media .
If this conflict had been resolved David black would be alive today .what has Shatter done to resolve this conflict. It would not take much to prevent the next murder, but it would take an open and honest dialog, between the parties involved in the conflict. That needs all the facts to be made known to the wider public.
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