Saturday, 25 May 2013, 1:26 pm

This year has been an interesting one in terms of media outlets in Ireland. The question of censorship is one that has been brought up by several incidents in recent weeks and it’s interesting to read about the various attitudes towards what can and can’t be published, whether in a physical format or online. Many people have heard of the recent spunout.ie controversy, in which attention was drawn to an article about threesomes. An article which was written around three years ago and was displayed on the spunout.ie website. The issue came to prominence when the Sunday independent pub...

  Imagine your friend breaks out in a rash. They go through feverish periods of restlessness and can’t sleep, they lose their appetite and can’t eat. They find it difficult to concentrate. They feel too ill to leave their bed or to complete the various tasks of everyday life. Sounds like a bad illness right? Take away the rash. Take away the external manifestation of their illness. Physically they look just fine, yet the effects are just the same. Mental illness is something that we don’t like to talk about, and yet it is a common and treatable condition which will a...

A sentence I had to say many, many times since I’m here, in Ireland: “I’m Hungarian, not Spanish!” Not that I’m offended by the assumption, but after a while I do feel exhausted explaining that despite my appearance I am not from Spain. Or Italy. Or Portugal. On the other hand, before I came here, I had a few expectations too. First of all, I wanted to meet some leprechauns. Seriously: Where are the leprechauns? If anyone knows, please, let me know. I promised my family and my friends that I will take one home. Not because we want some wishes to be fulfilled - those guys just seem...

What is a story without balance. Balance has never been so crucial to a story, as it is to the one of Savita Halappanavar. Balance between Praveen Halappanavar’s voice and the voice of the doctors at Galway University Hospital, balance between the significance of the foetus’ heartbeat and the significance of Savita’s heartbeat, balance between Savita’s right to life and her baby’s, balance between what’s wrong and what’s right. Savita Halappanavar’s death has transformed the Irish abortion debate. Men and women have turned out in their thousands to show their shock and o...

The darling of the social media age, a phenomenal success, over 1 billion active users and is the most visited website in the world on a daily basis. It has been linked with having a major impact on the media, politics, business and our society. Facebook has changed the world. How could such a valuable, successful and influential entity be under enormous pressure and face major criticisms? The company had one of the biggest market debuts in the history of the stock exchange on May 14th with over €80 million shares being traded on the Nasdaq within the 1st minute of going public with the s...

On the day that Barack Obama was re-elected as President, two hugely significant referendums took place in the states of Colorado and Washington. For the first time in American history, voters approved the complete legalisation of marijuana, a development which could mark the beginning of the end of the ‘War on Drugs’. The phrase dates back to 1971, when President Nixon declared that drug use was “public enemy number one” and had to be fought aggressively. The counter-cultural movement, rising crime rates and the large-scale use of narcotics by American servicemen in Vietnam all led...

By Friday October 26th, there were still over 38,000 students waiting for any form of grant installment. Student Universal Support Ireland (SUSI) is the state agency responsible for accepting the new grant application and payments system, which was recently launched in June by Minister for Education Ruairí Quinn. It was estimated at the time it would save the exchequer €5 million annually, and was welcomed by Opposition parties and the USI at the time. Minister Quinn stated back in June, ‘Many students have had to wait for lengthy periods for their grants in the past and faced undu...

On the 28th of October 2012 Savita Halappanavar, a dentist originally from India, died in the University Hospital Galway (UHG) from septicaemia. Two investigations have been launched to determine how she contracted the serious life threatening bacterial infection. Mrs Halappanavar presented in UHG on the 21st of October with back pains. It was found that the 31 year old woman who was 17 weeks pregnant was miscarrying. The type of miscarriage that she was having was what is termed as an inevitable miscarriage, where the neck of the cervix is open and the pregnancy cannot continue to term, e...

This Thursday, you will be asked to vote in a referendum which, if passed, will mean an increase of the Student Levy (currently €72) to €130, increasing to €150 in three years time, and a 2% increase annually thereafter. The proposed increase is to part fund a large capital project which will cost an estimated €40 million, half of which will be sourced by the University, and half provided by this increase in the Student Levy. As a result, Maguire’s pitches will undergo a badly needed renovation, the Arena will receive an extension to accommodate more facilities for Clubs and ...

The University of Limerick is often regarded as Ireland’s sporting campus, and that may well be the case but it is due to the hard work of the University’s Clubs and Societies that this accolade can be attributed to the University.  However, the facilities that these Clubs and Societies have to work with are entirely inadequate and could well prove detrimental to the growth of the University's Clubs and Societies. This referendum gives the Students of this University a chance to vote on what they believe they deserve for their Union and their Clubs and Societies. If you take a look at ...