Columnists - West Cork People

Vacant and derelict property grants

Ruairi Kay February, 2025

As part of the government’s ‘Housing For All’ plan, in July 2022 the Vacant Property Refurbishment grant was launched, aiming to enable ordinary people to bring vacant properties back into use as homes. After a slow initial take up, the remit of the scheme was expanded and the grant increased […]

Why go birding?

WCP Staff February, 2025

This month Jez Simms, Chair of the Birdwatch Ireland West Cork Branch, talks about his love of birding. To answer the question of this article’s title, as to why you should take up this joyful and fulfilling pastime, I shall relate my life as a bird watcher and hope this […]

Waste Not, Want Not: Initiatives and the February Freezer Challenge

WCP Staff February, 2025

This month we’d like you to join us on a mission. Winter has always been what we humans have pickled and preserved for. We freeze, we dry and we can. These are all great ways to save food but, as our lives have modernised, so have our shopping options. We […]

Hares and horrible hunters

Dr Jeremy A. Dorman February, 2025

Most people associate hares with March; think of the expression “mad as a March hare” and the hare in ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’. So this is a bit early, but because of what I have seen and heard recently, I couldn’t wait another month. The madness, by the way, refers […]

The failures of democracy

Kieran Doyle February, 2025

English reporter: What do you think of western civilisation Mr. Gandhi? Ghandi: I think it would be a very good idea. This famous anecdote is attributed to the great Indian independence leader, Mahatma Ghandi. Whether he actually uttered those words or not, the point is still valid. We live in […]

The decline of the Irish language

Eugene Daly February, 2025

Eugene Daly looks at the factors that instigated the diminishment of our native tongue in Ireland. The mortal wounds of Gaelic Ireland were inflicted at the battle of Kinsale in 1601, but the death agony was prolonged for all of the seventeenth century and into the eighteenth and nineteenth in […]

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