Latest Updates

The holiday break gave many of us cause to reflect on just how slow progress has been since those heady Easter days of 1998.

Spiking inflation and weak public finances have put community organisations on the back foot. However, it would be short-sighted to let services wither. Where possible, we must spend to save.

The first phase of Northern Ireland’s Dormant Accounts Fund closed to new applications this month.

Stormont was rarely good and never perfect but the current zombie version is leading us to disaster. Our elected representatives must get back to work.

Health inequality lies at the heart of the crisis in care we are living through. Yet few members of the public know what it means, or what needs to be done about it.

Distribution of wealth should a headline talking point of economic discourse, alongside GDP, employment levels and inflation.

US President Joe Biden is to visit Northern Ireland to mark the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday agreement (GFA).

We all die eventually but, before we do, most of us encounter death many times. Not all of us handle it well. Additional support could help.

The levels of animal cruelty we are prepared to tolerate tell us a lot about the levels of civilisation our society has reached.

New research reaffirms an old oddity – Northern Ireland has the lowest rate of poverty of any UK region. However, that’s not the whole story.

The High Court this week declared that the rights of two children with sight loss were breached when authorities failed to help get them to school. This grim story points to a bigger problem facing NI.

At its heart, the debate about membership of the EU and the subsequent falling out over the protocol was a clash caused by different visions, both of which are now impossible to achieve.

The Chancellor has flagged up economic inactivity as an urgent issue. If he looks at this complex challenge and attempts a simple fix, he won’t get the results he wants.

Have you ever wondered what happens to the reports, insights and research commissioned by interest groups and delivered to government at a time when we have no functioning government in place?

It has been a grim and desperately hard winter for hospital Emergency Departments (EDs).

For years, mental health provision was described as Northern Ireland’s ‘Cinderella Service’. What words would best describe services for special educational needs?

It is only when you pause to look back at how things were in Northern Ireland that you can see just how far we have come since the days of mayhem and carnage.

A huge new report, years in the making, says that the community and voluntary sector’s increasing importance needs to be fully embraced. The private, public and third sectors all need to work together to build the best-possible future.

Modesty is such a rare quality among leaders in these days of “influencers” and social media braggarts that it can be disconcerting to come across it.

Research from late last year shows that organisations in Northern Ireland are not all fully comfortable in the modern digital age – but, with a bit of support, the right improvements are achievable.