We look at the stories that were making the headlines this week back in 1982
Rehearsals for St Genevieve’s Oklahoma Show was in full swing back in November 1982
Things that go bump
Executives of the building company which designed and built the controversial Trada Wooden houses in the Devonshire area have flown to Ireland to investigate residents' complaints at first hand.
Residents have stopped progress on the West Link Ring Road at the Grosvenor Road because the noise level and vibrations of heavy mechanical equipment was, they believe, damaging their homes. Explained residents' spokeswoman Kitty O’Kane, “Panels and floorboards were coming away due to the constant vibrations. When we reported this the Housing Executive promised to carry out a survey and to produce results by the end of October. By November 2 we still hadn’t got any word back so we picketed the work going on at the Ring Road. We succeeded in halting it, and it hasn’t begun again since.”
Mrs O'Kane says the Executive are aware of serious design faults in the roof, floors, windows, ceilings, walls and panels of the Devonshire Close homes and as a result have called in the Trada architects. Asked if tenants would be happy with a refurbishing of all the homes Mrs O'Kane said: "I don't believe they can repair them.
"We want these wooden houses taken away and replaced by brick houses. Until this is done we will block any work on the ring road," she added.
Last Friday Gerry Adams and Alex Maskey of Sinn Féin, accompanied residents Mairead Fox and Kitty O' Kane to a meeting with Housing Executive officials and house designer Roy Reid.
“We put it to the Housing Executive that the houses, with their factory made wooden structures, were unsuitable and would have to be replaced," said Gerry Adams. "We asked why the Devonshire homes had actually been built when their prototypes, homes in Derby Street, were demolished because of their unsuitability before work had begun in Devonshire," he said. "It was even more ridiculous that these wooden structure homes were built right beside the site of a major ring road," Mr Adams added.
The Housing Executive regional controller told the delegation that any decision to demolish would be taken at "ministerial level”.
St Agnes' Cub Scouts Vincent Curley (leader), Gerard Curley and Martin Aylward present computer to Bro Dominic of La Salle
Daly: Feel free to criticise
A STARTLING new development in priest/bishop relationships has been heralded in Down and Connor with a dramatic move by Bishop Cathal Daly.
In pursuance of his new approachable image as Bishop, Dr Cathal Daly has informed priests that they should feel free to raise criticisms about him. The Bishop made the statement, unprecedented in this diocese, while addressing clergy at a private Mass immediately after his installation last month. Such a declaration has been previously unknown in any Irish diocese, where strict obedience to the Bishop has been expected, if not demanded from all priests. This could now lead to a greater participation by more priests in social and community affairs as they feel less inhibited by the Bishop's constrictions.
"In the final analysis,” one priest told our reporter, "in church and moral matters the Bishop's decision is final, but in all matters social, political or otherwise, he only expresses an opinion like any other priest or layman. "
Cemetery Sunday Mass in Milltown Cemetery with Bishop Cathal Daly and Archdeacon Montague and Father McCorry
Editorial: End the 11 Plus farce
IN this week's paper we publish the 11-Plus exam paper, sat by thousands of young children a few weeks ago. The Andersonstown News has always taken the view that this exam presents a grave social injustice, perpetrated on unsuspecting children with absolutely no thought to their educational welfare.
It could be compared to an educational 'sheep dip', where the only criteria for success or failure, is the number of sheep pens available on the other side.
To make children go through the cramming and tension of a major examination so young in life, and which 70 per cent of them must fail, no matter what standard they attain, is a fundamental wrong which would not be tolerated by any society which valued liberty and equality, let alone basic common sense.
This exam has left a long trail of casualties behind it since its inception – the harassed teacher placed under an intolerable strain to uphold the "reputation" of the school by getting results; the pupils who feel rejected because they don 't get the exam; the pupils who get the exam and are forced by circumstances to endure a grammar school education which may be quite unsuited to their needs as individuals; and last but not least, the parents forced into an inflated sense of expectation for their child because he or she succeeded in the exam.
We think that it is about time parents and teachers shouted 'stop' and forced the education authorities to drop this educational straight-jacket before it causes any more damage.
Oklahoma rehearsals at St Genevieve's in November 1982
