Wednesday, October 06, 2010

AN EXPERIMENT IN JAMES STREET : THE DEATH OF NIALL RUSH.......
From 'MAGILL' magazine , September 1984.
By Derek Dunne.

The Institute of Clinical Pharmachology in Dublin was first set up in 1965 with the backing of the Swiss pharmaceutical company , Hoffmann La Roche. Dr Austin Darragh was its director and, in 1979, Hoffmann La Roche sold its interest and Austin Darragh now owns and runs the Institute with managing director Dr Ian Brick and John Murphy , its financial controller.

Although the Institute is situated in the grounds of St James Hospital in Dublin , there are no links between the two places. Austin Darragh intends opening a new Institute some distance from the present site with the aid of a £1.1 million IDA approved grant. The present Institute employs just over one hundred people and its operations extend into the White Cross Clinic at Stillorgan which carries out similar testing.

The Elan Corporation based in Athlone , County Westmeath, is another company which carries out tests on healthy volunteers and , at one time or another, the following multi-national pharmaceutical companies have had clinical trials carried out for them in Ireland : Pfizer , Hoffmann La Roche , Kali Chemie , Beechams, Janssen , Bayer , Squibb , Astra, Warner Lambert , Bristol Myers, Schering Plough , Revlon, Wellcome, GD Searle, Pharmuka , Boehringer , Ingelheim , Organnon , Chemibiotic and Hoechst.......
(MORE LATER).







THE PETER BERRY PAPERS....... The Top Secret Memoirs of Ireland's Most Powerful Civil Servant : Dirty Tricks, Election '69/ Spying on a Unionist Politician/ Keeping the (State) Taoiseach informed/ The Garda Fallon Murder/ Advice to Jack Lynch- 'Fire the pair of them...'/ Vivion De Valera's advice to O'Malley/ Rumours of a Coup D'Etat/ The Internment Plot, November 1970/ Secret Meeting with William Craig.
From 'MAGILL' magazine , June 1980.

Peter Berry talked to us about his job - " When I joined the secreariat of the Department of Justice in January 1927 it was a very small unit , housed on the top floor of government buildings (on Merrion Street) . In those early years I was moved from pillar to post, wherever a handyman was wanted. I was baptised on the Intoxicating Liquor Act 1927 which then , in Bill form, was going through the Dail. I spent endless wearying days on alien administration and when the Censorship of Publications Act became law in 1929 I was thrown some dozens of books and periodicals which had been seized in customs clearance and told to lodge a complaint to the Censorship of Publications Board that this book or that periodical was "...in its general tendency indecent or obscene or advocated the unnatural prevention of conception".....

It was a good thing for me that I had been an omnivorous reader from infancy and that my library , ranging from Charles Carvice to Mrs Henry Woods to Ouida to Shakespeare to Shaw had prepared me for the forbidden fruits of Henry Miller et al.

My 'catholic' taste in literature had been developed by sea-chests of books sent from ports all over the world by my eldest brother , who was a ship's radio officer during World War 1 , and in the twenties. Even so , if there was any semblance of meaning in the prohibitory provisions of the Act , it was not good for a boy of nineteen to spend night after night reading salacious matter . In 1936, I was appointed Private Secretary to the Secretary of the Department and thus became one of a nucleus who had access to police reports dealing with subversive organisations. Part of my job was researching the history and activities of the IRA and the Communist movement with a view to keeping records in printed books for easy reference by the minister and government....... "

(MORE LATER).





GAMBLE....AND GUESS ?

GAMBLE -
This weekend ,in a venue on the Dublin/Kildare border , the monthly raffle will be held , at which over 600 tickets will be sold and over €400 in prize money will be won : the profit made from this raffle , which has been held on a monthly basis since the late 1970’s , will go to the CABHAIR POW support group and, as usual , no expenses and/or admin fees etc will be deducted.....
(More here)

.....AND GUESS -
In the 12th in the 10 , the 34th will be held on the 25th.....?







Monday, October 04, 2010

TEST POST - new templet: the pic shows RSF members taking part in the 'anti-cutbacks' protest which was held in Dublin city centre on Wednesday 29th September 2010. More pics and a brief report can be viewed on our 'Sister' site , here.
(Please Note - on changing the templet , we automatically lost our old stat counter , which showed a figure of close to 380,000 hits : with your support , we'll have our new counter inching its way upwards again...!)
Thanks!
Sharon.