MAYO hauliers are fearful that a planned closure of the N5 between Strokestown and Tulsk for a projected five-week period could go on for much longer, with disastrous consequences for their businesses. The closure is necessary to facilitate further improvement works on the national primary route and, while the improvements are welcomed by the hauliers, they fear that there isn’t sufficient urgency attached to them and that the road closure could drag on for several months.

Wow that sure is one piece of road that really does need a lot of work! The truckers say there are parts where two trucks can't pass each other. For sure, driving behind a wide truck is no fun on a wet day especially. Watch how often they cross the white line on this narrow stretch. Think about the guy coming around the corner to meet a big wide juggernaut out all over the place. So I reckon we can put up with it for 5 weeks over the summer if that’s the end of it. Having said that do you remember that piece of wall that collapsed onto the road in Strokestown at the top of the hill on the Dublin side? Traffic lights to co-ordinate traffic passing it. The lights were there for what seemed like a geological era. Nonetheless there are huge improvements in the Frenchpark section of the Roscommon N5 over the last summer when red lights were there all summer. I’m glad I don’t have to do too much up and down to Dublin traveling over the summer though.

Sean Rice interviews Inishturk woman Deirdre O’Toole about here experiences in the Sudan as a Goal worker. "For Deirdre it was like a journey back in time" he writes. Out in the far flung outposts of Sudan the Inishturk woman is living her dream, working in the desert among a languorous, underprivileged people, experiencing the conditions of the have-nots of this world. The native people riding their donkeys around the desert, dressed in swaddling clothes; living in circular mud and stone huts with straw roofs; no running water; travelling three to six hours to draw water from the well; sanitation the bush; no education; arranged marriages for girls from the age of thirteen; polygamy widespread; female circumcision a massive problem - these are the conditions which Deirdre and her GOAL workers are endeavouring to combat.