Emmet McElhatton

FIFTY years ago, Omagh experienced one of the bloodiest events of the early Troubles, when a car bomb exploded outside Knock-Na-Moe dance hall, killing four British soldiers instantly, with a fifth later dying in hospital from his injuries. A few minutes after the clock struck 1am on May 17, 1973, five British soldiers made their way out […]

Rural support group helping older farmers to ‘plough on’, writes Emmet McElhatton Isolation and loneliness has always been one of the darker facets of the farming way of life. However, while in years gone by, notions of pride and stoicism ensured that each farmer kept these feelings a secret unto himself, these days the agricultural community […]

Emmet McElhatton attends a support group which helps bereaved local families cope with road deaths There is little value in trying to compare people’s pain, but it is true to say that each death brings its own unique grief, shattering the world around it in its own peculiar way. Most of us like to imagine ourselves […]

Weekly readers of my column may have reached this conclusion long ago, but today you’ll hear it from the horse’s mouth: I am a clown of a man. No, please, before you give into any urge you might have to tell me I should not be so hard on myself, listen to what I have […]

THE new president of Omagh’s Chamber of Commerce has downplayed figures that suggest the county town might be a bad place for business. The relevant statistics indicate that Fermanagh and Omagh is the ‘worst area in the North to start a business’, with closures almost twice as common as openings between 2022 and 2024. The data – which emerged when MRPeasy […]

It is sometimes said that the lion’s share of sin is not committed by those who are too weak to act, but by those who are possessed of strength but don’t bother to use it. Indifference is commonplace; apathy is all around us. Few people take a proactive attitude to alleviating the suffering of others, especially those […]

Christened a Catholic but now an utterly unconvinced agnostic, I tend to speak to priests even less than I go to Mass – and that only happens about once a year. But even when death, life or love invites me on my annual visit to one of God’s many houses, usually the conversation between me […]

MANY people around Eskra were delighted earlier this week to see their local primary school receive a well-overdue upgrade. Until recently, one of the mobile classrooms in St Patrick’s Primary School had not been changed in about 30 years. It was old, run down, hard to heat and lacking some of the technology now deemed essential […]

A TIMETABLE has been published ahead of the resumption of the Omagh Bombing Inquiry, detailing when the accounts of bereaved families will be considered. The public inquiry into the atrocity, which saw a Real IRA car bomb kill 29 people, including unborn twins, and three Donegal schoolboys in the county town in August 1998, will continue at […]

Almost all the best qualities I possessed as a child have long since been robbed of me by the big bad world, leaving me with only a few remaining relics of the wee boy I used to be. I said farewell to my capacity for unselfconscious creativity before I left primary school. As for my […]