It provides seawater for the adjacent Queens University Marine Laboratory. While Exploris does not make money and has substantial running costs, it delivers a footfall of 100 000 people a year to Portaferry, which has a tremendous impact for local businesses in an area already suffering from high unemployment and rural deprivation.

The loss of Exploris will have a devastating effect on Portaferry and the surrounding area.

HURT is the only Holistic Drug & Alcohol Support group in Derry which provides a listening ear service, Auricular Acupuncture (which helps the client with cravings, detoxification and relaxation), Complimentary Therapies (Swedish massage, Indian head massage and reflexology) and also Counselling Sessions.

HURT also provides accredited evidence based Lifeskills programmes in schools for younger people covering drug and alcohol issues, self-esteem, anger and personal development.

HURT has expanded significantly over the past 11 years to meet an ever increasing demand on services throughout the North West. The services provided to the majority of our clients are not currently in receipt of funding and therefore we are very much dependent on donations to provide this free service to all clients.

HURT has been refused vital funding to work in partnership with Foyle Search & Rescue to provide critical intervention to vulnerable people at risk on or near the river.

Many of our clients are worried about the future; we work with them to create a future worth looking forward to!

It has provided generations of locals, sports people and visitors the opportunity to learn water safety, life saving and swimming in a unique cold sea water environment. It is a true cross community facility and has attracted visitors to Newcastle town for 100 years!

In a statement, the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment (DETI) said it was scrapping the Northern Ireland Tourist Board (NITB) events fund 2015/2016.

Time to lobby for a reversal to what is a short-sighted decision. The return on investment for all of these events is proven , in fact it is mandatory to show a positive effect on the economy before funding is granted.

Clubs where people from all backgrounds gather to enjoy a good game of poker, a friendly safe place, where no drink is served, and people just get along, having fun, good craic, and also places that could employ quite a few good people, are not permitted to operate legally in N. Ireland (unlike the rest of the UK and the Republic of Ireland).

This makes no sense. Poker is a game of skill. Meanwhile, there are bookies in every town, and that's pure gambling, as are the lottery, bingo and fruit machines. These are permitted but poker is not.

Take one Friday night this past October as an example. 70 men and women, ages 21 – 70 or so, Protestant and Catholic, from all different religious, social, economic, and ethnic backgrounds, spent an evening together, all getting along and enjoying a night of poker. All for 30 quid per person. 70 people who were not getting drunk in a pub, or causing trouble on the roads and streets of our towns and cities.

Poker would also bring needed jobs and revenue to N. Ireland if it were legal and regulated.

Poker Rooms are in fact, in a microcosm of what all of N Ireland aspires to be, a place where everyone gets along and just gets on with life. Where Protestant and Catholics don’t merely co-exist, but form friendships that then grow both in and out of the poker club. Why would anyone want to prevent this?

Over the last three months Ethan’s blood sugars have been dangerously low and high resulting in seizures and several hospital admissions. The seriousness of these hospital admissions is that every time Ethan has seizures or drops to low/high it is having an affect on his organs and in come cases these seizures can results in coma and death which we desperately hope to avoid. A team of diabetic specialists have rated Ethan’s case as severe, and after being on a waiting list for months we have recently been told Ethan is thankfully 1 of the 10 children in Northern Ireland that has been awarded access to an Insulin pump, which he will have fitted in July.

This insulin pump will help change Ethan’s life as Insulin pumps are one of the most significant advances in the treatment of diabetes, freeing people from the daily challenges of multiple daily injections, helping to reduce the risks of complications, raising quality of life and freeing up NHS time and resources. However there is always a BUT Ethan starts primary 1 in September and will require an advanced classroom assistant as he will have his insulin pump fitted by then.

This classroom assistant will be administering insulin via the pump, testing blood glucose (blood sugars), understanding what these readings mean, carbohydrate counting and making sure they understand what a hypo and hyper are and how they are treated, this is a serious role for anyone to take on as insulin administration can be fatal if not conducted correctly, and with a case as serious as Ethan’s he desperately needs this assistant and quick…. and here is where the petition begins.

It is just across the road from the cinema and in the middle of an area where there are numerous pubs and restaurants.

Would you like your child, sister, brother, niece, nephew etc to be out and about this area when these animals are lurking about?

Betyayed and lied to by our union – we demand justice now!

Sacked Belfast airport shop stewards Gordon McNeill, Madan Gupta and Chris Bowyer say:

We are on demanding justice from the leadership of our union, UNITE.

Six years ago we went on strike for a 50p an hour pay rise.

Our union official, backed by the leadership of the union, colluded with our employer, ICTS, to have 24 of us sacked.

We were told by the union that we had no case against the company.

We took our own case – and won!

As a result we have been left with crippling legal bills. Our homes are now on the line as we are faced with debts we can never pay.

We have faced paramilitary death threats against us and our families, warning us to drop this issue or else!

We will not walk away. We are demanding that the union pay our legal bills and compensate us for the hardship their actions have put ourselves and our families through.

Four times in the last eight months the Unite leadership has promises to pay the legal bills and make an offer of compensation but failed each time to stick to their word.

We were on hunger and thirst strike in April, but suspended this action after five days because the Union leadership again promised to pay our legal bills and offer compensation and to do so by 30 April.

They have reneged on this. No offer has been made. The legal bills are still not paid.

Instead they have moved the goalposts and are now saying that any offer they make to us will be subject to strings. Their first condition is that we issue a statement saying that the General Secretary, Tony Woodley and the Irish Regional Secretary, Jimmy Kelly, have acted “honourably” in this dispute.

We are suggesting instead that there be a full public inquiry into what the union leadership have done over the six years of the dispute so that Unite members can judge for themselves.

We appeal to every Unite member, and to all trade unionists, to support us by contacting Tony Woodley and Jimmy Kelly and demand that they stick by the commitments they have already made.

Then let us all Unite to build a strong union that can defend us against the attack on on services, on jobs, on wages and on conditions.

This shortfall will most likely have a significant financial consequence upon:

i) the families of enrolled pupils;

ii) current primary schools budgets and class sizes which may experience an upturn in pupil enrolment as a direct reaction to financial pressures imposed upon families of enrolled Preparatory school pupils - removing the funding removes choice (accessibility being of fundamental consequence to the DENI position) from some financially constrained families;

iii) The financial viability of many of the Preparatory schools as a consequence of funding removal and the destabilising effect caused by exaggerated financial pressures of the families of enrolled Preparatory school pupils.

The proposed funding removal presents a number of of fundamental issues of immediate threat to Preparatory schools in the province, some of which should be challenged and some of which would benefit from the provision of clarification or pursued such that clarity can be established in the immediate term prior to irrevocable decisions and policy changes being established.

Specifically, enabling the broader community to voice a considered opinion on the topic of DENI funding removal from Preparatory schools and the ramifications that will be brought to bear; the method by which this funding removal would be effected and, indirectly, the continuing viability of Preparatory schools in the region (ensuring parents are afforded a choice separate to primary schools which may not offer the pupil comparable opportunity to achieve excellence in Key Stages 1 & 2 as well as transfers)

It may be argued as being fundamentally important on a number of levels that the accelerated funding review, consultation period and proposed enforcement date be delayed until such time as a balanced, objective assessment, considerate of the ramifications change would bring and how these ramifications may directly contradict the basic agenda & principals the Department of Education, can be undertaken and digested.

There are 17 prep schools attached to NI grammar schools and 2,500 primary age pupils attend them. At the moment they get £800 per pupil - much less than the £2,000 currently paid by the Department of Education for each primary school child.

There are many different arguments relating to the proposal. Given the complexity of the issue and its possible impact, it should be discussed by the whole Northern Ireland Assembly.