mackies

AN opera inspired by the ultimately unsuccessful campaign to force politicians to vote to build social housing on the old Mackies site in west Belfast has been staged.

BELFAST City Council members have voted against a housing project on a dormant west Belfast factory site for the third time, disappointing homelessness campaigners.

PATRICK (Pat) Dougan, one of the north's most high-profile businessmen and entrepreneurs of the 1990s, and who famously hosted US president Bill Clinton at Mackies in Belfast in 1995, has died at his home in Magherafelt.

THE £9.1 million transformation of part of the former Mackie's site in west Belfast will support up to 400 jobs, Belfast City Council has said.