Erindipity

Real heroism has nothing to do with being a celebrity

2010-08-06T17:15:00.000+01:00

Sunday Tribune, 1 August

'Hurricane Higgins is dead. Last photograph of the People's Champion.'
I had to stare at the picture for several seconds before I recognised Alex Higgins. He was lost in his overcoat and looked 90. It was shocking to see the man who had once been a twitchy, aggressive 'hurricane' looking as if a breeze could knock him over.
Tributes were cued up. 'Hero', 'maverick', 'legend'… and eventually nostalgia snookered common sense. Higgins wasn't a hero. He was a very good snooker player who, for a while, rose above humble beginnings but ultimately returned there. He was a gouger who had once threatened 'Mr Nice', Dennis Taylor. His life was a string of run-ins and scraps. He was a sad mess. He was loved by his fans, but he was no hero.
The obituaries recalled his hellraising. We like to make heroes of our hellraisers. Harris, Behan, Lynott: all heroes, because they had the whiff of sulphur and booze about them. What's heroic about being a charismatic drunk?
That said, Higgins will probably have a statue raised to him in Belfast – just as Boyzone's Stephen Gately is to have one raised in his memory in Dublin.
Gately was not a hellraiser, but he was charismatic. Like Higgins, he came from a humble background. Like Higgins, he used his talents to become famous and has been called a hero. This was for 'coming out'. He inspired other gay men to do likewise.
His friends had wanted Docklands railway station to be named after him. Instead they got a statue. There are many others who deserve statues before Gately. Does being a nice guy from a boy band really merit one? Maybe, but I'm not totally convinced.
The Gately memorial formed part of the silly season talk last week about renaming places after Irish heroes. Fianna Fáil want to rename Dublin Airport after Sean Lemass.
[Imagine the Yank tourists: "Gee honey, where are we?"
"Lame-ass airport, honey."]
There was a debate about renaming Cork's airport after Terence MacSwiney who starved himself to death during the War of Independence. Two other names that have been mentioned are Rory Gallagher and Christy Ring.
These memorial debates show how the lines between heroism and fame have become blurred in celebrity-obsessed Ireland. How can hurling a ball or playing guitar be more noteworthy than sacrificing your life as MacSwiney did?
Heroism is not defined by what you say, how well you play sport or sing. It's defined by what you are willing to lose.
There were two good examples of real 'everyday' heroism in the papers last week.
The first emerged from an Irish Times interview with comedian Des Bishop whose dad, Michael, is dying of cancer. He's based his new show, My Dad Was Nearly James Bond, on his life.
Bishop described how Michael had been a model and an actor, getting parts in Day of the Triffids and Zulu. He was even asked to audition for James Bond in On Her Majesty's Secret Service. He had the kind of fantasy life young men dream of.
Then, when Des was born, Michael turned his back on fame. He knew that acting wouldn't provide a steady income for his family so he became a retail manager.
"He gave that up to raise us in a stable way," says Bishop. "That is so much more heroic than any nonsensical James Bond, celebrity thing."
It struck a note. Des's dad is a hero for sacrificing his dream. Heroism isn't found at the end of a snooker cue or a microphone or a lens. It's found changing nappies when it could be sipping a vodka martini. Everyday heroism is about giving yourself up for the benefit of others.
The second example of everyday heroism came via Facebook. I got word that a hero of mine was celebrating finishing chemotherapy. Her name is Marie Carberry and she has been fighting breast cancer. She writes a diary about her experiences in the Evening Herald. It's brutally honest and very moving. It's also very, very funny. Here's an example:
"'Excellent, excellent,' the oncologist murmured. I would like to say he was talking about me as a whole package, but he was actually talking about the workmanship of the surgeon who had carried out the mastectomy..."
Marie's decision to write about her cancer is, presumably, part-cathartic. That doesn't undermine her bravery. When Jade Goody chose to film her cancer battle she was pilloried for it. Cancer, despite our general enlightenment, is still taboo.
Marie's sacrificing of her privacy will have helped many people facing into a similar situation. She's bared herself to educate others. No amount of maximum snooker breaks or CD sales can compare with that. She won't ever have an airport named after her. A statue's unlikely too. (Sorry, Marie.)
With this in mind, I've decided to dedicate this column to her instead. Statues are placed on columns, so we're halfway there, Marie. It's not much, but it will exist in cyber space for a few years. Someone's bound to come across it in the future and read the following words:
'Marie Carberry: you'll never be a snooker champion and I don't know if you can hold a tune, but you're a hero.
'A real hero – whether you like it or not.'

dkenny@tribune.ie

August 1, 2010

What has Orangeism ever done for Ireland but divide it?

2010-08-06T17:13:00.000+01:00

Sunday Tribune, 25 July

Ten years ago, I was a guest at the Lord Mayor's Ball in Belfast. Sammy Wilson was hosting it. Sammy always struck me as a weasel-faced pup whenever I watched him on UTV. I felt uneasy as I entered City Hall.
I felt uneasy looking at the torn WWI pennants and the reminders of Belfast's loyal past. I felt that this was not a building for a southern taig like me. I was in a foreign country.
Initial misgivings gave way. People from the predominantly DUP gathering fell over themselves to make my group welcome. Sammy was the most genial of hosts. He spun around the dance floor like a rock and roll dervish. I liked him.
I had always suspected that TV's DUP monster must be human – and he was. I was still in a foreign country though. The pennants and sashes were as foreign to me as tricolours and rosary beads were to him.
I thought of those Somme-soaked pennants when I read about McDowell's reflections at the MacGill Summer School last week. Michael McWho? McDowell. Remember him? The Rottweiler. The PD leader. The Tánaiste. He's been locked in the attic since his defeat in 2007 and now wants back into the political fray. "I haven't gone away, you know!"
McDowell spoke about our Orange neighbours. The Republic is not inclusive enough of their tradition. The Twelfth of July should be added to St Patrick's Day as a national holiday, he said.
I nearly dropped my bowl of shamrock.
The Twelfth? A national holiday here? That glorious day of picnics in the sun? The day when all traditions bond in a spirit of harmony to celebrate the Battle of the Boyne? I rummaged through my pile of old newspapers. I saw the faces of protestors in the Ardoyne wreathed in smiles as the PSNI removed them from the street and the joyful raising of a glass or two – to those unfortunate constables' heads. The Glorious Twelfth – it always brings out the best in people, doesn't it?
Does McDowell seriously think we need to adopt this as a national holiday? He rightly says there are republican "psychos" who want a Balkans in the north. Is making the Twelfth a holiday going to stop them?
To correlate Patrick's Day with the Twelfth is bizarre too. It's a shared Christian celebration. Protestant and Catholic can both identify with it. The Twelfth celebrates one religion's victory over another. The state has recognised, through constitutional change, that the north is a foreign jurisdiction. The Twelfth is a foreign holiday. Why not make D-Day a holiday too? Why not make France's Bastille Day a public holiday? Or America's Fourth of July? We took our lead from those Republics. What has Orangeism ever done for this island but divide it?
Has McDowell forgotten about all those who head south to avoid the Twelfth? Has he forgotten the three Quinn children murdered in a Loyalist arson attack during the Garvaghy Road protests in 1998?
McDowell says he is a Republican who believes in inclusion. So do I.
I'm happy to see President McAleese host her Twelfth parties. They show Loyalists that we are happy to co-exist with them and respect their religious and political views.
Where McDowell's argument falls down about the state officially celebrating Orangeism is that the Orange Order doesn't want to embrace our state. It's a bigoted, anti-Catholic organisation that refuses to move into the 21st century. It is intolerant to the core. It won't even accept its own Assembly's blueprint for changing the way contentious parades are managed. Why should our Republic celebrate intransigence and the effect it has on morons like the ones in Ardoyne? Or at Drumcree? Or at the Love Ulster Rally in Dublin in 2006?
I don't want Orangeism foisted on me in the name of inclusion or republicanism. I don't want to be associated with bigotry, sectarianism or hatred – whatever colour it comes in.
I don't want Republican or Orange extremism celebrated in my name. The Twelfth is synonymous with all that is bad – on both sides – about the north's history. Respect for the opinions of others is the cornerstone of real republicanism. That also means respect for the opinions of people here – and I'm going to hazard a guess that most southerners don't want to be associated with the Twelfth.
McDowell's lofty idea would be easy to dismiss as the intellectual ramblings of a failed politician if he wasn't shaping up for a political recovery. Last week, he refused to say whether he was about to form his own political party or join Fine Gael.
Even his detractors admit he is a man of principle. There may still be a political role for him to play. However, if this is the best he can come up with to win support then he needn't hold his breath.
On the same day McDowell made his Twelfth suggestion, justice minister Dermot Ahern spoke about a "difficult" decision the government has just made.
It is discontinuing funding for Justice for the Forgotten. The group representing victims of the Dublin/Monaghan bombings says it will cease to exist at the end of the month as it has no money. The 33 dead and 300 Forgotten victims are to be forgotten again.
How about a public holiday to commemorate them, Michael?

dkenny@tribune.ie

24 years on, the time is right for Self Aid II

2010-07-18T22:04:00.000+01:00

Sunday Tribune, 18 July

Bob Geldof looks like a man who dusts his hair with talcum powder. The greyness isn’t natural. He’s too young for it. He actually looks better than he did when he organised Live Aid 25 years ago. The swine.
On Tuesday, I watched him talk about 13 July, 1985 and wondered how a quarter of a century had managed to slip by. The memories of that day haven’t faded. I still remember the overwhelming feeling of pride while watching Geldof grab the world by the scruff of its neck. Paddy Irishman had come of age.
I probably spent too much time reminiscing about this last week. It was an antidote to Batt O’Keeffe’s clueless witterings about the economy. I found myself wondering what it would be like if Geldof was running the country. Or, at least, doing a Live Aid for Ireland. Then I remembered that this had been done before. It was called ‘Self Aid’. I cringed.
The Self Aid concert against unemployment took place at the RDS on 17 May, 1986. It aimed to raise cash and get firms to pledge jobs. It was well-intentioned, but flawed. How could employers pluck new jobs out of thin air?
My skin crawls when I think about it now. There was this stupid notion that we could change the world, dude. It was all so Brady Bunch: “Hey guys, why don’t we put on a show right HERE!”
What made it worse was that it came right after Live Aid. It seemed low-rent by comparison, despite the presence of U2 and Elvis Costello. The ‘Aid’ inferred the Irish were the Ethiopians of Europe.
Despite the criticism, Self Aid was the biggest event of its kind the country had ever seen. 30,000 attended and thousands more watched on TV. It was reasonably successful, raising money and morale for a few hours.
Our native cynicism hadn’t been strong enough to abort it. Cynicism didn’t have Ireland by the throat back then. People still believed it was possible to change things. That same year, Ryanair took off and revolutionised air travel. That same year Bill Cullen bravely borrowed £20m to start his business.
The people who attended Self Aid were the generation that built an economy out of nothing. They also blew it, of course, but they showed Ireland’s potential.
The Ireland of 2010, by contrast, is dangerously cynical. Cynicism is valuable when it questions a suspect premise. When it becomes cynicism for cynicism’s sake, it breeds fear and inertia. People stop suggesting solutions for fear of being ridiculed. Unbridled cynicism castrates the imagination.
Niall O’Dowd put this best in the IT last week when he wrote. ‘[America’s] positive psychology creates an energy and a drive of its own … It is time for the Irish to stop admiring the complexities of their problems and start to solve them.’
I’m going to suggest something that will leave me open to ridicule. I don’t care if it does. I believe the time has come for Self Aid II.
In 1986, there were 250,000 unemployed and 30,000 emigrating. Today there are 450,000+ unemployed and 120,000 are expected to leave by the end of 2011. Mass anger has returned, so let’s put that energy to some use.
Self Aid One was an embarrassment, but it wasn’t a bad idea. Self Aid 2011 can learn from its mistakes. For a start, nobody should expect it to change the world. There should be no naïve job pledges.
Self Aid II should be an employment-generating event itself. Not long-term jobs, just a few days’ work surrounding the concert and the subsequent trust fund. Stewards, programme-sellers, burger-flippers, secretarial staff, could be drawn from the Live Register. Somebody smarter than me can figure out how to make this happen.
The trust would give money to charities that deal with the direct results of unemployment, like Vincent de Paul and The Samaritans. Maybe it could give seed cash to young entrepreneurs.
The gig would feature acts from U2 down along the line. It would showcase the young talent that’s out there too. Bands like The Cast of Cheers and the incredibly-gifted Bipolar Empire could get their break.
Why stop there? Get the Diaspora involved. Springsteen’s mother is Irish-American. Crowded House’s Finn brothers have Irish roots and have lived in Dublin. They could do their bit.
The acts could be introduced by our army of actors and film-makers: Gleeson, Neeson, Jordan, Cillian Murphy, Colm Meany, Colin Farrell …
Imagine an ‘FU Recession’ gig like that, with no lofty ideals, just an excuse to make a few bob and have a good time. Imagine the message it would send out. “This is not Greece. This is how we protest about the mess our government has made AND we’re making money out of it.”
I’m serious about this. I’m throwing down the gauntlet to anyone who can make this happen: U2, Geldof, Harry Crosbie, whoever. Don’t bother emailing me if you have nothing positive to say about this idea. Politicians, you’re welcome to get involved too. The country needs a morale boost. This is the way to do it.
It doesn’t have to be called ‘Self Aid II’ either. Call it Self 2011. Call it Open For Business. Call it whatever you like.
Just remember: self aid beats self pity, any day.
dkenny@rtibune.ie

Heroism and inspiration shine from a grimy street

2010-07-12T15:54:00.000+01:00

Sunday Tribune, 11 July

The couple from Limerick were spoiling for a row.
"It's you lot in the Dublin media that give Limerick a bad name."
"Us? What about the gangs?"
"You only ever print bad news about Limerick."
"Is it our fault Limerick's gangsters are exceptionally vicious? What about those toddlers who were firebombed in their car? What about Roy Collins? Should we ignore these stories just to spare your feelings?"
I knew I was getting nowhere with them, so I made a joke about Angela's Ashes and the conversation changed. This exchange took place in the southwest last weekend, but it's happened several times before, whenever someone from Limerick has heard I'm from the "Dublin media". There's a perception that we have it in for 'Stab City'. That we only ever print bad news about it.
If that's the case, then last week's papers would suggest the "Dublin media" has it in for the entire country – and not just for Limerick. There was bad news everywhere.
On Wednesday, I read a Donegal coroner's plea for a national debate on suicide. The rate has increased 25% since the recession began.
I read about murders in Dublin, heroin-dealing in Carlow and repossessions everywhere. I read that Nama's initial figures were wrong. I read that long-term unemployment is here to stay.
There was some good news, but it rang hollow. Fianna Fáil says its financial plan is working. Recovery is better than expected. It doesn't feel like it.
If the government-sponsored 'good news' was intended to inspire us, it didn't work – and we desperately need some inspiration right now. Half a million have been robbed of a living by our gangster bankers. We need to know that it is possible for the little man to fight back.
That inspiration has not come from the sources we should expect it from. Our leader, Brian Cowen, reportedly made an "inspirational" speech to his parliamentary party last week. Why couldn't he give us a similar speech?
Another leader, Michael O'Leary, is a man who could inspire us to achieve great things. Last week, he was again wasting his talent by being negative. He said he was pulling winter flights because of the tourist tax. His company is also making it difficult for ash-stranded passengers to claim back their expenses. O'Leary is one of the most creative business leaders Ireland has ever produced. Why can't he be creative on our behalf now?
Last week, I found myself wondering if this country had lost its gift for inspiration.
Then, on Thursday, that inspiration arrived unheralded and from an unlikely corner. A hero emerged from Southill in Limerick. Steve Collins is his name. He is worth 10 O'Learys and 100 Cowens.
Prime Time's 'The Collins Family' was one of the most outstanding documentaries RTE has ever produced. Steve and Carmel's son, Roy, was murdered by the McCarthy-Dundon gang because a 14-year-old girl was refused entry to his family's pub. Roy had two children. When you see his picture it feels like you know him: he has an open, humorous face. The face of a man you could have a pint with.
Despite death threats, the family fought his killers in the courts. It's difficult to fully understand the torment they are suffering. The price of courage has been a son and a €75k 'contract' on Steve's head.
"It's just lose, lose, lose, lose – it's a kick every time," says Steve. As he is speaking, a group of morons drive by and shout abuse at him.
There is one moment that sums up the pain he's enduring. He and Carmel are sitting by the Shannon. Steve talks about giving Roy's fishing gear to his friends.
"It's like every day you're giving another little bit of him away." He breaks down and the sound of those words catching in his throat is deeply affecting. Here is a tough man whose heart has been ripped open.
Carmel's moment is equally devastating, due to its understated delivery. "I often say I'd be better off down there beside Roy… Maybe if I got him cremated I could take him away with us… but I won't leave here."
Watching the Collins family disintegrate was a profoundly sad experience. That sadness was followed by anger. I'm sure I was not the only person watching to want a State hit squad to wipe out the McCarthy-Dundons. This is OUR country. Why should Steve Collins be subject to their 'laws'?
The State owes the Collins family its gratitude for standing up to evil. They have my gratitude for dissipating some of my cynicism. Steve's assertion that he would "do it all over again" shows that true heroism still exists. I hope Cowen, O'Leary and the rest of our so-called leaders watched Steve Collins's masterclass in leadership. His family are proof that it's still possible to be inspired by our country.
In Ireland, you go looking for inspiration from your leaders – and find it shining on a grimy street.
I hope the couple from Limerick are reading this. Your city may have produced the McCarthy-Dundons, but it's also home to the Collinses. While we have people like them living among us, this nation can achieve anything.

dkenny@tribune.ie

You want to be Irish? Are you right there, Mikhail...

2010-07-12T15:52:00.000+01:00

Sunday Tribune, 4 July

Everybody loves the Irish. The Yanks love us so much they're going to snap up the government's new Certificates of Irishness when they're back from the printers.
The Israelis love us so much they're stealing our passports to murder terrorists in other countries.
Our latest admirers are the Russians. They think we're so cool they used Irish passports to set up an inept spy ring in the US. Everybody wants to be Irish these days.
With this in mind, I'd like to give you a preview of my new tome, The Little Buke of Ireland (or How to be Irish). It's to help foreigners become like us, so they can blend in when they're spying, murdering or just gawking at the Cliffs of Moher.
Firstly, to be Irish you must…

1) Refuse to accept the bleeding obvious. Recession? What recession? Brian Lenihan announced it was over, last week. This was on the same day we recorded our highest ever unemployment figures. While cynics sneered, no one pointed out those figures are wrong. Unemployment is bound to be higher than 450,000. What about those who don't get the dole? The self-employed? Or those who have been unemployed for over a year and don't qualify any more?
Maybe the recession's over for you, Brian. For the rest of us it's (lack of) business as usual.
2) Have a stupid piece of advice for all occasions. Bill Cullen should set up a factory to manufacture old rope. He's been making a fortune out of selling it for years. His latest advice to the unemployed is to work for nothing. Business legend Ben Dunne doesn't agree.
"Bull! Absolute bull! It's an insult to ask somebody to work for nothing," he told Hot Press. He's right. Even Bill was paid a penny for selling apples back in prehistory.
Maybe they should become partners in the Old Rope Factory. 'Bill and Ben' has worked before you know.
3) Be a knocker. A builder in Navan has been ordered to knock down his home as it was built without planning permission. Despite the obvious turmoil involved, it's hard to feel too sorry for him. The house is a palatial "FU" to the planning process.
Building non-compliant houses and then asking for retention was one of the slimier aspects of the boom. Hopefully this ruling will lead to more demolitions. This could finally give a positive spin to the phrase 'a nation of knockers'.
4) Be a world-beater. To be Irish you have to succeed despite the begrudgers or fail on a spectacular level. Champage corks popped at Anglo last week as it entered the Guinness Book of Records as Worst Bank in the World. Maybe Ireland should aspire to be Worst Country Ever. It could be a good marketing hook. 'You've tried the best, now try the rest. Ireland: world-leader at being crap.' I like it.
5) Take 'T' to China. 'Mr T', that is. One of the best business decisions of the past month was made by Wei Quoinhas. He's exporting Mr Tayto's crisps to 1,200 outlets in Shanghai. It's the start of the process of softening up the Chinese. Get them hooked on Tayto and they might buy into Brian Cowen's plan to make the midlands a hub for Chinese industry.
We could take it one stage further. Why not sell the whole country to China? Ireland could then become the 'Hong Kong' of the west.
Just think how much that would annoy the Brits.
6) Squeeze everything you can out of the system. Despite having the second-worst Dáil attendance record in 2009, Bertie Ahern still cost us €114,000 in secretarial fees. The Irish Times last week reported that, as a former taoiseach, he's entitled to a free secretary for life. Angry about that? I am.
Take a memo, Bertie: you're a waste of space.
7) Overvalue everything. We did it with houses and now the country's lawyers are continuing the tradition with their wages. On Wednesday, Taxing Master Charles Moran expressed his "disgust" at the costs sought by some of the country's top wigs.
He reduced a €2.143m legal bill to €393,472 and described the costs as "revolting". Isn't it time we started revolting against this privileged class of moneygrubbers?
8) Sell something that's free. Clare County Council is to sell views of the Cliffs of Moher for €6 a pop. They've been free to look at for millennia and now, because an unwanted interpretive centre is losing money, the cliffs are pay-per-view. What next? A fee to look at the sky on sunny days? 'Sky pay-per-view'. Hasn't that been done before? Why must we always treat tourists like saps?
9) Get your priorities straight. This final module in our guide sums up everything you need to know about being Irish. According to the latest figures, last year we spent €2.3bn on cigs (up 3%) and €6.5bn on booze. Despite cutbacks we spent €8.6bn partying. Compare that to what we spent on food: €7.5bn. The ultimate Irish answer to hardship is to say, "Sod dinner, I'm off to the pub."
So there you have it, Mikhail. If you want to become an Irish 'Mick', get the pints in. And when the barman shouts "Have you no home to go to?" just wink and say, "Not any more."

dkenny@tribune.ie

Green-caped crusader? More like hooded hypocrite

2010-07-12T15:50:00.000+01:00

Sunday Tribune, 27 June

John Gormley is having an identity crisis. Last February the environment minister was a Frogman. Now he's Batman.
Gormley has approved a €60,000 survey of the rare long-eared bat. He wants to know how many there are left. One species facing extinction surveying another. Earlier this year he allotted €70,000 for a survey of frogs. What next: half a million to study red squirrels? (Watch out, Enda, he's coming looking for your nuts.)
Batman Gormley went on a crusade last week to clean up Gotham City. You could almost hear the 'Na-na, na-na, na-na, na-na – BATMAN!' tune as he announced an inquiry into the planning policies of the country's local authorities.
From a Dublin perspective, this seemed like a welcome development. The county's mountains are pimpled with ugly high-rise buildings that should never have been built. Someone is going to be held accountable for this. Finally, it's brown trouser time for the brown envelope men.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but it isn't. Batman has decided that he will only investigate six councils countrywide. It's too impractical to investigate all 34. That sounds like an admission of defeat even before his inquiry begins.
Dun Laoghaire/Rathdown County Council, which allowed the building of high rises along the mountains, isn't one of the six. Dublin City Council is the only authority in the capital that will be scrutinised. Not that that scrutiny is likely to make any difference.
On Wednesday, that council said none of the six has received details of any individual complaints being investigated or even the inquiry's terms of reference. Batman has yet to say who his "independent" investigators will be. He has also yet to announce their budget. It sounds like Batman is flapping his cape around just for show. Why? Like everything else about Gormley, this is about an illusion.
Gormley sold out his Green credentials for the illusion of power when he teamed up with Fianna Fáil. I always imagine them sniggering behind his back every time one of his plans falls on its face.
Remember how he tried to steal their thunder by announcing that there would be a direct mayoral election this summer? Is it happening this summer? No, Cowen scuppered that plan.
What about the domestic water rates? He said they would be introduced in 2012. He'll be lucky. The only people who pay for their water now are businesses. Yet last month, an Irish Independent investigation revealed that councils are not chasing defaulters. As few as 23% are paying up. It doesn't augur well for Batman's domestic water rates plan.
Batman isn't even a good politician. He nearly caused a backbench revolt by forcing his stag-hunting legislation through as the drink drive limit was being lowered. Both are seen as attacks on rural life. His stubbornness could have brought down his own government. Not that I would have a problem with that. The sooner they're gone, the better.
The Fianna Fáil backbenchers' attitude spoke volumes, by the way: 'sit quietly while billions are given to the banks and go mental when stag hunting and drinking are threatened'. Batman Gormley's planning probe is just another in a long line of Green illusions. Like the cage-rattling over Nama. Or the stag hunting. This is Gormley trying to look tough.
The reason why Batman is setting up this pointless probe is to scare local authorities in advance of his forthcoming Planning Bill. He's worried they won't implement its measures. If he can't get them to collect water rates, what hope is there of getting them to comply with his new legislation? What Gormley can't grasp is that every time he tries to grab a headline and trips up, it makes him, and the Green agenda, look ridiculous.
As the outcome of this planning inquiry is likely to be just a name-and-shame, he's going to look even more ineffectual once it's over and no heads have rolled. The money and energy Batman will waste on this planning probe could be better spent on just about anything else. Even counting the country's bats and frogs.
Gormley wants his Planning Bill to be his legacy. His real legacy, however, will be the M3 running through Tara/Skryne. In case you've forgotten, that road – which opened this month – will be tolled by a foreign company for 40 years. If it doesn't meet its projected revenue then the taxpayer will pay the toll shortfall. His party had vowed to fight it and yet he became the road's most enthusiastic supporter. He will be forever remembered as a Green hypocrite.
In October, this paper revealed that Batman took a ferry to Holyhead in 2008 to appear environmentally friendly – but had a Mercedes travel from London to collect him. He was attending a climate change event. The car cost us £2,200. After the event was over, Gormley flew home. The hypocrite. This revelation came as he was decrying the extravagance of the political expenses system. The hypocrite.
Batman wants to be seen as a clean Green fighting machine, while at the same time sleeping with the enemy. Gormley doesn't realise that he IS the enemy. He's setting up a pointless planning probe while serving with the crowd responsible for the country's disastrous property boom.
Forget stag hunting. This is just another case of Gormley running with the hare and hunting with the hounds.

I never thought I'd see a Tory PM apologise for Bloody Sunday

2010-07-12T15:47:00.000+01:00

Sunday Tribune, 20 June

"There are soldiers in those bushes. They're probably aiming at us right now. Say nothing. Just keep walking."
I shuddered at the prospect of gunfire.
"And there's a sniper on the roof."
I looked up at RTÉ's flat roof and thought I could see the glint of sunlight on a gun barrel. I imagined tanks rolling along Nutley Lane and bombs going off in Ballsbridge.
Looking back, it's hard to believe that soldiers were stationed in Donnybrook during the 1970s. They were there to guard RTÉ against an IRA incursion. I still remember, on trips there with my journalist father, the clang of the steel doors locking the newsreaders into the studio.
The soldiers at RTÉ were a reminder that we lived on an island where violence was never too far away. There was no shortage of these reminders.
I remember my father yanking me past men handing out de Valera remembrance cards at the GPO in 1975. "IRA sympathisers," he muttered.
I remember, in 1971, a last-minute detour on the way to Laytown took us away from Talbot Street – minutes before the Dublin/Monaghan bombs went off.
I remember a letter bomb being safely detonated at the end of our road. It had been sent to a well-known Republican who was away on holidays and was being looked after by his Protestant neighbour.
There was 'Tom', our uncle's brother, who had carried his dying wife across Belfast's rooftops in the aftermath of a bombing.
Even in comfortable south Dublin, the Troubles were never far from your mind. There were times when you thought the news reports couldn't get any worse – they did. Then, in 1997, something unthinkable happened: the Good Friday Agreement was signed. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, peace set in.
Over the years, I found myself saying "I never thought I'd see the day when …" on a regular basis.
I never thought I'd see the day when the IRA would cease fire. I did.
I never thought I'd see the day they would destroy their arms and enter Stormont. I did.
I never thought I'd see the day when the SDLP would be eclipsed by Sinn Féin. I never thought I'd see the day when McGuinness and Paisley would be called 'the chuckle brothers'. I did. There have been so many 'I never thought' moments that I can't remember them all.
The north is no Disneyland, but it is transforming itself. Peace, not violence, has passed the point of no return. The former slaughterhouse now frequently surprises us with inspirational days. Days like last Tuesday.
I never thought I'd see the day when a Tory PM would apologise for Bloody Sunday. Its whitewash was proof of how much the establishment detested the Irish.
When David Cameron apologised, I felt the same swell of emotion I had when the Guildford Four were released. I sensed history closing one door and opening another. There was the feeling that this might be the North's last 'I never I thought I'd see the day' moment. What other spectacular announcements are left to be made now?
This felt like it might mark the end of the Peace Process. Some date will have to mark the moment that peace was finally achieved. Was Tuesday 15 June 2010 that day?
This apology shows that lasting peace may now be possible between nationalism and the establishment. It has also ensured that a united Ireland is now further away than ever before.
When the crowds in Derry applauded Cameron, they showed how much Northern Ireland is becoming normalised. Derry 2010 is vastly different to Derry 1972. It's bidding to become a UK City of Culture – a sign of its new-found self-confidence and sense of place.
One of the dividends of normalisation has been a growing Catholic middle class, thriving in new-found stability. The south, on the other hand, is now the unstable part of this island. We once saw the North in its death throes. It now sees us struggling to survive. It sees record levels of house repossessions. On Monday there were 75 cases before the High Court. It sees record levels of unemployment. Last month it rose to 13.7%. It's 6.9% up North. Even with a Tory government in place and spending cuts on the way, Northern Catholics are better off staying within the UK.
One of the gambles republicanism took when it disarmed was not whether it would be able to sell its new strategy to its grass roots. It was whether it would be able to sell a united Ireland to the affluent new middle class.
The added measure of normalisation that Saville has brought has made this more difficult. It's no longer a foregone conclusion that nationalists would vote to cede from the UK. Republicanism now has to make a united Ireland attractive.
Dissidents will try to turn the clock back, but they won't succeed. It would take another Bloody Sunday for that to happen. Tuesday proved there will be no more Bloody Sundays.
A united Ireland slipped further away last week. We can just hope we never see a day when the greater Republican movement tries to force its arrival again.
We can just hope we never see a day when soldiers are back hiding in the bushes of Dublin 4.

dkenny@tribune.ie

June 20, 2010

Let big-mouth Leo talk himself out of a ministerial job

2010-07-12T15:45:00.002+01:00

Sunday Tribune, 13 June

Leo Varadkar's nephew is my godson.
I just want to get that out of the way before someone discovers it and tries to suggest that I'm a secret Leo supporter. Nothing could be further from the truth. I would never vote for Leo. I am not a fan.
That said, I want to make it clear that I'm talking about Public Leo. He comes from a lovely family and I hope they understand the following is just business.
Last week, Leo was back stirring the pot and annoying potential allies. During a Private Members' Bill debate, he tried to pick a fight with Labour – now the state's most popular party. He said they were ideologically closer to Fianna Fáil on government spending than Fine Gael were.
I wonder if Leo would sign my copy of How to Win Friends and Influence People. I'd make a fortune on eBay with it.
On Tuesday, Leo the Lion got a mauling from Olivia O'Leary in her Drivetime column. She started by calling him "a really smart 10-year-old: bumptious, unsquashable and really delighted with himself – and confident that everyone else will be too." This was going to hurt.
O'Leary said that when right-wing Leo starts "throwing ideological stones", political problems arise. Enda needs to rein him in if Fine Gael are to successfully woo Labour.
Ask anybody in Labour, she said, which Fine Gaeler gets up their nose most and they will say US Republican-wannabe Leo (followed by John Deasy and Lucinda Creighton). Come the day of reckoning, with Labour and Fine Gael frontbenchers jostling for portfolios, Leo the Lion may have to lie down with the lambs in the backbenches.
Leo knows Labour can't stand him. So did he heed O'Leary's sound advice and exercise some diplomacy? Of course not. He did what any bumptious 10-year-old would do: he posted a comment on social networking site, Twitter. "Someone send Olivia O'Leary a Labour Party membership application. She's let the mask slip once again." You could almost hear him stamping his foot.
Leo's use of Twitter may mirror his political personality. As of noon last Friday, he had 762 followers on the social networking site. He only follows 12 people himself (his apostles?). Leo leads, you follow.
Since joining in February, Leo has not tweeted directly to any of his followers. Leo talks, you listen.
We know his views on just about everything. Over the past few weeks he's been popping up everywhere from right-on Hot Press to on-right the Sunday Independent Life magazine.
We know that Leo is an ideologue. "I would be free-market centre right," he told the Sunday Independent, adding that Bismarck was his hero.
We know that Leo doesn't do clinics. He sees them as a waste of time. "Lots of people don't understand what the role of a politician is." I think you'll find they might, Leo.
We know where he stands on immigrants. Olivia O'Leary mentioned that Leo once suggested that unemployed immigrants be paid to go home. That was actually a cheap shot. Leo wasn't calling for deportation. The EU backs that plan: it has granted Ireland €600,000 from its Return Fund to help hard-up immigrants go home.
We know where Leo stands on drugs. He admitted to Hot Press that he has smoked cannabis. Whether this is really an 'admission' in politics any more is doubtful. Some might see it as a way of "getting down with the kids". As the political equivalent of wearing your baseball cap sideways. It's at odds with his assertion in the Sunday Independent that he's "always been 30".
We know where Leo stands on abortion. He told the Sunday Independent he's against it. He says he's not religious but would "accept a lot of Catholic social thinking". He didn't mention contraception, homosexuality or divorce though.
Leo said he was not in favour of legalising abortions for victims of rape.
Stop there.
What if the woman had been raped by her father, like Barbara Naughton was, from the age of nine until she was 18? Would he have denied Barbara the right to abort? Barbara has called his comments "ludicrous".
In 1992, the Supreme Court ruled a woman had a right to an abortion if there was "a real and substantial risk" to her life. What if that risk was from the victim herself? Should she not be protected from suicide? Leo believes this would lead to abortion on demand. The next step, he says, would be aborting babies with disabilities. Where does he think he's living? Nazi Germany? Does he really think we'd start aborting disabled babies?
You could dismiss Leo as just another US Republican-wannabe, if there wasn't a chance he might some day be a minister. Do we want another minister with right-wing Catholic beliefs? Remember how Bertie Ahern enabled the church to cap compensation for abuse victims?
O'Leary said in her column that when there's a coalition on the horizon "a smart politician plays down ideological differences. Leo, however, can't stop waving the ideology flag". Maybe Leo thinks he's smarter than he actually is. I hope so. I hope he keeps annoying Labour – so we won't have to suffer him as a minister. I hope he keeps roaring like a lion king – and never gets within an ass's roar of the throne.

dkenny@tribune.ie

June 13, 2010

Callely and the senators have become the untouchables

2010-07-12T15:43:00.001+01:00

Sunday Tribune, 6 June

"Points of order, when there's disorder, are out of order." As gobbledegook statements go, Ceann Comhairle Seamus Kirk's utterance was up there with the best of them.
The leader of the Dáil was frantically trying to calm down an unruly opposition who were revolting over what Enda Kenny called a government "whitewash".
The coalition had decided there would be a limited sitting this week, without votes or Leaders Questions. There would be no discussion of the forthcoming bank reports. Coincidence? Kenny and Eamon Gilmore didn't think so. Kenny said he "wouldn't stand for it" and sat down. Comrade Gilmore spoke of a "one-party state".
Captain Kirk fought desperately to save his Cling-ons and beamed Bernard Durkan (FG) out of the chamber. His expulsion reminded me of that old Johnny McEvoy song, 'Mursheen Durkin': "Goodbye Bernard Durkan/shure we're sick and tired of workin'".
This was democracy in action, Irish-style.
A toothless Dáil will now resume at 2.30pm on Wednesday. The Seanad isn't sitting at all – not that anyone would notice.
This enforced Seanad mid-mid-mid-midterm break will have caused one particular senator some serious consternation. Ivor Callely now has to wait two weeks for the next stage of the inquiry into his €81,000 expenses claim. Clontarf-based Callely, in case you haven't been paying attention, has been claiming travel and accommodation expenses to and from his Cork holiday home. Callers to Liveline, however, have pointed out that he's regularly seen jogging around Clontarf. Perhaps he jogged from Cork?
Or sailed up? Last year, a kimono-clad Callely was interviewed by gardaí after an embarrassing yachting accident.
Callely blames the Oireachtas for his €81k bill. He should have the right to give the Oireachtas two residential addresses. It's all very Pee Flynn. Doesn't anybody know how hard it is to run two homes, a constituency office and a yacht?
Kimono Callely is in deep water but, potentially, he's not alone. On Friday it emerged that senator Larry Butler has been claiming accommodation and travel expenses from Kilkenny. His official residence is Foxrock. Is there a pattern emerging here? Callely has again highlighted a system that says it wants to reform itself, but can't.
It's like giving a glutton a job in a sweet factory and expecting him not to gorge.
While the new attendance/expenses checks are to be welcomed because they show up spongers, they're powerless to do anything about them. People like Callely don't care what we think of them, so long as they get paid. They won't reform their mindsets. What kind of a brain thinks it's acceptable to claim €81k in travel expenses from a holiday home? That money would maintain eight people on the dole for a year. Even though he's unelected, Ivor is untouchable. Under the constitution, a senator can only be removed by disqualification or feet first. It's up to them to resign in a scandal.
In England, on the other hand, the Lib Dems have promised legislation to sack MPs guilty of serious misconduct. It's hard to see Irish politicians voting for legislation like that. They're hardwired to ride out scandals and wait for public opinion to move on.
For example, last week Mary Hanafin tut-tutted about Callely's lack of transparency. However, she still refuses to give up her old teaching job with its pension entitlements. How many of us had forgotten about that?
Callely will hope, as the inquiry drags on, that we will forget about him. Just as we may have forgotten about the debate to abolish the Seanad. It's now been nine months since Enda Kenny said he wanted rid of it. The Seanad weathered that storm and is still sheltering Callely's ilk.
Fianna Fáil rushed to say they would be taking the whip from Callely on Thursday. Spare us the righteous indignation. He's one of yours. You put him in the Seanad when we booted him out of the Dáil. You shouldn't have given him state expenses. But then, Fianna Fáil always rehabilitates its villains. Look at Beverley Flynn.
The Callely 'censure' was just a sideshow to distract from Fianna Fáil's gagging of the Dáil in the week the bank reports arrived. That 'gag' was yet another affront to democracy. We're also still waiting for the three outstanding by-elections to be held by an unelected taoiseach.
Ireland is crying out for radical reform of the political system. Now that Callely has put the spotlight back on the Seanad, the government should use the opportunity to finally reform it. To show some symbolic regard for democracy. The mandate is there. In 1979, we passed a referendum to widen the Seanad's representation and open voting to all our universities. It's not universal suffrage, but it's a step in the right direction. Thirty years on and the will of the people has still not been acted upon. An undemocratic institution has been propped up by the suppression of democracy. Fianna Fáil must now give us, at least, the limited Seanad reform we asked for – or move to abolish it. Without reform, all the accountability procedures in the world won't make the Seanad value for money. It will still be a doss house for political hacks like Kimono Callely.
Callely once said that "if people are known to be abusing the system… be tough and throw them out". Hopefully, they will prove to be prophetic words.

dkenny@tribune.ie

June 6, 2010

Despite their cockiness, I feel sorry for today's teens

2010-05-30T19:24:00.000+01:00

Sunday Tribune, 30 May

The nun on the Honda 50 was displaying a lot more leg than good taste required.
"Jesus, Joyce, pull your skirt down. Your knickers are showing."
Joyce's bloomers were bright pink and disturbingly tight.
"Seriously, you'll get us arrested for indecency," whined the vicar with the 'Bosco's a B****x' tee-shirt riding alongside. Joyce responded by hiking the skirt up to waist-height.
"Wheeeeeeeeeeee!" she squealed, spreading her legs and letting the wind whistle up her habit as the Honda 50 spluttered along Hudson Road.
Mark Joyce cut a memorable figure. You don't often see six-foot-two, rugby-playing nuns going "wheeee" on a Honda 50. I've often wondered if Joycey developed a 'taste' for it. If you're reading this… don't bother to let me know.
It was May 1984 and 'rag day' at Presentation College, Glasthule. School was finally over and we were blowing off the last puff of childish steam before sitting the Leaving.
Forty of us cycled in a fancy dress convoy (I was a hippy), to Dalkey for an egg battle with the girls from Loreto. They were a scary bunch. Rumour had it that two had already been expelled for "accidentally" gluing a real-life nun to a toilet. They won, ambushing us in a hail of porridge and raw eggs. I remember trying to lasso one of them from my bike as an egg exploded on my mullet.
I was lucky. The Loreto girls gave another boy a porridge wedgie – the worst kind. I'll never forget his shrieks as six of them lifted him up by his underpants and porridge squelched out over his waistband.
There was no sign of eggs or ripped jocks as I walked past the school the other day. The current girls from Loreto, with their photofit hair-dos and orange tans, are far too civilised for egg warfare. Like thousands of other Leaving Cert students, they heard the school gates clang shut behind them last week. They are now facing into No Man's Land – the area between childhood and adulthood, Leaving Cert and results. Just as we did in 1984.
Thinking back last week, I remembered all the pressure not to fail. Would I have to repeat? Would I be left behind as my friends moved on? Would I be back in school as they studied alongside girls and drank subsidised beer in student bars?
Fourteen years of school was compressed into a few weeks, followed by two months of trying not to think about results. July and August were spent mostly hanging around, broke, literally sharing a cigarette and squeezing the last life out of friendships that wouldn't survive into adulthood.
It's easy to dislike this generation when you view them through 40-year-old eyes. We had little and they have too much. They're narcissistic. They have Facebook to broadcast their every humdrum thought. Would the teens of 1984 have embraced such self-promoting technology? Actually, yes, we would have. We didn't have Facebook – we had CB radio. Remember that? Facebook is this generation's CB radio. We had the same need to connect with the world.
Take away the money and today's teens are essentially the same as we were. They even have some new problems, such as cyber bullying. We could just shut the front door. Or conflicting signals about sex and love thanks to the broadband porn revolution. Then there's the wider availability of drugs to mess up their heads.
When the 1980s' teens look at today's crop, all they see is pushiness and money. We tend to forget it wasn't always fun being a hormonal teenager. I suspect we're a little jealous of today's kids. Now they're about to endure real hardship, the fortysomethings are enjoying a little schadenfreude at their expense.
On The Late Late Show recently, Bill Cullen said young people should stop complaining and get on with life. A businesswoman evoked the fighting spirit of the '80s. The theme was "if it was good enough for me…"
This trite guff is wearing thin. The reality is this: during the boom, Ireland spawned a generation of spoiled, middle- class, latch-key kids. Life lessons were replaced by over-indulgence. They would have everything we didn't have. It's no wonder so many teens appear so shallow to non-parents like me. They were bound to grow up that way.
The main difference between 1984's teens and today's is that we had no great expectations. We didn't know anything other than being broke. It gave us a mental toughness which teens now lack. The absence of self-entitlement protected us as we crossed No Man's Land.
Today's Leaving Cert students are not prepared for what lies ahead. Despite their cockiness, I feel sorry for them. We had it bad, but they're in for an even more frightening jolt of reality. They were told they were guaranteed a job after college. Now they will have to learn just to survive.
Some people reading this will be relishing the prospect of spoiled teenagers experiencing what we did. Just remember this: those teenagers are the people who will lead the country in our old age. Not so funny now, is it?
If I had a choice between leaving school in 1984 or 2010, the decade of nuns on Hondas would win hands down.
I wouldn't be a teenager right now for anything.

dkenny@tribune

Let's protest to get things done, but one issue at a time

2010-05-30T19:19:00.001+01:00

Sunday Tribune, 23 May

May 1985 and a skinny 18-year-old walks up the back stairs of the Irish Press. He has a magnificent mullet and is wearing drainpipe, sky-blue trousers and gleaming white shoes. He (okay, me) looks like a toilet brush with legs.
"You'll wreck those shoes with all the ink here," an equally-mulleted runner told me as I settled in to my first night as a copyboy. He eyed them covetously.
He was right. Within an hour of running along the metal gangway with copy for the caseroom, they were blacker than a printer's fingernail. I sold them to him for a tenner. He used to carry around a tube of white polish to keep them gleaming.
It's a trivial detail to mention, but to me, 25 years on this week, this shows how indelibly the Irish Press inked itself onto my synapses. It would become my fulcrum for the next decade.
I remember the chemical tang of the dark rooms and the clutter of the newsroom. The bundles of pencil-subbed copy and the aroma of Pritt Stick. I still hear the tinnitus-like ringing of phones, the clatter of Linotype printing machines and Farah-slacked old lads singing "My, my, MYYYYYYYYYY... DELILAH!"
I recall the years slipping by in Mulligan's and the verbal sparring which sometimes turned physical. A drunk colleague once told me: "Journalists shouldn't fight with each other."
I was scathing. "Why? Because we're some kind of specially-anointed brotherhood?"
"No," he replied. "Because we're crap at it."
I see the old Linotypes being replaced by Harris computers and Burgh Quay hushed into a sleek, silent age. Two months after starting in my white shoes, there was a strike and printers who had worked there for decades were laid off. That was 25 years ago this week.
Ten years later, and also this week, I was the one being made redundant.
The dispute is largely forgotten now. A stand-off between the NUJ and management led to 40 journalists sitting-in at Burgh Quay. I was one of them.
Rebelling against The Man was one of the most enjoyable things I've ever done. I loved the attention. Sky News filmed us waving from the windows. Celebrities, even the Irish soccer team, showed up to show support. The country was behind us.
We worked on our own paper, the XPress. It was our 'War News'. After four sleepless nights we left to be greeted by 1,000 cheering journalists who had marched on the Dáil. The rest of that summer was a haze of marching and producing the XPress. I watched old, jaded hacks being rejuvenated by 'the struggle'. Then summer burned itself out and hope faded. People fell away. I worked on the last XPress in September. After 10 years of learning to edit, write and drink, I fell away too. The Irish Press was dead.
Depressing reality and the sudden gut-punch of mass redundancy hit home. Some would never work again. Some would drink themselves to death.
Sitting here now, 15 years later, I think I knew all along we'd never win. My protest was about pride. I actually hated the Irish Press. It had devoured my 20s.
The hundreds of redundancies to come at Pfizer reminded me of what it's like to face losing your job. I know what they're going through – I've been made redundant three times. No amount of marching will help. There are times when you can't win and must aim instead at squeezing the best out of a bad situation. You target specifics like beefing-up pay-offs. You aim for the winnable, realistic stuff.
You don't behave like Richard Boyd Barrett. Last Tuesday, his Right To Work campaign protested at Leinster House for the second time in a fortnight. Previously, some of the group tried to 'storm' the Dáil and gardaí drew their batons. Éirígí, who are agitating for a socialist republic, were involved.
I have voted for Boyd Barrett in the past for his work in Dun Laoghaire. Last week, I regretted it for the first time.
His campaign has undermined all future protests by its sheer bloody pointlessness. What does 'Right To Work' mean anyway? We all know we have that right. How is this campaign going to create jobs? This was purely about pushing Boyd Barrett's and Éirégí's unrealistic socialist agenda. Other marches by people with specific grievances will now be marked by heightened security. Elements among the radical socialists want this. They want batons to swing in a Grecian frenzy.
This was self-indulgent "down with capitalism" stuff. Single issue protests are the only way to achieve change – not fighting an 'ism'. Boyd Barrett knows this. He fought a single-issue battle to save Dun Laoghaire's baths and won.
The medical card and head shops campaigns worked because they had single, achievable targets. The media campaigns against TDs' expenses worked for the same reason.
Ireland will never be a socialist republic. Social justice can only be achieved bit by bit. Public protest is integral to this – but not the pie-in-the-sky crap we've seen from Boyd Barrett's crew.
The Right To Work march was as effective as my marching to save the Irish Press. Boyd Barrett needs to stop dreaming of his utopia and start trying to achieve something.
What do we want? For you to stop wasting our time with pointless marches. When do we want it? Now.

dkenny@tribune.ie

Sometimes the growing pains just never go away

2010-05-21T15:47:00.000+01:00

Sunday Tribune 16 May

A story in the news last week reminded me of an old friend. Before I get to that story, I'd like to tell you about him. Forgive me for being nostalgic, the pay-off is important.
The first time I saw Brian we were both 13. I wasn't impressed by him. He looked like a shaper as he stalked the schoolyard in his navy Eskimo anorak, hands in pockets, clicking the studs on the heels of his George Webbs.
I think our friendship started with a fight. If it did, it would have been all 'hold-me-back' posturing followed by a flurry of missed kicks at each other's crotch, ending in a headlock. Brian, as it turned out, was no shaper. Like me, he fought like a girl. He was also gregarious, insecure and infectiously funny.
We became friends and sat beside each other, trying to cause as much disruption as possible. We slagged everything, as all 14-year-olds do to deflect attention away from themselves. Clothes, hairstyles, even bikes were fair game.
Brian had a 20-gear Asahi racer, while I had a crock of crap masquerading as a Chopper. He never let me forget it was crap – especially as it didn't have a crossbar.
"It's a girl's bike."
"It's not. It's just… streamlined. It's a streamlined Chopper."
"But it folds in half."
"It's a Chopper."
"It's a girl's bike and you're a girl." The bike was eventually 'stolen'.
Our afternoons were spent listening to records or cycling around looking at girls. At night we'd slip through back gardens, avoiding dogs, to steal apples which we never ate.
Brian and I learned how to smoke together. We could only afford foul tipped cigars. I accidentally stubbed one out on my arm while we swung from a tree, making monkey noises to annoy the lawn bowlers at Moran Park.
We would ride around with cigars between our teeth, thinking we looked like Clint Eastwood: two short-arses playing at being adults from the safety of childhood.
Brian and I went to our first disco together. We herky-jerk danced like mad to Madness to impress the girls. The more we ran on the spot, the more they liked it – so local stud, Brian Mac, told us. What he didn't tell us was that he had spread the word among the girls that we were "special needs boys" from a care home.
"We're 'in' there," I said, as one waved sympathetically at us. We ran faster on the spot to impress her even more.
Brian was the reason we fell foul of our neighbour, Sinéad O'Connor. Yes, that Sinéad. When we heard she had split up with a classmate, we stood outside her house calling up at her window. We believed this would encourage her to go out with one of us. Instead, it terrified her. Her sister chased us down the road. (Sinéad, if you're reading this…).
The day Brian moved down the country was the bleakest of my life up until then. I couldn't tell him I was going to miss him. You didn't say that to your mates.

Years passed and we lost touch. We picked up our friendship again when he eventually moved back. Then we both got night jobs and lost touch again. We orbited the same crowds, but never seemed to meet up.
In November 1992, Brian walked into his local and settled a few small debts. He was in good form. He was 25.
Later that night, Brian turned the exhaust pipe in on his car. He killed himself. No one had seen it coming.
I try not to think of his final moments. How alone he must have felt. How his family felt when they heard the news. How whoever found him felt. How I felt.
The 14-year-old who shared my growing pains was gone. The reason why is not important now. I have other questions. What would his children have been like? Would he have enjoyed my wedding? Would we still be friends, tilting at the bar in Finnegan's?
Brian – that's not his real name – came back to me last Wednesday when I read that the Marks & Spencer model Noémie Lenoir had tried to kill herself. I was surprised at how hard that story struck me. Lenoir is young, beautiful: people like her don't kill themselves. People like Brian don't kill themselves.
Newspapers generally don't carry suicide stories because of the 'Werther effect', where reporting might encourage copycats. Sadly, Lenoir's attempt will have sown the seed in some minds.
The suicide rate here has risen by 35% since last year (CSO) as more people succumb to depression. (www.samaritans.org)
Two years before Brian's death, I suffered a prolonged period of desperate sadness. I was luckier than him: I learned from it. I think of what I could have said to him had I known what he was going through.
I could have told him we all crash emotionally, but we don't have to burn. It's possible to walk away from the wreckage. I would have told him that he didn't really want to leave, he just wanted the feelings to stop. I would have told him that the darkness passes.
I would have told him that he will always be my friend.
I would have told him that he was never really alone.

dkenny@tribune.ie

Deluded Tiger cubs still have their heads in the sand

2010-05-10T13:44:00.000+01:00

Sunday Tribune, 9 May

"You did well," my father said as he herded the coins off the table into the palm of his hand. "I'll make it up to a pound and we'll turn these into paper."
Dressed in my new black blazer, tie and slacks, I felt like a man who had come into some huge inheritance. I'd buy a car, I thought. Or, at least, all the sweets in Robertson's.
Later, at my Communion lunch in the Killiney Court Hotel, I heard the note crinkle in my pocket as I cut into my first steak dinner. I have a picture of the occasion. I'm all self-conscious elbows and skewed spectacles trying to look grown-up.
The picture is a reminder that my Communion Day was a watershed, spiritually and financially. It was a religious awakening, and also the day I came to covet money for the first time.
It's still the same for Irish children. We do mixed values from an early age in Ireland. We just do it on a bigger scale these days.
Across the road, 25 years later, two friends who made their Communion on the same day changed my view of money again. The well-known chef and the Entrepreneur drove to Killiney beach after a typically indulgent Celtic Tiger meal. They brought a bottle of vintage Victorian-era port.
"We drank it as the sun came up," Entrepreneur told me the following day, "then we tossed the bottle in the water." He expected me to be impressed. I felt sorry for him instead. The moment when two men bush-drank expensive port was when the Tiger reached its tacky apotheosis for me.
I realised then that Entrepreneur had the same concept of money as I did on my Communion Day, when I mentally plundered a sweetshop. I realised he, and to a lesser extent me, were like children who had lost the run of themselves.
Last week, Nama chief Frank Daly announced the final round-up of those who lost the run of themselves and won't accept the Tiger is dead. Those who cling to their "extravagant mindsets" are in for a shock. Trophy homes are at risk. This was welcomed as the proof that the Tiger is finally dead.
It isn't. Despite the hardships, it's still alive – in the equally extravagant mindsets of the other, non-developer, sections of society. There were three outstanding examples of this last week.
On Sunday, the Sunday Independent editor published a photograph of himself lolling on a knoll with a doll. He lay in the grass at Trinity with model Rosanna Davison and listened to her explain "her side" of her "controversial moonlight flit" to Marrakech with developer Johnny Ronan. If you're not familiar with that story, don't worry – it's really not worth reading about.
Rosanna was "shocked by the level of interest in this story". She wasn't the only one. I'm loath to have a pop at another paper, but a full broadsheet page, written by an editor, on the witterings of a former Miss World?
The Rosanna story didn't do anything for the news agenda of the day, but it did help perpetuate the myth that the Tiger days of endless alcopop launches and whirlwind holidays were still roaring along.
Do readers really buy into this? Or do they just read these stories to sneer at the likes of Rosanna? I don't know. Either way, they sell newspapers.
The second example of the Tiger's premature obituary was the funeral of Eamon Dunne. The so-called 'Don' was responsible for 17 murders. He was given a full-on gangster funeral, surrounded by tough-looking men with shaved heads. Tony Soprano would have been envious.
Gangster pomp like Dunne's funeral didn't exist before the Celtic Tiger. Before people like Dunne became rich selling cocaine to Ireland's bright young social set.
The Tiger's darkest side appears to live on.
The third example is the tackiest of them all. Last Monday, Kilkenny City hosted Ireland's first Communion Expo. It was modelled on a wedding fair. There was "complementary curling", "colour confidence consultations" and "goody bags" with "pampering treats". Up-style hairdos ranged "from €30 to €45". One woman planned to spend €1,500 on her daughter's "big day", including a hotel lunch for 30 people.
This Communion/Wedding construction is one of the most obnoxious by-products of the Boom. It's all about one-upmanship. It's vulgar and wasteful. It uses Ronseal-coloured children as accessories. It sets them up for bitter disappointments later in their young lives. 'This week you're a princess bride, next week you're Cinderella as daddy goes on the dole'.
This Communion fair shows that it's not just developers who are in denial about the boom years being over. They're not the only ones that believe this is just a blip and we'll soon be restocking our cellars. 'Ordinary' people are too.
The Celtic Tiger will never be dead while newspapers continue to sell society girls as role models and idiots prop up drug gangs by buying cocaine.
It will dwell in the Irish psyche until parents stop passing the message on to their children that 'bling is still in'.
If that doesn't stop, the generation making their Communion this month haven't a prayer of ever realising that the Tiger is never, ever coming back.

dkenny@tribune.ie

Crispgate ads should be taken with a pinch of salt

2010-05-05T15:07:00.000+01:00

Sunday Tribune, 2 May 2010

The young woman appeared to be playing rugby in her underpants. Her cleavage was spectacular. It looked like Peter Stringer and his bald twin were hiding down the front of her shirt. 'Are you staring at my crisps' read the legend. Of course I wasn't.
I was staring at her eyes. She had lovely eyes…
Hunky Dorys' latest billboard campaign had Ireland's tub-thumpers spluttering in indignation last week. Largo Foods has used scantily-clad female rugby players, like the one mentioned above, to promote its product. One poster says 'Tackle these' as a pneumatic woman legs it down the pitch. It could have been worse: it could have read 'I'm a hooker, maul me'.
Not since those paintings of Brian Cowen in his jocks appeared in the National Gallery has there been such a commotion over a picture.
Catholic group Iona decried it as "grossly offensive and demeaning to women". The advertising standards people received a number of complaints.
That bastion of Irish metrosexuality, the IRFU, was so incensed that it instructed its legal people to examine the claim that Hunky Dorys are 'proud sponsors of Irish rugby'. The ads were in "bad taste", it clucked.
Feminist TV presenter Anna Nolan was one of the few commentators who didn't believe the ads were sexist. She loved the campaign and was dismissive of those who were insulted by it.
So who's right: Nolan or the IRFU? Are the ads offensive? Every woman I asked last week gave the same response: WHO THE HELL CARES? There are more pressing matters to worry about. Like paying mortgages, etc.
For the record, I detest sexism. That cuts both ways, though. If these ads are offensive, then I should be offended by ads that use sexual stereotypes of men.
Am I offended by the Galaxy chocolate ad which features an oily gigolo dressed in a skimpy towel?
Or the Diet Coke ads. That window cleaner should have sued those ogling secretaries for sexual harassment. Shouldn't he?
Or the razor ads that promise to make me a babe magnet? I've been shaving for 25 years and still nothing's happened. Mind you, shaving with Gillette seems to have worked for Tiger Woods.
Or what about all the ads that show men as lazy and useless about the house? Or all the times I've heard the line "all men are bastards".
Am I offended by any of the above? Of course not. Why? Because I just don't care enough. Sexual stereotypes will always be used to sell products. That's life.
There are plenty of other ads that are more demeaning of women than the Hunky Dory ones. There's the Boots ads, for example. Why is it that when a group of women appear on TV they must be accompanied by 'Here Come The Girls'? The Boots ads portray women as stupid, vacuous and obsessed with make-up.
The ads for Gillette Venus razors are offensive too. 'I'm your Venus, I'm your fire ...' etc. None of the women I know are vain 'goddess' muppets like the ones portrayed in those ads. Thank God.
And don't get me started about the Bodyform ads with all those glowing models smiling through their periods…
What was really annoying and offensive about this non-debate about crisp ads was that there were other, serious women-related issues to get outraged about.
Last week, the governor of Mountjoy's Dóchas unit, Kathleen McMahon, resigned in protest over the state of the prison system. The plight of Ireland's women prisoners was overshadowed by the Hunky Dory story as the week wore on. That was truly offensive.
On Tuesday, we read that Mary Harney is still making a mess of rolling out the cervical cancer vaccine. After a year of dithering and spinning, Harney says the second jab will be administered while the nation's schoolgirls are on holidays. Many will miss out as a result. Harney's attitude to this issue is far more offensive than the sight of a model in revealing sports gear.
Some readers will criticise me for not taking a zero-tolerance line on this crisp ad. The problem is that knee-jerk responses to equality issues can sometimes do more damage than good.
Overuse of the sexist card lessens its impact. Mary Coughlan learned that when it backfired on her last February. She incorrectly accused Charlie Flanagan of being sexist when he criticised her abilities. She came across as a bully.
The disproportionate response to Crispgate will reinforce the false notion, in some quarters, that all feminists are humourless, prudish killjoys. Through their over-reaction, the offended parties have promoted the very thing they despise. The Hunky Dory ads got blanket coverage. The papers got to write prissy editorials and use the 'offensive' pictures over and over again. They should be more selective when sounding the alarm bells in future. The intention of these tacky ads is not nasty – it's to provoke a response. It worked.
If Anna Nolan says the campaign isn't offensive, then that's good enough for me. Is anyone prepared to call her a sexist?
The best thing to do with ads like these is to take them with a pinch of salt. And possibly some vinegar too.

dkenny@tribune.ie

May 2, 2010

Down the Hatch: Teddy's celebrates its 60th birthday

2010-04-30T15:35:00.002+01:00

Daily Mail, 26 April

It’s Saturday, the first of July, 1950 and a small hatch in a whitewashed wall slides open. A queue has formed on the shaded side of the road opposite Dun Laoghaire’s sea baths. It snakes its way from the People’s Park down to Number One Windsor Terrace. Adults and children, dressed in their weekend best, chatter and count coins. Suddenly, the queue jerks forward as a hand reaches out from the window. It’s holding an ice cream cone, swirled and peaked to perfection, with a crumbly Flake rooted on its slope.
There is a rattle of coppers in a till. Teddy’s – the most famous ice cream parlour in Ireland – has opened for business.
Half a mile down the road, another crowd is queuing in silence. It’s waiting for the mail boat to England. Ireland, still reeling from the Emergency years, is bleak and broke.
The contrast couldn’t be more pronounced. The cheerfulness of Edward ‘Teddy’ Jacob’s shop-front is a show of defiance to the miserable ’50s. It’s a joyful affirmation that, no matter how grim life is, you’ll always find summer queuing at Teddy’s window.
Post-Celtic Tiger, it still is.
Teddy’s is more than just an ice cream shop. It stores memories of water wings and blue skies. Of standing under the fountain in the baths or chasing a beachball at Sandycove. Of sticky ice cream leaking through a cone. It reminds you of a time before mortgages and bills.
Teddy’s red sign is as identifiably Dublin as the Pigeon House’s candy stripes.
From Friday, that sign will also hang in Dundrum shopping centre as Teddy’s expands its little empire (there’s one in Enniskerry). The owners are opening a new parlour and grill to mark the 60th anniversary of Edward Jacob’s entry into the ice cream business.
Edward, although a public figure, guarded his privacy. Even when he passed away in Thailand in February, his death notice didn’t give a date of birth. Just “sadly missed by Austin and many friends.”
“He was never keen on people talking about him. If he was interviewed about the shop, he would say ‘please don’t mention me’,” says current owner, Yasmin Khan.
Edward was raised on Ulverton Road in Dalkey, where the locals Christened him ‘Teddy’, because of his flamboyant, Teddy Boy, dress sense.
He built his landmark shop in the former garden of the last house on Windsor Terrace. As business boomed, Teddy expanded into the house with a gift ‘boutique’ and a café/grill, where couples drank coffee after the Pavilion and the Forum.
The café and boutique – like the cinemas – closed down, but the heart of Teddy’s survived. Even as the emigrants queued up again in the jobless ’80s, customers still queued for Teddy’s comforting brand of nostalgia.
In 1994, he retired to the south of France but, to maintain tradition, he sold Teddy’s to his ice cream supplier, Brian Kahn. South African-born Brian’s late wife had lived beside Teddy’s mother in Dalkey.
Brian’s daughter Yasmin now runs Teddy’s with the same passion that Teddy and her dad brought to it.
“I started working here when I was in school. The shop has always been an important part of my life. When I took over I was told, ‘If it’s not broken don’t fix it’.” It wasn’t broken: she didn’t ‘fix’ it.
When you enter Teddy’s, you step into a ‘reverse Tardis’: it’s smaller than it seems from the outside and ungoverned by time.
The counters are made of dark wood and beneath their glass are clusters of Dairy Milks and jellies. Along the wall is a row of jars filled with childhood favourites: mint humbugs, cough sweets, bon bons, sherbert lemons … I’m drooling.
“We’re going to produce our own apple drops,” says Yasmin. “They will be red and white – Teddy’s trademark colours.”
The sweets are still weighed out by the quarter on Teddy’s original scales and served in paper bags. Remember the taste of paper-clad bull’s eyes?
In the corner, behind a cooler, sits a Dublin legend, Rita Shannon. She’s been working at Teddy’s for over 40 years. She came to fill in for someone who was on holidays and just never left.
“Teddy was a lovely man,” she says. “We were always like one big, happy family. I love it here.” She recalls when Teddy’s would stay open until 2.30am, while people sat chatting on the wall beside the baths. In the winter, when the shop is closed, she still comes to sit and look at the waves.
From her hatch, Rita can see the generations changing. Many middle-aged parents queuing today remember their first childhood sighting of Rita. In your earliest years, she was a disembodied hand that passed cones to your parents. Your rate of growth could be gauged by Teddy’s wall, as each summer you got nearer to the sill of the hatch. Finally, you made eye contact with Rita. You were ‘grown up’.
“We’ve seen people come and go,” she says. “If we don’t see people for a long time we wonder what’s happened to them. You get attached to them. You miss them.”
People may come and go, but widowed Rita won’t ever lack for company.
“She’s like a granny to me,” Yasmin confides, adding that Rita’s even gone on holidays with her and her husband Craig.
She proudly lists some famous names that Rita has served: Bono, Sinead O’Connor, Tubbers – all happy to queue and chat with the locals. “Everyone is equal at Rita’s hatch.”
Yasmin loves her job. “This is the kind of place you could never give up,” she says. Like Bridie, who passed away in 1988. Rita and Yasmin are convinced the shop is haunted by the former ice cream swirler.
“Bridie always worked late into the night. After she died, the machines started playing tricks on us. They turn themselves on at night…”
Teddy’s traditionally opens from St Patrick’s Day until October, although it’s now common to see muffled-up walkers queuing for cones in mid-November. It’s all-weather ice cream.
“On a good Sunday, we can serve 5,000 customers,” she says. “The average is 3,000.” Those impressive figures are reflected on Teddy’s Facebook page. It made 5,000 friends – from South Africa to America – on its first day.
Those friends hadn’t forgotten the Teddy’s taste of Teddy’s ice cream, which is made to a “top secret recipe”. Yasmin is giving nothing away.
I’m handed a cone, the first one I’ve had in years. I bite into it. It’s gorgeous: thick, cool and sweet. Childhood memories race back.
Will the new Dundrum shop sell ‘designer’ ice cream? Will there be Yummy Drummy flavour, I ask.
“It will be plain vanilla and sold from a hatch,” Yasmin says, emphatically. Without any syrup. Tradition must be upheld.
Outside, a businessman crab-walks against the light breeze blowing in from Scotsman’s Bay. His jacket is sheltering a 99. Schoolkids are running along Windsor Terrace, money at the ready. The sun is shining and cloud-shadows skitter across the sea to Howth. There’s timeless, summer-like feeling in the air. The feeling that Tigers and recessions will pass, but Teddy’s will always be here. And so will Rita Shannon, sitting at her hatch, swirling memories for another generation of children.

O'Leary will get us back with a getting-off-the plane tax

2010-04-30T15:34:00.002+01:00

Sunday Tribune, 25 April

Michael O'Leary had that look on his face. The one where he appears to have a bad smell lingering around the end of his nose.
His horse, War of Attrition, had run a spectacular race at Punchestown. It was a day of celebration. He should have been feeling magnanimous. He wasn't.
"I'm not paying for a holiday for someone who bought a Ryanair ticket for €10," he told reporters. It just wasn't "fair".
O'Leary was going to break the European law that says airline owners have a duty of care to stranded passengers. He'd see those spongers in court. Here he was, working his racehorse's legs to the bone, while they were sipping Slippery Nipples in Santa bleedin' Ponsa – at his expense. The man of the people would take on the people. Now pour the Krug and stop hogging the foie gras.
O'Leary sees villains and idiots everywhere. If it's not freeloading passengers he has to contend with, it's stupid airspace regulators. He believes the latter's blanket-ban on flying was an over-reaction. Was it really? Is O'Leary an expert on volcanology?
It had been a week of over-reactions. There was the traditional 'Irish' over-reaction, where we went looking for someone to blame. In Ireland, there's no such thing as a culprit-less crime. If an earthquake opened a chasm in O'Connell Street, we'd all be on to Liveline blaming the Corpo. "Nearly fell into it, Joe. Disgraceful."
Last week, stranded callers struggled with not having any heads to roll.
"Joe?"
"Go ahead, Mary in Santa Ponnnnsaaa. You're on the LAVA-Line…"
"I'm going to sue that bleedin' volcano, Joe…"
Even singer Tony Kenny phoned the LavaLine with a tale of woe. Tony and half of Ireland's showbanders were stranded in a Ford Transit somewhere in Europe. Quick, I thought, let's seal the borders before they get back.
It struck me that I'd heard this LavaLine conversation, in reverse, a month ago. It was during the passports fiasco. People had waited weeks to get passports and now had to wait a week to get home.
That's Ireland for you: you can't get out of it quick enough – and you can't get back into it quick enough.
There was the inevitable media over-reaction too. Sky News had me believing fall-out was on the way. "The ash is descending. If you get runny eyes – go back indoors immediately." Is that ash on your collar? Please, God, NO! It was akin to the bird flu scare advice: "if you see a swan sneezing or a chicken with a Kleenex, DO NOT APPROACH IT".
While we were phoning Joe and Sky was sounding the air raid sirens, Europe was continuing to over-react in a way that actually helped matters. Airspace regulators had seen a huge cloud of ash and didn't know what to do. Rather than take any chances, they stopped us flying. It was a nuisance, but better to over-react while working out what to do in future, than under-react.
O'Leary, unlike the regulators, has a woeful track record at judging crises. His reaction to swine flu was to tell us to stop whingeing and take "a couple of Strepsils". Strepsils weren't much use to the people that died.
His talk of disproportion is a bit rich, considering his airline will stop you flying if you're 20 seconds late at check-in. Hand luggage slightly too big for the measuring frame? Can't fly. Wrong ID with you? Can't fly. Now he's getting a taste of his own gamesmanship. The rules may be disproportionate and unfair – like Ryanair's – but they're still the rules. They're OUR rules – and that must really hurt.
O'Leary blames the EU, the regulators and his passengers for shafting him. He even blames God. O'Leary discommoded by an act of God? Who's this 'God', anyway?
He's pursuing that great tradition of looking for culprits when there are none. Instead of whingeing and threatening stranded passengers with court, why doesn't he bully the companies whose insurance he sells into sharing some of the burden?
O'Leary thought that by breaking the law he could bully stranded, and in some cases broke, passengers into the Hobson's choice of suing or taking the financial hit. This backfired when the regulators smacked him and he had to back down. It was gratifying to see. For once, officialdom stopped the Great Unwashed being trampled on by the elite. For now, at any rate.
O'Leary will get us back, you know. The phrase 'reasonable expenses' is a bit arbitrary. This is a man who wants to charge you to go for a leak, after all. He'll dream up some way of getting that money back. He may charge a Getting Off The Plane Tax (€200). Or start selling Volcano Value Packs (contains parachute and map to the ground).
He probably started angrily dreaming up ways of getting even after he'd finished celebrating at Punchestown. Right after he'd ordered that bottle of Krug.
Last week, as the banks crisis continued to rack us, and Seanie and Fingleton continued to enjoy themselves while we counted coppers, as life seemed so bloody unfair, we finally had a reason to laugh. So thanks, Mick. I'd like to see a picture of O'Leary with his horse today. Just to check which one has the longer face.

Have you ever seen Peig on a souvenir tea towel?

2010-04-30T15:32:00.000+01:00

Sunday Tribune, April 18

"On will too tine?"
"What?"
"On. Will. Too. Tine?"
Gaeltacht headmaster, Mr P 'Fart' Faherty's face hovered over mine. His moustache smelled of mince and onions.
"Knee higgim," I replied.
"What?"
"What?
"An bhfuil tu tinn: Are you bloody well sick?" I had a hangover to rival anthrax-poisoning and we both knew it.
"I've a pian in my bolg," I said. Mr Fart stamped around the bedroom looking for evidence of contraband drink. He even looked in the bin, where all he found was an empty Yellow Pack shampoo container and a Dettol bottle. The vein in his forehead squirmed. If anger could have 'fadas' and 'shayvoos' all over it, then his did.
"The shmell of alco-hawl is dishgushting, so it is," he shpluttered in his thick Connacht accent. I could see the hairs in his nose shrivelling in the fumes of my hangover.
"I think I'm going to be sick," I said.
"As gaeilge!" he shrilled.
"I'm going to be sick… with a fada over the 'I'?"
I retched theatrically and he backed off. "I'd shend the lot of you shcoundrel hoors home exshept there'sh no boat off the island till Winsday next."
He slammed the door, shpluttering and farting in annoyance.
I was 16. I have always thought of this as the real dry run for my Leaving Cert oral Irish exam. Unlike the orals that are taking place this week, my interview with Mr Fart could have had tangible consequences: ie, a boot up the backside.
I hadn't shone in that test, but I had 'passed'. I had gotten away with it.
I've always associated Irish with 'getting away with it'. I also associate it with excruciating boredom. The kind that lasts three weeks and drives you to drink smuggled vodka out of shampoo bottles. Mr Fart should have checked that bin more thoroughly. I got away with that too.
School was all about 'getting away with it'. In Irish class we'd risk handing over history essays instead of gaeilge ones to our half-blind teacher, 'Harry Weed'. I used to spend the class seeing how many Blu-Tac balls I could get to stick to his tweed jacket. Poor Harry. I think we broke his brain.
The chief problem with Irish was the humourless, dry way it was taught. Pádraic Ó Conaire's 'M'asal Beag Dubh' ('My Little Black Ass') may have sounded like a Harlem porno mag, but was as interesting as watching donkey poo drying.
Who can forget Peig Sayers? "I am an old woman now, with one foot in the grave and the other on its edge." Now there's an image: Peig doing the splits over a hole in the ground.
She's off the syllabus now, but little has changed. Schoolkids still don't love Irish. RTé reported last week that more students are seeking exemption from doing it on learning-disability grounds. However, half of this year's exempted Leaving students are sitting other language exams.
Some parents are using the exemption to get their children out of studying what they see as a difficult subject. It's entirely understandable. Dropping Irish means a better chance of more points, which means a better chance of a job. Irish should not be compulsory for the Leaving Cert – its outcome is far too important.
Still, it's perplexing to think that parents will brand their kids 'special needs' to get them out of doing something difficult. To teach them it's okay to break the rules if you can get away with it. Maybe I'd do the same if I had kids. Maybe abusing the exemption is our generation's revenge on Peig.
We had no need for Irish and were never given any reason to love it. Gaeilgeoir fundamentalism was a major turn-off. This fundamentalism was in evidence again in Clare last February. County councillors complained that they had spent €30,250 translating three development plans into Irish, but nobody wanted to buy them. Then-Gaeltacht minister Eamon Ó Cuív insisted the practice should continue nonetheless. Idiotic wastefulness like that turns people against Irish.
What gaeilgeoir fundamentalism also ignores is that Ireland loves English. Whenever we market ourselves abroad, we point to our great writers: Wilde, Yeats, Joyce. They all wrote in English, not Irish. Have you ever seen a souvenir tea towel with Peig Sayers' face on it?
Gaeilge can't compete with that kind of marketing. For it to appeal to a wider audience it has to dumb down. It has to be conversational, not literary. It needs to be promoted as Ireland's secret language. The one you can insult foreigners in, when they're eavesdropping, for example.
Perhaps Mary Coughlan should commission an Irish slang dictionary (with curse words). Or employ Richie Kavanagh as a special adviser. He topped the charts for six months with his 'Aon Focal Eile'. It was awful, but at least he got people spouting a few words of Irish. That's more than Peig ever did.
If we stripped the earnestness out of Irish, people might start using a phrase or two. That's the best that can be expected. A cúpla focail is better than foc-all, as Richie and Mary might say.
I need to wash my mouth out after saying that. Now where did I leave that
Yellow Pack shampoo bottle?

dkenny@tribune.ie

April 18, 2010

Two reasons to be cheerful: Hassan and Hussein

2010-04-30T15:30:00.002+01:00

Sunday Tribune, 11 April

There are days when you just have to get out and walk. Push the chair away from the PC, fling the radio in the bin and bang the door closed. Walk with your eyes half-shut and your fingers in your ears, in case you see a headline or overhear a conversation about bankers.
There are days when you have to block out the constant bad news. Last Thursday was one of those days. I walked for hours around the coast at Sandycove, trying to think of something positive to write about. I'll write about spring, I thought. I'll talk about the stretch in the evenings and the warm, collar-loosening breeze tripping in from Dalkey Island. I'll say "forget Nama, Anglo and financial haircuts. Forget about economic green shoots – the green shoots of spring are here. Take a walk. Enjoy the sunshine. It's free."
Horse crap. A sunny day isn't going to make me forget my mortgage. Or you yours.
I stopped to buy milk and was drawn to the Herald's front page. There was a picture of two babies, asleep in each other's arms. They were nose to nose.
I'm not a 'goo-goo, ga-ga' merchant. I won't thank you for showing me photos of your tots napping, crapping or being 'adorable'. This picture was different. It hit me in the solar plexus and forced a lump up into my throat.
On Wednesday, twins Hassan and Hussein Benhaffaf from Cork underwent an operation to separate them at the chest. I thought of their parents, waiting 14 hours, hoping for good news. I had nothing to measure it against. All my own worries were dwarfed by the boys' tiny faces.
Walking home, I thought about the Ireland they would grow up in. I imagined them in 20 years' time, riffling through the newspaper coverage of their operation. I saw April 2010's other stories spilling out of the pages.
Last week's news kicked off on a raunchy note, with Dan Boyle sending everybody porn. Next time, Dan, just send me flowers. 'Dan Boyle' and 'porn' are words I never want to see in the same sentence again. Dan's Twitter account had been hacked.
The following day, Dublin's city councillors asked to be trained to use Twitter. Coincidence? They discussed how much this training would cost.
Question: who needs to be paid to be 'trained' to use Twitter? Are our city councillors really that thick? Evidently so.
Councillors weren't the only public servants finding ingenious ways of wasting money. Judge James O'Connor wasn't impressed when he heard the authorities had spent €1,500 escorting a prisoner from Dublin to his Kerry courtroom.
What was the prisoner's crime? He had failed to display a tax disc. If ever a story summed up state-sponsored wastefulness, this was it. No wait, there's another story that sums it up better.
Another desperado is driving around with gardaí in tow at our expense – to the tune of €170,000. That's what Bertie Ahern's state car bill cost in 2009, as he promoted his book. Bertie needs his car, as he hates being in one place for too long. That place is the Dáil. He spent just 12 minutes there for Lenihan's Nama speech before shouting "Quick! To the Bert-Mobile!"
I'd love to be his driver. Ever see the ending of Thelma and Louise, Bert?
Twenty years from now, Hassan and Hussein may turn the page on Bertie and switch on Liveline. Joe may still be talking about banning head shops. Last week, minister Seán Connick told Hotpress he had an open mind about them. Hopefully, despite out-of-touch politicians trying to be 'cool', the twins won't grow up with a head shop down the road.
Hopefully, they will grow up healthy and strong enough to hurl for Cork – while half the country's adults are getting their cholesterol checked. According to a Kelloggs survey, 55% of Irish children don't play sport. The Celtic Tigers spawned pampered Celtic Piglets. Piglets who may have to pay extra to fly Ryanair. In 20 years' time, the airline will probably have introduced the 'tax' on overweight passengers it dreamed up last April.
It may also have introduced a loo charge. 'Spend a euro to spend a penny'. Last week, it hiked baggage charges by a third for July/August. Fat, bursting for a pee and wearing layers and layers of holiday clothes to avoid bringing another bag – that's the future of aviation, Ryanair-style.
As I walked along the coast, fuming over the general crappiness of life, I tried to focus on that picture of the twins. I eventually realised why their struggle meant so much to us. We needed something to take us out of ourselves. We needed to set aside the bitterness and feel positive emotions again. Humanity was at work. Hassan and Hussein gave us a brief respite from last week's cynicism and selfishness. Nama, Anglo, Bertie, Ryanair: none of them matter to the twins' parents. They have a higher priority. It's a matter of perspective.
At home on Thursday evening, I switched on the news. I crossed my fingers. You probably did too. Hassan and Hussein were stable after their operation. It was the news we needed. It was something to write about.
Sometimes the green shoots are there. You just have to know where to look for them.

dkenny@tribune.ie

April 11, 2010

Leave us with the only pillars of society we really love

2010-04-30T15:29:00.002+01:00

Sunday Tribune, 4 April

It was the most boring day of my life. The memory of that school trip around Dublin Port and Docks is so watery, I keep expecting these words to slide off the page.
The best thing about it had been the anticipation. We gabbed for weeks about the messing we'd get up to. Our stomachs rumbled at the thought of the special packed lunch: ham sandwiches instead of Easi Singles, a bar of Dairy Milk, Tayto, a can of Club Orange. We prayed it wouldn't rain.
It rained. I've never seen rain like it. It ran into your mouth and up your nose, into your ears and under your anorak hood. It was like being water-boarded.
It was so wet we couldn't leave the bus and just drove around for hours, in almost zero-visibility, as the driver droned on about tonnage and fuel depots. Lunch was all gone by 11.30am. The fun of writing rude words on the fogged-up window soon wore thin. The bus stank of that wet-dog smell peculiar to classrooms and damp children.
Eventually, the rain eased and we were thrown off to look at a stack of palettes.
A man with an 'eff you' expression was leaning against them. He cupped his hand around his cigarette and sucked on it as if he was siphoning petrol from a garda car. He was a 'Real Dub'.
"D'youse know wha' dem lads are really for?" He nodded in the direction of the striped towers at the Pigeon House. We shook our heads.
"Day are, in fact, a pair of barber's poles belonging to my cousin, Mad Barry the Barber."
"He must be a big man, mister."
"Oh, he's big all right. And you should see his barber's razor. It done DIS to me…" Before we knew what was happening, Real Dub had ripped all the hair off his scalp and shot his bottom teeth out of his mouth.
"Arrrrrgggghh!" he roared and we scattered, screaming, back to the bus. A boy from Eden Villas wet himself. Another boy said it was just as well his "ma had made him wear his brown trousers".
The bus drove off to roars of gummy laughter from behind the palettes and someone saying: "Jaysus, Paddy, you're some bollix with that wig. Put your teeth back in."
The Pigeon House towers have dominated my mental landscape of Dublin since then.
As I grew up in the '80s, they became synonymous with Dublin's drabness, and emigration. They were the last thing you saw as you left the country by boat or plane. They were also the first thing you saw coming back. As time passed and life improved, they became a welcoming sight. They were as Dublin as eating Burdock's chips in the rain. They symbolised home.
Last Wednesday, the towers stopped puffing clouds out over Dublin. They will probably be demolished as the Corpo hasn't listed them.
The Mail ran a story on Thursday about a €1bn plan to turn them into giant windmills. It was a particularly good April Fool's joke and I nearly fell for it. After the week we've just had, you'd believe anything. We're bailing out Anglo for billions. Hahahaha! April Fool's? No, we're serious.
Our lives have been signed over to pay for the debts of developers who saw Ireland only as bricks and mortar. The Pigeon House towers are now being looked at in the same way – to maximise profit for the ESB.
They are more than bricks and mortar. They are rooted in our culture: featuring in our art, movies, music videos. When they were operating, they symbolised an elegant city which was rough around the edges. They were like two old hard chaws, smoking and working away, looking down disdainfully on the pretentious gits below.
The city's contrariness is stacked up in them. They say "welcome to this glorious kip – Dirty Dublin. What're you bleedin' lookin' ah?"
The depth of emotion over their destruction says a lot about how Dubliners view their city. It's hard to imagine the same reaction to the Spire being uprooted. Dubliners made the towers 'ironic iconic', unlike the Spire which came pre-packaged as a symbol.
You can't force a symbol on Dubliners: they will always choose their own – from the contrariest of places. Last month, 15,000 people signed up to a Facebook campaign to honour Dublin character 'Dancing' Mary Margaret Dunne who preached on O'Connell Street for 30 years. The city missed her. Dublin may have stopped producing characters, but it hasn't stopped loving them.
There was an outcry last year when it seemed another Dublin symbol was doomed – remember the spice-burger crisis? Characters, burgers, chimneys… these are the things Dubliners believe define them, not grand structures. They're the symbols of a city that can't take itself seriously. A city that gives direction by pubs rather than street. ("It's near Mulligan's.") That sees two grimy chimneys as being as symbolic as the Eiffel Tower.
Tearing them down will feel like another victory for the developers. They've taken enough from us. We need these high-rise towers to continue symbolising our modern city with its modest, low-rise attitude.
Last week, Nama began pulling down the former pillars of Irish society. As Ireland changes, these are two pillars of society that deserve to remain standing.

dkenny@tribune.ie

April 4, 2010

Was it for all this the men of 1916 fought and died?

2010-04-30T15:27:00.000+01:00

Sunday Tribune, March 28

My great grandfather delivered Pearse's farewell letter to his mother. As the fires crackled around the GPO, the rebel leader wrote: "Whatever happens to us, the name of Dublin will be splendid in history forever. Willie and I hope you are not fretting for us …" He sealed the envelope and great-granddad kept it safe. By the time he delivered it, Pearse was dead.
History sees Pearse's sacrifice in terms of bloodshed. My great-granddad, Matthew Walker, saw it in the face of a mother who had lost two sons.
You won't have heard of Matthew. He was one of those remarkable figures who prefer to work behind history's stage. You may remember from school that Parnell had lime thrown at his eyes during a rally. Matthew was the friend who shielded his face with his hat. Anonymous, forgotten.
On Easter Monday 1916, Matthew – who was 69 – walked eight miles from Glasthule to the GPO. He was dressed in full Edwardian fig of top coat and top hat. He also had corns on his feet, but his generation "didn't grumble". He was determined to "to play his part".
As he entered Sackville Street, Matthew would have seen the first casualties – two dead horses belonging to the lancers. He would have felt the giddiness of the slum bystanders waiting to see blood.
He would also have seen a tricolour flying over the GPO.
For Matthew – IRB man, publisher – Easter Monday was the culmination of his life's work. He was given the task of printing Pearse's Irish War News, as bullets ricocheted around the city. Each night, he bravely walked home through the cordons.
His Abbey actress daughters, Maire and Gypsy, were 'out' in 1916 too. Gypsy, my grandmother, lost her pacifist lover to a looter's bullet. A priest refused to marry the couple on his death bed.
Despite the pain, their generation valued sacrifice. Their selflessness seems very remote as you survey today's Ireland.
Last week, the tricolour Matthew may have seen over the GPO failed to sell at auction. It had been valued at $500,000. I wonder how he would have felt about this. After the week we've just had, I wonder what he would make of the Republic he risked his life for.
If he was publishing a newspaper today, Matthew's editorial would probably compare our Taoiseach's power-at-all-costs philosophy to Pearse's. It would condemn the cynicism of hoarding power at the expense of the democracy people died for.
Coming from an age when people risked their lives for principles, what would he think of Beverley Flynn? Unprincipled Bev's belief that democracy should serve her was in evidence again last week. She said she deserved a place in cabinet. She would "flower". She couldn't understand why the media picked on her. Drop around Bev, I'll tell you why.
What would he make of the people who keep electing her? Or Michael Lowry for that matter? Or Mary Hanafin, who along with seven other deputies, still refuses to give up her teacher's pension. Or smug Mary Harney, with no party behind her.
Let's be fair to politicians, though. They're not the only self-servers living in this great Republic.
Matthew would have led his newspaper with the story of the CPSU denying people their passports. He would have been livid. A passport isn't a bargaining chip. It's proof of the citizenship fought for by people like him and Countess Markiewicz.
Not that we care about the countess any more. She would appear on Matthew's 'page 3'. (With her clothes on.) He would report that she isn't included in an MRBI poll of greatest Irish people. Neither is President McAleese. Louis Walsh is, though. What does that say about us?
Matthew would look at what the vacuous Tiger generation allowed happen to Tara and run a story warning about the same happening to under-threat Newgrange. How many would read it?
He would look at Seánie Fitz and wonder why we allowed a new landlord class of bankers and developers to be created.
He would look at the whole, sorry mess our Republic is in and scratch his head.
Over the next week, you'll hear a lot of misty-eyed manure about 'reclaiming the spirit of 1916'. The Republicanism that Matthew and others strove for wasn't notional. It was based on the solid principle that your neighbour has a right to expect your help – as you do from him.
The current mess is being made worse by a general unwillingness to take some responsibility. We know who the chief culprits were, but we all bought into the Tiger crap to some extent.
If unity helped achieve our freedom, then it can help us maintain it. The refusal by some to take a hit is not acceptable. The new Civil War of public against private has to end. We need to start behaving like a republic or stop calling ourselves one.
I wonder what Matthew would have said about that GPO flag being valued at $500,000. A copy of his Irish War News fetched €26,000 in 2007.
I'm sure he would look at that tricolour and see more than money. He would know its true value. He would know whether it was worth fighting for, or not.
He would know whether we were worth fighting for. I hope we were.

dkenny@tribune

How can you threaten an abused child with hell?

2010-04-30T15:26:00.000+01:00

Sunday Tribune, 21 March

Stop. I know what you're thinking. You've looked at the headline and you're saying "not another piece about the church". I know how you feel. Please don't skim by. This column isn't about the church – it's about us.
Last week, as Charlie Bird bounded around the Oval Office like a spaniel on heat, Barack Obama hinted he might visit Ireland. (If he leaves soon, he could sit beside Charlie on the plane home.)
On the same day, the papers reported that the Pope will not be visiting Northern Ireland on his trip to Britain. To some, this seems like he's skimming past our sodden little island – as if he's too embarrassed or too afraid to face us.
The announcement of his bypass coincided with Cardinal Sean Brady's apology for his part in the Fr Brendan Smyth cover-up. The cardinal said there needs to be an end to the "drip, drip, drip of revelations". His words didn't hold much water, as the revelations continued to seep out. By the end of the week, many of us had stopped listening.
The drip, drip, drip of abuse stories has brought us close to saturation point. You can only absorb so much misery before it runs off you like the rain in a Frank McCourt book.
On Thursday, RTÉ appeared to reinforce this saturation point theory. The Irish Independent reported the station had "refused" to screen a film about clerical abuse survivors. RTÉ claimed there was "not much appetite" for movies about the subject. The survivors were angry, but RTÉ's decision reflected a reality which is not just confined to clerical abuse.
How often do you find yourself reaching for the remote during the news? Nama, recession, repossessions. Drip, drip, drip. Saturation point.
Politicians use our saturation point to their advantage. They know if they brazen it out long enough, we will move on to something else.
For example, last week we learned that Bertie Ahern had almost doubled his number of foreign speaking engagements in 2009 to 16. Instead of being in the Dáil, he was earning a minimum of $40,000 for each Washington Speakers' Bureau gig he did.
Bertie is coining it by avoiding doing the work we pay him to do. Will he continue to do so? Yes, because most of us have reached saturation point hearing about him. Saturation point is also how he got away with helping the church cap compensation for abuse victims. Remember that?
Here's another example: will fellow politicians, Conor Lenihan and Mary-go-round Harney, continue to get away with their phenomenal junketeering? What do you think? They know we'll eventually reach saturation point and calm down.
This saturation point is turning clerical abuse into the new Troubles. It's becoming our number one switch-off. The reports have become page-turners, in the negative sense of the phrase. Every bomb drove us further away from headlines with 'north' in it. We reached saturation point – and the IRA knew it. For every drip, drip they needed what they called a "spectacular" to catch our attention again.
Last week's revelations were a spectacular. How could Brady listen to a child saying he was raped and not go to the gardaí? No protestation that the past is a different country can excuse it. There's no excusable time to allow a paedophile to stay at large.
Then there was the oath. How do you swear a child to secrecy on pain of losing their soul? How can you tell him that if he breaks his oath with the pope, his soul will spend eternity in hell with his abuser?
Has the church now 'forgiven' these victims for breaking that oath of silence? Has it given them back their souls?
Are there other dinosaur clerics like Msgr Maurice Dooley, who say they would refuse to hand over a paedophile priest to the gardaí? Is he a lone loose-cannon when it comes to Canon Law?
On Thursday I read about how an eight-year-old girl had been abused for 10 years by a priest in Derry. She had been silenced in an out-of-court settlement.
Drip, drip, drip. Saturation point. I closed the paper. Later, I wondered what that said about me. Am I a flawed person for not wanting to absorb any more misery?
The problem is that when you reach saturation point and stop reading their stories, the victims are silenced again. Their voices become tinnitus in your soul, constantly ringing but ignored. That's the sad reality.
Like the Troubles, the drip, drip of revelations is turning us away from headlines with 'church' in them. A 'spectacular' is needed. That spectacular must be Cardinal Brady's resignation.
Despite his failings, he is a good man. He has done nothing technically wrong, but could show leadership by martyring himself for the greater good. He may not restore the Catholic faith that's been lost, but he can restore some faith in the humanity of his church.
Next week is the last Sunday in Lent, which commemorates the welcome Jesus got when he entered Jerusalem. I wonder what reception the Pope would receive if he came to Ireland now. I suspect the Pope's Children will save the palms for Barack and the brickbats for Benedict.
Lent is an appropriate word to end with. Benedict's Irish Church appears to be living on borrowed time.

dkenny@tribune.ie

March 21, 2010

The luck o' the Irish needs all the help it can get

2010-04-30T15:22:00.000+01:00

Sunday Tribune 14 March

This Wednesday, Brian Cowen will hand a bowl of weeds to the world's most powerful man. Only the Irish could get away with giving weeds as gifts. Anybody else might get a smack in the chops.
The shamrock ceremony in Washington will be the high point of a week spent selling Paddywhackery around the world.
Most of us will watch proceedings and feel reassured that America hasn't forgotten us. Most of us will also feel a little bit queasy about the blarney but accept that it's good for business. There's a national confidence deficit and every pat on the head we get is welcome.
That confidence deficit was behind an exceedingly stupid row last week. This concerned the opening of the Leprechaun Museum in Dublin.
Eire Nua was outraged that this symbol of our blarney past has been dredged up. Blarney the Dinosaur was supposed to be extinct.
The leprechaun is "a derogatory symbol," a Tourism Ireland mandarin sniffed.
"Truly the Jedward of museums," one Twitterer wrote. "This is not the Ireland we want to portray abroad," he said. The snobbery was obnoxious.
The culture police needn't have worried about the museum portraying Ireland as Leprechaun Land – there were plenty of other embarrassments to do that.
There was the health service allowing 58,000 X-rays to go unchecked and 3,498 doctors' letters to go unread at Tallaght hospital.
There was disgraced Nationwide boss, Michael Fingleton, demanding an apology for being called names in the Dáil while Nama board members' salaries rose by up to 70% since last December.
There was Noel Dempsey spending €850,000 on a competition to choose an operator for Terminal Two – and then just handing it to the DAA anyway.
Worst of all, there was Ombudsman Emily O'Reilly's damning indictment that "parliament has been sidelined and is no longer able to hold the government to account". We're not living in a democracy any more.
Ireland is Fianna Fáil's Fun Park – also known as 'On the Never-Neverland'. Instead of a Ghost Train we have Ghost Estates. The Roller Coaster has been replaced by the 'Coaster', which is an easy ride for top civil servants. The Big Dipper is run by the bankers who are still putting their hands in our pockets. Mary Harney's on 'The Mary-go-round' (when she gets back from her six-month junket to New Zealand). There's even a Hall of Mirrors so that we can see ourselves as others see us – vaguely comical.
We live in a madhouse and, yet, people are getting upset about a leprechaun museum. A bit of balance is needed.
We've grown sophisticated over the years, but we're not the suave boulevardiers we'd like to think we are. We're much more interesting than that. We are a confusing, contrary, annoying and highly likeable race. We are a low-rise people who used to value the ability to laugh at ourselves. We need to remember that.
Ireland must realise it has a unique brand to sell – its Irishness. The Leprechaun Museum is just another, daft, manifestation of that Irishness.
What was lost amid all the righteous indignation about the museum is that it's a good example of someone using a sustainable resource (Irish folklore) to make money. In 2009, tourism generated €4bn in foreign revenue earnings and €1.2bn in tax. Where there's blarney there's money.
Here's a question: if you have a natural resource that someone wants to buy, do you (A): talk it down or (B): sell it to them?
If the yanks want leprechauns, give them leprechauns. If they want to kiss a rock, charge them. Kissing the Blarney Stone is one of the greatest tourist marketing feats ever dreamed up.
Look at the airport, with its leprechaun hats and suits. Crap sells. Cork firm The Auld Sod Export Company has made millions from selling 1lb bags of Irish soil for $10 to Irish-Americans. Irish muck sells. Riverdance and Enya made hundreds of millions out of the cheesy re-branding of Irish dance and music. Then there's the Oscars, with Granny O'Grimm's Irish take on fairy tales and The Secret of Kells.
Do we really want to culture-up every tourist? Do we expect them all to go to the Abbey? Are we so sophisticated now that we look down on a real opportunity to make some money?
We may not see the value of Brand Ireland, but some foreign companies do. Volvo has decided to finish the 2011-2012 Ocean Race in Galway. This will generate €80m. Why Galway? Because Volvo wants to bring it to "a country that really knows how to celebrate". Ireland is, apparently, a fun place.
If you still believe that the leprechaun museum is ill-conceived, then buy the current edition of Time magazine. There's a 900-word article about its opening. What new Irish businesses are making Time magazine? Remember what that did for U2.
The Yanks have wild west shows, the Brits have the royal pageantry… we have leprechauns. If there's a crock of gold to be made out of a crock of crap – let's make it.
The world knows we're not leprechauns: they hoard their money in pots, we've blown ours.
So embrace your inner leprechaun this week. Remember, without the shamrock in it, the pot that Cowen hands to Obama on Wednesday would be just another begging bowl.

dkenny@tribune.ie

Why I now keep my Catholic faith in a biscuit tin

2010-03-12T16:34:00.000Z

Sunday Tribune, 7 March

I have a battered old biscuit tin in the attic. It contains tokens of my past: little pebbles that make up a shifting bank of memory. I took it down the other day and sifted through it.
There was a bead from a long-forgotten teenage girlfriend's bracelet, once-significant ticket stubs, a souvenir from the Isle of Man and a lighter from Ayia Napa. Letters, cards and negatives were neatly bundled under the Crawford's Assorted lid. There were also two grubby rosettes: white and red. The medallion is missing from the first, but the confirmation rosette still bears its depiction of the Holy Spirit descending.
There is a picture, too, of my class from the Harold, Glasthule, posing in our confirmation gear. It is 1978 and I am wearing a corduroy safari jacket, brown trousers and a polo neck. I look 100% nerd. We all do: with our rosettes, we're like a herd of prize-winning prats. The innocent expressions point to our childishness: the jackets and rosettes point ahead to adulthood. It is a watershed picture.
That same year, another boy my age was probably also looking goofy in his confirmation gear in Wexford. Colm O'Gorman's journey from confirmation to adulthood couldn't have been more different to my own. He suffered appalling clerical sexual abuse in his teens.
Last week, he reacted to the suggestion by Bishop of Ferns, Denis Brennan, that parishioners might help pay the diocese's €1.2m debts accrued while fighting abuse victims. O'Gorman says when he began proceedings in 1998, it was against the church, not the parishioners. His calm response was at odds with the prevailing anger. All week, I seethed with rage when I thought of Brennan's 'suggestion'.
O'Gorman has an article on his website about the death of his Catholicism. It struck a chord. His early memories are comforting ones. Many will remember flickering Sacred Hearts and prayers to ward off evil. Or looking over your shoulder for a guardian angel with superhero powers. Or asking silly questions like "did Baby Jesus get Easter eggs?"
As a youngster, I had unshakeable faith in the church and uncomplainingly endured the boring bits like Mass and the horrors of confession.
For a month, my pathetic sins would stack up like missals on a pew, before being scattered by a couple of Hail Marys. I would walk home clouded in sanctity. Then thoughts about the girl down the road would steal back in…
Watching the church's own slow confession over the years has been like watching an onion being peeled layer by layer. It ended in tears – of anger – as my Catholicism died. As the lies made a mockery of the trembling prayers and incantations whispered sotto voce.
There is a palpable feeling of emptiness when you lose the church. When you realise the spiritual crutch is gone and you want the moral guardian of your childhood forced to its knees.
There's no joy in typing those words and they are not cathartic. They go against a pre-conditioned emotional grain. Losing faith is, arguably, worse than never having it.
According to the 2006 Census, 86% of us are Catholic. The figure doesn't reflect the à la carte nature of that Catholicism. After Brennan's crass suggestion, many will find even an arm's-length association with Catholicism too close.
How many times will we have to hear the church say sorry before it's genuinely sorry? How can it apologise and then suggest someone else shares the tab for its crimes? All we hear is the meaningless mantra of "we must forgive, share the pain, reflect…" The Beatitudes have been replaced by platitudes.
It's not truly sorry, because the whey-faced, pompous old men, in their silly hats, are still too far removed from hardship to understand it.
Bishop Brennan's abuse tax suggestion is appalling. The parishioners of Ferns must not pay it. There was national anger before Christmas when friends of a convicted Listowel sex attacker queued to shake his hand in front of his victim. Putting money in the abuse tax basket will have the same effect on the victims of Ferns.
There is another way Brennan can generate money. Every June, the church sends a tribute to Rome. This collection is called Peter's Pence and is used for "the material needs of poor dioceses… etc". In 2008, Peter's Pence raised €50m worldwide and Ireland was the sixth biggest contributor.
Ferns could declare itself a "poor diocese" and ask for Peter's Pence to pay its legal bills. The price of asking would be utter humiliation. Humility is something the Irish church badly needs.
Any argument that this would create a precedent can be ignored. It should create a precedent and Pope Benedict should be happy to pay up.
I still wear a cross, not out of loyalty to Rome but as a symbol of the Christian philosophy I try to live by. It's also a reminder of the Catholic faith I now keep in a biscuit tin.
Rome knew of the sex abuse claims in Ferns and did nothing about them. It stole the faith of a generation. We're in Lent, the season of sacrifice, Bishop Brennan. Let Rome sacrifice its tribute money this year. For all the pain it has caused, ask it to turn Peter's Pence into Peter's Penance.

dkenny@tribune.ie

Going back on the Wanderly Wagon to forget all our troubles

2010-03-05T15:41:00.003Z

Sunday Tribune, 28 February 2010

The following is a Wanderly Wagon story that may shock fans of Mr Crow. (Close your eyes… now.)
In 1979, a friend sneaked off on an unofficial tour of RTE's studios while waiting to record a TV show. After inspecting Bunny Carr's Quicksilver set (and Norman's organ), Jimmy Smyth found himself standing in the shadow of the iconic wagon. Being a fan, he climbed inside to discover, to his disappointment, that it was just a shell. There was nothing inside but bare wood.
Jimmy also made another discovery that rattled his childhood memories. Just below the hatch someone had written – in thick, black letters – the revelatory sentence: 'Mr Crow is a W***er'. I sometimes lie awake wondering what went through the puppeteer's mind as he stuck his hand up Crow's backside, with 'Mr Crow is a W***er' staring him in the face. Thank you, Jimmy, for that charming story.
(Open your eyes... now.) I have my own memory of Wanderly Wagon. On a trip to Montrose with my father, I also discovered that the wagon was just a prop. I was nine and still remember that day. It was like losing a friend.
Last Wednesday, I had the same sad feeling when I heard that Eugene Lambert had died. Most Irish people between the ages of 35 to 50 felt the same way.
Wanderly Wagon was a 'bookmark' in our childhood. Lambert's death briefly stopped the clock and brought a rare, unconscious moment of national unity. The country's grown-ups stopped squabbling and ran splashing into a sea of nostalgia. There was a collective sigh as the wagon carried us to an age of talking crows and witches.
For a short while, the utter crapulosity of life in 2010 was forgotten and memories were traded. Remember the magic handle, which you turned to get your 'dearest wish'? Or Foxy, who lived in a barrel? Or the Moon Mice and Sneaky Sssssnake? And Rory with his fringed cowboy jacket and cravat (now there's mixed signals).
Mortgages, Trevor Sargent and Willie O'Dea were briefly shunted aside by a brightly coloured caravan from the 1970s. We recalled a time when our only responsibility was to be children.
It brought back memories to me of being driven to Laytown for the summer, with the dog on my mother's lap and the cat hissing like a slow puncture in the basket beneath my feet. Three children squashed into the back of a Triumph Dolomite roaring 'Here comes the Wagon, the WANDERLY, WAAAANNDERLY WAGGGGON!!!' and me wanting to go for a pee. I remember running in and wrestling with the rabbit's ears before settling down to watch Judge and O'Brien through a swarm of black and white interference bees.
Wanderly Wagon didn't challenge and it wasn't educational or scrupulously politically correct – it was just fun. It made you laugh while the strikes and violence of the '70s raged outside.
It was thoroughly Irish and was wedded to the landscape. In a child's eyes there were Wanderly Wagons in every Travellers' field and every bearded, ragged tramp was Fortycoats.
On Wednesday, it felt as if O'Brien was giving us a hug from the past. It was hard to resist him. The small details kept coming. I remembered soggy, sandy tomato sandwiches and TK lemonade on a windy beach. Dripping ice cream sandwiches, sherbert fountains and Gollywog sweets. Tokens for Texaco's 'signed' Liam Brady footballs, marbles, kick-the-can and scraped knees. Hand-me-downs and swap shops, sardines on toast and oxtail soup in metal bowls. Smog and candy cigarettes.
There was the childish belief that everything was possible. If a caravan could fly, what couldn't be achieved?
Fast forward to 2010. What has been achieved? We're where our parents used to be. We're the adults now. Judge's Safe Cross Code boy grew up to be Fianna Fáil TD, Chris Andrews. We grew up into a world as chaotic as any Wanderly Wagon plotline.
We have national disunity, huge unemployment and crushing debt. We gave the banks Nama and they've given us increased rates on personal loans. We have a political system in turmoil and there's been a return to '70s-style violence in the north.
Family life has changed. According to the ESRI, more married couples are breaking up after the birth of their first child. More are deferring having children.
These are some of the reasons why many of us felt grateful for the respite Lambert gave us last week.
With all the cynicism about, it's easy to forget that this country can produce inspiring, unsung heroes like Lambert. It's good to be reminded of that. He was a man who entertained children just for the love of it. He was the mad uncle who babysat us while our parents fought a recession. Our generation wasn't the 'Pope's Children', we were 'O'Brien's Children'.
Dublin is festooned with statues to patriots who mean less to us than Lambert. Luke Kelly has a bridge and Philo has a statue – Lambert deserves, at least, a park named after him. Somewhere we can sit and remember our childhood.
Somewhere we can hitch a lift from adulthood on the memory of a gawdy caravan, with a crow and a Godmother.
Somewhere we can sit with a huge man, with a huge heart and a cloth dog in his arms.
Thanks for the memories, Eugene.

dkenny@tribune

February 28, 2010

O'Leary should land 300 jobs; Coughlan should take off

2010-02-24T15:55:00.001Z

Sunday Tribune 21 February

There is an old schoolyard game called 'One, Two, Three O'Leary' you may have played as a child. It involves shouting out numbers and bouncing a ball between your legs. The rules, as with most childish pursuits, are arbitrary.
'Childish' and 'arbitrary' are good ways to describe the antics of another game-playing O'Leary. Last week, the Ryanair chief stood in the centre of the national schoolyard roaring about numbers and hopping the ball. The object of his bullying was Head Girl, 'Mary, Mary Quite Contrary' Coughlan. The pair spent the week brawling over a hangar at Dublin Airport. It took Williegate to dislodge them as lead story in the news. (By the way, if O'Dea is done for perjury, I'm starting the 'Free Willie' campaign. The logo will be a gun-toting whale with a moustache.)
O'Leary says he will create 300 engineering jobs at Dublin Airport. There are conditions, though. He won't talk to the DAA and he wants Hangar Six, which is leased to Aer Lingus. He contacted Coughlan to secure it for him, which she "failed" to do. The stupid girl.
The protagonists actually have quite a bit in common. Both are foul-mouthed and stubborn. Both are headline grabbers: O'Leary for putting his boot into the government; Coughlan for putting her boot in her mouth. She was the obvious choice for Villain of the Piece, 'cocking up yet again'.
In Leinster House, the opposition did more knee-jerking than a Riverdance chorus line. They howled at Brian Cowen to tear up Aer Lingus's lease. It was all just political hay-making, with insults tossed around the house by the country's best-paid tossers.
This was never a simple equation of 'Hangar Six minus Aer Lingus = 300 Ryanair jobs'. Aer Lingus's lease stated they could only be moved on the grounds of 'aircraft operation' or 'airport development' – not to make way for another tenant. Hangar Six is the only one capable of accommodating more than one of their wide-body Airbus A330 aircraft. They were staying put.
Coughlan offered O'Leary alternatives: Hangars One and Two or a newly-built premises. Sites at Shannon and Knock were also available. Like Andy, the churlish Little Britain character, he huffed, "I want that one", pointing at Hangar Six.
So why does he want Hangar Six so badly, given that he doesn't have any wide-body aircraft? He says he wants to move his HQ there. The suspicion, however, is that he wants to use it as a terminal. On Thursday, he produced a letter giving 'guarantees' to the IDA which he hoped would dispel this suspicion. It didn't. O'Leary knows that if he ever hopes to open Hangar Six as a terminal, then he must acquire it first. 'Guarantees' can be dealt with later.
Coughlan is an easy target for his criticism. Last week, Senator Eoghan Harris attacked O'Leary for demeaning the office of enterprise minister. In truth, Mary has done a fine job of demeaning it herself. Her handling of the Fás fiasco still beggars belief. We don't need O'Leary to tell us she is useless at her job – we already know it. The former Dell and Waterford workers know it. Cadbury's workers may know it soon too.
However, O'Leary's attack backfired as the week progressed. It became obvious he was playing a media game with her. Coughlan, he said, had "tragically" lost the 300 jobs. Why? Because he was asking for something he knew she couldn't give. He pined for the days when Haughey was running the country. Why? So he could avail of the services of a crook?
Lurking at the back of all this is O'Leary's penchant for score-settling. He's still seething over the government's €10 airport tax. It infuriates him that it's less money spent on his bagged alcohol or scratch cards.
If there is any lingering doubt that this is at the core of his manufactured row with Coughlan, then look at Ryanair's website. On 5 February, it announced it will be reducing its Shannon jobs from over 300 to less than 200 because of the tax. At the end of the statement it says, "these cuts would be immediately reversed if the €10.00 Visitor Tax is scrapped". Does that sound like he's holding hundreds of families hostage? O'Leary sees his employees and the unemployed merely as pawns. He's never experienced the soul-sapping desperation of being on the dole. To give jobless people hope and then take it away is cruel beyond comprehension. Whether those jobs materialise or not, he's dragged hundreds of vulnerable families through the ringer.
The bottom line is that he has 300 jobs in his gift. If he really cares about bringing employment to Dublin, then he should shut up, take what's on offer and create them.
Cowen, meanwhile, should start taking a Ryanair approach to his cabinet and stop placing loyalty above ability. Coughlan wouldn't be employed at corporate level in Ryanair. The Hangar Six affair may not have been of her making, but there are plenty of other reasons for hoofing her out of the enterprise ministry.
She has allowed O'Leary to play her like a ball in a schoolyard game. O'Leary should do the nation a favour and stop hopping the ball. It's One or Two, O'Leary… Hangar Six is out of the question. Now create those jobs or hop it.

dkenny@tribune.ie

February 21, 2010

No more bailing out of Ahern's long finger

2010-02-24T15:53:00.001Z

Sunday Tribune 14 February

Michael Murray is a walking cliché. His beady blue eyes, shaved head, mean, craggy face… if he had 'convicted rapist' tattooed across his forehead, his past couldn't be more obvious.
Last week, the Evening Herald pictured him at the door of his flat in Inchicore. His body language suggested that of a hunted animal run to ground.
Murray doesn't like being photographed. On Tuesday, solicitors for the serial rapist tried to effectively bar the Herald from using images of him at his new address. Murray values his privacy – with good reason.
In 1995, he was arrested on suspicion of rape and released pending a decision on charges. Over the following five days, he raped three more women and sexually assaulted two others.
He was jailed for 18 years but was released five years early last summer and then disappeared. Liveline and the Herald tracked him down. He may have been living next door to you.
As Murray was attempting to gag the Herald last week, another rapist, John Ryan, was sentenced to seven years for attacking a teenager in his taxi. After sentencing, it emerged Ryan had been allowed to continue driving his taxi following the rape allegation – despite garda objections. Ryan may have given your daughter a lift home while awaiting trial.
Two men, two threats, both at large when they should be kept away from the public.
Now consider the case of Dominic McKevitt. In December, McKevitt was arrested in Dundalk and taken to Mountjoy. The St Vincent de Paul volunteer had forgotten to get a €12.70 licence for his rescue dog Nemo and hadn't paid the €300 fine. He spent 12 hours in jail before being freed by the embarrassed authorities.
Cases like Murray's, Ryan's and Mc Kevitt's highlight the seemingly arbitrary nature of our legal system. They undermine public confidence by reinforcing the perception that the law is skewed in favour of the criminal. It's not, but appearances are everything.
Justice minister Dermot Ahern is aware of this. He has made a big show of dealing with the fines problem. Like Dublin traffic he has the appearance of movement but is really just snailing along.
Almost a year ago, Ahern published the Fines Bill 2009, to give judges alternatives to jail sentences. Incredibly, it is still not law and there is no date for its enactment.
During the first 10 months of last year, 3,366 people were jailed for non-payment of court fines. Sixty-two of these were jailed over TV licences. The overall figure compares to 2,520 in 2008 and 1,335 in 2007. While we wait for Ahern's fines law, the number of incarcerations is increasing. Dog and TV licence fine defaulters are going to prison while individuals like Murray are being set free early. Where are our priorities?
Ahern says defaulters are "a tiny fraction" of the prison population. Presumably, these 'little people' – like McKevitt – are not significant enough to warrant some haste on his behalf.
Last November, Ahern made another promise. He said he was finally going to reform the bail laws in favour of public safety. The figures for bail crime are frightening. The Dáil has heard that suspects for eight murders in 2008 and 13 committed in 2007 were on bail. The mother Sylvia Roche Kelly and Swiss teenager Manuela Riedo were both murdered in 2007 by bailed criminals. Twenty four serious sex offences were committed by people on bail in 2008. Thirty-four suspects threatened to kill people.
Between 2004 and mid-2008, 90,000 serious crimes were committed by bailed suspects.
Seven out of eight people who apply for bail are successful.
Will Ahern move quickly to deal with this problem? On the evidence of the Fines Bill, don't hold your breath. Before his proposals are even published, they must be approved by the AG and tested against the Constitution and European law.
Reform of the bail laws will drag on interminably. Why? Because of resources. Ahern admitted last April that reform was impractical because of prison overcrowding. During 2008, nine jails operated at or above capacity. The cost of keeping a prisoner is €92,717. Without Thornton Hall, bail will continue to act as a prison valve.
Ahern, while appearing to address the issue, has kicked reform to touch. He is playing the Fianna Fáil long ball game. The banks probe won't begin until the summer – a year and a half after the economic crisis began. Nama is still not up and running – a year and a half after the economic crisis began. The Fines Bill is still not enacted – one year on. Even Ahern's plan to tag sex offenders is still not a runner – one year on.
The public has a fundamental right to confidence in the legal system. It has the right not to be afraid of being attacked by someone on bail. Women shouldn't have to worry that their taxi driver is going to rape them, or that demons like Murray will be released early and quietly move in next door. The public has a right to more than 'optics' from a justice minister moving in slow-motion. It's about time Ahern started making a tangible difference on the streets of Ireland.
Long arm of the law? It's more like 'long finger of the law'.

dkenny@tribune.ie

February 14, 2010

We can rebuild our spirit, but Cowen must rebuild our trust

2010-02-24T15:51:00.001Z

Sunday Tribune 7 February

Brian Cowen wore a top hat, tails and tapped his cane on the stage. "You've got to… aaaaaccent-uate the positive…" he sang, "ellllllimmm-inate the negative… and don't mess with Mr In-Between!" He attempted to do the splits, failed and slid along the dancefloor on his knees instead, doing 'jazz hands'. The crowd was delirious. Someone threw their underpants at him and…
I woke up in a cold sweat. It had been a bad dream: the product of too much cheese and RTÉ's report of Cowen's speech to Dublin Chamber of Commerce on Thursday. Our leader wants us to stop being negative. We need to be like the heroes of 1916, lads. We need some new optimism, lads. Neo-optimism, if you like.
As unintentionally funny speeches go, this was second only to Donie Cassidy's mad ramble in the Seanad on Wednesday. (Donie kept referring to the 'Jack and Jill' charity as the 'Jekyll and Hyde' charity.)
The Taoiseach's pep talk was all the more remarkable as it came on the heels of a report which shows that Ireland is suffering Europe's worst confidence crisis. The Edelman Trust Barometer says our trust in government has fallen to 28% (global average is 49%), while trust in business is 31% (average is 50%). The latest MRBI poll says three quarters of us are dissatisfied with this government.
What planet is Cowen living on? It will take more than rhetoric to get the nation behind him. With its references to 1916, the Taoiseach aimed his speech at our nobler side. Anyone who doesn't heed his call is a pessimistic traitor. All critics are just being "populist".
"Populist" is the latest dirty word Fianna Fáil uses to dismiss dissenters. If you hammer home a point about cronyism or expenses, you are being "populist". This paper was accused of being "populist" when it pursued John O'Donoghue over his crazy expenses.
Even Jim McDaid, who is permanently camped under the public gallery, has a new aversion to "populism". Last Wednesday he, bizarrely, told Liveline that headshops shouldn't be banned "for purely populist reasons". Jim – not for the first time – was driving against oncoming traffic.
The opposition were also accused of being "populist" when they urged Brian Lenihan to intervene over Permanent TSB's rates hikes. Of course, Lenihan couldn't intervene, but it's the opposition's job to rattle his cage on behalf of the mistrustful 'Great Unwashed' – ie, be "populist".
There were plenty of reasons, last week alone, for the public not to trust Cowen and Co. For example, how can we trust transport minister Noel Dempsey about, well, anything? Last August, we learned that taxpayers will compensate the operators of the M3 if car numbers fall below a certain target. Dempsey refused to reveal what that target was.
Last week, he gave us the silent treatment again and wouldn't explain why he appointed his election canvasser to the National Transport Authority board. Damien Usher is, coincidentally, a former bank manager.
Or what about the revelation that the company which built the M50 for €58m will ultimately make €1.15bn from it – at our expense. We're paying that company €50m a year for the next decade in 'compensation' for buying the road off them. Padraig Flynn and George Redmond signed off on that contract.
Or how can we trust the Greens to protect our environment when they seem powerless to halt the building of the massive Poolbeg incinerator? Will John Gormley be steamrolled like he was over the banks? After his betrayal of Tara, how can we trust Gormley to handle concerns over the proposed Slane bypass at Newgrange? There are 44 archaeological sites within 500 metres of the route. Will he ask councillor Nick Killian what he meant when he dismissed local archaeology as "historic bric-a-brac"? Can we trust Gormley to safeguard our 'bric-a-brac' heritage? (See www.savenewgrange.org).
Or how can we trust Eamon Ryan's posturing over transparency when he appoints a new Commissioner for Energy Regulation (€165,000 pa) after a phone conversation?
And there's more. How can we trust the state's judicial system when a serial rapist like Michael Murray can be sentenced to 18 years, released after 10 and then go to ground?
How can we trust that system not to waste our money when a district court judge can run up €91,909 in expenses and the constitution won't allow us to lower his/her wages?
How can we even trust Irish businesses to sell us Irish goods? Did you know that Fruitfield's 'Old Time Irish' marmalade, which has an address in Tallaght on the label, is made in the UK and Portugal?
The above are just a few examples for Cowen to contemplate. All "populist" topics worth highlighting. He is correct when he says we need to rebuild our spirit. As leader of the country, it's up to him to rebuild our trust.
Half a million are on the dole. There's no harm in the media and opposition playing to that gallery once in a while – within reason – if it reminds the government that it's being watched. Cowen can make a song and dance about being optimistic, but he must first eliminate the negative before the disenchanted can consider accentuating the positive. We'll give you your 'neo-optimism' when you get rid of the nepotism, Taoiseach.
Noel Dempsey, please note.

dkenny@tribune.ie

February 7, 2010

An all-Ireland hero is let down by political pygmies

2010-02-24T15:49:00.001Z

Sunday Tribune 24 January

"This man is a true hero." Gay O'Brien blushed as my father gushed about his bravery. "He filmed Derry in 1968." It was October 1979 and I was 12. I hadn't a clue what the old man was on about. Filming a city sounded acutely boring. Nonetheless, I shook Gay's hand and made all the right noises.
Afterwards, my father explained that 'Derry' had been a watershed in the north's history. Civil Rights activists and elected representatives had been baton-charged by the RUC on the city's Duke Street while making a peaceful protest. O'Brien filmed the officers going berserk and his RTÉ footage was shown around the world. Finally, outsiders saw the RUC for what it was: a brutal, sectarian organisation.
O'Brien had put personal safety aside and stood his ground in the face of savagery. My father was right to embarrass him: he was a hero.
PSNI officer, Peadar Heffron is a hero too. Not for his exploits as captain of the PSNI GAA team or his championing of Irish in the Queen's constabulary. Not even for surviving a dissident Republican bomb earlier this month – he was a hero long before that. Heffron is a hero because he, too, stood his ground despite threats. He answered the call to create a new North and joined the PSNI. He took his Catholic Irishness into what many still see as enemy territory to dilute the force's old RUC reputation.
His decision to do this is a measure of how far this island has come since O'Brien filmed events in Derry. His payment for that decision was an amputated leg and multiple horrific injuries. Last week, Heffron regained consciousness to the sound of squabbling at Hillsborough. The DUP and Sinn Féin were head-butting each other again over the devolution of policing from London to Belfast – something all parties had signed up to.
As Heffron's wife, Fiona, reflected on her husband's future, the two men responsible for keeping peace in the North went running to mammy. Peter Robinson and Martin McGuinness tugged at the governments' apron strings and Gordon Brown and Brian Cowen doled out the sticking plasters and Savlon. There was also a flash of the wooden spoon and 'daddy' America was phoned at work. This was a soap opera – with the same old risible plotline and characters. It was another show of the pathetic, self-important nonsense we're used to from the North's politicians.
While Heffron's mutilated body was being nursed in hospital, McGuinness and Robinson were bickering over 'points of principle'. Time wasted over 'points of principle' is time given to malcontents like those who attacked Heffron. It creates disillusion and breeds more recruits for their pointless 'cause'. There is no time for 'points of principle' while the bombers are regrouping. The DUP and SF were playing politics with people's lives. The former Chuckle Brothers have become the Bare Knuckle Brothers.
Jim Allister of the TUV hit the target when he said that the DUP and the Shinners can't even get their act together over the education system. Why, he asked, give them even more power? His observation appeared to be reinforced by their play-acting for the cameras.
There is now major concern that this pantomime will be staged every time there's a hiccup in the peace process. The Knuckle Brothers must stop throwing shapes and start governing. The alternative is a slide back into the past.
It's only 12 years since the celebration of the Good Friday agreement was rocked by the Omagh bombing. Twelve years since 29 people were blown apart. The era of paramilitary barbarism was only yesterday in our island's long history.
It's only five years since the GAA lifted Rule 21 which banned policemen like Heffron from playing gaelic games. It's only 17 years since the lifting of Section 31, which outlawed the broadcasting of Sinn Féin voices. It's only 26 years since a Loyalist mob invaded Clontibret, Co Monaghan. A mob led by Peter Robinson.
The past is still very close.
Our Taoiseach's involvement in last week's mess highlights how important the North's stability is to the Republic. Peace has brought both jurisdictions closer together. The cross-border traffic we witness at Christmas is testament to the eased relationship.
The lessons learned over 40 years make it harder to understand attacks like those on Heffron. They also make it harder to understand last week's time-wasting.
The histrionics at Hillsborough did him a huge disservice. He has paid his price for peace. It's now up to the North's leaders to honour his sacrifice and start behaving like statesmen rather than sulky local politicians.
Robinson said of the Heffron outrage: "Those who perpetrate such attacks will not succeed in returning Northern Ireland to the dark days of the past." Maybe not, but squabbling politicians like himself and McGuinness might.
In the meantime, Peadar Heffron's pain, like Gay O'Brien's archive footage, is a reminder that the dark days 'haven't gone away' yet.
His GAA-playing days are over, but Heffron is an all-Ireland hero in the truest sense of the phrase.

dkenny@tribune.ie

January 31, 2010

Why public will gobble Gormley's Greens at election

2010-02-24T15:47:00.001Z

Sunday Tribune 24 January

There's a new 'green' in town. Last week, farmers unveiled the first new vegetable in 10 years. It's called the 'flower sprout' and is a weird-looking kale hybrid that veggie heads hope will give the maligned Brussels sprout an image makeover.
News of the flower sprout's arrival broke on the same day that another green vegetable was being boiled in public. Like the sprout, Green Party leader John Gormley is hugely unpopular and leaves a noxious odour behind him. On Wednesday, Pat Kenny turned the heat up on his defence of the government's whitewash of the banking crisis. Gormley said he welcomed the Commission of Inquiry, which will save key political figures a public grilling. (End of cookery puns.)
Just in case there's any confusion: this was the same Gormley who demanded a FULL PUBLIC inquiry. This was the same Gormley who pointedly didn't attend the Dáil announcement last Tuesday. His colleagues stayed away too.
Even by Gormley's usual hypocritical standards, his performance was off the scale. He hid behind buzzwords like 'scoping'. What's scoping? Is it some unpleasant medical procedure we get to inflict on the bankers? No. Scoping means drawing up the terms of reference for the inquiry… four months from now. The commission will begin in July and a document will be delivered next year – three years after the crisis began. Gormley didn't get the public inquiry he wanted. He got a delaying tactic.
He told Pat he couldn't understand why people were "dissing" the commission. (It nearly rhymed. "Yo! Don't you be dissin'… mah co-mish-on..."). Memo to gangsta rapper Gormley: people are "dissing" it because they want to see the architects of their misfortune dragged through the streets. They want revenge. He knows this despite his protestations.
They don't want a party with no integrity left propping up another one that had no integrity to begin with. Since signing up with Fianna Fáil, the Greens have compromised on every major principle they stood for. Before entering government, they supported the Shell to Sea movement, the halting of US military planes landing at Shannon and the re-routing of the M3.
Today, Eamon Ryan is in charge of the Corrib gas project and military flights still stop at Shannon. The latter is a classic example of the Greens being duped by a Fianna Fáil stalling tactic. In 2008, the government was forced to set up a cabinet committee to review the searching of suspected CIA rendition flights. Last week, Amnesty's Colm O'Gorman recalled Ciaran Cuffe happily endorsing it. Two years on, the committee has only met twice and there is still no review. There's a lesson to be learned in that.
Tara is the greatest betrayal of all, with Gormley steamrolling the M3 through the historic valley, despite the international outcry. His defence of this vandalism is even more galling when you consider that the M3 tolls are going to a multinational for the next 40 years. When there is a shortfall in usage the Irish taxpayer will make up the difference.
Now there is another archaeological flashpoint on the horizon. Plans were announced last week for a bypass at Slane, 500m from the edge of the Newbridge world monument. Who wants this vandal in charge when the fight begins over this?
Even in a business as devoid of conscience as politics, Gormley stands out as a man missing the shame gene. He was very misleading on Prime Time about the sourcing of extra grit/salt during the freeze.
He knows the banking inquiry is buying time for Brian Cowen. He also knows that the Toxic Trinity of banker, builder and politician is still with us. Two weeks ago, housing minister Michael Finneran said there were up to 140,000 unoccupied houses around the country. The construction industry suggested 40,000.
However, a study carried out at NUI Maynooth concluded there are 302,000: enough to satisfy demand for years to come. That's bad news for the construction industry – and the government if it has been spinning figures to suit its building buddies. Here is the physical proof that Ireland was deliberately over-developed by the Toxic Trinity.
Next month, the third member of that trinity, the bankers, will start throwing people out of their homes as the repossession moratorium comes to an end. This is as good a reason as any for Gormley to have forced Fianna Fáil's hand over the banks.
By his own lights he had the power to demand a full public inquiry. In 2008, he ran into problems with the EU over his plans to ban incandescent light bulbs. His spokesman said those problems could be over-ridden by EU legislation. Why couldn't Gormley have applied similar logic to the banking inquiry? If legislation is hindering you, find a way around it or change it. As with everything else, he sold out to stay in. He betrayed us, just as he betrayed our heritage. He has proven again that he believes in power at all costs.
His inquiry is a con job. Like the flower sprout, it's an illusion. A sprout is still a sprout no matter how you dress it up. A whitewash is still a whitewash.
The only consolation is – come election time – Gormley is one green the public will really enjoy getting their teeth into.

dkenny@tribune.ie

January 24, 2010

2010-02-24T15:43:00.002Z

The Boat That Rocks

Sunday Tribune 17 January, 2010

Did I ever tell you I once skated from England to Spain? Then took a break for some rock-climbing at Gibraltar? Oh, and I surfed from there to Rome?" It would be an interesting conversation-stopper to hit the grandkids with. And technically it would be true. The Independence of The Seas has an ice rink, rock-face and surfing deck included in its many amenities – and I mean many amenities.
The second largest cruise ship in the world is a staggering sight, with its 15 passenger decks and towering funnel. If it was turned on its bow, it would be taller than the Eiffel Tower. Not that you'd want to see it turned on its bow. Remember Titanic?
It's so massive that our main concern was whether it would swallow us up. Would it be so colossal and impersonal that our fortnight would be spent endlessly queuing? Could it manage 4,000 passengers and still have room for the finer touches?
The first hint of an answer came when we noticed that the day of the week was printed on the carpets in the lifts. Why bother? We found out the reason later in the week.
We were booked into a third-deck Ocean View state room which had a wide, fixed porthole at the bed head. The Balcony rooms above are airier but being able to prop your pillow against the porthole and watch the waves below wasn't a bad trade-off. There's adequate storage, a compact bathroom, a minibar and TV. You won't use the latter though. There's too much to see.
We went for a ramble on deck. It was a grey day but the bright blues and yellows of the pool, and the pinks and oranges of the cocktails, gave Southampton an almost tropical feel.
Drinks in hand we leaned on the handrail as the Isle of Wight drifted away and… nearly leaped overboard when the ship's horn sounded. The Independence's klaxon, like the rest of the ship, is CAPITAL LETTERS throughout. It bellows: 'LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME!'
Rattled, we headed to the top of the ship to see the sporting facilities. Above us, helmeted passengers picked their way up a man-made rockface several thousand miles high (43ft). Others ran about in the hockey and basketball courts. A few teenagers queued for the FlowRider – a wave simulator for deck-top surfboarding. It packs a punch and watching cocky teenagers being flung about by the force of its water was excellent entertainment. We bravely opted for mini-golf instead.
The sea air builds up a great appetite, which is good as there's food everywhere. There are 10 eateries to choose from and even a self-service frozen yoghurt machine by the pools. Above it, there's a running track. If you want to annoy smug joggers, place your sun lounger across it and sit there licking your ice cream. I did.
One of the worries about cruising is that you'll be stuck sharing a table with a stranger who picks their teeth or won't stop talking at you. The main dining area also has just two sittings (6.30pm and 8.45pm), which may not suit, either. The plus side is that the food here is excellent and elegantly served. There are alternatives, however. The vast Windjammer and Jade buffets serve food almost all around the clock. This is heaven, with everything from roasts to veggie meals, Asian, pizzas, fruit, burgers and salads.
There is also the excellent, if formal, Portofino Italian restaurant and Chops Grille and Johnny Rocket's diner which all have a surcharge.
We opted for My Time Dining, which meant we could book a table for two at any time in the main restaurant. To do this, you will have to agree in advance to pay your tips (see panel), but we felt it was worth it.
There's no shortage of after-dinner entertainment. The live shows in the 1,200-seat theatre are Broadway quality, if you like that sort of thing. There's also a casino, movies, live game shows and ice-skating performances.
There are 14 bars, featuring various forms of live entertainment from the excellent Schooners and Bolero music lounges to a not-so-excellent 'English Pub' called the Dog and Badger. This is in the centre of the ship on the Royal Promenade, which is a 'main street' with cafes, wine bars shops, boutiques and souvenir market stalls.
The patrons of the D and B sat outside it as if they were on their hols in Fuengirola. Now, I'm not a snob me, but… actually I am a snob. I can't understand why anyone would go on a cruise and spend it below deck in a mock 'pub'.
As the ship sails from Southampton it's understandable that a lot of the entertainment is geared towards the English, but it got a bit grating after a while. One Union-Jacked, 'Knees Up Muvver Brahhhhnnnn' night on the Promenade was so 'geezer-ish' we ran screeching to our cabin. A Norwegian couple we later befriended asked us if they had wandered onto the set of EastEnders.
From Southampton we travelled to Vigo in north Spain, Lisbon, Cadiz, Cagliari then on to Italy taking in Rome, Florence and Pisa, back to Cannes and Gibraltar and then home.
There is a drawback with cruising on a ship this size. If you like to explore then this is not the ideal way to do it as time is tight at each destination. This is more of a 'tasting menu' cruise than a slap-up European meal.
It's actually tempting just to stay on board – there's so much to do that the ship is a 'destination' in its own right. Sports, gaming, line-dancing classes, quizzes, seminars... Best of all, there's lying by the pool eating ice cream.
Parents can happily dispose of their offspring (not overboard, that's not allowed) in the kid's amusement centre and not see them for two weeks, if they like. There is a water park, the H2O Zone, and the activities rota will make their little heads spin.
Once they're out of the way you're free to have a quiet drink or go a few rounds in the gym's boxing ring with your spouse. Alternatively, you can just sit still and watch the sun go down over north Africa on a balmy evening, while distant forest fires light up the sky over Spain, as we did. (We were celebrating a significant anniversary.)
We thoroughly enjoyed our time on the Independence, which is skippered by the affable Teo Strazicic – a gifted artist in his spare time. He and his staff have turned an extraordinary vessel into an organic, living one. All the finer details are taken care of, right down to the 'weekday' carpets in the lifts. Remember them? As time progresses you get so relaxed you lose track of the days. It's a subtle touch, but…
If you want an alternative holiday, scything through the waves in five-star luxury, then this is highly recommended. It's particularly well-suited for groups of friends or families.
Be aware though, with increased discounting, cruising may be losing its 'exclusivity', if that's what you're looking for.
Was the Independence of the Seas too big and impersonal? Definitely not. It felt a lot smaller as I hauled myself down the gangway – but then I was a lot bigger. I blame all those ice creams by the pool.

Tipping

The work ethos on board the Independence is American and therefore tipping is expected. This is a source of annoyance for many non-Yanks. Last year Royal Caribbean said staff received far less tips when British passengers were on board.
The company is looking at addressing the issue for the Southampton run.
Whatever you feel about it, the staff work extremely hard and depend on their tips. Allow €11.50 per passenger, including children, per day for cabin and restaurant staff. 15% is automatically added to drinks. Booze isn't cheap, so be careful.

How my battle with weight nearly consumed me

2010-02-24T15:41:00.001Z

Sunday Tribune 17 January 2010

It's relentless. A flier has just dropped onto the mat advertising something called 'Salsa Slims'. I've put it with the other ads for Crunch Fatness and Blobwatchers 'Lose Weight, Slim Down – you fat bastard!' programmes. Under the litter tray.
It seems our lives are run on a marketing man's calendar. Christmas parties are advertised in summer, the festive season starts at Hallowe'en. January sales begin in December and summer holidays are advertised in January. These are sandwiched between new year's plugs for nicotine patches and fad diets.
The latter ads are the most galling. You're urged to eat everything in sight over Christmas, then, a week later, the same marketeers are tut-tutting at the weight you've put on. "You've had Christmas, now PURGE, fatso. Get in shape." Whose shape? We're not all supposed to be the same shape. That's what makes us individuals.
As I type this, Gillian McKeith is haranguing someone on the TV. Angelina Jolie's weight loss is Grazia's cover story and the annoying Kerry Katona is battling the bulge in Closer magazine. Last week, Michael Flatley was pictured holding in his tum on the beach under the headline 'Flatley has pull-in power'.
There's an endless media barrage to make us believe in some standardised shape for a happy life. It's not just women that buy into this rubbish. Men do too, although they won't admit it. The Flatley picture is a perfect example of the hypocrisy surrounding weight issues. Whereas it's not okay to poke fun at a woman's physique, it's acceptable to slag off a man's. It doesn't bother us. Well actually, it does.
Seven years ago, constant comments/jokes led me to become obsessed with my weight.
It started out as a mild midlife crisis. Looking through some holiday snaps, I barely recognised myself. I saw a balding, fat man. My hair had started receding, but I wasn't really fat. I was 13 and a half stone, which for 5' 10" is fine. I've always had a skinny frame and when I put on weight it goes on my chin and stomach. This can make me look a lot heavier than I am. People started joking about my 'porkiness'. My confidence went through the floor.
At the same time, we started looking to buy a house. Mortgage, impending baldness and obesity: I was becoming middle-aged. I started a bastardised version of the Atkins diet: cutting out all fatty foods and carbohydrates. I ate only twice a day: lunch was a tray of ham and dinner was grilled chicken breast with veg.
I exercised like mad. In three weeks I had lost a stone. The diet was boring but my confidence was returning. I worked harder and cut down my food intake. Meals were snack-sized. I was becoming obsessed with dieting and exercising.
Food became a nuisance and, really foolishly, I started smoking again. This speeded up my weight loss. My appetite went entirely and my weight plummeted.
I was so wrapped up in dieting, I couldn't see how gaunt I had become. For the record, I wasn't anorexic or bulimic – just very stupid.
In 10 weeks, my weight had dropped to nine and a half stone. I couldn't sleep at night as I kept cramping up. I felt nauseous and exhausted and paranoid about putting my weight back on. I couldn't eat.
As I had no fat left to burn, my body had started eating muscle tissue. My legs and arms were like rope. Walking became uncomfortable as my legs felt as if they were always on the verge of buckling. Even sitting down on my boney butt was uncomfortable.
I got so skinny that my wedding ring kept slipping down my finger. People told me how terrible I looked, just as they had when I was chubby. That was a great help to my self-confidence.
I came back from holiday and saw another person in the pictures: with hollow cheeks and ribs poking through.
My nutritionist sister finally got through to me when she told me the heart is a muscle and I was probably damaging mine. It was a battle to get back to a reasonable weight as my stomach had shrunk. A year and a half after starting my diet I was back to 11 stone.
Since then, I've been around the 11 and half stone mark although my chin might suggest otherwise. I don't care any more. After having been through the (tread)mill I realise that's just my body shape. There are more important things to worry about.
The media's pressure to lose weight is cynical and profit-driven. And hypocritical: last year Kate Moss was castigated for saying "nothing tastes better than skinny" by the same magazines pressuring young women to lose weight.
I know I'm open to ridicule for writing this piece, but there are thousands of men who are vulnerable to that pressure too, and won't admit it. It's estimated that one in five anorexics is male – the number is believed to be rising. There's no shame in talking about it.
A third of us will break our new year's diet resolutions over the next fortnight. For some, that may not be such a bad thing.
To hell with weight fascism – here's to the Fatkins diet.

dkenny@tribune.ie

January 17, 2010

Illness hasn't turned Lenihan into Superman

2010-02-24T15:38:00.002Z

Sunday Tribune 10 January 2010

Peter Robinson's lip trembled as he spoke about his pain. He looked like a man with a thousand Lambegs banging in his head. His voice faltered as he spoke of his wife's infidelity and suicide attempt last March. He would "get through this".
Gerry Adams' voiced trembled on Pat Kenny's show as he countered negative reaction to his revelations of childhood abuse. Like Robinson's, his story was very affecting. Here was a heart being bared. A heart we didn't necessarily know existed in the first place.
Brian Lenihan's voice was strong and clear as he told Sean O'Rourke about his cancer. The nation's heart crumpled to the floor.
The sound of the alpha male breaking has a distinctive resonance. The harder the exterior, the louder the crack. Alpha males are hard-wired not to show emotion and so we watch every gesture, listen to every syllable and wait for their humanity to break through. When it does it can be devastating. Robinson's 'snap' came with his wish for 2010 to be a "better year" and Adams' when he hinted he may have suffered abuse. Lenihan's came with his declaration that he would defeat cancer or be defeated by it.
The image of the stoic Irishman suppressing emotion always brings a lump to the collective throat. We become afflicted with a form of 'Irish amnesia' and forget his transgressions. We temporarily forget that Robinson's a bigot and Adams has blood on his hands.
The Irish 'nice' gene forces our emotions to over-ride our common sense. As we are incapable of doing anything by half measures, this frequently leads to national hysteria. Remember the Thierry Henry furore?
What I'm about to write next will anger many readers. I can't apologise for that. This amnesia and hysteria was evident in the response to Brian Lenihan's interview last week.
His words were inspirational and he reinforced my opinion that he is a decent, hardworking man. However, the public and press reaction went way over the top, even by Irish standards.
On Monday, Liveline buzzed with sympathetic callers. This is the same Liveline that has aired public-sector workers weeping over his cuts to their pay. The same forum for everyone with a gripe about his work as finance minister.
The following day the newspapers were full of unbridled praise for his undoubted courage. 'Braveheart Brian's battle cry lifts the country' yelled the Irish Independent, which also compared him to Winston Churchill.
The Daily Mail, not to be outdone, called him 'Superman'. He "has united the country". He is our "talisman". Superman? Talis-man? Oh, man.
Can we please stop for a reality check? Brian Lenihan is very ill and we all feel sorry for him and wish him well. However, his illness hasn't suddenly given him superhuman powers. He's still the same Brian Lenihan we criticised for setting up Nama. He's the same man who cut the price of booze while cutting carers' allowances. He's the same minister who axed medical cards for the elderly. The same man who crumbled to the bookies and rescinded his increase in gambling tax while levying the rest of us.
Now he is Superman? Get a grip.
It's time we stopped searching the skies for potential saviours. If we're not waiting for Our Lady to appear at Knock, we're handing an ill politician a cape with an S on it. We need to stop being misty-eyed and dreaming of superheroes. Lenihan is still the same finance minister he was when he delivered his budget.
We can admire him on a human level (and I do), but we must separate his private and political personas. We can't pull our punches as an electorate because we feel sorry for him. We must continue to lambaste him when he slips up – as he did over the carers' allowance.
That sounds harsh. It's not intended to be, but after last week's coverage some balance is needed. I hope Lenihan will understand what I mean by that.
He told the opposition not to give him an easy ride in the Dáil: to leave the kid gloves at home. The citizens of this state must leave the gloves off, too. Lenihan has shown himself to be a pragmatist over the past 14 months. He's been on a learning curve and it's not unreasonable to suggest that he sometimes heeds us when we shout. He admitted his mistake over medical cards, for example. He needs our voices to guide him as much he needs the opposition's.
His illness should not cloud our judgement of his decisions. When he is being grilled on RTÉ, the temptation to think "ah, ease up on him, he's not well" should be resisted.
Something similar can be said of Robinson and Adams. While feeling sympathy for them, we must also realise that their alpha male confessions were damage limitation exercises. Robinson spoke in advance of BBC revelations about his wife's murky financial affairs. Adams has been accused of lying about his alleged paedophile brother's relationship with Sinn Féin. Lenihan's confession had no hidden agenda. The only damage he can hope to limit is to his health. He is a fine man and deserves our unstinting sympathy in a balanced, measured way.
His recovery should be wished and prayed for… but it shouldn't overshadow the recovery of our nation.

dkenny@tribune.ie

January 10, 2010

New Year's Predictions

2010-02-24T15:32:00.002Z

Sunday Tribune 1 January, 2010

The best thing about 2009 is that it’s over. Unfortunately, in 2010 the government will invent new ways to squeeze even more money out of us. In addition to Nama, Brian Lenihan will set up Sofa (the Search Out extra Finance Agency).
This will deploy squads of taxmen to rummage down the back of the nation’s couches for spare coins. Apparently, there is still €370m-worth of pre-euro money hidden around the country. Start rummaging.
Iceland will continue to be a great source of relief to us as we say “could be worse. We could be Iceland”. We will continue to outperform Iceland financially. Iceland the supermarket chain, that is.
The financial institutions will announce the creation of new jobs… in India, by outsourcing. (Hibernian Aviva have already started that ball rolling.)
Sometime this year, the search party will return with news of George Lee. Has anybody seen him since he was elected last June? It might also find ‘ad hoc’ minister Mary Harney – it’s about time some party took her in. This year she will finally leave Biffo’s – and our medicine – cabinets.
Bertie Ahern will be elected honorary mayor of Newry. A year ago he told Newry Chamber of Commerce “the area deserves to be to the forefront of Ireland’s economic renaissances”. His book-signing there before Christmas, with the other southern shoppers, certainly played its part.
Visionary Joe Coleman will make further predictions. Last year, he forecast visions at Knock and pilgrims witnessed the “sun dancing in the sky”. This year I predict Our Lady appearing on ‘Dancing With The Stars’ on the telly.
Dermot Ahern’s Blasphemy Law will get its first test case. Possibly over the above gag. God will be called as witness for the defence. Get out of THAT one Ahern.
I predict another vision in the sky – that of John O’Donoghue taking a cheapo Ryanair flight.
Mary Coughlan will receive the Noble [sic] Prize for her thesis on Darwin’s Theory of Revolution and Frankenstein’s Theory of Relatives.
The Kimono will finally take off as Ivor Callely spots a gap in the rag trade. Beverly Flynn will have the upside-down coat hanger surgically removed from her smug gob.
Iran, continuing its brinksmanship, will play a practical joke and swap chairs with Ireland at the UN. Later, as the Yanks are nuking us, the Iranians will claim not to have had their “contact lenses in that day” and blame the alphabetical seating. ‘Iran, Iraq, Ireland’…
In showbusiness, Big Brother will end and I predict a headline in this paper that reads ‘Big Brother (no-one) is watching you’.
X Factor will return with Louis Walsh’s latest protégé: Jed Ward – a singing member of the Travelling community with a split personality.
In sport, Tiger Woods will restart on the Pro Tour. Not the golf one, the other kind of ‘pro’ tour.
As the monsoon season begins, Disney will buy County Galway and turn it into a water theme park called ‘Pirates of the Corrib’.
Ryanair will introduce ‘Pay-as-you-go’ airmiles. Run out of credit mid-flight? Off you goooooooooo….
Despite cutbacks at the station, TV3 will somehow find money to set up Ursula Halligan’s new office in the oncology unit of the Mater.
Finally, my top prediction for 2010 is … the end of the world. Later this month, in Switzerland, Cern’s Large Hadron Collider will be restarted. Critics say the Big Bang machine will create a black hole that will rip Earth apart. So forget the above predictions – we’re doomed.
The good news is that we’re all going down together. See you on the other side, folks.

We need the unsinkable community spirit of the west

2010-02-06T15:21:00.002Z

Sunday Tribune, 27 December

"He'll never make it. He must be mental." We watched the brown water at Kiltartan rise higher up the JCB's wheels. "Seriously, he's mental."
The stinking river, tainted by slurry and overflowing septic tanks, flooded across the broken N18 outside Gort, turning the hard shoulder into a beige waterfall. A snapped 'Stop' sign lay semi-submerged in its foam.
The driver was hell-bent on ferrying his neighbour's home. The torrent was hell-bent on making his digger join the 'Stop' sign. It was a tense few minutes.
We started to breathe again when his tyres re-emerged and he barrelled, defiantly, up the road.
There was a lot of defiance washing around Galway last month when I visited its flood sites. People whose homes were destroyed were defying the urge to drown in their own misery. They were determined that their neighbours would do the same.
In the hinterland of Beagh, I traipsed across acres of Somme-like mud with Hugh O'Donnell. Hugh's family, including his aged mother, had to be airlifted from the farmhouse he was born in. He, too, was defiant as he led us to his sub-aquatic home: he wouldn't let his spirit sink along with his belongings. "It just proves that you're not guaranteed anything in this world," he said philosophically, as the water lapped around his window sills.
His chief concern was that his mother was safe and happy "and that's all that counts". No self pity. 'There's always someone worse off than yourself'.
Above the waterline, we could see a kettle and a picture on the wall – the flotsam of 50 years of family life on the O'Donnell farm. Memories, his wife Kathleen later told me, were attached to every fitting: even to the gate Hugh's late father had built. There were memories attached to frames as well: the only pictures Kathleen had of her mother were in the house.
"I lie awake at night and wonder if I'll ever see a picture of her again." It was not a complaint, it was a regret – and all the more poignant for it.
Everywhere we went, we heard the same philosophy flowing through the conversation: don't complain, there's always someone worse off than you.
On Ashfield Drive in Ballinasloe, Michelle Devlin showed us around her parents' home. The flood water had receded, leaving cracks in the walls. The Sacred Heart hung behind her father Eamonn. "This is our dream home for 21 years," he said. "Now it may have to be knocked down." There was no display of, justifiable, self-pity. Just a resigned sadness and an overflowing concern for others as Michelle listed the damage her neighbours had suffered. There's always somebody worse off than you: someone deserving of your sympathy even though you're up the creek yourself.
The sad stories flooded out, as did the warmth and humanity of the people we met. Neighbours' dogs were being minded, houses were being cleaned and possessions stored. The Church of Ireland chapel was offered for mass as Catholic St Michael's was under threat from the river.
There was no public/private sector divide. There was no 'them and us'. There was just 'us'.
After a year of disharmony and disturbing revelations, here was tangible proof that we are still a fundamentally decent race.
We frequently behave like idiots – and we have some terrible skeletons in the national closet – but at the core we're disarmingly kind, despite what we say about ourselves.
Our problem is that we are, collectively, mad. Freud said we're the only race "for whom psychoanalysis is of no use whatsoever". We're too contrary.
Part of this madness manifests itself in our Dysfunctional National Body Image (© Dr Kenny). We don't know how small we are. We look in the mirror and see a big nation, although we're only the same size as Manchester. Look at the first Lisbon Treaty vote when we told Europe to stuff it. Four million of us against 500 million. We're nuts.
Look at the declaration of war with France over Thierry Henry. If we could harness the energy we wasted complaining about him we could be out of this mess by next week.
This lack of objectivity has led us to expect more from the world than we are entitled to. The result has been an inflated sense of entitlement which has now driven a wedge between the public and private sectors. We've wasted a year squabbling when we should have been behaving like a community. We're not some great sovereign power. We're a small community on the west coast of Europe that occasionally punches above its weight. We're the south Galway of the EU – and there's no shame in that.
Hopefully this new year we will start acting like a community again, bear the hardships for each other and stop the interminable bickering. The defiant, unsinkable community spirit of the west has shown that we can unite to ride out any storm – despite what Freud said.
That spirit will serve us better than the one displayed by Siptu's Jack O'Connor when he talks of indefinite strikes in February. We just need to tap into it.
The west's awake – the rest of Ireland needs to start waking up too.

dkenny@tribune.ie

December 27, 2009

At Christmastime, we let in light and banish shade

2010-02-06T15:17:00.001Z

Sunday Tribune, 20 December 2009

Warning: the following contains scenes of people enjoying themselves. Might be suitable for children.

We lit the tree in our village last week. We poured petrol over it and… only joking kids (don't try that at home). We turned on the lights and Christmas was welcomed in on a cold dark, Dublin evening.
Christmas always looks its best at night. Black suits it. It accentuates the light winking on trees and gutterings and spilling out of living rooms. Shadows retreat. The longest nights of the year are actually the brightest – and it's a man-made brightness.
When that brightness returned to our village last week, something else retreated. For an hour, cynicism, sadness and futility were exiled to the edge of town.
Small voices bubbled up around the stage in the church carpark. Clouds of breath hung in the air as children sang the praises of Rudolf's remarkable hooter. Inflatable snowpeople hummed along as air was pumped up their white posteriors from an invisible generator. The chill crept up through the soles of my shoes. "Santy," we were told, "will be along presently."
Feet shuffled, noses snuffled and children raced through prayers as Father John blessed the tree.
"Godblessourtree. Aaaaamen-wheressanta?"
The switch was pressed, the tree blazed. Light was slung over its branches like a broken cobweb. Then Santa appeared, in a shower of sparks, on top of Goat Castle. Children squealed and hundreds of adults, including non-parents like me, were led by the hand out of reality back to our childhood. Everybody was smiling.
Later, walking past the four dead businesses on Castle Street, I wondered what it would be like to see Christmas through a child's eyes again. To rub out the rubbish bits of reality and only see the good stuff. To blot out the misery of the past year.
Then I remembered the story of Jenny O'Connell. In May, the Dun Laoghaire mum had her sight restored after 46 years of blindness. She was able to see her husband and her children for the first time. She was able to see all the things we take for granted.
I realised that this is the first Christmas Jenny has seen since she was 11 years old. The visible world will be bright and new again on Christmas morning.
What a year to regain your sight, though. Since May, there has been nothing but images of floods, marches and angry faces. Jenny may have seen Alan O'Brien's, contorted with rage on The Frontline, as he berated Pat Kenny over his wages. Hardly a sight for sore eyes.
She may have seen Paul Gogarty's face as he effed and blinded in the Dáil.
She may have seen Bertie Ahern's as he told TV3 he wasn't sure if his years in politics "had been worth it".
She will finally have put a face to Brian Cowen but may still wonder what most of his government look like. From May to late September they were on holidays and now they're gone until 19 January. Biffo's probably on the couch, munching a mince pie reading this. Hey Biffo, quit dropping crumbs all over me, will you? And put on a shirt, like a good man.
She also regained her sight in time to read the headline announcing the cuts to her allowances and those of her blind husband.
She may have seen her first Christmas card in five decades. Hopefully it won't have been from her local TD. The exchequer spends €2.7m on TDs' cards. Imagine: your benefit is slashed and a card arrives with a picture of a politician on it – and you've paid for it. Happy Christmas.
She can finally see a Christmas panto again, if she likes. I recommend 'The Pied Piper' in Thurles tonight. Michael Lowry is making his stage debut in it as the 'good mayor' who holds the balance of power in Thurles/Hamelin. All together now: "He's behind you, Biffo – just so long as it suits him."
Apart from all the stupidity, avarice and anger, Jenny will see good things too.
After years of darkness, she will be surrounded by light. She will see it twinkling on trees and strung across streets. She will see carol singers, Santa hats and spray-frosted windows. She may be fortunate enough to see plundered selection boxes and faces streaked with chocolate. She'll see torn wrapping paper. She will see tinsel and baubles and cribs and stars and angels. She'll see primped people hiding hangovers at Christmas mass.
She'll see eejits jumping into the icy water at the Forty Foot. She'll see those eejits, purple and jibbering, race back ashore.
She'll see kindness in most faces and hopefully smiles on those of her family around the table. She can finally see where the sprouts are.
After 46 years of waiting, Jenny O'Connell will see Santa again. Hopefully, she'll see enough pleasant things this Christmas to fatten her spirit up for the lean months ahead. I hope you do too.
Here's a thought to end on: tomorrow, Monday 21 December, is the shortest, darkest day of the year. On Tuesday, the days will start getting longer again.
We'll have turned the corner. The darkness won't be here forever. If you don't believe me, go ask Jenny O'Connell.
Happy Christmas.

dkenny@tribune.ie

December 20, 2009

I won't be raising a glass to this 'Budweiser Budget'

2010-02-02T13:41:00.001Z

Sunday Tribune 13 December

'When things go wrong and will not come right
Though you do the best you can,
When life looks black as the hour of night –
A PINT OF PLAIN IS YOUR ONLY MAN.'

Brian Lenihan must have been reading Flann O'Brien's The Working Man's Friend before he dozed off and dreamed up last week's budget. What better way to take the sting out of bad news than by buying everyone a few scoops?
I like scoops. Probably too much. I regularly drink more than whatever the recommended guideline is. That's why I'm applauding Lenihan for lowering the pint by 12c. Right?
Wrong. Minister Lenihan, I didn't ask for – and don't want – your 12c cut. You can't buy me that easily. There are far more worthy recipients of your 'largesse'.
How about carers and the blind? Their allowances have been snipped by 4.1%. What does that say? Forget the blind, get blind drunk instead?
Or the pensioners who now have to pay for their medicines. Or the low-income families creaking under debts, levies, reduced dole and child benefits and a new carbon tax? Never mind them, a pint of plain is your only man.
I won't be raising a glass to cut-price booze, because these families won't be. This Budweiser Budget targets the most vulnerable and that's nothing to celebrate. Lenihan says lowering the alcohol excise duty will stop people going north. It won't and he knows it.
Last Tuesday, a bottle of Baileys cost €26.10 in Dunnes, Dublin. In Sainsbury's, €11.08. A litre of Carlsberg €3.98 and €1.84 respectively. The 20% excise reduction won't be enough to stop 'drink tourism'. The adjustment of Vat in January (to 21% here and 17.5% up north) won't make much of an impact either. Booze will still be cheaper.
Lenihan juggled CSO figures to justify his excise cuts. He said 44% of cross-border shoppers are buying alcohol. True. However, the CSO says it's not the main reason people head north – 79% are there for groceries. Instead of tinkering with alcohol, a more courageous move would be to lower vat to 15% and compete with the UK in the grocery market.
Lenihan's gargle cut is not about the north. It's a cynical stunt – along with not taxing cigarettes and gambling – to pacify us. What does that say about his opinion of us? Does he think unemployed people sup pints all day, in between trips to the bookies?
Does he see the rest of us as pliable booze-bags, who can be bribed to look away as he hammers the disadvantaged? The optics may be in his favour here. Look at the pictures of cars stuffed full of bottles and see how ridiculous our obsession with gargle is. Or stand outside the off-licence on Holy Thursday to see the panic-buying for Good Friday.
How does this look to the world outside? Lenihan said: "we're getting our house in order". He obviously meant 'public house'. Here's how the Chicago Tribune saw it: "Lenihan sought to offer one boost to public morale by cutting taxes on liquor. Ireland has the highest rate of alcohol consumption among major European nations…" This referred to the OECD Health at a Glance Report which was published the same day as the budget.
Morale boost: let the rummies drink beer. Embarrassed? I am. And annoyed when I think of all the effort the state made to change my drinking habits.
Look at those patronising 'Enjoy alcohol sensibly' warnings. (Don't most people drink to become insensible?) And the decision to close off-licences at 10pm. And the stricter drink-driving laws.
On Wednesday, none of this mattered. The government needed us boozed up. 'Never mind the warnings, drink up'. 12 cents! Hurrah!
Here's what I'm going to do with my 12c, minister. I'm multiplying it by 100 (pints) and adding it to our Christmas donation to the Vincent de Paul. Calls are up 30% this year and they need the money. It's not much, but it's a small statement of solidarity with those hit hardest by the budget.
Let's end with a rhyme, as we started with one. It's for you, Brian. Hope you like it…

The Working Man's Other Friend

(By DK, With apologies to Flann O'Brien)

When you're old and frail and times are hard

And your only friend's the medical card,

When you've paid your taxes, for your sins,

And they're charging for your med-i-cines,

When it's 50 cents to buy your pills

And you're terrified of getting ill,

'Don't worry,' says Brian, 'you'll be grand –

A pint of plain is your only man.'

When you're young and married with three kids

And life is, generally, on the skids,

When they've slashed your pittance from the dole

And Gormley wants to tax your coal,

When you're angry, broke and your house is cold

And Christmas cheer is put on hold,

When you have no pressies for your tykes

And turn to crime (when the Gardai strike),

When the crap has really hit the fan

And Ireland's swirling down the pan,

'Don't worry,' says Brian, 'you'll be grand –

A PINT OF PLAIN IS YOUR ONLY MAN.'

dkenny@tribune.ie

Tax gambling, minister – society will be the winner

2010-02-02T13:09:00.001Z

Sunday Tribune 6 December

The caller from Cork was outraged. He had "never seen a guard in Douglas" before, and there were two on duty at Bertie Ahern's book-signing. "At either entrance to the shop" where Ahern was flogging his life story. This was for "protection", Liveline was told. For who, I wondered: him or Cork?
Bertie definitely needs protection from Liveline's listeners. They were furious that he was being driven around, at their expense, to sign books. One signing venue that got them particularly annoyed was Newry. Isn't this where his party says only "unpatriotic" shoppers go?
The racket on Liveline won't have bothered Bertie. He has a neck like a jockey's proverbials and knows all there is to know about rackets – political ones at any rate. He's sitting on a pile of pensions and allowances and will make a bundle from his autobiography. And he won't have to pay any tax on it.
Basket Case Ireland strikes again. We blame Ahern for the economy, yet his tax-free version of events is likely to be the most-read book this Christmas. Instead of making him put a sock in it, we're putting him in our stockings.
Will someone please put Ireland back in its straitjacket? Anyway, this column isn't about Bertie not paying tax on his story-telling. It's about him not paying tax on another pastime: the horses. Remember how he revealed his fondness for them at the Mahon tribunal? How he won his unexplained cash?
Last year, Bertie and other chancers spent €5.5bn at the bookies. This was a great boost for the exchequer, right? Wrong. According to Horse Racing Ireland, €1.7bn of it was gambled, tax-free, online.
Just as well the bookies paid tax on the rest, then. What was the rate? 20%? 30%? No, they paid… 1%. Remember that figure when you read Brian Lenihan's budget cuts this week. Everything else is screwed by the taxman but gambling is virtually untouched.
Why? Because the racing/gambling industry is enmeshed with Fianna Fáil. This goes back to 1969 when Charlie Haughey introduced tax exemption for profits on stallions at stud. Thirty years later, Charlie McCreevy did the industry a favour again and lowered betting tax from 10% to 5%. Charlie's from Kildare – racing's heartland – so no bias there. In 2001, he made it 2% to "safeguard the betting industry by reducing the incentive for Irish bookmakers to move off-shore". The only stipulation was that the bookies, not the punters, would pay this nominal amount. This derisory 'tax' was then put back into racing, for prizes etc, through the new Horse and Greyhound Racing Fund. In 2002, Fianna Fáil reduced it to 1% 'just to be sure'.
It was a bit like the banks, really. Fianna Fáil gave the bookies a form of 'guarantee' so their business wouldn't collapse.
Last year, Brian Lenihan raised the tax back to 2%. The bookies cried as if it was the apocalypse. They have loud voices, bookmakers. In May, Lenihan crumbled and 'postponed' the rise to examine the impact of offshore, online gambling on the industry.
What has been the major bookmakers' response to this threat? They've gone… offshore themselves.
Someone is having a laugh here – and it's not the taxpayer.
The bookies claim 2% tax will endanger jobs. Everyone's in danger at the moment, so why should they get preferential treatment while paying so little back? Gambling has been around for millennia – it's not going to disappear overnight. Bookies shops are closing, certainly, but people haven't stopped gambling. Online betting, according to Horse Racing Ireland, accounts for one-third of wagers. A betting shop can't compete with the accessibility of a computer.
Fianna Fáil has shown disproportionate favouritism to gambling over the years. This was epitomised by the annual bash at the Galway Races. Here they toasted Ireland's new gambling fraternity – the Property Speculators. Our property bubble, the most reckless 'gamble' of them all, was inflated at a race course.
Last week on TV3, Ahern recalled the betting that took place at Galway. On Budget Day, Lenihan can put some distance between his party and that era of gambling.
Doubling the tax won't be enough. Last year it raised a paltry €36.5m from €3.8bn worth of taxable bets. Get your abacus out minister, we can do better than that. Make it 10% and bring in some real money.
If you think the bookies can't sustain this, then divide the tax between them and the punter. If someone can afford to potentially lose money on a bet, then they can pay 5% tax on it. That would add just 50c to every €10 punt.
If that's too much for either side to bear, then tax the winnings, rather than the stake, at 10%. Tax all online betting, too, and level the field for smaller bookies.
This is your chance to make gambling work for society, minister, and it comes with a 'sweetener'. Bertie had a go at you last week for bitching about him behind his back.
You can't get even by slapping tax on his autobiography, so why not slap one on those mysterious wagers he loves?
You won't get him on the book Brian, but you can definitely hit him at the bookies.

dkenny@tribune.ie

December 6, 2009

Why Ireland is the (shopping) basket case of Europe

2010-02-02T13:06:00.000Z

Sunday Tribune 29 November

"See that man over there, he's on strike." The crop-headed Dub pointed off-camera. We couldn't see the striker, but there was a dull 'thunk', which might have been a slab of beer hitting a car boot. Newry's The Quays Shopping Centre was full of southern reg plates – many of them belonging to striking public sector workers.
Another man asked the RTÉ reporter "sure, what else would you do on a day off?" It summed up the insanity of Tuesday's day of protest. Our public servants went on strike saying they're hard-up, got docked a day's pay… and legged it over the border to spend money they don't have on a Christmas they can't afford in a country that can't pay their wages.
Strike? This was trade unionism striking a blow for capitalism.
Not that anyone should be too shocked. This is just further proof that Ireland is Europe's Largest Open Air Lunatic Asylum. Tuesday's behaviour wasn't an aberration, it was just 'The Irish Way'. Country in crisis? Don't just pull a sickie: pull a sickie while… pulling a sickie.
This wasn't the only example of The Irish Way in action last Tuesday. Here's another five random ones, all from the same day.
1: The Irish Way is to let a tax evader hold you ransom in the Dáil. Brian Cowen was asked to reveal what voting deal Fianna Fáil has with disgraced TD Michael Lowry. Had plans to build a €460m Las Vegas-style casino on his Tipperary doorstep anything to do with keeping him sweet? No, swore Cowen. Honest.
The Irish Way is to do deals with cheats. It's also to build a massive casino during a recession. It's hard to say which is madder.
2: The Irish Way is to be quick to take offence. On Tuesday, Liveline buzzed with complaints about Tesco putting security tags on meat in less affluent areas of Dublin. It was disrespectful. Disgraceful. How is wanting to protect your goods in a time of rising petty crime 'disgraceful'? The real disgrace is that no one said how sad it is that people are now stealing food.
3: The Irish Way is to believe, like Whitney Houston, that "children are our future". President McAleese said she does in the Irish Times. Just think: that orange, American-accented teen, gawking at the telly, is going to be running the country some day. God. Help. Us.
A few pages away, a poll in the same newspaper revealed that 81% of 18- to 24-year-olds want to see the number of foreigners living here reduced. Children are our future… and that future's the Fourth Reich.
4: The Irish Way is to introduce webcasting to local government to show that councillors are not wasting money. The Evening Herald revealed that Dun Laoghaire council spent €30,000 on 12 broadcasts last year. The council had wasted money to prove… it wasn't wasting money.
5: The Irish Way is to declare we are a post-Catholic, pluralist society – and then introduce a crackpot Blasphemy Law. Surprisingly, it has its fans. A conference in Dublin heard that one country has cited it as an example of "best practice" – Pakistan. Ireland is now a role model for one of the world's maddest countries.
The Irish Way is to be an irrational, reckless, dysfunctional race, who really are too cracked to govern themselves. The sooner we realise this, the better it will be for our mental health. There's only four million of us. We're not as important as we think we are. In Europe's eyes we're a medium-sized city – and a complete basket case.
The Germans think we drink too much. To them, we're the annoying little tosser who turns up drunk at the party, drinks all the host's booze and then picks a fight with him.
To the French, we're ungrateful peasants. They forced us to replay the Lisbon Treaty but wouldn't replay the Paris match. They got away with this because Fifa doesn't like us either. Even the eastern European countries don't like us: they keep booting us out of the Eurovision. Stuck out here in the Atlantic, we're like Europe's mad cousin, locked away in the attic. Ignored and unloved.
We only have each other now. So, instead of feuding, I propose we have a National Day of Inaction, with both sectors working out a plan to get someone sane to rule us.
Here's an idea: how about selling Ireland to the US and becoming the 52nd state? With a little investment we could re-open the country as a huge water theme park.
Think I'm not serious? It's not as batty an idea as that strike last week. As the protestors headed north, Ireland slid out of the IESE Business School's list of top 20 countries to invest in. We've gone from 16th to 21st. Could the striking and general stupidity on display have anything to do with this?
The unions have threatened further action. So here's my plan: on the day of the strike, all us non-protestors will meet up along the border and hide in the bushes. Then, when the last striker has crossed into Newry, we'll leap out and seal the border. Let the Queen keep them. Problem solved The Irish Way.

We really are the (shopping) basket case of Europe.

dkenny@tribune.ie

Unwrapping some good news amidst all the gloom

2010-02-02T13:02:00.001Z

Sunday Tribune 22 November

The rain is streaming down my coat and into my shoes. My collar is drenched and there's a drip on the end of my nose. I'm broke. The only thing rattling in my pockets are my keys. I am walking through soggy Dublin thinking of Donie Cassidy.
One of the reasons I am thinking of Donie is because I've forgotten to bring something to cover my head. The other is to do with something he said in the Seanad. He, and some of his colleagues, believe the media is responsible for the grim state of the nation. Senator Anne Ormonde says the press is "creating so much gloom that it is depressing those in the world outside".
Donie's solution is to get broadcasters to "give us 30 minutes of good news every day" as a tonic. Suddenly a lightbulb has switched on over my head: maybe Donie's right. So I start flicking through the week to find something positive to write about for a change.
Ireland is no longer corrupt, according to new figures released by Transparency International.
That's good, isn't it? Or does it just mean there's less money around to steal?
Irish writer Colum McCann has won the top prize for fiction at the US National Book Awards. Great but, well, it's hardly going to overshadow our World Cup heartache, is it?
Brian Lenihan has 'scored' a victory over AIB by making it accept the €500,000 salary cap. That's good, isn't it, Donie? If you ignore the Financial Times poll that rated him Europe's worst finance minister. See, Donie, it's hard to find something positive to write about.
Another lightbulb goes on over my head. I look up: Miriam O'Callaghan has switched on the Christmas lights on Henry Street. Or 'Hahnry' Street as she calls it.
Finally, something positive to report: the lightening of Dubliners' moods by something simple and free. I am a boy again in town with mum, dad and sisters, looking at the Moore Street stalls as ould wans sing "Annywan for de last of de Cheeky Charlies?" Gaudy beads of yellow, blue and green light shiver between the lamp posts. Sleet spits at us, but we hardly notice: we are too excited at the prospect of seeing Santa in Arnotts. Afterwards, there will be coffee, cake and the unwrapping of colouring books and plastic crappery which will break, like the Cheeky Charlie, on the way home.
Walking south across the bridge, we wonder what herky-jerky robotic wonderland waits for us in Switzers' snow-sprayed window.
Memory is a great bolthole. There's no entrance charge and looking back beats looking forward into an uncertain future. If I sound like I'm going soft, I'm not. Even cynics need a break sometime.
In previous years I've given out about Christmas coming too early. Last November, mayor Eibhlin Byrne lit the city's tree at the start of the month. This was to encourage us to do our "civic duty" and spend our money in Dublin, not Newry.
I wrote a column telling her to stop turning Retail Therapy into Retail Guilt. If Dublin wanted my money, then its merchants should lower their prices. Groceries were 28% cheaper up north.
This year, Mary Coughlan led the patriotic charge. She said cross-border shoppers are supporting "her majesty's government". I thought we'd moved on from that "Crown Forces" rhetoric. The war is over, minister.
Although her faux-republicanism is annoying, I agree with Coughlan in principle. Not about ropey patriotism but about our economic reality – 250,000 southern households are shopping over the border (TNS Worldpanel). It doesn't take a genius – and Coughlan's no genius – to see how this affects our tax take.
Southern retailers can't win a price battle with the north. Running a business here is more expensive, between energy costs, Vat and exchange rates. They are trying, though. The National Consumer Agency says prices are continuing to fall.
It's no longer a case of "them and us". Retailers are now as jiggered as the rest of us. They may have fleeced us in the past, but I don't like seeing businesses go to the wall.
Unlike last Christmas, Dublin City Council deserves some credit this year. It's easing the idiotic bus corridor on College Green for the festive period and providing 1,400 free parking spaces.
The city's merchants have started to show some civic spirit too. In 2006, 30% of them were unwilling to fund the Christmas lights. This year, they've paid to illuminate six new streets.
All that said, I'm not telling anyone where to shop. It's a matter of conscience and means.
If you decide to head north, the best of luck to you. I won't see you there, though. I've decided to spend less this Christmas – and to spend it locally.
So there you are, Donie. I've tried to write a positive column this week. I'm giving Dublin my business and thanking its retailers for temporarily blinding me, with Christmas lights, to the rain, the soccer etc.
Why don't you come and see the lights with me, Donie? You've a day off on Tuesday because of the Oireachtas strike, haven't you? Tell you what, come to O'Connell Street this evening instead to watch the lighting of the tree.
Damn it, hang on a minute, more bad news: wasn't it made in France?

dkenny@tribune.ie

PC brigade are stifling proper debate on racism

2009-12-14T15:09:00.001Z

Sunday Tribune 15 November

It was the image of the week. Alan O'Brien's face contorted with rage as he pierced the air with his finger and berated Pat Kenny on The Frontline. "Six hundred thousand pounds!" he roared, confusing currencies in his condemnation of Kenny's wages.
His outburst was so forceful, unexpected and prolonged that it had a surreal quality to it. At first I thought it was a comedy interlude. It soon became apparent, however, that this was no parody. O'Brien was as stable as the price of trophy houses in south Dublin.
The following day it was revealed that O'Brien was a former psychiatric patient. A "nutter" as the red tops put it. On Wednesday, the headlines screamed that the "nutter" was also a "racist". He was once convicted for incitement to racial hatred after verbally abusing foreigners on Grafton Street.
Commentators justified calling this mentally ill man a "nut" by counterbalancing it with the PC word "racist". You can get away with most things if you call someone a racist.
O'Brien says he's not racist: "I'm a white b****rd myself." He may have a point. The fact that he's a 'nut' weakens the racist tag. Being mad, he's not responsible for what he says, is he? I don't know if he's really a racist, although the words he used on Grafton Street certainly were.
Is the mayor of Limerick a racist? Last week, FG's Kevin Kiely was called one for saying that newly-arrived EU nationals should be deported if they haven't found a job within three months. This would stop them "abusing" the dole. The howls of "racist" were deafening. Is it racist to suggest we stop dole fraud?
Is Judge Aingeal Ní Chondúin a racist? Two weeks ago, comments she made in the Children's Court were criticised for reinforcing racial stereotypes. She said the Roma community seemed to raise their children to steal. At the time she was dealing with a Roma teenager who admitted theft. Is it racist to suggest that Romas raise their children to steal when there is evidence that some do?
There have been no satisfactory answers to any of the above questions, because there has been no debate about them. Just the predictable PC scramble to be heard crying "racist".
The opportunity to engage in a meaningful discussion about these issues has been squandered again. Ní Chondúin's remarks were ill-judged because they were too general. An entire community can't be bred to thievery. A proportion can, though, ie, a majority or minority. Many condemned her, but no one was brave enough to analyse what she said.
Ní Chondúin is an expert on children and crime. No one asked how many Romas she deals with in her court. Are we being overrun by Roma thieves? Or is it just a matter of one or two? Anyone who believes that no Roma children steal is as ignorant as Mayor Kiely.
Like the judge's comments, Kiely's were condemned but not analysed. There's a warped logic to what he believes. Our dole bill is crippling and some non-nationals are scamming the system. Last July, the Department of Social Welfare revealed that from a sample number of non-nationals claiming benefits, 11% were not living here. Kiely is right: cheats, like Roma thieves, do exist.
While the PC brigade branded him a racist, no one attempted to educate Kiely and people like him. To dispassionately point out that the authorities are pursuing dole fraudsters. To allay fears that all foreigners are potential cheats. To explain that the EU is trying to help us deal with unemployment among non-nationals. Last month, it granted us €600,000 a year from the EU Return Fund to help hard-up immigrants return home – if they want to.
When his party colleague, Leo Varadkar, suggested something similar last April he, too, was called a racist.
When you shout the word 'racist' without stopping to examine what's being said, you blur the lines between incitement and honest social commentary. There was a fine example of the 'race' word being used out of context in Joe Duffy's Irish Mail on Sunday column last week, calling a negative description of Ballyfermot, by an author, "racist rubbish". Racist? Are the people of Ballyfermot a new ethnic group?
This kind of kneejerking is dangerous. It stifles debate through fear. Fear breeds resentment. Resentment breeds racism.
Subconsciously, we might also be afraid of debating racism because this would be an admission that some Irish people are racist. We never colonised anyone – the Irish can't be racist, can we?
By making PC noises and not discussing the problems that come with racial integration, we are ignoring a time bomb. The country is boiling with anger: public sector v private, both sectors v the government. Who will the mob turn on next?
The budget is weeks away and the Christmas social-welfare bonus is being axed. It doesn't take a genius to see how this could create further tensions.
It's critical that we discuss all sides of the integration issue. People like Kiely must be made see how their generalisations are wrong. Not just told they're wrong.
Kiely must be made understand that his half-baked notions are far more dangerous than the racist ravings of Alan O'Brien on Grafton Street. People sometimes heed politicians. No one heeds nutcases.
Unless they're ranting about Pat Kenny, of course.

dkenny@tribune.ie

November 15, 2009

Someone in RTE should really talk to Joe

2009-12-14T15:07:00.001Z

Sunday Tribune 8 November

I did something last week that I'm ashamed of. I emailed a radio show. I don't usually contact talk shows or write strongly-worded letters to the Times, but my irritation got the better of me.
On Wednesday, Joe Duffy unleashed the hounds on Jim Connolly, author of The Culchie's Guide to Dublin – a book which pokes fun at the capital. Unlike most of the people who ranted on Liveline, I have a copy. In it, Connolly describes Ballyfermot as a crime-ridden dump. Joe is from Ballyfermot. He was "outraged" and ripped Connolly asunder. As his listeners fought over Connolly's body parts, Joe wanted to know where he lived, despite this being flagged in the opening pages.
"Where are you from, Jim?"
"South Dublin."
"Where in south Dublin?"
"Dalkey." Dalkey. This was outrageous: a Dalkey snob demeaning the plain people of Ballyfermot. Joe finished him off by quoting the book's favourable description of Dalkey's, apparently, crime-free status. Cue a barrage of stereotyping about 'southsiders' from his listeners.
For the record, I'm from Dalkey and I know Connolly. I'm not defending him. He set out to be politically incorrect and can suffer the consequences. I'm not endorsing his book either – primarily because it's in competition with a similar book I wrote 10 years ago.
However, I will say that I have less of a problem with Connolly's offensive description of Ballyfermot than I do with Liveline's reaction to it. The outcry illustrated how we are being manipulated by people, like Duffy, peddling victimhood.
Siptu's Jack O'Connor is another victimhood peddlar. On last Monday's Frontline, he accused Pat Kenny of owning a 'trophy' Dalkey home. Whether Kenny is overpaid or not, this was a cheap shot aimed at the union gallery. It was meant to reinforce Siptu's 'them-and-us' philosophy. The hypocrisy behind the jibe is extraordinary. O'Connor also earns a handsome salary – €124,000. That's what the state will have to pay to keep 12 of his members on the dole for a year. And that's where he's leading them, by fostering divisions between the public and private sectors.
Instead of behaving in the national interest, Siptu has been promoting a victimhood culture. The public sector feel victimised by the private because they have to take cuts and levies. The private sector feel victimised because they are paying for the public sector. And so it goes on, until we reach the obvious conclusion: a state of economic civil war.
Meanwhile, on the sidelines are people like Duffy, apparently observing but in reality egging the protagonists on, like he did last Wednesday. He accused Connolly of reinforcing stereotypes – and then hypocritically encouraged his listeners to do just that. Connolly was attacked not just for his comments, but also his address. According to Liveline's world view, all Dalkey-southsiders are spoilt, out-of-touch, snobs. Ironically, this is the same portrayal Connolly's book uses. Joe didn't mention this.
The reality is that the majority of Dalkey southsiders are decent, honest people – just like the residents of Ballyfermot. A small number are wealthy like Pat Kenny, but most are levied middle- and lower-income earners. Some are losing their houses and some have been made redundant.
Liveline has done a lot of praiseworthy work over the years. This was all about Joe though. His home had been insulted and so two days were spent denouncing something that merited three minutes, but probably should have been ignored.
This wasn't Tommy Tiernanesque. This wasn't the Lonely Planet guide insulting some national institution. This wasn't going to affect tourism in Ballyfermot. This was published in a book called The Culchie's Guide. How could this justify all the national airtime? Answer: ratings.
Duffy – like O'Connor – benefits from dividing society. Duffy wants ratings, so he pits one 'victimised' part of Dublin against an 'affluent' one. O'Connor causes disunity because he needs to justify his salary.
The perpetrators of the economic crime against us are Fianna Fáil and the bankers – not our beleaguered fellow citizens. Our energies should be focused on installing a new government – one which will get us working again – not fighting among ourselves. Unity is the only way out of this mess. We must not be manipulated by people like O'Connor and Duffy.
I mentioned earlier that 10 years ago I wrote a guide to Dublin. It made Connolly's book look PC. ('Summerhill Fair is where Dubs buy back their stolen handbags'/Southsiders are 'limp-wristed nincompoops'). Everything in it was deliberately untrue and, by Joe's standards, grossly offensive.
However, Dubliners got the joke and it became a bestseller. The difference between its reception and Connolly's is easy to explain – we didn't take ourselves so bloody seriously back then. This is what I wrote in my email to Joe. He didn't reply.
I'm sending you a copy of that book, Joe. It's going to annoy you and you might give it two days of free publicity like you did with Connolly's. You can email any complaints to the address below. I promise to respond.
'Talk to Joe' is the catchphrase. Yes, someone in authority in RTE should talk to Joe alright.

dkenny@tribune.ie

November 8, 2009

No piece of cake

2009-12-14T15:01:00.002Z

Sunday Tribune 8 November

It's reputation as a haven for the elderly is just not fair. Dave Kenny had an action-packed, thrill-seeking holiday in Madeira, and not a zimmer frame in sight
David Kenny in Madeira

Madeira: land of the zimmer frame. God's waiting room, where pensioners sunbathe in their overcoats. Madeira, like the sticky bottle of wine named after it, sweet, old-fashioned, lingering in the back of the cupboard. Why would any youngish person want to spend their winter holiday in a place that shares its name with their granny's favourite cake?
This question troubled me as we touched down in Funchal. Along with "Isn't it strange that 'Mad' and 'Fun' are the first syllables of the island and its capital's names?"
At first view, Funchal looked a bit too built up. As if the buildings, housing 100,000, were designed on a standing-room-only basis. This didn't augur well. We checked in after dark and hoped the morning would show the city in a better light.
It did. As the sun rose, Madeira threw off its house coat and hair net and introduced itself properly. This is a beautiful, vertiginous island of soaring peaks and lush valleys. Of sheer green-thatched cliffs lapped by sapphire waters. For showiness alone, it's easy to see why the Portuguese claimed it 600 years ago.
Over the years it has built up a reputation as a pensioner's paradise – which it certainly is. However, what most don't realise is that it's also an adventure-seeker's playground. Madeira – which is sunny all year round – can be as adrenaline-fuelled as it is sedate. If it was a movie, it would be Cocoon.
Where do you start? The best way to experience Madeira is to alternate lazing by the pool (it's currently 25ºC) with excursions. These range from wine-tasting to clifftop paragliding. A morning whale-watching with a marine biologist costs €45 a head but is worth much more for the thrill of watching dolphins break the surface – like missiles from an underwater bunker – or a whale spouting 200m away from your boat.
How's your head for heights? A trip up to the Funchal parish of Monte – 800m above sea level – is a must. Four to a cable car, we ascended for 15 minutes, passing quietly over terracotta rooftops as the sea receded behind us and a wispy coils of mist beckoned us into the greenery at the summit. The trip costs €10 single or €14 return. Don't buy a return ticket. Instead, walk a few yards from the station – and skitter down the hill in a basket. Seriously, if you're happy to risk being mangled by a passing schoolbus, you have to try this. The basket toboggans seat two and are steered by men dressed as gondoliers who manipulate the wooden running boards with their rubber soles. It takes about 10 minutes of twisting and shrieking to get to the bottom where a hawker will offer you a photo of you displaying your tonsils for a tenner. I captioned mine 'Chicken in a Basket'.
Speaking of food, Madeira is festooned with excellent restaurants, such as Riso (from €30) which specialises in rice dishes and is partly al fresco, overhanging a lido and with great sea views. Espada (Black Scabbardfish) risotto with bananas may sound disgusting, but you'll ask for seconds.
O Jango is a superb fish restaurant in downtown Funchal, where you can choose your dinner date from a wide selection – John Dory, cod, espada etc – on ice near the kitchen. The grilled swordfish was the best I've ever had. Another island speciality is skewered, barbecued beef, hung at the table with a saucer to catch the juices – which are delicious mopped up with sweet potato bread.
Eating great food and fooling around in baskets was all very well, but the highlight of our trip was a 'levada' trek in the picturesque Laurisilva National Park. Back in the 1500s, the locals began constructing aquaducts (levadas) to bring water downhill to the farms. There are 2,170km of them clinging to the sides of towering, laurel-clad mountains. (I'm getting vertigo typing this.) At one point I found myself walking along a crumbly ledge, 25 inches wide, with nothing between me and infinity other than a 'fence' that looked like a washing line. If, like me, you're a gibbering coward, arrange for a walk with a guide through one of the less challenging routes.
In the afternoon, amble about the tiled streets of Funchal. Passing under the shade of the jacaranda trees, head for the market in the old quarter, where there is a vast array of tropical flowers on display.
Contrary to what you may have heard, Madeiran nightlife doesn't end with a cup of Horlicks at 9pm. Party-loving Madeirans let off steam at clubs like Vespa, Marginal, Café do Teatro and Chega de Saudade. The best advice is just to follow the crowd and explore the side of Madeira your granny never told you about.
Madeira is not what I expected. It's quirky, beautiful and good value for money. The Madeirans themselves are one of the best reasons for visiting. They're dignified, warm and – surprisingly, given the tourist demographic – very young. Forty percent of them are under 25.
Madeira/Funchal was Mad/Fun. I will definitely be returning – well before I need a zimmer frame.

Getting there

Topflight has just introduced Madeira to its Winter Sun Programme, in partnership with SATA Airlines, with direct Sunday flights to Funchal.
Dave Kenny stayed at the Tivoli Marina Hotel, which boasts top-class facilities and a courtesy bus into Funchal. www.topflight.ie
Weeks of 22 and 29 November

Dublin-Madeira

4* B&B from €499.50

Includes flights, transfers and seven nights' accommodation. Taxes not included.

The native liquor

A trip to Madeira isn't complete without a tour of a winery. The Old Blandy Wine Lodge is based in the heart of Funchal and runs visits and tastings. The Blandys are the only family of all the founders of the Madeira wine trade to still own their original wine company. They've been at it since 1811 and the lodge reeks of history. Madeira is a fortified wine, brown in colour and is used as an aperitif or, in higher alcohol doses, a digestif. Don't get the two mixed up.
A bottle of Rainwater Dry/Medium will set you back €6.90 while a single vintage 1993 costs €34. Whatever you buy will have to go in your suitcase, so quality over quantity is probably the best policy.
www.blandys.com

November 8, 2009

Ahern's God-damned blasphemy law no use in recession

2009-12-14T15:00:00.001Z

Sunday Tribune, 1 November

Picture this: you're tottering home from the pub in Ennis, when you're overwhelmed by a call of nature. You run down a sidestreet and relieve yourself. Suddenly there's a loud buzzing, an electrifying flash and your nether regions light up like a Christmas tree. The owner of the shop you're peeing on – in this case Custy's music store – has installed an electric fence to stop people like you interfering with his property.
Conclusion? You won't do that again in a hurry.
It's a basic principle: your actions have consequences. The same applies for inaction too. Justice minister Dermot Ahern is today facing the consequences of his inactions. The latest CSO figures show that aggravated burglaries have increased by 51% this year and that 'ordinary' burglaries rose by 27% between July and September.
Shocking figures aren't they? Well actually, no, they're not. It's another basic principle: recession means that money goes down and crime goes up. Ahern has been expecting these figures.
Here's another figure Ahern is aware of: 25% of all serious crime is committed by people on bail (CSO, 2008). Prison overcrowding leads to more people on bail. This leads to more crime. Ahern admitted as much on 8 April when he told reporters that he couldn't tighten the bail laws because of overcrowding. There wasn't enough room to keep potentially dangerous suspects behind bars.
So what exactly has he done about overcrowding? Has he forced through the construction of Thornton Hall prison? You know the answer to that. In total, €40m has been spent on the project, with the government paying well over the odds for the site. Instead of turning the sod there, Ahern has been planting shrubs. The latest bill for Thornton Hall is €18,000 for gardening. Its maintenance has cost us €440,000 so far. Instead of a prison we have a well-groomed parkland.
Meanwhile, there's a burglar downstairs who should be behind bars. Get angry about it – but not too angry, if you don't want to get sued. Ahern won't amend the laws to allow homeowners to tackle burglars without being liable for injuries they receive. Or shop-owners. How soon before Custy's of Ennis is sued by some crotch-clutching moron?
The most credible long-term attempt by Ahern to deal with overcrowding was the introduction of the Fines Bill 2009. This allows for alternatives to custodial sentences for loan defaulters. In the past year, almost 300 people were jailed over unpaid debts. As more people lose their homes, more will go to court. More overcrowding, more bailings, more crime. Guess what? Like Thornton Hall, the bill is still at the talking stage. Ahern's detestable Blasphemy Bill made it into law before something that will alleviate needless suffering.
Along with these unfortunate prisoners, the jails will also have to accommodate a new brand of criminal – the Recession Burglar. A rising crime rate means more people heading to jail. With the traditional Christmas burglary spree coming, the situation can only worsen, putting more pressure on the system.
The Department of Justice is operating a revolving door which is spinning out of control. Last year, anyone serving under 20 months in Mountjoy's Dóchas unit was released to make space for more serious offenders. During the summer, overcrowding led to a huge increase in the number of offenders on temporary release. On 29 May, 14.65% of the prison population were at temporary liberty, compared to 8.75% in January.
Recidivist criminals have murdered while on bail. Last April, days after Ahern announced his Fines Bill, Gerard Barry was convicted of the rape and murder of Swiss teenager Manuela Riedo. He had been out on bail.
Ahern says that new beds recently provided across the service will deal with current overcrowding. As crime figures rise, they will not be enough.
Thornton Hall will not be ready for years, therefore other solutions are needed. One is the immediate implementation of the Fines Bill. Another is the reopening of the prisons closed by Michael McDowell. Their gates were shut because he expected Thornton Hall to be operational by now.
We must protect society and show compassion to prisoners. This can only be achieved with a functioning system, where custodial sentences are respected and inmates' rights are protected.
Jail must not be hell on earth – but it should be a deterrent. Wrongdoers – as the man urinating against Custy's shop discovered – must know that there are consequences to their actions.
Finally, there might be another way of dealing with Thornton Hall. It's a classic toxic asset, bought for too much money by the state. (See where I'm going with this?) Perhaps Nama has the answer. Maybe it can get it built by giving it away to a developer as a 'bonus buy'. "We'll even throw in this fully landscaped, rural idyll, with permission for a 1,400 bed guest house and several bars… on the windows."
If we continue to just plant flowers on it, we'll reap the whirlwind. In the meantime, Ahern must deliver credible alternatives to deal with the crime upsurge.
On a brighter note, there's one positive revelation in the new CSO figures. There's been no rise in the number of aggravated blasphemies. Nice work there, minister.

dkenny@tribune.ie

November 1, 2009

Enda Kenny, the red squirrel, has finally found his nuts

2009-11-03T16:46:00.002Z

Sunday Tribune, 25 October

A red squirrel has been spotted in Kilkenny. This is good news: the native red has been almost wiped out by the aggressive grey. Now, after years in decline, it's back, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.
Enda Kenny is a lot like the red squirrel: in recent times he has been in decline. He too is gingerish and has a tendency to nibble and run away. Last week he finally stuck his teeth into something and called for the abolition of the Seanad.
This is a subject close to my heart. I wrote about it a month ago when senator Ivor Callely crashed his yacht. I wanted to know why we should have to indirectly help pay for its upkeep. The Seanad's meaningless, sponging existence should be put to a referendum. Our politicians must radically overhaul the system.
I received a gracious email from a popular senator who offered to bring me in and show me around (I'll get back to you when the Kevlar vest arrives). I don't know if his 59 colleagues read my attack on them. I don't know if Kenny read it either. I'm certainly not suggesting that he picked up the Sunday Tribune and was moved to tear down the Seanad. Mind you he hasn't convincingly explained why he suddenly shifted from reform to abolition. To hell with it, I'm taking the credit. Give us a shout Enda, I've LOADS more ideas for you.
The proposal scored well with the public but, typically, Kenny fluffed the follow-up. He was dreadful on Prime Time. During that interview he waffled on about a willingness to grasp "radical" solutions through "strong leadership". He reiterated the 'L' word in the Irish Times, name-checking his hero, JFK. "Decisive leadership". The sound of loins being girded was deafening.
The question is: was he talking to his party or us? Recently, I put it to a prominent Fine Gaeler that Kenny would never be taoiseach. The people don't want him, I said. He's too wishy-washy. The reply surprised me. "We'll sell ourselves as a team." There was no contradiction, no indignation, no loyalty. The word "coup" wasn't mentioned, but it was there, skulking in the corner.
Nobody was more shocked by Kenny's announcement than his party – notably the front bench. Was the surprise revelation of his Damascene conversion intended to flush out his enemies? Did he want to gauge loyalty by their reaction to a crotch-shot? Probably – at least as much as he wanted to regain popular ground from Eamon Gilmore.
Like a clutch of other senior politicians last week, Kenny was just throwing David Brent-like leadership shapes. Noel Dempsey acted like he was rehearsing for party leader when he squared up to his backbenchers over his drink-driving law. Brian Cowen was all "bring it on" with the unions over pay cuts. Gilmore told The Week in Politics that Kenny would make a good Tánaiste – ie "I'm your future leader".
What a shower of poseurs. Who do they think they're fooling? It's been a year since the economy fell off the cliff and still nothing has been done to lower down a stretcher. NOTHING. The rest of the world is recovering and we haven't even begun to tackle our banking crisis. We began talking about Nama in April and then the Dáil went on holidays. Last week it made it to the Oireachtas committee stage and, guess what, the Dáil is about to go on leave again. All of our leaders have disgraced themselves with their response to the recession. We should have had something in place months ago.
Real leaders tackle problems, they don't just flex their puny biceps. So, Brian, Enda, Eamon, stop telling us what great leaders you are/will be. We'll decide what you are after the dole queues begin to shorten.
Kenny cocked up on selling us Fine Gael's recovery plan and Nama now appears a fait accompli. To date he has yet to land a blow on this staggering government. Even the stunt of getting George Lee aboard hasn't been effective as he has yet to make his mark. The Seanad proposal hasn't wrong-footed them either – Dempsey has actually backed it.
That said, a good idea is a good idea, regardless of what you think of the instigator. It's already had an effect on our senators who are now begging to be reformed. Stunt or not, Kenny made an impact. A politician who is willing to attack a system that has lost the confidence of the people should be encouraged.
He now needs to move further to show he's commited to reform. He can do this by requesting that those senators who agree with him about the Seanad, for example Frances Fitzgerald, resign to save taxpayers' money. There are 15 Fine Gael senators earning €70k each plus expenses. If the Seanad is powerless as he says (which it is), they won't be missed. This would be a radical move with immediate effect, as opposed to something potentially years down the line.
If he does this, maybe the public will forgive the previous wishy-washiness. He's given us a hint that he may be capable of being a pragmatic leader. He still has some way to go but he's on the right track. Like the Kilkenny red squirrel, he may finally have found his nuts.

dkenny@tribune.ie

We all have a (toilet) role to play in economic recovery

2009-10-24T12:40:00.003+01:00

Sunday Tribune 11 October

History is speckled with great recovery plans: there were the Young and Marshall Plans to get Europe back on its feet after the world wars. There was the Tallaght Strategy plan of the 1980s when Irish party politics was put aside for the good of the country. Then there was… The Blotto
Last April, I suggested that, instead of Nama buying toxic assets and leaving them idle, it should raffle them. We could call it the Building Lotto – or 'Blotto'. Each week, our blindfolded finance minister would pick a toxic deed from the pile in his office. This would then be Blottoed at €25 a ticket. The winner would win a half-finished development, potentially worth millions. If even half of the 80-million-strong diaspora played, that would generate €1bn a draw. 'Blotto! It could be
As crap ideas go, I argued, it was no worse than Nama. I smugly believed it couldn't be surpassed for lateral thinking. Then, last week, a schoolmistress in Cork came up with another plan: the Patch Up The Economy With Bog Roll
Not only has this eclipsed Blotto, it's also undermined my other recovery strategies such as the Adopt A Paddy Scheme. This features TV ads with a forlorn Paddy staring into his pint as the barman shouts: "Drink up, have you no homes to go to?" Paddy glumly shakes his head and the voiceover begins: "Paddy has no home to go to… since the bank repossessed it. For just €200 a day…
Or, the Roots For Your Roots Campaign. For just €10, a tree will be planted for you in Old Erin. Eighty million people multiplied by 10 = €800m. (With that many, they'd have to be bonsai trees.) Or the Be Honorary Mayor of Your Ancestral Town for A Month Scheme (€50) or the Buy a Piece of Irish Muck Scheme (€10). Or the Be Irish campaign. We could set up an agency to discover people's Irish roots, whether they have them or not, invite them over – and hold them for
On Tuesday, the Irish Independent reported that the principal of St John's, Carrigaline has a better idea. She has asked parents to give their children a toilet roll, now and again, for the school. This, she said, is part of a cost-containment plan – a statement which drew howls of righteous indignation from some editorial
Here's the thing though: although it is literally a crap idea, it is a brilliant one. Not only is it an imaginative response to the downturn, it also teaches children the value of generosity, prudence and, of course, bog roll. Michael O'Leary is said to be very impressed. Most of all, it's a new idea and all new ideas should be welcomed. The Carrigaliners have decided that, instead of just griping about money, some lateral thinking is
There were other examples of good lateral thinking last week. Offenders doing community service are to be given the task of removing graffiti from Dublin's buildings. Law-breakers cleaning up after law-breakers and saving money for the council. Why did no one think of this
On Wednesday, it was revealed that we have applied for EU funds to pay for flights home for non-nationals. People who want to leave here, but can't afford to, can soon avail of the scheme. We save on our dole bill. Good lateral
There was also an example of lateral thinking being punished by bureaucracy. Joan Ryan raised €300,000 to buy an exercise machine for disabled people after her daughter was paralysed. She saved the HSE money and now her charity has been hit with a €60k Vat
There was political lateral thinking too. Eamon Gilmore warned Siptu that Labour would not be its puppet in government. He is opposed to it striking. Gilmore was once a radical left-winger. This was a powerful, pragmatic statement. He has changed his mindset. Trade unionists must now do the
Carrigaline's example should be the new bog standard response to the downturn. The '80s had the Tallaght Strategy, this can be our Toilet Strategy: new, positive, pragmatic ideas to deal with our new problems. Community spirit like that shown in Cork won't pay off the billions we owe, but it will improve our quality of life, little by
Fianna Fáil is incapable of following this principle. Its deputies are hotwired to be self-serving. Look no further than Bertie, or John O'Donoghue, or the backbenchers revolting over expenses
It's also incapable of lateral thinking about the economy. Last week, it sat down with the Greens to refine the Nama plan. It's six months since this was first mooted. In that time we have had only two alternatives to it: a National Recovery Bank, championed by Fine Gael, and nationalisation. Six months and nobody has any fresh suggestions. What does that say about the mindset of our politicians? The schoolchildren of Carrigaline are wiping their backsides for them when it comes to dealing with the
The communities of Ireland, from Carrigaline to Killybegs, can lead our so-called leaders by example and start rebuilding, little by little. For my part, I'm posting my money-making schemes, written on loo roll, to Government Buildings this afternoon. Every little helps. Everyone has a (toilet) role to play.

dkenny@tribune.ie

Let's redefine treachery to get Bertie and the bankers

2009-10-05T00:52:00.001+01:00

Sunday Tribune, 4 October

"There are llamas loose on the M50." I thought Seán O'Rourke would burst a blood vessel trying not to laugh on the News at One on Thursday. Llamas 'on the lam'. It wasn't quite "there's a moose loose aboot the hoose" but it was close.
Several hours later, the Cab (Criminal Alpacas Bureau) had rounded up the fugitive camelids. The Corpo appropriated them, valued them at €5,000 and the Australian Circus Sydney had to stump up or they were going to be sold on. It was a kind of 'Llama Nama'.
This was a perfect allegory for the week: a circus being held to ransom by clowns.
Down on O'Connell Street, protesting taxi drivers caused traffic misery in a bid to get the regulator's attention. I have a certain amount of sympathy for taximen, but not when they use us as hostages.
On Monday we had representatives of the public sector holding us to ransom over pay – at the ultimate expense of those on welfare. On Tuesday we had a farcical, raucous debate on RTé about Lisbon – both sides blackmailing us with various threats.
Along with this we had the resignation of the Fás board and yet more revelations about our politicians' expenses. 'Mé Féin' was ringmaster at Big Top Ireland and every selfish act it introduced bolstered the proposition that we're not fit to govern ourselves. We've given the country over to solipsistic jerks in the Dáil and on the ranks. Thick-skinned bullies who believe that we are here merely to do their bidding.
By Thursday evening, I had reached saturation point. Self-interest tedium had set in. I was no longer shocked or angry by selfish unions or taximen or TDs – just exasperated. You probably were too. This is a natural response to information overload. It happened with the Troubles in the North. Each report of an atrocity drew less of a response.
When I read that banker Seán FitzPatrick is entitled to free flights with Aer Lingus while having €106m in loans, I filed it under 'Nothing Would Surprise Me Anymore' and moved on.
Then, just as I was unfurling my white flag, up popped P Bartholomew Ahern TD. My knuckles whitened. On Tuesday, Bertie chaired a debate on Lisbon at the UCD Law Society where he declared himself 'neutral'. He wouldn't be taking any questions. (Bertie doesn't like questions.)
The following day, the first signs that the man who blew the boom is successfully reinventing himself appeared. The Indo gave him a soft ride in a playful report about the debate. It didn't question why a disgraced taoiseach would be so warmly welcomed by our future lawyers.
The Irish Times noted that he drew a tiny demo over fees outside the hall, while, inside, the students cheered him to the rafters. These are the same law students who will sign on as soon as they graduate, thanks to Ahern's policies.
How can we have forgotten so soon? Bertie has been hiding in plain sight since cocking up the economy. He has been walking around in his own solipsistic bubble, impervious to our anger. He knew that all he had to do was ride out the storm and eventually he would be home and dry. The public and the media would get tired of being angry with him. He was right.
Bertie brazened his way through a tribunal that nearly had to hold him upside down and shake him for answers. He told us he won money on horses and our jaws clattered on the floor. And here he was, reconstituted as elder statesman, wearing his old Teflon suit and smug grin. In any other country (bar, maybe, Libya) he would be hounded out of public life. In Ireland, he is asked to be an honest broker at debates.
Last week, Brian Lenihan said he was determined to punish those who had undermined the state. John Gormley also said that FitzPatrick would be made to pay back all his loans. A jaded public arched its eyebrow. It doesn't take a genius to see they were playing to the gallery. How can we believe that FitzPatrick will feel the consequences of his actions while Ahern is still giving us two fingers?
If Lenihan is really serious about dealing with economic wrongdoers, he could look to the Treason Act of 1939. This defines treachery in terms of warfare, but could be amended to punish those who, through financial mismanagement or wilful profiteering, threaten the survival of the state.
Such an amendment would make it easier for justice to be applied in the case of fallen politicians and bankers. Under such a definition of treachery Bertie Ahern and his Old Boys Club would be traitors. They should be punished as such.
We can complain about Siptu or taximen, but until we have made Ahern and his ilk accountable for the destruction of our economy, we can't expect them to behave in a more civic-minded fashion. 'Monkey see, monkey do', etc.
I started this column with a play on words about llamas and Nama. Here's another one: what's the difference between Nama and Bertie Ahern?
One deals with loss-making toxic assets – the other is a toxic ass that won't get lost.
Some day we might make him pay. I'm not holding my breath though.

dkenny@tribune.ie

October 4, 2009

The ram, the bull and the elephant in the room

2009-10-05T00:42:00.001+01:00

Sunday Tribune, 27 September

Baltimore is no stranger to buccaneers. In 1631 two boatloads from Algeria sailed into its harbour and kidnapped 100 of its citizens. The locals still talk about the incident. Last July, the town suffered another devastating naval assault which will also be recalled over pints for years to come.
A salty old sea dog from foreign shores (Dublin) allegedly banged his vessel into a yacht and badly damaged a speed boat. He didn't hang around and headed to Sherkin Island (surely not Sherkin his responsibilities?). Later, according to reports last week, Senator Ivor Callely wore what looked like a kimono when gardaí interviewed him about the ramming.
I am still pouring bleach into my mind's eye to get rid of the image.
The most shocking thing about this story was not the chain of events or even the kimono. What really stunned me was the news that Ivor Callely's a senator. A SENATOR. I thought that when he lost his Dáil seat in 2007 he had retired from politics. Now I discover he's been hiding in the Seanad.
Callely was one of the oilier members of Bertie Ahern's club. He resigned as junior transport minister in 2005 after it was discovered that a well-known construction firm had painted his house for free. Then he lost his seat and decided to run for the Seanad. He lost that election too. So, unloved by the public and unwanted for the Seanad, Callely walked away, right? Wrong, Ahern consoled him with one of his 11 discretionary seats in the upper house.
Despite having shown him the door, we are still paying for this two-time loser to have a career. He is the embodiment of political cronyism and self-interest and is another good reason for abolishing the Seanad – an institution that most of us know little about.
Here's a question: how many senators can you name? Four? Five? Here's another: what exactly does the Seanad do? One thing it does exceptionally well is hoover up money.
Since 2007, Ivor and friends have claimed €5.6m in expenses on top of their €70,000 annual salary. That's an average of €47,000 for a part-time job.
You may think that's a waste of money but Seanad leader, Donie Cassidy, doesn't agree. He told a Sunday newspaper that "no one makes any money out of politics and if anybody says they do, I would like to meet them." Senator Cassidy, may I introduce Senator Callely? He has a yacht, you know.
There have been 11 reports on Seanad reform, yet it's still there devouring money. Colm McCarthy said its abolition would save €25m. That's our €25m and most of us don't get a say in who is elected to it. Its membership is decided by the political establishment and two universities. Generally, it is a retirement home for failed politicians and a halfway house for Dáil wannabes. As a national debating parlour, Liveline is 20 times more potent and democratic.
The Seanad has no powers other than to delay bills. Actually that's not true: it has the power to shut itself down when it fancies a round of golf. In May it decided to take a day off so that Donie and Co could go on an outing to Portmarnock. There were 'wigs on the green' over that.
Some genuinely gifted people have graced the Seanad – Mary Robinson, Feargal Quinn, David Norris, or Camp David as I like to call him. They don't, however, justify its existence. It's not even like we have any great historic ties to it either: it's only been around for 72 years. Common sense says that, considering our finances, we should scrap it. It also says that if our senators were interested in the state's welfare, they would debate the Seanad's worth, conclude it's worthless and vote to abolish it. As the Seanad is powerless, the result wouldn't be binding, but the process would give them something to do between golf outings.
What a banana republic. There are hundreds of thousands on the dole and we are paying people like 'Ram' Callely to do a meaningless job. We're paying for the upkeep of his yacht.
We live in a country where John 'Bull' O'Donoghue can waste hundreds of thousands of euros and only half apologise. Where a disgraced Fás chief can walk away with a golden handshake. Where those bankers who have betrayed our country are not behind bars for treason.
Our politicians have, grudgingly, taken token pay cuts. If they want to show real solidarity with their fellow citizens they should put the Seanad's fate to a referendum. There's a painful budget coming up and heeding An Bord Snip's thoughts about this club might soften the blow. It would show a willingness to come up with some new thinking.
Admiral Callely, for his part, believes in "new thinking". He says so on his website.
"I truly believe, together, with a redoubling of our commitment and effort, and with new thinking, we will see these tough times through and restore our country to more prosperous times. I invite you to join me in [sic] this journey…"
Join you on your journey, Callely? With you at the helm? Not bloody likely.

dkenny@tribune.ie

Nostalgia makes the hero infallible. It also masks his failures

2009-09-18T15:55:00.001+01:00

Sunday Tribune 6 September

I was nine when my father brought me to his office for the first time. My stomach was in a knot as we drove up Nutley Lane. I was the luckiest boy in the world. Some kids' dads worked in paperclip warehouses or counted traffic cones for a living – mine worked in RTÉ .
My cheeks burned as I met people "from the telly" that afternoon. Professionally unsmiling newsreaders smiled at me and shook my hand. I discovered they even had legs or, in the case of towering Charles Mitchell, stilts. Snow-capped Don Cockburn wore bicycle clips as he saluted us from the shadow of the radio mast. Maurice O'Doherty's magnificent deadpan face creased into a grin as he traded affectionate insults with my father.
Then there was the Wanderly Wagon. It stole the show. We turned a corner and it practically "yahooed!!" at us, all showy bright paint, parked beside the slick glass TV building. Judge and O'Brien's caravan was taking a break from its adventures and I was allowed to touch it.
"Is Judge inside there?"
"He's probably in the canteen having his tea."
Over 30 years later I can still recall the excitement of seeing Wanderly Wagon glistening in the sun. Moments like those bind fathers and sons.
Last week, 1974's Safe Cross Code TV ad, featuring the Wanderlies, was relaunched. All together now: "One, look for a safe place. Two, don't hurry…" I was brought back to sunny summer holidays in Laytown. It never rains in your memories, nostalgia is a great umbrella.
Last week, the boy in the ad was 'outed' as Fianna Fáil TD, Chris Andrews. That's handy: when times are rough in the Dáil he can start singing and all will be forgiven in a swell of nostalgia.
On Thursday, his cousin Ryan Tubridy dipped into the past too. He told how Gay Byrne had advised him about the Late Late. The nostalgia chord was struck. Is he the new Gaybo? We were told that the original theme tune was returning, revamped. Nostalgia as a sales tool – if you forget that Gay's show was insufferable at times. Just because we associate something with our youth doesn't mean it was any good.
The same could be said of Oasis, who have announced their split. Last week I played 'Don't Look Back in Anger' in honour of my 20s. Memories of the '90s, and the Tiger party kicking off, came tumbling back. Nostalgia. Only the party is over and now we have Nama to cure our hangover.
As I moshed about in my past, another generation recalled theirs, watching Ted Kennedy's funeral. Poor Teddy. Bereaved brother, raconteur, peacemaker – he came good in the end. Nostalgia can make heroes of us all. Even if we have a dead girl in our car, or years wasted philandering.
Another American hero returned last week to re-run news reels in our heads. Ali, still handsome but almost entombed by disease, came to meet his cousins. "Float like a butterfly…" I remember crying when he lost to Leon Spinks in 1978.
Nostalgia makes gods out of heroes, despite their flaws. Ali nearly destroyed arch-enemy Joe Frazier with his cruel "Uncle Tom" taunts. He nearly broke his own wife too, when he flaunted his new girlfriend on TV in Manila while she watched at home. A hero with feet of clay. Cassius Clay.
Nostalgia is the opiate of the masses in post-boom Ireland. Instead of facing the present, we're constantly looking back. This is because the past is a Nama-free country. There are no repossessions when you live in a Wanderly Wagon or parking fines on our Safe Cross Code roads. There are no greasy politicians like John O'Donoghue, just prodigal statesmen like Teddy. There are only heroes, like Ali.
We turn to our childhood because it's preferable to being a grown-up at the moment. We want someone older and wiser to make things better. That's why so many people listened to Garret FitzGerald when he backed Nama last week. He represents an heroic age, spent battling recession and CJ Haughey. Garret is part Ali, Teddy and cuddly Wanderly Judge. Most of all, Garret is the nation's grandad. "If Garret says Nama is okay, then…"
Nostalgia makes the hero infallible. It also masks his failures. Garret made one of the greatest unforced errors in political history. He brought down his government by trying to tax children's shoes in 1981.
Nostalgia makes us forget the Messiah is human. Maybe that's a good thing, though. Maybe, by blinkering us, nostalgia helps us fulfil a human desire to start trusting again. Maybe a leap of faith with Garret is what we need – we're potentially knackered any way you look at it.
When I was 11, I was tall enough to finally see over the half door of the Wanderly Wagon. I climbed up, trembling with excitement. My dad watched my heart crash through the floor. There was no Judge, no O'Brien. There wasn't even a table and chairs. Just bare wood. Wanderly Wagon was a shell, an illusion.
Thirty years on, Safe Cross Judge is back on TV, teaching a future politician how to cross the road. Thirty years on, Fianna Fáil still has muppet advisers.
Considering the past, that's still one hard illusion to shatter.

dkenny@tribune.ie

September 6, 2009

Want to redeem yourself Harney? That'll be €7m

2009-09-01T14:17:00.002+01:00

Sunday Tribune 30 August

Here's a trivia question: which minister was first to impose a smoke ban on Dublin? Micheál Martin or Mary Harney? Here's a clue: it was a no-brainer of a decision.
If you're over 30 you'll remember how thick smog used to choke Dublin's streets on still winter evenings. As a teenager working for the Irish Press; I used to dread those nights when it turned Burgh Quay into a horror movie set. My first 'job' was death-notice messenger, which was macabre enough without added atmosphere. Undertakers would phone in their notices, ask for a copy to be sent to the Indo and I would be flung, jibbering, out the door with a ream of print-outs.
Eight times a night I crossed the Liffey with a list of dead people under my arm, terrified that some nutjob would lunge out of the smog at me. Then, in 1990, Harney banned 'smoking' bituminous coal and the smog vanished forever. It was one of her best achievements.
Nineteen years later, she says she wants to ban sunbeds. Getting rid of something that's bad for you is a "no-brainer", she said last week.
Her old friend, Bertie Ahern, doesn't believe in getting rid of something that's bad for us – namely himself. He's indicated that he will stand again if there is a snap election, to make up FF numbers. To Bertie this is a no-brainer. He's right – only the brainless would think it a good idea to put him back in the Dáil.
Ahern, the man who blew the boom, is proof that all political careers end in failure. The same may be said of Harney. She started out so well though. When she was expelled from Fianna Fáil in 1985 for defying Haughey over the Anglo Irish agreement, many of us thought, 'Here's a woman with integrity.' We saw the formation of the PDs and thought, 'New liberal party with integrity. Looking good,' and then watched as Fianna Fáil slowly enveloped it, like a grubby smog.
The first signs of Harney reverting to FF type came in 2001 when she used a government plane to fly her to the opening of a friend's off-licence in Manorhamilton. (She's since been embroiled in the Fás expenses scandal.) Despite this, many still had high hopes for her when she took over Health in 2004.
Her first move was to set up the HSE. Two years later, the Euro Health Consumer Index ranked our healthcare 26th in Europe – out of 26 countries. In 2008, we were ranked 11 out of 31. So some improvement there, and there are others to be fair. Such as in monitoring of standards and infrastructure. The overhaul of St Vincent's is a good example of the latter in Dublin. Saying that, Loughlinstown is terrifying.
Standards, in general, are getting better in our hospitals. The problem is getting into one. Waiting lists are a disgrace. For instance, don't get a hernia in Tallaght. There is an 11-month wait to get it repaired at Tallaght hospital. By comparison, in Britain, the maximum wait for any procedure is 18 weeks. For suspected cancer it's two.
Wrap your children in cotton wool, too. Last Wednesday, Crumlin said it didn't know when the 25-bed ward and operating theatre there would reopen – it's been closed since May.
Other areas are dreadful too: stroke, mental health, cystic fibrosis care… The HSE is still an overstaffed, incompetent mess and responsibility for this lies with Harney.
Last week, Labour's Jan O'Sullivan said Harney has "lost interest in the job. She hides behind the HSE and doesn't want to engage with people." When she does, her "dictatorial approach backs people into corners" and makes matters worse.
All the signs point to this. Harney's best days are behind her. Her party's dead. Health – the job no one wants – is now a sinecure for her, like Ahern's Dáil seat is one for him. They both share the same breathtaking level of arrogance and self-entitlement.
Occasionally, she ventures out of Fortress HSE and makes a pronouncement. Last week it was about sunbeds. Harney told Lance Armstrong's cancer conference that she was looking into banning them. She was talking rubbish. In 2006 she said she would introduce legislation banning children from using them – and it still hasn't arrived. How long would it take her to bring in an all-out ban? She could do it tomorrow, if she really was interested. Her department, by the way, doesn't even fund any skin cancer awareness campaigns.
Harney made a fool of herself last week. The international reaction to her halting of the €7m cervical-cancer vaccine scheme was mortifying. She is looking for cuts of €800m from the HSE and can't spare €7m to save lives. Up to 80 women a year die from cervical cancer. What is the cost of treating a cancer patient, minister?
All political careers end in failure. Some will remember Harney as the minister who banned smog. All of us will remember her for failing to protect Irish women.
Harney has become an arrogant, cantankerous journeywoman. She's not stupid – she knows she can redeem herself. The only thing standing in her way is pride. And a paltry €7m.
It's a no-brainer, Mary.

dkenny@tribune.ie

August 30, 2009

It's shocking to find a murder story on your doorstep

2009-08-26T13:37:00.003+01:00

Sunday Tribune August 23

Thunder rumbled beyond Dalkey quarry as I walked into the village: a storm was threatening to move in from the south. It was almost tacky, like a bad special effect, but matched the gloomy mood about the place on Thursday.
A group of subdued young people in black crowded around a gate. The funeral of Shane Clancy had taken place that morning in the church. The suicidal student murdered Sebastian Creane in Bray last Sunday in a jealous rage over his ex-girlfriend, Jennifer Hannigan. I presumed these young people were mourners. They may have been the young voices extolling Clancy's virtues the previous day on Joe Duffy's Liveline. "He was a great man," said 'Phillip'. "An all-round really nice guy," said 'Jennifer'.
Phil Coulter also came on air to lament tragic Sebastian Creane, the innocent friend of his children. "It's the kind of unreal thing you read about in the papers that always happens to somebody else, but when it comes to your door…" he said.
Headlines become three dimensional when you live in a village. I walked down Castle Street to buy the papers, past The Queen's where Sebastian spent his final hours with teetotaller Clancy on Saturday. As they left at 3am, I was leaving a party nearby. I might have passed them, I thought.
I eat in restaurants within feet of Clancy's house and occasionally drink in The Club, where he and Jennifer worked. He may have packed my shopping during a charity drive in EuroSpar. He lived half a mile from me and knew people I know. Even as a cynical hack, it's shocking to find a murder story on your doorstep.
I fine-combed the papers, wanting to understand Clancy and his crime. There were grainy photos and timeline maps in the Independent. The Irish Times carried the story about him buying knives at 4am on page one. The Daily Mail painted a picture of an enraged stalker – the Evening Herald that of a teetotal charity worker who had gone psychotic. It also carried an interview with a Jesuit who had strident views about the case.
What had started in the village rumour mill as a crazed stabbing, the papers fleshed out as a crime of passion.
Around the country, others pored over the details too, trying to understand. Interest was so great that the murder eclipsed a spate of stabbings on the streets of Mayo. Stabbings don't normally happen in Ballinrobe. Why was Bray more newsworthy?
The reason is that the Mayo attacks happened on the street – where we expect them. The Clancy stabbing, on the other hand, happened in a suburban home and involved a jilted lover from a 'celebrity' village. The story has an obvious, tabloid attraction.
However, once you strip away the voyeuristic aspects, another reason for our fascination with this type of story emerges – fear. This was a 'next-door killing'. We subconsciously fear that something similar could happen beside us or, worse, in our own homes. Therefore, we forensically examine the story to make sense of the crime. What was the reason? We have to have a reason, because if there isn't one, it will haunt us.
Ten years ago, almost to the week, Raonaid Murray was murdered a mile from Dalkey. No motive or killer has been found. Every year her story is republished and every year we read it, hoping for a breakthrough. Until her mystery is solved, there is a killer still living among us. We read hoping for closure.
Whenever the Herald carried a Rachel O'Reilly story at the peak of the interest in her murder, sales increased. Raonaid, the Robert Holohan tragedy in Cork, Siobhan Kearney in Goatstown and the Club Anabel's death of Brian Murphy all did likewise. Sales were boosted by people's need to make sense of the seemingly senseless. If Rachel's husband didn't murder her, who did? Is there a serial killer on the loose? And so on.
Ireland is becoming more violent. We fear confronting car thieves or kids vandalising a Dart carriage. We fear intervening in street fights. Most of all, we fear violence creeping into safe suburbia, as it did with Bray. As readers, we have the closure we need with this case. It wasn't random: we have motive and killer. The families are not so lucky and other questions remain. Why were the warning signs not spotted? Should a young man be able to buy a block of knives at 4am?
In his homily, Dalkey's parish priest spoke of Clancy's psychotic state and prayed for him to be at peace.
Jesuit blogger Fr Fergus O'Donoghue was not so kind. "All the psycho-babble explanations in the world will not take away from the fact that this killing was pure evil," he told the Herald. "Some will want to take comfort in a psychological explanation, but that won't help."
Statements like that won't help Shane Clancy's friends and family either as they deal with their grief. His final acts defined his short life, but branding him evil on the day they buried him is brutal and grossly insensitive. The theological discussion about Clancy's character could have waited until the mourners had gone home and the clay had settled.
I'm sure Joe Duffy would have handled the debate admirably.

dkenny@tribune.ie

August 23, 2009

Baron Wince, Tara and the lords of incompetence

2009-08-18T13:57:00.002+01:00

Sunday Tribune 16 August

Tenner for the first person who guesses what 'Carbon Wine', 'Brace In Now!' and 'Bare Cow Inn' have in common. My travelling companions didn't make the connection. One threatened to connect his fist with my gob if I didn't shut up, though.
On Tuesday we headed to Tullamore for a lads' night out with a friend who has swapped the Liffey for Offaly (he's a 'Liffo'). I spent the journey shouting out stupid anagrams of people's names to irritate the other passengers. I can be really, really, really annoying when I'm bored.
Brian Cowen's name is stuffed with good anagrams, like the ones above, but I discovered one that describes him perfectly. It's 'Baron Wince'. You know the way you wince at your bills these days? That's down to Baron Wince – Ireland's Lord of Pain.
We headed to the Baron's local, the Brewery Tap, because I wanted to ask him what he knows about bi-location – being in two places at once. Noel Dempsey got me wondering about this last week as he defended the latest news from Tara. The Baron wasn't about, so my question had to wait. (We'll return to it later.)
The news from Tara is that we will have to compensate the operators of the M3 if the number of cars using it falls below a target agreed by the state. So what's that target? Don't ask the National Roads Authority. It would only say last week that it was "competitive".
Don't ask Dempsey either. Newstalk's Eamon Keane asked him if the public will ever be told. Not if it's commercially sensitive, he replied, adding "what we WILL know is if the target is NOT reached". So there you have it. How many cars make the M3 viable? Answer: mind your own business.
Even after all the crookedness Fianna Fáil has displayed towards Tara, this latest revelation stopped me in my tracks. What next? Are they planning to sell the rights to Tara's name, like The Point did to 02? Will we see 'Welcome to The Hill of Eurolink' as we approach Tara? It wouldn't surprise me.
The M3 scandal embodies all that is wrong with Irish politics: greed, wastefulness, ignorance and a total disregard for democracy. Nobody wanted it in Tara/Skryne bar Fianna Fáil, which was so eager to destroy the valley that it paid almost €69,000 an acre for it. So eager, that it bulldozed the national monument at Lismullen, sparking an expensive European Court case. If/when we lose, we could be ordered to do a new environmental impact study and go back to scratch on the site.
Unesco may also order the road to be moved if it deems Tara a World Heritage Site. Environment minister John Gormley is afraid of this so he delayed presenting it for consideration. The obvious thing to do now is halt the M3 pending Unesco and the court's decisions. 'Green' Gormley, however, is hell-bent on completing a motorway that is destroying a heritage site, may have to be moved and may not prove viable.
A shortfall is highly likely. Last April it was predicted that almost 23,000 vehicles would use the M3 daily when it opens next July. Those numbers need to be readjusted because of the recession. Last month, Meath experienced the largest increase in people signing on – an extra 17,000 people, or 4%. That means a lot of cars off the road until the gloom recedes. On top of that, the remaining workforce won't want to pay €11.20-a-day in tolls when the rail service to Navan opens. Incidentally, neither Dempsey nor Gormley will have to pay the tolls – ministerial cars are exempt.
The pair's record with sums is appalling: last year Dempsey spent €70,000 on a new logo for Transport 21. The existing one had been developed in-house… for free. At around the same time, Gormley spent €15m on a climate change advertising campaign and only €5m on the Warmer Homes Scheme.
Two men, two things in common: the M3 and financial incompetence.
Remember I wanted to ask Brian Cowen about bi-location? The M3 bail-out has made it theoretically possible for me to be in two places at once – driving through Meath while at home in Dublin. Here's my question: why should I pay a toll on a road I don't want, will never use, in a county I don't live in, to a foreign consortium – for the next 45 years?
Fianna Fáil has secretly shackled us to a road that's in the wrong place. It agreed to underwrite a bad development that was in trouble from the start. How many other similar deals has it done? After this, how can we trust its judgment on Nama?
Last week, the Greens made noises about holding a convention on Nama. Under party rules, Gormley and Co can be ordered to vote it down, effectively ending the coalition.
Here's another question about location: where were the Greens' grass roots when the rest of us were discussing Nama? Why have they suddenly discovered their voices when the Dáil is on holidays? Are they serious or just posing?
Considering the Greens' hypocrisy to date, another two-word anagram comes to mind. It's of 'T-a-r-a' and is normally preceded by "I smell…"
It's also always associated with sinking ships, Mr Gormley.

dkenny@tribune.ie

Here's some media advice, Beverley: stop laughing at us

2009-08-14T17:38:00.001+01:00

Sunday Tribune, 9 August

Summer 1984 ended too quickly. May crashed into June as the 'mock' became the Leaving. Fourteen years of school were over. July flew: a blur of discos at the Cliff Castle Hotel, dancing to Dexy's 'Come on Eileen', and evenings at the Pierrot Club scrounging coins to play PacMan. Afternoons zipped by, hanging around our road, ogling Spanish students and rehashing gags from the Young Ones. Disguising dread with stupid banter as August, and results day, sprinted in.
Leaving Cert summer is a type of No Man's Land between childhood and adulthood. I didn't want mine to end. Results day terrified me: it meant either college or the shame of a repeat year. For many it meant a ticket to England or America. We were the last generation of Irish to emigrate.
Two other fortysomethings who were in the news last week also waited on exam results in 1984. One was from Glenageary, the other from Castlebar. Both went on to UCD. Both are politicians. Both are shameless opportunists.
The former made headlines during the Thomas Cook sit-in on Grafton Street. On Tuesday I watched the 'protestors' singing 'Ireland's Call' and behaving as if they were on some kind of a patriotic mission. I cringed. They were deluding themselves. They weren't heroes. They had been offered a good redundancy package and greedily wanted more.
The appearance of left-wing campaigner Richard Boyd Barrett added to my irritation. He's respected for his work in Dun Laoghaire, but what was he getting involved in this for? This was a circus. His presence, however, prompted me to look closer at the story and my attitude changed.
Thomas Cook's profits were up 35% last year and its CEO received a 34% pay rise and a €7m bonus. It's making buckets of money. When the workers tried to negotiate for more, management moved to close the office ahead of schedule. They were being 'railroaded'. The employees had no right to defy a court order ordering them to leave, but their action was understandable.
The country can't afford industrial mayhem, but workers can't be expected to just roll over either. Sacrifices must be made, but people's rights must also be protected. Ireland has already been run into the ground by ruthless profiteers. Profiteers who are constantly in the sights of arch opportunist, Boyd Barrett.
While his sincerity isn't in doubt, the Glenageary man knows the value of a picture of him being arrested with the protesters. It helps further his socialist agenda. Still, even if you don't agree with his beliefs, you can't deny he's in politics for the right reasons.
Now look west. Another opportunist is making headlines. Unlike Boyd Barrett though, Beverley Flynn only ever makes headlines for the wrong reasons. The latest is that she claimed almost €30k in expenses for work done by a media adviser.
Beverley has always been good with money. After her failed libel action against RTé she dragged her heels over the €3m costs and got away with paying only half. Bertie Ahern later declared she would be a minister some day. Possibly minister for finance given her dexterity with taxpayers' money.
Earlier this year, we learned she was still claiming €41k of expenses as an independent TD. Despite public revulsion, Beverley keeps soldiering on.
No wonder she needs a media adviser. Here's a piece of media advice, Beverley: wipe that smirk off your face. You look like you're laughing at us. Your bloated self-importance is stomach-churning.
Flynn, and others like her, proves Boyd Barrett's case that Ireland needs a new radicalism to shake up the establishment. I obviously don't mean turning the country into a socialist state, but to adjust the balance. To stop a small part of the population screwing the rest. You know, like in a R.E.P.U.B.L.I.C.
Those of us who did our Leaving in the '80s claimed to have built a new Ireland. What we actually built was a New Babylon, founded on greed and toppled by our towering self belief. We wanted more, more, more and so overstretched to buy overpriced houses. Both parents then had to work to pay the bills. This created a new breed of latch-key kids, flush with guilt-money from their absentee parents. They became designer accessories for mum and dad: the more spoiled your child, the more affluent you looked.
So we have a generation of cosseted kids staring out over No Man's Land as the hours tick down to results day. I feel sorry for them. For all their cockiness they're more vulnerable than we were. We were prepared for the worst. They've only ever tasted success and aren't prepared for failure. Unlike us, they have no escape route to England or America.
What's more, we've loaded them with another responsibility: the task of rebuilding this country over the coming decades. They can start by looking at two individuals who awaited exam results 25 years ago this week. Boyd Barrett and Flynn. Who is giving more to society? Who has made the most of their potential? Our school-leavers' answer to this will be the key to Ireland's emergence as a just society.
And kids, if you ever need a media adviser, I know just the man for the job.
And I'll do you a good deal …

dkenny@tribune.ie

August 9, 2009

Bertie's 'legacy' is as good as his fashion sense – rotten

2009-08-05T14:52:00.002+01:00

Sunday Tribune August 2

I have an admission to make. It's not pleasant, so prepare yourself. I once… God, this isn't easy… I once owned a pair of… white shoes. And an electric-blue Miami Vice jacket, white baggies and a canary yellow polo shirt with matching tie. I also had a mullet. I never wore white socks though – I swear it. Sorry if the image is putting you off your brunch.
I used to wear the jacket's sleeves rolled up. I had to: I bought it for £19.99 in Unique Boutique and in my hurry to leave before anyone I knew saw me being such a cheapskate, I grabbed a size three times too big for me. Still, I thought the huge shoulder pads made me look manly. My dad said they made me look like Joan Collins dressed as a rent boy. The jacket ended up in the cat basket after that.
I was reminded of my fashion unconsciousness last week when I saw pictures of Bertie Ahern at the Galway Races. Bertie, one expert wrote, broke the cardinal rule of not wearing navy with black.
He was a right mess: navy jacket, striped shirt and tie – clashing so badly they nearly gave me an epileptic fit – and black trousers. Bertie looked like the kind of man who tucks his shirt into his underpants and wears his socks in bed. Not that I ever want to find out.
When Garret FitzGerald wore odd socks it suggested he was too busy juggling matters of state to notice. Bertie can't claim the same excuse. He hasn't much to worry about as he's on holidays until September. Not that he's been too busy at work. In his first year as ex-taoiseach, Bertie missed 85% of Dáil votes. He didn't even attend for a vote on the bank bailout.
The main thing on Bertie's mind last week was the demise of the Fianna Fáil tent at Galway Races. "Some of the flak it got over the years was a bit unfair," he said, "but it never worried me."
Nothing ever worries Bertie. Nothing: like the intake of breath when he told the planning tribunal he had won sums of mysterious money on the gee-gees.
Nothing: like the economy he helped wreck through his profligacy. The economy that last week pinned its hopes on Nama, set up to bail out his developer friends and rescue deals struck over pints in that same Fianna Fáil tent.
He's not worried about the Commission on Taxation either, as it prepares to recommend introducing a property tax. He can afford it – unlike the 78 families whose homes were listed for repossession in court last Monday. The government is going to tax the house Bertie encouraged you to buy, as you struggle to hold on to it.
As he checked the form last week, Bertie was probably glad he no longer has a garda minder. He wouldn't have been able to concentrate, with him moaning about his pension.
The gardaí last week legally challenged the levy on their sweet-deal pension. If they succeed, more public-sector challenges will follow. If only Bertie hadn't over-inflated the public sector. Never mind, spotted any 'bankers' on the card, Bertie?
Bankers? Last Monday, Permanent TSB raised its rates. Bertie's colleague, Brian Lenihan, said he wouldn't intervene. He gave PTSB a state guarantee and now it's giving him the finger. Didn't you promote him to cabinet, Bertie? Good judge of form, there.
It's enough to make you sick – if you can afford to be sick. The HSE last week published a list of chemists who won't 'strike' over the Drugs Payment Scheme row. Typically, the list was wrong and included one pharmacy which closed three months ago. Wasn't the HSE put under starter's orders by your government, Bertie?
While Ahern was at the races, the fall-out continued from his 2002 deal capping the church's liability over child-abuse payments. Last week, the state was still waiting for a statement of assets from one of the 18 orders named in the Ryan report. Presumably, it will pass the post some day soon, Bertie.
Some people like to blindly stick a pin into the racing pages when choosing a runner. You could have stuck one anywhere in the paper last week and skewered a piece of Bertie's 'legacy'. Or a picture of him: smug, laughing. Funny Bertie. As funny as a hernia. Bertie Ahernia.
Ahernia used to spend thousands on make-up, but his dress sense on Tuesday suggests he couldn't be bothered keeping up appearances any more. The real Bertie is resurfacing, as shabby as his 'legacy'.
Not that he sees it as shabby. The Washington Speakers Bureau describes him as having "brought economic prosperity, peace and political prominence… creating a progressive strategy and blueprint for other countries of the world to follow". Who wrote that CV?
I suspect I wasn't the only person watching Bertie acting the retired champion last week and wishing he was finally put out to grass.
When he said he never worried about flak taken over the Fianna Fáil tent, I happily imagined him being boiled down for glue.
The FF tent is gone but, like the odour of stale horse manure, Bertie lingers on.
Roll up your tent and take a hike, Ahern. You're not at the races any more.

dkenny@tribune.ie

August 2, 2009

Airport tax doesn't put me off flying but O'Leary does

2009-08-05T14:50:00.000+01:00

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Sunday Tribune 26 July

Bags unpacked, fridge magnets in place and the last of the after sun squirted over the peeling bits: the holidays are over. I'm not complaining, though. I was grateful for the break from the relentless bad news. During the fortnight I was away, the only 'Snip' I heard was the label being cut off the new, larger, shorts my expanding belly forced me to buy.
This year we were determined to leave catching up on events to the bitter end. On the way from the airport the taximan got as far as "So what do you think abou…" before we yelled "Stop!" A relative managed "Recess…" before we wrestled her to the ground.
On Tuesday, Her Nibs finally turned on the telly – as if she was detonating a bomb by remote control. We chose the BBC, to avoid any bad news from home. Bad choice. Up pops Ryanair's Michael O'Leary spinning figures and moaning about airport taxes, which he says are putting people off flying. He's cut some winter flights from Stansted in protest and is expected to announce the same here.
O'Leary has the same effect on me as haemorrhoids have on jockeys. It's the man-of-the-people act that gets me: when he puts on fancy dress, gurns and Takes On The System. What man-of-the-people has his bank balance? What people-friendly organisation cuts dozens off from their holiday homes in Fuerteventura by withdrawing flights in a business row? Ryanair did, two weeks ago.
This latest gripe suggests he's either deliberately talking rubbish or is completely out of touch.
His tax theory falls apart when you consider the ordeal that air travel has become. Let's start with booking. Ryanair insists you print your own boarding pass. If you forget you're fined €40 – four times the airport tax plus a surcharge of extra stress.
When you arrive at the airport you have to queue for security. Forgotten the plastic bag for your 100ml of liquids? That'll be €1 for two, please.
Instead of cashing in on this rule, airports should be lobbying to have it abolished. It's a joke. Last year, a friend was stopped with 150ml of expensive moisturiser and refused to hand it over. Instead, she squeezed half into a Zippy bag and was let through. What was she going to do? Hijack the plane by threatening to give the pilot a facial?
The next stress point is the scanner and trying to remember to remove all metal objects, your laptop, your shoes, your belt and keep moving. This, by the way, is when you discover you've holes in your socks and everyone else discovers your novelty underpants as you struggle to keep your trousers up.
Whereas the staff are always pleasant, the scanner is a bit on the sensitive side. A female friend's bra frequently sets it off. We call it her Booby Trap Device.
Bras aside, Dublin airport has recently added another item to its Most Dangerous list… the pop-up umbrella. This has to be scanned separately in case, presumably, you storm the cockpit with it. "Don't move, I've got an umbrella… and it's spring loaded!" Mary Poppins flew with an umbrella. Bet she never had it scanned.
To avoid the gate scrum we normally gamble on Ryanair's priority boarding and hope that everyone else hasn't had the same idea. In Krakow a couple of years back, a friend discovered it gave him priority boarding… onto the bus to the plane. Being first on meant he was last off. There's value for money.
Speaking of value for money, O'Leary loves finding new ways to milk his herd. The latest are to get passengers to load their own luggage – turned down on security grounds – and stand for the flight. The next may be to strap a few to the wings.
Then there was the proposed charge for the loo. What if you hadn't any coins? That's where the plastic bags you bought at security would come in handy. Once filled, they could be given to the stewardess who – as a Ryanair employee – is probably used to taking the p***.
What about installing pedals at every seat to save on fuel bills: Passenger Power?
With all this in mind, you have to conclude that O'Leary is wrong about the tax being a disincentive to fly. If we're willing to put up with all the crap he and Dublin airport fling at us, then who cares about a lousy tenner?
The recession is the reason people are cutting back on foreign holidays. If you're fortunate enough to have saved for one, you're not going to let a €10 tax put you off. The tariff also brings in extra revenue from foreign tourists and it all goes into the state's – not O'Leary's – coffers. That's why he's so annoyed: he wants that tenner. He reckons if you've paid it in tax you'll be less inclined to buy his Baggies or Cup-A-Soups. It's eating into his profit margins.
O'Leary has some neck whingeing about taxes given that he considered introducing one himself four months ago: a fat tax on porky passengers. After weeks of winding everyone up, he dropped it.
Pigs will probably fly before he stops mouthing off about this one though, and gives us all a break.
I definitely need another one now.

dkenny@tribune.ie

July 26, 2009

It's a cruel, cruel summer, but at least I've got ELO

2009-08-05T14:47:00.002+01:00

Sunday Tribune 5 July

I HAVE good news. I won't be giving out about anything this week. I decided this on Wednesday while listening to RTÉ's Drivetime. Along with the relentless misery there was a piece marking the 30th birthday of the Sony Walkman. It raised the clouds for a few minutes.
So the following is a sort of Happy Birthday to the Walkperson. It's for people from a certain age group. So kids, bugger off to your room now.
I remember the first time I saw a Walkman was behind my school's handball alleys. Ten Major in hand, I turned the corner to see Andrew Flood surrounded by a crowd of excited, spotty adolescents. He was shouting. "BRILLIANT!!!! JUZCANGEDENNUF, AH JUZCANGEDENNUF!!!!" What a mentaller, I thought.
"What's up?" I asked Charlie Costello, trendsetter of fifth year.
"He's listening to my Walkman," he explained.
"Oh." I nodded knowingly, not having a clue what a Walkman was.
"Here," he lifted the headphones off Floodie's mullet, "have a listen."
I suppose you could call it an epiphany. There's no other way to describe being assumed into stereo heaven for the first time. The quality was staggering. Depeche Mode's 'Just Can't Get Enough' was playing. Electronic notes pinged, buzzed and ricocheted around my head. "AH JUZCANGEDENNUF!!!!" I sang and silent faces laughed back at me.
Prior to the Walkman, the most portable musical player was a tape recorder. I bought my first one with my Confirmation money – £11. It was a rectangular, mono Lloytron with a built-in condenser mic. I used to put it under the telly for Top of the Pops and pressed record when the The Jam or Blondie came on, noisily banging it off when Abba or The Nolans appeared, which really annoyed my sisters.
It was portable, but you couldn't walk down the street listening to a Lloytron. Someone would, justifiably, beat you up for being a twat. Then the Walkman arrived and music could be pogoed to on a friend's hi fi and played on the way home too. It had left the living room.
The Walkman, if you could afford one, made the streets of early '80s Ireland seem less grim. It helped block out the uncertainties of being a teenager and cast us as the stars of our own imaginary music videos.
It also eventually led to the solipsistic world of today where Mp3 players are used to shut out the sound of humanity's cogs turning: coughing on the bus, a baby crying, someone looking like they want to chat.
The Walkman brought opportunities for adolescent intimacy. Sharing a headphone, cheek to cheek, could lead to brittle teen romances. The mix tape was conceived: a cassette filled with favourite tracks and given to the object of your lust.
It contained songs like Frankie Goes To Hollywood's 'Two Tribes', with its controversial video depicting Ronald
Reagan wrestling the Russian premier. Maybe we should get Brian and Enda to do that. Could solve a lot of problems. My money's on Biffo, though. He looks like he bites. But I'm digressing.

Madonna's 'Papa Don't Preach' was another favourite. Someone should sing that to Bishop of Galway, Martin Drennan, who is stopping mourners leaving loved- ones in church overnight. Apparently it's 'inappropriate'. Yet another example of compassionate Irish Catholicism. Actually, I'd better be careful what I say: don't want to blaspheme. I might get fined €25,000 under Dermot Ahern's new blasphemy law. Last week, he backpedalled slightly by reducing it from €100,000 but is still sticking with his crackpot's charter.
We'll add one in honour of his new anti-gang law. The Clash's 'I Fought The Law And The Law Won'.
How about 'Caravan of Love' by the Housemartins for John Gormley? He's backtracked on placing a property tax on mobile homes after an outcry on Liveline. He still won't listen to the outcry over Tara though. What a hypocrite.
Sorry, I promised not to give out. Here's one for Bill Cullen who accuses Gormley of wrecking the car industry: Alexei Sayle's 'Hello John, Got a New Motor?'.
How about some ska? Madness to go with our ministers' decision to take 10 internal flights this year at a cost of over €20,000. Bad Manners to go with the second suspension in a week of the Dáil due to heckling. The Specials' 'Ghost Town', which is what the Dáil will be when these timewasters go on their 11-week holidays.
Our penultimate track is the Boomtown Rats' 'Banana Republic'. Blasphemy laws, Tara and Nama becoming the biggest owner of bad debts on the planet? BananaNama. Wasn't that a girl band who sang 'Cruel Summer'?
It's cruel all right, given that unemployment reached 11.9% last Wednesday. This was the news which prompted me to stop listening to Drivetime and promise (unsuccessfully) not to give out. When Leo Varadkar said "this is the darkest day in the worst ever recession" Julian Cope's 'World Shut Your Mouth' began playing in my head. I reached for my iPod, stuck in my headphones and listened to one of my favourite bands, Electric Light Orchestra. The song I played is 30 years old this month, like the Walkman. 'Don't Bring Me Down' never fails to cheer me up.

July 5, 2009

A word to Gormley about his new archaeology code: Tara

2009-07-02T00:31:00.006+01:00

Sunday Tribune 28 June

This boys," said Mr Halpin, "will stay with you forever. I hope it makes a big impact."
Ordinarily, whenever a teacher spoke of making an 'impact' at St Joseph's National School in Glasthule, you started sweating. It normally involved the crack of a bamboo cane. Not on this occasion though. We were about to see something historic. Besides, Halpin always preferred sarcasm to brutality.
He was a bit of a hero. He played Mungo Jerry records in class and showed us how to make free plectrums out of detergent bottles. He also liked cartoons and had a wit as dry as a pub on Good Friday. He seemed to actually like us.
The historic occasion took place on a trip to the National Library in 1979. Myself and two other 11-year-olds, Cianán and Mick, were to choose books for the school. The four of us clowned the day away with Mr Halpin leading the laughter. Afterwards, he took us to see a part of Dublin he hoped we'd remember forever. He hoped seeing it would make an impact on our young minds. It did.
I can still see, through a gap in the hoarding, the muddy timber steps of Wood Quay. "This is going," he said. "The council is covering it with concrete." All the way home we simmered with anger, fuelled by his. He told us how protestors had found swords in the builders' rubble and how the city walls had been razed. He explained how the quay had been named a national monument but the government destroyed it anyway. He told us the only people who wanted the ugly new buildings were politicians.
I still get angry when I pass Wood Quay. Halpin had given us a mental snapshot of our disappearing history. I'll always have it in my head. Last week, I saw Wood Quay again when John Gormley announced a new archaeological code of practice to protect our monuments. There was the clang of a rusty gate being bolted and the distant neighing of a horse. This is the man who sold Tara to get into bed with Fianna Fáil – the party which was responsible for Wood Quay.
Despite being 'Green', he has done nothing to halt the M3 ploughing through the Tara/Skryne valley. Instead he has concentrated on defending his predecessor's demolition of the Lismullin national monument which lay in its way.
Dick Roche contravened European law by failing to commission an environmental impact study on the site. The government has now spent huge sums fighting the European Commission over the issue.
Gormley also spent a bundle drafting last week's Eirgrid Code of Practice. If the European Court finds against Ireland, the National Monuments Act will have to be amended and the code will have to be redrafted. More money flushed away.
The M3 tolls will go out of Meath to a multinational. More waste.
The mishandling of Tara proves, conclusively, that we are being governed by profligate idiots. The M3 should never have been routed through Tara/Skryne. It was always going to throw up monuments like Lismullin and lead to costly court battles. The obvious thing to do was route it west of Tara, avoiding the valley.
The Greens campaigned against the M3. The World Monuments Fund and Smithsonian Institution have placed it on their 'endangered' lists. Gormley is still pushing ahead with it, though.
In December, he hired 15 experts to help draft a list of sites, including Tara, to nominate to Unesco for world heritage status at its annual meeting last Tuesday. No list was delivered.
Tarawatch is continuing its campaign to re-route the road with a protest at the Dáil this Wednesday (1pm). They will ask Gormley why the Unesco list wasn't submitted as it would have tested the M3's impact on Tara's heritage status. They will also tell him that his new archaeological code of practice is meaningless while Tara/Skryne is being vandalised.
Gormley's betrayal of Tara/Skryne is endorsing Fianna Fáil's traditional approach to the environment – "cover it over with concrete". That party's love of unbridled development is the reason why places like Meath became an overspill for Dublin and why its roads desperately need to be improved. They mustn't be improved at the expense of Tara. It's bound up with our history. For 800 years it tied our ancestors to a legendary past which was ultimately used to stir up revolution and create our Republic.
The world sees Tara as our spiritual centre. It even features in one of the most popular novels/films of all time. Scarlett O'Hara's plantation is named after it in Gone With The Wind. Her fictional Tara represents the Irish emigrant's longing for home. Our real one now stands for longing to get home from work quicker. We need Unesco to protect Tara from ourselves.
Our generation stood by as the government over-developed our country. What will our legacy be? Some Nama-esque hulks of buildings? Some half-built estates? A concrete dagger through the heart of Tara? Is this what we want to leave behind for future schoolchildren and young teachers like the late Mr Halpin?
I can imagine him surveying the M3 and sardonically quoting Scarlett's famous line: "Is Tara still standing or is it also gone with the wind?"
Scarlet? He'd be crimson with anger.

Scrap Bloomsday - give us 'Dubliners' Day instead

2009-06-26T11:47:00.002+01:00

Sunday Tribune, June 21

Stately, plump Buck Mulligan leaned on the parapet of the Martello tower and examined the snot green sea. Filling his nostrils with salt-tang air, he picked up his shaving bowl and noticed a throng below him.
"Who," he wondered, "are that shower of w****rs?"
And w****rs they were indeed. Some wore bruised panama hats and novelty spectacles. Others wore bowlers, blazers and deck shoes. Women wore shawls over designer dresses. All about were ad-hoc Edwardians who had half-plundered their wardrobes in an attempt to look 'period'. A bearded gentleman in a linen suit was high-camping it on a pushbike, cooing "how's your giblets missus?" Small groups of Japanese, Scandinavians and Americans leapt out of his path, hugging their ragged copies of Ulysses, the book in which Buck was a character.
Sighing, Buck called to a young boy passing by. "You there! What day is this?"
"Why, it's Bloomsday sir!"
"Bloomsday? Here's a guinea, buy that goose in the butcher's window."
"But sir, you're confusing Ulysses with A Christmas Carol."
"That's not possible," Buck protested, "I've never read Ulysses."
"Don't worry," said the boy, "neither have most of these w****rs."
And so Buck retreated, leaving the narrative to me.
I live a seven-minute walk from Joyce's tower and every 16 June my head is done in by the pretentious gobdaws celebrating Bloomsday. Mentally, I moon at them.
My father used to celebrate Bloomsday. Like me, he had never finished Ulysses. He would plump up his cravat and grab someone's walking cane (even if they were using it) and head off with our pleas of "Don't! You look a twat!" ringing in his ears. I don't know if he ever made the tower but he definitely made Fitzie's pub.
I suppose he enjoyed himself and there's something to be said for that. Although it's really irritating, Bloomsday does provide some people with a respite from the prevailing Gloomsday.
What is REALLY annoying is that people confuse Bloomsday with a celebration of Dublin. It isn't. It's a middle-class pretence-fest. Dublin should be celebrated, but not in such an exclusive way.
Joyce celebrated the mundane aspects of the city as well as the landmarks. He drew a detailed human map of toilet smells, snot and other body fluids. He hoped that if Dublin was ever razed, it could be rebuilt using Ulysses.
Physically, this would be difficult. Joyce's short-arsed Dublin now spreads out beyond the pale. Dedalus's shoreline is now dominated by monolithic office blocks in Booterstown. Monto is gone and Talbot Street is now full of new lowlife.
Mundane, human Dublin is vanishing fast, too. If Joyce set Ulysses in 2004 instead of 1904 he might have walked down Moore Street recalling how Joe Murphy founded Tayto there in 1954 – the year of the inaugural Bloomsday. Fifty years on, they were still being made in the capital. In 2005, the citizens' crisps, and jobs, were outsourced to Meath.
He might have stopped in Davy Byrne's and asked for a Jacob's cracker to go with his gorgonzola. Jacob's stopped producing biscuits here last month after 156 years. The Fig Rolls we unfurled as kids are no longer made in Dublin.
He might have glugged a Guinness, unaware that two years later Diageo would talk of closing St James's Gate.
On the way home, he might have stopped for a spice burger. Soon the latter may be gone. Tomorrow the company that invented the burger, Walsh Family Foods, goes into receivership. For more than 50 years, they've been made solely in Dublin and are as old as Bloomsday. Unlike Bloomsday, spice burgers are quintessentially Dub. They're our equivalent of haggis and never caught on outside of Ireland.
Walsh's passing cuts another tie to Dublin's pre-boom past. The city is becoming homogenous. Internationally bland. Blow away the froth and it's as beige as the latte underneath. In its rush to become refined it's lost a lot of its Dublinness.
Think of the little touches that have gone: the sound of the Premier Dairies milkman rattling and whistling you awake. The shout of "c'mere ye little bollix" and the rasp of the bus conductor's boot as you jumped off the back step without paying. Someone calling you "love" over a counter. The things we associate with Dublin are being outsourced. The dirty Dublin they represent was the one celebrated by Joyce. Tight-scrotumed Bloomsday isn't a fitting festival for his city. It's exclusive and snobby. If you're going to celebrate his work, celebrate Dubliners. It's more accessible and is actually read by Dubs.
'Dubliners Day' should be held on 16 June every year to commemorate its real citizens, from Joyce through Luke Kelly to Willie Bermingham. We could all dress up as Dublin characters, like Fortycoats and Bang Bang. I'll dress up as the Faker Baker in memory of Jacob's Fig Rolls. He's fictional, but more real to Dubliners than Leopold Bloom.
We could fling Dublin's false heroes into the sea (Bertie, get your Speedos on). We could throw out the pretence of Bloomsday, but keep the traditional breakfast. With one noble addition: let's stick a spice burger on with the liver and kidneys. Stick one on for Molly too.
Malone, that is. Mrs Bloom has had her day.

dave@davekenny.com

June 21, 2009

Sinn Féin: a lot done, more to do if it wants our respect

2009-06-26T11:43:00.001+01:00

Sunday Tribune, 14 June

Mrs Smith had dusted the parcel every day for two weeks and kept it on her telephone stand in the hall. Not many people dust their next-door neighbour's post, but she wanted it pristine for their arrival home from holiday. It would also show that there had been no sneaked preview of its contents.
Mrs Smith was Protestant, middle-class and well-liked on her 'mixed' road. Her neighbour, Mr Murphy, was a well-known Republican with a brother who still makes the news occasionally. On the other side of her lived a Catholic family whose uncle was an outspoken cleric who constantly angered the IRA. A few doors down lived another Protestant, a Second World War RAF man. Across the road from him lived a German family. By today's standards, the road was hardly multicultural, but in 1978 Ireland it was an Olympic village.
When she heard the tyres on the Murphys' driveway, Mrs Smith grabbed the parcel and hurried out. Curiosity was killing her.
She saw the colour drain from Mr Murphy's face as he watched her approaching. He waved her away. His family ran indoors. She stared at the parcel in the same disbelieving way soldiers stare at a wound before the reality of pain rushes in.
The explosion lifted everyone off their feet.
Fortunately for Mrs Smith, it happened several hours after her drama on the driveway. Mr Murphy had helped the terrified woman place the letter bomb on the ground. The army later detonated it before an excited crowd of rubber-necking kids.
Mrs Smith wasn't her real name and Murphy is an alias too. Their story is a forgotten episode from the Troubles. It didn't happen in the north. It happened on my road in leafy Glenageary, south Dublin when I was 11. Things like this didn't happen in Glenageary. The memory took root.
In 1981, the green shoots appeared. The older kids sat in their gardens talking about the hunger strikes and recalling the bomb which nearly killed Mrs Smith. A friend wore a 'Bobby Sands MP' badge which was replaced by a 'Bobby Sands RIP' badge when summer arrived. A world away from Belfast, the Troubles had spread down the clipped lawns of Glenageary again.
The hunger strikes politicised a generation of middle-class Irish youth. Some went on to become notorious. They had their heroes and you didn't dare disrespect them. They weren't my heroes. They were too blood-stained. Bobby Sands' death was heroic, but his poster was never on my wall. I have never supported Sinn Féin.
A quarter of a century on, they are sharing power in the north. The last I heard of my friend with the Bobby Sands badge was he had settled down with a Protestant girl. Times change. People change. Not everyone though.
Last week there was braying from the usual quarters about Sinn Féin's demise here. One paper called them 'revolting'. Enda Kenny sacked Fine Gael's director of elections for linking his party with them in a possible coalition. Some people refuse to acknowledge change.
Some perspective wouldn't go amiss. Everything Sinn Féin does must be measured against how much they have changed. Nobody in the 1980s would ever have envisaged them saying the war was over. They have said it.
In the South, we conveniently forget how our democracy was born out of radicalism. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael's founders fought a savage civil war. They are now 'respectable'.
In Brussels, Dublin is represented by a man who was interned in the Curragh for IRA membership. Former Official Sinn Féiner, Proinsias De Rossa, is now a Labour party statesman.
Eamon Gilmore first ran for the Dáil in 1982 for the Workers Party. That party had links to Official IRA/Sinn Féin. He, too, is a respected statesman.
Change is always possible. History proves that, with every turning of the democratic tide, radicals are either rinsed, reshaped and polished or washed away. Sinn Féin should be encouraged to fully immerse themselves.
That said, it's not easy to like them. On Tuesday they disgraced themselves with their reaction to councillor Christy Burke's resignation from the party. He claims it under-funded his by-election campaign as they concentrated on Mary Lou McDonald's. Despite being a former IRA prisoner, Burke is widely respected for championing Dublin's underprivileged. Not by Sinn Féin, though. In the North, they paint murals of their heroes; in Dublin they let them go to the wall. Aengus Ó Snodaigh demanded he resign his newly retained city council seat and "return what is a Sinn Féin seat to the party".
A "Sinn Fein seat"? Do they think they own a place on the council? Are direct elections meaningless? The sense of entitlement was worthy of Fianna Fáil. The spat revealed, again, that they still don't fully understand democracy. Burke has served his fellow citizens for 25 years. The seat belongs to them and they chose him – not Sinn Féin – to occupy it. They are free to choose their own heroes.
Sinn Féin has come a long way since the bloody 1980s. That should be constantly acknowledged. However, it still has a long way to go. It still has to earn our respect. It can start by accepting the wishes of the people of Dublin.
It also needs to learn that if you don't respect your own heroes, you can hardly expect others to respect you.

dkenny@tribune.ie

June 14, 2009

Tottering trinity of power collapses but we'll pick up the tab

2009-06-10T00:47:00.002+01:00

Sunday Tribune 7 June

Money is the first thing to greet you as you approach a churchyard: it calls from the collection tin being rattled at the gate.
Money is the first thing to greet you as you pass the font, forehead dripping. Catholic newspapers for sale – and "every Catholic home should have one".
Money is everywhere inside the church. The candles near the altar can be bought for a special intention. The slot in the wall is for the parish dues. The second collection is for the upkeep of the priests.
Money is there when you first enter the spirit of the church. Silver is given for christenings. Money is the first thing you hope for when you receive First Communion and are confirmed. A Catholic childhood is marked by this trinity of religious landmarks and windfalls. Adulthood is marked by the trinity of births, deaths and marriages, requiring gifts and donations to the church. Irish Catholicism is awash with money and we are bred to receive it as children and give it back as adults. Only the church gets to keep it.
A Catholic life is mapped out by trinities. A Catholic country is too.
Those of us under 50 didn't know the trinity that once ruled Ireland: the church, the banks and the state's biggest party, Fianna Fáil. We do know, however, what it's like to watch it falling from grace.
The banks have been falling for months, the church – by which I mean the entire organisation from bishop to brother – has been damned by the Ryan report, and Fianna Fáil have been flayed at the polls. Natural justice is prevailing.
Fianna Fáil were in power for most of the 1950s and all of the '60s, that dark period investigated by the Ryan report. It colluded, one way or another, with the church in the abuse of children. In 2002, it colluded again and capped the orders' liability at €127m while they lied about the extent of the abuse. The man with ultimate responsibility for that deal was taoiseach Bertie Ahern, a visibly devout Catholic.
Last Thursday, Fianna Fáil again spoke to the orders, who said they were willing to make "substantial additional financial contributions". The government must wait two weeks to learn how much that will be. It hopes it will equal the state's contribution.
Instead of finding a legal way to undo the black knot tied by Ahern, the government is sitting on its hands waiting to be dictated to by the religious orders. It's waiting outside the head brother's door, hoping it won't get smacked again.
This government has looked after its banker friends with billions and is still kow-towing to the cloth. It should put a gun to the church's head and make it pay for all the 'redress'. It's as straightforward as that: drag the church to its knees and punish it.
Those are hard words to type. I was baptised a Catholic. To have faith and to lose it is worse than never having believed. The realisation that the church which taught you how to pray at night was actually the monster under the bed is almost too hard to comprehend.
Twice daily, the church reminds us of its presence. At lunch and teatime, God's dinner bell rings out for the Angelus. With every clang of the bell, we are reminded that this is a Catholic country – and reminded of the sins perpetrated by our predecessors.
And here is the point: none of this is my fault. My generation is not responsible. We are paying for other people's sins. While perverts are at liberty, the victims are, rightly, seeking compensation. Thanks to Fianna Fáil, we are picking up the tab.
I want the victims of abuse to be properly cared for, but I am not willing to pay for it while the church can. It's rotten with money – we are not, thanks to Fianna Fáil's developer friends. The state that existed back then is gone. Today's generation should not be sharing its guilt. I would rather bankrupt the church than accept any of the blame for what Ryan revealed. The church must rip up Ahern's 2002 deal and prostrate itself before its victims. It should not be given two weeks to decide what contributions it wants to make.
There are many good people in the church. This must be heartbreaking for them. They would still be good people even if there was no church. Their contribution should not be forgotten.
Eighty six per cent of us said we were Catholics at the last census. Many of us are really just à la carte, picking the bits we like – weddings, Christenings – and ignoring the rest. After Ryan, how many can stomach being associated with the church, even on that basis? A similar question can be asked of Fianna Fáil's 'rump' supporters. After all the revelations, how could you vote for it last Friday?
According to a Newstalk poll, 73% of us want a general election. Fianna Fáil must give it to us now.
For the past month, their canvassers have vied with the collectors for Catholics' attention at the church gates – a reminder of the old trinity of politics, piety and the sound of money.
Today, just the charity workers remain – without politicians to hinder their work.

dkenny@tribune.ie

June 7, 2009

Chance to rip the weeds of cronyism out of local politics

2009-06-01T15:18:00.001+01:00

Sunday Tribune 31 May

"The camera never lies." Now there's a redundant cliché. The camera frequently lies and in this post-digital age, can seldom be trusted. Especially when it comes to politics. Just look at the election posters: all those huge inflated heads and not a blemish in sight. Politicians being strung up on lamp-posts shouldn't look this good.
Occasionally, the political camera lets its guard down and tells the truth. The expression on former spin doctor Frank Dunlop's face last Tuesday wasn't the result of a touch-up. No one had digitally enhanced that look of fear as he entered court for sentencing.
It was a powerful image. Here was the man with the brown envelopes who facilitated Dublin's debasement by grubby little men with greasy fingers. Here was the property developers' bagman who helped undermine our faith in democracy and, ultimately, lead us here to Nama-land. Here he was, brought down and about to be jailed.
Now consider another picture. It's of a grey-haired man with a pale, worn face. If it's been airbrushed, then they missed a line or two. It's smiling but is tough and not to be messed with. The eyes, however, betray sensitivity as they stare down from the lamp-post near the Dáil. Writer Mannix Flynn, former bête noire, is running for a seat on the same council that Dunlop bought off in the 1990s.
While Dunlop enjoyed a life of money and influence, Flynn spent most of his suffering. He was a slum boy, destined to be crushed by the authorities. At the age of three he had been singled out as "trouble" by a state-paid psychiatrist. How can a three-year-old be "trouble?"
By 14 he had run the gauntlet of industrial schools, including Letterfrack, where he was tortured for two years. For all his adult life he has railed outside the institutions of the state that helped scar him. Now he is looking for the chance to effect change from within.
On Wednesday he spoke to Newstalk's Eamon Keane about the Ryan report into child abuse. It was a compelling piece of radio: brutally honest, intelligent, angry and sad. His message is that he wants to bring accountability to local office and give hope to the "disenfranchised". It's hard to doubt his credentials.
His ideas won't be to everybody's taste. For example, he suggests a pilot scheme for the controlled distribution of heroin to addicts. This won't ever happen, but at least he's stirring up debate. That's his strength: making a difference by challenging the status quo.
There are others like him. In my own home patch of Dun Laoghaire, Richard Boyd Barrett has taken permanent residence up the nose of the establishment. In 2005, he was at the helm when residents from all backgrounds 'blockaded' the local Baths. The council had agreed a €140m private development plan to build apartments on the site. The march stopped the deal and won the leftist Boyd Barrett many admirers in the traditionally Fine Gael area.
Labour councillor Jane Dillon Byrne later requested that double glazing be installed in the council chamber – to keep out the noise of his protesters.
All across the country there are decent candidates like these two, favouring community over clientelism. In fairness, they are not all independents and some are suffering for that preference. Dun Laoghaire's Fianna Fáil councillor Cormac Devlin is widely respected as hardworking and conscientious. He has also been critical of issues such as Minister Mary Hanafin's scrapping of the Christmas welfare bonus. No surprise then that Hanafin is trying to shaft him in favour of her personal assistant, Peter O'Brien. More Fianna Fáil cronyism overriding the interests of the people.
According to a Newstalk poll last week, only 0.5% said they would vote for a candidate because his/her family was involved in politics. Dynastic politics – and by extension cronyism – is out of fashion. Hanafin, take note.
On a daily basis, we discover more about how our government has been mismanaged. At local level as well as national. In my own area, the council was so inept that for a seven-month period in 2006, not one single motion was debated. The entire system needs shaking up.
When we go to polls on Friday we have a unique opportunity. We can make this more than a de facto referendum by setting aside party politics and choosing candidates genuinely committed to the greater good. We can throw out the nod-and-wink merchants who will try to buy us off with personal favours and then do dodgy deals with developers. This is a real chance to rip the weeds of cronyism out of local politics. This is a chance to make local government the training ground for national government, where we can nurture change from the ground up.
We need to encourage mavericks like Mannix Flynn. They can help rescue us from the cynicism created by Frank Dunlop's political crimes. Next weekend, we can replace that picture of the broken bagman entering court with another – a snapshot of our generation pulling itself away from the past.
There may be another picture too. Of a decent man, crucified by church and state, picking up his cross – and successfully battering down the door of City Hall with it.

dkenny@tribune.ie

Get outta Dodge, Sheriff, before you get us all shot

2009-06-01T15:14:00.002+01:00

Sunday Tribune 24 May

Imagine this column is a saloon in the Old West. The swing doors burst open. An old timer rushes in, wearing a racoon hat and long-johns, hollering: "Gunfight! There's a-gonna be a gunfight!"
Two lawmen are heading for a showdown. One stands for the big ranchers and is gathering a posse of new laws to clean up Newspaperville. His name is Dermot Ahern. The other is a moustachioed hero standing for its townsfolk (journalists). His name is Gerry 'The Sheriff' O'Carroll.
The Sheriff is a former garda who writes a column for the Evening Herald. He's not a fan of minister Ahern and, like the rest of us, has been kicking him over his privacy legislation, which is before the Dáil.
A part of Ahern's Defamation Bill, this legislation forbids the "disclosure of documentation" – including documents that are in the public domain such as planning applications. It also prohibits "stalking/harassing" of possible wrongdoers which will hamper the work of our latter-day Veronica Guerins.
It says invasions of privacy are justified only when fair, in good faith or in the public interest. There's a conundrum. If a reporter is halted by an injunction before he/she has completed their investigations, they have no way of proving justification. Therefore they have broken the rules. This legislation – which Gerry and the rest of us rail against – will take away the basic tools the journalist uses to expose corruption.
There's no denying that the media sometimes crosses the line. Last year, Dubliner Michelle Herrity was awarded €90,000 against Associated Newspapers over articles in Ireland on Sunday in 2003 about her relationship with a priest. These were based on the illegal tapping of her phone calls and, according to the High Court, were an unjustified breach of her right to privacy.
Each time something like this happens, it undermines the argument that we don't need a privacy law. It plays into our politicians' hands. Here's a statistic. According to Dublin City University research, two-thirds of all privacy complaints over the past 25 years came from public figures – mainly politicians. They want the new law more than anybody else.
Two weeks ago, the Herald led with pictures of Ryan Tubridy walking with his new partner. They had been taken by an opportunistic dogwalker and sold to an agency. This wasn't as bad as phone-tapping but Tubridy was, understandably, unhappy. He believed it was mean-spirited for someone to take a picture of him from behind a tree and sell it.
His anger annoyed the Sheriff who felt the papers were justified in publishing the pictures and Tubridy had no right to complain. In Wednesday's Herald, he shot "the kid" down. Bang, bang. Tubridy was disingenuous about the pictures and knows that publicity is the oxygen of celebrity. Bang, bang. "If you look at his own show on a Saturday night, it is all celebrity tittle tattle… The kind of stuff he's giving off [sic] about." Bang.
The piece was peppered with lines such as "The kid's angry" and "Listen, kid, grow up and enter the world of the big boys." Bang, bang.
According to Gerry, Gay and Pat had no problem with being in the public eye. I don't ever recall them being photographed strolling through the woods, together or otherwise. They were allowed, in the main, to keep a lid on their private lives.
Still, according to Gerry, this erosion of Tubridy's privacy was the price of getting the Late Late. Actually, the pictures were taken before Tubridy had been given the gig. Would they still have been published if he hadn't landed it?
As a journalist, Gerry said, Tubridy should know better than to give "cannon fodder" to privacy-law-toting Dermot Ahern. Take your medicine, kid.
The Sheriff is relatively new to journalism. Hearing him dispensing advice to "the kid" was beyond cringeworthy.
He's missed a few key points about Tubridy. He's not part of the micro-celebrity herd. He doesn't seek out publicity in the same way as Rosanna Davison or Glenda Gilson, or Brian Ormond and his girlfriend do. He doesn't go to every launch or talk about his 'love life'. He doesn't want to play the Diary game. Fair enough.
As publicity guru Max Clifford said about the pictures last week, "If he hasn't courted publicity for his own ends, it's not justified." Tubridy, as Late Late host, will have to sacrifice some privacy, but not to the extent that he should have to check under bushes for cameras. Gay and Pat never had to do that.
Publishing those pictures was an invasion of privacy, plain and simple. I've been a tabloid hack myself and so have no right to be too judgmental about that. What sticks in the craw, however, is O'Carroll's pompous lecture about press freedom. How Tubridy was giving "cannon fodder" to Ahern by complaining.
Hypocritical statements like that by O'Carroll only strengthen the minister's position. If you're going to invade someone's privacy while prattling on about press freedom, then at least have a decent reason for doing it. Highlighting wrongdoing, for example.
Stop shooting your mouth off about press freedom, Sheriff.
You're just shooting yourself – and the rest of us – in the foot.

dkenny@tribune.ie

Jenny O'Connell proves hope is lurking everywhere

2009-06-01T15:08:00.002+01:00

Sunday Tribune 17 May

A friend of mine once had a rare audience with punk legend Joey Ramone. Joey was, as always, sporting his trademark sunglasses. It was late at night after a gig at Dublin's TV Club and Tony asked him, jokingly, if he ever took them off.
"No, man," replied Joey.
"But can you actually see anything through them?"
Joey shrugged, implying the negative. Tony persevered.
"Does that not bother you?"
"Look, man," said Joey, his pupils hidden behind two almost-opaque walls of glass, "there's not a HELL of a lot I WANT to see out there."
It was an interesting world view – or, rather, lack of it. I was reminded of it last week when I read the profoundly touching story of Dublin woman, Jenny O'Connell, who has had her sight partially restored after 46 years. Jenny went blind when she was 11 and will soon, hopefully, be able to see her husband and children. She will see a lot of other new things too, which must be exciting, and daunting, for her.
As Jenny was entering into darkness in 1963, Ireland was emerging from it. Kennedy visited, the showbands jived and Sean Lemass was lowering unemployment. The queues Jenny may have seen for the Mail Boat were shrinking. She won't see any today because there is no escape route for the 380,000 unemployed. She will, however, be able to see what a modern dole queue looks like: multi-racial and full of highly-skilled people.
Among the many coloured faces Jenny will see here now are those of the Orange People – 1960s' freckles are extinct. This month, scores of Irish children are being sprayed-tanned orange for their Communions. These little tangerines may grow up to become the Jaffa-hued models who inhabit the diary pages like Rosanna 'Rubex' Davison and her boyfriend, Whasisname. Are they on? Are they off? Will they please get lost? Jenny can now fully appreciate the fake-tan-deep, appearance-obsessed vacuousness of post-Tiger Ireland.
She can also put a face on Brian Cowen and see those voluptuous, bee-stung lips mouthing phrases like "what's the point?". That was his despairing response to heckling over his handling of the Monageer tragedy report. Like the rest of us, Jenny will not be able to read all of the report as it's been censored. She can, however, see photographs of the little Dunne girls who were killed by their dad.
Along with Cowen's mouth, she can also marvel at some necks: those of Ireland's developers. They are setting up a federation to dictate how the National Asset Management Agency operates. Developers created most of the ugly landscapes Jenny is seeing for the first time. Now they are forming a union to fight the state. Imagine the first AGM: all of them in one room. Hopefully the roof will cave in.
In 1960s' Ireland, the bank manager was cock-of-the-walk. Jenny nearly got to see one of those cockerels being egged at AIB's EGM last week. Pensioner Gary Keogh said he snapped when supremo Dermot Gleeson told a shareholder to "sit down while I'm speaking". He flung eggs at the stage and was 'whisked' away by security. What was that old phrase about never teaching 'your granny how to suck eggs'?
Jenny will see her first Dart, Luas and euro. She will see her first Limerick gang funeral. She can watch all the bad news she likes on digital TV. She can sample other digital treats like generic text messages ('CU L8R'?) and the internet at its clinical, automated worst. From tomorrow, Ryanair passengers will have to check in online and print their boarding passes at home, or be hit with a €40 penalty. Jenny has children to do this for her. Ryanair apparently doesn't care about those who don't.
Joey Ramone said there wasn't a hell of a lot he wanted to see. If the above examples were all that were on offer, you'd have to agree. They aren't.
Along with the new sights, there are old ones for Jenny to rediscover. She's from Dun Laoghaire. In time, she will be able to walk with her blind husband along the seafront there on a sunny day, like last Tuesday. She can describe what she sees to him. The colour of the sea foaming over the walls of the Fortyfoot at Sandycove. A nutter in a rickety boat see-sawing through the swell to Bulloch Harbour. People sheltering from the breeze in the lee of the wall at the half-moon-shaped beach. Sunburn glowing above the collars of old folk sunbathing with their coats on. The Mr Whippy van arriving, children paddling, dogs chasing waves. Someone poking a jellyfish with a stick.
She can stop in Fitzgerald's pub and admire the murals or watch, for the first time, a glass of stout slowly change from marble to jet black. She can describe the bubbling, fleeting happiness of a sunny day in our odd little country. How we savour that small morsel of happiness and declare it a feast.
Maybe, someday soon, she'll read this article to her husband. I hope she does, because I'd like to thank her here for lifting people's spirits with her story.
Thank you, Mrs O'Connell. Life sucks right now, but you've proved that hope is lurking everywhere.

dkenny@tribune.ie

Greens have sacrificed principles for the illusion of power

2009-05-12T14:56:00.003+01:00

Sunday Tribune 10 May

What's that sound? Is it the thunder of hooves just over the next ridge? Hurray! It's George Lee leading the cavalry (he's the one on a Segway) to rescue us from the dole queue. Hip, hip, hurray etc, etc.
No matter how you look at it, Fine Gael has floored Fianna Fáil with its choice of candidate for the Dublin South by-election on 5 June. George ticks all the boxes: he's sincere, popular and knowledgable. With the exception of FF, the announcement was loudly applauded. Too loudly. The reaction bordered on mild hysteria. George, while being very, very good at maths, has no political track record. He might be rubbish. Still, it said a lot about where we, the electorate, are at emotionally.
Lee's decision may turn out to be a missed opportunity. Many would like to see a new party enter the fray. With George's financial acumen bolstered by a couple of seasoned dissidents, we could have seen the birth of the George Lee Party. ('George Lee' and 'party': there's three words you don't see together too often.) In time, it might have become known as the Glee Party – 'Spreading the message of gloom with Glee'. Now we'll never know.
While George was throwing shapes over the economy, another man of principle, Eddie Hobbs, reminded us of Fianna Fáil's culture of hard-necked cronyism. Hobbs resigned in protest from the National Consumer Association on Thursday. He had called for Bertie Ahern's 'ex', Celia Larkin, to step down over the revelation that she was fast-tracked for a mortgage by Michael Fingleton. True to FF form, she refused.
The two 'people's economists' aren't the only men of principle taking pot-shots at Fianna Fáil. The Greens are at it too. The first rumblings between the Saviours of the Earth and Fianna Fáil came over the TDs' bonuses debacle. Then John Gormley announced the scrapping of electronic voting, despite a Cabinet decision to defer it. Last Wednesday, Eamon Ryan really stuck the boot in. He told Newstalk's Eamon Keane that he wouldn't recommend Green voters give their transfers to Fianna Fáil in the upcoming local elections. He also said the Greens would be open to doing business with Fine Gael/Labour in a possible National Government. Principled Ryan spoke of "values". He didn't mention loyalty to his government partners, though.
FF played down Ryan's disloyalty and revealed its grand by-election plan to defeat George Lee. It has chosen the late Seamus Brennan's son, Shay, to run against him. Fine Gael is putting up a trusted economist, while FF is relying on sentiment. Economies are not saved by sentiment.
To compound the impression that Fianna Fáil is entirely clueless, Brian Lenihan said, disingenuously, that the three sets of elections on 5 June don't constitute "a referendum". This is rubbish. Fianna Fáil will be tested across the entire voting spectrum: local, by-elections and European. The outcome will reflect the public mood: 384,000 unemployed people are looking forward to letting him and his colleagues know how we feel. You only have to look at the election posters to see FF is really worried: the words 'Fianna Fáil' are microscopic. It's like they're trying to distance themselves from themselves.
Ryan's comments, too, were designed to distance the Greens from them in the run-up to the elections. The question is: What will the Greens do when the elections are over? If Ryan was disloyal last week, imagine what he'll be like when FF is really down.
There's revolution in the air. The public is subconsciously preparing for a new government. As Seán O'Rourke was grilling Lee on Tuesday's News at One, the speculation wasn't whether he would win the seat, but what portfolio he would get in the next cabinet. Lee had leaped that hurdle and was already in a new Fine Gael-led government in the public's mind.
The Greens realise this and that they face annihilation in a general election. They need to start building bridges, which may be why Ryan spoke about doing business with Fine Gael on Newstalk. This double talk, however, is giving weight to ex-Green Patricia McKenna's assertion that they are hypocrites who have sold out.
George Lee has sacrificed his power as a commentator to follow his principles. The Greens have sacrificed their principles for the illusion of power. Their weasly behaviour is at odds with the image of a party with lofty ideals. They used to stand for integrity and plain-speaking. It's taken them just two years to learn how to speak like Fianna Fáil. They are still politically immature though. Trying to be Machiavellian doesn't suit them and is, frankly, a bit embarassing. It's like watching the class nerd trying to act tough.
The response to Lee's candidacy has shown that, psychologically, we are already on a general election footing. By failing to strongly endorse their partners now, the Greens are effectively undermining them. They are hinting that they're having doubts. If they don't act upon these doubts, they are finished as a party. It's a dangerous game they're playing.
The Greens can still show they have some principles left. They should jump ship now, before it's too late, and nail their colours to a National Government mast.
It's either that, or get nailed by a seething electorate.

dkenny@tribune.ie

Nice u-turn Micheál, but you're hardly a class act

2009-05-05T15:48:00.001+01:00

Sunday Tribune 3 May

Is it just me or has anybody else noticed it? George Lee's name is ironic. He's 'G. Lee'. Mr Glee, no less. I realised this as Mr Glee's sepulchral tones delivered the bad news from the ESRI on Wednesday – unemployment is now expected to reach the 500,000 mark. Ireland is suffering the worst recession anywhere since the 1930s.
Mr Glee's glum report was the icing on a fruitcake week, which was dominated by cats, pigs and a u-turn by a senior minister. Let's deal with the cats first.
Top Cat economist, David Grubb of the OECD, says our dole is too generous. It discourages people from looking for work. Really? 380,000 people may beg to differ. Last week, a clothes shop in Galway received 1,000 applications for just 60 jobs. Among the applicants were teachers, lawyers and other graduates, all willing to set aside years of training – and the dole – to sell clothes. Being employed is about more than just money, it's about self-esteem. People want to work, not get 'hooked' on the dole, despite what the experts say. That's why so many workers were angry at being the victims of another 'cat' last week: the unofficial wildcat bus strike.
On Monday, a group of morons at Dublin Bus hindered 100,000 commuters because a driver was suspended for refusing to work an agreed new schedule. What kind of idiots strike in a recession? Half-witted actions like this only further destabilise the economy. The government should introduce legislation outlawing the disruption of public transport without union sanction. If that's not possible, then future job contracts should have a clause waiving the 'right' to unofficial action. Selfish bus drivers should not be allowed to mess up the economy. That's the job of the lads in Leinster House, which brings us to the pigs we mentioned earlier.
Last week, swine flu arrived to hoots of derision from Ryanair's Dr Michael O'Leary. He prescribed Strepsils and accused "idiot politicians" of using this "load of b***** nonsense" to distract us from the economy. He's wrong: it's doubtful they could even do that properly. Day after day, our politicians prove how inept, self-centred and deluded they are. Take Bertie Ahern, for example. He's more delusional than a pig looking forward to Christmas.
Last week, he hinted he wants to be Dublin's first publicly elected Mayor. The job should go to an experienced politician, he said. Not someone going around "making an ass of themselves". (Hasn't he already got that gig?)
Bertie believes he can have whatever job he wants when he leaves the Dáil. After receiving a fat pay-off and pension, he wants to continue swanning around in a state-paid job. When it comes to having a jaw-dropping sense of entitlement, Bertie is king. Or he was – last week, he was usurped by one of his former lieutenants.
On Monday, the Indo revealed that Micheál Martin will draw three pensions when he retires, worth nearly €130,000. These are ministerial, TD and teacher pensions. Martin has held on to his teaching job – for the past 20 years – despite financial security most of us only dream of. Under 'Oireachtas Leave' rules, he is entitled to do this while a substitute fills in for him. On Tuesday, he said he has no intention of quitting a job he hasn't worked at since 1989. This means he is denying someone a full-time post so he has something to fall back on if he loses his seat.
To add insult to injury, he lamely explained that he has a young family to support. Showing a rare lack of confidence, he pointed out that he's 48 and "if anything happened tomorrow morning with regard to my career…".
You have to feel sorry for him. If he gets the sack, he'll be staring at a bleak future on €130,000 a year and a six-figure lump sum. Despite being considered a potential taoiseach, he apparently doesn't believe he has the skill to carve out a business career. He's heading straight back to the classroom.
Yesterday, it emerged that he has had a change of heart since the Indo revelation and now only wants a pension for the five-and-a-half years he spent with his back to a blackboard. Big deal, he's still not giving up his teaching job.
Eleven of his Oireachtas colleagues – including Mary Hanafin – are also clinging to their teaching posts. Like Martin, they're frightened they might wind up hooked on the dole, as Mr Grubb says.
Martin was a member of the Ahern-led government that failed to put money aside for our future. He says he is only thinking of his family's by keeping his teaching options open. What a hypocrite. The 380,000 unemployed didn't have a back-up job when they were let go. What a great role model he'll make if he takes up teaching again.
Martin has been shamed into making a small gesture about his pension and doesn't deserve applause for it. His u-turn just means that there's a little less in the political trough for him as his colleagues snuffle around him.
Pigs will fly before any of them ever sees a dole queue.

dkenny@tribune.ie

Ahern's get-out-of-jail card will not solve prison crisis

2009-04-30T00:36:00.002+01:00

Sunday Tribune 26 April

Gary Douche should not have died in Mountjoy. Those are the words of the man who beat him to death there in 2006. Nobody should die in Mountjoy, but they do, as in other prisons across our state.
Douche was in a holding cell to protect him from other prisoners. His killer, Stephen Egan, was there because the jail was overcrowded. He had been transferred from the Central Mental Hospital without his anti-psychotic drugs. I'll spare you the details of what happened.
We only ever hear what passes as life in Irish jails when someone like Gary Douche is killed. Attacks happen every day. As of 9 March, we had 3,790 prisoners and only 3,611 beds in our powder-keg prisons. They are operating at 105% of their capacity. While Douche lay dying in Mountjoy, there were 526 other inmates sleeping in the jail which had a capacity for just 470. There are now 633.
Four thousand prisoners doesn't seem like an overwhelming number to deal with. So why do we have overcrowding? It costs the state an average of €97,700 a year to house a prisoner. Do the maths: we have overcrowding because we're strapped for cash.
Justice minister Dermot Ahern made two announcements last week. The first was the publication of the Fines Bill 2009. At any given time, there are about 15 people in prison for non-payment of fines. The Bill allows defaulters pay by instalment as an alternative to jail.
The second heralded a plan to rehabilitate sex offenders. Prisoners who volunteer for therapy will be released early and electronically tagged. This will incentivise serious offenders to undergo treatment.
Both plans have merits and while I agree with the first, I don't with the second. Sex offenders are notorious recidivists and should do their time. Out of 578 released since 2003, only 42 had completed the Sex Offender Programme.
The optics are fine: TV licence fee defaulters stay out of jail and offenders get treatment. Look closer and you'll notice something both plans have in common: they free up prison space. Does the government believe releasing paedophiles is the answer to overcrowding? Or releasing short-term prisoners? Last year, anyone serving less than 20 months in Mountjoy's women's unit was released to make room for more serious offenders.
Or how about letting potential killers out on bail?
On 8 April, Ahern said that our bail laws can't be tightened because of prison overcrowding. There's no room for suspects who might not be granted bail. That's an admission of defeat.
Ahern knows that 25% of all serious crime is committed by people on bail (CSO, 2008). This includes rape and murder. Between 2004 and mid-2008, 90,000 serious crimes were committed by bailed suspects.
In 2007, despite garda objections, Tipperary man Jerry McGrath was granted bail after being arrested for assaulting a five-year-old girl. A month later, McGrath murdered mother-of-two Sylvia Roche Kelly. Her husband has accused the state of giving McGrath freedom which he used to carry out the killing.
Ahern has linked reform of the bail laws to overcrowding. His solution is early release. This will, inevitably, breed more crime. Our penal system is a revolving door which will soon be spinning faster than a government press secretary.
Every time the overcrowding issue comes up, the standard answer is 'Thornton Hall'. This 2,200-bed super-prison will solve everything. The problem is, Thornton Hall isn't being built. It's been "in the pipeline" for the past three years due to negotiation problems with the builders. There's a first: disharmony between the government and the construction industry.
The Prison Service can move quickly when it needs to, though. It's currently being investigated for awarding €100m of contracts to one building company – Glenbeigh Construction – without putting them out to public tender. The justice department secretary general, Sean Aylward, has defended the service saying it had to move quickly due to… overcrowding. Where there's a will there's a way.
Last week the government scrapped the unused electronic voting system that has cost us over €51m. Then there's the pay-offs to junior ministers and bonuses to 'veteran' TDs. All the money it has wasted could have been put towards Thornton Hall or some interim solution, like reopening Spike Island or the Curragh detention centre.
The former military camps at Rockhill House, Lifford, Monaghan and Longford could be used as 'boot camps' for young offenders, like Thorn Cross centre in Warrington. This is a voluntary scheme where prisoners sign up to learn respect and self-esteem. They are given construction courses leading to placements with local builders. If we had an Irish version, an offender could end up building Thornton Hall rather than residing in it.
The crime rate is rising and the government must protect us, inside and – more importantly – outside prison. Opening the gates is not the solution, minister. Stop wringing your hands about the bail laws and dreaming of Thornton Hall. Use the idle facilities we already have. Continuing to pack prisoners in will result in more Gary Douches. Continuing to let them out will result in more Sylvia Roche Kellys.
We don't want any more like them on our conscience. Find the space now.

dkenny@tribune.ie

Stagg's debate about legalising cannabis is stone mad

2009-04-21T13:35:00.003+01:00

Sunday Tribune 19 April

It might have been the greatest economic plan ever conceived. Then again, it might not. Last week, I suggested raffling the country's toxic assets to raise money. I suggested we call this lottery The Blotto. As stupid ideas go, I thought it couldn't be beaten. It has.
Labour's Emmet Stagg has now suggested that the government legalise cannabis and tax it. The country should go from stoney broke to stoned and broke. Hurray.
Last Tuesday, he debated the idea with campaigner Grainne Kenny of Europe Against Drugs. 'Debate' is not the right word – it was more of a 'scrap'. Grainne lit into him, firing off facts about health, etc, while Emmet countered by calling her a fanatic.
He said he didn't know of anyone who died from cannabis use and that "drinking too much milk" is bad for you. Grainne boiled over, accusing him of not having done any research.
He called her a dictator. Grainne dug into him again. At the end, it was clear that, in Stagg's mind, he had beaten the 'mad oul wan' (my words, not his).
The mad oul wan is my mother, by the way. She told me she was annoyed with herself for losing her temper. As a hack, I've never commented on the drugs debate or defended Grainne before – she's capable of defending herself.
I will say, though, that her passion comes from the experience of quietly helping families with drugs problems. She sees hardships that most politicians only read about.
To tell you the truth, the drugs debate is not something I lie awake thinking about. I have other things to worry about – like paying bills. Stagg's comments have forced me to go on the record here and give an opinion. It's just that, an opinion, and it may be wrong. I don't agree with legalisation. This is not because the mammy says drugs are bad for me, but because I believe it's illogical.
I drink alcohol and smoke cigarettes and I accept the evidence that both are bad for me. I would expect anybody who smokes dope or promotes its legalisation to say the same.
Cannabis abusers, for example, run the risk of becoming psychotic. Here's a statistic: the number of teens presenting with mental health problems rose 22% (between April 2003/2004) after the UK downgraded cannabis. It has since 'upgraded' it again. As Stagg points out, this country already has problems with alcohol and tobacco.
Department of Health figures released last week show that one in five of us have been assaulted by a drunk. Over a quarter of us binge drink once a week. Cigarette smoking kills 7,000 people a year according to the Irish Cancer Society. Cannabis also intoxicates and can cause lung cancer. Where is the logic in legalising it, and increasing its usage, when we already have a problem with legal drugs?
Why would a government that is effectively outlawing cigarettes legalise cannabis? To beat the drug dealers? That's illogical too. The dealers will just sell other drugs. Do we then legalise cocaine? Or ecstasy? Or heroin?
At what age can you start smoking cannabis? Stoners don't generally make good students, so do we limit its use to those who have finished secondary school? Age restriction doesn't work with alcohol, so it won't work with cannabis. Do we bother with age restriction at all?
How much cannabis can you smoke before you are legally intoxicated? How many units/joints will put you over the limit? Will we have a 'joint' Oireachtas committee to look into all of this?
Of course, not all cannabis smokers will become psychotic or get cancer. They won't all graduate to heroin. The fact remains, however, that some will. Cannabis is not a harmless drug and anyone who says it is is either lying or hasn't done their research.
We need a debate on this issue by people who know what they're talking about. Stagg's contribution, last Tuesday, was devoid of any revelations other than "too much milk's bad for you". Children of Ireland, put down the Avonmore and toke on this. I suppose it will be our patriotic duty to get stoned, seeing as how we're doing it for the economy.
Stagg sounds like a man who has heard the words 'election' and 'coalition' blowing in the wind. He wants to raise his profile with young voters and win a portfolio before he retires. If not, and he really believes his drug tax will help the economy, then we can forget about ever electing a credible alternative to this government.
Every day we learn more about the ineptitude that has left us facing a future full of social problems, like rising drug abuse. The country needs hope. We need to know that someone out there has a solution. We don't need Stagg's nonsensical economics undermining that hope.
Eamon Gilmore must now clarify where his party stands on the only issue that concerns me and thousands of prospective voters today – the economy. Is Labour in favour of taxing drugs to fix it? Is that the best your party has to offer us? Is that it?
God help us if it is.

dkenny@tribune.ie

One way to solve the economic crisis – get Blottoed

2009-04-19T20:01:00.002+01:00

Sunday Tribune, 12 April

It is Easter Sunday and I bring you tidings of great joy. That's right, 'great joy', for tomorrow night there will arise from our midst two new millionaires. Hallelujah. On Tuesday morning, when everyone else is glumly listening to Mourning Ireland, two lucky people will be chuckling away under their respective duvets thanks to the National Lottery's Millionaire draw.
Have you bought a ticket? Don't worry if you haven't as I've even better news for you: I have a plan to make us all a few bob and rescue the country from the knacker's yard. It's this: we hold a big raffle. A VERY BIG raffle. The WORLD'S BIGGEST RAFFLE EVER, in fact.
Last Tuesday, Brian Lenihan announced that he's buying a load of useless land and half-finished buildings on our behalf. He calls them "toxic assets". Every day, their value is getting smaller, but someday, someone, somewhere may buy them. That's what he's hoping for, at any rate. My plan is, instead of leaving these "toxic assets" lying idle, we (drum roll, please)… raffle them. As this brilliant idea came to me after a few budget-free scoops, I propose to call this land Lotto, the 'Blotto'.
Here's how it works: Brian is blindfolded (nothing new there) and chooses one toxic deed from the pile in his office. Let's say it's for an unfinished street. This is then put up for the Blotto. Tickets are sold worldwide, priced at €50 each. As there are 80 million people who claim Irish ancestry, that's a guaranteed €4bn already. Then there's the Chinese – they love a gamble and there's a billion of them. There's loads of Africans too. See the potential? Some lucky Blotto player will win a (half-finished) street for €50. They can then sell it back to the developer at a reasonable price and he can finish it off using cheap Irish labour. The state, the winner and the developer all make a profit. The houses are then sold at pre-boom prices. 'Blotto! It could be you!!'
There's even a precedent for Blotto. In 1984, horse trainer Barney Curley raffled his Middleton Park mansion, selling 9,000 tickets at £200 each. Last October, Tony Browne from Corbally, Co Limerick, decided to do the same with his €352,000 home (he reckoned 800 tickets at €500 each would do the trick).
The authorities have played Blotto before as well. In November 2002, Cork City Council raffled 40 homes to 600 people. The pathetic state of the affordable housing scheme was highlighted when the council put the applicants' names in a hat and offered to sell a cut-price house to the first 40 out.
But why stop with toxic assets? We could Blotto places we don't like and are costing us money. Like the gang-ridden 'Island' area of Limerick where the cost of policing is outrageous. We could market it as "a disarming corner of the Shannon estuary with abundant wild life".
Once a month, we could buy special 'Madonna Blotto' tickets, with the winner getting adopted by that nice old lady. Well, what's Malawi got that Ireland hasn't? Apart from more money, of course.
Why not Blotto the entire country? Maybe not – the Germans might win us. Any road, that's my rescue plan. Now consider the government's plan.
The plan is to bleed us dry with new levies and rescue their wealthy friends by buying up their "toxic" land for €90bn. Some of this land may never be eligible for planning permission. What then? Does the government plan to force permission through?
The government believes it's "fair" to spend €90bn cleaning up their friends' mess and then levy people on the minimum wage. That's €18,000 a year. To put that figure in context, during the first 10 months of 2008, €23,000 was spent on serviettes and crockery at Leinster House's catering facilities.
While we are being screwed, the drinks and racing industries are left unscathed. You can't get a job or pay your mortgage, but you can drink yourself to death or gamble your house on the horses. That's an interesting message to send the electorate.
Where were the incentives in this
budget? Why wasn't VAT lowered? If even 1% was chipped off, it might have encouraged those who have money to spend it. As for jobs, if the government manages to dispose of "toxic" land, the only employment generated will be in the construction industry – the same industry that got us into this mess.
Social problems are rising and last week the gardaí said that cutbacks are hampering their ability to respond to calls for help. The government that failed to protect us from the bankers is now failing to protect us from criminals.
Brian Lenihan's bludget is brutal in every sense of the word and, like the regime that spawned it, is utterly devoid of any original ideas. It's the final proof that we need a National Government – fast. It makes the Blotto Plan look positively inspired.
Here's an idea: let's Blotto Lenihan and see how many tickets we sell. I bet we'd shift more if we Blottoed one of those paintings of bare-chested Brian Cowen.
Either way, you're looking at the ultimate booby prize.

A gag that's not funny... and is a threat to democracy

2009-04-08T18:21:00.002+01:00

Sunday Tribune, April 5

Picture this: Bertie Ahern picks up the Sunday Tribune, sees a portrait of himself in the nude on page one and immediately despatches his art dealer with a brown envelope to buy it. Bertie doesn't want an unflattering picture of himself in the public domain. The only aras he wants the public to connect him with is the one in the Park.
Plausible? Highly. True? Unfortunately not. The preceding scenario formed a newspaper's April Fool's gag last week and I'm not ashamed to admit that I fell for it. That's the thing about Bertie – you wouldn't put anything past him. For a man who loves the limelight, he's fiercely protective of his privacy. He doesn't like the papers showing him up. That is probably why, under his stewardship, the VAT on newspapers rose to 13.5% – the highest in Europe (Britain has zero VAT). It probably also explains why his administration published a Privacy Bill in 2006 to curb the power of the press. Naughty press, Fianna Fáil will learn youse.
That bill was subsequently 'parked' to give the now year-old Press Council time to prove itself effective at dealing with media complaints. Last week, another Ahern – Dermot – announced that he is going to introduce the legislation. Why? Because "there seems to be a growing disregard for the privacy of the individual". Note the word "seems". According to who? Who has been calling for a privacy law? Was it Dermot Ahern himself?
Ahern knows the value of privacy. For example, the equality minister now knows it's better to keep his views on homosexuals private. Back in 1993 he agreed with Fine Gael's Brendan McGahon that gays were deviants. Once the press highlighted this, he was branded homophobic.
His dealings with the family of terror chief Michael McKevitt might have been kept private if the press hadn't reported that he forwarded an email on his behalf to Michael McDowell. The press hasn't done Ahern any favours. Could this be personal?
The new law forbids "surveillance", "stalking/harassment" and "disclosure of documentation" – all legitimate weapons in the journalist's armoury. Documents that can't be published will include publicly available material from, among others, county council planning files and the Land Registry Office. Without the disclosure of such documents, the extent of planning corruption in north Dublin may never have come to light.
Without "stalking", the documentary that led to the beef tribunal might not have been made. In that programme, journalist Susan O'Keeffe approaches beef baron Larry Goodman for a comment as he is leaving mass and pursues him until he drives off. Under the new rules, Goodman could have got an injunction and halted production. Similarily, Brendan O'Brien's legendary "stalking" of Martin 'The General' Cahill might not have been aired. The print labours of Veronica Guerin would have been hampered too.
With the new restrictions, Seanie Fitz might be able to get an injunction against a newspaper revealing that he's enjoying a nice holiday in Spain.
The new law states that invasions of privacy are justified when they're in good faith, the public interest and fair. Sounds reasonable? It isn't. It's 'Catch 22': for an invasion of privacy to be justified, you must invade someone's privacy to prove it. However, you can't invade someone's privacy because that's not justified without proof. A reporter who is stymied by an injunction can be found to have broken the rules just because he was unable to finish his investigation.
So, again, who has asked for this privacy law? Take a guess. Last year, Dublin City University released a study which revealed that two-thirds of all privacy complaints over the past 25 years had come from public figures, chiefly politicians.
The hypocrisy at the heart of this law is staggering. In February, minister Ahern was forced to introduce new European legislation requiring telephone operators to store details of all calls made for two years. Under Irish law, they had to store them for three years. All your calls, emails and internet usage are logged by the government. How about a privacy law against that?
Ahern's announcement last week was all the more telling because of its timing. It came just weeks after this newspaper broke the Brian Cowen portraits story. This was a clear threat to the press. It was a slap on the wrist for getting uppity and a direct attack on the fundamental right to freedom of information.
We don't need this law. The press ombudsman is doing a good job of correcting rogue journalism. It's independent, fast and binding. As it's free, the public aren't put off complaining by legal costs. That's good for democracy, unlike privacy laws and VAT on newspapers.
This brings us back to Bertie, as it was his administration that dreamed up this nonsense. When I read the April Fool's portrait gag about him last week, it struck me that the words 'Ahern' and 'gag' were entirely appropriate given the decision to silence the press.
Forget about Cowen: Bertie deserves to be hung in the National Gallery.
I'll start building the scaffold…

dave@davekenny.com

How to run a household on less than €4,000 a week

2009-03-31T16:49:00.003+01:00

Sunday Tribune, 29 March

It was one of the great comic performances of the Celtic Tiger era. Pee Flynn on The Late Late Show, grinning like he had a coathanger in his gob after telling the audience how he ran three households on £100,000 a year. Poor out-of-touch Pee, the poster boy for gombeen politics. Who else would claim to spend so much on housekeeping?
Another Fianna Fáil man, perhaps?
Zip forward 10 years and Offaly councillor Ger Killally is bemoaning the high cost of housekeeping. Killally, a former running mate of Brian Cowen, sobbed as he told a judge he needs €4,000 a week to meet household expenses. FOUR GRAND A WEEK. That's €192,000 a year – six times the average industrial wage.
Councillor/auctioneer Killally, who has admitted he made secret profits from land deals and resigned his party's whip, was ordered by the Commercial Court not to reduce his assets below €8m in February. Last Tuesday, he pleaded to have those assets unfrozen to make ends meet. He wept as he detailed his outgoings, which included problems with his underfloor heating and the expense of raising two small children, with another on the way. He was "in between" cars, as his 2008 Audi SUV had been damaged in a road accident. He can't afford to repair it. Oh, and his mobile phone has been cut off.
Killally is actually a victim of the Celtic Tiger. If it wasn't for the boom, he wouldn't be living in a nine-bedroom castellated monster-mansion with all those bills to pay. He deserves our sympathy. Imagine having to struggle with a €4,000-a-week housekeeping bill. There aren't many of us who have faced that kind of challenge. With the exception of Fiona Nagle, of course.
Remember Fiona? She's the socialite wife of Breifne O'Brien, the Dublin tycoon who has been ordered to pay €16m to investors in his alleged 'pyramid scheme'.
Fiona is a former receptionist and party organiser who told Image magazine in 2006 that she never "sticks to one designer". A few Chanel pieces "always rise to the top of the pile", she said, adding that Roland Mouret makes her "feel like a woman". Her "diamond butterfly ring from Van Cleef & Arpels goes with jeans or evening wear". Well it would, wouldn't it?
In January, Nagle – who is not accused of any wrongdoing – also pleaded with a judge to unfreeze the family's assets. She said she needed money to cover her household expenses. Coincidentally, like Killally, she also needed €4,000 a week to pay her bills. Diamond polish obviously isn't cheap (not that I'd know).
Nagle must really be short of a few bob as, last month, a judge had to instruct gardaí to bring her to court for non-payment of parking fines. The warrant was withdrawn and she has since ponied up. Still, at least she had a car to park illegally, unlike poor Ger Killally.
A week later, Nagle pleaded with the media to respect her privacy. There's an irony in that: a PR person asking the press to stay away. It was not as ironic, however, as hearing a Fianna Fáil man blaming the crash for his ruination. It was Fianna Fáil, after all, that sowed the seeds of it with the property boom, from which he profited. It was his former running mate that was at the financial helm when everything went belly-up.
It was Fianna Fáil that refinanced the banks and then let an old-age pensioner give it two fingers over a €1m bonus. Only a hard-necked Tiger stalwart like Michael Fingleton could believe he deserves that and a €28m pension. Is he mad? He's in his 70s – it's not like he has a lot of time left to spend it all. Does he have housekeeping bills like Killally and Nagle? Does his house cost €4,000 a week to run?
You really have to marvel at how out of touch these people are. They just don't get it: the party's over. The rest of us have known this for months. No one, except perhaps Fingleton, is running up housekeeping bills of €4,000 a week any more. We're drawing the dole or taking pay cuts.
On Friday, Judge Peter Kelly said Killally must come to his sense and reduce his living expenses. So the councillor will just have to stop crying and get on with life. He'll have to learn how to shop with an eye for a bargain, just like us. (Eurospar has a €3.49 deal on a cabbage/turnip/carrots combo.) He may even have to use public transport and wear slippers now that the underfloor heating is shot.
Here's an offer for you, Ger. Why don't you hire me as your housekeeper? I know how to run a household on less than €4,000 a week. Come on, give me a call. I've a load of mince in the freezer and can be at your place, making your dinner, by tomorrow evening.
I have to admit that when I read about your housekeeping plight last week, the tears ran down my face as well.
Well, where would we be without our sense of humour?

dkenny@tribune.ie

Pope vs Messiah: the conflict that will define modern Ireland

2009-03-31T16:44:00.002+01:00

Sunday Tribune, 22 March

There he was, the little Taoiseach: bassett-hound cheeks blushing, trying to stop his tongue flopping out the side of his mouth as it does when he's happy. If he had a tail, he'd have wagged it.
After all the flak at home, Brian Cowen was finally enjoying himself. He had come bearing gifts (a begging bowl of Irish weeds) and got a pat on the head and a good aul' feed at the White House. More important, he'd got Obama to promise to visit Offaly.
Nice one.
When Gordon Brown visited Washington, he only got a few manky DVDs – and he's blind in one eye, lads.
"Jaze, but tha' was some craic," said Cowen the next morning, as he popped a Panadol and changed his socks for the flight home. "Hould on a sec though, who're them lads?" he asked, pointing at the four rows of bearded gentlemen waving at him from across the aisle.
"Guantanamo Bay, boss," replied his aide. "You adopted them last night."
"Wha'? How did tha' happen?"
The aide raised an imaginary glass to his lips and tilted it a couple of times. Jaze, thought the Taoiseach, Obama spiked my pint.
"Don't worry," said the aide, "we'll shave them and stick them in Carlow along with the 48 other lads we have coming over from Burma. No one will notice."
Before take-off, Cowen checked his voicemail. "Jaze lads," he sighed, "looks like the Pope's coming to Ireland too."

And so, Ireland is now facing visits from the world's two most powerful men: one bringing a message of hope, the other bringing a boot to kick our pagan backsides. One represents the material world, the other the spiritual. One is liberal, the other ultra-conservative. Cowen must be hoping they don't want to come on the same day.
Last week, the Telegraph newspaper reported that Pope Benedict will tour Britain next year and is considering coming here as well. Unlike the euphoria over Obama, there's been no great rejoicing at the prospect of him visiting us.
What kind of reception will each man get? Sociologists will be watching closely, because the Pope's welcome will, inevitably, be measured against Obama's. The result will define post-Celtic Tiger Ireland.
If the public had to choose between both visits, it would probably pick Obama. It's easy to see why. He is handsome, healthy and young. The Pope is stern, stooped and ancient. Barack says "Yes, we can", Benedict says "No, you can't". The former sees stem-cell research as a boon to mankind, the latter sees it as dooming mankind. Obama stands for hope, Benedict says hell really exists.
Then there's the Hitler Youth thing. Oh, and the condoms. Benedict visited Cameroon last week and said the church still opposes the use of condoms, even in a country with an Aids epidemic. Cameroon, by the way, has the world's fastest-growing Catholic population. Well it would, wouldn't it, considering he won't let them wear condoms.
So how would Ireland benefit from a visit by Benedict? Would it yank us back in line? Probably not. When John Paul II visited he was given a hero's welcome, but his trip didn't halt social change. Since then, we've introduced divorce, contraception, exposed church scandals, etc.
We now prefer sound bites to sermons, so if Benedict's visit is to bring hope, he's on a loser compared to Obama. When the civil-rights hero comes, the multitudes will hang on every word. The Pope's visit, on the other hand, will probably be marked by civil-rights protests. It would be disastrous for Catholicism if the Irish booed Benedict and greeted Obama like the Messiah. It would deal the ailing church here yet another sucker punch.
For this reason, Benedict should not come to Ireland. Obama's popularity would only highlight his lack of it. Besides, he'd be better off at home rethinking the rules on condoms.
Unlike the Pope, Brian Cowen is benefiting from the Obama effect. Yes, the visuals at the White House were awful: at one stage he looked like a bullfrog trying to catch a fly with his tongue. That said, he actually did a good job, even if Obama spiked his pint and made him adopt some Guantanamo lads. The word is, however, that Cowen's having the last laugh on the president.
Apparently, he's asked them to do security for his visit.

March 22, 2009

This is not a rebel column: Bono still makes me proud

2009-03-15T17:35:00.002Z

Sunday Tribune, 15 March

It was in the summer of 1983 that the strange man asked my little sister what she was having for tea. She was 12 and I recall her holding the receiver away as if it had farted in her ear. “What’s up?” I asked. She had been in the hall for five minutes since the phone rang.
“He’s messing,” she said, alarmingly.
“Who’s messing?”
“Burgers,” she told the mystery caller adding, to me, “he says he’s Bono, but I’ve told him he’s not. He won’t go away. I want my burgers.” The phone was nearly back on the hook before the penny dropped. “MUUUUUMMMM! Come quick!” I roared, grabbing it.
I’d better explain. It really was Bono, but in my sister’s defence, you don’t expect rock stars to phone up asking what’s for tea. My mother is an anti-drugs campaigner and was producing a charity video with him called ‘Bands Against Drugs’. Bono had brought in the biggies: Lou Reid, Peter Gabriel, Sting. You won’t remember the video, but I mention it because Bono did it without fanfare.
For the past month, Bono has been slow-roasted at the stake over his tax affairs. In 2006 – before the recession – U2 decided to move part of its business to Holland to cut its tax burden. Annoyance over this has re-ignited and all Bono’s extraordinary achievements have been thrown onto the blaze along with him. What’s galling is that his detractors are mainly from my generation – the people who took such pride in U2’s conquest of the world.
The mob has forgotten that Bono is a rock star and could spend his time snorting coke with hookers. Instead, he uses it, and his own money, lobbying for an end to poverty. Bad Bono. Why can’t you be more like Keith Moon?
Bono is one of our most successful businessmen ever. We used to be proud of our top entrepreneurs. Why not him? He spends a lot of money here, employs people and – whether we like it or not – U2 is a business and is entitled to protect its interests. With the abuse he’s getting, you’d swear he punches kittens for fun.
Granted, sometimes his pronouncements are too high-falutin’ for our tastes, but he’s also known for being down-to-earth with fans and hacks. However, if you’re in the media, it’s not ‘cool’ to like Bono. Still, when he plays Croker, every bar-stool critic will want to be there.
U2 have given more to this country than is quantifiable in cash, and for little thanks. They wrote the soundtrack to our youth. If you’re too young to remember the Dandelion Market there will always be someone older to claim they were there for their first gig. (Like the GPO in 1916.)
Whenever I hear “This is not a rebel song …” the hairs still stand up on the back of my neck. When ‘War’ hit number one in the depths of the recession I nearly burst with pride: four Dubs were cracking the UK charts. My generation thought, ‘maybe we can succeed’. U2’s success gave us hope.
Then came the moment that a thousand Riverdances couldn’t match: the world watching as a mullet-haired Irishman mesmerised Wembley. Bono’s performance at Live Aid was possibly the greatest feat of crowd control since JC and the loaves and fishes. (Maybe.)
I’m not Bono’s PR and don’t want, or need, anything from him. He doesn’t need me to defend him from the mob but, like many others, I’m sick of the small town begrudgery he has to endure. There are plenty of other heads to stick on spikes (Bertie, bags get Bertie!).
On Tuesday we celebrate our national day. In any other country Bono and the lads would be at the head of the parade. How often have you said you’re Irish, when abroad, and been answered with “Ah, Ireland… Bono, U2.”?
There is some positive news for U2, though. The Dubliner magazine has just published its poll of the Top 10 things that make us proud to be Irish. U2 are at number eight, just ahead of the Irish breakfast roll. In 1983 my sister’s burgers were more popular than Bono. In 2009, he’s edged past some sausages.
Top of the list is our sense of humour. I hope Bono still has his.
F**k the begrudgers.

dkenny@tribune.ie