Irish Political News

An entertaining thread on Politics.ie about the ‘RTÉ (guys, do the fada, it’s dead easy) coverage of berties (sic) resignation announcement’ in which we are told that

this IS something thats bothering me. you’d swear the guy was just retiring gracefully because he wants to bow out.

thats not it at all and as we can see from the foreign coverage the rest of the world is calling it retiring in disgrace due to tax issues.

RTE needs to get their act together and report whats actually happened here

Now, I’m a sceptical king of a person and when people tell me something is so and so I tend to want to check that it actually is, rather than taking such things for granted (incidentally I saw the reports on RTÉ and they didn’t strike me as beyond the beyond, quite the opposite David McCullough and Charlie Bird took pains to say that the current little problems would influence future assessments of Aherns reputation). So, I did a little digging to see just how the foreign press and media (anglophone so far, my French is rusty and my Spanish very very minimal - I’d appreciate any precis of articles in those and other globalish languages) were reporting it as it broke.

And what do I find? Well, what I find is that no-one characterised it as ‘retiring in disgrace’. Indeed, what I found was an almost uniformly positive portrayal of a ’statesman’ stepping down due to the political attrition of Tribunals which came ever closer to his personal finances. Perhaps that delicacy is indicative of their need not to be sued. Or perhaps they’re trying to take a measured view.
Consider the New York Times:

Prime Minister Bertie Ahern of Ireland, one of Europe’s longest-serving leaders, who was closely involved in the negotiations that brought peace to Northern Ireland, announced Wednesday that he would resign next month.

He denied accusations of corruption in the 1990s, when he was finance minister, but said he was quitting to prevent his government’s work from being “constantly deflected by the minutiae of my life, my lifestyle and my finances.” He forecast that a tribunal investigating payments received by Irish politicians would find that he had not acted improperly.

During Mr. Ahern’s 11 years in office, Ireland’s economy has undergone a transformation to become one of the most robust in Europe, though more recently, economic growth has slowed.

His planned resignation raised questions about the future of his coalition government and about his ambitions. Supporters hint at his possibly becoming the first permanent president of the European Union, a new role being proposed for the 27-nation bloc.

“Ahern likes Europe,” said Sean Donnelly, a leading pollster who has worked for Mr. Ahern. “He is not just going to walk away from politics.”

Other analysts, however, said Mr. Ahern’s prospects would depend on the outcome of the tribunal investigating accusations that Irish politicians received payments from real estate developers in return for favorable planning decisions. It is called the Mahon Tribunal after Alan Mahon, a judge who leads it.

Or how about the Washington Post?

Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern, who helped bring peace to Northern Ireland but was dogged by investigations into his personal finances, said Wednesday that he would resign next month after almost 11 years in office.

Ahern, 56, announced his resignation at a Dublin news conference as a government tribunal continues to investigate whether he received improper cash payments from businessmen in the mid-1990s.
“He has an affectionate following among the voters, who put him in office three times,” said Irish author and historian Tim Pat Coogan. Ahern remained popular, Coogan noted, despite growing pressure from opposition politicians and members of his own coalition government.

…

Under his watch, Ireland built hundreds of thousands of new homes and businesses and became awash with millionaires and even billionaires as the “Celtic Tiger” economy boomed. By 2006, the nation’s population had topped 4 million for the first time since the mid-19th century. Immigrants from Eastern Europe, Africa and China have been drawn to the flourishing economy, and many Irish who had left their once-impoverished land returned.

Working closely with Tony Blair, then Britain’s prime minister, Ahern brought Northern Ireland’s Catholic and Protestant leaders together to sign the landmark 1998 Good Friday peace agreement.

Former Irish prime minister Garret FitzGerald, from the opposition Fine Gael party, said in an interview that despite Ahern’s “financial problems,” the outgoing leader has “extraordinary negotiating skills” and has handled Northern Ireland and European issues “brilliantly.”

….
Ahern’s ultimate downfall follows an investigation by the Mahon Tribunal, which the Irish government established in November 1997 to look into allegations of bribes and other payments related to Ireland’s fast-paced development.

The tribunal has been investigating deposits into Ahern’s accounts totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars in the first half of the 1990s, when he was a member of Parliament but not prime minister.

Last October, Ahern acknowledged receiving cash payments from businessmen who were personal friends during the period when he was separating from his wife, Miriam. He denied that the payments were unethical.
….

Michael Gallagher, a professor of political science at Trinity College Dublin, said the resignation “was a surprise to everyone, but there was growing speculation his position was growing untenable.”

“Bertie lives in an ordinary suburban house and goes to the local pub, and he was never seen as someone who was making much money in politics,” Gallagher said. “He will be remembered well, as a modest and direct person who seemed to live the same lifestyle as most people. But nonetheless, there was something odd about his finances.”

The Guardian offered us:

Despite a reputation for immunity from scandal summed up in his “Teflon Taoiseach” nickname, Bertie Ahern’s otherwise successful decade as Ireland’s prime minister has been regularly undermined by allegations of financial impropriety.

In particular, Ahern, now 56, has faced persistent questions over claims that a Cork-based developer, Owen O’Callaghan, gave him money in return for planning approval when he served as finance minister in the early 1990s, a period when Ahern’s first marriage was breaking up.

…
In September last year, the prime minister gave a pugilistic performance in testifying to the Mahon tribunal, which investigates allegations of corrupt payments to politicians.

Ahern said he had never taken a bribe in his 30 years in politics, during which he became lord mayor of Dublin, then finance minister and finally prime minister in 1997.

“I have done no wrong and have wronged no one,” he said.

Reports in Irish newspapers about his finances were based on forged documents, Ahern claimed, saying there was a political conspiracy designed to bring down him and his ruling Fianna Fáil party.

Today, Ahern said that while he had made many mistakes in his political life, “one mistake I’ve never made is to enrich myself” through bribes.

“I look forwards to comprehensively dealing with these matters at the [Mahon] tribunal,” he said.

Away from the corruption claims, Ahern has enjoyed many triumphs, not least three election victories, in 1997, 2002 and last year.

During his period in office as Ireland’s second-longest serving prime minister, Ahern helped negotiate the Good Friday peace deal in Northern Ireland and led Ireland’s six-month turn holding the rotating EU presidency in 2003.

His tenure coincided with a somewhat golden period for the Irish economy, during which the once rural-dominated nation emerged as the so-called Celtic Tiger, a magnet for migrants from new EU nations and, in Dublin, home to one of the world’s most fevered recent property booms.

This prosperity has brought some legitimate personal benefits to Ahern. A 14.6% pay rise last year saw his salary boosted to almost £220,000, comfortably more than that earned by the US president, George Bush.

There’s more, but you get the point (notwithstanding the article on Comment is Free by Fintan O’Toole which takes a rather more jaundiced view…).

Now, lest this seem like an apologia for our beloved near to not leader, can I refer you to comments I posted here on Saturday which echoed the Irish Times in its call for him to resign, or indeed the broadly critical thrust of our posts on this topic over the past two years. So, it’s not an apologia, but it is an attempt to avoid the usual descent away from political analysis into partisan personality based stuff. I’m certainly not going to beat myself up because the Irish people elected him time and again, or that at the very least he has enormous questions to answer that will take a prodigious effort on his part to satisfy an increasingly sceptical Irish public. Indeed this ‘guilt by association’, or pointing abroad as if we are uniquely corrupt and corrupted irritates me no end. As was noted here by DJP O’Kane:

even if… [personal] corruption [exists] [it] was a symptom not a cause of structural defects in Irish society.This is the point that Dublin 4 and D’Olier street will not and cannot admit; their identity and politics is based on preserving that structure so that they can be its unchallenged masters.

And you cannot construct serious political strategies from self-flagellation, but I suspect that that might not be the lesson Fine Gael, and some of it’s more vociferous cheerleaders may take from this (indeed not just they). And here again I want to reiterate that Ahern is - even today - old news. The cameras at the entrance to Leinster House this lunchtime were assembled not to talk of him but the leadership contest in Fianna Fáil as evidenced by subsequent reports on TV3.

And it is this that will swamp Enda Kenny’s last best hope for long term personal political survival, the call for an election…

Repeating his call for a general election, Mr Kenny said: “I believe that this Government has not lived up to its commitments.

“I believe that, as we face a new challenge and a new time in Irish politics, that the new leader of Fianna Fáil should seek a mandate from the people of the country.

“I believe they have a right to say who they want to lead them, what parties they want to lead them and on what policies they want to [ be led]. And I believe that the new leader, whoever he or she is, should seek that mandate.

“All of the Ministers in the current Government and all of the Ministers in the junior partners have defended this Taoiseach on the basis of having done nothing wrong and of there being no lessening of the ability of Government to do its work. Clearly that has not been the case.”

Well, it’s a theory.

Still to finish, for an equally generous assesment as RTÉ, consider the following choice and selected quotes:

He has made the right decision for himself and the country to name an early date for his resignation as Taoiseach. And it is a measure of the political substance of the man that, through the manner of his leaving, he has partially redeemed his reputation rather than hanging on to be hunted out of office. He will have a well-deserved month-long lap of honour.

And…

Suffice to say that he was a very good Taoiseach for almost 11 of the most progressive years - socially, politically and economically - in the modern history of this State. Unlike others, he can genuinely claim that he did the State some service. He won the admiration of the people for historic achievements in office. What’s more, there was an affection for his affability, his ordinariness, his common touch.

But:

Mr Ahern had to resign as Taoiseach because all of the political mantras which he constructed for senior colleagues were shattering all around him. The day had arrived when it didn’t matter whether or not the Mahon tribunal could prove the allegation by Tom Gilmartin that property developer Owen O’Callaghan had paid £80,000 to Mr Ahern. The substantial sums of money which Mr Ahern received from other sources for other reasons over a continuous period in his political career had become the dominant issue. A finding from the Mahon tribunal could not, and would not, clear his name.

Do go on…

Some say that this is a sad day for Irish politics. It is personally for Mr Ahern. The decisive and dignified announcement of his departure, however, will have a restorative effect on political standards. For that alone, Mr Ahern must be given due respect and credit on this day.

The source of these kind words? Why none other than today’s editorial in the Irish Times. Magnanimous in victory… they partially redeem their own reputation.

Just a few stray thoughts to follow on from yesterday. It really does strike me that for the opposition this pre-dated resignation may have come too early. By going now Ahern doesn’t appear to have his fingers pried one by one in a Mugabe like fashion from power (indeed in an unkind moment I wondered whether the events in Zimbabwe played upon our beloved leaders mind). There is much less of the sense of the men in grey suits arriving at his door, indeed a particularly telling moment was the shot on TV yesterday of Brian Cowen actually scanning the text in front of Ahern. Yes, we were all interested in what he might say next. And although the idea that events hadn’t conspired to push him now is laughable, he could have hung on and brazened it out, at least until his next round of evidence.

So he goes with the barest fig-leaf covering the reality that it would require enormous expenditure of energy and political capital to remain.

And what of our opposition? It’s tricky.

Bertie was - at least at one point in his career - meant to represent the essentially technocratic approach that Fianna Fáil often, but not always, excelled at. In particular he was meant to personify a break with what had gone before. Where Haughey had seemed an almost reptilian figure of menace and self-reflection coiled up in Kinsealy, Ahern was to be an open friendly and engaging person who would put all that behind him. His working class persona to compare favourably with the pretensions of the older man with his horses, his island, his country manse. But ‘personify’ is a difficult term. He never quite managed, despite retaining much of those open characteristics, to shrug off his mentor. The technocrat for the 21st century was really just half a technocrat…

It’s this gulf between aspiration and reality that perhaps in the end did for him. His roots, whatever about his vision, lay in the 1970s and 1980s.

And this is why this is tricky for the opposition. Despite all those evident flaws Ahern remained the most popular politician of his generation. I’ve seen it in action at close quarters, dyed in the wool Fine Gael supporters (or members) on committees who would never vote for Ahern in a million years swayed by the strength of his personality. For those with no particular ideological leanings, as most of us do, he was and remains extremely attractive as a person.

But to attack that one had to attack the person. Which is what has essentially happened - and indeed rightly so in relation to the issue of explaining payments.

But because people recognised that aspect of his success was very personal it makes the strategy 2.0 approach the opposition is road testing sotto voce of ‘everyone is guilty’ in FF and the Green Party and the PDs somewhat less than effective. Much of the voting population was also taken in. And with Cowen, a figure untainted by the 1970s, on the point of assuming control we move back to policy. Cowen is - remarkably - even more technocratic and from some of his outings in the Dáil extremely commanding, when the mood takes him. And that is a really really troublesome aspect for Labour and Fine Gael whose own self-identity is under considerable question at this moment (consider the way Labour is reexamining itself, consider the fascinating shift to the right by a small but vocal minority within FG).

Moreover, and this is at the distant edge of the possible, what happens if at the Tribunal out of that painfully contorted hedge of verbiage we are about to be served up (and can I for a moment distinguish between his rhetorical approach and the revoltingly snobbish attacks on his ‘accent’ by people who should but clearly don’t know better) Ahern manages to put forward an excuse for the ‘unusual’ events that have come to light that is just this side of implausible? It’s unlikely. But… Ahern winning a third term was on the face of it unlikely. If yesterday’s news prompted the thought that there would be tears, well, there’ll be more…

I genuinely think this next six months is going to be one of the more interesting periods of our political life.

Meanwhile, here’s something written earlier… one wonders how much the dynamic will change after the events this morning. Although I’d almost bet that we’ll see a poll boost for FF.

Reading the Sunday Business Post poll at the weekend I couldn’t help but think that perhaps their may be hard stares around the Cabinet between the Green Party Ministers and Mary Harney. Why so?

Because the Green Party’s previous policy of saying nothing has seen then go up yet again in the polls. The RedC poll saw the following:

STATE OF THE PARTIES
Fianna Fáil 35 (-2)
Fine Gael 30 (-1)
Labour 11 (+1)
Greens 8 (+1)
Sinn Féin 9 (+1)
PDs 1 (-1)
Inds 7 (+1)

For the Progressive Democrats, what was there left to lose? Their poll ratings could hardly go down whatever Harney said (well, short of announcing the return to public life of Michael McDowell). I’ve heard that Harney broke ranks in a bid to support Fiona O’Malley’s bid for the leadership of the PDs. Well, there is nothing like a little local political concern to have unpleasant knock-on effects and here is a prime example. For them, hovering at the lowest end of the their potential support saying something, anything, was no harm. And indeed Pat Leahy in the SBP notes as much when he writes:

The Progressive Democrats may not be among those potential partners. Down one point to 1 per cent, the party is at the very edge of the public consciousness. And this is the middle of a leadership campaign.

It’s not that they are a complete irrelevance, no party with a Minister in government and a small and imperfectly formed crew of public representatives can be utterly irrelevant. But what plausible strategy can dig them out of the hole, largely of their own making, that they currently reside in? Will a grateful nation thrill to O’Malley, or her rival Cannon? It doesn’t seem likely. And they seem to me to be like nothing so much as the minor parties in the Inter-Party Coalitions of the 1940s and 1950s. Who now remembers, or cares about, National Labour or the… ? Gone. Gone entirely. Who indeed cares much about Clann na Poblachta (well, me actually, on a slight tangent I think they were a much more reforming force than some might give them credit, and had they not been lumbered with some enormous egos at the top… well, who knows?).

And the outlook is hardly good for the PDs. The SBP also reports that so far only a third of their membership had registered to vote in the leadership election. That, apparently is 1,200. If they can’t motivate their own, what likelihood that they can motivate everyone else?

But for the Green Party, smoked out as it were by the PDs this can be but a tale of woe. For silence, omerta, call it what one will, had served them well for the previous eight or ten months. But they, in the words of Niamh Connolly in the SBP (in a piece which had a remarkable number of contributions from named and unamed GP sources - too many to my mind for a party which might be better off imposing a rigid discipline on all media comments):

do not relish any of their party members even hinting at a moral custodian role for them in government. An absolute priority for them is to put a stamp on every piece of legislation passing through the Oireachtas, and it should not be deflected from this ‘‘by events that happened 20 years ago’’, the source said.

And while one may have enormous criticisms of that stance it has clearly connected with a section of the public in a way that is… well, surprising to be honest. Because their poll rating is three points higher than it was at the election and has seen a steady upward trend.

Another thought struck me that the political aspect of the Ahern issue is that it is personality based. All the calls for Ahern to go, and he will - again the SBP recounts that he has allegedly agreed to depart sometime after the appearance before the US Congress which if true sort of leaves his options just a little open - centre on Ahern. But Ahern is in a sense becoming rather like the bedraggled figure that most families have of the relative with a sort of unspoken long term ‘problem’ or malady. Someone who regarded with affection, but also a sort of resigned tolerance, and is dealt with a little warily. The trick is to not vocalise the wariness, or reserve in order to prevent verbal and other explosions.

Now that the GP has spoken will that impact on their rating?

Once Ahern is gone we have Cowen. And if there is one message that’s been hammered away on this site it is that a Cowen led Fianna Fáil is simply not going to present the same sort of target as an Ahern led Fianna Fáil. It will be a different sort of target, one that is political rather than personal and probably more vulnerable around the edges, particularly in Dublin (particularly with no Bert to shore up the defences). But the whiff of the 1980s and early 1990s will have largely gone. And, note too that Gormley is apparently ‘attempting to change legislation to ban or limit corporate donations’. That would be no mean achievement. But it isn’t going to happen anytime soon.

And what then of the other party that sees yet another upward trend in its polling, that being Sinn Féin? They must be scratching their heads at the results. And also wondering what they should do next. Two points behind Labour and yet what to show for it? In a curious way they’re in a similar situation to Fine Gael. The next election is too far away to leverage whatever support they currently have. Other, of course, than in the local elections. And it is possible that they may add to their current crop of councillors, particularly off the back of a good Lisbon campaign. And they know that even 7% in May of last year didn’t do the business. They have to consolidate their support to be in with a shout of getting even half the seat return that Labour routinely sees on those extra couple of percentage points.

Labour can take some comfort in their poll result. But only some. The new leadership hasn’t lit a fire under them. And the siren voices, at least at the SBP are now talking about how Gilmore should ‘modernise’ further. Back Room column makes three points, two of which I agree with, the other I don’t. Firstly it suggests that:

Eamon Gilmore’s steady but unspectacular start as Labour leader has included a determined assault on the old orthodoxy within the party that Labour is right and that the people will come to their senses some day and recognise this at the ballot box.

For some of us on the outside of Labour the very certainty that they are the one true voice of the Irish left (to coin a phrase) has been enormously off putting (incidentally, one might also argue that some of that thinking split off into Militant and later the Socialist Party - equally off-putting comrades). And the sort of half-baked deterministic certainty that s/he refers to that the Irish people ‘will come to their senses’ is not that different really from the Irish Times approach, which is hardly coincidental. So, very good. And perhaps realistic. Not terribly enticing, but there we go.

Secondly s/he argues that:

As was seen dramatically in 1992, when Labour gets in tune with the public mood, it can prosper.

It was also the last time that Labour set itself the objective of being the unquestioned leader of the opposition. It insisted that they would have the right to at least share the position of Taoiseach, and everything it did was about setting Labour apart from all other parties. Gilmore appears to understand this, which is why he has said that he will not be repeating the pre-election pact which delivered so much for Fine Gael.

Again, no dispute there.

On the other hand Back Room argues that:

If Labour wants to make major gains, it must change in a major way.

21st-century Ireland will only respond to Labour if the party shows that it really understands the needs of our modern economy; if it has an organisation that people with balanced lives might want to join; and if it stops responding to issues and starts leading on them.

…Should it be allowed to question old certainties within the party and genuinely look at modernisation, the next leader of Fianna Fail may face a much tougher challenge from his left.

What exactly does this mean? Change in what way? Modernise in what way? Does the Irish political system really need FG or FF 2.0, a three three-quarters party system each more or less identical? Because surely that is the suggestion, that somehow Labour shifts even further towards an already over-crowded centre.

And I’m not entirely convinced by the argument that:

The loudest critics of the party insist that this is because it isn’t radical enough - but they have nothing to say when countered with the fact that countless radical alternatives have tried and failed to even come close to matching its support.

The WP certainly was considerably more radical and built up a strong cohort of TDs, ironically one that has sustained the Labour Party since. And, WP/DL were able to largely maintain their grip on those TDs even when Labour was ascending to the dizzy heights that they achieved in 1992.

Anyhow, plenty of food for thought there…

Well, not quite the surprise it might have seemed at 9.30 this morning while I was waiting in a doctors surgery and heard on the radio that our beloved leader would make a statement on issues. Things had been coming to a head for a couple of weeks now.

A valedictory effort, heavy on the emotion, patriotism… and wise too to define precisely when he was on his way. So like Blair too, wasn’t it? The victor of an election brought low relatively soon after that election.

Who, which ingrates, would deny him his last sentimental victory lap, taking in Congress, no less? Well, let’s see the polls and then we’ll know better. Perhaps there are more ingrates than we’ve suspected out there, or perhaps not.

And, now at home suffering not so silently (I’m complaining to anyone who bothers to read here - aren’t I?), I caught the entertaining response on RTÉ from Eoghan Harris who prophesied a backlash against ‘those who had brought him down’, and even better this gem, that one merely had ‘to look at Berties face to see how honest he was’.

Our greatest political thinker - eh? (and more on him later in the week).

So what happens next? I wonder if this is going to pose problems for Fine Gael and the opposition. Unsurprising then that Pat Rabbitte was talking about the “Ministers”, Pat well remembers the concept of collective guilt from back in the day… but that may not work quite as he hopes [see reference to ingrates above!]. And he, Ahern, gets - no doubt at all about this - weeks of good press about his achievements (indeed there’s Liz MacManus waxing lyrical about those very achievements - and remember, once he’s gone, he’s gone. Yesterday’s political power is… irrelevant). There’ll be tears… and not necessarily just from his friends.

Meanwhile, will Cowen be Brown, or not? No early election I’ll bet… and what of the Lisbon neverendum? So many questions.

I’m off to bed for the rest of the day… sick, but not with sorrow, at the departure….

There is a problem with the nature of the internet, particularly the unpleasantly named Web 2.0. For those who have use or have access to sites there is the opportunity to use them as and when the mood strikes. Which is unbelievably dangerous because it engenders a sense of importance, which can be illusory, and immediacy, which is very poison.

I’d echo entirely Conor’s words on Dublin Opinion about the recent problems over at Politics.ie, not because I’m a wimpish blogger, or middle-class bottling it in the face of power, but simply because they are right.

P.ie has become a bear pit in regard to all things Ahern and Tribunal. Words were allegedly put in the public domain that have now impelled a legal company into action with charges of defamation.

The possibility of such words being written was obvious, the response inevitable. And that David Cochrane has been, to some extent, caught in the crossfire is unfortunate.

But this is the real world where chances are a legal firm will be first to up the ante - particularly if they think that it is themselves who have been impugned.

To read this then as some sort of attack on Politics.ie with the motive of ‘chilling’ conversation on the topic of the Tribunals or Ahern is nonsense. To see that then as the rationale for a broader campaign to defend ‘free speech’ is near-risible. To then, as some (assiduously hunting with the hounds and running with the hare) suggest conspiracy - or rather air the idea that some are saying it is only to dismiss it while simultaneously spreading it yet further is … well, it is what it is.

In a situation like this there is one solution. The problem is dealt with as it by separate legal teams, because that’s the only way it can be dealt with. No public campaign on the internet is going to change this issue. No appeal to a gallery that will melt away at the first hint that this will incur either financial or other penalties. No dubious relocations whose efficacy has yet to be proven in Irish law.

It requires first and foremost cool heads, restraint, and the sort of compromise that is one aspect of the nature of the legal system. Particularly when what we’re talking about are commercial entities.

But restraint is not the nature of the internet, of boards, or whatever. In an echo of the supposedly ‘legacy’ media, immediacy is all. What is written takes on a life of its own. The ‘campaign’ becomes all, in a perfect simplification. We’re all ‘meant’ to rally to Politics.ie (best of all someone started a P.ie ‘pledge’)…

Nevermind that Politics.ie closed down discussion of the Tribunal and Ahern. Nevermind that they weren’t asked to in the original letter, and were questioned as to why they did so in the second letter. Nevermind that apparently they are going to reopen it as soon as it suits. Not the solicitors. I think the actions were understandable, but developed into the wrong response. So why on earthy would I or any thinking human being pledge ’support’? Or as a poster on P.ie put it;

I support Dave Cochrane. I don’t support those who persist in putting his site and personal finances in jeopardy especially those mouthing off when service of legal action may be imminent.

My thoughts entirely.

Addendum: I note that Adam Maguire got some unkind words directed at him for daring to express his (entirely moderate) opinion about the matter on Newstalk today. That’s pretty unfair to, as anyone who has met Adam will confirm he’s a good observer of all things internet. Slightly entertaining was the confusion of him with Damien Mulley who is also guilty of thoughtcrimes… albeit ones that date back some time now…

Interesting times at Politics.ie just got… well… more interesting as noted by Starkadder. For, on foot of a discussion of the Tribunal dealings the week before last David Cochrane was sent a letter from Frank Ward and Company which called on him to remove ‘comments ‘ from P.ie and to identify the names and addresses of six contributors to the debate.

On foot of the letter David has said:

Until further notice, the Tribunal section of the forum is out-of-bounds, and no Tribunal discussion is allowed. Furthermore there can be no discussion with respect to the Tribunals or anything concerning Bertie Ahern.

It is a problematic - and no doubt for David worrying - issue. On the one hand - and I only loosely followed the original discussion - it is clear that there was considerable heat on the matter. On the other isn’t this an issue of moderation? Why not just have a limited number of discussions on the Tribunal and Ahern which are tightly moderated? The letter doesn’t require P.ie to do anything other than two very specific things one of which has been done, the removal of the offending comments, one of which David (entirely) rightly says he won’t:

Under no circumstances can I be in a position to disclose the identity of any user on this website, and I will not be doing so.

So why the guillotine on all discussion of the Tribunal and Ahern?

It’s funny. There is a point where it’s time to move on:

There have been too many explanatory statements from the Taoiseach since this newspaper first published Colm Keena’s story 18 months ago revealing that the Mahon tribunal was investigating payments of between €50,000-€100,000 by businessmen to Mr Ahern while he was minister for finance in the early 1990s. Some have been short; others have been long. Some have been in written affidavits; others verbally on oath. Some have been sound bites; others have been long articles.

Eventually the moment arrives when numerous tortured explanations which avoid dealing directly with the matter at hand won’t do:

The seminal statement was made on the Bryan Dobson interview on RTÉ when the payments were presented as a dig-out from friends at a sad time in his personal life. There have been three or four other versions of that story ever since.

Where sympathy, however residual, finally ebbs away:

The time has come for Mr Ahern to name a date for his departure.

Where respect for past achievements cannot outweigh the slow but steady attrition of a reputation:

He should be allowed the dignity of a valedictory address to the Joint Houses of Congress in the United States. He should lay claim to the historic part he played in the peace process in Northern Ireland. There is a danger that he could become the focal point for voters in the Lisbon Treaty referendum. Mr Ahern should name a date, sooner rather than later.

Enough really is enough… isn’t it?

I had to smile today when I opened the Irish Times letter page to discover that the indefatigable John McGuirk, Communications Director of Libertas, was taking Gay Mitchell to task.

Now one of the things I love about politics is that it can throw up some unlikely alliances of convenience. And here is a perfect example. I’m not much of a fan of Fine Gael, although there are a number of politicians I admire in it. Still, I can’t help feeling a certain degree of sympathy for Mitchell when I read the following…

Madam, - Gay Mitchell (March 27th) wants to know how Libertas is funded. We have repeatedly said that we are in communication with the Standards in Public Office Commission, and are totally compliant with the relevant legislation.

If Mr Mitchell, or his party, wants to go down the road of talking about political funding, we will happily oblige him. Perhaps we could start with a lengthy discussion of his own party’s funding in the mid-1990s, when he was a government minister?

Mr Mitchell should stick to the facts of this treaty, and avoid the politics. He was never very good at the latter anyway. - Yours, etc,
JOHN McGUIRK,
Communications Director,
Libertas,
Baggot Street,
Dublin 2.

It’s not so much the factual, or otherwise, content of the letter as the little lash at the end. Now, I’d never present myself as an expert on such matters, but one thing I do know is that courtesy goes a long way whereas sarcasm, at least in these contexts, doesn’t.

And while there are those who think Libertas is getting an unfair time of it, I think it is reasonable to enquire about an organisation, any organisation, that can mount a fairly comprehensive billboard campaign in a political campaign. That this organisation in particular is an exotic blend on the political right (at least in the Irish context) is of natural interest to those like ourselves who like to study such things.

On politics.ie it’s all getting a bit raw, which is perhaps an object lesson in why it is probably best for people to avoid trying to be both players in a campaign process and assisting spectators of that process.

In a way I can’t help but think this is a bit like a project that has run well out of control. Perhaps some of those involved saw this as a good opportunity to burnish their credentials as campaigners and consultants - not unlike Frank Luntz or Saatchi and Saatchi for example. Participation in a campaign like this, where there is a good chance (particularly following Nice) that it might go sour for the ‘establishment’ could only look good, allowing for a share in the credit. Even if the result was close but the No side lost, well, it would still be seen as a credible and professional effort.

Perhaps the motivations are completely different. But the current spate of events seem to speak of a much less assured handling of the whole affair than might have been expected.

It’s funny, I had been thinking last week that in some respects Fine Gael remind me of nothing so much as the Irish Parliamentary Party - the reasons for that observation I will get to in a moment. And what happens? Why here comes John Bruton. For we learn in the Irish Times yesterday that ‘Bruton salutes the historic legacy of John Redmond’. Now I should state that for my money were FG to look for serious inspiration they could do no better than actually engage a bit more with the reality of what Michael Collins sought and did. But… to each their own.

Anyhow the article continues:

HISTORY HAD not “done justice” to the leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party, John Redmond, the EU ambassador to the US and former taoiseach John Bruton said at the Mansion House in Dublin last night.

Speaking at the launch of Redmond: The Parnellite, the first in a two-volume biography by Dermot Meleady (published by Cork University Press), Mr Bruton said he had “very strong feelings” on the book’s subject.

And Bruton recounts some of his achievements…

“He was, as the book tells you, regarded as the greatest parliamentary orator of his time; John Redmond’s capacity to hold the House [ of Commons] in his hand was equalled only by Gladstone,” Mr Bruton said.

“He won the consent of people all over the world for the idea that the Irish were capable of ruling themselves . . . The crowning achievement came on September 18th, 1914, when the Home Rule Bill was placed on the statute book.”

Which is great if one counts as a crowning achievement one which doesn’t actually have any effect. Or to rework Enoch Powell’s acerbic observation that all political lives end in failure… well yes, this one sure did…Because as the Irish Times notes:

However, Home Rule was suspended for the duration of the first World War.

And:

Coming in the wake of the 1916 Rising, the general election of 1918 rejected Redmond’s legacy and his “policy of engagement and negotiation” in favour of “abstention and violence”.

Now, this is a significant rewriting of history. Because it elides a number of events and ignores others in order to present us with a highly misleading interpretation. The 1916 Rising was a direct consequence of the failure of Home Rule to be implemented. Many of those involved had been supportive of the Home Rule campaign but had become disillusioned when that campaign was not successful (in 1912 Pearse had shared a platform with Redmond demanding the implementation of Home Rule). These were not people instinctively wedded to violence. Their next political port of call? Why advanced nationalism otherwise known as Republicanism. The campaign for Home Rule had stretched across more than a century since the Act of Union. The suspension of Home Rule was not in itself an isolated issue, but also occurred in the context of the aversion of the British state to face down the political response of Unionism.

Nor is it unreasonable to suggest that the support for Republicanism in the period after 1916 was a direct result of the lack of Home Rule. The response to the Rising by the British demonstrated the reality of their authority - perhaps in a way that had not been seen in at least a generation at that time. And in such a context it is unsurprising that as with those involved in 1916 itself there would be a shift of sentiment towards a harder edged identification with Republicanism.

Nor would it be correct to suggest that the shift to violence was in some sense external to the Home Rule project (a sort of Republican import as it were). For the militarisation of the struggle was a response to Unionist militarisation in Ulster and the foundation of the original Ulster Volunteer Force. And it was Home Rule in the broader sense which mobilised in response, not Republicanism, in the shape of the Irish Volunteers in November 1913. Redmond ignored, then intervened in the Volunteers forcing their Provisional Committee to accept his nominees. This is not to ignore the fact that former Fenians and the IRB rapidly took a commanding role in the Volunteers, but that in the words of Alvin Jackson in Home Rule: An Irish History 1800 - 2000, ‘Redmond’s belated annexation of the Volunteers looked like weakness, and a panicked reappraisal of his most deeply cherished strategies’.

Indeed a better argument can be made that Home Rule in and of itself was the issue which led to not merely 1916, but 1919-1921 and thereafter. The point at which the British state was willing to concede self-government, limited as it was, was one which would lead to a backlash from Unionism. That backlash was in a paramilitary form utilising the threat of force and this was met with an equal and opposite response from Nationalism of the Home Rule variety, rapidly appropriated in part by advanced Nationalism.

So therefore to present it in bald terms as some sort of ‘rejection’ of negotiation in favour of ‘violence’ is simply wrong. It was the near-inevitable outworking of processes which the lack of implementation of Home Rule, indeed the previous aversion to even engaging on the issue, by the British political classes led almost directly to. And just as violence is implicit in all state-building, it is also implicit in secessions. We have seen how ugly the post-Yugoslav dispensation has been, why would it be different in 1914 or 1921, particularly if the state concerned was the then leading global power?

And while Redmond might well have won consent internationally that ‘the Irish were capable of ruling themselves’ this was a very partial sort of rule, one constrained by the structures of a British political system. I find it curious that the former Taoiseach of an independent and sovereign Republic of Ireland would see in Redmond a political hero. I don’t mean that in a lazy sort of ‘John Unionist’ way, but simply that while Redmond did indeed seek a non-violent way to ’self-rule’ (although as we have seen that was tempered by the experience of the Irish Volunteers, and let us not even consider his role in recruitment to the British Army) the end he sought was surely very different from that Republic (indeed arguably his vision was less radical than that of O’Connell) and was directly incompatible with the Republic or indeed even the Irish Free State which did emerge in 1922. In fact it is difficult not to regard Home Rule as a political cul-de-sac which diverted energy away from independence, and which even had it been instituted in 1914 would still have seen partition of sorts, and then eventual independence probably sooner rather than later. The counter argument is that this might have been achieved without bloodshed. But, one wonders.

Consider this quote from Jackson, where he notes that…

Redmonds grief on military questions reflected, perhaps, not just the ambiguities created by the suspension of Home Rule but difficulties with the measure itself… under the terms of the suspended Home Rule Act an Irish leader had no direct jurisdiction over military matters. There is little doubt that the Home Rule Act could not - indeed should not - have been a final and complete expression of Irish national aspirations. But the war raises a question about even its short-term viability as a settlement. If Home Rule had been enacted, and Redmond had been Irish Prime Minister in late 1914, then under the terms of the Act he could have exercised no more authority over the critical issue of Irish recruitment than he already did as leader of the Irish Party… it is hard to resist the suspicion that the Home Rule Act of 1914 could have been no more than a provisional settlement of the historic Anglo-Irish antagonism.

More to the point even what support there was for the Irish Parliamentary Party, and it was on one level near-hegemonic, was built on shifting and contradictory ground. Jackson also notes that when the 1915 wartime coalition government in Britain took power and offered cabinet seats to Edward Carson (as attorney general) and Redmond. Redmond refused. As Jackson relates ‘Irish nationalism had traditionally been deeply opposed to the notion of its commanders accepting ministerial positions under the English Crown’. Granted the situation had changed to the extent Redmond could seek recruits to the British Army, but that he did not suggests that the alternative history of a gentle slide towards peaceful autonomy (or independence) during this period is largely aspirational.

This is not to say that, as John Regan in The Irish Counter-Revolution has noted that ‘notions of an Irish teleological history and republican predestination - that is to say that all Irish history was seen as a continuous process leading to independence, the republic and rule by Fianna Fáil’ were in and of themselves correct. Merely that so many of the elements that fed into the ultimate shape of the post-1916 conflict were well beyond the control of Redmond, or indeed anyone on the island (or the other island directly to the east). The First World War, Unionist dissent, the development of a small, but not insignificant band of dissenters within Nationalism itself (as early as September 1914 12,000 Irish Volunteers from the 170,000 original members followed Eoin MacNeill in direct opposition to Redmond). Each of these was in place soon after Redmond was forced to bend to the will of the Westminster Parliament and delay once more in the implementation of his ‘crowning success’. And that was largely that. His route was far from ignoble, but predestination aside, it seems more than likely doomed - certainly from 1913 or so.

Once one factors in 1916 one is left with a situation in which, as Jackson argues:

The Easter rebels had exposed the limitations and inconsistencies of the Irish Party’s rhetoric and actions - a party that celebrated the achievements of earlier insurgents, and yet which daily compromised the ideals of Irish self-government. The rebels had also exposed the distance that the party had travelled since the death of Parnell - the extent to which his great coalition of militant and constitutionalist had degenerated into a party of tough-talking but sedentary and ageing gentlemen. In the very act of purloining the rebels’ sanctity [by a speech following the Rising in which he denounced the executions and praised the courage of Pearse et al], Dillon underlined the integrity of their case.

And I wonder too if in the most benign scenario of a Home Rule government extant from 1914 pressure from a recalcitrant Northern Ireland, presumably behind a border, would not have fed precisely the sort of appetites that those like Bruton believe that Redmond might have shielded this different Irish history from. After all, in the relative calm of the late 1940s the Anti-Partition campaign saw a final flourish of near mass enthusiasm for direct (political) intervention in the North with frankly disastrous results. Add to this a younger generation impatient with the compromises and conciliations of a Home Rule administration and we see something approaching the counterfactual detailed in British Ireland (an essay by Jackson in Niall Ferguson’s interesting albeit right of centre Virtual History).

Ireland emerges as a dominion, loosely bound to the British empire. The inclusion of Ulster has little bearing on this counterfactual fantasy… however it should again be emphasised that an independent Ireland with a strong Unionist representation need not have been - in the long term - a politically and culturally settled polity. There is, in fact, some justification for supposing the reverse. It seems unlikely that had Home Rule been enacted in 1912, there would have been an Anglo-Irish war; on the other hand it is not improbable that advanced seperatists would have staged a revolt against a Home Rule administration which seemed to be (in MacSwiney’s metaphor) joining the Carnival of Empire.

And Jackson continues that in a further counterfactual there is the possibility of an Ulster provisional government emerging (this contention supported by some plans proposed by Carson and the UVF) which would either have been put down by force by the British or Irish, or transition to a near-civil war scenario and either a sort of half-life of autonomy within the Home Rule context or otherwise. Would any of these have been substantially better than the situation that did in fact emerge? Would they have been more stable? Would any of them have provided the sort of outcome that Redmond sought? And would any of them vindicate the faith John Bruton places in Redmond as the great lost leader who could have negotiated Ireland safely through the crucible of international and domestic events during this period? Could any leader do that?

Because the problem is that once we accept that the elements existed, were in place and required no internal activity to bring them into play it is clear that even had Home Rule been granted in 1914 the exigencies of the broader environment would place it under almost identical pressures to that endured by the protagonists of our actual history. Whether Redmond and his peers in the Irish Parliamentary Party were capable of dealing with such pressures is a very interesting question indeed. The brute reality is that despite his seeming altitude above the messy compromises political and military that the post-1914 era would necessitate Redmond was in actual fact deeply involved in attempting to bridge the same gaps that others who Bruton would find much less congenial later sought to do so. He is no more the untainted white knight of Irish political life than any other individual and his record, and indeed project, is vastly more contradictory than is presented by John Bruton.

And finally, to my mind there is an unhappy echo of the Redmond legacy today. For watching the assembled Fine Gael TDs recently the unkind thought struck me that they were being essentially true to their now distant roots in the Irish Parliamentary Party as they sat in an assembly with no direct influence, whatever their numbers. Indeed Michael Taft has noted that:

If Fianna Fail is one of the most successful parties in Europe then Fine Gael, as the main opposition party, is one of the least successful. Since its formation in 1933 it has been in office for only 18 out of 75 years. But, more to the point, Fine Gael is solely reliant upon Labour to lead a government. It’s not that they are inflexible: they have coalesced with Democratic Left while making it clear prior to the last election that both Greens and the PDs were acceptable partners. However, without Labour, they cannot hope to lead a government. Were Labour to permanently withdraw support, it is very hard to see Fine Gael ever recapturing that office.

I think it is unlikely that that latter scenario might come to pass, but it does speak of a serious structural problem for Fine Gael as it is currently positioned within our political system. The events of the last day have been triggered not by opposition activity but by ‘disquiet’ and ‘unease’ amongst the government parties. Events are made by those who can shape events (even if they sometimes propose that they are supernumerary to requirements). That’s as true of 2007 as it was in 1914.

Difficult to be certain what to make of the statements today which see both party political components of the Coalition delivering essentially the same message to Bertie Ahern.

Mary Harney of the Progressive Democrats was first out calling:

… on Mr Ahern to break his silence over Ms Carruth’s testimony regarding sterling lodgments to the Taoiseach’s Irish Permanent account in 1994.

Speaking to reporters in Dublin this morning, the former Progressive Democrats leader said the Taoiseach was the only person who could dispel public rumours following Ms Carruth’s evidence. “What I am saying is that the public disquiet has to be dispelled, and that is a matter for the Taoiseach, and only the Taoiseach can dispel that public disquiet”, she said.

She wasn’t saying she would walk… indeed she was being very careful to say nothing too scarifying at all…

“I am not being specific as to what the Taoiseach should actually do. That is a matter for the Taoiseach.” “I am simply saying there is considerable public disquiet as a result of Gráinne Carruth’s evidence last week, and that public disquiet needs to be dispelled quickly,” Ms Harney said.

Indeed she was at pains to state…

…she still had confidence in the Taoiseach.

I love this political dance which necessitates an extreme sensitivity in political language and gesture. Disquiet must be balanced by ‘confidence’. Only the Taoiseach can ‘dispel’ ‘unease’. It has all the mannered refinement of “The Importance of Being Earnest”. Delicacy in word. Reserve. Emphatic statements softened by something approaching diffidence. Or to put it another way, they reach forward but they refrain from striking.

John Gormley of the Greens was no more assertive.

In an address to county councillors in Co Meath today, Green Party leader Mr Gormley said it was clear that evidence given by the Mr Ahern’s former secretary Gráinne Carruth gave rise to serious issues which need to be clarified.

And from him the following masterfully understated sentence:

“There is evidence of growing public interest in this issue, and there are concerns.”

Indeed.

His suggestion?

More information from the Taoiseach would help here

Why yes. Yes it would!
But here’s the rub. He continues with:

We have always insisted - including during two key Dáil debates - on full Government support for the tribunal’s work. As I have said on numerous occasions, the issue is a distraction from the business of good government.

And how can he say otherwise. There is a process, but the process itself is subject to centrifugal forces that spin information out almost at random in a manner which actually subverts the process, and yet also gives a, perhaps, far too clear picture of a situation that causes… well… ‘public interest’… and in such a way as to make the political terrain - for Ahern at least - incredibly unstable. As it happens I agree with Gormley. I think it’s astute of him to introduce the idea that there is a distinction between Ahern’s position and ‘good government’. That may well become crucial for the continued participation of the Green Party in government in the mid-term. And I salute him for the skillful turn of the following phrase…

This is – as it has always been - primarily an issue for Mr Ahern, his lawyers, and the Mahon tribunal. It is also a matter for Fianna Fáil.

I think, on the evidence of this that there is no immediate danger to the Coalition. But… the rhetorical pressure is being ratcheted up. I’m guessing that Ahern at his next meeting with the Tribunal is going to have to pull some serious chestnuts out of the fire or else we’ll see yet further pressure again. And all the while… to paraphrase John Gormley in that last sentence, where is Fianna Fáil?

I missed the Easter Sunday parade on O’Connell Street this year. To be honest I didn’t hear about it until too late, and I got the sense that it was fairly unpublicised. This was confirmed, at least slightly, by the report on RTÉ before the event that the Gardai were expecting 5,000 spectators. Considering that the Easter parade, which I remember seeing as a very young child, went AWOL during the Troubles one wonders is it as a response to the continuing issues with the Peace Process that it remains low key. And yet I don’t see why it shouldn’t be seen as an entirely valid part of our history and commemorative traditions.

That said there was a certain degree of pathos about the fly past (which I did catch as the four Air corps - count ‘em, four - propeller trainer aircraft looped out towards Fairview after storming across O’Connell Street. Time for a few fast jet squadrons. Or, if not that, how about beefing up the number of our coastguard aircraft. This is after all an island with an extensive shoreline and surrounding territorial waters.

Anyhow, on foot of all this there was an interesting article in the Irish Times about how the GPO may become setting for presidential inaugurations.

Franks McDonald, the IT Environment Editor (and surely one of the few remaining outposts of the ancien regime at the IT) writes that

THE GPO in Dublin may become the setting for future presidential inaugurations, following its transformation to accommodate a museum commemorating the 1916 Rising.

Plans being drawn up by architects in the Office of Public Works (OPW) envisage demolishing part of the building to create a glazed courtyard to the rear, two-thirds the size of the Upper Yard of Dublin Castle.

Apparently its current layout is not appropriate for such usage. And that…

The two existing courtyards within the GPO are “rather mean”, according to a spokesman, so the plan is to demolish the cross-block between them and create a much more impressive civic space.

It get’s better…

Beneath this courtyard, there would be a vast concourse - “something like the Louvre [ in Paris] rather than Clery’s basement” - which would be accessible from the front and sides of the building.

Let’s conjure with that thought a moment or two. “Something like the Louvre”… Okay. Sounds good. I’ve been there. But it is the second comment that I like… “rather than Clery’s basement”. No doubt that had their shareholders sputtering their morning coffee across the table when they read it, but really. Who would seek to compare a ‘vast concourse’ with ‘Clery’s basement’?

The concept being worked on is to retain the existing post office, but reconfigure it to create a processional route from the neoclassical portico on O’Connell Street to the courtyard and concourse.

“This could become the ‘front room of the nation’ within a building that’s central to the foundation of the State,” the OPW spokesman said. “It could even be used for presidential inaugurations.”

I think that may be a bit of a stretch, and one wonders if this is the spokesman talking or has it been thought about a bit more deeply elsewhere? Well perhaps since they seem to be fairly clued up on the matter…

Traditionally, presidents have been inaugurated in St Patrick’s Hall at Dublin Castle, “with 500 people crammed in, so it would be lovely to have these ceremonies in a space that could accommodate 2,000″.

I think the symbolism might be most interesting. It’s not as if the GPO isn’t even as it stands a bit more contentious than many consider. After all, the iconic site of the rebirth of Irish Republicanism and/or Nationalism (depending on taste) was a very British building indeed. Now I can talk about the mutability of such symbols - go take a look at who introduced the harp as a state emblem - and I have. But if one has even a passing acquaintance with the imagery used by the state in the first fifty odd years of its existence one will know that the GPO became something of a substitute signifier of Republicanism, to the point that Leinster House, the actual site of a sovereign independent Irish parliament was almost never depicted. No surprise there. The revolution was truncated and delayed in the context of partition. The present was less happy than a past which was bright with optimism despite the seeming defeat at the GPO and a future which would see an entirely new dispensation (and arguably no Leinster House).

So in a way this suggestion hearkens back to that. And I suspect quite a few people might find that a somewhat threatening proposition. Nationalist feeling has never been entirely trusted by our indigenous elites, hence the disappearance of our Easter Parade, indeed perhaps too a subtext that has led to a sort of de facto pacifism and dearmanent as regards our military affairs (although in fairness that approach has entirely sincere roots in other places). The idea that a President of the Republic of Ireland will be inaugerated at the GPO seems to me to be hugely unlikely. Still, we’ll see. Meanwhile the GPO redevelopment promises to be eye-catching…

The proposed concourse beneath the courtyard would be a large, column-free exhibition space similar to the central concourse of the Louvre museum, with roof lights above to flood it with natural light.

And we also get, and this makes considerable sense:

…a 1916 museum… it would contain a philately museum and possibly also a museum of Dublin. A working group headed by the Department of Arts, Sport and Tourism is examining the options.

The National Museum is advising on the content of the 1916 museum, which is likely to be broader than the Rising itself and its aftermath, but it is likely that professional exhibition designers will also be involved.

Erm… yes, I’m sure the National Museum could supply some expertise on that front, but anyhow. Although reading the above that does seem like and extraordinary number of museums being located there.

Generally I think the redevelopment of O’Connell Street has been reasonably good. The wider pavements and central island are a significant improvement. I’m one of those who liked the Spire and I think the general aspect of the street is better (and having an interesting effect in aiding the already on-going regeneration of Parnell Street as well). That it still acts as a central hub for traffic is problematic. There’s little as effective as a phalanx of buses to drag the look of a street down, and pedestrianisation would be a good step forward, but that’s presumably an impossible dream. Clearing the relatively low volumes of private cars off it would be no harm.

Nor does it mean that the GPO will lose its original function….

The proposal to demolish the cross-block, which is located halfway between the front of the building and the GPO arcade, means that many of An Post’s 1,000 staff will have to relocate to other offices.

However, the OPW spokesman emphasised that the GPO would continue to house the “headquarters function” of An Post as well as the post office, which dates from 1814 and was rebuilt in the 1920s.

And how soon is this coming on-line?

The sketch scheme they are preparing is expected to be presented to the Cabinet in May, with a view to getting approval to proceed to planning application stage and finish the building work by 2013.

Why just in time for the 1916- 2016 commemorations!

Sort of an entertaining story on the eve of St. Patrick’s Day.

For we learn that:

Four men arrested as part of a Garda investigation into paramilitary activity in Co Donegal last night are understood to be BBC journalists.

The men, who are being held at three separate Garda stations in Donegal, were working on a BBC Northern Ireland current affairs investigation.

This may prove a bit of an embarrassment, although for who is an interesting question. I imagine that the journalists will be let go rapidly. A link to the International Herald Tribune (http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/03/16/europe/EU-GEN-Britain-Ireland-BBC.php) on Slugger O’Toole (http://sluggerotoole.com/index.php/weblog/comments/bbc-journalists-among-11-held-by-gardai-in-donegal/) suggests there may be a connection with dissident Republican activity.

The BBC said the arrests took place in County Donegal, a favored haunt of the Irish Republican Army and its dissident offshoots because it borders Northern Ireland.

The province’s dissent rebel groups in have been courting media attention in recent months. In November, the Real IRA, one of the most prominent splinter groups, released a video through a local TV station showing two masked men firing weapons.

It was the first public propaganda exercise by the group, which was responsible for the 1998 Omagh bombing, the single deadliest attack in decades of bloodshed over the British territory.

Which raises the thought that, if true (and it’s early days yet on this story so who knows who was involved, and wow, if it were another more ‘mainstream’ group this would certainly be a bad bad time politically for them to be caught in anything untoward), don’t they ever learn? And then rapidly the follow-on, no thankfuly, apparently not. Because while paramilitary groups have always had something of a symbiotic relationship with the media - and hence Thatcher’s less than original point about the oxygen of publicity, on a deeper level there has been an awareness shading to complicity on the part of such groups as they attempt to put their message out. I mean complicity in the sense that paradoxically for supposedly covert undertakings the necessity to air their views and activities is core to their project. They need the media and clearly will take bizarre risks to access it. And so we are treated to photo-ops and suchlike if only to remind us that they haven’t … erm… gone away… in the sense that they seem to have dipped into the wonderful world of the media as a superior form of struggle.

Problem is from their perspective that, as we already know, such groups appear to have been massively infiltrated from the word go and unable to maintain viable levels of internal security. So a meeting with the media is hardly the wisest course of action if only because it might (as it apparently has here) entail a concentration of people at a single location. Yet this basic fact appears to have slipped their minds. Curious. Slipshod, self-defeating and pointless. The established pattern repeats.

Hard to take seriously a letter in the Irish Times from last Saturday by Progressive Democrat Councillor John Kenny (Monkstown) who writes;

Arthur Morgan TD’s disgraceful comments in the Dáil on Thursday show Sinn Féin still has a long road to travel before fully embracing democracy.

His dismissal of this Republic as nothing more than a “semi-statelet” is a stark reminder for those with short memories that until recently the Provisional movement did not recognise the legitimacy of this State.

Let’s go back to the original, offending, words. The debate, as reported in the Irish Times centered on “Sinn Féin finance spokesman Arthur Morgan [who] condemned a Government proposal to give tax breaks for the development of private hospices.”

According to the Dáil Report:

I am acutely aware that palliative care is needed. Every single extended family in my constituency has been touched in one way or another by cancer. I do not want only those who are rich to be able to afford palliative care. I do not want those people who are on very low incomes putting themselves into debt, in some cases serious debt, to try and buy proper palliative care for their loved ones in their last days on this earth. This amendment is pathetic.

I would have half expected such a proposal from the Fianna Fáil and Progressive Democrats end of this Government but I am absolutely amazed and astounded that the Green Party has gone along with this proposal. I am absolutely astounded that Independent Deputy Finian McGrath is going along with this proposal. It is beneath contempt for the Greens and Deputy McGrath, who on many occasions sat on these benches and slated the Government for its policies over recent years. Since 2003, when the then Minister, Mr. Charlie McCreevy, brought in this gifting of taxpayers’ money to these developers of private hospitals, we have had many debates. Because of the public outrage over the scandalous notion introduced in 2003 I thought that would be the end of it. I did not really expect it to come back again. It is a mark of the arrogance of the Government that here it is yet again. Here is more gifting developers with public money. The Government is shovelling money over to private developers to provide an essential service that should be available as of right for our people.

How much will this cost the Exchequer? I am told the amount already given to developers for the development of private hospitals is unknown and unquantifiable. Will the funds given under this provision be quantifiable? Will any measures be put in place to allow us ascertain in 12 months or two years how much it will have cost the Exchequer? I am told that is the position with what has happened already. This money from the Exchequer should be retained to develop proper health care services for our people.

Cancer patients are waiting for up to 18 months for an examination. They cannot even have an examination to know how serious their condition is for a period of 18 months. The Taoiseach tells us it is the consultants’ fault and the doctors’ fault. As he is not a doctor it is not his problem. He claims these consultants who are putting people on waiting list are responsible. How pathetic is it to come in here and tell the House such nonsense?

The Government and its predecessors have presided over ten years of an otherwise successful economy. It claims credit for making it a booming economy. I do not accept that. However, I accept that a jackass could have run this company as well as that Government and its predecessors have done for the past ten years. A jackass could have done what they did because they left no proper social infrastructure in place. The health service has been in crisis for eight or ten years and the Government is doing nothing about it. No proper public transport is in place and there are no proper education facilities. I could take the Tánaiste to half a dozen facilities around my constituency that are falling apart and in need of renovation. The Tánaiste thinks he and his colleagues have done a good job with this economy in the past ten years. The biggest disappointment for me is that the Green Party and Independents are backing him in the endeavour he is proposing today.

Yesterday we touched on the notion of social conscience and the Tánaiste came back to me, for which I am glad. There is more social conscience in a cat’s arse than there is in the entire Fianna Fáil parliamentary party.

A colourful turn of phrase from the generally affable Morgan. But more was to come…

They might not have robbed banks, but they robbed the people and gave the bank owners the people’s money. That is what the Government and its predecessors have done over ten years now. What else have they done? They have presided over thousands of people dying on hospital trolleys and old people dying in their homes because of a lack of home support and a lack of proper help being given to those people to maintain their health and welfare in their homes. What is the Tánaiste telling us? There is no change in policy. He obviously believes what he has done up to now is grand and perfect, and is continuing with it. Tax exiles can declare they are tax exiles and walk away. We know that a few years ago one character walked away with in excess of €36 million that was owed to the taxman. Of course he walked off with that.

This amendment represents an absolute scandal. I agree there should be palliative care for people who need it and, God knows, we all know enough of them. However, we do not want families going into debt. If it is needed it should be paid for out of the public purse by the taxpayers who, I believe, would be happy to do so to ensure those people most in need of that care can get it in their last days on this earth. I believe they are entitled to it and what the Tánaiste is proposing is an absolute scandal. Why would I expect any different from a Tánaiste and a Government over this partial Parliament in this little semi-statelet over which he is presiding? It is pathetic and the Tánaiste and the Government have had their day.

I do not understand one matter to which the Tánaiste referred yesterday. How did Fianna Fáil get the support it did in last year’s general election, for which I commend it? Yesterday I addressed the issue of how I believed it got that support, which was partially through its tax offers and scaring people on the economy. By God, it is a mystery to me why people have not seen through the Fianna Fáil Party long before now.

This drew down a storm of criticism (which is interesting, since the cat’s arse comment is arguably more offensive)…

Martin Mansergh said:

This is an excellent use of tax breaks. I see absolutely no incompatibility with long-standing Fianna Fáil policy. I can well imagine that it would be introduced, regardless of who our partners in Government were. There is a certain allergy in parts of the House to the very notion of private profit but our whole mixed social market economy operates on that basis.

Very crude criticisms were made of the Government’s economic policy by a party which does not have any coherent economic policy that I am aware of. I was shocked, although not surprised, to hear any Deputy refer to this as a partial parliament in a semi-statelet. I have always had great difficulty understanding so called republicans who do not recognise this Republic. It throws into context the party in question’s presenting itself as the champion of sovereignty and democracy when it is clear that the Deputy opposite does not recognise the sovereignty of either this State or its people. The European Union in the past 35 years has had much more respect for sovereignty and democracy in this country than the party opposite.

One would never have suspected that the good Deputy was instrumental in negotiating with said party. How quickly they forget. And not to be outdone we had Michael Finneran, also of FF:

I welcome the amendment. I compliment the Tánaiste and Minister for Finance on his innovative proposal regarding the further provision of hospice or palliative care. The banner headlines achieved by Deputy Burton have been somewhat subdued today given that representatives of the hospice movement have now endorsed the proposal. All those with whom I have consulted welcome it very much. I have been in close contact with the hospice movement over the years.

Regarding the outburst and breaking into a sweat by Deputy Morgan, if it was not for him and his fellow travellers we would have had considerably more money to invest in many projects over the years instead of needing to spend it on security to protect the State.

And from the opposition? Nary a whisper bar the following from Fine Gael’s Richard Bruton…

Acting Chairman:Nobody interrupted Deputy Morgan.

Expand Deputy Arthur Morgan:More is the pity.

Expand Deputy Richard Bruton: They were sorely tempted.

No doubt. But to return to the indefatigable Cllr. Kenny. He finishes his letter with the following:

Robust debate is needed in our parliament, but only between people who fully support the institutions of the State. If Mr Morgan does not resign now he should be charged with treason and expelled from the Dáil.

Erm… okay. So in the cut and thrust of parliamentary debate it is somehow wrong to use the term ’semi-statelet’? Wrong to the point of expulsion from the Dáil and charges of treason. How interesting.

This of course would would not apply perhaps to Mary Harney’s speech from 2002 when she argued in relation to Ansbacher that:

A state that does not collect taxes, through lack of will or authority, or as a result of a degeneration of its political culture, is a failed state.

That state, lest we forget, is this one, the Republic of Ireland. Now I don’t know if she was simply being rhetorical, but it indicated something less than a full blown enthusiasm for the Irish state and presumably a lack of faith in and consequently support of the institutions of that state. But then, I hardly think we’ll hear any argument from Cllr. Kenny that she should be charged with treason and expelled from the Dáil for implying that this was a failed state.

And to move on a fraction, what is it that means that people are unable to distinguish between overheated rhetoric (that’s you Deputy Morgan) and actuality. Arthur Morgan has been in the Dáil for six or so years. His party is locked into government in the North with the Democratic Unionist Party. De facto, and de jure, Arthur Morgan supports the state, while, as many many of us do, seeking change in that state, and in the nature of that state. The point is he is doing this through democratic structures.

I’m not dismissing the historical resonances of the expression. For far too long from Sinn Féin there was a sort of disregard as to the actuality and legitimacy of this state. This strikes me as not sitting within that spectrum, although I’m far from certain how useful it is. But Kenny’s response points to a willful misunderstanding of political projects which is ironic coming from a Progressive Democrat who presumably wants to see at least some structural change in the nature of the Irish state, the sort of change which would have institutional effects. In essence all radical political projects want to change the nature of the state, and state institutions. But, to want to change them, or to argue they are less than perfect is far from treason. Indeed, as a letter writer today to the Irish Times notes:

In a parliamentary democracy, all elected members have a right to participate in debate and legislation, whatever their attitude to the state. In addition, he would, in expelling Mr Morgan from the Dáil, disenfranchise those who voted for him. In his agitation, the councillor has revealed perhaps more than he intended about his own attitude to democracy.

Short of Morgan arguing publicly for the violent overthrow of the Irish state I cannot imagine a formulation of words which could prima facie be described as ‘treasonous’ emanating from him. And let’s be serious. At what point did Sinn Féin, or any serious political organisation, do that? If anything we’ve seen how muted such calls have been, and for obvious reasons.

This isn’t a minor matter, particularly in the context of Sinn Féin, and it merely points up Kenny’s lack of engagement with the issue. De facto recognition of the Republic has convulsed various incarnations of Sinn Féin time and again since the 1920s. Every split can be traced back to that. That Provisional Sinn Féin (and I add the prefix merely for clarity) ruptured over this in the mid-1980s resulting in a split away by Republican Sinn Féin is now almost ancient political history. Arguably one could make a case that Sinn Féin has recognised the state since 1986, but there is in fact a further point which is that Republican pragmatism was in operation long before that, as (if I recall correctly) in the Green Book - and certainly in general operation - where IRA units were prohibited from engaging with either An Garda Siochana or the Defense Forces. That - in it’s own way - pointed to a reality that for his own rhetorical purposes Kenny might like to ignore, and indeed some of the more revanchist of Republicans might equally be somewhat uncomfortable with.

And these issues aren’t restricted to Republicans. Socialists, as Martin Cassidy pointed up on the Garda post, yesterday also have to be critical of their own position in relation to such matters. It is hardly coincidental that the state has always been somewhat cautious as regards the transformational demands of the left. Indeed, arguably those demands have been seen as close to treason in the past (and it’s worth reflecting on how that dynamic tamed large sections of the left over the past thirty or so years, particularly in the UK - Tom Griffin has pointed that up on numerous occasions). But these are issues of tactics and strategy, not principle. Some might like to bask in a sort of virtuous disavowal of dealing with the reality of a Republic or Ireland, or An Garda, I tend to think that that sort of approach is as rhetorical as that of Cllr. Kenny.