Léargas

Sept 28th 09 Lift the Siege of Gaza The water front in Gaza City is very inviting. The blue waters are set against blue skies and high temperatures. In April, when I spent two days in the region meeting political leaders, business people, health workers and citizens, I watched as people walked along the beach, some jogged, children played and fishermen braved Israeli gunboats to fish in the waters off-shore. But the gun boats are not the only danger in the waters off Gaza. The Mediterranean Sea presents a grave health risk to the citizens of Gaza and of Israel. Each day between 13 and 21 million gallons of raw sewage or partially treated waste are pumped into the Mediterranean because of the inability of Gaza treatment plants and storage pools to deal with the demands place don them. The Israeli siege means that the parts essential for repairs to the sewage and water treatment plants are not available and work on an internationally funded multi-million dollar waste treatment plant for ...

September 25th 09 Croke Park And All That. I spent Sunday at the All Ireland Football Final. Regular readers will recall that I was also at the Hurling Final. So I am twice blessed by these experiences. My intention is to get to the Women’s Football Final next week as well. So I will be thrice blessed. Aontroim is in the Junior Final. That’s a brilliant achievement and I commend everyone involved. Very well done indeed to the players and management. I missed out on the Camogie. My own fault. I was in Dublin that day and I was very tempted to steal away from the Lisbon referendum campaign. I am sorry to say I resisted that particular temptation and I am the lesser for it. Life is too hectic but that’s no excuse. I should have gone. The football was mighty. Ard Mhacha Minors had a deserved victory. It wasn’t a great game. That’s not a complaint or a criticism. Merely an observation. I rarely criticise players. Unless they are indisciplined, dirty, unwilling to do their best or cynical t...

September 21st 09 Birds of a feather ‘Do you think many people nowadays know how to pluck a chicken?’ Your man does that sometimes. He just comes right out with a question and let’s it stand there naked, on its own, completely out of context and without any relationship whatsoever to the conversation up to this point. When pressed about this he says it’s because he has an active mind. ‘Do you think many people nowadays know how to plant a chicken?’ He gazed into the bottom of his glass as he waited for an answer and was unmoved when I chortled loudly. ‘What do you mean? Plant a chicken?’ ‘I mean pluck a chicken. You know that. You should listen to what I mean; not to what I say’. I emptied my glass slowly. ‘You always know a good pint of Guinness by the way the top goes right to the bottom of the glass’ I said, ‘Look at the rings’. Your man looked at me for a long slow minute. ‘You can tell its age by counting rings’ he observed, ‘like a tree. And your pint is nearly as old. It’s your ...

September 17th 09 No to Lisbon in Cork Delay on transfer cannot go on indefinitely This blog spent Wednesday afternoon in Dublin and Leinster House. The government was unveiling its proposals to bail out its banking and developer friends. NAMA is the name of the game. On Thursday I was in Cork. Preparations for a victory against Kerry’s footballer are well afoot, if a little premature. It should be a thrilling encounter but no one knows – and that’s the great thing about it – no one knows if the kingdom or the rebel county will prevail. I’m not fully recovered from the hurling final but all being well Sunday will see me in the Hogan Stand. The hurling was awesome. The Lisbon Treaty is less so but that’s another story. The response from people on the streets of Cork suggests many are still equally opposed to Lisbon. The referendum is only two weeks off so there’s a lot of work to be done. While in Cork City me and Richard joined a picket of workers who have been treated shamefully by th...

September 14th 09 There must be Truth and Equality for all Victims The DUP brought forward a motion in the Assembly on Monday which asked the Assembly to “support the case being taken by the victims of IRA terrorism to claim compensation from the Libyan Government who supplied arms and semtex explosives to the IRA; and further calls on the UK government to apply diplomatic pressure on Libya to pay this compensation.” Sinn Féin opposed the motion, and in the debate in the chamber we set out our reasons for doing so. These are my remarks: “Sinn Féin will be opposing this motion. It is our view it is unfair and partisan. Let me say for the record that Sinn Féin is not opposed to any victims campaign lobbying any government, anywhere in the world, for compensation. Let me also say that I am mindful of the suffering of those families who lost loved ones or who were injured as a result of IRA actions. I believe that it is part of the responsibility of republicans to acknowledge this and to ...

September 14th 09 There is no NAMA for working families The National (mar dhea) Assets Management Agency is the central plank of the Irish governments proposed strategy to tackle the economic crisis. It will be put to the Dáil in Leinster House on Wednesday. Many people do not understand how it is supposed to work. So, I asked a friend of mine, Joanne, to explain NAMA –to me. This is what she said. “Irish banks have a cash flow problem. During the boom, they lent out money to developers that they didn't really have. This money was credit on paper allowed by the European Central Bank. Now the developers can't pay it back because they can't sell the apartments, houses, offices or other developments they were building, or in some cases can't even finish their projects because the banks won’t lend them any more to continue work. According to the government NAMA is about cleaning up the banks. It's being set up like a parallel bank. Banks can transfer over the loans they...

A section of the large number of people who attended Thursday mornings rally at the City Hall September 10 09 World Suicide Prevention Day Thursday was a beautiful morning in Belfast. Families bereaved through suicide had organised a ‘Walk of the darkness’ event at Belfast City Hall to raise awareness around suicide and suicide prevention. Family groups, supported by activists on this issue, walked from several locations across the city, including the Shankill, Springhill, and Stormont. At the City Hall ballons were released, songs were sang and poems were read reflecting the pain of relatives and their hope that through their actions they can save lives. It was a moving and emotional event held as the darkness gave way to the dawn. Bobby Cosgrove of Survivors of Suicide from east Belfast, whose son died 21 years ago, revealed that this summer, between the beginning of July and the middle of August 30 p...

September 7th 09 British stance hypocritical The demand for compensation from the Libyan government for victims of IRA actions, in which it is claimed Libyan armaments were used, and the British government’s role in this, is the cause of some controversy. Interestingly little of this controversy has focused on the inappropriateness of any British government making or supporting such a demand of any other government, given Downing Street’s war crimes in Ireland. I would certainly support compensation for all victims. This has to include the victims of British state violence and collusion. On Monday morning I spoke to Downing Street and to the British Secretary of State Shaun Woodward about this. I told them there could be no hierarchy of victims; that all victims deserve compensation and that Mr. Brown’s position is totally inconsistent. No one should be surprised by the hypocritical stance of successive British governments on this issue. The role of the British state in killing citizen...

4ú MEÁN FÓMHAIR. 2009. MESSAGE IN A BOOK. Regular readers will recall that in May I wrote about Big Marshall 'Mick' Mooney. Big Mick had just died of cancer. He and I shared many fine experiences and none more memorable than one of my doomed efforts, to escape from internment in Long Kesh on Christmas Eve 1973. There were four of us on this occasion, myself, Big Mick, Toddler and Marty and we ended up in court before Diplock Judge Kelly. We had, among other things, the distinction of being on remand and interned and soon to be sentenced prisoners all at the one time. I decided, as we sat in the dock at Belfast Court House and as Mr. Kelly was telling us what bad people we were for daring to try to escape from an internment camp in which we were being held without charge or trial or due process, to write a little note to another old comrade Dickie Glen' who was interned at the time. I had a book which I was going to give him as a going away present and I scribbled in the fl...

31 Lunasa 2009. Back to Porridge. Children are back to school this week. Most of them anyway. Cynics tell me that usually makes for better weather. By that they mean drier weather. ‘Kids locked up in their classrooms and the sun is splitting the trees. That’s always the way of it!’ This blog wouldn’t count on that, not this year at any rate. But anyway wet or dry, windy or warm, isn’t it great that we are able to complain about it. I met a man once, an Irish man, not long after he was released from a long term of imprisonment in a French jail. ‘What was the main difference between gaol there and gaol in Ireland?’ I asked him. ‘Nobody complained about the weather’ he replied. Your man never complains about the weather either. He probably has French blood. But then according to him, it never rains in pubs. And as he often observes, we are far better off than decenter people. Yahoooo! So as the summer draws to a close there are lots of good things to look forward to. Kilkenny and Tipp ...