Léargas

This blog has been of a mind to write a frivolous piece for some time now about the citizens who comment on these musings of mine. In particular about the ones who get annoyed for no good reason. For example Anonymous, who is beside himself or herself because I refer to this blog as this blog. Or the Saint Galls amadán who accuses me of bias against the All-Ireland champions when I have nothing but admiration for them, to the point where I am endeavouring to have our City Council and our Minister of Arts, Culture and Leisure Nelson McCausland host receptions for Naomh Gall. This blog has already hosted a Stormont reception for this wonderful Gaelic sporting institution. That was a few years ago when a good time was had by all and the bar bill was more than this blog and your man could bear. This time the state and the city burghers should pay. Naomh Gall Gaels deserve it. But to other matters. An old friend of mine, Brendan Hughes, has been in the news this week. The Irish News actuall...

Wednesday was British budget day. From early that morning Downing Street was humming with scores of cameras, photographers and journalists eagerly awaiting the British Chancellor’s emergence from Number 11. Traditionally the Minister holds high his little box of secrets to be snapped and filmed from every possible angle before going off to the British Parliament to reveal all to his peers and the public. As that event was unfolding this Blog and the Deputy First Minister arrived in London and slipped into Number 10 for a private meeting with Gordon Brown. Our focus was to press him to bring forward new proposals on a Bill of Rights. 12 years after the Good Friday Agreement the draft proposals from the NIO are disgraceful. So, we need new proposals that take account of the advice from both the Bill of Rights Forum and the Human Rights Commission. Bloody Sunday was high on our agenda for discussion. This Blog was outraged by the decision of the British Secretary of State Shaun Woodward n...

On my way down the Falls Road this morning this Blog noticed a quantity surveyor measuring and doing what quantity surveyors do on the old Andersonstown Barracks site. That started me thinking about the recent history of this piece of ground. Once it used to be home to a very strategically placed military structure aka the Andersonstown RUC Barracks. It commanded a controlling point at the junction of the main roads through west Belfast. For a long time the community around Andersonstown barracks wanted it demilitarised and demolished. With the advent of the peace process and negotiations we demanded that the land on which the barracks had been built be given back to the people of the area to decide how the site should be used. In 2005, the people prevailed; the barracks was levelled. Since then a space has existed where the barracks once was. Andersonstown RUC Barracks But the space and the site are still contested. For the Department of Social Development (DSD) which purchased the ...

Gerry Adams; Martin McGuinness and US Vice President Joe Biden So here we are again. The sun is still shining. The sky is still blue. And the train is just now sliding gently out off Union Station in Washington and beginning its rolling singie-song passage to New York. This blog, your man, Ms O Hare and other wandering republican evangelists are starting the long journey home. It has been a good visit. No matter how this blog feels when I start these trips I always feel uplifted at the end. The connection between Ireland and Irish America is electric. And contrary to the image of dewy eyed sentimental Americans with an outdated view of Ireland so often depicted by sections of the media those Irish Americans who I meet are clued into what is happening back home. In fact in these internet times people in the USA can get overnight news from Ireland before people living in Ireland. Gerry Adams with Terry O Sullivan, General President of LIUNA – the Laborers' International Union of Nort...

Another day, another train. The early one. From New York to Washington. Trains are a great way to travel. Especially here where security at the airports is so intrusive and invasive. Travelling by train is less hassle. And you get to see the countryside. Also occasionally a train guard sounding and looking like a character out of a Mark Twain novel will pop up to tell this blog and everyone else that ‘dis train is approaching Philadelpia. Have yo tickets ready for inspection. And we kindly, courteously and professionally ask yo all to make space for your fellow passengers. And if yo is leaving de train do so on de platform side. And mind de step.’ And so it goes in a singsong melody and an equally musical shoo shoo shoo from stop to stop. The ticket inspector on the train down from Boston thanked me for coming. He thanked everyone else as well but that didn’t stop me from feeling that I was really doing him a favour. This morning the rain has disappeared. We are proceeding through ro...

This blog is travelling south from Boston on the train to New York. Me and your man are soaked, dripping wet from the incessant rain that greeted our arrival in the USA on Saturday. We were in Boston for a number of Saint Patrick’s Day events. In Ireland we celebrate Paddy’s Day for one day. Here it takes at least a week. And for that week or most of it there is a great deal of focus on Ireland. So this is always a good time to engage with popular opinion, to inform the public, particularly Irish America, of current developments and to thank friends for their support. It is also an opportune time to make more friends and to ask for support in the upcoming period. This year I almost didn’t make the trip. But because the planning for some events was already well advanced I eventually decided to come ahead. And as always it is very worthwhile. Except for the rain. However as always, some good always breaks out and my failure to bring a topcoat means I have now inherited a jacket belong...

The difference between a good idea and reality is in the doing. ‘The West Awakes’ project, which this Blog was invited to formally launch in An Chultúrlann on Wednesday is an excellent idea but it needed people with determination and commitment to turn it into a positive project, creating jobs and bring alive the history and stories of this part of the city. It was a packed event for a unique and innovative tourism project which seeks to give the increasing numbers of visitors to west Belfast a sense of the history and experiences of the people living here. ‘The West Awakes’ combines local history and storytelling with theatre. Essentially it involves actors, dressed in period costume, meeting tour groups at different locations on the Falls Road and for 10-15 minutes recounting their experience of life at a point in our past. The five sites chosen are: St Comgall’s Primary School; Conway Mill; An Chultúrlann; James Connolly’s former residence facing the bottom of the Whiterock Road and...

On Saturday evening as dusk was falling and as I made my way into the RDS to make my speech at the Ard Fheis what do you think I spied dandering out of the Lansdowne Road Cricket Grounds? A fox. An madadh rua. Although the fox is the bane of the poultry farmer and seen by many farmers as a pest, I have always been excited by the sight of this wild animal. Until now my acquaintance with an madadh rua have been on mountainy slopes or green pasturelands. Ar oíche Shathairn nuair a bhí an ghrian ag dul a luí agus mar a rinne mé mo bhealach isteach san RDS le mo chaint a dhéanamh ag an Ard Fheis cad is dóigh leat go bhfaca mé ag spaisteoireacht amach as Forais Chruicéid Bhóthar Lansdún ? An sionnach. An madadh rua. Cé go bhfuil an sionnach mar chrá chroí an fheirmeora éanlaith chlóis agus go bhfeictear orthu mar pheist, bhí mé i gcónaí iontach tógtha as an radharc seo den ainmhí fiáin. Go dtí seo b’é an t-aon chaidreamh a bhí agam le madadh rua, nuair a bhí sé amuigh ar fhánaí sléibhtiúla ...

This Blog has taken a few quick minutes from the Sinn Féin Ard Fheis in Dublin to scríobh a few words on the conference thus far. I have found a quiet corner in the back of the stage and borrowed a laptop. The Ard Fheis started last night and ran on until nearly 9.30pm before breaking until this morning. It will run until 9pm tonight when this Blog wraps up with the Presidential speech. For the first time Sinn Féin opted to take the later live slot on RTÉ television so the speech begins at 8.30pm and will last for half an hour. It’s been a packed hall all day and people are in great form. In the background, as this Blog pounds away on these keyboards, there are delegates addressing the Ard Fheis. The clár ranges across a multiplicity of issues, from job creation and the economy, through education, the environment, to rural and coastal communities; equality and Irish language rights; to internal party issues. In the international section guests from the African National Congress in Sout...

The proposal to establish in law a Bill of Rights was agreed in the negotiations which led to the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. There are a number of such examples around the world. It should have been a relatively easy matter of looking at international best practice and applying it to the north. Not so. It has proven to be a torturous process. In part, because unionism is deeply uncomfortable with the idea of equality and of citizens having ‘rights. The British government shares this view. After 11 years, the British Government several months ago finally published a Consultation Paper on a Bill of Rights which is currently out to public consultation. This consultative paper ignores the advice of Sinn Féin, but more importantly it ignores the views of the Bill of Rights Forum and the Human Rights Commission. The Human Rights Commission described the British government documents as not a ‘genuine effort’. The Commission said it ‘demonstrates a lack of understanding of the purpose and ...