Léargas

  Having an ice cream before the speech The last few weeks have been even busier than usual for this blog. The run in to the weekend Ard Fheis was hectic accompanied as it was with campaigning in the Fiscal referendum treaty which takes place on Thursday. We arrived in the Kingdom last Friday afternoon in time to do a run through on the Presidential speech before the Ard Fheis began at 5.30pm. Each speech has to be approached differently. Sometimes it’s enough to have speaking points to work from. Sometimes you speak without notes. Sometimes there will be a script around which you can ad lib. But the Ard Fheis speech is counted down to the last word. There is a fixed length of time and little opportunity to make a mistake or be spontaneous. It is a very rigid structure and made all the more so because you have 3000 words or so to deal with the big issues of the day while setting out the republican vision and explaining how republican solutions would come at problems differ

Fionnuala Flannagan and Gerry Adams walk down Moore Lane with representatives of the Famileis of the 1916 Leaders.  All nations have their heroes; men and women who in war and peace overcome adversity and succeed in changing the course of history. In so doing they advance the cause of freedom and the betterment of citizens. Some are the stuff of myth like the Greek and Norse gods of old, like Hercules and Thor. Every culture has them. Some are real but their actions become the stuff of legend and the stories of their deeds change in the telling over millennia; Fionn Mac Cumhaill and his band of soldiers, the Fianna, or the Ulster hero Cú Chulainn. But often these are real people who in remarkable acts of leadership and courage and self sacrifice transform the world around them. Leonidas and his 300 Spartans at the pass of Thermopylae, Travis and Bowie at the Alamo, Mandela through his decades of imprisonment and inspired leadership as President, Ghandi and Martin Lut

This is a tale of two worlds. One rich and powerful. The other desperately poor, destitute and on the brink of the abyss. The economic crisis in Europe and the impact of austerity policies in Greece, Spain, Italy and in the Irish state are dominating the news agenda at this time. The talk is of billions of euro. Greece owes hundreds of billions. Spanish banks owe billions. The Irish government has given over €20 billion to bad banks to pay off private banking debt. French banks hold billions of euro of Greek debt – and are watching anxiously the unfolding crisis in that state. And then there is the European Financial Stability Facility with its €200 plus billion and the European Stability Mechanism which has €700 billion. Billions and billions and more billions. If it were not for the dire social consequences of the austerity policies the reader could be forgiven for thinking this is all about monopoly money. A few hundred miles south of the European Union there is another world

There have been a whole series of elections in European states in the last week. Voters in Britain, Italy, Greece, Germany and France have all gone to the polls. Most of the media focus has been on the electoral outcomes in France, with the election of a Socialist President Francois Hollande, and on Greece where the government parties saw their support sharply decline. In effect the elections in France and Greece were referendums on the strategy of austerity which French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel championed and successfully imposed on the EU in the last two years – austerity lost! The defeat of Sarkozy and of other conservative parties and governments is evidence of a tide of change that is taking place in many European countries. Since the economic crisis gripped Europe the conservative governments that dominate the EU have pursued austerity policies. In March they agreed to the introduction of an Austerity (Fiscal Compact) Treaty. The resul

This blog left the Dáil late last Wednesday night and traveled to Castlebar in County Mayo. It was a beautiful evening and a peaceful drive – if a bit long. Mayo is a beautiful part of the country. I have been there many times over the years most recently in March for a public meeting on the crisis in Rural Ireland. After that event I met with some community activists from Rossport in County Mayo who have been involved for many years in the campaign around Shell and the Corrib gas field. They briefed myself and Martin Ferris about their ongoing concerns, including the behaviour of the Gardai and the actions of the private security firm, Integrated Risk Management Services (IRMS), that is used by Shell in the area. I told them I would visit the area and last Thursday morning we arrived into Bangor and met local Sinn Féin activists and Corrib gas community activists. I travelled around several of the Shell sites and visited the Shell-to-Sea camp. This blog witnessed for mys