Léargas

Attacking rural communities

2012-01-25T12:57:00.002Z

There are many issues exercising the minds of citizens in this part of the island at this time. Today, Wednesday, the government will hand €1.25 billion of taxpayers money over what are called unsecured, unguaranteed bondholders. These are people who bought bonds in Anglo-Irish bank when the boom times were booming on the basis if it all went belly up there was no moral or legal obligation for them to be paid back.

They are financial gamblers on the world economic market.

The Fine Gael and Labour government are insisting that they must be paid. The deference being shown attached to these bondholders by the government contrasts sharply with its attitude to citizens. It is also at odds with what it said was its attitude before last year’s general election.

One year ago, in January of last year, Labour leader Eamon Gilmore criticising the then Fianna Fáil Taoiseach Brian Cowen, said: ‘If the Taoiseach’s government knew Anglo Irish Bank was insolvent and he asked the Irish taxpayers to bail it out and to pay the cost we are now paying for it, that was and is economic treason.”

If it was treason for Cowen why is it not treason for Kenny and Gilmore? They know that Anglo Irish is a toxic bank. They know the huge financial burden it is imposing on citizens. €4 billion was given by Fianna Fáil to Anglo in 2009; €3.1 billion was given last year; and €3.1 billion will be given in March. That’s over €10 billion of taxpayers money being paid over to a criminal bank that is now dead. By 2031 the total cost will be close to €80 billion.

To put this in context. Just before Christmas the government cut huge swathes of money out of the health system. The impact of this means the loss of 3.300 jobs, the closure of up to ten public nursing homes, and the loss of half a million home help hours. Yesterday Gerry Burke, a Consultant Obstetrician in Limerick warned that the loss of 47 midwives at the Mid-Western Regional Maternity Hospital in Limerick next month may cost lives.

The money that is being given away today would have more than paid for the cuts to health.

And then there is the issue of septic tanks. Not something most readers of the Andersonstown News would be familiar with. Like urban dwellers the length of this island you are connected to a mains sewage system.

But not everyone is that lucky and before I comment further let me declare an interest in this issue in that I have a septic tank – albeit a relatively new one in Donegal.

In this state there are 1,462,296 private dwellings of which 418,033, or just over a quarter, have septic tanks. The Water Services Amendment Bill is expected to be passed by the Oireachtas tomorrow thanks to the overwhelming majority enjoyed by the coalition by Fine Gael and Labour.

The government’s legislation imposes a €50 registration fee for a mandatory inspection of septic tanks which is on top of a €100 household charge recently imposed on all households. But this is only part of the story.

There’s also the possibility of a €200 fee for follow-up inspections and should the inspections find that the tank is not up to EU standards then those 400,000 plus rural households could find themselves with a repair or replacement bill than could be anywhere between 8,000 and 15,000 euro.

Rural communities are outraged and justly so. In the last decade in the region of €3 billion was spent by the government on waste water services throughout the south. All of it went to providing urban services. What rural dwellers want to know is why is that urban households can have their sewage upgraded out of public monies but they have to pay for theirs. Is that fair?

And it’s not as if this issue sneaked up on the government. The EU directive which is at the heart of this issue came into effect in 1975 but successive governments failed to deal with it. But now it’s all rush, rush, rush, with the government trying to scare the public and brow beat the opposition parties by claiming that if it fails to pass this legislation by February 3rd the state will be liable to an initial fine of €2.7 million and €26,173 each day after that until it implements the EU directive.

This isn’t quite true. The European Commission has said that the European Court of Justice won’t make a ruling on this issue until at least the summer and maybe even later than that. So there is time for a proper debate.

Sinn Féin proposed a series of amendments to the government’s Bill. Our goal was to remove any cost to the householder by forcing the government to come forward with a fair grants system that would ensure that people in rural Ireland would not have to bear the cost for the failure of successive Governments on this issue.

If necessary the government should apply to the EU for finance which they should match to grant aid households in upgrading their septic tanks.

However, the government moved to guillotine the debate and to close down any proper discussion of this issue.

In addition the Minister for the Environment has added significantly to peoples’ worries and concerns by his failure to provide clarity for householders as to what the standards will be that will now be applied to Septic Tanks and Treatment Systems.
In my own constituency of Louth and right across rural Ireland this issue has caused genuine anger amongst people.

It is right that government protects our environment and the health and welfare of citizens. Registering septic tanks makes sense. Inspecting these tanks also makes sense. But to force rural households to bear the financial brunt of this when billions of public money – which rural taxpayers contributed to – has been spent on urban systems is not equitable.

It is not right that rural householders should be discriminated in this way.

There is now a widespread campaign against paying the registration fee and opposing the government’s plans. The passing of the Water Services Bill will not be the end of the matter.

Defending the rights of the elderly

2012-01-22T15:25:00.004Z

March and Rally in Drogheda
Yesterday afternoon (Saturday) this blog and several thousand people from the Drogheda and Ardee area attended a march and rally in Drogheda to protest at the threatened closure of the Cottage Hospital in the town. Under plans by the Fine Gael and Labour government it and St. Joseph’s nursing home in Ardee are likely to close.

Both buildings are home to 33 long stay residents and a similar number of respite patients. In the course of a year the number of patients who receive respite is around 300.

The buildings are old. But the staff are professional, dedicated and caring and over the years both have developed a warm family closeness.

One resident in the Cottage Home is 97 years old and another has been there for over 30 years and many of the rest for a decade or more.

The threat to their home means that the residents are frightened by the prospect of a major move and the disintegration of their nursing home family.

I met many of residents and staff from both homes who braved a cold day to demonstrate their opposition to the government’s cutback plans.

The large turnout is evidence of the huge affection the people of Drogheda have for the Cottage Hospital.

Inevitably in the arguments for and against closure all sorts of excuses are pedalled about by the government. Most often that older nursing homes are not fit for purpose. It is said that they are of poor standard and present a health risk to residents.

However this can’t be said of the Cottage Hospital or St. Joseph’s. Both have received regular inspections and have passed with flying colours. The Cottage has had 3 HIQUA inspections to date, and on all occasions it scored highly on clinical aspect and quality of care. HIQA reported that the hospital is SAFE, SECURE and SUITABLE.

So whatever the spin any decision to close this hospital has nothing to do with health and safety issues for patients and staff. It is quite simply a political decision based on the government’s determination to pursue its austerity programme.

Citizens understand this. Events at the rally demonstrated this and showed public anger and rejection of austerity policies that deliberately target the weak and vulnerable. The Cottage Hospital Act Group had decided to ask all local TDs to sign a pledge of support for the nursing homes.

They also decided that they would not give speaking rights on their platform to any TD who refused to do this. This TD was pleased to pledge support. Fine Gael TDs Peter Fitzpatrick and Minister Fergus O Dowd, along with Labour TD Ged Nash refused to sign the pledge and amid shouts of anger from the crowd they were asked to leave the platform by the organising committee.

This blog would have allowed them to speak but this was not a Sinn Féin platform and the Action Group have the right to make their own decisions on this matter.
The three TDs in question should have signed the pledge.

The context for this widespread public annoyance is to be found in the events of last November, before the budget, when government Ministers deliberately leaked budget proposals, including the possibility of closures to nursing homes. This irresponsible action frightened elderly residents across the state. Suddenly none of them could be sure that their homes were safe from closure.

This was then followed by a budget, and then a HSE plan which will strip €750 million out of the health service. This is on top of the €1 billion already cut by Fianna Fáil in the previous budget. The government target is to get rid of up to 900 beds in public nursing homes. This is at a time when our elderly population is increasing and the demand is growing. Up to 10 nursing homes might close.

The Minister for Health James Reilly excuses his actions by claiming that he wants to keep more elderly citizens in the community. But then he sets as one of his goals the reduction of the home help service by half a million hours this year. A complete contradiction!

Last week in the Dáil this blog asked the Taoiseach to spell out his plans for nursing homes. I asked him to tell staff and residents whether he plans to cut their services; their jobs, their homes. He refused to do so. He did agree to hold a debate on health but that will be small comfort to residents of nursing homes.

Last Thursday morning a meeting was held involving local government TDs and the Minister. When I contacted the Ministers office and asked to attend I was refused. This runs against the normal protocol for such events and was a disgraceful decision by the Minister of a government which claims to be for greater openness and transparency and accountability.

Residents and staff need clarity and certainty, not waffle and spin. The government has a responsibility to speak plainly and provide real and proper information on its plans for public nursing homes.

This is no way to treat our elderly citizens. It is no way to treat committed staffs.
This blog believes that citizens have rights. The right to a job, to a home, to access to education and a health service that provides a wrap-around professional service from the cradle to the grave.

Society has a responsibility to look after citizens and especially those who are vulnerable or aged or ill. And government policy should reflect these core values.
Regrettably this governments core values, like the previous one, is motivated by profit and cutting public services.

It is not right that nursing homes and beds are to be cut to pay off the debts of the big bankers and developers. Next Wednesday Anglo Irish Bank will hand over €1.25 billion of taxpayers money to unguaranteed unsecured bondholders.

The government is under no moral or ethical or legal obligation to do this. That money could cover the cost of providing a first class nursing care service. A month later the government will hand over another €3.1 billion to the European Central Bank to pay off the debt of Anglo-Irish a criminal toxic bank.

Imagine how many nursing beds and emergency departments and schools that would pay for.

The truth is that the austerity policies which Fine Gael and Labour are wedded to are not working. Worse they are adding to the mess created by the previous government.

The evidence is all around us – mass emigration; mounting job losses; a health service on the rack - and one government decision after another imposing cuts on public services.

Recently, the government was forced to retreat on two issues – cuts to DEIS schools and funding for young people with disabilities. It u-turned on these issues because public support for the schools and young people and against

This government was forced to retreat on DEIS schools and on cutting support for young people with disabilities because of the level of public support for the schools and young people and opposition to government policy.

That is the lesson we must learn. If we are to stop the cuts to public nursing homes; if we are to protect the future of the Cottage Hospital and of St. Josephs in Ardee and any others that might be threatened, then we need to make our voices heard.

Next Saturday St. Josephs is holding a public rally. Regrettably I can’t be there because of a long standing commitment to be in Derry however I would urge everyone who appreciates the work of nursing home staffs and is concerned at the treatment of elderly citizens to come along on Saturday and show your support for St. Josephs.

Young people under attack by Labour

2012-01-19T20:55:00.001Z

Last week it was DEIS schools. The Labour Minister for Education Ruairi Quinn had turned Labour party policy on its head and imposed major cuts to schools situated in disadvantaged area.

And while Sinn Féin TDs like Sean Crowe and Peadar Toibin lashed government education strategy in the Dáil it was the mounting public anger and pressure on Labour backbenchers that forced Quinn to do a volte face.

But that wasn’t the Labour Minister’s only bad decision.

In the education system in the 26 counties schools employ guidance counsellors, who are normally qualified teachers, to advise students and young people.

They cover three separate but interlinked areas including personal and social, education, and vocational guidance and counselling.

As part of his cost cutting programme Quinn decided that guidance counsellors will no longer be provided on an ex quota basis in secondary schools. The goal is to save €32 million annually. In practice this means that many school principals will have to transfer counsellors back into the class rooms to teaching subjects.

One counsellor I spoke to before Christmas told me that she began her teaching career 18 years ago and immediately became a full time guidance counsellor.

She has never taught the language she has her degree in but will now be expected to go into the classroom. But for many more it means the loss of their employment as between 700-1000 posts will be cut.

The reality is that the government’s policies are not working. The evidence is all around us – mass emigration; mounting job losses; a health service on the rack - and one government decision after another imposing cuts on public services.

Ruairi Quinn’s decision to cut resources to DEIS schools was an example of this.

Last week he admitted that this had been a mistake. But the truth is that it wasn’t a mistake. It was a conscious decision taken by him – by a Labour Minister - to cut services to vulnerable young people.

In every society, as those of us who live in the real world will be aware, there are citizens who need a leg up. A fair society has an obligation to give them support.
A good Government, a visionary thoughtful Government, will supply this, protect it and build on it, while a unfair short-sighted Government will do the opposite.

The decision to cut resources to DEIS schools was an example of this. It was completely in keeping with the Government's commitment to austerity policies. This approach is aimed at forcing those who can least afford it to carry the greatest financial burden of the economic crisis.

This is also the reason the Government targeted disabled young people and DEIS schools and it is why services to our elderly are now being cut. It explains why Minister Quinn is determined to scrap up to 1,000 guidance counsellor posts.

The reality is that guidance counsellors are skilled professionals who provide an essential service to young people, their families and society.

Without the help of guidance counsellors students might pick the wrong courses.
Without guidance counsellors students from financially disadvantaged backgrounds who often apply to college through the higher education access route would have no one to help them fill in complex forms to avail of reduced points and assistance in college.

Without guidance counsellors students with learning or physical disabilities or mental health problems who apply through the disability access route would face similar hurdles.
Guidance counsellors also help students with ADD, ADHD, OCD and autism. They help students identify careers, which is particularly important during this recession.

They are also the first port of call for young people under threat or who are experiencing difficulties with their mental well-being.

One guidance counsellor from County Louth outlined for me some of the issues she has dealt with in recent times. Incidents included self-harm, rape, family breakdown, bullying, eating disorders, child neglect, alcoholism in families, drug abuse and mental health issues. At a time when self-harm and suicide are increasing, who will help these students if guidance counsellors are not available?

It is also likely that cuts will result in the privatisation of guidance counselling. For those who can afford private counselling this will not prove an insurmountable difficulty.

However, those who cannot afford private guidance counsellors will not get help on any of the issues I have mentioned. This means that students from low and middle income homes will be at an even greater disadvantage.

The notion of two Irelands is becoming apparent. The Labour Party used to have a slogan, "one Ireland", even if its Ireland stopped at the Border. We are not seeing the emergence of a sense of one Ireland. Rather we are seeing two Irelands, namely, those at the bottom and the rest of us.

On Tuesday and Wednesday the Dail debated a private members motion on this issue seeking a reversal of the cuts. All of these points were made by this blog and others. Once again Labour backbenchers were discomforted but they voted down the motion.

And this time there is no sense that the Labour Minister for Education will acknowledge another mistake and change tack.

Austerity is not working

2012-01-15T17:24:00.000Z

It seems like every time you turn on the news or open a newspaper there is a new crisis in the Eurozone. Last Friday’ decision by the credit rating agency Standard and Poor (an ironic name for such a body in the current context) downgraded France’s AAA credit rating. It also lowered that of 8 other European nations.

The immediate consequence of this was for stock markets and the value of the Euro to drop.

This blog and other comrades will be meeting the Troika representatives, who are currently in Dublin, on Monday afternoon. It will be our second meeting with the Troika. For those readers unfamiliar with the term the Troika is the title given to the International Monetary Fund/European Central Bank and European Union bodies that have provided the bailout fund to the Irish government. They are in Dublin to check the government’s books and to make sure that it is keeping to the austerity programme that the previous Fianna Fáil led government entered into.

The purpose of our meeting with the Troika is to provide Sinn Féin with an opportunity to spell out our strongly held view that their programme is not working and that its implementation by the Fine Gael/Labour government is causing huge distress for citizens.

One example of this will come into effect tomorrow when the government decision to eliminate concurrent payments for new participants in Community Employment schemes comes into effect. This move also includes cutting the qualified child payment for existing lone parent CE participants by €29.80 per child per week.

It was the special arrangements for lone parents on Community Employment schemes which made this project work for lone parents who wanted to get back into the job market.

The government’s cuts will put Community Employment schemes out of reach of most lone parents. It is another example of the government’s December budget that protected the wealthy while penalising low and middle income families, the poor and disadvantaged.

The reality is that the government’s policies are not working. This is evident in the unprecedented levels of unemployment; the numbers of young people that are immigrating; the crisis in our health and education systems; the attack on our public services; the debacle around pensions, and the huge distress for individuals and families.

Austerity is not working. The domestic economy is on the floor.

People are worried about paying their bills, putting food on the table and keeping a roof over their heads. The failure of this government to defend workers rights has also created a climate in which employers believe they can abuse workers. Employees at Vita Cortex in Cork and the La Sensa retail chain were denied their redundancy payments. Both engaged in sit-ins in an effort to get the money owed to them. The La Sensa workers, with the solidarity support of many people, successfully secured their redundancy money. The Vita Cortex workers are still battling.

Fine Gael and Labour also plan to hand €1.2 billion of taxpayers money over to unguaranteed unsecured bondholders on January 25th. The government will also pay out €3.1 billion in March to a toxic bank – Irish Bank Resolution Corporation, formerly known as Anglo.

Citizens are paying for the greed of bankers and the bad policies of the former Fianna Fail/Green government.

The €4 billion that this government will give away in the next three months is more than the €3.8 billion in cuts and new taxes it introduced in December. This government, both Fine Gael and Labour, is ideologically committed to austerity and plans as part of the Fiscal Compact agreed with the other EU governments, to write this into the constitution locking future governments into austerity programme.

The government’s policy is wrong and short sighted. The money being handed over to unsecured and unguaranteed bondholders and toxic banks should instead be used to retain jobs, create new jobs, run our public services and stimulate growth in the economy.

Our conversation with the Troika will be an opportunity to raise these issues and to challenge the government’s excuse that is no alternative to the austerity programme, and we will explore with the Troika how much room for manoeuvre there actually is.

For example, what is their view of investing a portion of the National Pension Reserve Fund into job creation and economic recovery? What is their view of progressive tax reform that places the burden on those most able to pay rather than low and middle-income families? What is their view on the future of the Anglo Irish promissory note? And do they believe that Ireland will be able to return to the markets fully in 2013 on the basis of current trends?

People are only beginning to fully understand the impact of the cuts and extra charged meted out in December’s budget by Fine Gael and Labour. For many 2012 will be a year of increased hardship. Sinn Féin wants to demonstrate that there is an alternative, that there is hope.

Failing to cherish the Young

2012-01-13T19:55:00.004Z

Children and Parents protesting outside the Dáil at DEIS cutbacks

Wednesday was the first day of the new Dáil term for 2012. As they returned from their Christmas break TDs and Seanadoirí were met by a large and vocal demonstration of parents, children and staff from DEIS schools across the state.

'Delivering Equality of Opportunity in Schools' (DEIS) is an initiative which provides essential support for children from disadvantaged backgrounds and those with Special Educational Needs so that they are able to leave school with the skills necessary to fully participate in the social and economic activities of society and to live independent and fulfilled lives.

There are over 300 such schools and according to the Department of Education they should “receive a greater level of support in terms of pupil-teacher ratios, special grants and extra support for pupils”.

However, in its December budget the government introduced a number of measures which are about saving money by cutting resources to these schools. These measures include increasing class sizes; cutting a number of administrative principals; ending the support teacher scheme, and transferring up to 250 teachers in DEIS schools to mainstream schools.

It is estimated that up to 428 DEIS teaching posts from 270 primary and 163 post primary schools will be lost.

On Wednesday evening the first private member motion of the new term was a Sinn Féin motion calling on the government to rescind its decisions and to ring fence funding and support for DEIS schools.

Meeting protestors just before Sinn Féin Private Members Motion debated

A few hours before the debate was due to commence the Labour Minister Ruairi Quinn moved to try and ease Labour backbench unhappiness with the cuts by saying that he would hold a review into each school individually and complete that within 4 weeks. Some Labour TDs took this as an indication that the cuts will be reversed.

However, the Minister who had the opportunity to confirm this refused to do so.

Alarm bells immediately went off, not just among Sinn Féin and other opposition TDs but also campaigners seeking a reversal of the budget decision.

For many this smacked of the ‘old politics’ of divide and conquer. It’s the cynical tactic of holding out the prospect of the Minister possibly making a few concessions and trying to strip away the urgency and dynamic and solidarity of the campaign for a reversal of the cuts.

Cynicism increased when the Minister went on to RTE on Friday morning and admitted that he had ‘made a mistake’ but warned of different cuts in education if he had to reverse any cuts to DEIS schools.

"I'm out of practice” he said. Out of Practice? What sort of explanation is that to give?

What is needed is not a review or shallow excuses but a reversal of the decision. That is why the Irish National Teachers Organisation is right to go ahead with its planned protest next Thursday.

There is abundant evidence supporting the positive and productive work of these schools. The publication on Friday of a report on the first phase of the DEIS programme in primary schools confirms this. The report published by the Education Research Centre covers the years 2007 to 2010 and reveals significantly higher scores in reading and mathematics.

The Minister has added significantly to the confusion and uncertainty and fear that exists among parents, pupils and teaching staff. His decisions and actions have been unacceptable. He should move now to immediately reverse the threatened cuts to DEIS schools.

However he failed to do so and one after another Labour party backbenchers walked through the lobby and vote to pursue the current government agenda.

It is a far cry from the Proclamation and cherishing all of the children of the nation equally.

What would James Connolly, whose bust looks down on the Dáil chamber, have done if faced with this decision? I am confident he would not have voted to cut essential resources from schools in disadvantaged areas.

And what will citizens, particularly those who support Labour, think when they watch a Labour Minister force teachers onto the dole queues and penalise disadvantaged children?

The Labour Party claimed that Labour in government was needed to take the sharp edge off Fine Gael’s conservatism. It isn’t working. Labour has bought into Fine Gael’s austerity and conservative ethos. Sinn Féin is actively encouraging teachers and parents and others aggrieved at Labour behaviour to lobby backbenchers, especially Labour backbenchers. They are now being forced to take the sharp edge of their leadership’s conservatism.

The fact is that the Labour Minister for Education took the decision to cut resources to DEIS schools without any thought to the social consequences, hopes and opportunities in the lives of these young people?

While his decision may save a minimal amount of money future outcomes will mean that society will lose out ten times over.

Leaving aside the politics, the ideological position and the morality of it all, it is bad economics because in time the State will need to pay more to pick up on the social legacy left by these cuts.

Another matter of real concern are the cuts to guidance councillors. As well as the career guidance such councillors give they are the first port of call for many children with difficulties in their lives. That has also been dismantled, which is very short-sighted.

Equality, equality, equality: where is the equality in any of this?

The government’s cuts will copperfasten inequality. We will see emerging in this State two different types of Ireland, namely, the people of the bottom of the ladder, who have not emigrated or are now on the dole, will be cemented into their inequality while those at the top of the tier will have their positions reinforced.

This should not be reduced to a matter of money particularly by a Government which will by March have given €4.3 billion of taxpayers' money to criminal banks and unguaranteed bondholders.

This blog knows, as a representative of County Louth and from all of my experience in west Belfast, the huge effect which small amounts of money can have on disadvantaged areas in terms of uplifting possibilities and opportunities, in particular of young people.

Let us not consign another generation of people to a life on the dole or to emigration.

Mol an óige agus tiocfaidh sí. Even those who have only Gaeilge bhriste know the sense and wisdom of that proverb. Mol an óige agus tiocfaidh sí. Nourish the young and they will come right. Do the opposite and we create problems for ourselves.

Talking to the media and to protestors at Leinster House

Thatcher’s War Policy in Ireland

2012-01-07T15:26:00.001Z

The recent publication of British government papers from 1981 have reminded many people of the negative role played by British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher at that time.

The papers were published coinicdnetly at the same as a Hollywood movie about Thatcher.

I haven’t seen the film but I do remember the Thatcher years and the great hurt she did to the British people and also to the people of this island.

Thatcher’s right wing conservative social and economic politics – often labelled Thatcherism - were a source of considerable division in Britain. Along with US President Ronald Reagan she championed the deregulation of the financial institutions, cuts in public services and was vehemently anti-trade union. The current crisis in the banking institutions and the economic recession owe much to these policies.

She also went to war in the Malvinas pursuing Britain’s age old colonial interests; opposed sanctions against apartheid South Africa; and supported the Khmer Rouge and the Chilean dictator Pinochet.

Thatcher inherited a British counter-insurgency strategy in Ireland from the Labour government. Its goal was to politically defeat Irish republicanism.

The Thatcher government embraced this strategy. It believed that the criminalisation of the republican prisoners would break the republican struggle. It was not interested in a resolution.

This much is evident in the government papers. For example a report of a meeting at Chequers on May 27th, after the deaths of Bobby Sands, Francie Hughes, Raymond McCreesh and Patsy O Hara, describes Thatcher commenting that ‘the Government must be ‘rock solid’ against any concessions to the hunger strikers or PIRA.’

The following day on a visit to Belfast Thatcher declared that the hunger strike ‘may well be their [the IRA’s] last card.’

At a later meeting on July 3rd a paper notes that: ‘The PM said that she felt that no concession could be made to the hunger strikers in any way...The Government’s main aim should be to demonstrate that the blame for the hunger strike lay with the strikers themselves, rather than with the alleged inflexibility of the Government.’

At the same time as she was publicly engaged in the trenchant rhetoric that characterised her term in office the ‘iron lady’ was also involved in secret discussions through a Derry based ‘back-channel’ – code-named ‘Soon’ - with the Sinn Féin leadership.

It was a cumbersome process of contact open to abuse. The British state papers raise serious questions about the motivation of the British and the relationship between London and ‘Soon’.

In a paper dated July 21st the British state: ‘The use of the channel has ensured that the Provisionals have been left in no doubt that our public statements are our true position, and not a negotiating gambit...The channel has also been a source of additional intelligence about the Provisionals’ attitude which we could not get in any other way…’

Outside the H-Blocks Thatcher’s intransigence saw an escalation in conflict in the summer of 1981 with almost fifty people killed on the streets.

The electoral intervention of H-Block prisoners in the June general election saw Paddy Agnew and hunger striker Kieran Doherty elected as TDs. Since that election no single party has been able to form a government.

The events of that awful summer of '81 polarised Irish society, north and south. The Thatcher government policy during the 1980’s was little more than a war policy. All of the strategies issuing from that policy were aimed at defeating or isolating republicanism. This included the shallow and ineffectual 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement which was about creating a political alliance involving the Dublin establishment, the SDLP, and the British to defeat Irish republicanism. Margaret Thatcher was a prime mover in all of this.

Under her direction collusion between British state forces and unionist death squads increased. In 1982 the Force Research Unit (FRU) was established. FRU ran British agents inside the various loyalist paramilitary groups and provided information on nationalists and republicans to be murdered. FRU and British intelligence also facilitated the importation of weapons for the UDA, UVF and Ulster Resistance via the apartheid regime in South Africa in early 1988.

In the three years prior to receiving these weapons loyalists killed 34 people. In the three years after the shipment they killed 224.

Among those to die was human rights lawyer Pat Finucane. On January 17th 1989 one of Thatcher’s Ministers Douglas Hogg told the British House of Commons that some solicitors in the north were ‘unduly sympathetic to the cause of the IRA’. Three weeks later Pat Finucane was shot dead by a UDA squad made up entirely of Special Branch and British agents.

Shoot-to-kill actions by British forces also significantly increased. This was most evident in the shooting dead of three unarmed IRA activists in Gibraltar in March 1988. It is my view that Thatcher authorised the killings at Gibraltar.

Later when the BBC and the IBA scheduled two programmes about Gibraltar Thatcher tried to stop them. She was “outraged” when the programmes went ahead. Later that year she introduced the Broadcasting Ban on Sinn Féin.

Three years later Thatcher authorised the then British Secretary of State Peter Brooke to reopen the back-channel with republicans. We were wary of this. However, for almost a decade Sinn Féin had been patently trying to build a peace process and unfolding events on the world stage, including the dismantling of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Germany, and the release of Nelson, were evidence that governments, and apparently intractable situations, could change. So we agreed to reactivate the back channel.

But for Thatcher it all ended several months later in November 1990 when she was forced to resign by her party who perceived her to be no longer an electoral asset. She was evicted from Downing Street with all the ruthlessness, treachery and warped humanity of what passes for high politics.

Thatcher’s 12 years of dictating British policy in Ireland was a legacy of bitterness and entrenched division.

Following the paper trail – Thatcher’s Irish Legacy

2011-12-30T16:47:00.002Z

Today sees the publication of British and Irish government papers that are being released under the 30 year rule. There are hundreds of documents. Some are minutes of meetings involving the then British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Others are reports of briefings of unionist politicians by the NIO. Some are letters written by former Taoisigh Charlie Haughey and Garret Fitzgerald and assessments of the political situation at different times in the course of that momentous year.

This blog has read some but not all of the papers. Academics, historians and journalists will be poring over the detail of these for months to come and trying to fit the story they tell into what is already known. They deserve the closest scrutiny.

There is of course the important health warning. These are government documents, written in their time with the bias of those political systems. So care is needed.

The H Block/Armagh prison protest and the hunger strikes were watershed events in recent Irish history. Ten prisoners died. Over 50 other people were killed during the summer of 1981, including young children killed by plastic bullets. The events of that year had a profound impact on subsequent developments.

However, it is very clear from an initial examination of the papers that the British government in 1981 had adopted a fixed, intransigent and at crucial points a duplicitous approach to finding a settlement. It consistently refused to deal with the substance of the prison protests and was prepared to allow prisoners to die.

The NIO played a particularly obstructive role aided by the then Secretary of State Humphrey Atkins and his junior Minister Michael Alison. Both were very much influenced by the attitude of Unionist political leaders.

One event which has already been the focus of some media comment is a claim by the Pope’s envoy Fr. John Magee that in a meeting with Bobby Sands that Bobby had offered to suspend the hunger strike for five days.

I have never heard this claim before. Moreover Bobby was very clear in his approach to the hunger strike. The prisoners had agreed procedures among themselves to ensure there would be no repeat of the events of the previous December when the first hunger strike ended.

The prisoners wanted Brendan McFarlane OC of the prisoners in the H Blocks and someone from outside to be part of any discussions about any British government proposals. This was to protect the hunger strikers and the protest. Several days before Magee’s visit Bobby had refused to meet two members of the European Commission of Human Rights without Brendan McFarlane being present.

Bobby viewed Magee’s visit as pastoral. In none of his subsequent conversations with either Jim Gibney or messages to Brendan did he mention making any offer to Magee.

For him to have made such an offer and not mention it would have been totally out of character because Bobby diligently reported any developments. In my view he certainly would have mentioned such an important proposal.

However, whatever the veracity of the Magee claim the British response is clear.

According to the record of the discussions between Atkins and Fr. Magee, which were held at 12.30 p.m. in Stormont Castle on April 29th – 7 days before Bobby died – Atkins told Magee: “that there could be no negotiation: that was what Sands was trying to initiate. The Government had no intention of conceding political status … To concede that would be wrong – and would also provoke a violent reaction within the Province which would threaten innocent lives. Father Magee said he thought that the prisoners would not be inflexible: they wanted evidence of goodwill because promises had been made to them at the end of the last hunger strike and had not been kept. The SoS emphasised to Father Magee that no promises had been made at the end of the last hunger strike. That fact was well known to Sands … At the end of the meeting the SoS explained, and Father Magee accepted, that the SoS could not see Father Magee again because to do so would risk creating the impression that some form of negotiation was going on. There was no question of negotiation and the SoS would not to continue to make that quite clear.”

The other aspect of this period that will be of interest to many is the detail provided by the British of their engagement with and abuse of the ‘back-channel’.

This was a line of communication between a Derry based contact – Brendan Duddy - and a British intelligence agent Michael Oatley who had direct access to Downing Street.

There are transcripts of 8 telephone calls over the weekend of July 4 to 6th between the British agent and the Derry ‘back-channel’ who was given the code-name ‘Soon’. This was just before the death of Joe McDonnell.

The papers raise serious questions about the relationship between London and ‘Soon’.
For example, according to the British papers ‘Soon’ had an agreed code word with them. The paper says: ‘At the outset Soon indicated by a prearranged code that he was accompanied by a representative of the Provisionals. He had previously suggested that in this situation we should adopt a hard line…’

It is also stated in respect of another call that: ‘Soon reported that a great deal of confusion has arisen in Provisional circles … Soon then described the circumstances of the issue of the Prisoners’ statement of 4 July. He said that the statement had been issued independently by the prisoners in the Maze and the timing came as a surprise to senior Provisionals outside … Unfortunately, the timing of the release of the statement had caught the Provisionals unaware.’

This was not true. The statement had in fact been issued by prisoners through the Sinn Féin POW department and the Republican Press Centre. I chaired the Sinn Féin committee responsible for handling the prison struggle, contacts with the prisoners, with the British and anyone else. We had seen this statement before it was issued and ‘Soon’ would have known this.

A report of another call claims that: ‘Soon began by restating the Provisionals disorganised position.’ Not true.

According to the Brits he also tells them that, in respect of the end of the December 1980 hunger strike: ‘the Provisionals believed that HMG had been sincere in trying to implement their side of the agreement. The breakdown had occurred because some of the prisoners had been harassed by some of the prison officers …’

Not true.

While the prison administration and prison officers worked hard to prevent the prisoners positively working through the December paper from the British, at no time then or since did anyone in the Sinn Féin leadership believe that the British government was ‘sincere’ in implementing that agreement.

The British also reported that according to ‘Call No 7, 2300-2400, 5 July’: ‘Soon had been called into an angry and hostile meeting of the Provisionals almost verging on a complete breakdown. .. At this point Soon indicated that a considerable number of Provisionals had arrived. ..’

Not true.

The line of communication was very straight forward, although cumbersome. The prisoners communicated with the Committee I chaired on the outside. I then dealt with Martin McGuinness who met ‘Soon’ in Derry. No one else was involved in the meetings with the back-channel.

These and other inconsistencies raised in these records only confirm this blog in my view that in negotiations ‘facilitators’ or ‘intermediaries’ can unintentionally or deliberately create problems by not relying messages accurately.

Finally, among the many matters raised in these papers one in particular stands out. It has been claimed by some that an offer was made by the British and relayed to Brendan McFarlane by Danny Morrison in a visit to the prison on Sunday July 5th.
It is claimed that this ‘offer’ was the substance of the five demands and that it was blocked by outside because the leadership wanted more prisoners to die for political advantage.

This lie has caused great hurt to the families of the hunger strikers who subsequently died and to those of us who were involved in the efforts to save them.

These transcripts reveal that no offer was made to the prisoners on 5th July and that at the time of Danny Morrison’s visit to the prisoners on that day the British government had not formulated its position: ‘Soon then indicated that McGuinness had just arrived. He said that time was of the essence and asked what the current HMG position was. We explained it was important before drafting any documents for consideration by Ministers that we should possess the Provisionals view. Soon then undertook clear views on their position. Which would be relayed to us later after discussions in the light of Morrison’s visit’.

Another myth busted.

The hunger strike and its repercussions on individuals, families and the political life of this island were far reaching. The papers that have been released provide another insight to a tumultuous period. Next week this blog will return to the papers and identify other interesting aspects of developments 30 years ago.

2012. Here we come!

2011-12-29T12:49:00.001Z

Christy Moore is on the CD player. He is away from the island on his Honda 50. The rain is pelting down outside. The wind is whooooshing through the trees out the back. I have sliced the last of Teds ham and made a stew of sorts in a big pot with spuds, garlic, onions, tomatoes, organo, parsnips and carrots. And Teds ham. With meat balls. In the kitchen. And a splash of red wine.

Luisne is beside me, in deep conversation with Peppa Pig, courtesy of the internet. Christy doesn’t seem to mind. Neither do I. We are cosy here. Thanks be to God. I used to have a Honda 50 but that’s another story.

Christmas was nice. This blog was well looked after. So was the rest of the clann. We are very lucky. I am glad to get the rest. I haven’t seen your man for a wee while. Since before Christmas. Since he left me in Dublin.

The next day I went to Drogheda. I wandered along West Street. There is a man who sells organic vegetables from a stall there on Fridays. West Street has a street market on Fridays. I be there every third Friday. Or at least I was there every third Friday in 2011. Or every third Friday since the General Election. The other Fridays I was in Dundalk or East Meath. Doing constituency work.

So on Fridays I also shop for vegetables. Not always at the street market in Drogheda. Sometimes I got to a lovely wee Green Grocers in Dundalk. They sell very nice Florance Cakes there. As well as vegetables. When I was a wee lad my granny used to send me to McErleans Home Bakery on the Andytown Road just below Saint Agnes Chapel to get her a Florence Cake – spelt with an e instead of the a of Dundalk. So I like Florence Cakes whatever way they are spelt.

Other times when I know I’m going be in Dublin on the Saturday I go to Moore Street. I like Moore Street.

But I especially like the organic vegetables that I get in West Street. Especially the fresh dates. And the figs. The Friday before Christmas I noticed that the man selling the organic vegetables had mistletoe on his stall. He was talking to me at the time about what was going on in Iran. I only figured out afterwards that he was so up to date with all the sceal from those parts because that’s where his dates come from.

That’s when I noticed that the mistletoe wasn’t hanging up. I mentioned this to your man when we spoke on the phone.

‘I suppose he is just being careful’ he said.

‘What do you mean?’ I wondered.

‘I mean if he had his mistletoe hanging up some people might think that was an invitation’.

‘An invitation?’

‘To kiss!’ he exclaimed.

‘I know that’ I said, still not getting his point.

‘Well’ he explained slowly ‘ If his dates come from Iran he wouldn’t want to be jeopardising that by kissing anyone else!’

‘Ho Ho Ho’ I retorted. ‘ see you in 2012!’

‘2012!’ he exclaimed. ‘2012 here we come!’

Nollaig Shona Daoibhse

2011-12-20T17:58:00.000Z

The New Year will be as bright as we chose to make it

It is amazing the difference a year makes. 12 months ago this blog was the MP for west Belfast. Bar one brief interlude in the 90’s I was humbled and privileged to represent the people of that historic constituency as MP since 1983.

I was and still am very attached to west Belfast. It is where I grew up. It’s where I went to school. It’s where as a young boy I played with my friends in the lanes and parks and streets and had wonderful adventures on the Black Mountain. It was where I first witnessed the brutality of sectarianism and the injustice of the northern state. It’s where I discovered republican politics. It’s where my family live.

During the 70’s as a republican activist on the run this blog relied on the generosity of many families. I experienced for myself many times the solidarity of the west Belfast community.

It was the same with my experience of elections. My first foray into electoralism was in the 1982 Assembly elections. It was the year after the hunger strike and Bobby Sands and then Owen Carron’s successes in Fermanagh South Tyrone. Sinn Féin was dismissed by the pundits as ‘no-hopers’ who would barely register a vote. But the sound nationalist and republican people of west Belfast and Tyrone and South Armagh and Derry and Fermanagh and elsewhere gave the Brits, and others, another in a long list of electoral shocks.

This blog was an abstentionist MP. I refused to sit in the British Parliament or swear an oath of allegiance to the English Queen. In my view the British have no right to be in our country or to exercise any jurisdiction over it. The people of west Belfast had no difficulty understanding this. But I was an active absentionist. Absent from the British Parliament, but active representing the electorate of west Belfast.

Until last December. Then after almost 30 continuous years of being a west Belfast representative, this blog went south. A Sinn Féin selection convention in Dundalk, just before Christmas 2010, selected me to stand for Louth.

I have described this move as a ‘wrench’ but in truth that description doesn’t really do it justice. The move out of west Belfast and into Louth and the Dáil has been an exhausting, exhilarating, and exciting process.

I miss west Belfast but I am thoroughly enjoying County Louth. The people are just as sound and the Shinners just as committed as those in Belfast. The challenges and the issues as they impact on people’s daily lives are the same.

It’s about unemployment and housing and suicide prevention and a proper health service and education and a safer environment. But it’s in a different political context.

In the north Sinn Féin and the DUP are trying to win fiscal powers from the British state. The Irish government is in the process of handing these same powers away to bureaucrats in the EU.

In the power sharing system in the north Sinn Fein has developed innovative economic initiatives to minimise some of the worst affects of the economic recession and of British Tory cuts.

In the south the Irish Labour party is supporting the conservative Fine Gael party in implementing a Thatcherite strategy that is stripping away essential public services and inflicting huge damage on the social fabric of society.

For Sinn Féin it is a relentless battle criticising and challenging bad government policy while promoting sound practical republican solutions.

A year of elections and ten months as the real voice of opposition in the Dáil means that Sinn Féin has emerged stronger and more vibrant and more popular than ever.

However, it is important that we do not lose sight of what all of this hard work is about achieving. Irish republicans are about equality and inclusiveness and citizenship and sovereignty. We are about the historic work of uniting Ireland and uniting the people of Ireland.

We follow proudly in the tradition of James Connolly and Padraig Pearse, and Anne Devlin and Wolfe Tone, and Countess Markievicz and Bobby Sands and Mairead Farrell and many more.

That is a huge agenda of change for the future. It’s about building a new Republic for the 21st century that takes the 1916 Proclamation as its template but seeks to shape it for a new century and new conditions.

This blog, despite the dire economic circumstances north and south, is very optimistic about this new future. If I have learned anything in my years of activism it is that the Irish people have the wit and intelligence to see beyond the current problems and intelligently chart a way through it.

Wishing his readers ‘A Happy New Year’ James Connolly, writing in the Workers Republic on January 1st 1916, and addressing the ‘rebels in heart’ wrote: ‘...let us remind them that opportunities are for those who seize them, and that the coming year may be as bright as we choose to make it.’

So, dear readers wherever you are in the world enjoy Christmas and the New Year – nollaig shona daoibhse agus áthbhliain faoi mháise daoibh. And remember that the New Year is a new year of struggle. An opportunity to build on the progress we have made in recent years and to continue to build political strength and to take real and tangible steps toward Irish unity. It will be as bright as we chose to make it

Defending the Lowest Class

2011-12-15T00:38:00.000Z

It’s the last week before the Dáil breaks for Christmas and the New Year. All across this state there are families reeling from the damaging impact of the scrooge-like budget that was delivered by the Irish government last week. Hard choices are being made by parents between presents and food and heat and the mortgage.

James Connolly in 1915 in the Workers Republic said:
“In the long run the freedom of a nation is measured by the freedom of its lowest class; every upward step of that class to the possibility of possessing higher things raises the standard of the nation in the scale of civilization.”

On this basis the Irish Labour Party has abandoned its claim to Connolly’s socialist roots. To its shame the Irish Labour Party has bought into and is helping the conservative Fine Gael party to implement a budget that is severely hurting the low paid, the vulnerable in this society and the lowest class.

The outcome of the budget means that lone parents; teachers; the disabled and carers; the unemployed; the elderly; and children are all significantly worse off. The number of children deprived of very basic essentials has risen from 23.5% two years ago to 30.2%. It is a fact that every measure of poverty and inequality is rising.

Homeless support groups like Focus Ireland and the Simon Community in this part of the island report a significant increase in the demand for their services. In particular they have seen an increase in demand for support from people who have become homeless as a direct result of financial and emotional hardship arising from the recession.

There are 5000 homeless while around 200 citizens sleep rough. A TD can stand on the plinth outside the Dáil here and see the grim reality of homelessness in Dublin, where night after night - from summertime to the depths of freezing winter - people are forced to sleep rough.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg of the housing crisis. Over 100,000 families are on local authority housing waiting lists and there are over 90,000 people claiming rent supplement, an emergency benefit for those unable to meet the cost of rent in the private sector.

The government has cut homeless budgets in the HSE and in the Department of Environment. Housing budgets to local authorities have also been slashed by a staggering 26%. Personal contributions to rent and mortgage interest supplement have been increased and once again the Government is planning to reduce maximum rent thresholds.

And all of this at a time when hundreds of thousands of housing units – houses and apartments - across the state lie empty. Most now owned by NAMA.

The government appears so indifferent to this crisis that the Taoiseach has thus far refused to appoint a new Minister for Housing to take charge of this deteriorating situation.
The last Minister Labour TD Willie Penrose resigned from the Cabinet and lost the party whip after opposing a decision by the government to close an Army barracks in Mullingar. He is one of three Labour TDs – Tommy Broughan and Patrick Nulty being the others – who have jumped from the Labour ship over disagreements on the budget and bank guarantee.

The housing crisis is only one part of the tale. Five years ago there were 1,281 excess winter deaths. Most were elderly and vulnerable citizens. This year there will be more.

In September the government cut the weekly fuel allowance; it also cut the household benefits package fuel allowances and last week’s budget cut the fuel allowance by the equivalent of €120.

And then there has been the disgraceful treatment of the five women in St. Brendan’s Hospital in Grangegorman. The five, who are long term patients, have been forced to move into a ‘lock-up’ secure unit with six other patients because the facility does not have sufficient nurses and Christmas holidays mean that there is a staff shortage. They will be there for five weeks.

The five women are being moved from a ward in which they have already erected a Christmas tree and decorations.

The decision has caused distress to their relatives and to these vulnerable women.
The treatment of the five is a shocking indictment of government policy and of our mental health service. Mental health provision is the Cinderella of our health service. These women should be cherished not victimised.

All these injustices are examples of a government making political choices and deciding that instead of making those who can afford to pay more, pay more, it is penalizing the vulnerable and disadvantaged, as well as low and middle income earners. The social consequence is that for many families these policy decisions will leave many homes colder and poorer this Christmas.

Bridge over troubled water

2011-12-12T10:19:00.006Z

Carlingford Lough

Carlingford Lough with Narrow Water Keep in the foreground

Carlingford Lough is a glacial fjord or sea inlet on the East Coast. It lies sandwiched between the Mourne Mountains to the North and the Cooley mountains in the South and is linked in the west through the Clanrye River and Newry canal into south Armagh and beyond.

Both the Mournes and Slieve Gullion in south Armagh are designated areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty. This blog has spent a lot of time over the years in the Cooley’s walking the roads and lanes and hills. The people too are tremendous. Friendly and helpful, proud and independent. I am very gratified to represent the Cooley’s which are part of the Louth constituency.

Carlingford Lough gets its name from the Vikings. It is a tourist’s dream bursting with geological wonders and historical sites from the Neolithic times.
In the mid 9th century two Viking fleets fought a two day battle against each other with the Danish Vikings beating the Norwegian Vikings and then plundering nearby Monasteries.

Newry is, according to folklore built on the site where St. Patrick planted a yew tree. It has existed since the 12th century.

The Cooley’s are linked to the legend of Setanta who left home at the age of 10 to travel to Eamhain Macha (near Armagh) to join the Red Branch Knights of Ulster. As he made his way across the Cooley mountains he would strike his sliothar (ball)with his caman (hurley stick)and then chase after it catching it before it hit the ground. The Poc Fada is now an annual game of stamina and skill played across the Cooley’s.

Eventually Cú Chulainn reached Eamhain Macha. He slayed the hound of Cullan, the Kings blacksmith, and earned himself the name by which he is best remembered - Cú Chulainn – the Hound of Cullan. He is one of the central figures in the Táin Bó Cúailnge: The Cattle Raid of Cooley in which Queen Meabh of Connacht invades Ulster to steal the Brown Bull and is opposed by Cú Chulainn. This is an epic tale of a war in which the teenage Ulster hero Cú Chulainn saves the day by challenging Meabh’s champions to a succession of single combats. He does this to give the heroes of Ulster time to awaken from a curse. Meabh’s Gap in the Cooley’s marks one famous battle site.

There are numerous other sites of historical interest, including King John’s Castle in Carlingford, scattered around Carlingford lough.

Narrow Water Castle

Narrow Water Castle on the northern shore of the lough is one of the finest. It is one of the best examples of a tower house in Ireland. While there has been a keep here since the 13th century the current tower was built in the mid 16th century to defend Newry from attack by sea.

Partition brought its own difficulties for the region drawing a border through the Lough and between Counties Down and Armagh on one side and Louth and Monaghan on the other. The economic impact on the region was profound. Newry and Dundalk on either side of the border were cut off from their natural economic hinterlands and suffered grievously as a result.

In an effort to reverse this and enhance the tourist and economic infrastructure of the region it was proposed some years ago that a bridge should be constructed across the lough at Narrow Water where the distance between the South Down and Louth sides is very short.

Sinn Féin has been to the fore in campaigning for the bridge and a significant amount of planning, including an economic appraisal and Environmental Impact Assessment, has already taken place.

However back in July the Narrow Water Bridge project received a body blow and the local community was deeply disappointed, when the news broke that the Fine Gael and Labour Government was withdrawing funding for the cross border road project.

But that wasn’t the end of the story. Since the summer Newry and Mourne District Council and Louth County Council have submitted a proposal to the Special EU Programmes Body (SEPUB) of the INTERREG programme. INTERREG has over €20 million available which must be spent by 2015.

In recent days my office has also discussed the possibility of this EU funding being made available for the construction of the bridge. There have also been a range of other meetings involving Caitriona Ruane MLA in South Down, Conor Murphy MP in Newry and Armagh, and party representatives, like Councillor Jim Loughran in the Cooley area and Councillor Tomas Sharkey, who have been active on this for some time.

This blog has also asked for an early meeting with Leo Varadkar the Minister for Transport in the Irish government. It was his decision in July which pulled the plug at that time on the Narrow Water Bridge project.

The possible involvement of INTERREG means that the possibility exists for this cross border project to go ahead and to be cost neutral for Irish taxpayers, as INTERREG would cover all costs.

There is a limited three year period for the bridge to be taken from the planning stage to the completion stage. So a lot of work has to be done in a relatively short time.

The reality is that at a time of economic crisis and recession the Narrow Water Bridge project can create jobs and bring financial investment and economic growth to this region. If properly developed it would allow for the fullest economic exploitation of the historic, cultural and natural beauty of the Louth/South Down/and South Armagh areas.

All pics taken by Paula. The landscape shots were photographed from Flagstaff Point.

Carlingford Town with King John's Castle

A Scrooge budget for Christmas

2011-12-06T23:36:00.003Z

The budget has dominated the news in the south for the last weeks. A series of leaks from Ministers had raised heightened fears around likely budget measures by the government.

These fears were entirely justified for those on the receiving end of a series of swingeing cuts and stealth taxes. There is no disguising what has been a savage Budget which leaves struggling families and working people to carry the can for the greed, incompetence and corruption of others.

In his broadcast on Sunday evening the Taoiseach talked about fairness and said, “You are not responsible for the crisis”, and then proceeded to make ordinary citizens pay for the greed and corruption of the political elite, the bankers and the developers.

As this government has protected the wages and pensions of those at the top of the political system so too has it shielded bankers. Twenty two of the top fifty Anglo Irish Bank executives are still in place and nineteen of them are earning over €175,000 per year.

During his Sunday night broadcast the Taoiseach mentioned jobs 15 times and spoke frequently of the need to create work. “Work provides focus. Work gives us independence. Work gives our families hope”. He said.

And then he introduced measures that will costs jobs. The €750 million cuts to the capital budget will mean between seven and nine thousand less jobs. The government is also committed to cutting 6,000 public service jobs. The money taken out of the pocket of low and middle income families is money taken out of the economy –out of the local shops – and this will also cost jobs.

The government has already accepted in its medium term fiscal report published at the start of November that there will still be 390,000 people on the dole in 2015. And it would be much worse but for immigration which since the start of the year has seen 54,000 of our mainly young people leave for foreign shores.

Today there are 444,000 people on the live register. That is 15,000 more than when Fine Gael and Labour won the election. It is an indictment of their policies and a reflection of their failure.

The budget will have a devastating effect on some of the most vulnerable in this society.
• The government has introduced a cut of 20% in the fuel allowance.
• They have cut child benefits: despite the pre-election promises the cuts in child benefit will cost a four child family €432 in 2012 and €768 in 2013.
• They have introduced punitive measures targeting those in part time employment at a time when there are 444,000 people on the dole.
• They have also introduced cuts to disability allowance and mental health provision and payments to lone parents have been cut.
• Community nursing homes are to be closed and there will be a €100 household charge from next January.
• At the same time as introducing this scrooge-like Christmas budget the Taoiseach sought and secured a €35,000 a year pay rise for a political crony – a former press officer for Fine Gael who has now been appointed as a special adviser to Minister Richard Bruton.

The government choose to go after children, the disabled, lone parents, widows, carers.

The media spin for Labour party spokespersons in particular was that the budget would protect social welfare payments and it would not cut the basic unemployment rate.

But the truth was different. The cut in the Fuel Allowance from 32 weeks to 26 weeks is an attack on older people. More of them will now experience fuel poverty – in other words colder homes for more months of the year. Child benefit – a red line issue for Labour during the election campaign – was cut; disability benefits for the under 18s were abolished; lone parents were targeted; widow and widowers pensions were attacked; the back to education allowance was cut; and the cut in rent supplement will hurt people on low incomes.

Community Employment schemes and community projects which frequently provide the safety net for vulnerable citizens – our young and sick and elderly –will be severely damaged.

The government also deceived citizens over the actual size of the cuts being introduced. It claimed for example, that social welfare cuts were €475 million. But that is just for 2012.
• In a full year social welfare is cut by €811 million.
• Health is cut by a total of €797 million.
• Education by €316 million.

What sort of society will there be next year after these cuts have wrought their damage and the government introduces another 2 billion plus of cuts?

And all the while that Fine Gael and Labour are cutting and slashing at those who can least afford it they have handed €20.7bn, of taxpayers money over to the banks, including €3.1bn to Anglo Irish Bank. It will pay another €3.1 billion to Anglo Irish in three months time.

As Pearse Doherty said in the Dáil, “No wealthy person ever died from having to pay more taxes?”

And he’s right. 5,000 citizens die prematurely every year because of inequality in areas like health. Up to 2,000 people die each winter due to cold related illnesses.
In light of this budget with its cuts and stealth taxes how many more this winter?

This budget is the same old story from this conservative government and despite the Taoiseach’s claims, the fact is that those at the top have not made sacrifices.

The choices this government took – and Labour should be ashamed – was to demand that our young and elderly, citizens with special needs, our carers, our sick, lone parents, women, citizens on low and middle incomes and the unemployed pay for the greed of the golden circles, the political elites, the developers and bankers.

Sinn Féin firmly believes that Irish people have the intelligence, the will and the ability to build a real republic, to reorganise our affairs and to create a fair society based on equality.

• That requires a fairer tax system that targets wealth and lifts the burden of the least well off.
• It requires real investment in health and education services.
• It demands a job stimulus package which will get people back to work, and increase state revenue. That’s the way to reduce the social welfare bill.
• It means the end to bailouts for bad banks and bondholders.
• It means the elimination of wasteful public spending.
• And the end to excessive pay and pensions in the public sector.

The Irish people cannot afford to subsidise rock and roll life styles for former Taoisigh or special advisers when Special Needs Assistants are being cut.

The 90th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty which partitioned Ireland is a reminder that decisions can have far reaching and negative consequences.

Sinn Féin believes that economic recovery is possible based on a strategy of fair taxes, investment in jobs, debt restructuring, growing the all-Ireland economy and protecting public services and those on low and middle incomes.

The Irish people deserve better. We deserved a better, fairer budget. There is an alternative. It is based on equality and fairness.

The Minister who farted a mouse

2011-12-04T12:11:00.003Z

Last week public sector workers in the north went on strike for one day against an effort by the British Tory Government to force them to pay more in pension contributions and to cut pensions.

Sinn Féin supported this action and these workers. There are also many other people without jobs or pension provision who are being attacked by the Tories.

And not just in the north. In the south we have our own little Tory government which is also inflicting inequality on citizens. This will be most evident next week when on Monday and Tuesday, our home grown Tories in Fine Gael and Labour will produce their first budget in government.

Government statements and a series of planned Ministerial leaks have already given us a good sense of its shape. In addition, to the embarrassment of the government the detail on a two per cent VAT rise was passed to the German Parliament two weeks ago. German Parliamentarians had the opportunity to scrutinise this proposed increase to be announced in the budget before the Dáil!

On Monday the budget to cut €2.2 billion from public services will be outlined. The following day it will be the new taxes to be introduced to raise €1.6 billion. The amount of hardship this will cause to families struggling to pay bills is significant.

The stupidity of this economic strategy will be evident next month when the government hands €1.2 billion of tax payers money over to unguaranteed bondholders in Anglo Irish bank. A move it is neither legally nor morally nor ethically obliged to do.

But the flaw at the heart of government policy was evident last week, even before the budget is unveiled, in its failure to tackle the issue of highflying pensions for former government Ministers, civil servants and judges.

On Tuesday this blog challenged the Taoiseach on this issue in the Dáil. Did you know that over 30 former ministers are paid more than €100,000 a year in pensions? But in addition they receive these pensions before they reach pension age and while they are still employed.

Former Taoiseach Brian Cowen receives €151,061; the former Minister for Health Mary Harney, gets €129,805; former Fine Gael leader Alan Dukes, receives somewhere in the region of €150,000 as chairman of state-owned Anglo Irish Bank (now the Irish Bank Resolution Corporation) and draws down a ministerial pension of €94,467.

The former Labour Party leader Dick Spring has a pension of €121,108. He receives this at the same time as a basic salary of €27,375 he gets from the partly state owned AIB on which he serves as a public interest director. He also gets €3,000 for every committee meeting he attends.

Talk about the boys looking after the boys!!!!!

I was therefore surprised when the Taoiseach responded saying that the government was also concerned by all of this and that Minister Howlin was going to come into the Dáil and announce changes.

However my surprise soon turned to disgust when I saw the half hearted measures the Government were prepared to take. The measures announced by the Minister served only to add insult to injury. Yet the same Minister will announce savage cuts to public services on Monday.

The cuts announced by the Labour minister were tokenistic. The measures will mean that former Minister Ray Burke, imprisoned for corruption, will lose €1 a day from his pension of €104,000 while former Taoisigh Bertie Ahern and Brian Cowen will still retain pensions of €147,000 a year.

In effect it was all a piece of political sleight of hand – a piece of media spin to give the appearance of responding to public outrage without actually doing very much. Speaking in the Dáil I described it in slightly more colourful language. I said to the Taoiseach: “Yesterday you promised an elephant and Minister Howlin farted and produced a mouse. It’s a disgrace.”

It beggars belief how a Government which claims it has no money for job creation, for hospitals, for children with special needs, for carers, for students, still has plenty of money to protect these political elites.

Given their election promises many citizens will be disappointed at the Fine Gael position but it is particularly shocking that this is being done by a Government which includes the Labour party.

The Labour party seems to have lost its way in Government. Labour TD’s were elected on a platform of political change, an end to cronyism and made firm commitments to the electorate that they would protect child benefit and oppose increases to student fees.

They have fully endorsed the failed policies of their predecessors in Government. Given the amount of policy U turns since the election I often wonder what the purpose of Labour remaining in this Government is. Considering the Budget that TD’s will be asked to vote on next week maybe some other Labour TD’s will ask themselves the same question.

Justice for Abuse Victims

2011-11-28T20:31:00.000Z

In May RTE broadcast a ‘Prime Time Investigates’ programme ‘Mission to Prey’ which identified a number of Catholic priests alleging they were abusers. Subsequently the state broadcaster apologised when it emerged that false accusations were made in the programme against Fr. Kevin Reynolds. It paid substantial damages to him.

Within days of the libel action being settled the Cabinet met, discussed the issue and ordered an inquiry by the Broadcasting Authority. A speedy response to a serious issue.

Less speedy has been the response by successive governments to the allegations of an appalling litany of sexual abuse against patients which occurred in Our Lady of Lourdes hospital over three decades beginning in the early 1970s. Bernadette Sullivan, a former nurse, exposed the scandal almost 20 years ago. She then established in 2008 the support and advocacy organisation, Dignity 4 Patients.

Dignity 4 Patients is patient-centred organisation, which delivers support and advocacy services to people “who have experienced sexually inappropriate behaviour whilst a patient. Our services are designed to help patients understand what has happened and to provide a safe place to talk and access support and information. We aim to assist those patient/victims and their families on a path to healing and recovery.”
It has also been campaigning for a Commission of Inquiry into the Drogheda allegations.

Two years ago Fine Gael and Labour brought forward a very good motion to the Dáil in support of the Lourdes victims. The Taoiseach Enda Kenny supported this motion. So did the Tánaiste, Eamon Gilmore and the Minister for Health James Reilly. Dr. Reilly was an outspoken critic of the then Health Minister Mary Harney’s refusal to hold an inquiry. The opposition motion was narrowly defeated 76 to 73 by Fianna Fáil and the Greens.

In April this year the now Health Minister James Reilly performed a political U-turn by ruling out an inquiry into the abuse allegations. It was suggested by a Health department spokesperson that this ‘may’ have been because the Smyth review last autumn had advised against an inquiry because it might affect possible criminal proceedings. However, Bernadette Sullivan pointed out that Minister Reilly was critical of the failure to hold an inquiry both before and after the Smyth review.

Four months later in July I received an email from a victim of the abuse in Lourdes Hospital. He was responding to Enda Kenny’s Dáil speech in which he criticised the Catholic Church for its failure to co-operate with inquiries into abuse by members of religious orders.

In it the victim included an email sent to him two years ago following the failure of that earlier motion in which Mr. Kenny said: “We did not wish to divide the Dáil on this issue but the government of Fianna Fáil and the Greens voted down our request ... I know they were wrong to do this.”

That same month Minister Reilly changed tack again and raised hopes among victims. On July 21st at a meeting with the Joint Committee on Health and Children he acknowledged that; “Many people have suffered as a consequence of not being able to have this issue aired in public and I have discussed it with the Attorney General. Notwithstanding the reports to date, I have the agreement of the Attorney General that we will, following the referendum on the Abbeylara judgment, have an Oireachtas committee inquiry to investigate fully this issue when the committees have restored their rights to compel witnesses to attend.”

Minister Reilly also said that he hoped the inquiry; “... will address the outstanding issue and give people the sense that justice will be done. Justice will be done in the courts in any event but this matter goes beyond that.”

The referendum was not passed but the issue of justice for those who have suffered abuse remains, and as he accepts, is a matter that goes beyond the courts.

As well as the hurt done to victims there is also the failure of the state thus far to reassure the public that the systemic flaws in the health service, that failed to prevent the abuse in Lourdes hospital, have been properly addressed.

Last Monday evening I attended a meeting in Drogheda of the Dignity 4 Patients group. The sense of anger and hurt and frustration among victims was obvious and distressing. On Wednesday I raised this issue in the Dáil and asked the Taoiseach if he would establish an independent Commission of Inquiry into these events as he promised in opposition, and announce this before the Christmas recess.

He refused, instead offering to meet with the leaders of the opposition to discuss this matter. This was a disappointing rejection of a request which the Taoiseach has a clear record of supporting.

It is also in stark contrast to the speed with which the Cabinet moved on the RTE case.

What is the delay? Why are the rights of these victims being ignored by the state? Whatever the reason it is not good enough.

An inquiry is needed. An Inquiry is long overdue. The victims have a right to the truth. The public has a right to know that the health system has put in place procedures to prevent a repeat of this.

There are also other related issues that need to be resolved. Dignity 4 Patients has had its core funding cut. The 200 plus patients who rely on it and many of whom do not trust the health system, are to be denied the support and advocacy service it provides. The Minister has to reverse this cruel decision.

Victims I have spoken to have also asked that the Minister authorise the release to the victims of the evidence they individually gave to the Drogheda Review held by retired High Court judge TC Smyth. The review itself was never published and thus far the individual evidence provided by victims has been withheld from them. That decision also needs reversed.

In the Programme for Government agreed by Fine Gael and Labour after the election the two government parties committed to building a new Ireland based on ‘fairness’ and in which government would protect the “vulnerable”.

The victims of abuse in Drogheda Hospital are ‘vulnerable’ citizens seeking justice. Two years ago Enda Kenny castigated Fianna Fail and the Greens for their stand.

He was right then. But he will be wrong now if he does exactly what they did.

There is an alternative

2011-11-23T22:41:00.000Z

Since it came to power last February the Fine Gael/Labour government has blamed every bad decision, every u-turn in pre-election promises on the last government. Everything is Fianna Fáil’s fault.

It is a fact that the current economic mess in the south is primarily a result of the bad policies of the last coalition government, but this government has chosen to implement the same austerity strategy.

Last week it produced its medium-term fiscal report which sets out its financial outlook for the next four years. It cleared up one important issue would the cuts to the budget be €3.6 billion or €4 billion? They opted for €3.8 billion. It also revealed that government predictions of a 2.5% growth next year have now been revised downwards to 1.6%.

Spending cuts will make up €2.2 billion. This includes a €750 million reduction in capital spending which is the equivalent of at least 7,500 jobs lost. New taxation measures will see increases in VAT (up from 21% to 23%), excise duties, carbon tax and a property tax.

All of these will hit low and middle income families hardest.

This blog found the government’s acknowledgement that unemployment levels in four years time will be almost equivalent to where they are today – and that after four years of four austerity budgets – to be the most revealing fact in the report. The Government’s plan will mean that 382,000 people will still on the live register in 2015, at a minimum.

Where is the hope for citizens? If emigration were not taking place at the rate of up to 50,000 a year unemployment levels would in fact be significantly higher in four years time. As a measure of the success or failure of government policy that adds up to a big F.

The negative impact of current government policy is evident in the fact that this time last year the Fianna Fáil/Green Party government told the people that there would have to be a budget adjustment of €9.8 billion over the next four years.
Earlier in the year, the Fine Gael/Labour government increased that adjustment figure by €2 billion. Last week they added €600 million to this. The state now needs an adjustment of €12.4 billion.

The reason this keeps going up is because the government’s deflationary policies are not working. Flat taxes are not working. Not investing in the economy and expecting exports to lift all our boats is not working. As unemployment rises and wages shrink, and people have less money to spend, then money raised through consumption taxes, like VAT, are collapsing.

There is an arrogance about this Government, as there was with the last. They talk and think like right wing economists. They don’t look at the impact of their policies on citizens, on families, the young and elderly and the sick.

People are being squeezed. The accumulation of three years of austerity has not fixed the economy but more importantly, it has pushed many families into poverty. And this Government says it plans four more years of the same.

That’s why Sinn Féin puts people front and centre in our Pre-budget submission - ‘The Route to Recovery’ which we published earlier this week.

Sinn Féin has repeatedly argued that there is an alternative to the politics of Fine Gael and Labour, and of Fianna Fáil and our pre-budget submission spells that alternative out.

We believe that the deficit caused by the disastrous policies of the last Government and of this one has to be reduced and the state can’t continue borrowing large sums indefinitely.

But the plan to reduce it by 2015 by imposing savage cuts to frontline services and levying flat taxes on struggling households will be hugely damaging socially. There is no real difference between the tweedledee policies of this government and the tweedledum politics of the last.

After the general election in March Labour asserted that reform begins with the banks and it committed to ‘tearing up the blank cheque policy on banking that has undermined our very sovereignty’.

Yet three weeks ago the government gave more than €700 million to unguaranteed bondholders in Anglo and plans to hand over another €1.2 billion in January.

The government promised to prioritise Job creation yet unemployment is higher today than it was when it came to power. And according to its own medium term fiscal report last week there will still be almost as many people unemployed after 4 years of their austerity budget.

The government also promised an end to cronyism but reports this week confirm that it’s still jobs for the boys at the top as Fine Gael and Labour appoint over 20 people with connections to both to senior positions on state bodies and within the judiciary.

And Labour specifically pledged that the choices it made would be fair. Tell that to the thousands of students who protested in Dublin last week over broken promises by Eamon Gilmore and Ruairi Quinn; or the families in mortgage distress; or those who have lost their jobs and see no hope of employment because of the policies of this government.

Sinn Féin’s pre-budget submission is a costed, effective alternative to the policies of the government which is focussed on economic recovery based on fair taxes, investing in jobs, debt restructuring and growing the all-Ireland economy.

We are for a fairer tax system that targets wealth and lifts the burden of the least well o0ff, for example by abolishing the Universal Social Charge. We are for investing in jobs (which will increase state revenue and reduce the social welfare bill) and the elimination of wasteful public spending. And we are against paying out billions in the promissory notes to Anglo Irish and would restructure the remaining unguaranteed, unsecured bonds.

Sinn Féin’s pre-budget submission is about protecting public services and those on low and middle incomes. We have shown that this can be done through taxing wealth, eliminating wasteful public spending, stimulating the economy, and tackling exorbitant salaries in the public sector.

We have put forward effective proposals that would create new jobs and retain existing ones and puts the needs of the Irish people above the needs of banks and bondholders.

For any of you who wish to know more about our pre-budget submission go to www.sinnfein.ie. It’s all there.

But be assured there is a viable alternative to the policies of Fine Gael and Labour and there is hope.

TAXI ! - A Boston Visit

2011-11-21T13:43:00.001Z

Me and your man were in a taxi. On our way to the airport in Boston.

‘You Irish?’ the taxi driver asked.

‘Yep’ we told him.

‘So am I’ he said ‘You look like that guy Gerry Adams,’ he said.

’You know he can’t get into this country. It’s a disgrace’.

Your man looked at me. The taxi driver looked in his mirror at the two of us.

‘You probably get this all the time,’ he continued.

‘But the resemblance is amazing He is my President. I tell all my customers that. Especially the Brits. They have a nerve. Keeping him out. Our government needs to take a stand.’

‘What’s your name?’ I asked.

‘Bob’ he replied. ‘I love the Irish. Jimmy Cagney! I love Gerry Adams and Jimmy Cagney. Saw a great movie. All about the IRA. Shake Hands With The Devil. Saw it years ago. Jimmy Cagney made great movies. Forget about Sinatra and the Chairman of the Board and all that Italian bullshit. The Irish ran Hollywood. Jimmy Cagney and Spencer Tracey. And Maureen O Hara and Johnny O Wayne. They were real stars!’

‘Johnny O Wayne’ your man queried.

‘Yup’ Bob went on.’ As Irish as shamrock. John Wayne was his stage name. He made great movies too. You guys flying Aer Lingus? You here on business?’

‘At a conference. The Boston – Northwest Ireland: Golden Bridges.’ Your man said.

‘It was very good. All about building bridges of goodwill and commerce, culture and education between Massachusetts and Northwest Ireland. It is hosted annually by the Irish Echo.’

‘Read it all the time’ said Bob. ‘Great paper.’

‘Yes’ said your man. ‘It is. I keep in touch with what’s happening here in Irish America by going online. The Irish Echo is Irish America’s oldest — and biggest-selling newspaper. It is distributed across the USA and beyond through the internet.’

By now we were at the Airport. Bob helped us with our bags.

‘Have a good flight’ he told us ‘Give my regards to the old country. And to Gerry Adams. I wish that guy the best of good old Irish luck’

‘Ok’ we told him. ‘Good luck to you too’.

And then he was gone. Me and your man made our way towards our gate.

‘Johnny O Wayne?’ I said to your man.

‘Jimmy Cagney?’ your man said to me. ‘You dirty rat!’

The Ballymurphy Campaign – A Landmark judgement

2011-11-17T09:42:00.001Z

The Ballymurphy Massacre campaign has taken a huge toll on the families involved. This blog has watched through countless meetings with Irish government Ministers and British Secretaries of State, and many others, family members of those killed recount time after time the heartbreak and trauma they have lived with every day for over 40 years.

It doesn’t get easier in the telling and it doesn’t get easier listening to. The wounds are raw. The emotional upset is deep and distressing. The tears are real and painful.

The decision of the north’s Attorney General to reopen 10 of the 11 Ballymurphy cases is a landmark judgement which gives hope back to those families that their long journey toward truth and justice may now succeed.

It also vindicates the importance of having policing and justice powers transferred from London to Belfast.

The Ballymurphy story begins 40 years ago in August 1971. Internment was introduced by the Unionist regime at Stormont with the backing of the British government. In the early hours of August 9th heavily armed British soldiers and RUC personnel invaded nationalist areas across the north and dragged hundreds of men away from their families.

In the Ballymurphy area the British Parachute Regiment was sent in. Their function was very clear – to use violence to pacify the local population.

The British state had already put in place legal and judicial measures to make it safe for British soldiers to arrest, beat, torture or kill citizens with impunity. In Ballymurphy this led to the killing of 11 local people over a three day period.

Few people can imagine the terror and the trauma that families in nationalist areas of the north endured on internment morning and in the days and weeks afterward.

Thousands of homes were raided and ransacked; some of those arrested were forced to run the gauntlet of British soldiers and were beaten unmercifully; and a small number were taken away and tortured. And in Ballymurphy 11 people, including a priest and a mother of eight children, were shot dead.

Fewer still can understand the horror which those 11 families suffered as they discovered that their loved ones had been shot and killed by British soldiers.
Or the torment and frustration and anger they experienced as the British state moved to ensure that the actions of their soldiers were covered-up and lies told about those who died.

The killings left 46 children without a parent. Many of these children were evacuated to this part of the island, mostly to military camps as refugees.

Briege Voyle and her sister were in Waterford when a RTE news bulletin on the television told them that their mummy had been buried that day.

Briege described it as being “like a nightmare. We couldn’t grasp it” she says; “We stayed with relatives but cried to go home. We imagined home would be like it always had been but it wasn’t. It was an empty shell without my mummy. We had already been through a terrible ordeal but it didn’t stop there. The paratroopers continued to torture us. They used to sing “where’s your mama gone” outside our door and you couldn’t walk down the street without them taunting you. We were all so terrified.”
None of the dead was involved with any armed group. They were all unarmed civilians.

The success by the British state in covering this up meant that Ballymurphy became a forgotten massacre.

Now, as adults, the children and the surviving siblings of those killed want the names of their loved ones cleared.

The Attorney General’s decision is an important step in the right direction. The new inquests must now be held without delay and the families must be provided with the necessary resources to ensure that all of the facts are uncovered.

This blog raised the Ballymurphy campaign in the Dáil on Tuesday. Jan O'Sullivan TD the Minister of State at the Department of Foreign Affairs & Trade with responsibility for Trade & Development gave a commitment on behalf of the Irish government to “assist” and “support” the Ballymurphy Massacre families “in their search for justice”. She also recommitted the Taoiseach to meet with the families.

This is welcome but the words must be followed by action by the government.

The families also believe that the role of the British state and of its armed forces warrants a full, thorough international investigation and an apology from the British government which recognises their innocence.

The names of those who were killed:
Fr Hugh Mullan (38); Frank Quinn (19), a father of two; Joan Connolly (50), a mother of eight; Daniel Teggert (44); a father of 13; Joseph Murphy (41), a father of 12; Noel Phillips (18); Eddie Doherty (28), a father of four; John Laverty (20); Joseph Corr (43), a father of six; John McKerr (49), a father of two; and Paddy McCarthy
(44).

The Irish diaspora

2011-11-13T13:52:00.000Z

“Nice to see you two gentlemen again.”
Mike was our friendly conductor on the express train on Friday morning as we travelled from New York to Boston. His family roots are in Dungannon and Pomeroy. He’s a Tyrone man and proud of it.
As he introduced himself he flicked back his coat to reveal a small radio with its aerial wrapped in green, white and orange.
Coming out of the New York Times on Thursday morning after a meeting with its editorial board I was stopped by 0ne of the maintenance staff. He is a native of Blackrock in County Louth.
They are just two of the millions who make up the Irish diaspora in the USA and many millions more scattered across the globe, who are proud of their Irish roots and heritage.
It’s the one solitary advantage of being recognised. I meet the Irish everywhere. On trains and planes, in streets and hotels, in New York and London, and Perth and Jerusalem, and Capetown. Every townland and parish the length and breadth of Ireland has a son or daughter in the diaspora.
Many of them were represented at the Friends of Sinn Féin dinner in New York on Thursday night in the Sheraton Hotel in New York. Over 800 Irish Americans demonstrating their solidarity with the struggle for freedom and unity in Ireland through their support for Sinn Féin.
The host dinner committee had done it again. Despite the economic difficulties it was a packed house.
Mary Lou McDonald was there for her first Friends of Sinn Féin dinner in the USA and her first visit to New York. She was given a warm and enthusiastic welcome and after the speechifying was over there was a queue of well wishers looking to say failte and to get their photo taken with her.
I was reminded of my first frenzied visit to New York which in part brought me to the same hotel. It was February 1994. Bill Flynn had organised a peace conference and the issue of a visa for me was causing headaches for the governments.
The British government was lobbying like mad to have the Clinton administration say no. As far as they were concerned the north was an internal matter for the ‘United Kingdom’ and everyone was told to butt out.
But Irish America was having none if it and launched its own intense lobbying campaign. As a result this blog got a 48 hour visa for New York. And one of the key events of that visit was a speaking engagement with hundreds of excited Irish Americans in the Sheraton Hotel. Some of those who organised that event 17 years ago were also involved in planning the FoSF dinner.
So, Thursday night’s dinner was an opportunity for a little nostalgia. But it was also a time for reflecting on the substantial progress that has been made since then – in no small way helped by Irish America.
It is also my custom at the New York dinner to provide a sort of report back on the work of the preceding year. And the last 12 months have been eventful!!
Last November when I returned to Ireland it was to go straight into the Donegal South West by-election. That saw Sinn Féin inflict a serious defeat on the Fianna Fáil/Green Party government and Pearse Doherty elected as a TD in the Dáil.
Did you know that in the year since then Sinn Féin has fought five additional major elections? The general election in the south, the Assembly and local government elections in the north, a Seanad election, and most recently the Presidential election.
Six elections in 12 months! As well as the Dublin West bi election.That’s an incredible number of major elections for any party to fight in such a short time. And remarkably each of those elections saw Sinn Féin significantly increase our representation - quite an achievement!
At a personal level it’s also been a year of change. 12 months ago I was still the MP and MLA for west Belfast. Today I’m the TD for Louth and the leader of the only real opposition party in the Dáil.
All of these changes were most obvious in the recent Presidential election. The first ever undertaken by a member of Sinn Féin. It was a short tight campaign and in a funny way New York is part of that story also. Martin was there when his candidancy was announced.
Nine months ago Sinn Féin won 9.9% of the vote. At the end of a hard six week campaign Martin McGuinness took 13.7% of the first preferences. In 31 out of the 38 constituencies we fought in February he increased our share of the vote. In 21 of those constituencies he increased our vote, and in four of the five constituencies we didn’t contest last February he took over 10% of the vote.
A very good result for the Irish republican project. And a solid electoral base for the local government elections in two years time.
Martin also succeeded in placing republican issues like Irish unity on the political agenda. He also introduced into the debate the fact that Irish citizens living in the north and passport holders within the diaspora, are denied the right to vote in Presidential elections.
As Michael D Higgins begins his Presidential term it is important that we raise again and again the right of Irish citizens living in the north of Ireland and others in the diaspora who hold Irish passports, to vote in future Presidential elections.
Next year the Irish government has said it will hold a constitutional convention. The Irish diaspora has to be part of that.
I said that to the large crowd who gathered in Boston for the Golden Bridges Irish Echo event. Our diaspora proved its value as an indispensible supporter of the peace process. It also has a vital contribution to make as we seek to reshape and reimagine Ireland in the 21st century.
And as the centenary celebration of the 1916 Rising and of the Proclamation approaches there is a role for Irish America in commemorating these events.
Ireland is an island in transition; in part because of the peace process but also because of the economic crisis. There is an opportunity to build a new Ireland – a new Republic, and the diaspora can play a positive and constructive role in that.

2011-11-07T11:47:00.001Z

OCHON OCHON.

‘You should have used your considerable influence to get us tickets for the MTV Music Awards!’

‘What?’

‘Tickets. For Lady Gaga.’

‘Tickets? What do you mean tickets?’

‘I mean tickets. Tickets. To see Lady Gaga. I missed seeing her because you didn’t make the effort.’

‘You wanted to see Lady Gaga?’

‘Yup. I like Lady Gaga. But you left it too late for tickets.’

‘What do you mean? I left it too late? You never bought a ticket for anything in your life’.

‘I won’t even ignore that. I always pay my way. But it was in Belfast. I’m stuck in Dublin with you most of the time so it’s not my fault that I cudn’t get a ticket.’

‘You left it a bit late. It’s Monday. The gig was last night.’

‘I asked you a month ago. Don’t you remember? We were in the City Hall. No problem! That’s what you told me. No problem. That’s what you said. My friend the Mayor will sort us out. Gan Fabh. That’s your exact words’.

‘When was that?’

‘The day we bumped into Tom Hartley in the City Hall and he was showing off his tickets for The Odessy. As you know Tom is a big Justin Bieber fan. He was delighted with himself. Do you remember now?’

‘Aye’

‘Aye? That’s all you can say? Aye?’

‘Aye! And I did ask. Our Mayor. That’s who I asked. That very day. I offered to carry his chain. I said I thought he was the very best Mayor who ever came out of the Short Strand....’

‘Ballymacarret!’

‘What?’

‘Ballymacarret’.

‘Okay. An Tra Gearr. And he - our Mayor – he said I was to leave it with him’.

‘Well you certainly did that.’

‘Stop huffing. If you have an issue get in touch with the Mayor.’

‘I didn’t ask the Mayor. You’re the big shot around here. I asked you. You let me down. Again!’

‘You cudda gone down to see Snow Patrol. That was free’.

‘I wanted to see Lady Gaga.’

‘I’ll get you a CD’.

‘Biggest music event in the history of Belfast and I missed it. All because I relied on you. Lady Gaga live. And I wasn’t there’.

‘Probably the only Belfast republican to miss out!’

‘You don’t need to be so sarsastic’.

‘Ach you shud stop going on. And on. And on.’

‘And you shudn’t make promises you don’t keep.’

The billion-dollar bond and the great Irish rip-off

2011-11-02T12:42:00.001Z

So the countdown is at an end. Today the Irish Government will stand by and watch as Anglo Irish Bank hands one billion dollars, or over €700 million of Irish tax payers’ money, over to an anonymous bondholder. By the end of January that amount will have risen to €2 billion.

It is doing this exactly one week to the day after Enda Kenny agreed to a 50% discount on Greek sovereign debt at a European conference during which the Irish Government did not even have the nerve to raise the issue of the mammoth Irish debt burden.

The sequence of events that have led to this transfer of Irish citizens’ money illustrates the absurdity of the policies being pursued by this Government.
The next budget will take place at the beginning of December. It will be the fifth austerity budget. The Fine Gael/Labour Government plans to take around €4 billion out of the economy through flat tax increases and swingeing cuts.

The Government PR machine is in full flow to ready the public for the adverse impact this huge adjustment will cause for citizens. For the fourth year in a row, the people of this state are hearing the same arguments, though this time from a different government. It’s still about how citizens have ‘to be responsible’. How we lived ‘beyond our means for years’. How we are nearly there and must take ‘a little more pain’. How well we are doing and how impressed Europe is with us.

The latter is the most frequently used line. Every Minister trots it out in the course of interviews. According to them this state is being held up by the European Union, the International Monetary Fund, and the Europe an Central Bank as a model for getting it right; for doing what we are told. They proclaim that we are not the Greeks or the Italians or the Spanish; as if we are somehow better than them!

It is the worst kind of patronising and jingoistic nonsense.

There is no logic, no rhyme or reason for the Government to pursue its current course of bailing out bank bondholders. What galls this blog most is that the government claims that it is powerless to do otherwise, while at the same time sitting at a negotiating table in Europe like nodding dogs when the halving of Greek sovereign debt is being agreed.

But nothing takes the biscuit more than the fact Fine Gael and Labour continue to treat citizens as though we are all stupid.

Take for example the soft-spoken, inaccurate, lecture Enda Kenny delivered to the Dáil last week in response to a question from this blog regarding the payment of this bond.

Mr Kenny claimed that the Government had to oversee the payment of this €700 million bond because the last Government had placed €31 billion of promissory notes in Anglo Irish Bank. There is no linked up thinking here. The Government would not be defaulting on the promissory notes if it ordered Anglo not to pay this private bondholder.

Enda Kenny cannot keep up with his own Government’s ‘line’. For most of the week the cabinet has been running with the theory that this bondholder will not be paid out of Irish taxpayers’ money, but instead out of its own resources. Apparently Anglo has sold some American holdings and can meet its bond responsibilities. Can someone please explain how a bank which has received €30 billion of Irish taxpayers’ money and is completely insolvent, can be described as having its ‘own resources’?

This line jars completely with Enda’s previous assertion that the bond had to be paid because the last Government had ‘committed’ us to it by handing over the promissory notes.

Then we have Michael Noonan saying that the bond must be paid because we are ‘working the EU/IMF programme’. On Thursday night’s Six One on RTE he claimed that we had the choice to either ‘repudiate the programme, or work the programme and the Government was working the programme’.

Here’s a newsflash for you, Minister:

There is no commitment to pay bank bondholders in the programme!

Minister Noonan’s uneasy grasp of Ireland’s finances was further laid bare in the same interview when he claimed that Greece was getting an awful deal and would be stuck in an EU/IMF programme until at least 2020. ‘Imagine’ he said incredulously if the government had to tell Irish taxpayers ‘we had to have ten more years of austerity budgets’.

Considering a 50% write-down of sovereign debt for this state would mean that we effectively lose €85 billion worth of debt, how does this lend itself to ten more years of austerity? And after all, nobody is claiming we need a sovereign default like Greece.

What Sinn Féin is saying, and what others from the left to the right of the economic and public spectrum are also saying, is that we need to stop honouring private banking debt because it is not our responsibility and it goes against market practice.

For example, if the Government got the ECB to write off the €31 billion in promissory notes that are essentially owed to them, that would reduce our debt to GDP by 20% and save us up to €85 billion by 2031, including interest servicing of the capital €31 billion.

The Government could also choose to stop Anglo paying out the billion-dollar bond on Wednesday. If it saved this money, and the other €1.2 billion that will be paid out by the end of January then it wouldn’t have to have such a punitive austerity budget on 6 December. Everyone could be grateful for that.

Will the Government listen? What do you think?

REFLECTIONS ON AN ELECTION.

2011-10-31T10:22:00.005Z

Martin McGuinness is a trail blazer. That much must be clear. Even to his detractors. A life devoted to struggle has seen many examples of this. Martin, in good times and bad, has had many opportunities and occasions to draw on these pioneering qualities. The net outcome has generally benefitted the people he struggled alongside. It has also, particularly in this time of peace, assisted those, in time of war, who would have been or seen themselves as his enemies or opponents.

Rarely has this been acknowledged by the great and the good. But no matter. None of this is done to win favour with them. They know that. They have their values. We have ours.

The Presidential election brought all this to the surface.

Martin is the first Sinn Féin person ever to contest a presidential election. He fought a six week campaign. And as a result of this, despite the short time involved, many of the issues he argued for are now firmly on the public agenda.
These include voting rights for Irish citizens.

The need for a new Republic based on genuine core republican values.
The fact that there is an alternative to greed and corruption and austerity. The need for and merits of Irish unity. The imperative of an ongoing process of reconciliation. For reunification through reconciliation.

The issue of victims was also raised. Legitimately by relatives of some victims. This is a matter which needs to be dealt with. Properly and in a manner acceptable to all victims.

There has also been huge attention and comment on the Frontline debate and Martin’s outing of Sean Gallagher’s involvement with Fianna Fáil leaders and with its former leaderships’ corrupt practices, fundraising activities and with policies that have brought the Irish people into the awful economic and social mess that is the cause of so much distress and hardship.

Sean Gallagher’s problem wasn’t that he was involved in this. It was that he was denying such involvement and presenting himself as a casual and occasional volunteer from the Fianna Fáil grass roots – alongside many other good and decent people who undoubtedly work for that party.

At the time of the Frontline debate opinion polls indicated that this stroke might work and that the premature rehabilitation of this type of unacceptable politics was almost upon us.

Hugh Morgan had contacted our campaign office and given us a break down on Sean Gallagher’s approaches to him. He had already spoken to the media about this. He turned to us when this failed to get traction and we decided to ask Mr Morgan to brief Martin in advance of the Frontline programme.

We also decided that Martin should challenge Sean Gallagher on this. We did so – and Martin challenged Sean Gallagher- in the knowledge at that stage in the campaign, depending on how Sean Gallagher responded, that Michael D Higgins would be the main beneficiary of any such challenge. Martin was and is entirely satisfied that this was the right thing to do. So am I.

Michael D Higgins will be a very good President. I wish him and Sabina and their family well. I gave Michael D my second preference vote. The tally people tell me that many of his voters returned the favour to Martin a thousand fold.

Martin McGuinness’ entry into the Presidential election was bound to lead to a reaction from the Dublin establishment. Our campaign team knew that. A small cadre of the usual media suspects, particularly, although not exclusively, in the Independent Newspaper group led the charge. Some of these at least have been consistent over the years. Revisionists, two-nationists, supporters of Section 31, the odd hard boiled old fashioned partitionist and opponents of the peace process, were provoked into action once again. Nothing but the same old story.

We should not tar all the media with the same brush or rail against robust scrutiny even if we suspect the motivation. Good, fair and balanced interrogative or investigative journalism is to be applauded. And RTE should be especially encouraged to provide such a public service. After all the tax payer foots that particular bill.

There was a certain hysteria within the wider political establishment. This hysteria was led by Fine Gael, best personified by Gay Mitchell’s strident negativity, and most memorably represented by the attack on Martin by Fine Gael ministers and Chief Whip Paul Keogh a month or so ago. Their contribution was entirely self-serving and cynical. And arrogant. That is an emerging and growing trait of that party.

Especially in Leinster House.

Little wonder Fine Gael did so badly. In the bi-election. The referendum. And particularly the Presidential election.

Well hard cheese!

Every doggie has its day and on this issue their day has come and gone. It has passed. That much is clear.

They obviously need to be given time to come to the new dispensation which now exists across this island. Like the unionist leaderships most of them, though maybe not all of them, will come around. Until then this infuriating and self-serving negativity is just something they have to go through. Thankfully we don’t have to wait for them to play catch up. The rest of us can get on with narrowing the political gap between north and south. That gap was considerably closed in the course of this presidential election campaign.

For that and for many other achievements thank you Martin.

Drogheda Hospital in crisis

2011-10-25T22:39:00.004+01:00

In June this blog commented on the worsening state of the health service in the south. It made grim reading. The critique arose mainly as a result of several visits I had made to the Emergency Department of Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda. This blog witnessed many patients, some of them very elderly, lying on hospital trolleys, or sitting on chairs or the floor waiting to be treated by an overstretched and overworked medical staff.

This blog had also visited Louth County Hospital which was and is being slowly strangled by the withdrawal of key health services, including the closure of its emergency department.

And these two hospitals are the rule not the exception. Last Saturday I joined local Sinn Féin representative Paul Donnelly in Dublin West along with scores of local people who were protesting at the 20% cuts in funding for James Connolly hospital and the adverse impact this is having on services in that hospital.

But it was the news out of Drogheda that caused greatest concern. Last Friday it was revealed that a patient, who had been on a trolley in the Emergency Department for five days, had TB. Three other patients are now being screened for this dangerous disease and an undisclosed number of staff are also being checked.

The deterioration in the situation in Drogheda hospital was not unexpected. Three weeks ago this blog joined with party colleague Peadar Tóibín TD from Meath and Dr Ruairi Hanley from the Save Navan Hospital campaign, to write a letter to the Health Information and Quality Authority asking that it urgently and immediately “launch a full, public investigation of the Emergency Department in Our Lady of Lourdes, Drogheda and publish the findings.”

We did so because Our Lady of Lourdes in Drogheda was consistently ranking as the hospital with the worst waiting list in the state in its Emergency Department; a clear pattern which has been exacerbated since the closure of Louth County Hospital’s Emergency Department.

With Paul Donnelly in Dublin West protesting at cuts to Connolly Hospital

This level of overcrowding is not an anomaly. Nor is it simply a matter of inconvenience for patients. This is a matter of life and death. For months now the numbers of patients on trolleys in Drogheda has consistently exceeded 30. This has resulted in enormous pressure on the Emergency Department and represents a clear threat to patient safety and welfare.

Overcrowded EDs result in patients having their treatment delayed. Niall Hunter, who is the editor of Irish Health.com wrote recently that ‘experts now agree that hundreds of unnecessary deaths may occur in Irish hospitals each year that can be attributed to excessive Emergency Department pressure.’

The Irish Association of Emergency Medicine, representing consultants, said earlier this year - “It is now well-established that boarding hospital inpatients in emergency departments results in increased numbers of deaths among this group of ill patients, compared to similar patients who are admitted to a hospital ward in a timely fashion.”

The management in Lourdes responded to this crisis by putting into effect the ‘Full Capacity Protocol’. This essentially means that hospitals identify spaces on wards. Patients are put into those spaces even if the wards are not be appropriate for their health needs.

David Hughes, Deputy General Secretary of the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation explained: ‘When hospitals are operating in excess of 90% capacity (Irish hospitals with Emergency Department overcrowding are generally operating at 100% capacity) admitted patients are transferred to available beds which are not necessarily the appropriate beds.

Patients with heart problems should be cared for on a cardiac ward, while patients with lung disease should be admitted to a respiratory ward. This ensures that patients benefit from the experience of an appropriate specialist consultant and nurses with the right set of skills. The admitted patients and if additional trolleys are put up on wards, those additional patients will invariably be in the wrong ward. This leads to the movement of patients.

Patients may be moved two, three, or four times in the course of a week’s stay at a hospital. Excessive movement of patients increases the risk of transmission of infections and, although these practices are condemned in reports from Britain’s Healthcare Commission, they are now regular occurrences in Irish hospitals with Emergency Department difficulties.’

Moreover, hospitals across the state are daily breaking the target set by the HSE of a maximum of six hours from the time a patient presents at admission to the point at which they are admitted.

Regrettably, despite the clear evidence that Drogheda hospital is in serious trouble, HIQA declined to order an investigation. It said that it is ‘currently actively engaging’ with the HSE on the issue of quality and safety in the Louth Meath Hospital Group but didn’t specify what this meant.

The Health Act 2007 clearly states that HIQA has the power to carry out an investigation if it believes that there are reasonable grounds and that there is a serious risk to the health or welfare of a patient.

This blog believes that the safety, quality and standards in the Emergency Department of Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital, Drogheda are such that a statutory investigation is the only reasonable response.

If HIQA continues to refuse to implement this then the responsibility falls to the Minister for Health James Reilly. His party, Fine Gael, in its five point plan for the general election at the start of the year pledged to reform the health service and cut waiting lists.

Thus far they have perpetuated the mess created by their Fianna Fáil and Progressive Democrat predecessors.

Yesterday, Monday October 25th, there were 294 patients on trolleys in emergency departments across the state and Drogheda as ever was the worst in the state. This is a daily crisis confronting front line health staff and it exists even before the inevitable increase in demand that the onset of winter will bring.

Not only are waiting lists in Emergency Departments long but the waiting list for hospital treatment has increased by nearly 40% since the start of 2011. According to the most recent HSE statistics the number of patients waiting for over three months for operations and other hospital procedures at the end of August stood at 28,657. At the end of December last year the figure was 20,634.

In his first six months in office the Minister has had the distinction of increasing the waiting list by just over 8,000. That’s an increase of 39% of patients on the waiting list.

The Health service needs to be properly funded. That much is obvious to the health professionals and patients but not the government. It claims the money is not there. Not true! Next Wednesday November the 2nd the government will give €700 million of the people’s money to unguaranteed bondholders in Anglo-Irish bank.

€2 billion will be paid over by January next year. The government is under no legal or moral obligation to do this. And Anglo-Irish is a dead bank.

The government is making a political choice when it uses taxpayers money to pay off unguaranteed bondholders instead of fixing the health service.

These are short sighted and uneconomic policies which will make it more difficult to repair the damage done by the economic crisis. A public and popular campaign is needed on health issues to persuade the government to change its policy.

Visiting Our Lady of Lourdes with Cllr Imelda Munster

A Good News Day

2011-10-19T09:38:00.007+01:00

The International Group
left to right: Jonathan Powell, mise, Bertie, Kofi Annan, Gro Harland Bruntland, Pierre Joxe.

Monday was a busy day and hopefully a significant one for the people of the Basque country and Spain. It started with a plane flight to Bilbao from Dublin. This blog and a Sinn Féin delegation met up with Bertie Ahern and his colleagues in Dublin Airport, and joined Jonathan Powell, former Chief of Staff to Tony Blair, on board a small plane bound for the Basque country.

We were on our way to a conference in San Sebastian in Euskadi entitled; ‘International conference to promote the resolution of the conflict in the Basque County’. The event had been organised by a range of groups, including the Basque Citizen Network for Agreement and Consultation, Lokarri, the International Contact Group (GIC) led by South African lawyer Brian Currin, and four other international foundations.

We were due to join up with former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan; Pierre Joxe, former French Defense and Interior Minister; and Gro Harland Bruntland, a former Norwegian Prime Minister.

The flight took about two hours and provided Bertie, Jonathan and this blog with an opportunity to talk about the conference.

The format was straightforward. Each of the six international participants would make a contribution on the issue of conflict resolution, its difficulties and hopes.

A range of trade union, business, community and political representatives from the Basque country would then make short presentations. After which the international guests would retire to discuss and agree a ‘Declaration’ which would set out our view of how the process of peace in the Basque country could be advanced.

This blog has been in the Basque country many times in recent years. There is a long affinity between Irish people and the people of France and Spain and the Basque country.

Sinn Féin’s efforts to assist in building a peace process there go back to the Good Friday Agreement. In that time there have been moments of great hope but also of despair as the opportunity for peace suffered setbacks.

I was in the Basque country in June 2006 after ETA called a cessation. There was great excitement and anticipation. The collapse of the cessation at the end of that year was a disappointment to many.

Since then Sinn Féin has continued to work closely with our Basque friends in Batasuna – which is currently banned – and others, in an effort to inject new momentum into a peace process that is stalled.

In the last two years we have seen the formation of Abertzale Left, which includes Batasuna, and the adoption in February 2010 of a new political strategy for progress.

The example of the Irish peace process is clear in this strategy which commits Abertzale Left to using ‘exclusively political and democratic means’ to advance its political objectives. It seeks to advance political change ‘in a complete absence of violence and without interference’ and ‘conducted in accordance with the Mitchell Principles.’ And its political goal is achieve a ‘stable and lasting peace in the Basque country’.

Subsequently, ETA called a ceasefire in September 2010 and last month saw the establishment of the ‘International Commission of Verification of Ceasefire in the Basque County’- CIV.

So, Monday’s initiative in San Sebastian is rooted in a lot of hard work and effort and some progress. There was and is an expectation that Monday’s conference could see a step change in the situation.

That was certainly the expectation among those taking part in the conference in the Ghandi room, in the San Sebastian Peace House, and among the ranks of journalists who were covering it.

In my contribution to the conference I recalled that for many the conflict in Ireland, rooted in centuries of war and division and violence, had seemed intractable. Every generation had known war – and between the cycles of violence there was the despair of oppression and discrimination, of instability and institutional violence. The cycle seemed destined to continue into a depressing future.

But the Irish peace process demonstrated that with imagination and dialogue and a commitment to achieve peace it is possible to rewrite the script.

This blog said: “Violence usually occurs when people believe that there is no alternative. Transforming a situation from conflict to peace requires therefore that an alternative is created.”

Making peace is hugely challenging and enormously difficult. It demands that we seek to understand what motivates, what inspires, what drives their opponent. Ultimately, as Madiba - Nelson Mandela - said, we have to make friends with our enemy.

Each conflict is different but in the course of our efforts Irish republicans have learned that there are general principles of peace making, methods of conflict resolution, that can be applied elsewhere and which can help end conflict if applied properly.

These elements include; dialogue; tackling the causes which lie at the heart of the conflict; a good faith engagement by all sides; an inclusive process – with all parties treated as equals and mandates respected; all issues must be on the agenda; there can be no pre-conditions; no vetoes; and no attempt to pre-determine the outcome, or preclude any outcome and there should be time frames.

Most importantly, participants must stay focused and be prepared to take risks and engage in initiatives and confidence building measures.

But if there is a starting point it must be dialogue. I emphasized this again and again. This is the foundation upon which any progress will be built.

Confidence building measures are also crucial. In Ireland this meant, among other things improving conditions for prisoners, including moving those who were in England closer to their homes in Ireland. It meant demilitarizing the environment and ending the use of emergency laws and repression, a new beginning to policing and the release of political prisoners.

It also meant respecting and acknowledging the democratic rights of all political parties and treating them as equals. At a time when Batasuna is banned and leaders like Arnaldo Otegi, who is totally committed in my view to peace, are imprisoned, the use of confidence building measures by the Spanish state is very important.

Going out to meet the media

At the end of our four hours of deliberation the international delegation presented our ‘Declaration’. We first read it to the conference and then went outside to the grounds of the Peace House where the media were camped.

The ‘Declaration’ said that we believed it is possible to end the last armed confrontation in Europe. We set out a five point proposal, which included calling on ETA to make a definitive declaration to end all armed actions. We urged the French and Spanish governments to respond positively and to agree to talks.

My colleagues and I said that we are willing to form a committee to follow up on our recommendations.

There was applause from the media and with that it was over. We said our goodbyes and got back into our cars for the return high speed journey to Bilbao airport.

I think it was a good days work. As we made our way home there was good news from another front. Tuesday saw the release of 477 Palestinian prisoners and of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, with another 550 Palestinian prisoners due to be released next month. This is a welcome development. It came clearly after talks involving the Netanyahu government and Hamas. It’s wonderful what happens when dialogue begins.

Slán Peter John

2011-10-12T23:49:00.004+01:00

Sinn Féin MP Conor Murphy, Fergal Caraher’s parents, Mary and Peter John, and Sinn Féin Councillors Brendan Curran and Colman Burns at the memorial in South Armagh dedicated to Fergal Caraher

It was a fine autumn morning. The South Armagh hilltops, free of British Army forts, were beautiful in the bright morning light as we drove north from Dublin to Cullyhanna to attend the funeral of Peter John Caraher.

This blog has known Peter John and the Caraher family for many years. A few weeks ago his son Miceál contacted me to let me know that Peter John was terminally ill. I told him I would call. It was just before the Ard Fheis.

Miceál explained to me that Peter John had been told he only had a few weeks left but had forgotten this and I needed to be mindful of that in my conversation.

I was therefore a wee bit apprehensive about the visit but I called and I came away uplifted and very happy.

Peter John was in great form. We spent a couple of hours craicing away, telling yarns and in his case engaging in a little bit of loose. As I left there were 40 people crowded into the kitchen and Peter John followed me out and left me to the door. I think that this was his way of saying slán in his own quiet country gentleman’s way.

In my view Peter John hadn’t forgotten how ill he was. Like the kind, loving husband and father he is he didn’t want it to be sore on his family.

Peter John died on Monday morning. The family had asked if I would do the oration and I was pleased to have been asked.

So, this morning I headed to Cullyhanna to join with Peter John’s family and friends and neighbours to say slán abhaile to one of the unsung heroes of the republican struggle.

Below is an edited version of my remarks:

I want friends and comrades to welcome all of you here today to Peter John’s graveside and on your behalf to extend our solidarity to Mary, to Peter John and Mary’s daughters, Maria, Therese and Joanne and their sons, Francis, John, Miceál, Phelim, and Cahal, to Peter John’s surviving siblings, his 19 grandchildren and the wider Caraher family, and to Peter John’s friends and neighbours.

I’m sure that many of you have your own stories, your own tales to tell of his humour.

He was a giant in our struggle. He was like a very, very tall tree in very turbulent times in the centre of his own family and the republican community.

He was a quiet big man who held his republicanism close to his heart and who gave 100% in pursuit of the Irish unity and freedom.

He was a very proud Armagh man and a very proud south Armagh man. He was born not far from here on the 9th of May, 1928 on Creenkill Hill, Crossmaglen. He was the eldest of 7 children - 4 boys and 3 girls to John and Catherine Caraher.

His was also a republican family. His father was a member of the 4th Northern Division. Peter John was fiercely proud of this. His father was imprisoned in Newbridge, Co. Kildare in the 1920's. He escaped and was recaptured and received such a severe beating that he died at the early age of 44 leaving Peter John as head of the household at the age of 14.

Peter John went to Kildare to work as a bricklayer and when his brother Francie contracted polio he returned home to help with the farm. Another brother Owen was imprisoned in 1959 during the 50s campaign and Francie died in 2005 at the age of 73,a volunteer of Oglaigh na hÉireann.

Peter John married Mary Carragher on the 4th September 1962 and they had a family of 9 children. And like his father before him Peter John was a volunteer in the Irish Republican Army.

South Armagh in those days was part of the Orange state oppressed and under British military occupation and was a very proud republican heartland. Peter John was rightly proud of the actions of the volunteer soldiers of the IRA.

In the early years of the conflict he was adjutant to Michael McVerry of Culllyhanna, a volunteer who was killed in action while carrying out an attack on Keady Barracks in 1973. Mickey McVerry and Peter John were firm friends and his death had a huge impact on him. There was never a day went by that he didn't speak of or refer to him.

The flag on Peter John's coffin today is the same one that was draped on Mickey McVerry's coffin.

In the aftermath of McVerry's death Peter John took on the role of OC and promised that Mickey’s memory would live on in Cullyhanna. He instigated the building of the monument to his comrade and friend which was opened a year to the day after his death.

Peter John and his other good friend Tom Rooney were founder members of the Cullyhanna band and even though he was approaching 80 years of age he acted as foreman at the building of the band hall.

With the support of his wife Mary he devoted his entire life to the Republican cause and his whole family suffered house raids, arrests, imprisonment and harassment by British Crown Forces.

He was very keen always that people should recognise the central role played by Mary. Not in a supporting role only but in her own right as an indomitable Irish republican woman and a sound patriot. And Peter John always valued her opinion and her advice.

The family suffered a great hurt when in December 1990 Fergal and Miceál were the victim of a shoot to kill action by the British Army. Fergal was killed and Miceál was severely wounded. Peter John refused to be daunted by this huge personal loss.

At Fergal’s graveside, Peter John spoke about the need to hold a public inquiry – that the RUC and British system could not be trusted in any investigation. And in June 1991, just six months after the shooting, with the help of the Irish National Congress, a two-day public inquiry into the murder of Fergal and the wounding of Míceál was held.

People from all over this district and South Armagh and beyond came to assist in the quest for the truth and organised a truly historic event in the local Community Centre. Michael Mansfield QC chaired the proceedings and there was a panel of jurists from America, Germany and France.

The inquiry was recorded and relayed to the crowd that overspilled to a marquee and a reconstruction of the shooting took place on the Tullinaval Road. It was an amazing achievement for such a historic event to be organised by the local community and was a huge source of comfort and pride for the Caraher family.

After careful examination of the events and of witnesses to the shooting on December 30th 1990, they found that there was excess use of lethal force on the day and that:
‘There are sufficient grounds to indict or charge with murder those soldiers who unreasonably fired their weapons with intent to kill Fergal and Miceál Caraher.’

The experience of the Caraher family is not unlike that of the Finucane family this week. Pat was killed by loyalists acting for the British state and in order to cover up that fact the British government told the Finucane family that there would be no inquiry, as agreed at Weston Park 10 years ago, into his murder.

Geraldine Finucane has made it clear that her family will not be daunted.

And Peter John was not daunted by the release of the soldiers who killed their son.

He understood the real nature of the British government’s involvement in Ireland. He also knew that there were hundreds of families, just like his, who were victim of British violence or collusion between British forces and loyalists, and who needed help. He and his family along with others, helped establish the Relatives for Justice Group.

Peter John was involved in the Pioneer Society and in the Lourdes Committee, having gone there for over 25 years to help the sick. He was Honorary President of Cullyhanna GFC and foremost in this community he was an authority figure and a huge influence on the republican struggle.

He took a keen interest in Prisoner Welfare and their families and was a member of South Armagh Green Cross from it's foundation. He was also a founder member of the Michael McVerry Cumann and was very keen on promoting the Irish Language.

Peter John was his own man. He took his own counsel. He was totally unselfish in his commitment. If you want a role model for our time than Peter John is that role model. He personified all that is sound about our struggle.

He was never a war monger, but he had a justifiable sense of pride in his republican comrades, especially here in South Armagh, to take on and fight the British Army to a standstill.

And he understood the need to build Sinn Féin as the vehicle of republican struggle.
So it’s a very, very sad day. There is a lot to reflect on and to be proud of. Peter John lived long enough to see Sinn Féin and republicanism grow. And he was a very central and positive part of that growth.

He also lived long enough to see his family grow. To enjoy his grandchildren, to be with his bellowed Mary in good times and bad.

He’s now with his IRA volunteer father and his IRA volunteer son.

But Peter John’s spirit lives on in the lives of his clan and the onward progress of the struggle which he helped shape.

A last word to the 19 grandchildren.

There are 19 grandchildren so far. To the 19 grandchildren you have a grandfather, a dadó to be proud of and you have a mamó to be proud of. Mind your granny.

Slan Peter John, slan abhaile.

Remembering Rev Fred Shuttlesworth

2011-10-09T12:38:00.003+01:00

Mark Guilfoyle, mise agus Rev Fred Shuttlesworth

This blog has had the good fortune to meet many inspirational people over the years, in all parts of Ireland, in the Irish diaspora and beyond.

Often they are very ordinary men and women who despite very real dangers have been prepared to make a stand against injustice and to defend the rights of others.

Some walked the roads and streets and lanes of the north in pursuit of civil rights.

Some confronted and challenged the riot clad brutality of the RUC and British Army and the death squads of loyalism and the British state. And some refused to accept the status of criminal in prisons in Ireland and England.

In all sorts of little and big ways they and others stood tall for what is right. Most are anonymous citizens. Quietly and with dignity and courage, getting on with playing their part. Some, like Bobby Sands, Mairead Farrell and Maire Drumm, and many others took up leadership positions. They are remembered and are role models.

So it is in other struggles. They too have their role models. People like Mandela and Martin Luther King and Steve Biko and many more.

One such was Baptist Minister the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth who died last Wednesday aged 89. This blog met Fred in March 2002. I was in the USA for the St. Patricks week celebrations and had been asked to speak at the Cathedral in Covington, Kentucky. A good friend Mark Guilfoyle was instrumental in organising the event.

It was packed. I spoke from the altar and so too did Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth. In the USA Martin Luther King, Rev Ralph Abernathy and Rev Fred Shuttlesworth are still regarded by many as the head, heart and soul respectively of the civil rights struggle in that country in the 1950s and 60s.

At the end of our event in the Cathedral we were in a back room and I was formally introduced to Fred. He was seated in front of a church kneeler. I went over and set on the kneeler and spoke to one of the heroes of the American Civil Rights struggle. He was a quietly spoken man.

Fred was imprisoned countless times, his home was bombed and on at least 8 separate occasions he was close to death.

He was a fearless leader and pioneer of the civil rights movement. He had grown up in rural Alabama, and worked as a labourer and a truck driver. He eventually graduated from a black college in Selma and became a preacher. One newspaper report tells how ‘a friendly college professor gave him a cow. Once he had given some milk to the college, the balance went to feed Shuttlesworth's family.’

He moved to Birmingham Alabama which was at the centre of the struggle against segregation. In the 1950s dozens of homes and churches in the area were attacked. The white police force didn’t care. The KKK (Klu Klux Klan) dominated.

The City was starkly divided. Every aspect of life was segregated – the schools, the buses, the restaurants, the parks and including the waiting room in the train station.

Rev. Shuttlesworth and his wife bought tickets and took their seats in the white section. Like Rosa Parkes who refused to sit at the back of the bus, this was a brave and courageous act. It gave huge encouragement to others.

The response from the white supremacists to the Shuttleworth’s defiance of segregation was to attack Fred and his family. They detonated 16 sticks of dynamite at his home one Christmas day. He described what happened: ‘The floor beneath me was gone, but underneath me was my mattress. I knew God was there. And I felt more peaceful in that moment than I ever have in my entire life.’

Interviewed years later for a documentary, ‘Eyes on the Prize’ he recalled.
‘Instead of running away from the blast, running away from the Klansman, I said to the Klansman police that came – he said, “Reverend, if I were you I would get out of town fast”. I said, ‘Officer you’re not me. You go back and tell your Klan brethren that if God could keep me through this, then I’m here for the duration.’

On another occasion in September 1957 he tried to enrol his daughters in the all white Phillips High School. There was a white mob outside and they attacked him.

Remembering that event he later said: ‘They really thought if they killed me – the Klansmen did – that the movement would stop, because I remember they were saying, “This is the leader. Let’s get the SOB; if we killed him it will all be over.’

Rev. Shuttlesworth was beaten about the head and body with logging chains and whipped. He recalled that the doctor was amazed that his injuries weren’t much worse. ‘I said, “Well doctor, the Lord knew I lived in a hard town, so he gave me a hard head”.’

There can be no doubt that his actions in Birmingham helped create the conditions for the 1964 Civil Rights Act. He also played a key role in the famous march from Birmingham to Selma – that later inspired the Belfast to Derry civil rights march in 1969 – which led to the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

This blog was very pleased to have had the opportunity to meet and speak to Rev. Shuttlesworth. It was men and women like him and Rosa Parkes - who I was also proud to meet- who inspired many in the civil rights movement in Ireland.

We are indebted to their vision and courage and selflessness. The world is a better place for the stand they took.

And in these times of economic difficulty and opportunity for change in our own society let’s remember Fred’s words: ‘Do tomorrow what we did today, and do it the next day, and then the next day we won’t have to do it all.’

Kids are Great

2011-09-30T14:45:00.000+01:00

Kids are the same everywhere. They are great craic. I remember visiting Phola Park, a vast squatter camp not far from Soweto in South Africa in the summer of 1995. The conditions were appalling. Families were living in one room structures made from pieces of battered corrugated tin held together with bits of wire and rope.

There was an overwhelming sense of great poverty. Very few had employment of any kind. Health care was basic. There was one water tap and a row of outside latrines. And it was all covered in dust.

But the people had a huge sense of pride in their contribution to the end of apartheid and the election the previous year of Madiba (Mandela), as President of a new free South Africa.

Their living conditions might have been primitive but their hearts were huge and the welcome they gave our small delegation of Shinners was mighty.

They danced and sang and their voices soared in exuberance over the barren landscape around them.

There were kids everywhere. Hundreds running around. They were enthusiastic participants in the songs and dances. They leaped through the air, jumping and gyrating. Most had no shoes or socks and wore old battered jumpers and frayed shorts.

They were curious too.

‘Who are you?’

‘Where are you from?’

‘Ireland? Where’s that?’

Robert McBride our host and guide, who had spent years on death row in an apartheid prison, told us of the ANC’s hopes for the future – new housing, schools and jobs.
He and his comrades were focussed on building a better future for the people of Phola Park and Soweto.

The energy and sense of hope and joy of young people is infectious, whether in South Africa, or west Belfast or Gaza or Dundalk.

Last Monday night that sense of excitement was evident in the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Dundalk.

RTE was broadcasting the second in a series of programmes entitled ‘The Secret Millionaire’. John Fitzpatrick is a New York based hotelier who was dropped off in Dundalk by the program makers – a place he had never been in before.

His objective was to identify individuals or groups he would give money to, to sustain or enhance their quality of life and project. They had all been told he was a native Irishman returning home to do a documentary on how communities here are responding to the economic crisis.

Last Monday night John hired a large room in the Crowne Plaza. It was packed to overflowing with many of those he had met during his time filming in the county Louth town. He had invited them to come and watch RTE broadcast the programme on a big screen.

And again it was the young people who shone through. They had no inhibitions. Despite living in some of the most disadvantaged social housing estates in the state these young people were bursting with energy. They laughed and joked and slagged each other and John. When someone they knew appeared on screen a huge shout of recognition went up.

In all John handed out almost €40,000 to local projects. Craobh Rua is a Doolargy based youth group which provides after schools activities and homework clubs and works hard to ensure that children stay in education. One young lad, Joel Maguire so impressed John with his singing that he has arranged for him to have singing lessons and he later brought Joel and his mother to Dublin for the Rhianna concert.

The Cuidigh Linn group is based in Muirhevnamor. It provides maintenance workers for elderly people who for a token fee will carry out repairs and decoration work on homes and gardens. The €15,000 John gave this group went toward buying a van. The O Hanlon Park Boxing club received €2,000 with which they were able to buy new kit, including head gear and sparring gloves. The club caters for over 80 ranging in age from 7 to 70.

The programme didn’t shy away from the anti-social and poor housing and health problems of people living in Cox’s Demesne and Muirhevnamor estates.
But what came through was the integrity, humanity and compassion of the mainly voluntary workers who help the young, the disabled and the elderly. I include John Fitzpatrick in this excellent company.

What was also evidence is the very positive effect of relatively small amounts of money when this money is invested in disadvantaged communities. Citizens working at the coal face know how to get value for every cent to improve the lives of our youth, elderly and disabled neighbours.

Secret Millionaire was an inspiring story made all the more relevant and moving because none of those taking part knew what the underlying purpose of the film was.

This blog has had the opportunity to travel to all parts of this island. Everywhere I go I am amazed and humbled and very proud of the numbers of people, whether in the GAA or Conradh na Gaeilge or in the community and voluntary sector, who freely give of their time to help others. Well done to all who took part in ‘The Secret Millionaire’.

The Clinton Global Initiative

2011-09-26T16:53:00.000+01:00

Bill Clinton’s pulling power has not been diminished by his years out of office. If anything he is more popular today in the USA that when he was President.

The Clinton Global Initiative is his event. It is branded with the Clinton name and it reflects his values and ethos and politics, especially in seeking to help disadvantaged people and communities around the globe.

The CGI is held each year to coincide with the full meeting of the UN General Assembly. Consequently, it is a magnet for current and former Prime Ministers, Foreign Ministers and Presidents and political leaders, who arrive in New York wanting to network with others and happy to share a high profile platform to talk on the major issues of the day.

This is my seventh year at the CGI. When former President Clinton established it in 2005 he invited this blog to be a member. I was happy to join and to travel there each year to participate in the discussions and to listen and learn from others.

The CGI is an innovative project which brings together political and economic leaders to devise and implement solutions to some of the world's most pressing challenges, including poverty, climate change, inequality, and job creation.

Since 2005 the CGI has succeeded in improving the lives of over 300 million people in more than 180 countries through commitments valued in excess of $63 billion. This year another 6 billion dollars in commitments were made at the conference.

And it is this that marks the CGI out as different from other international conferences at which notable guests speak about issues of immediate concern. At the CGI participants are expected to make a commitment to action – that will see money, technical and human resources and enthusiasm and energy invested into a time limited specific project which has a definite outcome.

This can be the creation of jobs, the delivery of health services, the provision of water or telecommunications or education or skills training or a multitude of other outcomes.

This year’s CGI had three main topics. Jobs, sustainable consumption, and Girls and Women. A big part of the three day event focused on climate change and the danger it presents, for example to low lying areas as a result of rising sea levels.

The Prime Minister of Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasine, warned that this threatened one fifth of her country, which is one of the poorest in the world and that this would displace over 30 million people. Another example cited was the Maldives islands in the Indian Ocean which some predicted might not exist in 30 or 40 years.

It is quite clear that the failure of world states to agree a legally binding agreement on carbon emissions is the source of much of the current difficulties. In addition the Kyoto Protocol on climate change will expire next year.

In two months representatives from world governments will be attending the United Nations convention on climate change in Durban, South Africa. It is vital that new rules are agreed that are legally binding and that they are monitored.

Rising sea levels also threaten parts of this island. It is a danger that must be taken seriously and action taken to minimise any dangers. The Irish government needs to go to Durban with a clear strategy to propose and support ideas which can tackle climate change.

Day one of the CGI also saw former Irish President Mary Robinson along with Archbishop Tutu of South Africa, announce their specific commitment to undertake a global partnership to end child marriage. The campaign is entitled ‘Girls Not Brides: The Global Partnership to End Child Marriage’.

It is estimated that in poor countries, a third of all girls are married by 18 and that this forces them out of school and exposes them to abuse. Mrs Robinson and her colleagues are committed to ending this practice in a generation.

Day three of the conference saw a return to this issue when both the plenary sessions and the workshops and smaller discussions focussed on the problems faced by women and girls. Business participants recounted their experience of having to negotiate through the cultural barriers to persuade fathers and tribal elders allow women and girls take up paid positions or set up small businesses which could then support them and their families.

One speaker detailed the back breaking work that women and girls in sub Sahara Africa undertake collecting water. Many walk for 10 miles a day over the most difficult terrain and in high temperatures carrying up to 20 kg of water on their heads.

This has an adverse impact on their health leading to arthritic diseases, miscarriages and back and chest pains. Women and girls who travel from their home also face grave risk of rape and assault.

Piping clean water to villages can reduce the threat and provide women and girls with the time to engage in education and other training programmes that can economically benefit both them and their communities.

The plight of 12 million people in Somalia, who are currently experiencing famine and drought, was also highlighted during the conference by Somali born poet and rapper K'naan. He had recently been to Somalia to see for himself the conditions in the camps and he brought back film of the scale of the problem which was shown at the CGI.

In two weeks President Clinton will be in Dublin to attend an economic conference organised by the Irish government. This blog will be there as well. It will be interesting to see how his belief in growing the economic rather than austerity measures will go down with an Irish government that is committed to cuts.

Honouring Irish America’s labour legacy

2011-09-22T22:44:00.005+01:00

Joseph Smyth, mise and Terry O Sullivan

The first thing you notice when you get out of the car at the South Street Seaport in New York are the massive sailing ships. The Peking, built in 1911, with its four enormous masts and rigging is an impressive sight and dominates the landscape. And there are other sailing ships dating from even earlier times. The South Street Seaport sits on the site of the original port of New York and part of it is Pier 17.

That was my destination last Wednesday evening. Me and your man were on our way to Harbour Lights, a restaurant, where the Irish Echo was holding an event to honour Irish America’s labour legacy – Irish Labour 50.

The Pier is now a tourist centre and part of a designated historic area which includes a Museum, exhibition galleries, a working 19th-century print shop, an archeology museum, a maritime library, and much more, including a small fleet of privately owned sailing ships.

Harbour Lights looks out over the East river and at night is lit by the lights of the Brooklyn Bridge.

The contribution of the Irish in America to the labour movement has been significant and the Irish Echo event was recognition of this. It was an opportunity to pay tribute to current labour leaders and activists, and for me to say thank them for their ongoing contribution to the peace process.

Kathleen Curtain from the Kingdom

The restaurant was packed to overflowing. Your man complained that he could not get a seat. I ignored him and went off to talk to Kathleen Curtain an old friend from Kerry who was amazingly magnanimous about Dublin’s victory over the Kingdom. I was also delighted to see Marian and Patti Reynolds. Great people all.

In my remarks I took the opportunity to extend warm greetings from Martin McGuinness and to assure the audience of his and Sinn Féin’s commitment to secure the right to vote in future Presidential elections for Irish citizens in the north and those living abroad.

The Irish involvement with the labour movement in the USA goes back over a 150 years. The period during and after the great hunger saw a huge influx of Irish and this gave a boost to efforts to organise working people.

Those Irish built the roads and canals, the sewers and the railroads, the buildings and the mines – the infrastructure of this vast new emerging United States of America. It was a hugely difficult time. Poverty and hardship were the common experience of millions of Irish. There was significant discrimination and I recalled a sign given to me some years ago which dates from that dark period and which declares, ‘No Irish Need Apply’.

Irish workers were not the only workers to face the challenges of exploitation and adversity. It was a time when workers had no rights. They were hired and fired by employers, who often had the power of life or death as witnessed in the oppression of the Molly Maguires.

The children of workers had no childhood and no future. They too worked from a young age. The great American writer Jack London described a child worker; ‘He did not walk like a man. He did not look like a man. He was a travesty of the human. It was a twisted and stunted and nameless piece of life that shambled like a sickly ape, arms loose-hanging, stoop shouldered, narrow-chested, grotesque and terrible.’

Trade Unions were the means by which working people could demand improvements in working conditions and wages. And the Irish helped establish many trade unions and worked hard to make them a success.

I reminded the audience that one of our greatest leaders James Connolly was a hugely influential trade union activist in the United States, as well as in Ireland. Connolly spent 7 years of his life here and he helped found and organise the ‘Independent Workers of the World’ and campaigned tirelessly for workers rights. He understood the importance of workers standing together, united against injustice and oppression.

And he articulated the connection between British colonialism and sectarianism in Ireland, and the importance of workers taking a stand against the British presence. He famously wrote: ‘The cause of Labour is the cause of Ireland; the cause of Ireland is the cause of Labour.’

He was prepared to put his life on the line in pursuit of his beliefs and in 1916 he was executed by the British for helping to lead the Easter Rising. But his death did not stop his ideas from taking root.

The Proclamation, which Connolly played a key role in writing, reflects his beliefs. It is a freedom charter. It guarantees religious and civil liberty and is avowedly anti-sectarian. It promotes equal rights and equal opportunities for all citizens. And at a time when women in most countries did not have the vote, the government of this new Republic was to be elected by the suffrages of all her men and women. The Proclamation is a declaration of social and economic intent for a rights based society in which the people are sovereign.

It is, as this blog has said many times, for Irish republicans today our mission statement for the 21st century.

There were also among the audience Labour leaders who have stood shoulder to shoulder with us in the peace process in Ireland. Their role and that of Irish America and especially of the Trade Unions, has been hugely influential and invaluable.

The fact is that there would be no peace process at this time in Ireland if the trade union movement had not been part of the Irish American lobby, which in the early 1990’s created the possibility of cessations and negotiations and agreements.
However, the great historic challenge facing the people of Ireland has yet to be resolved – British involvement in our country and the reunification of Ireland.

Uniting Ireland makes economic sense; it makes political sense; it makes common sense. And we need Irish America to stay with us as we seek to advance toward the achievement of this goal.

Thanking Terry for his help with the Peace Process

At the end of the speeches I had the honour to make a number of presentations. One especially was for the President of LiUNA – The Labourer’s International Union of North America.

I have known Terry O Sullivan, whose family are from Kerry, for many years now. He has been a good friend and supporter of the Irish peace process.

I had to leave early to go back to another event but it was clear from the boisterous banter that the labour activists and their families were intent on having a great night.

As we left your man was complaining again. This time it was because he was leaving. There is no pleasing some people.

With John Liu New York City Comptroller

THE PEOPLES’ PRESIDENT

2011-09-16T17:29:00.001+01:00

Martin McGuinness has been my friend for almost 40 years. He is a remarkable and gifted human being and a great leader and a patriot. It will be a great honour for me to propose Martin McGuinness to contest Presidential election on a broad, republican, citizen-centred platform. He will make an excellent President of Ireland.

Ireland is a partitioned country. The consequences of that have been deeply damaging for the people of this island.

In the north a unionist one party regime ruled and abused citizens for 50 years. Unionist repression and a society in which Catholics were treated as second class citizens led to a civil rights campaign for justice. When that was attacked by the state there followed decades of conflict.

Martin McGuinness played a huge role in bringing that conflict to an end.
The southern state was run by a conservative political and business elite whose greed and corrupt practices ultimately led to the current dire economic crisis.
As a result there is now a climate of despair and of fear. Half a million are unemployed; thousands more face losing their homes; one third of our children are going without one or more of the basic necessities of life. This includes a warm coat in winter, a bed and bedding of their own, and three meals a day. And each day brings more news of job losses. This is unacceptable.

Never was there a more important time for republican politics. Never was there a greater need for a President who can represent all that is good and vital and compassionate and caring about the Irish people.

Ireland needs a Peoples President – a President who can bring hope; who can lift spirits and reach out to and embrace all the people fo this island.

A President who has the ability to break down barriers between people and who has the acknowledged experience to work with those of opposite opinions.

Martin is an outstanding political leader. First as Minister of the Education when he began the work of transforming education in the north, and then as Deputy Fiurst Minister Martin has worked closely with unionist leaders like Ian Paisley and Peter Robinson, building a partnership power sharing government which has defied the begrudgers and is delivering for citizens.

Martin has demonstrated enormous courage and taken a strong stand against those who would seek to plunge Ireland back into war.

He has travelled widely, ably representing the people of the north on the international stage. He knows many world leaders and is recognised by then as a capable and effective leader and representative.

Martin has a deserved international reputation as a peace maker. He is a statesman who has taken huge personal and political risks in his life.

As Sinn Féin’s chief negotiator during the peace process, time and again HE demonstrated immense personal leadership and an ability to persuade others to take decisions and initiatives which many thought impossible.

There would have been no peace process without his enthusiastic encouragement.

The next seven years will be enormously challenging for the people of this island.

Ireland needs a President who has a vision of a fairer, better and more prosperous Ireland.

A President who can represent every section of our society, nationalist and unionist, urban and rural, republican and loyalist, and those from the new immigrant community.

Martin will ensure that the Aras is a welcoming place for all sections of society across this island, and in particular for those who have been marginalized.

He is uniquely placed to reach out to the Irish diaspora and to engage with it in building a new Ireland.

Martin is for a new Republic which has citizens rights at its heart. He believes totally in the core republican values of equality and fairness.

He believes in people and community and in civic virtues. He has the ability to rise above the party political and to successfully represent all of the Irish people.

I am confident that he will build on the excellent work of President McAleese and her husband Martin.

And as we enter a period of unprecedented historic anniversaries, including the 100th anniversary of the 1916 Rising, it would be especially important that we have a President who is committed to uniting Ireland and ensuring that the principles and values that are expressed in the Proclamation become a reality.

This is a time of great challenge for all the people of Ireland. We need positive but authentic leadership.

I believe that this election will give Martin the platform to continue the work which he has led in the North and in the peace process and to put it on a national footing.

If elected he will draw the average wage. He will dedicate himself to a genuine national reconciliation and the unity of our people. He will personify hope in the great genius and integrity of all the people of this island, Catholics, Protestants and Dissenters.

I would appeal, if Martin contests this election, for people to join in this campaign, including people in the North and across the diaspora who are denied a vote at this time. The campaign will give citizens the opportunity to make a stand for a better Ireland, for a united Ireland.

Remembering Friends

2011-09-14T12:17:00.003+01:00

Todd Allen, John Fitzgerald, Tom McGinnis, Desi Macken, Gerry Adams, Larry Downes, Tom Boyan, John Kitrick

This blog has met the Irish everywhere. From Britain to Australia, from all parts of Europe, to the USA, from the Middle East to South Africa. Some have been first generation. Others have been the sons and daughters of previous generations forced from Ireland for economic and social and political reasons. Persecution, sectarianism, repression, hunger all played their part.

Among the 70 plus million in the Irish diaspora scattered around the globe there are many who take a deep interest in developments in Ireland. They seek to play a helpful role. Many times this is in small personal ways. Over recent decades they have positively contributed to the search for peace. This has been especially true of the Irish in America, Britain and Australia.

Friends of Sinn Féin in America was established in 1995. It raises funds for the party. It has done sterling work in that time. Consequently leading Shinners have travelled to all corners of the USA speaking at breakfast, brunch and dinner fundraisers and at many universities. We have addressed press conferences, met newspaper editorial boards, lobby groups and politicians at local, state and federal level, as well as the various Washington administrations under Clinton, Bush and Obama. We have also engaged with local Irish American communities and briefed them on the ongoing developments in the peace process.

In my travels around the USA I have met tens of thousands of very good, decent Irish Americans.

Frequently, in the early days of my travels I would be met at airports by Irish American police officers who would whizz me around New York and other cities, through rush hour traffic, with lights flashing and sirens blaring. I used to joke that it was for me a whole new experience of being driven round by police officers who weren’t intent on taking me to prison.

In New York the backbone of the fundraising project for FOSF is the construction industry, and the police and fire services. Others, including people who work in the financial district, the law, the pub and restaurant business, in community organisations and ordinary working men and women, have also been enormously helpful.

A frequent attender at our fundraisers was Fr. Mychal Judge, a Franciscan priest, who was well known in New York for his work among the homeless and aids victims. Mychal was chaplain to New York’s Firefighters. He was also close friend of Steven McDonald, a New York policeman now a quadriplegic, as a result of being shot. Steven is a strong opponent of violence and a firm believer in forgiveness.

Mychal and Steven both attended some of our New York events. They even travelled to Ireland and Parliament Buildings at Stormont to see the changes that their support for the peace process had helped bring about.

In 1999 I visited the Mercantile Exchange, the largest commodity futures exchange in the world, and then in the shadow of the twin towers. A group of FOSF activists, Todd, Fitzy and Tom arranged for me to see the place and watch the madness of the ‘bear pit,’ There scores of traders, buying and selling commodities, line 10 or more deep shouting at each other creating a cacophony of noise and excitement. How they understand what they were buying and selling is beyond me.

These three also organised a very successful fundraiser in the north tower of the World Trade Centre in the Windows on the World restaurant.

The restaurant was at the top of the tower, on the 107th floor. I remember looking out of the large windows. It was like being in a helicopter hovering high above New York. It was a spectacular panoramic view of New York and New Jersey, of the Hudson River, and the Statue of Liberty, and of Ellis island through which so many tens of thousands of Irish immigrants had entered the United States.

There were about 30 people there that day. Enjoying the craic, getting photos taken and talking about Ireland. Being captivated by Rita O Hare.

We also met security men and women, waiters, lift operators, and others. They were all warm decent human beings.

Mise with Tom McGinnis

Two years later the twin towers were gone and almost 3000 people were dead. Among them was Tom (McGinnis) one of the three who had organised our World Trade Centre event. Another to die was Mychal Judge. Hundreds of New York police officers and NYFD personnel died also, along with construction workers, many from Ireland.

I remember that day. Martin McGuinness and I had been meeting the Taoiseach in government buildings in Dublin. As we left the building we met US Special Envoy Richard Haas. The first reports were coming in but the detail was vague. Mark Costigan, a very good radio journalist was outside Government Buildings with the press pack. He had a new hi tech electronic gadget with a miniature TV. We heard him exclaiming and gathered around him to watch images of the planes hitting the Twin Towers.

It was like a scene from a film. Hard to take in. Then on the way north we listened on the car radio to Conor O Cleary’s eye witness account of what was happening. It was gripping and shocking and terrifying.

I immediately began to ring friends in New York trying to find out if any of those we knew were among the dead or injured. Like many others I spent several hours each day for several days doing this as the extent of the devastation and the scale of the deaths became clearer.

Two months later FOSF held its annual fundraising dinner in New York. It was agreed that the monies raised would go to help the families of the construction industry who were killed at the World Trade Centre. It was a small gesture of solidarity from Irish republicans in Ireland, and from Friends of Sinn Fein in the USA, to our friends in the construction industry who suffered grievously as a consequence of the attacks that autumn day in September 2001.

During that visit I called to a local Fire Station. The fire fighters talk with huge pride of their chaplain Mychal Judge. He had joined them in the inferno that was the Twin Towers. He died attending to them and the dead and injured. The Fire Fighters had a deep sense of gratitude to him.

There was also a deep sense of the huge courage and heroism of all those who rushed to help others caught up in the attacks in New York and Washington and the passengers of Flight 93 who confronted their hijackers.

September 11 is one of those watershed moments in human history. Its consequences are still with us today in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere.

But on this tenth anniversary our thoughts and prayers are with the innocent who died. On Sunday I thought back on all this. I also thought of the time I visited Arlington cemetery with Courtney Kennedy, Robert Kennedy’s daughter. She brought us to visit her father and her uncle’s graves.

Carved on the wall before Robert Kennedy’s grave are words he spoke in South Africa in the 1960s – visionary words in the history of that troubled land but words which speak to those who died trying to help their neighbours in the 9 /11 attacks or the 70 million Irish people throughout the world who make up our great diaspora and whose help and support we still need as we seek to advance our democratic goals of peace and unity and freedom for Ireland.

Robert Kennedy said: ‘It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope; and crossing each other from a million different centres of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.’

Suicide Prevention and Awareness

2011-09-05T12:05:00.003+01:00

Sinn Féin banners outside Belfast's Waterfront Hall where the party will be holding its Ard Fheis this weekend.

Yesterday was the start of International Suicide Prevention Awareness Week. It runs until next Saturday, World Suicide Prevention Day.

Regrettably in my years as a public representative I have spoken to people at risk; to their families and the bereaved families of suicide victims; and to health professionals working on this issue. It is clear that this is a problem which is getting worse.

The World Health Organisation estimates that “Every year, almost one million people die from suicide; a "global" mortality rate of 16 per 100,000, or one death every 40 seconds”.

That’s equivalent to a population the size of Dublin dying each year from suicide.

WHO also calculates that in the last 50 years “suicide rates have increased by 60% worldwide”, and that it is now among the three leading causes of death among those aged 15-44 years.

Recently Pieta House, a suicide crisis centre based in Lucan, Dublin, reported that in the first half of this year it has seen a 40% increase in the number of people coming to it for help in respect of suicide and self-harm.

Pieta House said that 486 people - 386 men and 100 women - died by suicide in the south of Ireland last year.

In the north the situation is equally bad. The Public Health Agency (PHA) has reported that since 1999 rates of suicide there have increased by 64%. And in many instances these were deaths of young people, many of whom came from disadvantaged areas. North and West Belfast have been especially hard hit. In 2009 260 people died by suicide in the north.

A report last June by the Institute of Public Health in Ireland (IPH) examined the connection between the economic recession and male suicide.

Facing the Challenge – The Impact of the Recession and Unemployment on Men’s Health in Ireland concluded that male suicide is on the increase as a result of the dire economic situation. It revealed that in the south 379 male suicides occurred in the year up to June 2009. The following year that number had risen by 48 to 427.

In the north the report said that there had been 240 male deaths by suicide in 2010. When combined with the 73 female suicides in that period the 313 deaths by suicide in the north for last year, was the worst figure ever for that region. It is an increase of 100 on the 2005 figure of 213 deaths by suicide.

There has also been a significant increase in the numbers of people self-harming, again particularly among young men.

One year ago Prof Kevin Malone of the School of Medicine and Medical Science at University College Dublin and St. Vincent’s University Hospital gave evidence on suicide to the Dáil Joint Committee on Health and Children. He explained that a study he carried out into suicide in 23 countries concluded that suicide levels are significantly higher than the official statistics suggest.

It is easy to get lost in the statistics and to forget that this is an issue of life and death for hundreds of citizens and of huge trauma to many families.

The reality is that suicide prevention needs more resources, more money and more trained personnel than ever before. How to organise and put in place preventative strategies is well known.

What is required is a properly funded all-island based multi-agency intervention approach which brings together training and support for family doctors; a public information campaign; and a co-ordinated strategy involving all of those who are working on this issue in community, the voluntary sector and the health professionals.

At a time of cutbacks in health budgets it makes sense that the two health departments co-operate in providing effective and efficient health services for citizens.

The failure by the health service in the south to meet the psychiatric needs of young people has been highlighted in recent days by 17 year old Cíara Molloy from Dublin who in desperation wrote an open letter to the Dublin Minister of Health James Reilly.

Cíara suffers from depression and anxiety and has difficulties with food. In her letter she begs the Minister for help, describing the state’s current psychiatric care for teenagers as a “disgrace”.

Her decision to go public came after she was told that instead of an appointment with a psychologist she was being offered a place on a six week lecture course dealing with ‘stress control’. The course is entitled: “Think Clearer. Learn to control your eating. And control your drinking.”

Ciara told one journalist: “I’m 17 and I don’t drink.”

“I just broke down crying then,” she said. “The HSE were saying that they do not care.”

Cíara published her open letter on her blog and emailed it also to the Department of Health, the HSE and some media outlets.

In her letter she wrote:

“An Open Letter to Minister James Reilly, TD:

Dear Minister Reilly
My name is Cíara Molloy, and I am a 17 year old teenager. For the last few years, I have struggled with anxiety and depression. My local hospital, Connolly Hospital, was unable to treat me, as they didn’t have the funds or manpower to do so. Nor were they able to let me see a dietician for my difficulties with food. Instead, I’ve languished on a waiting list for over a year.
Thanks to my GP, I have been sent a letter by my local primary care team, to attend a ‘stress control’ course. This is not helpful in the slightest. To my mind, this course and letter is simply a way for the HSE to wash their hands of me. The course itself isn’t suitable for me, because, as the letter states, it ‘is NOT group therapy’. Secondly, it is on a Wednesday morning from 10 – 11.30. Minister, I am going into sixth year, and wish to study Law in college. I cannot afford to take that much time off school, because by the time I get out of the course, go home, get my schoolbag and get the bus to school, it will be 1.30.
Minister, I am begging you to help me. Nobody else seems to want to, and the HSE appear to have washed their hands of me. Psychiatric care for teenagers in this country is a disgrace. There are no facilities. Unless you’ve attempted suicide, you can’t even be seen by a counsellor. How is this fair?
I cannot afford to see a private counsellor. I can’t afford to see a private dietician. Is the HSE simply going to let me rot because of my socio-economic class? I thought Ireland looked after its people.
Yours sincerely,
Cíara Molloy,
Dublin 15
Visit Cíara’s blog, Messy Desk, Messy Head”

Finally, let me take this opportunity to commend the amazing dedication and work of all those involved in suicide prevention. Many of these are bereaved families who have known the personal tragedy of loss. Their courage and determination is inspirational.

ONLY A GAME

2011-08-30T14:20:00.004+01:00

ONLY A GAME?

‘What brilliant seats!’

Your man was estatic. I have never seen him so delighted with himself. The green sward of Croke Park stretched out before us. We were in the Hogan Stand. Plumb centre. Just above the level of the pitch.

‘Any closer and we wud have to tog out’.

‘Indeed’ I said.

All around was there was noise. Happy noise. Excitement. Expectation. Colour. Whoops. Hollers. Hill 16 was a stormy sea of blue. The stadium was filling up rapidly. Hector was out cajoling and winding up the crowd.

‘An bhfuil aon daoine anseo ó Thir Conall?’ he yelled.

Tens of thousands yelled back at him.

‘Are the Leinster champions here?’ he countered.

The Dubs answered him in one huge gurrier roar.

‘This is the biggest sporting event in Europe this weekend’, Hector told us.

Then the entire stadium roared and yelled and screamed and applauded as the Donegal and Dublin teams tore on to the field to begin warming up. Your man and I yelled along with all the rest. For both teams. But mostly for Donegal. It was the All Ireland Senior Championship Football semi Final and we are from Ulster and even though we both fancied Dublin to win that didn’t matter. We are from Antrim but for today Donegal was our team.

The Artane Boys band and swarms of flag waving youngsters flooded on to the field as Hector exited. Your man grinned through it all. Then Amhrán Na Bhfiann and we were off. Or were we?

By half time the score was 4 to 2 for Donegal. The cheers and exhuberance before the throw in was replaced by groans, moans and loud booing from the 81264 spectators. The prospect of a free flowing game of flair and beauty had been replaced by a grinding defensive exhibition of slow aggressive basketball.

This had been well signposted of course but no matter. Donegal are famously renowned for their defensive play. There were no secrets about the way they would play. Or about their lack of forwards even though Colm McFadden had a very good game. But he was on his own for most of the match and the only Donegal player in Dublin’s half during the slow pondersome build ups which marked Donegals strategy. That and their blanket defence when Dublin tried to move forward.

None of this was a secret. But that didnt stop the collective frustration of both sets of fans. Particularly at the number of wides kicked by both teams. However this was always Dublins game to lose. Donegal would be hard pressed to sustain their intensity. And they needed to be further ahead or capable of better score taking to win out by such a defensive approach.

‘Dublin are going to win’ your man told me even though they hadn’t yet kicked one score from play and there was only ten minutes to go.

‘I agree’ I told him.

‘You don’t win games defensively unless you can get very far ahead and stay there’he said.

And so it turned out.

And even though they were lots of people giving out about the style of play, about ‘puke football’and ‘soccer tactics’it was still a brilliant day out.
‘The only way to spend a Sunday’ your man affirmed as we made our slow way out off Croker past the jubilant Dubs and the devastated Donegal fans.

For all the negative commentary about the style of Sundays game nothing can take away from the spectacle, the energy, pride, drama, the joy and the sheer magic of this wonderful pheonomon that is the Gaeldom.

Gaelic games – played to the highest standard by amateurs and sustained mostly on a voluntary basis – are a credit to everyone involved. There may have been a bit of a grind about the way the football was played on Sunday but I am glad was there to see it. So was your man.

Now for the Dublin Kerry Final! What a contest that will be.

But before all that the hurling!

Will Tipp prevail? Or will the Cats get their revenge?

Isn't it great to be a Gael?

OLD CROCS.

2011-08-24T13:21:00.001+01:00

OLD CROCS.

‘I really love good black and white pudding.’
‘Clonakilty is your only man’
‘Clonakilty is Michael Collins homeplace’.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yup. And Clonakilty black and white pudding is the best in the world.’
‘What do you think of Collins?’
‘He shudda had more sense. He shud never let the Brits divide and conquer’.
‘Dev had a lot to do with that’.
‘There is a place in Fermanagh sells black bacon. O Dohertys. Its in Eniskillen. It is traditionally cured. None of the stuff that comes out like when you fry other bacon.’
‘Aye I ate that black bacon. It comes from pigs who roam wild on the islands on Lough Erne’.
‘It’s hard to get’.
‘But it’s worth it. Clonakilty black and white pudding, O Doherty’s black bacon and duck eggs fried with home made potato farls and soda bread.’
‘I’m starving’.
‘I’m a vegetarian.’
‘But you eat eggs. And fish’.
‘So what? At least I don’t eat dead animals’
‘Fish is animal.’
‘Michael Collins shudda came home and called Llyod George’s bluff.’
‘Maybe it wasn’t as simple as that.’
‘How can you call yourself a vegetarian if you eat fish? Aren’t vegetarians not supposed to abstain from meat of all kinds?’
‘It depends on what kind of vegetarian you are’.
‘Well that’s obvious’.
‘There is another black pudding they make in Kerry. It comes in little squares. Its very good as well’.
‘Nothing is as good as Clonakilty. Its the barley in it.
‘Who do you think killed Collins?’
‘The ‘Ra’.
‘I know that. But do you believe the conspiracy stories’.
‘Nope. I think it was straightforward. A local unit heard he was in their area and they ambushed him. It was as simple as that’.
‘Terrible times’.
‘Indeed’.
‘A waste’.
‘It wasn’t a simple as that’.
‘Were you always a vegetarian?’
‘Nope I just decided to give up meat one day. I felt sorry for the animals.’
‘Except the fishes’.
‘Why are you so agitated by that? I don’t tell you what to eat.’
‘I know you don’t but did you ever eat Clonakilty black pudding before you converted partially to vegetarianism?’
‘Can’t say I did. At least I can’t remember. And I never converted partially to anything’
‘Ah you wud remember if you ate this black pudding. You won’t ever know what you missed. Now you’ll die wondering.’
‘I’m more worried about my crocs’.
‘Aye. Did you never find them?’
‘Nope’.
‘That’s bad luck.’
‘I cud kick myself. I was on the Beggarman’s Strand and I always like to walk in my bare feet. So I put my crocs to one side the way I always do. It was kinda windy. And as I walked off I had this wee doubt about whether it was safe leaving them there. They are so light. And the wind was so strong. It niggled a wee bit at me’.
‘Do you reckon Collins had any wee niggles about .......?’
‘When I got back they were gone. Thirty euros down the drain!’
‘Was there anyone about?’
‘Nobody that wud steal a pair of crocs’.
‘What size were they?’
‘What does that matter?’
‘Wud you two give over. This grub is ready. Eggs for the continuity vegetarian and a full fry for the rest of us’.
‘Thanks.’
‘Failte romhaibh. Enjoy.’

The H-Block Hospital Visit

2011-08-22T15:03:00.000+01:00

Mickey Devine was the last of the hunger strikers to die. His 30th anniversary was on Saturday. He left us after sixty-six days on hunger strike.

I remember meeting Mickey three weeks before he died when I visited the H-Block prison hospital on Wednesday July 29th along with Owen Carron, Bobby’s election agent and now Fermanagh South Tyrone candidate, and Seamus Ruddy of the IRSP.

A week later – August 8th - An Phoblacht carried an article by me in which I reflected on that visit. In the intervening days Kevin Lynch and Kieran Doherty died, and on the day the article was published Tom McElwee died.

In memory of those inside and outside the prison who died during that tragic summer I am posting that article.

H-Block Visit

Brendan McFarlane, Tom McElwee, Laurence McKeown, Matt Devlin, Pat McGeown, Paddy Quinn and Mickey Devine were assembled in the canteen of the prison hospital when Owen Carron, Séamus Ruddy and I arrived.

Paddy Quinn was in a wheelchair and sat with the others around two tables which had been pushed together in the centre of the room.

Brendan, Pat McGeown and Matt had been taken from their cells to the prison hospital while the others, dressed in prison-issue pyjamas and dressing gowns had been brought from their cells in the prison hospital itself. Kevin Lynch and Kieran Doherty could not attend the meeting, but Brendan McFarlane made arrangements for us to see them later.

It had taken us an hour to pass through the various security checks from the main gate of Long Kesh to the prison hospital, as the screws, sullenly resentful of our presence, quizzed our escort and driver.

I had mixed feelings going into the prison, though it held not secrets or surprises, for I had been a reluctant resident there on a number of occasions in 1972.

Also, I knew both Kieran Doherty and Pat McGeown, two of the hunger-strikers, and Brendan McFarlane, O/C of the Blocks, and had written to or read notes from, most of the other hunger-strikers. No, apart from a slight feeling of déjà vue, the prison itself, and its permanent prisoners, the screws and armed British soldiers, didn’t disturb me, tho’, in its grey hostility, Long Kesh is a forbidding and intimidating place.

It was a feeling of apprehension about the physical state of the hunger-strikers, and a fear that our arrival would falsely raise their hopes which disturbed me, as Owen, Séamus and I were introduced to the boys.

They all looked rough, prison-pale skin stretched across young skull-like faces, legs and arms indescribably thin, eyes with that penetrating look which I have often noticed among fellow prisoners in the past, and which Bobby Sands has described as ‘that awful stare of the pierced or glazed eyes, the tell-tale sign of the rigours of torture’. Someone else wrote that our eyes are the windows of our souls. The eyes of the blanket men, the hunger-strikers, are the unshuttered, unveiled, curtainless windows through which one can see reflections of the intense cruelties they have endured.

As they smiled across the table at us, all my fears and apprehensions vanished when Big Tom (McElwee) offered me a just of spring water.

“Ar mhaith leat deoc uisce?”

“Ba mhaith”, arsa mise.

“Lean ar aghaidh, tá á lan uisce san ait seo,” duit sé, grinning at me.

There were a number of small while jugs of spring water, and two or three blue plastic mugs of ordinary tap water, on the table. The lads sat, as pensively as wine tasters, as I took a delicate swig from one of the white jugs.

“Cad é a sileann tú faol sin?”

I took a longer slug, “Hold on,” said big Tom, “It costs the British government a lot of money for that stuff.”

The screw at the large peep hole at the end of the canteen, peered in a the outburst of laughter which follow Tom’s slagging. His appearance was greeted with bantering, in both Irish and English among the boys. Otherwise the screws were ignored and spoken to, politely, only when necessary.

We were left along again and then went on to discuss the hunger-strike, the campaign outside, the British government’s position and the hunger-strikers’ personal attitude to events.

We outlined the clergymen’s proposal to them. The lads were fully aware of all developments, but we persisted in detailing in a factual and harsh manner, everything which had happened over the past few weeks. They sat quietly, smoking or sipping water, listening intensely to what we had to say.

Occasionally Paddy Quinn, who sat beside me, used the spittoon which he held on his lap. Paddy heavily bearded, was by far the worst looking of the hunger-strikers.

As I talked, or listened to Owen Carron or Séamus Ruddy talking, I couldn’t stop my eyes straying below the tables where the scrawny legs of the hunger-strikers were stretched. We smoked in relays, in the absence of matches keeping our cigarettes alight by ensuring that somebody was always smoking, thus avoiding having to ask the screw for a light.

When we had finished our lengthy piece, a discussion involving everyone commenced. All the lads were crystal clear in their attitudes.

There was no basis for a settlement. They British government were stil persisting in their refusal to move meaningfully on work, association, or segregation. The prisoners’ July 4th statement outlined their position.

Yes, they knew they could come off the hunger-strike at any time. Yes, they knew the Movement would have no difficulties in explaining the end of the hunger-strike.

If there was an alternative to the strike they wouldn’t be on it. Five years of protest was too much. A reasonable and commonsense approach by the British would end, permanently, all the prison protests.

No, they weren’t motivated by a personal loyalist to Bobby, Raymond, Francie, Patsy, Martin or Joe. They knew the score, they didn’t want to die, but they needed a settlement of the issues which caused the hunger-strike before they would end the hunger-strike.

No, they weren’t driven by a personal loyalty to each other. Regardless of what the others did, each was personally committed to the five demands and to the hunger-strike. They weren’t under any duress.

Apologetically, at first, because I knew all those things myself, I told the lads that I felt duty bound to satisfy the clergymen and all those who were pressurising their families.

I painted the darkest and blackest picture possible: between ten and twenty prisoners dead, nationalist Ireland demoralised, and no advance from the British government.

“You could all be dead. Everyone left in this room when we leave will be dead.”

“Sin é” said somebody. “They won’t break us. If we don’t get the five demands then the rest of the boys and the women will.”

“We’re right.” declared another. “The British government is wrong and if they think they can break us they’re wrong twice. Lean ar agaigh.”

By this time I was starting to feel absurd, but I persisted in probing them harshly, questioning them all, outlining the Republican attitude to the hunger-strike, explaining that we could go out and announce it had ended, or that any one of them had finished it; but the lads, individually and collectively, remained unmoved.

By this time I had emptied two jugs of Tom McElwee’s spring water, much to the amusement of Lorny McKeown and Matt Devlin.

“We’re not letting you in again,” said Tom, as he went to get a refill.

“What about Danny Morrison?” somebody asked. “We heard he was sick.”

“Working his ticket.” I replied.

“And your brother? How’s he?”

“And G.B.?...”

“Cad é faoi wee Tommy agus Fiery Joe. Tell Spike to do is whack. Do you ever hear from him. Fear go h’iontach”.

“How’s my mother holding up?”

“Is Pauline okay?”

“Can you get me in the ‘Irish Times’. Ed Maloney’s cat, but there’s plenty of reading in it. Any chance of a copy of ‘Magill’? How’s the Phoblacht’s sales doing?”

“Cad faoi mo clann?”

“What about the SDLP? Get them off the councils… And Fermanagh/South Tyrone? How come Owen always wears a suit?”

Our gathering was starting to dissolve into a bantering session. Tom McElwee was trying on my glasses. Somebody was seriously and genuinely concerned that Brendan McFarlane had missed his tea. We were inundated with queries about the struggle outside, about their families, about fellow prisoners, about the women in Armagh, the lads in the Crum.

Paddy Quinn informed us that his sight had gone since the meeting started. I spoke to him privately.

“Na bac,” arsa se. “Lean ar aghaidh.”

Brendan arranged for us to go and see Kieran Doherty. I told the lads that I wouldn’t tell Doc of their position.

“He knows it anyway,” someone said. “We saw him last night after Fr. Crilly’s visit.” “I know.” I said.

Doc was propped up on one elbow, his eyes, unseeing, scanned the cell as he heard us entering.

“Is mise,” said Brendan McFarlane.

“Ahh Bik, Caide mór ata…?” arsa Doc.

“Níl ro dona, agus tú féin?”

“Tá me go h’iontach, tá daoine eile anseo? Cé…?”

“Tá Gerry Adams, Owen Carron agus Séamus Ruddy anseo. Caithfidh sibh a bheith ag caint leath.”

“Gerry A, Fáilte.” He greeted us all, his eyes following our voices. We crowded around the bed, the cell much too small for our visitors. I sat on the side of the bed. Doc, who I hadn’t seen in years, looked massive in his gauntness, as his eyes, fierce in their quiet defiance, scanned my face.

I spoke to him quietly and slowly, somewhat awed by the man’s dignity and resolve and by the enormity of our mission.

He responded to my probing with patience.

“You know the score yourself,” he said. “I’ve a week in me yet. How is Kevin (Lynch) holding out?”

“You’ll both be dead. I can go out now, Doc, and announce that it’s over.”

He paused momentarily, and reflected then: “We haven’t got our five demands and that’s the only way I’m coming off. Too much suffered for too long, too many good men dead. Thatcher can’t break us. Lean ar aghaidh. I’m not a criminal.”

I continued with my probing.

“For too long our people have been broken. The Free Staters, the Church, the SDLP. We won’t be broken. We’ll get our five demands. If I’m dead... well the others will have them. I don’t want to die but that’s up to the Brits. They think they can break us. Well they can’t.” He grinned self-consciously.

“How are you all keeping? I’m glad you came in. I can only see blurred shapes. I’m glad to be with friends. Cá bhfuil, Bik? Bik, stay staunch. How’s the boys doing?”

We talked quietly for a few minutes. Owen got another ribbing about Fermanagh and South Tyrone. We got up to go. I told Doc to get the screw to give us a shout if he wanted anything.

We shook hands, an old internee’s handshake, firm and strong.

“Thanks for coming in, I’m glad we had that wee yarn. Tell everyone, all the lads I was asking for them and…” He continued to grip my hand.

“Don’t worry, we’ll get our five demands. We’ll break Thatcher. Lean ar aghaidh.”

Outside Doc’s cell, the screw led us into speak to Kieran’s father and brother, who had just arrived to relieve Kieran’s mother.

We spoke for about five minutes. I felt an immense solidarity with the Doherty family, broken-hearted, like all the families, as they watched Kieran die. Yet because they understood their son, prepared to accept his wishes and completely committed to the five demands for which he fasted.

Talking to Alfie, his eyes brimming with unshed tears, in the quiet cells in the H-Blocks of Long Kesh, I felt a raw hatred for the injustice which created this crisis. Alfie, concerned for us, had a quiet word with Bik McFarlane and left to sit with Kieran.

We went in to speak to Kevin Lynch’s family. The prison chaplains were with Kevin, and the screws had advised Brendan that Kevin should not be disturbed. We spent a few minutes with Kevin’s father and older brother. Kevin was totally determined to continue his fast, unless the five demands were conceded.

Kevin’s father, broken-hearted at his imminent death, told us of his anguish in the face of British intransigence. “To rear a son and see him die like this…”

We left, unable to speak with Kevin. I paused at the open cell door: the priest knelt at Kevin’s bedside, Kevin lay stretched on the prison bed. The screw closed the door on us.

Back to the canteen, Paddy Quinn by now restricted to his cell, was absent. The lads asked us about Kevin and Doc’s condition. Someone had heard on the radio that the press were outside. One of the lads suggested that the hunger-strikers write an agreed statement signed by them all.

“Send it out yourselves tomorrow. They’ll think we solicited it from you.” I advised.

“They’re still at that,” said some of the lads in disgust. “They must think we can’t write.”

I scribbled out an account of our visit and read it to the boys. They suggested that we put in two paragraphs calling upon the Catholic hierarchy, SDLP and Dublin government to publicly support and pressurise the British government into moving towards the July 4th statement.

“And tell them to get off our families backs.”

“Thank our supporters and all the prisoners’ families.”

They dictated two paragraphs to me on these issues, then, satisfied at the final draft, we spent the last few minutes talking. Matt Devlin and Owen Carron; Séamus, Paddy, and Mickey Devine; myself and Brendan McFarlane. Then a few words with Pat McGeown, Tom and Lorny.

“Before we leave, have any of you any questions? You might never see us again.” I looked around at the thin, half-starved defiant young men.

“Have we got any heavy gear yet?” one of them asked. “Get us our five demands.” Somebody else said.

“Beidh on bua againn. Brisfidh muid Maggie Thatcher.”

We all shook hands. “Mind yourselves, and tell our families we’re sound.”

“Beannacht dia duit,” arsa Bik, “agus be cúramach.”

We left by the same gates and watchtowers, Brit soldiers, RUC men and screws. Move the British government on work, association, and segregation. That’s what the boys said.

We went out the last gate to where the press were gathered. The huge double gates of Long Kesh slammed shut behind us. I never saw Kevin Lynch or Kieran Doherty alive again.

THE HOLES IN THE WALLS GANG.

2011-08-19T10:27:00.000+01:00

Jimmy hit the stone chisel with the lump hammer. The house vibrated with the dull thumping thud of his exertions. Your man was nursing his morning after the night before hangover. He had his own personal dull thumping thud to contend with. He didn’t need any competition. Not at half eight in the morning. He was putting on a brave face but I knew he wasn’t pleased. Who would be?
I wasn’t too pleased myself. And I couldn’t find an egg cup. We had no electricity. Jimmy was punching a hole in the wall to let the spark run a new length of wire from the fuse box to replace the bit that was causing the trouble. Jimmy was a handy workman. But even a handy workman had to resort to brute strength and ignorance when it came to making holes in walls. When there was no electricity to run a drill.
Boiling eggs was easy. Even without electricity. But I like an egg cup. It’s more civilised. In fact it’s the only civilised way to eat a boiled egg.
‘Did you get those eggs of Eilis? Jimmy asked.
‘I did’ I told him.
‘The chicken that laid that egg was corn fed’ he said.
‘Do you see when you have bacon and eggs for breakfast?’
‘Aye’ I said.
Your man was listening to us intently. I could see he was relieved that Jimmy had stopped hammering when he was talking.
‘Well’ Jimmy continued’ what is the difference between the chicken who gives you the egg and the pig who gives you the bacon?’
‘I give up’ your man said after a short pause.
‘Well’ Jimmy replied with a smile, ‘The chicken who gives you the egg is making a commitment to you but the pig who gives you the bacon has given you his all’.
He chuckled away to himself. Your man muttered something obscene to himself as Jimmy returned to his hammering. I pressed my egg down on a plate with a wee thump so that it stood upright. Then I sliced the head off it.
Jimmy stopped hammering again.
‘You know we are all very spoiled these days. Hot and cold running water. Indoor toilets. And baths. Clean dry warm houses.’
‘Electricity’ your man muttered.
‘And egg cups’ I said.
‘It’s far from egg cups you were reared’ Your man replied.
‘Or Rioja wine’ I countered.
‘I’ll never drink again’ he said.
Jimmy swung his lump hammer again. Your man grimaced at the noise.
I sampled my corn fed chicken’s egg. It was delicious. A wee taste of butter on top and a sprinkle black pepper. I really appreciated that chicken’s commitment.
By the time I was finished Jimmy had the last hole punched in the wall. Your man fed the electric cable through to him.
‘People nowadays don’t appreciate what we have’. Jimmy continued. ‘Its not that long ago that most houses were damp and dark. The toilet out in the back and a cold water tap in the street. And candles or paraffin lamps. Its only when you have to do without something that you miss it’.
The two of them worked away together in silence. Eventually Jimmy gestured to me.
‘Try that light now’ he nodded.
I flicked the light switch. Nothing happened.
Jimmy shrugged.
‘The two of youse put your hands up’ he said.
‘Why?’ your man grumpted.
‘Just do what I ask’ Jimmy pleaded.
The two of us raised our hands. Jimmy adjusted the electrical fitting with his screw driver. The light came on. Jimmy chortled.
‘Many hands make light work’ he told us.

The Rising of the Moon

2011-08-15T12:23:00.002+01:00

A few weeks ago a good friend and sound man with whom I spent time in Long Kesh in the early 70s visited me in Leinster House. It was his 70th birthday and he and my brother Paddy and wee Harry came along to look around the place. He brought with him some poems he has written over the years.

One in particular, ‘The Long Road’ was about the 1981 hunger strike and I immediately set it aside knowing that I would use it as part of remarks I was to make at the national hunger strike commemoration in Camlough. And I did. The march was yesterday and I used the poem to open my speech.

The Long Road
The Hard Road
The Brutal Road
The Torture Road
The Naked Road
The Blanket Road
The Hunger Road
The Martyr Road
The road through the long Bog ...
Ten men walked them all.

The crowd at yesterday’s march and commemoration was among the biggest I have seen in many a long time. It took almost one hour to pass any given point. The weather was generally good and with the hills of South Armagh all around us it was a beautiful setting to mark 30 years since that traumatic summer of ’81.

As well as marking the deaths of Bobby, Francie, Raymond, Patsy, Joe, Martin, Kevin, Kieran, Tom and Mickey, the commemoration also remembered Michael Gaughan and Frank Stagg.

The McCreesh and McDonnell families

With Kieran Doherty's two sisters Roisin and Mairead

There were people from all across the island. And the organizing committee from South Armagh did a great job of planning the event, including a private gathering before hand at which presentations were made to the families of the hunger strikers.

A glass presentation was made by the South Armagh organisers and Jack O’Patsy’s Pottery in Youghal in County Cork also made a special plate presentation which was given to the families.

The event was notable for many reasons but not least for the numbers of young people who attended and participated.

Emma McArdle chaired the commemoration and young people from across South Armagh read brief biographies of the 12 hunger strikers. White doves were released, Paddy Martin played the uillean pipes, Ailín McIlwee sang ‘Raymond’s song’ and Paddy Quinn lowered the national flag during the minutes silence.

I gave the main speech and I include most of it below:

“The hunger strike was 30 years ago. It was a watershed moment in Irish history. In the summer of 81 over 50 people were killed and many hundreds more were injured.
30,000 plastic bullets were fired mostly in republican Belfast and Derry.

7 people died as a result, three of them children, and countless hundreds injured.

The hunger strike came at the end of a decade in which the British government had employed every conceivable weapon in its substantial military and political arsenal.

Internment; torture; shoot-to-kill actions; rubber and plastic and lead bullets; CS and CR gas; curfews and mass arrests; black propaganda; special courts and special laws and an orange judiciary; sectarian attacks and collusion, and the withdrawal of political status for the prisoners in the H Blocks and Armagh women’s prison, were all part of a concerted British strategy.

So too were its efforts to build political alliances with the SDLP and the Irish government. The British aim was simple – to protect British interests, and to defeat Irish republicanism and the struggle for Irish unity and independence.

Despite its propaganda and lies the British government knew that republicans enjoyed a substantial level of support. So, severing the connection between the republican struggle and the people was key and criminalisation was a central part of this strategy. Breaking the prisoners was crucial.

Chreid na Sasanaigh gurbh fhéidir príosúnaí poblachtacha a bhuaileadh agus a sceimhliú chun éide coirpigh a chaitheamh, chun obair príosún a dhéanamh agus a gcuid poblachtachas a thréigeadh.

They were supported in this by the northern and southern political establishment.
But, as was so often the case throughout the centuries the British and their local allies misjudged the tenacity and resolve of Irish republicans, and in particular of the prisoners.

The account of that period has often been told.

Of Kieran Nugent refusing to wearing the prison uniform and saying they would have to nail it to his back.

Of the hundreds of prisoners in the H Blocks – naked, beaten, starved, denied proper medical care or toilet facilities, forced frequently to run the gauntlet of riot clad screws or subjected to the brutality of the mirror search.

Of the women in Armagh – isolated and beaten and strip searched who were also denied adequate medical and toilet facilities.

Of the families who organised and campaigned through the Relatives Action Committees and then through the National Smash H-Block Campaign.

And of the tens of thousands who marched and protested in support of the prisoners.
The hunger strike changed the political landscape in Ireland.

The political gains that have been made since then owe much to the men and women political prisoners and to the sacrifice, resolve and perseverance of the hunger strikers and their families.

Bhí feachtas na bpriosúnaí dírithe ar 5 éileamh chun leasuithe príosúin ach i ndairíre bhí an streachailt ibhfad níos doimhne ná sin.

The prison struggle, like the struggle on the outside, became a battle of will about the right of the Irish people to self-determination and independence and freedom.

The prisoners knew that. So did the Brits.

It was about uniting Ireland. That struggle continues today. And core republican objectives are at the heart of everything we do today. The Sinn Féin political strategy is about achieving these objectives.

And let there be no doubt about it. We have a viable project and we have made, are making, and we will continue to make significant progress.

30 years ago the north was embroiled in war. British troops were dug in on these hilltops; people were dying in their scores; nationalist areas were under military occupation and unionists were entrenched behind their laager mentality.

The Sinn Féin strategy brought the British and the unionists and the Irish government to the negotiating table.

Thirty years ago there was an Orange State. The Orange State is gone.

The Government of Ireland Act is gone. The right of citizens to opt for a United Ireland is equal to that of those who wish to retain the union.

Sinn Féin is from that democratic tradition which believes that the British government never had any right to be in Ireland; does not have any right to be in Ireland and never will have any right to be in Ireland.

There is now an entirely peaceful way to bring an end to British rule. Our duty is to develop democratic ways and means to achieve and to unite behind the leadership and the campaigns which will bring this about.

Yes it will be challenging! Yes it will be frustrating! The enemies of change are strong. But that never stopped us in the past.

Remember, once upon a time Margaret Thatcher – remember Margaret Thatcher? Remember she claimed that the north was as British as Finchley! It never was.

Britain’s claim to the north is now reduced to a simple majority vote.

Of course we have a huge job of work to do to persuade unionists of the merits of the republican and democratic position. But we are also in a very good place to do this. Sinn Féin is the largest nationalist party in the Assembly and on local Councils and we hold one of the three European seats.

There are five Sinn Féin Ministers, including our leader Martin McGuinness, who as Deputy First Minister shares the Office of First and Deputy First Minister with Peter Robinson as an equal in all matters.

The DUP and UUP, who opposed power sharing, are sharing power in government.
There are all-Ireland political functioning institutions. And in all of these political institutions Sinn Féin is defending the rights and entitlements of all citizens and promoting our republican agenda for unity and equality.

I mbliana tá méadú tagtha ar ionadaíocht pholaitiúil Shinn Féin sna comhairlí áitiúla agus sa Tionól sa Tuaisceart.

In the Oireachtas today, we have a Sinn Féin team of 14 TDs and 3 seanadoirí. And in constituencies across the south, especially those where we came close to winning Dáil seats, Sinn Féin is growing organisationally and electorally.

In Leinster House our new Dáil team is proving itself to be effective and efficient. For many we are now the real opposition party, challenging the Fine Gael and Labour government as it imposes a disastrous austerity programme and introduces new stealth taxes on working families.

The fact is that Irish republicanism is stronger today than at any time since partition. Ach chun cuir lenar neart, chun tionchar pholaitiúil agus cumhacht níos láidre caithfidh muid ár streachailt a neartú.

There is no more important time than this for the republican principles of equality, fraternity, and freedom.

Tá polasaithe polaitiúla bunaithe ar na prionsabail seo de dhíth go práinneach chun leas ár bpobail.

Republicans need to build our party. More people need to join Sinn Féin. More young people need to join Sinn Féin. We especially need more women to join Sinn Fein. To take up leadership positions.

And we need to use our growing political strength wisely and successfully and well.

Achieving our republican goals will not be easy.

While Unionist leaders now see the benefits of working on an all Ireland basis, they remain opposed to a united Ireland.

So there is work to be done peacefully and democratically with them. Sinn Fein is up for that work.

The British government, despite its protestations to the contrary, and its systems, has yet to face up to its responsibilities to the people of this island. It can best do this by leaving us to manage our own affairs.

The Irish government, and in particular the Irish political establishment, is partitionist. That is evident in so many ways, for example, in the resistance thus far, to extending voting rights in Presidential elections to Irish citizens living in the north.

But there are many people in Ireland who want rid of outsiders ruling us whether from London or the IMF and EU. They want a free and united and independent Ireland.

I believe there are many people in Ireland who share our goals of a free and united and independent Ireland.

Trí neart pholaitiúil a thógáil agus comhpháirtíocht a chothú beidh muid ábalta ár spriocanna amach.

Sinn Féin is clear about our strategy, clear about our goals and clear about the road map to the future. We will not be distracted or put off course. We have a vision of a new future, a better future, and we have the spirit and the confidence to work with others to achieve this.

Raymond McCreesh agus a 9 comrádaí agus na poblachtaigh go leor eile a thug a mbeatha don streachailt thar na blianta, chuidigh siad linn theacht go dtí an áit a bhfuil muid inniu.

There is an enormous responsibility on us to seize the opportunity they created and to make Irish freedom a reality. There is a role for everyone in this new situation.

Let us stand together, united behind our republican goals.

Bainimis ár saoirse amach agus tógaimis Éire Aontaithe agus poblacht nua lenar linn.

There is resistance to this. There was also resistance to the blanketmen and the women in Armagh. They knew this. But they kept their eyes on the prize. They were also aware of all of the developments in the campaign and the manoeuvrings by the British and others.

They were not put off by any of this. They were steadfast in their determination. Struggle is hard. Activism can be challenging. There will always be cynics and begrudgers and naysayers.

But there will also always be heroes and heroines.

Ray McCreesh and his comrades set an example for every republican. They should be our role models. Let’s keep our eyes on the prize.

In the last entry of his diary Bobby wrote.

‘...at the end of the day everything returns to the primary consideration, that is, the mind. The mind is the most important. But then where does (the) proper mentality stem from?
Perhaps from ones desire for freedom.....
If they aren’t able to destroy the desire for freedom, they won’t break you.
They won’t break me because the desire for freedom, and the freedom of the Irish people is in my heart.
The day will dawn when all the people of Ireland will have the desire for freedom to show.
It’s then we’ll see the rising of the moon.’

The Doves are released

PÓC OFF

2011-08-07T22:52:00.002+01:00

PÓC OFF!

The second annual Póc ar an Cnoic for the Edward Carson Memorial Trophy was an outstanding success again this year and I will post some photos over the next few days. As regular readers of this blog, historians and hurling aficionados will know Unionist leader Carson was a hurler. He played for Trinity College away back in the day. And so, as part of Féile an Phobal, this blog and other atheletes gathered in the Stormont estate in the shadow of his famous statue Saturday. It was a mighty day of craic and sport.
First off our young folks, camógs and hurlers battled in a series of very exciting games on the lawns in front of Parliament Buildings.
Then a best out of two for the póc fada. Mark Sidebottom was defending his title from last year. Big Rogey – Martin Rogan heavy weight boxer – was obviously in training. Barry McIlduff obviously wasn’t. Neither was Mickey Brady. Or Lucilita Breatnach, Cathy Power or Madge McEldoone.

Peter Bunting did well. And Dominic Bradley. This blog was robbed. I was ahead when Mark Sidebottom sidebottomed me. There was only a bounce of the ball in it. But sin é. There will be no sticking him now when he is commentating. Mr Two in a row.
And then as Barry McIlduff said, before he fled to Croke to watch his son and Tír Éoghan and Baile Atha Cliath play in the national stadium, it was down to the serious business.

This was the real long póc when a range of senior hurlers and camógs competed to see how many pócs it took them to cover the mile long avenue which is the main entrance into Stormont. After a mighty battle Niall McManus from Rossa won the men’s event and Claire O Kane from Doire won for the women.
Everyone had a great day out. Carson certainly would have approved. Our sponsors – O Neills, Martin Donnelly and Translink did a great job. So did all the stewards and mentors and every competitor. And the Poc Fada lads from the Cooleys. And the staff at Stormont. This blog sends special thanks to our good friend Paula Mac Manus who kept the whole thing going. She did a mighty bit of work.
Comgheardas also to Kevin Gamble. This was his first outing as Féile Director. And a very fine outing it was also. Well done to all the Feile team.

The calm before the storm

2011-08-01T13:35:00.001+01:00

The Dáil closed two weeks ago for its six week summer break. Fine Gael and Labour will be glad of the opportunity to catch their breath after weeks of intense grilling by opposition TDs over a wide range of government policies.

Fine Gael and Labour won power promising not to raise income tax or cut social welfare and to defend public services, including health.

Last December’s budget by the Fianna Fáil led government was supported by Fine Gael and facilitated by Labour. It proposed major cuts to public spending and services, and a four year austerity programme.

Among the measures introduced was the universal social charge. This is basically a flat tax which requires that everyone with an income above €16,000 pays it at the same rate of 7%. It also brings people who earn as little as €77 a week into the tax net.

It breaches the fundamental principal of progressive taxation – that those who have more, should pay more. In opposition Labour opposed it. One of its TD’s Róisín Shortall, who is now a Minister, even went so far to describe it last December as … “little more than a ‘Working-Poor Tax’… It is a blatant and unjustifiable attack on the poor.”

It is now government policy.

In opposition Fine Gael pledged that it would not commit ‘another cent’ to the banks. The current Transport Minister Leo Varadkar promised that any bank “coming to us looking for more money is going to have to show how they are going to impose losses on their junior, on their senior bondholders, and on other creditors before they come looking for us for any more money. Not another cent”.

Of course, that led to another significant u-turn and a commitment of an additional €24 billion to the banks. Worse still has been the continuous stream of money being paid by the government to unguaranteed senior bondholders in Anglo-Irish Bank and Irish Nationwide – two banks that are now defunct.

There is no legal obligation on the government to pay these people and yet, according to the weekend’s Sunday Business Post: ‘The state has paid out over €1 billion to unsecured bondholders in Anglo so far this year, and a further €1 billion falls due later this year, just weeks before the budget.’

Additional taxes, including water charges and a property tax are to be introduced. As a first step a few weeks ago the government announced the introduction of a household charge. This is an annual flat rate tariff of €100 on all households for a two year period, beginning next January.

This will be replaced by a full property tax in 2014. The Minister has already said that this levy may increase.

The claim by some that this amounts to ‘only’ €2 a home a week misses the point. This will be an additional bill on top of increased food costs; the universal social charge; water charges; a reduction in household benefits; and increased mortgage payments.

And the hurt for the growing numbers of unemployed and those on low and middle incomes doesn’t stop there. There are substantial additional costs on their way from gas and electricity suppliers.

So, claims by the government parties that they won’t hurt citizens by raising income tax or lower welfare benefits are a deception. In every other way imaginable they are impoverishing the less well off while protecting the wealthy.

But it is in the area of health that the crisis is most clearly visible and the dishonesty in Fine Gael and Labour party policy most clear.

When he took up office the Taoiseach told the Dáil that ‘the old ways of politics damaged us’ and he promised that his government would ‘tell the people the truth.’

The row over Roscommon hospital has brought all of this into sharp focus.

The government decided to close Roscommon’s A&E. The Taoiseach denied making any promises to keep it open. At least he did until the Sunday Business Post produced a tape recording of a speech Kenny gave in Roscommon during the election promising to keep services at Roscommon open.

One of the Fine Gael candidates Denis Naughten was even more explicit. He said: ‘This election is a referendum on the hospital. If people want the reconfiguration of services – which would lead to the downgrading of services – to continue they should vote Fianna Fail. If they want the exact opposite and to see services retained and enhanced then they need to vote for Fine Gael.’

Labour was no better. It was in the same mode. It wanted a seat in Roscommon and Labour leader Eamon Gilmore said: ‘The Labour Party policy will be to retain Roscommon Hospital and to retain all services.’

Only 4 months in office and the government parties have performed so many policy u-turns they must be dizzy – the public certainly is.

And in their handling of the Roscommon A&E issue they look and behave like Fianna Fáil. Cén difir?

When Fianna Fáil used the 2009 HQIA report to justify the withdrawal of emergency services from Ennis Hospital James Reilly rightly accused the government of starving smaller hospitals of resources to make them unsafe and of then producing reports to prove this and to justify their closure.

Precisely and exactly what Fine Gael and Labour are now doing. The way to deal with a hospital that is unsafe is to make it safe and to say that you have no other option demonstrates a lack of vision and imagination.

And this situation can only get worse. The government is committed to cutting another €4 billion from December’s budget. The new Dáil term which begins in September promises to be stormy.

Poc ar an Cnoc – Poc Fada returns to Stormont

2011-07-27T14:10:00.004+01:00

Following last year’s hugely successful Féile an Phobail, ‘Poc ar an Cnoc’ – Puck on the Hill - on the Stormont estate, this year’s event will take place on Saturday 6th August 2011, as part of a series of GAA focused events during the Festival programme.

The Poc Fada has been a part of Féile an Phobail for many years and was held either in the Falls park or on the Black mountain. However, in November 2009 a tree was planted in the grounds of Parliament Buildings at Stormont to mark 125 years of An Cumann Luthchleas Gael. The tree was planted in the shadow of the statue to Unionist leader Edward Carson.

Subsequently, this blog offered to host the Poc Fada at Stormont and proposed that we name a competition after Edward Carson, who as a student at Trinity College in Dublin was a member of their hurley team.

Last year, the Captain of Trinity Martin Phelan and four team colleagues came up from Dublin to participate in the first ever Poc Fada at Stormont.

The concept of the Poc Fada (long puck) is rooted in the legend of Setanta or Cuchulainn, hero of the Ulster Cycles, who as a boy set out for the palace of the High King of Ireland at Emain Macha. Along the way he would hit his sliothar – ball – with his hurl and run ahead and catch it before it hit the ground.

50 years ago Fr. Pól Mac Sheáin and the Naomh Moninne club in the Cooley’s used this story as the basis for the first Poc Fada – long puck. Since then the competition has grown in prestige and status as an all-Ireland event. It is an annual competition testing the skills of Ireland’s best hurlers and camogie players.

The Poc ar an Chnoc brings the Poc Fada to Stormont.

Up for grabs are the senior men’s and women’s trophies; an open longest poc competition; the Edward Carson trophy for the celebrity competition and there will be an U10 Hurling blitz.

On Tuesday this year’s event was formally launched at a press event at Parliament Buildings. Regrettably, due to other commitments this blog was unable to be there but I will be at Stormont for the event itself on August 6th.

Great names of hurling taking part this year already include Damian Maguire (Carrickmore), Micko Herron and Paul O'Connell from Antrim, Ruairi Convery and Brian Gilligan, as well as last year’s winner Graham Clarke who will be returning to defend his title as the first ever winner of the Edward Carson Cup.

The Camogs will be taking part again and there will be the popular U-10 blitz. The BBC's Mark Sidebottom, the Mayor of Belfast Niall Ó Donnghaile and yours truly will be taking part in the Celebrity Poc Fada.

Somalia - A failure of politics

2011-07-25T16:06:00.001+01:00

Imagine walking from Belfast to Dublin or from Derry to Cork!

Imagine doing it in your bare feet.

Imagine walking in the scorching heat and with no water and food.

Imagine carrying your children and being forced to leave some of them lying dead at the side of the road because you haven’t the strength to dig a hole to bury them.

Imagine a landscape blasted by heat, with sparse vegetation and the rotting remains of cattle and other animals dead of thirst. A harsh and unforgiving countryside.
Imagine that those around you are empty eyed and gaunt, with swollen and extended stomachs.

This is the reality of life and death for hundreds of thousands of men, woman and children. It is the immediate future for millions more. It is Somalia.

Famine is a terrible word. It conjures up frightening images and for many in Ireland a folk memory of the Great Hunger of the 1840’s.

The Horn of Africa today, like much of Africa, is still conflicted by the brutal legacy of colonisation. It is also caught up in the post 9-11 international conflict with Islamist groups linked to al-Qaeda.

Climate change may be playing its part but it is the decisions of past colonial governments; and the policies being pursued by the international community, and local indigenous governments, including a Somali government whose remit extends only a few kilometres beyond Mogadishu, which have created this crisis. Ultimately it is a failure of politics.

No one will be surprised that the area worst affected correlate to those which suffer entrenched deprivation and poverty and where there has been an absence of investment in infrastructure – health programmes – agricultural training – education for children and jobs.

Somalia, northern Kenya and Southern Ethiopia are experiencing their worst drought in 60 years. This has had a disastrous impact on the largely pastoral and farming communities living in the affected area.

10 million people are affected by the famine. That is almost twice the population of this island. It’s the first time in almost 20 years that the word famine has been used to describe the conditions in Somalia.

Everyday hungry, thirsty, tired and emaciated figures make their way in slow processions through a blistered, dying landscape toward hastily erected refugee camps. Dadaab in Kenya has almost 400,000 people crammed within its increasing boundaries. That’s more people than live in the city of Belfast totally dependent on international aid.

The 4,000 people living in a refugee camp called ‘Safety’ on the outskirts of the Somali capital Mogadishu, have built their homes out of plastic sheets wood and branches. People sleep on the ground.

The horror stories now being reported by the media tell the desperate story of people on the edge of disaster. One report recorded the experience of Amina who had walked 50 kilometres with her one and a half year old son on her back only to discover when she arrived at ‘Safety’ that he was dead.

The UN defines famine as:
• More than 30% of children suffering from acute malnutrition
• Two adults or four children dying of hunger each day for every group of 10,000 people
• The population must have less than 2100 calories of food each day.

In the famine affected areas of Bakool and Lower Shabelle the reality is already far worse than this.

Aid is needed immediately. But the Norwegian attacks, which left over 90 dead and the death of Amy Winehouse have again pushed this issue off the media agenda. This reduces the political momentum for the urgent intervention that is essential to save lives.

The situation is complicated by the fact that the Islamist rebel group, al-Shabaab, which controls much of the area affected, has denied lifting a ban on some of the aid organisations and has rejected any suggestion that there is a famine in the region.

The UN Food Agency is holding crisis talks on the issue in Rome and there have been pledges of money for famine aid, but thus far it is insufficient to meet the immediate needs of those millions at risk and it is inadequate in building the necessary infrastructure to minimise the threat of famine in the future.

More needs done and quickly.

For now there are a multitude of international aid organisations working in the region. Among them are Irish organisations like Concern and Goal and Trocaire. If you can donate check out their websites and do so.

Kenny is not listening

2011-07-20T21:29:00.000+01:00

Tomorrow state leaders from across the Eurozone will be meeting in Brussels to try and fix the crisis in the Eurozone economies. It’s a big ask!

The agenda is already clear. Much of the focus will be on Greece. The leaders need to agree measures to ensure the sustainability of Greek public finances; the role of private sector involvement; whether it is possible to put more flexibility into the European Financial Stability Facility; to take measures to mend the outstanding faults in the banking sector; and to agree measures to ensure there is liquidity – money - within the banking systems.

The Irish government has set as its priority a reduction in the interest rate being paid on the loans it has taken out as a result of the EU/IMF/ECB (European Union – International Monetary Fund – European Central Bank) bailout.

The stated goal by Fine Gael at the time of the election earlier this year was to reduce the interest on the total bailout of the loan by 1%.

This, it was claimed, would save the Irish taxpayer some €400 million per year.

However, the Minister for Finance then moved the goalposts. According to Minister Noonan the government’s goal now is an 0.6% reduction on any further drawdown of EU money. This would save taxpayers in the region of €150 million a year.

There is no sign at this time that even this significantly reduced demand in the interest rate reduction will be achieved, but even if it were the small amount involved would have to be set against the excessive profits our so-called partners in Europe are making at our expense; the tens of billions being pumped into banks to pay for their mistakes; and the hardship our citizens are enduring as a result.

But the real issue in all of this is, and the issue which should be the priority for the government going into Thursday’s summit, is the fact that our partners in Europe have imposed an excessive 3% handling charge on the loans they have made to the Irish government.

This means that our European partners – at least they claim to be our partners – are making a massive €9 billion profit. This is a cautious estimate based on a full draw down over seven and a half years and may increase if the cost of borrowing at EU level increases as predicted by some economists.

Last week the Department of Finance confirmed that the IMF is also going to make a significant profit on its loans to the state. This is estimated to be € 4.6 billion. Again this figure is based on the full amount being drawn down.

What this all means is that when added together the EU, European member states, and the IMF will make more than €13.6 billion profit from loans extended to the Irish government under the EU/IMF austerity programme.

This is money that ordinary citizens will have to pay for years to come through new stealth taxes and deep cuts to public services.

This is the issue that the Irish government should be placing on the agenda on Thursday in Brussels. This is the big issue. The unsustainability of the mountain of debt which this government, and the last, have heaped on citizens.

I used the opportunity to raise this matter during a Dáil debate on Wednesday but Enda Kenny was not for listening. His position is fixed. Other options, other choices, are not for him.

And there are other choices to be made.

The truth is that you can’t resolve a debt crisis by taking on more debt.

The Irish government should end payments to Unguaranteed Senior Bond holders. There is no legal obligation to make the payments and many other governments and those in the markets are surprised the Irish government is still paying out.

The implication of this short sighted position is that in early November €703 million will be paid over to unguaranteed senior bondholders in Anglo-Irish Bank – a bank that is dead – that doesn’t exist now.

This huge sum of money mirrors almost exactly the amount of money taken out of the Health budget in last Decembers budget.

The social consequences of this and of government policy is to be found in closed A&E units; in the almost half a million unemployed; in the decisions our elderly citizens are being forced to take between paying bills and buying food.

It is reflected in the downgrading of services in Hospitals, in the loss of SNA’s in schools and in the cuts to fuel and household benefits.

It is to be found in the Universal Social charge and in increasing energy and food prices.

The Irish government faces a huge negotiation and seems ill-prepared and out of its depth.

There is a lot of noise coming out of Europe which suggests that EU leaders are finally coming to realise that something radical needs to be done to avoid calamity.

But with the larger states thus far placing self-interest above the interests of their neighbours, and the Irish government dug in on a ruinous strategy, Thursday’s Brussels summit promises to be the most important for Ireland in recent history.

A litany of Abuse of Children and Trust

2011-07-18T22:11:00.000+01:00

It’s difficult to know where to begin. Last week’s Cloyne report makes grim reading. It provides a horrendous and detailed account of clerical abuse and Catholic hierarchy failure and cover-up in the Diocese of Cloyne in County Cork.

It is the fourth major report in the last decade in the south of Ireland into child abuse by clerics.

The Murphy report investigated the handling of allegations of clerical sex abuse in the Dublin Archdiocese and was published in November 2009. It concluded that four successive archbishops had handled the allegations with ‘denial, arrogance and cover-up’ and that they did not report what they knew of these allegations to the Gardaí.

The structures and rules of the Church allowed for the cover-up of abuse.

Murphy also concluded that many auxiliary bishops in the Dublin Diocese were also aware of the accusations yet priests were assigned to parishes without any examination of sex abuse issues.

It detailed cases involving over 300 children.

The Ryan report was published in May 2009 and presented a damning account of life and abuse for thousands of children who were victims of abuse in industrial schools, orphanages, institutions for children with disabilities, reformatories, and ordinary day schools. Its investigations went back as far as 1914 but most of work was focussed on the four decades from the 1930s to 70s.

The conclusions were devastating for church and state alike. The Ryan report painted a picture of many thousands of children enduring years of sexual and physical abuse in over 200 institutions run by religious orders over decades. Hundreds of priests and nuns and brothers and lay people were involved.

Ryan criticised the Department of Education. It had failed in its ‘statutory duty of inspection.’

And as in the Murphy report, the Ryan report described how too often the agencies of the state, whether Gardaí or the Department of Education, too often deferred to the religious institutions preferring to believe their accounts or not being prepared to investigate allegations because clerics were involved.

The Ferns report was published in 2005. It reported into how allegations of clerical sex abuse against children had been handled by the Church and State authorities in the Diocese of Ferns between 1962 and 2002.

Once again the Catholic hierarchy was roundly criticised for the manner in which it had dealt with allegations during that four decade period. In one telling comment Bishop Brendan Comiskey was accused of having ‘failed to recognise the paramount need to protect children, as a matter of urgency, from potential abusers.’

And now there is the Cloyne report. It investigated allegations of child sex abuse in the Cloyne Diocese from 1996 to 2009. Once again the hierarchy, including its most senior figures, come in for serious criticism. Their response to allegations of abuse is described variously as ‘inadequate’, inappropriate’, ‘ineffective.’ It stands accused of telling lies and Bishop Magee was accused of taking ‘little or no interest in the management of clerical sexual abuse cases until 2009’. This was 13 years after the Church had put in place guidelines and 15 years after the Fr. Brendan Smyth case.

The Cloyne report examines the handling of allegations against 19 clergy and describes how none of the priests were moved as a result of the accusations. A number were retired. And in one instance a priest who brought complaints to Bishop Magee was discouraged from taking the issue any further.

The media last week carried accounts of victims and of the behaviour and treatment of alleged clerical abusers. It made for distressing and depressing reading.
The response of the Church Hierarchy through Cardinal Seán Brady to the Cloyne’s report was to apologise once again for the exposure of more abuse of children by clerics.

An additional aspect that has caused concern has been the attitude of the Vatican to the whole issue of clerical abuse and its lack of support for the efforts of those within the Irish Church who have sought to put in place effective measures to deal with this problem. The Cloyne Report found that the Vatican ‘gave individual Irish bishops the freedom to ignore the procedures which they had agreed and gave comfort and support to those who, like Monsignor O’Callaghan, dissented from the stated official Irish Church policy’.

Monsignor O’Callaghan was responsible for implementing child protection measures in the Diocese of Cloyne and ‘did not approve of the procedures’ set out by the Church and consequently ‘stymied’ their implementation.

There is talk of the Irish government closing its embassy to the Vatican in protest. There have also been demands that the Papal Nuncio, the Vatican ambassador to Dublin, should be expelled.

The government has responded quickly and there is talk of strong new legislation forcing the disclosure of information on child sexual abuse; as well as the placing of the child protection code ‘Children First’ on a statutory basis; and a ‘vetting bureau’ to vet applicants who wish to work with children.

This sounds impressive but already social workers are expressing concern at the implementation of all of this at a time when budgets for all government departments are under pressure and when there are plans for more cutbacks later this year in the budget.

The government’s seriousness on confronting this hugely difficult issue will be determined by its willingness to put the necessary money into ensuring that any new measures can function effectively. It will also be judged on how it responds to abuse in the Magdalene laundries and Bethany Home.

As for the Catholic Church I suspect that most citizens are exasperated with the endless apologies and failures by bishops and archbishops and Cardinals to face up to this issue honestly. Too often they have been revealed to have been more concerned about scandal and its impact on the Catholic Church than with the needs and concerns and interests of victims. The subsequent damage to the Church has been all the greater because of this.

There is a grievous lack of leadership. But more importantly the Church hierarchy have completely failed to live up to the teachings of Jesus.

Finally, there is a commitment from the Executive at Stormont for an inquiry into historic cases of abuse. But as we have seen in the Cloyne’s report these issues are also current. This blog believes that an inquiry into clerical abuse should be conducted across this island. If ever an issue transcends partition it is the issue of child abuse.

Too Soon – Too Young: Seán Ó Riada

2011-07-17T18:15:00.002+01:00

Féile na Laoch, /Festival of heroes, Cúl Aodha Sunday July 31st

Seán Ó Riada was born almost 80 years ago on August 1st 1931. He is one of the great pioneers of traditional Irish music. In 1959 he scored the music for the film Mise Éire and succeeded in producing one of the most iconic pieces of Irish music of modern times.

In 1961 he formed Ceoltóirí Chualann and for the remainder of the decade, and with the support of some mighty musicians, he singlehandedly took Irish traditional music into a new era. Ó Riada is equally famed for his choral music and, as part of the féile, Cór Chúil Aodha, the choir he formed in the village, will perform one of his masses.

He did great work for Ireland, for our language and for our people.

Sean died at the age of 40, too soon and too young.

I have listened to his music all my adult life so I was greatly honoured to be asked to launch Féile na Laoch when I was down west Cork recently. The festival will be held over the August bank holiday, beginning on July 31st.

The official launch was great event and I was delighted to meet up with Sean’s son Peadar and others from Cuil Aodha. They are doing great work.

Peadar and the organisers putting together a magnificent weekend encompassing pop and traditional Irish music, opera, poetry, drama and dance.

Great names such as Christy Moore and Glen Hansard will be joined by opera soprano Cara O’Sullivan, sean nós singer Josie Sheáin Jeaic Mac Donncha and jazz guitarist Louis Stewart.

I am hugely impressed with the focal point of the festival with music taking place throughout the night and the stage, on the banks of the Sullane River, rotating from sunset to sunrise as performances continue and culminating with a massed orchestra performing Ó Riada’s Mise Éire.

It is a fitting way to remember a man who did so much to promote Irish arts, music, culture and the Irish way of life, a man who is widely believed to be the most influential figure in the revival of traditional Irish music from the 1960’s onwards.

I wish you all a great Féile. I am sure it will be hugely successful and very enjoyable and uplifting and I will be encouraging people from throughout Ireland and abroad to travel here to Ballyvourney for the August Bank Holiday weekend for what promises to be a magical Irish festival.

Adh mór libh.

With Peadar Ó Riada

2011-07-16T20:29:00.002+01:00

OUTCOMERS

This blog gets to go to all sorts of places for all kinds of events. On Friday it was Dundalk for a series of engagements and a few events. The town was busy. Traders have a hard time with the big out of town multiples eating into the retail business. Escalating rates and other charges make life difficult for small local shop keepers. Recession! Recession!

Recession is the order of the day.

But on Friday Dundalk was bustling. Especially in Eno’s opposite the Cathedral. I was there as a guest of Dundalk Outcomers. They, and this blog and other public representatives, were celebrating Dundalk Pride. The event at Eno’s is part of a celebration of the towns gay citizens. Other events include a table quiz, a film and panel discussion. Today, Saturday, is Pride Day.

Pride Day is a fun day out for everyone with an outdoor café, funfair stalls, a travelling circus troupe and magic show, free workshops, music and holistic therapy treatments. The venue is Dundalk Outcomers Centre and Courtyard at 8 Roden Place. So if you get to read this blog on time dander along for a bit of fun or if you are a real party person then the Pride Party in the Radius Club is the place to be tonight.

So who are the Dundalk Outcomers?

They are a support group for gay, lesbian and bi-sexual people from Louth and the border counties. They run a drop in centre at 8 Roden Place. It is a safe and relaxed place for people to make social contact, meet for a chat or get advice. The centre is run by volunteer members of the Dundalk Outcomers Group.

Bernadine is the co-ordinator. She is also funny, engaging and a brilliant advocate for our gay, lesbian and bi-sexual friends. Bernadine also promotes Lesbian and Gay health information and training. She spoke wonderfully well at the event at Eno’s.

So did Billy. Billy is the chairperson of Dundalk Outcomers. John is the youth worker.

If you check out the Dundalk Outcomers website you will see the range of services on offer. Or email info@outcomers.org. Bernadine can be contacted at Bernadine@outcomers.org and John at youth@outcomers.org.

They do great work and this blog thanks them all for that. I hope they have a great Pride.

As your man says all the time politics has to be about empowerment. Equality is the essence of republicanism. And equality is for everyone. That includes our gay, lesbian and bi sexual citizens.

British journalism and psyops

2011-07-11T16:46:00.001+01:00

Sunday was the last day of the News of the World. It was the biggest selling Sunday newspaper in Britain. It thought it made the rules. And for much of its 168 years it did.

It was a paper which specialised in sex, politics, drugs and celebrity scandals. And it didn’t care who it hurt in seeking to sell papers.

As part of the Murdoch media empire it was ruthless and merciless in pursuit of the exposé.

But last week it became of the latest victim of that same exposé culture it had dominated for generations.

The accusations being levelled against it are straightforward.

It hacked phones for stories - to sell more papers - to make more money. But the British public’s appetite for sensational stories of political corruption, the sexual indiscretions of celebrities and the exposure of sporting cheats, drew the line at listening in on the traumatic personal calls of bereaved British military families and terror and murder victims. There are also allegations that tens of thousands of pounds were spent on bribing police officers.

According to the Chief Executive of News International worse is to come.

The British government rushed to limit the damage. So, two enquiries have been ordered by the British Prime Minister, who is himself mired in the controversy because he hired Andrew Coulson, the former boss of News of the World, when some of this was going on.

This blog has watched this story unfold with interest in recent days. It has dominated much of the news reporting in Ireland and was given a new twist when Murdoch closed News of the World.

But there is another part of the story. It is to be found in the arrogance and hypocrisy and jingoism of significant elements of the British media establishment.

The exposure of News of the World, which is largely down to the dogged determination of a small number of journalists, is now being extolled as an example of the British media getting it right! They are busy clapping themselves on the back claiming this is an example of the high standards of British journalism in the pursuit of truth and justice.

There are many in Ireland who would strongly disagree. Whatever the truth about the events at the News of the World British the record of the Britisdh media in Ireland was disgraceful and shameful.

With a few honourable exceptions most of the British media set aside the laudable objectives of truth and justice and willingly bought into the British state’s version of events in Ireland and in doing so undoubtedly contributed to the duration of the conflict.

Britain’s counter insurgency specialist in the early 70’s was Brigadier Frank Kitson. He brought to the north of Ireland his experience of counter-insurgency actions in a host of former British colonies from Kenya to Cyprus. Kitson argued that to win against a guerrilla enemy which had the support of its community, or at least a significant proportion of that community, one needed to reshape the government, the judiciary, the law, the police and the media, as well as government policy.

According to Kitson: “The law should be used as just another weapon in the government’s arsenal, in which case it becomes little more than a propaganda cover for the disposal of unwanted members of the public.”

This needs a compliant media and an effective disinformation programme. In a British Ministry of Defence documents in 1974 entitled, ‘An introduction to Psychological Operations’, it states:
“Psychological Operations (Psyops) is an all-embracing term defined by NATO as ‘planned Psychological activities in peace and war directed toward the enemy, friendly and neutral; audiences, in order to create attitudes and behaviour favourable to the achievement of political and military objectives …”

Media coverage of the conflict was an integral part of Pysops and black propaganda. It was also expensive. In 1989-90 the British government spent £7.238 million through its ‘Northern Ireland Information Service’ for a population of 1.5 million as against £1.1 million in Scotland by the equivalent office for a population of 5 million. And this did not take into account the money spent by the British Army or the RUC.

The fantasy stories; the lies; the willingness to carry as fact British Army and RUC accounts of events; and the refusal to investigate illegal actions by British state forces, are all legendary.

Scores of programmes were banned. The internal rules within newspapers and broadcasting companies for covering Ireland and the political bias of these ensured a large degree of self-censorship. And for a time after October 1988 this took on the form of formal censorship. It was about criminalising a whole community.

No British or Irish broadcaster, no mainstream British or Irish newspaper was exempt from this – and for some it has become a way of life which continues.

The Murdoch ‘Sun’, which it is speculated will soon publish a Sunday edition to replace the News of the World, carried a typical piece of psyops as far back as 1971. Under the title ‘Front Line Kids’ it was claimed that ‘IRA leaders here are sending their shock troops to war – their own children. Bomb throwing eight year olds are in the front line. They steal out at dusk to play games with death, trained to hate and kill. And the children at war chant obscenities to nursery rhyme tunes as the bullets fly.”

But much of psyops was given over to presenting the conflict as sectarian and excusing the killing of civilians by British forces or their loyalist allies. Collusion was generally ignored.

Depending on the target audience Republicans were accused of being either ‘criminals’ or ‘godfathers’ – or Marxists trying to create a communist dictatorship in Ireland.

And the underlying racism of much that appeared about the Irish was evident in stories like that produced by the Daily Express in October 1976 which claimed that Irish people in Britain were leading a £200 million social security swindle and that millions were finding their way to the IRA.

It was a reminder of the attitude of British newspapers of the 19th century. Mostly famously expressed in the Punch cartoons of the period which depicted the Irish as ape like, with low foreheads and Neanderthal features.

So, from one perspective the behaviour of the News of the World has been aberrant but from another, in particular the experience of Irish republicans and nationalists, the News of the World is a perfect example of how British journalism functions.

It’s not about truth. It’s not about justice. It’s about selling papers, making a profit and backing the status quo.

Back to School

2011-07-09T15:07:00.004+01:00

This year sees the second of Sinn Féin’s summer schools. For those who don’t know there are many of these across the state during the summer months. They are organised by a wide range of groups and cover topics as diverse as literature, music, culture, politics, writing and much more. Most last a weekend.

This blog has spoken at several over the years. But last year Sinn Fein held its first such school in west Cork and this year we have returned for a second time.

'Scoil Shamhraidh na Saoirse’ is taking place in Baile Bhuirne in West Cork. The summer school has a wide range of speakers on politics, the economy, sports, language and arts. The partys website www.sinnfein.ie is carrying regular updates throughout the weekend.

Among the topics being covered is the 1981 hunger strike which took place 30 years ago this year. Danny Morrison, Leo Green and Sean Kelleher are addressing that issue. This morning there was a informed and very discussion on the ‘need for a new Revival’. The main contributors to that were the north’s Minister of Culture Carál Ní Chuilín, Robert Ballagh, Jimmy Barry Murphy and Adrian Breathnach and beginning soon after my keynote speech will be a debate on ‘Dealing with the debt crisis – Progressive Alternatives’. Contributors to this include Pearse Doherty TD – Sinn Fein Finance spokesperson, Huginn Freyr Thorsteinsson - Political Advisor to the Finance Minister of Iceland, Yanis Varoufackis - Professor of Economics University of Athens, Tom McDonnell – Policy Analyst TASC, Mary Smithwick - Assistant News Editor and Political Editor for the Evening Echo and Jack O’Connor - General President of SIPTU.

Frankie Gallagher (loyalist politician and chief spokesman for the UDA linked Ulster Political Research Group) also this morning on the issue of loyalism.

Getting my notes ready

I used my remarks to speak on the need for a new Republic for the 21st century which is relevant for today and which reflects the views and opinions citizens across this island.

Sinn Féin’s goal is a new republic for the 21st century that encompasses all the people of this island. Already there are many, including business leaders and some unionists in the north, who understand the economic value of building the all-Ireland economy.

In my view Ireland can be changed. But citizens need to be clear about the kind of new Ireland we want to create. That needs a national debate. If we are to renew and revitalise and construct a new Ireland – a new Republic – it has to be relevant for citizens today.

It must reflect the views and opinions of all our citizens; whether they are urban or rural; nationalist or unionist or republican or none; of all or no religion; young or old; disabled or from our new immigrants, and it needs to reach out to the diaspora.

In respect of unionists it is important that we engage with them in seeking to create a new republic. It must be one in which they are comfortable.
The construction of a new national democracy on the island of Ireland must involve reconciliation between orange and green.

Nationalists and republicans must reach out to unionists and engage with them on the type of Ireland we want to create. Our responsibility is to ensure that unionists are comfortable and feel secure in a new Ireland. It has to be their Ireland also.

So it must be a shared Ireland, an integrated Ireland, an Ireland in which unionists have equal ownership. That means republicans seeking to understand what unionists mean by Britishness.

It means being prepared to seriously examine forms of institutional and constitutional arrangements and structures which may be different from those normally advanced by republicans.

It means seeking to convince unionists that in a new Republic they would be citizens, not mere subjects, and entitled to rights not concessions.

Key to this is building an equal society, one in which equality is at its core. The fact is that equality makes sense. Inequality costs society more. The elimination of inequality is not only possible, it is critically important, not least because it allows for the full mobilisation of the available creative human resources.

For example, a person who cannot walk is not unequal because he or she uses a wheelchair, but because most buildings (including workplaces and schools) and transportation are designed in a way that excludes people who use wheelchairs.

It takes only a few adjustments to allow for universal access.

This principle applies more broadly. We are not inherently unequal. It is exclusive social and other structures that make us unequal. We can choose, either to perpetuate and reinforce these structures, or to change them to make them more inclusive. Just as inequality is socially constructed, it can also be dismantled.

As a consequence, building an equal society is possible because it is a matter of public choice.

Finally, we need to appreciate that Ireland today is a country in transition. There have been many positive developments in both states on the island. A lot of the old certainties have gone. A lot of the old conservative influences have been weakened.

A lot of unfinished business still has to be completed, but progress has been made.

If is also a fact that Ireland is still partitioned and there is poverty and unemployment, and there are profound issues which need to be resolved between unionism and the rest of us.

But no one should minimise how much our society has changed, particularly in this last forty years or so.

Sinn Féin’s goal is an Ireland built on positive change, on equality, on partnership. An Ireland where the wealth is invested creatively and more fairly and where our children wake up in homes that are warm.

An Ireland in which our schools are properly resourced and where no one waits for a hospital bed, a home or a job.

The resources exist to build this republic – the new Ireland. What is needed is political will and vision. We are inviting others to join us in this historic endeavour.

Heroin addiction – ‘like ground hog day’

2011-07-07T13:22:00.002+01:00

There is a similarity in problems faced by communities north and south. The constituency of Louth and East Meath shares many of the same characteristics of west Belfast – high unemployment; poor housing provision; poverty; lack of investment by government; community safety issues and much more.

There are differences also. The most obvious being the fact that Louth and East Meath has an electorate of over 100,000 – some 40,000 more than west Belfast and big parts of it are rural.

Among the community safety issues are those caused by drug and alcohol misuse.

A few weeks ago this blog and local Sinn Féin Councillor Paddy McQuillan visited the Louth Community Drug and Alcohol Team in Drogheda.

We met the staff, members of the North East Regional Drug Task Force, and a group of addicts who are on methadone to control their heroin addiction.

I was very impressed by the commitment and professionalism of the staff who provide a first class service with inadequate resources, and who are struggling to meet the needs of a growing number of drug and alcohol addicts.

Drug and alcohol misuse has taken up to 8 lives in the Drogheda area in recent years.

We met a group of former heroin users, one of whom was a woman. They were very honest about the dreadful impact the drug has had on them and their families, and the connection between heroin and drug addiction and crime.

One former user described the experience as like ground hog day – chasing the money –chasing the dealers - and chasing the drug. And when that cycle is complete they begin the process all over again.

The Drug and Alcohol Team in Drogheda has only been in place since last April. I have no doubt from my conversation with the former heroin users that the centre has been a life line for them.

The project consists of a co-ordinator, one project worker, one CE support staff member and one counsellor who provides 6 sessions a week. According to statistics for 2010 from the Health Research Board, 76 individuals presented for treatment at the centre.

Of these 60% had heroin addiction; 28% had issues with alcohol; 17% with cannabis and 7% for cocaine. 71% of the above have been identified as early school leavers and 60% use more than one drug. 33% are injecting drug users and 8% began injecting under the age of 19.

There obviously are policing and other issues around the availability of illegal drugs. And these statistics only scratch the surface of the problem.

The reality is that many individuals who initially presented with one problem actually have more than one. Some were addicted to up to four substances. And those I talked with spoke of many more users in the area who have not sought help.

The Louth Community Drug and Alcohol Team work hard to provide a service which helps those affected by drug and alcohol misuse. However, the biggest gap in current services lies in the absence of a second level 2 methadone prescribing GP.

Currently there is only one and consequently the waiting list for methadone treatment in Louth stands at eighteen months which discourages individuals to go on the list. In Dublin the waiting time for treatment is within 10 days.

Even if an addict manages to get on the list they are expected to maintain their drug using lifestyle in order to qualify for treatment. It also means that the current system is encouraging ongoing heartache, illness, further family breakdown, crime and in some cases overdose, which can lead to death.

I secured an adjournment debate in the Dáil on Tuesday night and spoke on this issue pointing out the immediate and beneficial affect an additional level 2 GP would have.
The Minister, Roisin Shortall in her contribution acknowledged that the Health Service Executive has now “identified two potential level 2 GPs who are available to commence in the Drogheda area. An additional level 1 GP has also been identified and the HSE is awaiting return of a signed contract from the person concerned.”

This was good news.

The Community Drug and Alcohol Team also needs a dedicated project worker who can provide the essential family support that is part of dealing with drug misuse in the community. But on this issue the Ministers response was less helpful. She said: “Unfortunately, there is no funding available to support an additional family support worker”.

The Louth Community Drug and Alcohol Team in Drogheda provides a critical health and community service. So, this issue is not going away and I told the Minister this after the debate.

We have no money she told me. ‘Yes, we have’, I told her, ‘But your government is giving it away to unguaranteed bondholders in toxic banks.’

And so it is with €10 million this week alone.

In the meantime the work of groups like the Louth Community Drug and Alcohol Team continues. Without their dedication many more lives would be lost or destroyed by the scourge of drugs and alcohol. So well done to you and all those others like you who provide this essential service.

Irish Flotilla Activists Defiant

2011-07-04T11:15:00.003+01:00

The war of words around the humanitarian aid flotilla trying to bring much needed supplies to Gaza took on a more sinister turn when two of the ships, one in a Greek port and the second, the Irish MV Saoirse, were the target last week of what appears to have been sabotage.

Israeli spokespersons have been ratcheting up the threatening language against the flotilla. Despite having no evidence to support their accusations Israeli newspapers have claimed that the aid convoy is carrying a cargo of chemicals and is planning to use violence.

The Israeli Maariv newspaper used a photo of one of the flotilla and beside it the headline, “Coming to kill.”

One Israeli blogger wrote: “The objective of the ‘Ships of Fools’ has nothing to do with helping the people of Gaza, or promoting peace. Its purpose is to delegitimize Israel and kill Jews.”

And a government Minister claimed that the Israeli Army had information that “participants in the flotilla to Gaza plan on attacking IDF soldiers with lethal force are accurate”.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu added to the spin: "Israel has the full right to operate against efforts to smuggle missiles, rockets and other weapons to Hamas's terror enclave."

It was in the midst of all of this negative propaganda that the two aid boats were damaged.

Evidence that Propeller shaft had bent

At a press conference in Belfast on their return some of those who were on the MV Saoirse explained that the indent in the propeller shaft was sufficient to bend the shaft and leave them adrift at sea. There was also the real danger that it might have sheared off while under stress and that the propeller could have holed and sank the boat.

The activists remain defiant and refuse to be intimidated.

In the meantime Israel has been exercising enormous political pressure on other countries in the region to prevent the flotilla from sailing from their ports.

This blog has written to the Irish Minister for Foreign Affairs seeking a full investigation into the situation surrounding the MV Saoirse and urging him to raise this matter with the Israeli authorities. I have also asked him to seek from the Turkish authorities a full and thorough investigation into what occurred.

The Irish government has a responsibility to protect Irish citizens abroad and must demand answers from the Israeli government on this matter.

I want to commend the courage and dedication of the crew and international observers who were due to sail on the MV Saoirse.

Despite the Israeli assault last year on the previous flotilla in which 9 aid workers were killed and the threats from official Israeli sources, they have refused to be intimidated and are committed to highlighting the illegal and inhumane siege by Israel of Gaza.

Support the MV Saoirse

2011-06-29T16:56:00.000+01:00

Today I had an opportunity to speak in the Dáil on the outcome of last weeks European Council meeting. Much of the debate was around the EU/IMF/ECB bailout of €45 billion to the Irish government, its social consequences and the debt repayments that must be met by the state.

But it was also an opportunity to raise the issue of the flotilla of ships which are planning to bring much needed aid to the besieged people of Gaza. One of the ships is the MV Saoirse, an Irish boat. Among its crew of Irish activists are a number of shinners from west Belfast, Waterford and Derry.

If you want some idea of what they are up against then read the words of the Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman on Israeli radio on Tuesday morning. He accused those taking part in the flotilla of being ‘terror activists, seeking to create provocation and looking for blood.’

Minister Lieberman then sought to dismiss the flotilla as irrelevant and to claim that a number of those planning to join it had declined because they had been convinced ‘by our explanations regarding the humanitarian situation in Gaza.’

In reality what people will be more concerned about is the safety of those brave human rights activists who have refused to be intimidated by Israeli threats and are determined to bring aid to the besieged citizens of Gaza.

Last May nine unarmed aid workers were killed by heavily armed Israeli naval commandos who dropped from helicopters onto the deck of the Mavi Marmara.

And already the Israeli state is getting its defence in first with off the record briefings to the media claiming there ‘may’ be Hamas members in the flotilla ‘who means Israelis harm.’

The siege of Gaza by Israel is an international disgrace. The settlements on the west Bank are a breach of international law and the result of the theft of Palestinian land. The separation wall, which runs for hundreds of miles stripping the Palestinian people of land and water, is a weapon in the arsenal of an Israeli government determined to strengthen its apartheid system against the Palestinian people.

Last week the Israeli government imposed a new and harsh regime on the thousands of Palestinian political prisoners it holds. Education courses have been withdrawn; visits curtailed and telephone contact with families several restricted or withdrawn entirely.

We have seen it all before in our own situation. And repression didn’t work here and it won’t work there. It will only exacerbate a bad situation.

Imagine all the people of the north crowded into an area roughly the size of County Antrim. Imagine that 80% of those living there are entirely dependent on aid that has to come from outside the area, through hostile military blockades. Imagine that sanitation is terrible, food scarce, and that many homes destroyed several years ago in a military strike by your powerful neighbour, have not been rebuilt because they won’t let the building materials in.

Imagine that medicine are difficult to acquire and that essential and life saving hospital equipment can’t work because those who besiege your territory won’t let it in.

Imagine you have a huge number of children growing up in this, living in frightening conditions and with little hope for the future.

The treatment of the Palestinian people by Israel has been shameful.

To our credit Irish people have been very active over many years working in solidarity with the Palestinian people. There are Irish people today living and working on the west Bank and in Gaza. They do so knowing that there is a real risk to their lives.

This blog strongly supports the right of the humanitarian aid workers and others to deliver very necessary humanitarian aid to the people of that region which they are being illegally denied by the Israeli authorities.

I welcome the efforts by those engaged in this flotilla. I know some of those on board the MV Saoirse and I want to commend them and their colleagues for their courage in standing up for the rights of the people of Gaza to live free of oppression.

The Flotilla should be allowed safe passage to Gaza to bring its much needed aid to the besieged Palestinian people there.

And the Irish Government should be speaking to the Israeli authorities to ensure that they get it.

The government should also support the unity efforts of all the Palestinian groups and their demand for recognition for statehood when it comes up in the UN later this year.

Opinion Polls – that’s your opinion but ...

2011-06-21T22:41:00.002+01:00

The Life and Times Survey last week, which claimed that 16% of the population of the north and 33% of Catholic favour a united Ireland, caused jubilation in some unionist circles and among those in the media who support this position. Given our experience with inexact, and occasionally totally wrong opinion polls over many years, most nationalists and republicans took a much more relaxed attitude.

This blog wasn’t surprised by the unionist political reaction. Unionist politicians are continually seeking reassurance on the union. Usually it has to come from British Prime Ministers who must constantly declare at every opportunity their support for the union.

Sometimes it’s a visit by some member of the British royal family; occasionally it’s from election results or opinion polls.

But the demand by unionist politicians for regular reminders of British support for the union is a constant. It is a measure of the insecurity of the unionist political elite, and the impact of a partitionist arrangement which many know makes no sense politically or economically, that this is a frequent feature of northern politics.

One reason why political unionism was opposed to the Good Friday Agreement, and even today seeks to change it, is that for the first time there is an international treaty, between the British and Irish governments, which accepts that there is an equivalence between the union and the desire for a united Ireland.

In the negotiations which led to the Good Friday Agreement Sinn Fein succeeded in getting the British to scrap the Government of Ireland Act through which it claimed jurisdiction over a part of Ireland. This was a significant development.

And the strength of the Agreement’s position on the constitutional question was exemplified two weeks ago when the British Prime Minister addressed the Assembly. David Cameron reminded the assembled MLAs that ‘as the Agreement makes very clear,’ the constitutional future of the north does not rest in his hands or those of his government but in the hands of the people.

As a unionist Mr. Cameron made his preference clear but he was equally frank in his public declaration that the British government will always back the democratic wishes of the people whether ‘to remain part of the United Kingdom, as is my strong wish…or whether it’s to be part of a united Ireland’.

Later when he was privately challenged on this by the leader of the UUP the British Prime Minister stuck by this position.

The reality is that contrary to Margaret Thatcher’s claim many years ago, the north is not as British as Finchley! And in their hearts unionists know this.

So, in this context what significance should be attached to the Life and Times survey?

As has often been said the only opinion poll that matters is the one in which people put their mark on a ballot paper and that into a ballot box for counting. Everything else is just so much speculation.

This blog remembers when Sinn Féin first put forward candidates for an Assembly election. It was 1982, the year after the hunger strike. The BBC organised an opinion poll. It concluded that Sinn Féin would win no seats and that we would take somewhere around 3% of the vote. Sinn Féin was dismissed as irrelevant.

In the end Sinn Féin won 5 seats, 10% of the vote, and our emergence as an electoral force in northern politics was the story of the election.

In the years since then the unionist vote has slipped. In 1982 the Ulster Unionists and the DUP between them picked up 52.7% of the vote and Alliance took an additional 9.3%. The combined unionist vote was regularly took around 60% of the total.

But in the last decade there has been a decline. The unionist vote share has dropped from roughly 60% to around 50%.

In 2005 the combined unionist vote was 55.3%. In 2007 it was 50.2% and a few months ago in the Assembly election the unionist vote was again 50.2%.

The combined Sinn Féin and SDLP vote in 2005 was 41.2%; in 2010 it was 42% and a few months ago it was 41.4%.

Given that both Sinn Fein and the SDLP are pro united Ireland parties the figure produced by the Life and Times survey is clearly at odds with what people actually do when presented with the opportunity to vote.

And this is the key.

Opinion polls are a standard feature of modern life. They are used by governments, political parties, the media, and business seeking to develop and sell new products.

They are useful guides. But that is all they are. Often they get it wrong, as companies whose products have failed to sell, or movie makers whose films have failed to light up the box office, or political parties whose real vote has crashed, will all testify to.

If Sinn Fein was to take the Life and Times opinion poll at face value we would be in crisis. According to it we have 11% of the vote, just one more than the Alliance Party!

But in May Sinn Féin took almost 27% of the vote!

And it is in this new situation that the opportunity for promoting Irish unity is greater than ever before.

Over 40% of the electorate vote for parties which are for a united Ireland. A small percentage of those identified as protestant say they want Irish unity. But interestingly 85% of those polled by Life and Times would live with and accept a united Ireland if it was achieved. When this was broken down on the basis of religion 80% of protestants could live with and accept Irish unity.

There was a time when it was claimed that any move toward a united Ireland would see unionists react violently. Life and Times suggests that this too has changed.

The Good Friday Agreement provides for a legislative road to Irish unity. There is a constitutional mechanism in place to end the union and partition.

If Life and Times has a message it is that this goal is more achievable than ever before.

Irish unity will not be won through opinion polls. It will be achieved by persuading citizens to vote in a referendum for that option and to do so in a way which ensures maximum support and political stability. This blog believes we can do this.

Mapping out the Road to Irish Unity

2011-06-19T13:44:00.000+01:00

Uniting Ireland Conference Dublin

Mapping out the Road to Irish Unity

On Saturday Sinn Féin held the first of a series of conferences this year on the theme of uniting Ireland.

Several hundred people attended the conference in Dublin’s Rotunda Pillar Room Complex in Parnell Square. A major focus of the conference was the economics of Irish unity. Speakers included, Dr. John Bradley, an economic consultant, who was formerly a Research Professor at the ESRI and regularly advises the European Commission, the World Bank and other international organisations and governments; Dr. Pádraic White, Former IDA Managing Director, Entrepreneur & Chairman Employers Services Board West Belfast and Greater Shankhill; and Michael D'Arcy, a Dublin-based economic and business consultant. Other speakers included Norah Gibbon of Barnardos, Director of Advocacy, and Geoffrey Shannon, Child Law expert; and Rev Gary Mason.

Next week there will be a conference in Cork and later in the year in October another in Galway. Plans are also advanced for a fourth in the north.

These conferences are part of a strategy by Sinn Féin to raise awareness and encourage a national conversation around the goal of a United Ireland and create inclusive platforms for an engagement on this crucially important issue.

In recent years Sinn Féin has held conferences in London, in the United States and in Canada.

These were part of a process of consciously reaching out to the millions who make up the Irish diaspora.

All of the conferences were well attended and have generated activity and momentum around the Uniting Ireland project.

Our friends in Irish America have been particularly successful and resolutions in support of Irish unity have been passed at State, County and City levels in many areas.

But of course, it is here on this island that the arguments and debates and persuasion must take place.

The Dublin conference, and the one in Monaghan last November, are a part of this process.

Partition created two states and two governments on this small island of six million people. As a consequence there there is a significant duplication of public and private services, two sets of currencies, and two tax systems, laws and regulations.

It makes no sense politically, economically or socially except as it was at that time – part of a counter revolution.

Much has changed since then and today, and at a time when every cent or pence is needed to rebuild the economy, this duplication of government and public services is wasteful and costly.

The most recent live register figures for this state show that there are at least 443,400 people unemployed while in the north the figure is around 60,000. At the same time 50,000, mainly young people, will emigrate this year – 1,000 each week.
There is an opportunity to change all of this.

It is inefficient that on an island this small there are two contending political systems; two health services; two education structures; and two economic systems competing with each other for jobs and investment.

The Good Friday Agreement provides a roadmap to build all-island approaches.

Already there are many who accept the logic of an all-island economy, in which all of our interests in health, the environment, education, agriculture, transport, job creation, taxation and strategic investment, are planned together.

Uniting Ireland makes sense. Together is better.

Sinn Féin seeks to erase the border and its adverse impact on the lives of citizens, through practical co-operation and imaginative policies, including the full utilization of the all-island institutions that were created by the Good Friday Agreement.

In the negotiations which led to the Good Friday Agreement Sinn Fein succeeded in getting the British to scrap the Government of Ireland Act through which it claimed jurisdiction over a part of Ireland.

This was a significant development.

Last week in his speech to the Assembly the British Prime Minister David Cameron repeated this position. He said, ‘as the Agreement makes very clear’, the constitutional future of the north does not rest in his hands or those of his government but in the hands of the people.

As a unionist Mr. Cameron made his preference clear but he was equally frank in his public declaration that the British government will always back the democratic wishes of the people whether ‘to remain part of the United Kingdom, as is my strong wish…or whether it’s to be part of a united Ireland’.

Later when he was privately challenged on this by the leader of the UUP the British Prime Minister stuck by this position.

The reality is that contrary to Margaret Thatcher’s claim many years ago, the north is not as British as Finchley!

We need to create a national – all-island – conversation about the kind of new Ireland citizens want to serve the common interest.

Sinn Féin wants a republic.

Our belief is that the interests of citizens and society on this island will be best served by a republican system of governance based on the rights of people. But that is a matter for the people to decide.

There are other models which can be considered, including federal arrangements. They could serve transitional measures or as governmental systems in their own right.
A key part of the debate about the future must be a discussion with unionists about what they mean by Britishness and how a new Ireland – whether or not it is a Republic - can accommodate this.

It also means mapping out the steps necessary in the time ahead to progress toward uniting Ireland.

For example:
• The Taoiseach commissioning a Green Paper on Irish unity which would address all aspects of this national and democratic project including its political, social, economic, cultural, legal, administrative and international dimensions.

• A Joint Committee of the Oireachtas on Irish Unity to monitor, assess and report progress on its implementation should be established.

• And a new constitution – discussed and debated and agreed by all sections of people on this island, which would enshrine citizens rights in law.

There is a yearning in Ireland today for a new way forward. Citizens north and south are looking for something new.

They want a society which is equitable and just. The 1916 Proclamation is the template for this. It used language that was appropriate for that time.

We need a new all-Ireland constitution that enshrines the principles and ideals of 1916 and gives expression to them for the 21st century.

Real social, economic and political change is not easily achieved but all those who have a genuine commitment towards building an Irish Republic worthy of the name must work together towards that end.

Health service facing ‘worst ever crisis’

2011-06-16T07:40:00.000+01:00

This blog has had occasion to visit the Accident and Emergency unit in Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda. Each visit was as depressing as the previous.

Patients, many of them elderly, were lying on hospital trolleys, others were sitting on chairs, and in one instance a patient was lying on the floor. Most had been there for two days or more.

The staff were doing their best but were simply overwhelmed by the numbers of patients and the inadequate resources available to them.

The collapse and subsequent death of Peter Sherlock several weeks ago in Drogheda, and the failure of the ambulance service to respond promptly to emergency calls, is additional evidence of the cracks in local health provision and in the state health system.

And then there is the slow destruction of Louth County Hospital through the withdrawal of key health services, including the children’s ward, the maternity ward and then the gynaecological unit. And last year the HSE closed the A&E and Acute Medical Services.

A media report last week revealed that a confidential internal HSE submission, which looked at health services in Dublin and Louth, Meath and Monaghan, was warning that it might be necessary as a result of budget cuts to close down some hospitals as well as a large number of wards.

These could include Louth County Hospital and Monaghan hospital.

An additional grave difficulty to that posed by financial cuts, and poor management and bad planning by the government and the HSE, is the severe shortage of junior doctors within the health system.

It is estimated that there are currently just over 100 vacancies for junior doctors but this figure will jump to at least 400 in July when current contracts come to an end and new ones have to be agreed.

While 500 to 600 graduates are produced in this state each year many of these are leaving for Australia and elsewhere in the world.

The health service is therefore dependent on hiring in junior doctors from India and Pakistan but the numbers needed this year far exceed those available.

As one consultant described it there is a ‘drought of non-consultant doctors.’
So, there is a major crisis looming in health provision, particularly front line services, which will probably be the worst ever experienced by that state.

The Irish Association for Emergency Medicine (IAEM) which represents consultants who work in emergency medicine, warned on Monday that many emergency departments ‘face significant challenges in maintaining 24/7 cover.’

And the IAEM said that the ‘loss of medical staff both in emergency departments and front-line specialities, compounded by worsening ED overcrowding, will undoubtedly result in even more prolonged waiting for patients ... The IAEM fears that prolonged emergency department waiting times for patients will lead to delayed treatment and potential avoidable harm.’

The outworking of all of this is that some Accident and Emergency units are at risk of closing; some hospitals and hospital wards are also facing closure and the future of some essential services, including the maternity and infant scheme, are also under threat.

Having spoken to those working in the health service I believe that there are a number of hospitals which are especially at risk. These include, Drogheda, Cavan, Beaumont, Castelbar, Limerick, Letterkenny, the infirmary in Cork, Portiuncula, Tullamore, Roscommon, Portlaoise, Midwestern Regional Hospital in Limerick and Waterford.

I raised this matter during leaders questions in the Dáil yesterday morning and asked the Taoiseach ‘to take immediate action to assess what the impact on services will be on the 11 July.’

I also asked the Taoiseach to come back to make a statement to the House on what plans the Government will put in place to rectify this situation.
Regrettably, the Taoiseach did not answer my question. His response was vague and there is a clear absence of the kind of clarity and leadership that is urgently needed on this issue.

The Taoiseach tried to dismiss my concerns around the shortage of junior doctors as something that arises each summer. This is disingenuous. The reality is that this year’s short fall is significantly greater than ever before and the consequence of that for the Health Service will be profound.

Our public hospitals are completely dependent on Junior Doctors.

As I have noted earlier on July 11, following the changeover in job rotations, the number of vacant junior doctor posts will be at least 400.

This will be substantially worse situation than anything seen before and will have a devastating effect on the provision of services within the healthcare system.

I have been told that in the Louth and Meath area there are at least 50 junior doctors fewer than needed. The curtailment of emergency services and longer waiting lists will result.

Frontline services, including anaesthetics, emergency medicine and trauma paediatrics, are under so much pressure that they may not be able to maintain an emergency service.

One consultant described the scene in the Mater hospital in Dublin on Monday as like a ‘war zone’. This was because there were so many patients on trolleys and ambulances waiting to discard their patients into the A&E.

Failure by the government to get to grips with this crisis means that more and more of our hospitals are going to face similar scenes in the time ahead.

An Independent International Truth Commission

2011-06-12T13:11:00.001+01:00

The legacy of the past is one of the big issues which remains to be resolved in the outworking of the peace process. This includes the truth about formal and informal collusion and the wider desire of many victims and families for an effective truth recovery process.

Ten years ago, in 2001, the British and Irish Governments committed, at peace process talks at Weston Park, to adopt the recommendations of an International Judge in relation to a number of specific cases of collusion.

Canadian Judge Peter Cory was asked to look at the killing of Pat Finucane; Robert Hamill; Rosemary Nelson; Billy Wright; Judge Gibson and his wife; and RUC Chief Superintendent Harry Breen and RUC Superintendent Robert Buchanan.

Cory worked diligently and in 2003 he handed his reports over to the two governments. The Canadian Judge concluded that there was no basis for an inquiry into the deaths of the Gibsons. He proposed that one should be held into the killing of the two RUC officers.

The Irish government published Cory’s recommendations in December 03 and announced that it would set up an inquiry, but the British stalled until April 04 before publishing his reports to them.

Seven years later of all the six cases investigated by Judge Cory only the Pat Finucane Inquiry has yet to commence. It is the opinion of this blog that the British government is deeply worried by the enormous political implications of the Finucane case which is known to involve substantial institutional collusion between British state forces and the UDA.

This concern was evident in the introduction by the British government in June 2005 of the Inquiries Act 2005. This legislation deliberately limits the scope of the inquiries proposed by Cory who criticised the British move saying it "...would make a meaningful inquiry impossible."

Meanwhile, the Smithwick Tribunal was established by Resolutions passed by Dáil and Seanad on the 23rd and 24th March 2005. It allows for immunity for witnesses.

Its purpose is to inquire “into suggestions that members of An Garda Síochána or other employees of the State colluded in the fatal shootings of RUC Chief Superintendent Harry Breen and RUC Superintendent Robert Buchanan on the 20th March, 1989.”

In May 2006 I was asked to meet the Smithwick Tribunal. This meeting took place a few weeks later in June.

The Tribunal asked if Sinn Féin could facilitate an engagement with the IRA about the killing of the two RUC men and claims that this action was possible because of collusion took place with members of the Gardaí.

We undertook to do our best. But we were mindful that the situation had changed significantly as a consequence of the IRA’s July 2005 statement in which the IRA leadership had “formally ordered an end to the armed campaign” and said that “all IRA units have been ordered to dump arms. All Volunteers have been instructed to assist the development of purely political and democratic programmes through exclusively peaceful means.”

The IRA restated its goal of achieving a united Ireland and in its statement it acknowledged that it believed that “there is now an alternative way to achieve this and to end British rule in our country. It is the responsibility of all Volunteers to show leadership, determination and courage.”

The consequence of this was that the IRA had left the stage and there could be no engagement with it. However, we were advised that former volunteers might be prepared to engage with the Smithwick Tribunal on a voluntary basis.

The Sinn Féin leadership spent some time putting in place a process which would facilitate this. When this was achieved Sinn Féin stepped back and the process moved forward.

This week the Smithwick Tribunal opened for its first substantive public hearings. In her opening remarks Maura Laverty SC, a member of the Tribunal’s legal team, revealed that the Tribunal had met with former IRA volunteers.

She described it as a ‘very significant development’ and as an ‘unprecedented development’ and described how three members of the Tribunal’s legal team had met with three former members of the IRA. She said: “Those former members included former leadership at both national and local (south Armagh) level. One of the three former personnel had first-hand knowledge of the IRA operation of March 20th, 1989, and had a command role in that operation. The former personnel gave a detailed account of the events leading to the deaths of Chief Supt Breen and Supt Buchanan and replied to questions posed by the three members of the Tribunal’s legal team.”

The Sinn Féin leadership helped to facilitate this engagement because we sincerely believe there is a responsibility to assist families bereaved in the conflict if and when we can, though this may not be possible in all cases.

Republicans are very conscious of the hurt and suffering which has been caused through conflict in our country.

Sinn Féin believes that there needs to be an effective process for dealing with all legacy issues. Weston Park only dealt with six cases. But there are many more families who seek truth and closure.

Therefore, the British and Irish governments should invite a reputable and independent international body to establish an Independent International Truth Commission.

Sinn Féin has been consistent on this issue. Our proposition would be independent of any state, combatant groups, political parties, civil society and economic interests.

It should have a remit to inquire into the extent and pattern of past violations as well as their causes and consequences and would be dependent on the full co-operation of all the relevant parties.

Of course, such a process would not be easy. There are vested interests who do not want the truth and who will oppose the creation of a meaningful truth recovery process.

It will also be a difficult and painful process and experience, particularly for bereaved families. It must therefore be conducted in a sensitive and generous way. And there can be no hierarchy of victims. All victims must be treated on the basis of equality.

The closure which victims, victim’s families and survivors deserve, demands that those who contributed to the conflict have to pledge ourselves to tell and to listen to the truth about the past. Over time this will contribute to genuine national reconciliation and an inclusive healing process.

For my part I would actively encourage republicans to co-operate with such a process.

Building a united harmonious society demands that these difficult issues are dealt with in an inclusive way as a necessary part of putting the past behind us. Looking after victims and victims’ families and survivors is a significant and important part of this.

Vodafone Sackings - The unacceptable face of globalisation

2011-06-06T15:51:00.006+01:00

The announcement by Vodafone that it plans to cut over 130 jobs from its workforce in the 26 counties and ‘outsource’ them to India and Egypt has outraged the Communications Workers Union and led to condemnation from Sinn Féin and others.

Meeting Vodafone workers in Dundalk

Most of the jobs are expected to go in Louth. The impact on those affected will be traumatic. The affect on the local economy, which is already reeling from the imposition of the Universal Social Charge and austerity cuts to government programmes and public services, will be incalculable.

Last week I met the Deputy General Secretary of the CWU Terry Delaney and on Friday four local workers from the call centre in Dundalk met me to explain their concerns and to express their determination to fight this decision by Vodafone.

The decision to axe these jobs is typical of the approach multi-national companies take toward local investments.

Multinationals primarily take decisions based on costs and profits. If they can produce the same service or product elsewhere in the world at a cheaper price and for a greater profit they will follow the money. It’s called globalisation.

They have no loyalty to the local community. They have no loyalty to their workforce.

A good case in point is the Visteon Corporation which was set up by the Ford Motor Corporation to run a number of factories previously directly owned by the Ford company. In March 2009 the directors of Visteon UK put their company into administration.

That day, 210 men and women employed at the Belfast plant of Visteon were told that their jobs ceased to exist. That information came by letter from the management of Visteon UK.

The statutory 90 day consultation was not afforded to the workers. No information was given to them about their rights and entitlements. They were denied any right of reply.

Moreover, their right to Ford terms and conditions, including the lifetime protection of their discretionary pension in payment increases, contained in the ‘Agreement governing the separation of the Ford Visteon organisation’, was binned by Visteon.

This was unacceptable and contemptible behaviour by the management of these two companies.

In light of this the workers rightly and courageously took over the plant and refused to leave until Ford and Visteon negotiated a satisfactory agreement on redundancy and pensions.

They refused to be cowed or intimidated by threat of legal action and lobbied and fought for their rights. And their actions encouraged their union colleagues in Britain.

Like Ford, Vodafone is a huge multi-national. Through its investments in Ireland it controls over 40% of the mobile phone market and has almost two and half million subscribers.

Last year Vodafone made profit here of €122.3 million and paid an additional €125 million in a dividend back to its parent company. In total Vodafone in Ireland has contributed over €2.2 billion to the profits of this multi-national.

So, Vodafone receives grants and tax breaks to set up in the south of Ireland – I am currently waiting the Minister coming back to me with detail of this – they make huge profits but then arbitrarily sack 130 workers and move their jobs to a cheaper location.

No loyalty to the workers who contributed to those profits. No loyalty to the Irish people who subscribe to Vodafone.

This attitude emerges clearly in the minute of a meeting the CWU had with Vodafone Management. The Union representatives questioned Vodafone about the jobs it plans to axe directly from Vodafone and those that will be lost from Rigney Dolphin which supplies employees to Vodafone.

The Union asked:

Q Why is Vodafone offshoring these jobs?

A Cost and Quality

Q Does Vodafone accept that customers currently receive an excellent customer service from employees in the area?

A Yes

Q What will happen to Rigney Dolphin employees who are loosing their jobs – will they be redeployed in Vodafone?

A No

Q What will be the terms of redundancy for Rigney Dolphin employees?

A This is noting to do with Vodafone. It is a matter for Rigney Dolphin.

Q Does Vodafone accept that they have a responsibility to Rigney Dolphin employees working in Vodafone?

A Vodafone only has a responsibility to the business contract between Rigney Dolphin and Vodafone.

Q The Union requests that Vodafone postpone this decision to enable all parties to engage in discussions with a view to finding alternatives that will save jobs

A No

Q Can Vodafone guarantee the Union that further work/jobs will not be outsourced?

A No

Q What are the cost savings involved in off shoring these jobs?

A Don’t know

This is the unacceptable face of globalisation. But it is not a new phenomena.

I’m sure readers can think of other businesses, for example, shipbuilding and breweries and shirt and clothes manufacturers and others which have over the years left this island and moved their base of production to other climes.

Those who support globalisation claim that this movement of capital and production benefits those poorer countries that can offer cheaper labour costs. But the facts suggest otherwise. The evidence thus far is of the income gap between the rich and poor countries widening in recent decades.

No state can grow economically without some measure of international investment. But every state has the right to ensure that such investment is responsible and that there are contractual agreements in place to ensure this.

Controlling the ‘narrative’

2011-06-01T20:27:00.000+01:00

It used to be all about ‘spin’. That is getting the message out and influencing, to the point of controlling, how the media covered a particular story.
Alaistair Campbell was credited with being the master of spin for the former Labour government in Britain.

‘Spin’ was the new word used in the 90’s to describe a very old aspect of politics and business – sell the message to the public in a believable and attractive manner; hammer the opposition, and win support for your position. And if you make mistakes? Limit the damage through briefings and more ‘spin’, which if necessary means dumping on whoever is responsible for the problem.

Governments have been spinning their way in and out of trouble for millennia.
The British never claimed they were invading Ireland to steal the land and impoverish and exploit its people – in their own words they came to civilise the barbarians!

The west claimed that it invaded Iraq to save us from Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction. They didn’t exist but the oil fields do.

Today ‘spin’ has given way to a new description. According to one journalist I listened to on RTE it’s now about ‘controlling the narrative’. A nice turn of phrase but the goal is the same.

This week Fine Gael is trying to limit the damage done to its credibility and economic strategy by the comments of Fine Gael Transport Minister Leo Varadkar. He spoke out of school and told the Sunday Times that the Irish state might not be able to return to the bond markets next year. And worse than that it may have to seek a second bailout.

The Taoiseach, the Tánaiste and the Finance Minister all rushed to reject this position. Mr. Varadkar was contradicted and his remarks were described by his department as a ‘hypothetical answer’ to a ‘hypothetical question’. But of the Minister himself there has been no sign.

The importance of all this is that Fine Gael and Labour have spent all their short time in government claiming to know what they are doing, defending the EU/IMF deal and stating that the state is on target to meet the bailout requirements imposed by the EU and IMF and will be able to return to the bond markets next year. That’s the narrative.

Minister Varadkar’s remarks undermine this position. Hence, the rush by his boss and more senior colleagues to publicly deny him and retake control of their ‘spin’ the narrative around the bailout.

But this isn’t the first time Varadkar has put his foot in it. During the election campaign he declared that not another red cent would be given to the banks.
Within weeks of being in government the banks got more than a red cent – they got €24 billion.

But to be fair to Leo he isn’t the first coalition Minister to make a faux pas when it comes to the issue of the bailout. Two weeks ago Labour Minister Brendan Howlin spoke of the desirability of renegotiating the bailout loan and extending the period over which the state would pay it back.

The Minister of Finance immediately stepped forward, rubbished the suggestion and firmly stated that the only item of the agenda in negotiations with the EU/IMF and ECB is a reduction in the interest rate.

The ‘narrative’ for Fine Gael and Labour is to claim that the state is bound by the huge debts that have now been accumulated, and that it will pay all of these back.
Any claim or suggestion to the contrary must be stamped on quickly and ruthlessly.
The problem for the government is that the evidence of failure and of flawed economic policies is to be found in the daily experience and distress of citizens.

RTE’s Primetime on Monday night exposed the extent to which government cuts are driving carers further and further into debt and the enormous poverty that this is causing.

It has also emerged that 4604 elderly citizens are waiting for approval for nursing home places but that the government refuses to release the funds.

And to add to the misery of millions the Minister for the Environment has confirmed that an interim household charge – property tax – is to be introduced early next year, with water meters in place the following year.

The ‘narrative’ is that the money raised by the household charge will be ring-fenced to provide money for local services. You would almost think that the Minister is doing householders a favour by ensuring that the provision of local services is protected.

The truth is that the state is obliged under the EU/IMF deal to introduce both a property tax and water charges.

Moreover, the money raised by these taxes will not be additional to the money currently spent on local services.

The cuts will continue and the money saved will be used to pay off the EU/IMF bailout. So, in reality the property and water tax is being used to pay the EU/IMF bailout.

But that’s not the government’s ‘spin’, ‘line’, ‘narrative’, ‘story’.

Yesterday when I challenged the Taoiseach on all of this I reminded him that 100 years ago exactly – on May 31st 1911 – the unsinkable Titanic was launched in Belfast. She too had a Captain who steered straight for the iceberg. He at least had some excuse. It wasn’t spotted until the last minute. The bailout and debt mountain iceberg that this government has the state sailing straight for is clearly visible and the alarm has been sounded. But on the basis of the ‘narrative’ coming from Government Buildings this captain is not for turning.

Finally, a brief note on the launch and sinking of the Titanic. Over 1500 people lost their lives in April 1912 when it sank. In the years since much has been written and there have been two successful movies made about the event. Next year a £97 million Titanic Belfast Building will be opened to co-incide with the sinking.
But there is a part of the story that is rarely told and which it is important to remember. Harland and Wolff shipyard was a by-word for discrimination. Catholics were only ever employed in very small numbers. Frequently, during the frequent sectarian pogroms that afflicted Belfast they, and any progressive Protestant workers, were among the first to be forced from their jobs.

The Titanic was a human tragedy. So is generational sectarian discrimination.

Irish America - Is Féidir Linn – Yes, we can

2011-05-28T15:42:00.002+01:00

President Obama’s visit was even shorter than anticipated. The President touched down at 9.30 am last Monday morning and by 9.30 pm Airforce One was taking off from Dublin airport enroute to London.

A 24 hour visit became half that due to fears that dust and ash from the erupting Grimsvotn volcano in Iceland might ground all aircraft as happened last year, and delay the President’s departure to Britain.

After first meeting President McAleese and then Taoiseach Enda Kenny, President Obama and his wife Michelle flew to Moneygall in County Offaly where an estimated 3,000 people lined its one main street.

The Obama’s were given a tumultuous welcome. For most of the morning it had rained and as they arrived the sun came out.

The President met his distant relatives and spent a considerable amount of time meeting and greeting local people, signing bits of paper, shaking hands, and then into Ollie Hayes pub for a pint of Guinness.

Moneygall is like many small towns and villages across Ireland. It was from there in 1850 that President Obama’s great, great, great, grandfather, Falmouth Kearney, a shoemaker, emigrated to the USA.

This was in the immediate aftermath of An Gorta Mór – the Great Hunger - just three years after Black 47 when hundreds of thousands died. This was a time when within a decade an estimated 2 million citizens fled Ireland as a result of starvation or eviction or hardship.

Later in Dublin, in front of a capacity crowd in College Green the US President referred to this period in Irish history and the impact it had on the USA: “ But standing there in Moneygall, I couldn’t help but think how heartbreaking it must have been for that great-great-great grandfather of mine, and so many others, to part. To watch Donegal coasts and Dingle cliffs recede. To leave behind all they knew in hopes that something better lay over the horizon.”

Falmouth Kearney was one among millions. Today their descendents occupy pivotal positions in society in the USA. In both political parties, the Democrats and Republicans you will find Irish Americans in leadership; in the Boardrooms, in the news media and the entertainment business; in fact in every strata of US society there are Irish Americans.

President Obama is now one of these and around him is a group of Irish Americans including Vice President Joe Biden; his Chief of Staff Bill Daley; his National security Adviser Tom Donilon and many more. I have met Vice President Biden and Bill Daley. They are enormously proud of their Irish roots and of the contribution Irish America has made to the peace process in Ireland.

This contribution was evident on Monday when we were all reminded by President Obama that he was not the first US President to address thousands in College Green. It was there in December 1995 that President Bill Clinton received a huge welcome from an enthusiastic Dublin crowd. His reception was in large part due to the positive contribution he made at a critical point in the peace process.

And that’s an important lesson for Irish America as we seek to move forward toward our goal of uniting Ireland. 16 years ago the strength of Irish America brought a US President to Ireland to help inject much needed momentum into a peace process that was faltering.

That strength is still evidenced in the decision of President Obama to make his lightning visit earlier this week.

And as Sinn Féin increases our efforts to right the historic wrong of partition and unite the people of this island we will need Irish America to use that strength again.

Irish Language Debate in the Dáil

2011-05-28T15:41:00.001+01:00

Thursday saw a debate in the Dáil, initiated by Sinn Féin, on the 20 year strategy for the Irish language.
There are aspects of Fine Gael policy that are totally contrary to the proposals contained in the 20 year strategy. For example they want to make Irish an optional subject for the leaving certificate, they want to end the 'Irish Speaker’s Scheme' and change the rules in relation to the establishment of new Gaelscoileanna which will make it much more difficult for Gaelscoileanna to become established in the future.
These proposals fly in the face of everything contained in the 20 Year Strategy.
Unless the Government adopts a radically different attitude its policies will have a serious detrimental affect on the Irish language.
In my contribution to the debate I said:
“Cuirim fáilte roimh an díospóireacht seo. Tá sé tábhachtach go bhfuil sé ag dul ar aghaidh. Tá súil agam go mbeidh i bhfad níos mó plé anseo faoin Ghaeilge agus i bhfad níos mó gnó eile déanta trí Ghaeilge amach anseo. Sin an fís a bhí ag na daoine a bhunaigh an pharlaimint seo.
Tá súil agam go mbeidh an díospóireacht ina spreagadh do Ghaeilgeoirí, do fhoghlaimeoirí agus do dhaoine amuigh ansin atá báúil don Ghaeilge, thuaidh agus theas.
Ag tús an phróiséas síochána agus i rith na cainteanna roimh Comhaontú Aoine an Chéasta chuir Sinn Féin ceist na Gaeilge sa Tuaisceart, agus ar an oileán ar fad, ar an chlár. As sin tháinig aitheantas don Ghaeilge, agus Foras na Gaeilge, agus don chéad uair tacaíocht don Ghaeilge ins na Sé chondae. Tháinig feabhas mór ar stadas ár dteanga náisiúnta sna Sé Chontae ó shin.
Ní aithníonn an Ghaeilge aon teorann ar an oileán seo. Is teanga uile-Éireann í má ta muid chun í a athshlanú is ar bhonn uile-Éireann a dheantar é. Tá tábhachtach le Foras agus le tacaíocht leanúnach ón dá thaobh den teorann chun cuidiú lena chuid oibre.
Is linne uilig an teanga, pé creideamh ná dearcadh polaitiúil atá againn.
Caithfidh muid seo a chur ina luí ar Rialtas na Breataine agus go háirithe ar ár gcairde, na hAondactóirí. Tá gá le fís s’againne faoin Ghaeilge a mhíniú dóibh agus a leiriú nach bagairt dóibh forbairt na Gaeilge agus an cultúr Gaelaigh.
Ta muid ag iarraidh pobal na Gaeilge a thogail ins an Tuaisceart, pobal a bhfuil cainteoirí ann, scoilteacha lán-Ghaeilge, áiteacha sóisialta, clubanna óige, féidireachtaí gairme, mean cumarsáide agus dlithe chun na cearta sin a chosaint sna cúirteanna.
Tá Sinn Féin ag déanamh ár ndicheall sa Roinn Oideachais ó thuaidh chun an Ghaeloideachais a fhorbairt. Thiug Caitriona Ruane deontais do chlubanna óige Ghaeilge fríd an Tuaisceart. Leanfaidh muid ar aghaidh leis an obair sin.
Fuair Sinn Féin airgead ó Rialtas na Breataine i rith cainteanna Hillsborough i ndiaidh troid mór ‘s ag cuir a lan bru, fá choinne an Ciste Craoltóireachta agus fuair muid airgead chun Ciste Infheistíochta a bhunaigh a chuideodh le forbairt gréasán Cultúrlanna.
Tá Gaeilgeoirí ó thuaidh ag iarraidh Gaeltachtaí uirbeacha a chruthú agus an timpeallacht thart orainn a Ghaelú. Shin ceist. Bh’feidir ta nios mo daoine ag caint Gaeilge i Bheal Feirste achan la na in Bhaile Atha Cliath. Níl fhios agam. Taobh amuigh do Uachtaran Obama
Banrion na Shasana.
Faoi stiúradh Conor Murphy mar Áire Timpeallachta tá busanna ag gabháil suas Bóthar na bhFál le comharthaí Gaeilge orthu.
Tá gá leis na hiarrachtaí seo bheith á forbairt ar bhonn uile-Éireann agus comh-oibriú idir na hinstitiúdaí ar an dá chuid den oileán seo chun tuilleadh éifeacht bheith leis an obair seo.
Beidh Sinn Féin an sasta a bheith ag obair leis Áire Jimmy Dennihan. Go n’eirigh an t’adh leis. Agus leis Carál Ní Chuilín, Áire nua sns Thuaisceart fosta.Tá Acht na Gaeilge againn ó dheas. Caithfidh muid sin a úsáid agus a fhorbairt. Tá Acht a dhíth ó thuaidh.
Mar shampla, a penal law, The Administration of Justice (Language) Act Ireland of 1737 decrees that all proceedings within courts of justice (mar dhea) there shall be within the English language.
Tá an Ghaeilge mí-dleathach sna cuirteanna ó Thuaidh. Tá gá le deireadh a chur leis an dlí seo anois.
Agus mar a dúirt mé tá Acht na Gaeilge a dhíth ansin.
Acht atá bunaithe ar na Bunphrionsapail seo a leanas-
• Cearta Gaeilgeoirí ag croí an Achta
• Achmhainní oiriúnacha leis an Acht a chur i bhfeidhm
• Coimisinéir na Gaeilge leis an Acht a mhaoirsiú.
Ní cheart go mbeadh eagla chóiche ar duine ar bith roimh an Ghaeilge.
Is linne uilig an saibreas agus an dúchas atá taobh istigh den teanga Gaeilge agus is ansin a bfhaighfidh muid croí agus anam na tire seo.

A Champion for Human Rights

2011-05-24T11:53:00.001+01:00

Rosemary Nelson was a human rights lawyer. She stood up for what she believed in and she sought to use the law – even one as corrupted as that of the north during the years of conflict – as a means of defending citizens from abuse and discrimination and as a way of achieving justice.

Rosemary was killed in a car bomb attack by a unionist death squad on March 15th 1999.

The family believe, and the nationalist people of Lurgan and Portadown believe, that she was the victim of collusion. They are right.

Collusion took many forms in the north. Often it was formal and institutionalised. Sometimes it was informal, sectarian and the response of an individual or group of individuals within one or more of the British state’s security system – the RUC; RUC Special Branch; the Ulster Defence Regiment; British Military Intelligence; the Force Reconnaissance Unit; the Security Services and others.

Sometimes it was a British Minister – for example, Tory Minister Douglas Hogg - standing up in the British Parliament and accusing lawyers of working for the IRA and creating a context in which lawyers could be murdered. The first to die Pat Finucane was murdered within weeks of Hogg’s remarks.

Sometimes it was the provision by British intelligence agencies, directly through agents, of thousands of intelligence files, including names, addresses, car registrations and movements.

Sometimes individual members of the RUC and UDR participated in sectarian attacks. Scores of UDR soldiers were convicted over the years of involvement in sectarian murders; of providing British intelligence information for unionist death squads; and of stealing weapons for use in killing Catholics.

Sometimes those involved where members of the British Forces and killed under orders.

Sometimes it involved British Forces providing the weapons to carry out murder.

Sometimes it was the turning of a blind eye to actions which led to murder.

Sometimes it was creating a belief that all Catholics were the enemy.

Sometimes it was creating a climate in which an individual or a specific group of people were targeted by unionist death squads, as happened with Sinn Féin members, including family members.

Judge Peter Cory was asked by the British and Irish governments to carry out an investigation into six cases where it was alleged collusion might have occurred and to recommend whether inquiries were necessary.

He began by asking: “How should collusion be defined? Synonyms that are frequently given for the verb to collude include: to conspire; to connive; to collaborate; to plot; and to scheme. The verb connive is defined as to deliberately ignore; to overlook; to disregard; to pass over; to take no notice of; to turn a blind eye; to wink; to excuse; to condone; to look the other way; to let something ride; see for example the Oxford Compact Thesaurus Second Edition, 2001.

4.29 Similarly the Webster dictionary defines the verb collude in this way: to connive with another: conspire, plot.

4.30 It defines the verb connive

1. to pretend ignorance or unawareness of something one ought morally, or officially or legally to oppose; to fail to take action against a known wrongdoing or misbehaviour – usually used with connive at the violation of a law.

2. (a) to be indulgent, tolerant or secretly in favour or sympathy;”
By this measure and by the report of the Inquiry, Rosemary Nelson was a victim of Collusion.

The Nelson Inquiry itself admits that it could not “exclude the possibility of a rogue member or members of the RUC or army in some way assisting the murders to target Rosemary Nelson".

In addition the report admits also that Rosemary Nelson was the victim of serious and repeated threats and that the RUC "negligently failed to intervene to prevent their officers from uttering abuse and threats to defence solicitors, including Rosemary Nelson".

The report states that RUC members "publicly abused and assaulted Rosemary Nelson... having the effect of legitimising her as a target"; it acknowledges that members of the RUC Special Branch resented Mrs Nelson and were prepared to say so; and it added that there was "some leakage of intelligence which we believe found its way outside the RUC". This, the report states, "increased the danger to Rosemary Nelson's life”.

The report accuses the RUC of failing to properly analyse or evaluate intelligence information relating to Mrs Nelson; of not warning her and of not offering her advice on personal protection.

The report also accuses the NIO of not demanding answers from the RUC concerning Mrs Nelson and of ignoring concerns expressed to it about the danger she was in from other human rights agencies.

The Inquiry report says: "The combined effect of these omissions by the RUC and NIO was that the state failed to take reasonable and proportionate steps to safeguard the life of Rosemary Nelson”.

Peter Cory in defining Collusion also said that “members of the public must have confidence in the actions of government agencies whether they be the Northern Ireland Office (NIO), the Secretary of State or the police force. There cannot be public confidence in any government agency that is guilty of collusion or connivance with regard to serious crimes. Because of the necessity for public confidence in government agencies the definition of collusion must be reasonably broad when it is applied to such agencies.”

The reality is that Rosemary Nelson, like so many hundreds of others was a victim of collusion. The RUC not only failed to act to prevent threats to her life but contributed to these and created a context in which she became a target for loyalists.

The actions of the RUC, its Special Branch and the NIO directly contributed to the murder of Rosemary Nelson. That is collusion.

The inquiry reveals a pattern of behaviour that all of these agencies connived in her death. That is collusion.

Moreover, knowing that she was at serious risk the state and its security agencies, did nothing to prevent attack or help Mrs Nelson protect herself. That is collusion.

Comhdáil

2011-05-23T21:46:00.003+01:00

On Saturday last Sinn Féin Gaelgeoiri had a conference on the Irish language in Dublin.

It was a busy day for republicans in the capital. Former blanket men were involved in a debate at the Irish Film Institute about the legacy of the 1981 hunger strikes, there was a commemoration at Glasnevin for Martin Doco Doherty, an IRA Volunteer who was killed by a unionist death squad when he intervened as they were set to attack oeople at the Widow Scanlon’s pub.And there was the Comhdáil.

And a very good Comhdáil it was too. This is what I said:

“Ar dtús ba mhaith liom buíochas a ghabháil le Rósaí, le Gearóid is leis na daoine eile a chuir an chomhdháil seo le chéile agus na cainteoirí uilig a ghlac páirt anseo inniu.

Tá cúpla ócáid tábhachtach eile ar siúl anseo i mBaile Átha Cliath inniu. Tá comóradh amuigh ag Reilg Glas Naíonn do Martin ‘Doco’ Doherty, óglach a maraíodh agus é ag cosaint cairde is comrádaithe ar 21 Bealtaine 1994. D’éag Raymond agus Patsy 30 bliain ó shin ar an Stailc Ocrais agus tá ócáid mhór ar siúl trasna na habhann san Ionad Scannánaíochta faoin Stailc Ocrais.

Ach tá dhá dúshlán mhóra romhainn i Sinn Féin faoi láthair:
obair taobh istigh den pháirtí – gaelú Sinn Féin
obair taobh amuigh den pháirtí le gaeilgeoirí agus thar cheann gaeilgeoirí

Ar dtús ba mhaith liom fáilte a chur roimh Pheadar Tóibín, roimh Sheán Ó Loingsigh agus roimh Chathal Ó hÓisín na feisirí nuathofa againn, agus tá Trevor anois ina sheanadóir nua againn - gaeilgeoirí breá ábalta iad uilig agus comhghairdeas dóibh.

Ansin tá na seanfhonduirí ann – Críona, Tomás, mé féin, Bairbre, Caitríona is Gráinne. Lena chois seo, tá go leor gaeilgeoirí cumasacha eile sa pháirtí gan sain-ordú ar bith.

Tá croífhoireann iontach againn ach caithfear i gcónaí barrchumas a bhaint amach. Sin dúshlán mór atá romhainn.

Thaitin an díospóireacht sin liom inniu, tógadh a lán pointí maithe agus tá go leor ábhar machnaimh ansin dúinn. Ach caithfidh muid bheith réadúil agus cúramach faoin slí ina bhfuil muid ag leanúint leis na moltaí chun an páirtí a ghaelú.

Mar shampla, bunaíodh cúpla cumann Gaeilge i mBéal Feirste is i mBaile Átha Cliath ach níl siad ag teacht le chéile nó ag feidhmiú mar is ceart.

Rinne Bairbre agus cúpla duine eile ansin pointí faoi fhreagairt guthán in oifigí Sinn Féin agus gach duine ag úsáid cibé Gaeilge atá acu go háirithe leis an Ard Fheis ag teacht go Béal Feirste i mbliana, aontaím leo.

Caithfear obair le chéile leis an chun an chothromaíocht inár gcur chuige a aimsiú. Caithfidh an Ghaeilge bheith i gcroílár obair s’againn i Sinn Féin. Caithfear í a phríomhshruthú. Mar sin de, tá struchtúr de dhíth orainn.

Ar an taobh eile, tá sárobair déanta againn; i gcaibidle Chromghlinne, fuair muid £8 milliúin don Chiste Infheistíochta Gaeilge. Tá Cáral agus John Mór mar airí againn anois agus tá mo bhuíochas agus bualadh bos mór tuillte ag Caitríona as an ualach a d’iompair sí – tá 4 daoine againn ar an Fhoras, foireann láidir leis an obair a dhéanamh.

Ní féidir linn leanúint ar aghaidh gan polasaí, gan straitéis, gan clár, gan struchtúr. Ghlac muid céim mhaith inniu leis an chomhdháil seo agus dréachtpholasaí scríofa.

Beidh céim eile le glacadh againn leis an Ard Fheis nuair a bheidh díospóireacht teasaí ansin, is dócha.

Tá a fhios ag daoine anseo go raibh muid ag tógáil Sinn Féin le tamall in achan chearn den tír. Tá sé de rún againn anois stiúrthóireachtaí a tharraingt le chéile, ceann acu ó thuaidh, ceann eile ó dheas seo agus mar aidhm againn nasc láidir a thógáil idir na hInstitiúidí agus an páirtí ar thalamh.

Caithfidh an Ghaeilge bheith mar chloch lárnach sna hathruithe sin. Tá mé a rá sin mar Uachtarán ar Shinn Féin agus mar bhall ceannaireachta.

Tá mé ag brú cúpla rud atá an-tábhachtach go deo – taobh leis na gnáthchúramaí a bhíonn orm – agus tá an Ghaeilge ina gceartlár siúd.

Mar sin, beidh an dualgas ormsa agus ar Oifig an Uachtaráin chun obair libh chun cearta Gaeilge a fháil agus an obair seo a chur chun cinn.

Ár mbuíochas daoibh a tháinig le chéile anseo inniu.

Bhí díospóireacht fhiúntach againn. Bhí cruinniú an-mhaith againn agus tá an-obair romhainn. Leanaigí ar aghaidh.

Building a better future

2011-05-21T16:57:00.002+01:00

The peace process has created the space in which the possibility of a different kind of relationship between the people of this island, and between Ireland and Britain has been made possible.

That relationship is still evolving. Nationalists and unionists in the north are engaged in a unique power sharing and partnership mode of governance – and all-Ireland political structures are established and beginning to work well.

But our country and our people are still divided. The British still claim jurisdiction over the north, even though this is now in a conditional way, and there remain many legacy and justice issues that are unresolved.

For all these reasons Sinn Féin set out our concerns about the visit of the English Queen at this time.
Nonetheless, mindful that the people of this island are on a journey out of conflict, and that unionists have a close affinity with the British Monarchy, Irish republicans have sought to be constructive in how we responded to this event.
I have also expressed my hope that some good will come from it.

The political reality in Britain of course is that the legal and constitutional powers of the Queen rest with the British Prime Minister of the day. It is David Cameron who personally exercises all of the Crown Prerogatives and does so without recourse to the British Parliament.

This includes approving Queen Elizabeth’s speeches.

Many people who I have spoken to, particularly people from the North, are disappointed that she did not apologise for Britain’s role in Irish affairs in her remarks on Wednesday. This disappointment is understandable given the huge hype around the visit, the difficulties surrounding it and the expectations raised by it.

For my part I believe that the expression by the Queen of England of sincere sympathy for those who have suffered as a result of the conflict is genuine, and I welcome that. Many victims and victims’ families will expect her Government to now act on that as quickly as possible and to deal with legacy issues, particularly those involving British state forces and collusion in a forthright manner.

As we have said many times, Sinn Féin wants to see a real, new and profoundly better relationship between the peoples of Ireland and Britain, one built on equality and respect.

There were a number of important symbolic gestures during this visit. The laying of a wreath in the Garden of Remembrance at the memorial to the men and women who died for Irish freedom was one of these, not least because many of the heroes remembered there were executed by British crown forces. The laying of the wreath was a recognition that they fought in a just cause.

The Irish Government and the other political parties in this state know that their sacrifices were not for a partitioned Ireland or a 26 County Republic, though they rarely admit it.

Interestingly during the recent General election the Fine Gael party did say that, “In any Republic the people are supposed to be supreme. Judged by that standard Ireland today is a Republic in name only”. They need to act on this and all the parties here need to act on the imperative of the Proclamation of the Republic.

For her part President Mary McAleese and her husband Martin have shown an ability to reach out to others. That has been a mark of her office.

I welcome the President’s acknowledgement that ‘inevitably where there are colonisers and the colonised, the past is a repository of sources of bitter division. The harsh facts cannot be altered nor grief erased.

I also agree with her assertion ‘that with time and generosity, interpretations and perspectives can soften and open up space for new accommodations’.

This will not happen of its own accord.

It will require ongoing work and a committed focus in the time ahead, particularly by the Irish Government.

Building healthy, friendly ’normalised’ relations with our nearest neighbour is in everyone’s interest. The peace process creates a democratic, inclusive way to do this.

All of us have come some way – the process has delivered. This week’s events are evidence of that but there is still a journey to be completed.

As the President remarked ‘this may still be a work in progress’ as well as ‘a work of progress, of partnership and friendship’ … ‘an important sign – among a growing number of signs’ of the fresh start envisaged in the Good Friday Agreement.

The challenge is to ensure that this is built upon and that reconciliation gestures, though important in themselves, do not become substitutes for real political action and positive change.

In practice that means there is an outstanding need for the Irish and British governments to honour their obligations and guarantee full implementation of all the terms of both the Good Friday and St Andrews Agreements.

The Irish Government and the British Government have spoken a lot in recent days about new beginnings and that is welcome. However, the British Government has thus far steadfastly refused to release files on the Dublin and Monaghan bombings, and on other attacks which have involved their agents in this state.

Mr Cameron needs to act on this issue on the terms outlined by the families of victims of these attacks.

So the Royal visit will be judged by the actions that spring from it, particularly how Mr Cameron responds to the very modest and legitimate demand that we work together to find ways of dealing with the past.

This is an opportune time for Irish Government to plan for the future in partnership with our unionist friends for a new Ireland, for genuine national reconciliation and healing across this island and for Irish Unity. This means having a real, inclusive national conversation about the future of our island including the need to bring all of our traditions together and building a better future for all the people of this island. This, along with building the peace, is the work of practical patriotism. It is work for us all to be getting on with.

Sinn Féin is working with our unionist partners in the North and every day we are seeking to explore possibilities for the future based upon equality, respect and tolerance. Like all democrats we seek an end to partition and the reunification of our people and our island.

So this week’s visit by the Queen of England to this part of Ireland has to be seen as part of a journey.

It is a page in a book – not the end of that book.

We need to continue that journey and to write the next chapter of that book.

Note to Readers

Sinn Féin will be holding two conferences in June on the theme of ‘Uniting Ireland’.

The conferences are titled: Towards a New Republic – I dtreo an Poblacht Nua.

They first will be held in Dublin on Saturday June 18th in the Rotunda Pillar Room Complex, Parnell Square, Dublin 1 beginning at 10am.

The second conference will be on Saturday June 25th in Cork City Council Concert Hall beginning at 7.30pm.

Details are available at www.unitingireland.ie

It is for the people of Ireland to determine our future

2011-05-16T10:02:00.004+01:00

The unparalleled security arrangements that have been put in place in Dublin to accommodate the visit of the Queen of England, forced the organisers of the An Gorta Mór Commemorative Famine Walk on Sunday, to change their arrangements.

Originally the walk was to commence at the Garden of Remembrance. However that’s now closed off as part of the massive security precautions that have put in place around the city.

Sundays ‘Famine Walk’ started from the bottom of O'Connell Street and finished at the Famine Memorial on the Quays.

An Gorta Mór (the Great Hunger) had a profound impact on Irish society. While its cause was the failure of the potato crop it was the political decisions taken by the British colonial authorities which exacerbated the human misery.

As food left Ireland for export and thousands were thrown off their land by a landlord class eager to evict families, the human and economic impact was significant. In the five years between 1845 and 1850, approximately 1.5 million Irish men, women and children died of starvation or related diseases. In the following decades millions more fled Ireland.

An Gorta Mór, like Britain’s colonial occupation, shaped Irish society in the 19th and 20th and now the 21st century. It is long past the time that the relationship between our two islands and peoples was placed on an equal footing.

The visit by the Queen of England has brought a renewed focus to this unequal relationship.

This blog wants to see a real and profoundly new and better relationship between the peoples of Ireland and Britain — one built on equality and mutual respect. Sinn Féin has been to the forefront in working to bring this about and we will continue to do so. Sinn Féin is for a new relationship.

As I wrote in a previous publication I have nothing against the Queen of England being the Queen of England. That is a matter for the people of England. But it is not the way I want Irish society to be organised.

I am a republican. I believe that the people are sovereign and not subjects. I am against monarchies.

I am also Irish. And while I am conscious of the sense of affinity which unionists have with the English monarch, I am offended at having to live in a partitioned Ireland with the Queen of England ruling over a part of us.

I believe the visit of the English Queen is troubling for many Irish citizens, particularly victims of British rule and those with legacy issues in this state and in the North.

It is for precisely this reason that we in Sinn Féin oppose this visit and believe that it is premature and insensitive. This is why the party is holding alternative events in Dublin and across the state during the visit.

I am for a new relationship between the people of Ireland and between the people of Ireland and Britain based on equality and mutual respect.

I hope this visit will hasten that day but much will depend on what the British monarch says. As an Irish citizen who was detained without charge or trial a number of times on a British prison ship, in a prison camp and a H Block, as well as a more conventional prison, at ‘Her Majesty’s Pleasure’, I hope so.

So too will many of the families of victims in the conflict, including victims of British terrorism and collusion. This includes families of those killed in the Dublin Monaghan bombs whose anniversary takes place on the first day of the visit.

British interference in Irish affairs has come at a huge cost to the Irish people.

It has been marked by invasion, occupation, subjugation, famine and cycles of Irish resistance and British repression.

The impact of this, including partition and its consequences, are still being felt to this day.

Irish republicans too have caused much hurt to people in Britain. I regret this.

The full normalisation of relationships between Ireland and Britain is important.

This will require the ending of partition and the emergence of a New Ireland.

The Peace Process, which Sinn Féin has contributed significantly to, has transformed the political landscape in Ireland and resulted in a peaceful political dispensation based on an historic accord between Irish nationalism and unionism.

The Good Friday Agreement is the foundation upon which new relationships between unionists and nationalists and between Ireland and Britain can be forged. It has fundamentally altered the political landscape, levelled the political playing field, removing the despicable Government of Ireland Act and opening up a peaceful, democratic route to a united Ireland.

And because nationalists and unionists are governing the north decisions affecting the lives of people there are being increasingly made in Ireland and not in Britain.

Republicans want to continue and to accelerate this process.

The united Ireland that republicans seek to build encompasses all the people of this island, including unionists. It will be a pluralist, egalitarian society in which citizens rights are protected and in which everyone will be treated equally. Sinn Féin wants a New Republic. That of course is a matter for the people of this island to decide.

But no matter how we shape our society, the new Ireland must embrace our islands diversity in its fullest sense. This includes English and Scottish influences, the sense of Britishness felt by many unionists, as well as indigenous and traditional Irish culture and the cultures of people who have come to Ireland in recent times.

Ireland and England are not strangers to each other. We should build on what we have in common while at the same time respecting each other’s sovereignty and independence.

Maybe the events of this week will assist that process. This blog hopes so.