Léargas

I don't know a lot about Scotland. I like the accent and the music and Robin Hall and Jimmy McGregor, Kenneth McKeller and an occasional wee dram. I was only there twice. The first time I had to be escorted to the plane by a Police unit after the Orange Order laid siege to a  public meeting I attended in Glasgow. The other time was in Saint Andrews where we succeeded in getting the DUP  to cross the line and where the two Governments made promises they have yet to keep. The scenery is stupendous. Not unlike our own place. I know lots of people who have big Scottish connections. Pat Doherty, the West Tyrone MP, originated in the Gorbals of Glascow, though he is Irish through and through.  Pearse Doherty TD,  no relation of Pats, has a similar family history. They are not on their own. Donegal,  their county, is like that. Especially the west of the county. Families have deep roots in both places. In times gone by young Donegal folk, and also many from the ...

      The  first barrier beyond which ticketless mortals cannot venture is at the mouth of Clonliffe Avenue opposite Quinns on Dorset street. Traffic  slows down as easy going Gardai marshall the throngs of hurling fans who congest the usually busy Dublin thoroughfare. There is a babble of noise. Shouts and guffaws. Laughter.  The cries of street hawkers and ticket touts. The excited chatter of rival fans. Tipp gansaí's mingle with the black and amber of Kilkenny and the emerald green of Limerick minors.  Its the same down at Gills corner and other entry points to Croke Park. It is the All Ireland Hurling Final. Me and my older brother Paddy slip through the barrier at Gills. The huge shoulder of the Canal end of Croke Park looms into sight. A duo of street musicians rent the air with traditional ballads. The street is filled with an epidemic of hurling fans. There is a sense of expectation. Of hope. A palpable expectation of ...

The Israeli government has decided to seize 400 hectares of Palestinian land in the Occupied West Bank. This is said to be the largest land grab in 30 years.  Coming in the wake of the recent widely welcomed ceasefire in Gaza this is a profoundly negative and retrograde development. It raises serious questions again about the Israeli government’s commitment to peace and a negotiated 2 state settlement. Of course this latest provocation is in line with the ongoing building of settlements and the Separation Wall, home demolitions, movement restrictions and detentions. The recent Israeli Government aggression against the Occupied Gaza Governorates ran in parallel with the oppression in the rest of the Occupied State of Palestine.   I have been raising the need for the Irish government to take the lead within the European Union on the issue of peace in the Middle East, and the need for the international community to uphold international law for a very long time no...

    On Monday, Martin McGuinness, myself, Rita O'Hare, Pat Doherty and Lucilita Breatnach represented Sinn Féin at the funeral of former Taoiseach Albert Reynolds in Dublin. All of us, along with others who couldn't attend, had worked with Albert on the peace process. The State ceremony was a fitting send off for a man who was crucial to the development of the peace process.   There was poignancy in the fact that his funeral took place just days before the 20 th Anniversary of the historic and groundbreaking IRA cessation of 1994.   That decision by the IRA leadership resulted in enormous changes and had profound effects on politics in Ireland and on the relationship between Ireland and Britain.   Much of the work to bring about that opportunity was carried out away from the public eye and is often now forgotten.     People rightly remember the great political highs of the past two decades, be...

  Last month I headed down to Carrick-on- Shannon in county Leitrim for a public meeting on the impact of the Irish government’s austerity policies on rural communities and families. It was a warm summer evening with a clear blue sky for most of the way there. Carrick-on-Shannon was quiet but the public meeting was packed to the doors. Later we drove to Monaghan along dark windy roads crisscrossing the border. Leitrim is one of our most underrated counties. Fewer mobile phone calls than usual meant I had an opportunity to enjoy the beauty of the countryside. Last week I was just across the border from Leitrim in Derrylin in county Fermanagh for the national hunger strike march and rally. Like its Leitrim neighbour Fermanagh is a wonderful county – stunning scenery, lots of small and large lakes and countless rivers all feeding into the Shannon river basin. Small towns and villages are connected by twisting narrow roads. For several decades the road network was br...

    Last Friday morning, August 1 st , former comrades of Bobby Sands - ex-POWs Sinead Moore and Jimmy Burns - unveiled a remarkable white marble bust of Bobby in the Felons Club on the Falls Road in west Belfast. Two days later thousands more travelled to Derrylin in County Fermanagh to celebrate the lives and heroism of the 10 hunger strikers who died in 1981 and also of Michael Gaughan and Frank Stagg. The marble bust, which was commissioned by the Bobby Sands Trust and shaped from a block of marble by Paraic Casey, is a fine representation of Bobby and a tremendous piece of sculpture. I would urge any of you either visiting the Felons or just passing by to take a few moments and go into the foyer to admire the bust which has been set in a recess into the wall. Art is very important in whatever form it takes but to carve something out of stone or wood or marble into an image of a living person and to capture the essence of that person takes enormous talent. ...

It is unusual for this column to deal with the same issue three weeks in a row. But the Israeli assault on Gaza makes this a very special case. The scenes of desolation and destruction, of whole streets reduced to piles of broken rubble, and the images of torn bodies, especially of young children and babies, demand that the international community do all that we can to end this slaughter. Just before noon on Tuesday morning I spoke to Saeb Erekat in Ramallah on the west Bank. The Palestinian Unity Government was holding an emergency meeting to discuss the deteriorating situation. Saeb is an Executive Committee Member of the PLO and is the Chief Negotiator for the Palestinian government. He took a few minutes to brief me on the current situation in Gaza and the behind the scenes efforts to achieve a humanitarian ceasefire. He explained that the Palestinian government, including Hamas, had accepted a United States proposal for a 24 hour humanitarian ceasefire. The Israeli go...