N

icky Kelly, of Arklow, Co. Wicklow, is currently

serving a 12-year jail sentence in Portlaoise prison for
an offence he did not commit, the Sallins mail train robbery in March 1976. He is likely to go on hunger strike in
prison within the next few weeks in protest against his conviction and, given his current mental state, he is very likely
to at least do himself very considerable damage, if not actually starve himself to death.
We hope to be able to publish in Magill within the next
few months, proof of Kelly's innocence by showing how a
group with which he was not associated were responsible
for the robbery, but at this stage we wish to highlight some
of the disquieting features of the police enquiry and the
judicial conduct of the case.
We have published on a number of previous occasions
the evidence of Garda ill-treatment which Kelly and his codefendants, Osgur Breathnach and Brian McNally allegedly
suffered. Nicky Kelly's own version, given in evidence, of
what happened him in Garda custody is as follows. We have
deleted the names of the Gardai from his account.
"(Garda A) rammed my head off the locker door. Some
of the Brits treatment. Spreadeagled. Jabbed in ribs, slapped in face, legs kicked. Lights switched off Placed behind
door. Spreadeagled. Door pushed in. Collision. Ended up on
ground. Once on floor refused to get up. Hair pulled. Hit on
back. Frightened more than hurt. Taken upstairs by (Garda
A). Smell of drink off him. Comer of cell. Toilet. Grabbed
by hair. 'Tomorrow - long day'. Shoved head 5 - 6 times
down toilet, didn't wet face. Taken out of cell by (Garda
A). To wall - out of sight of cell. Short delay. Knee in
groin. Caught in thigh. Spat in face. Back to cell. 5 minutes.
there. (Garda A): 'eventually you'll talk'.
"(Garda A) hit (me) back of ears after wrong answers.
Telephone ears 10 times. (Garda B) slapped in face and
arms. (Garda C and Garda D) punched, punched. Fell to
ground. (Garda D) hit me with chair - not much force.
"On floor, on back, hands stretched backeards. Chair
put on palms. (Garda A) sits on chair. Spits on face. Leering. Cried. Frightened. Don't know what they are going to
do to me. Very tired, sore, ears ringing, bad headache,
stomach sick, afraid of my life. (Garda A) produced blackjack. Beaten by (Garda E) on biceps. Left on table. Black
lathe 10 inches long, 1 inch in diameter. Flexible, Swish
noise. 'Own up, make statement '.Beaten above the knee ... "
Dr. Sean 0 Cleirigh, an independent doctor, examined
Kelly in Mountjoy hours after this ordeal and gave the
following evidence in court. He feundextensive bruising on
Kelly's outer arms from the shoulder to the elbow. There
were also bruises over the left shoulder blade, over the ribs,
over the pubic bone and on his left hip and thigh. He found
extensive bruising over the mastoid bone of the left ear,
which itself was also bruised. The ear area was also slightly
bruised. All of these bruises were tender. He said Kelly was
very apprehensive at the time.
Dr. Samuel Davis, the medical officer at Mountjoy prison, examined Kelly the following day. He said in evidence
that he found extensive bruising on the left shoulder and

scapula ... there was extensive bruising on the upper arm.

The left arm was completely bruised on the outer side ...
there was a circular bruising on the lateral, or outer surface,
of the left forearm and there was circular bruising about 2
inches in circumference about the wrist on the inner surface ... he found two superficial injuries about an inch in
size, over the pectoral area, slightly above the left nipple.
Kelly ltad a large superficial bruise on the outer surface of
the right upper arrn , measuring 7 inches by 7 inches and
continuing into the back of the right shoulder. There were
bruises on both buttocks and also behind the left ear. There
was bruising as well on the front and back of the left thigh.

nspite of this persuasive evidence of Gardai ill-treatment

a statement made by Kelly, while in custody, was held
by the Special Criminal Court to have been made voluntarily. The court accepted Garda evidence that there had been
no ill-treatment of any of the defendants and insinuated
that any injuries they received must have been self-inflicted.
On the basis of a statement made by Kelly while in Garda
custody and on that evidence alone Kelly was convicted of

charges in connection with robbery and sentenced to 12

years penal servitude.
The Special Criminal Court's acceptance of-Garda assurances that statements were given voluntarily, when there is
substantial evidence to show that there was a considerable
degree of coercive pressure involved is not unusual. It is one
of the major defects of that court and, to a large extent,
an inevitable defect - for the repeated exposure of Justices to Garda evidence versus "subversive" claims conditions the members of the court in favour of the Gardai.
However that the Court of Criminal Appeal should consistently refuse to look behind the decision of the Special
Criminal Court on such matters is a matter for considerable
disquiet, for it means that there is effectively no check on
the Special Criminal Court's inevitably prejudiced predisposition towards the Gardai.
Kelly's two co-defendants, Breathnach and McNally,
were discharged on appeal on technical grounds. By that
time Kelly had absconded to Canada. He had jumped bail
before the verdict in the Special Criminal Court. However,
once his co-defendants were acquitted by the Court of Criminal Appeal he returned to Ireland and gave himself up to
the Gardai. He was immediately imprisoned in Portlaoise
and he had considerable difficulty in winning a right to
appeal his conviction, not having lodged his appeal within
the statutory period.
Then his appeal was turned down by the Court of Criminal Appeal - the technical grounds for his appeal differed from those in the cases of Breathnach and McNally and he was returned to Portlaoise. The Appeal Court have

allowed an appeal to the Supreme Court on a technicality

but it will be possible there to argue the point whether the
Appeal Court should examine the basis for the admission
of statements in evidence - the point at the heart of the
Kelly case, which was entirely ruled out of contention by
established practice by the Court of Criminal Appeal.

he entire Sallins robbery case had proved to be a major

national scandal - at one point Gerry Collins, then
spokesperson on Justice for Fianna Fail, demanded an enquiry into the actions of the Gardai in the case but when he
became Minister he not alone didn't institute an enquiry
but promoted several Gardai who were prominent in the
affair.
The incident took place at the height of the Coalition's
hysteria about law and order - a time when the Gardai
would have been most encouraged to believe that the
authorities would stand behind them in whatever they did
to stamp out "subversive crime".
As stated above the handling by the Special Criminal
Court of the case was less than satisfactory and the Court
of Criminal Appeal has proved entirely unprepared to deal
with the issues which the court throws up.
At the end of it all Nicky Kelly is in Portlaoise doing a
12-year jail sentence. Apart from the material fact that he is
entirely innocent, there is the point that the processes
whereby he has ended up serving this sentence have proved
entirely unsatisfactory. There is only one correct course of
action now: Release Nicky Kelly and then institute an enquiry in to the entire background to the case. 'Vincent Browne

.1.U;

MAGILL APRIL 1982 5

rior to Christmas three years ago a row, involving a

full time official of Sinn Fein The Workers Party,
broke out in a Dublin pub, The Dockers, on Sir John
Rogerson's quay. The row resulted in the party official
stabbing a broken glass in the face of one of two of his
antagonists, both of whom were former members of the
party. Inevitably, there were threats of retribution.
These former members, brothers, had been involved in a
number of previous occasions in conflicts with other party
officials. Indeed there had previously been a row with the
same party official at the party's drinking club, Club Vi
Cadhain at Gardiner Place. Somebody obviously decided
that The Dockers pub incident was the last straw and that
the two brothers would have to be taught a lesson.
The Sunday morning after the row two cars carrying
eight men drew up outside The Dockers. The men, several of
whom were armed, went into the pub and singled out the
two brothers, having warned the rest of the Sunday morning drinking crowd to stand back and mind their own
business. They then beat the two brothers over the head
with hatchets, causing them very serious injury. A girl who
was with one of the brothers and who was then a current
member of the party, was beaten when she protested. She
had been involved with a senior member of the party some
time previously and this may have been an aggravating
factor in the dispute.
Seven of the eight men were members of Sinn Fein The

Workers Party. All were members of the Official IRA, some

members of the Dublin unit and some from Belfast including one of the most notorious "heavies" of the latter
organisation in the North, who is now in jail on an arms
offence.
The person who is not a member of the party is perhaps
the most interesting of the group. He occupies a very senior
positon on the GHQ staff of the Official IRA. He has been
involved in numerous robberies over the last several years
and is believed to have murdered a prominent individual in
Dublin in the course of the last 5 years. He is from the
North and was formerly a member of Clann na hEireann
(the SFWP British support organisation) and was deported
from England. He carried out several robberies in England
for the organisation prior to his deportation. It was he who
led the party of eight to The Dockers that Sunday morning
and it was he who assembled the gang for the operation.
They had convened earlier that morning in a house near
the North Strand in Dublin, a place where the Official IRA
Dublin unit still meets regularly.
Information about this incident comes primarily from
one of the eight men who were involved. Also from one of
the victims. And people who were members of the Official IRA until recently tell us that there is no way that this
incident could have happened without explicit authorisation for it from a senior officer in the Offical IRA, who is
also a member of Sinn Fein The Workers Party.

1 lhePartv t

)JO~~':~
As the two victims had been involved with the Communist Party there were protests from the Communist Party
about this incident to the leadership of SFWP. The latter
denied any knowledge of the incident or the involvement
of any of its members in the affair.
In the course of an interview for this article with Tomas
MacGiolla, President of SFWP, and Sean Garland, General
Secretary, they both recalled hearing of the incident at
the time and remembered the correspondence with 'the
Communist Party. They both denied that members of
SFWP had been involved and said that as they were un.aware of the existence of the Official IRA they were not in

a position to make any observation about its involvement

or otherwise in the incident.
Such incidents are almost unique in the South, where
SFWP is keen to project a respectable image while it competes for votes as a regular conventional political party of
the left. But they are commonplace in Northern Ireland.

he leadership of Sinn Fein The Workers Party now

consistently deny any knowledge of the Official IRA
or any involvement by the party in military activity. In an
interview on RTE's Day By Day programme shortly after
the recent general election Tomas MacGiolla said: "I certainly have no knowledge of them (the Official IRA). All
MAGILL APRIL 1982 7

I know is that I am convinced and I am aware that there is

no question of any military organisation in any way associated with us at the present."
He went on to say :"1 have no reason to think that (the
Official IRA) still exists. Certainly it doesn't exist in any
way down here. There was for some years a suggestion that
it may have existed in the North' and I pursued that there
for quite a number of years to see any evidence of its existence and I am satisfied that it certainly doesn't exist in
any association with us."
In the course of the same programme Sean Garland said
that in his July 1972 Carrighmore speech Tomas MacGiolla
had made it clear then that "this party wanted nothing to
do with such activities from then on". Asked if he was still
a member of the Official IRA army council he replied:
"you're talking about today and we'll say 12 years ago,
which is a long time."
The official stance of the party nowadays is that as far as they are
concerned the Official IRA went out of existence immediately after the July 1972 ceasefire. It is also suggested
that the military campaign from 1970 until the ceasefire
was an abberation for which only a handful of hotheads
were responsible, while the leadership did what it could to
stop the campaign all along.

- the fact is that almost all the 100 or so

members of the Official IRA are members of SFWP;

ike most organisations, SFWP remains to a large extent a prisoner of its past, although it has made remarkable effotts to disengage itself from its ideological heritage.
The leftward drift of Sinn Fein during the 1960s under
the direction of the Trinity intellectual, Roy Johnston, has
been well chronicled by now. However, the significance of
this development in terms of Marxism has been much exaggerated - it reflected much more the very non-marxist

radicalism of the 1960s, more popularist, more issueoriented in terms of fish-ins, housing agitation, etc. than
a strict marxist strategy would allow.
It was also very republican, in the traditional sense of
that word. The national question remained central to its
ideology and the struggle against "British imperialism" was
seen as the focus of the party's main line of activity both in
economic and nationalistic terms.
The IRA was run down during that period with the main
emphasis on civil rights. The belief was that concentration
on civil rights would have the effect of destabilising the
state in Northern Ireland. But when violence flared on the
streets of Belfast in August 1969, the republican movement
reacted instinctively in the traditional republican manner.
Although its rhetoric didn't catch up for a while and the
split with the Provisionals confused the issue, the Official
IRA got caught up in a military campaign against British
presence in Northern Ireland as much as did the Provos.
Although the party now seeks to minimise the significance of the issue, the Battle of the Lower Falls was a
major macho boost to the Officials in July 1970. They
boasted at the time that it was "the first major battle
between the forces of the Republic and the British army
since 1921". Some enthusiasts even went so far as to claim
that it was the heaviest military engagement involving the
British army since the Second World War - nowadays
Tomas MacGiolla refers to it merely as a confrontation
between the people of the Falls and the British army.
"Slates were thrown from the roofs", he says minimising
the degree of military engagement that occurred.
The military campaign of the Official IRA stepped up
considerably in the months after the introduction of internment in August 1971. Local O/Cs were encouraged to outdo the Provos in militancy. The Derry O/C at the time
recalls being berated at the time by very senior members
of the Official IRA for not shooting enough British soldiers.
The course of the campaign began to go sour on the
Official IRA from an early stage and in fact it was the Officials who were most associated in the public mind with
atrocities rather than the Provisionals in early 1972. The
following is a sequence of incidents which caused considerable public outrage and pressure on the movement to halt
its campaign:
December 12, 1971: Senator Jack Barnhill was shot dead
when he resisted attempts to burn down .his house. Although it seems that there was no intention to kill him, in
fact, his name had apppeared on a death list of prominent
individuals, compiled by the leadership of the Official
IRA, to be assassinated at some future date. The list included several resident magistrates and prominent unionist politicians.
February 22, 1972: Seven people, including five cleaning
women, a priest and a gardener, were killed when bombs
went off at the headquarters of the Britsih parachute regiment at Aldershot. The Official IRA planted the bomb in
MAGILL APRIL 1982 9

he image which SFWP presents to voters in the South

as the party of "peace, justice and class politics" and
as "the party you can trust" is very different to reality of
the Official IRA which has been responsible for some of the
most horrific atrocities in Northern Ireland in the past decade. We list elsewhere the horrors for which the oganisa-

The Murder of
(June 21, 1973)

David

Walker

We are including this incident in

our list of Official IRA atrocities because of its particular awfulness, even
though it happened before the effective end to the Official IRA military
campaign. David Walker was aged 16
and was mentally handicapped. He was
kidnapped by the Official IRA on his
way to school at 8.35 am and was'
found with gunshot wounds in his
head and chest at 11.25 am. He died
20 minutes later.

The Official
(1975)

IRA/INLA

Feud

It is impossible to apportion blame

in such incidents but because the the
Official IRA was then the larger organisation and its interests most immediately threatened, it is not unreasonable to assume that it was the
major culprit in this feud.
Certainly the Official IRA was the
first to kneecap an opponent'and then
it was the first to murder a member of
the opposing party, Hugh Ferguson.
The final tally ended up with two
deaths on each side. Then the Official IRA OIC, Billy McMillan was shot
dead by the INLA on the Falls Road
- this shooting took place after a
truce had been negotiated.

The Larry White Murder

10,1975).

(June

One of those convicted of this murder was Barry Doyle who had been
SFWP organiser in the Munster area.
The ofhers convicted were Bernard
Lynch of 30 Charles Day Road,
Togher, Co. Cork; David O'Donnell of
147 Rosewood Estate, Ballincollig,
Co. Cork;

tion was responsible in 1972. Below we list the most salient

examples of thuggery for which the Official IRA have been
responsible.
We list only those incidents, apart from the murder of
David Walker, that have taken place since 1975. This is because the Official IRA seemed intent on a ceasefire since
that time.

Larry White associated with Saor

Eire in Cork, having previously been
involved with the Official republican
movement. There was a great deal of
aggro between White and SFWP members. It is not clear whether this murder was authorised by the leadership
of the Official IRA.

earlier . that year if only because it

was the more vulnerable party. Altogether eleven people were killed in
the 1975 feud and five in the feud two
years later, when the Officials seemed
to have wreaked some sort of revenge.
We are not delving too deeply into
these feuds here because of the enormous complexity of them and because
of the existence of thuggery on both
sides.

The Billy Wright Murder

(October 2, 1975)

Although in no sense was this an . The Murder of Seamus Costello

authorised Official IRA operation we
(October 5, 1977)
are including it in this list because it
arose directly out of an Official IRA
There continues to be speculation
robbery in Heuston station in Sepabout this act and there have been sugtember 1973 when 17,000 was
gestions that Costello may have been
killed by members of his own organistolen.
Wright was accused of having taken
sation. Certainly there had been talk
part in this robbery but was acquitted.
among Belfast members of the INLA
However, he later made a statement to
in the months prior to this killing
the Gardai in connection with the
about "getting rid" of Costello, by
robbery and in this statement he imwhich at least some of them meant
plicated a very prominent member
killing him. This was because of Cosof the Official IRA who had been
tello's failure to acquire arms and exOIC of the Dublin unit and who had
plosives in the quantities that he realso been prominent in the research
peatedly promised and his refusal to
division of the organisation set up by
allow anybody else take over responCathal Goulding in 1972. This person
sibility for it or even to be jointly inhad absconded to the Continent folvolved.
lowing the robbery but, it is widely
However, we have been informed
. by a number of people who were
believed by the Gardai among many
others, that he returned specifically
members of the Official IRA at the
time that Costello was in fact shot by
to even the score with Wright.
Wright knew he was in trouble once
a senior member of the Official IRA.
he made the statement - he told
The only doubt that surrounds the
friends "I am a dead man". On Octooperation is what degree of authorisation did it have. Certainly, when the
ber 2, 1975, he was mowed down in a
IRSP feud broke out in 1975 and eshail of machine gun fire in his barber's
pecially after the killing of Billy Meshop on Cabra RoadiDublin - he died
Millan in Belfast on April 28, 1975,
in hospital on October 19, 1975.
plans were made by the Official IRA
to kill Costello and the army countil
Official
IRA/Provisional
IRA
gave explicit authorisation for this: We
have been informed of this by people
Feuds (1975 and 1977).
who were members of the army council at the time.
The Official IRA seems to have
been the victim, certainly in the 1975
It also appears that there was no
feud with the Provisionals, for the
countermanding order made to the
same reason that the IRSP was the vicarmy council but there may have been
tim in the feud with the Official IRA
a general understanding "to let sleep-

ing dogs lie". However the person who

is believed to have been directly resposible held no personal animosity towards Costello and the belief is that he
was specifically ordered to kill the
IRSP leader by a very senior person
in the movement.
There was an earlier attempt made
on Costello's life in Waterford on May
7, 1975. Costello had spoken at a
meeting in the city that night and on
his way to the home of one of the organisers the car in which they were
travelling was raked with machine gun
fire by a passenger on a motorbike.
The motorbike keeled over and it was
this which saved Costello's life at the
time.
We have been informed that both
men on the motorbike were senior
members of the Official IRA in Dublin, who were attached to the GHQ
staff. It is believed that the gun used in
the attempted murder was later found
by Gardai but not identified by them
as such.
There is no question but that that
attempt on Costello's life was a fully
authorised Official IRA operation
.

The Murder of Hugh Halloran

(September 8,1979).
Halloran, a former member of the
party, was "sentenced" to a beating
for indiscipline. He was beaten to
death with hurley sticks by members
of the Official IRA in Belfast. Two of
the men responsible for the murder
fled to Cork, where they were looked
after by local Official IRA contacts.
Meanwhile, public outrage over the
killing evinced from Seamus Harrison,
who mans the party offices in Belfast's
Springfield Road, a comment: "our
party wishes to place on record its
absolute condemnation and disgust at
these murders (caused by street
violence generally). Those responsible
showed callous disregard for human
life by their unprovoked assaults
against innocent and harmless people".
Public reaction became so intense
that the Official IRA decided to order
the culprits back from Cork and give
themselves up to the RUC. Francis
Macklin of Britton's Parade, Belfast
and Stephen Hunter of Ballymurphy
Road, Belfast duly arrived in Newry
and gave themselves up at the police
station. In the course of their trial,
their counsel told the court that they
had been approached by two Official
IRA men and told they would be shot
if they refused to return to Northern Ireland to confess the killing.
Macklin was jailed for 15 years and
Hunter for 13 years.

Joe McCabe, shot

. (August 1980).

in the head

There was a riot taking place in the

vicinity of Divis Flats close to midnight between local youths and British soldiers. Official IRA men emerged armed from the vicinity of their
club in Cyprus Street - they had two
rifles and a handgun. They opened
fire on the rioters, hitting McCabe,
aged about 18, in the back of the
head. As he lay on the ground seriously injured, one of the Official IRA
men, who had been in school with
McCabe came up and kicked him.

Beatings,
knee-capping
intimidations (1975-1982).

and

There are countless stories in Belfast of these incidents involving members of the Official IRA, and certainly a weekly, if not daily, occurrance.
Only earlier this month they were involved in kneecappings of two brothers in the Moyard estate. During the
hunger strike protest last year they intimidated several public house owners
in the Leeson Street area into either
refusing to close during hunger striker
funerals or, as in one case, forcing a
publican to remain closed for a week
in retaliation for closing during a
funeral.
In early April members of SFWP
seriously injured an American reporter outside McEnaney's pub beside
Andersonstown police station and left
him unconscious on the pavement.
His offence was to be in the company of a woman who was selling the
IRSP newspaper. The brother of a
well known SFWP member was present during the beating of this reporter and then walked by saying that he
had seen nothing.
In 1973 a former member of the
party was beaten by two very prominent members of SFWP in a bar in
Belfast for indiscipline - they cracked his ribs, broke his nose, etc. One of
these people involved in this beating
is a very prominent spokesperson of
the party in Belfast. Later this same
victim was kneecapped by the Official
IRA having been enticed to Dundalk.

Ardmonagh
29,1982)

Evictions

(January

The most recent operation conducted by the Official IRA, of which we

are aware, occurred in the Turf Lodge
area of Belfast on January 29 last.
About 20 members of the organisation
took part in the eviction of a family
from a house in Ardmonagh Gardens.

They carried rifles and short arms

openly on the street in broad daylight
and they pursued a man in a manner
that suggested that they intended to
cause him serious injury at least.
The incident started when members of Provisional Sinn Fein (actually
probably the Provisional IRA) went
around to families living in flats in
Ardmonagh Gardens, asking if any of
them would like to move into a house
which was about to become vacant. A
Seamus Smith said that he would like
to move his wife and three young children in and this was agreed.
A few days later he started cleaning
the vacant house and began some redecoration. He also moved some of "'the furniture from his flat into it.
A knock came to the door of the
hose on the evening of Thursday,
January 28, and when he answered
it there were two men standing on the
doorstep with their hands inside their
coats, suggesting that they were
armed. They told him "you'd better
be out of here tomorrow at 6 o'clock
or you're going to be shot". They said
they were from the Official IRA but
he didn't recognise either of them.
Naturally frightened by the visit he
approached the local Provos and was
told later that night that they (the
Provos) had been in touch with the
Official IRA and that the matter had
been sorted out - he could continue
moving into the house.
The following evening at around
6 o'clock, (Friday, January 29, the
second day of the recent general election campaign), Smith left the house
to go across the road for his tea to his
mother-in-law's home. Immediately
after he did so he was informed by a
neighbour that armed men had broken
into the house - two Ford vans had
driven into Ardmonagh Gardens and
about 20 men had got out, about 6
held rifles, several others were carrying short arms. They effectively took
over the street, manning corners, standing in the centre of the road and even
taking up positions in the fields at the
back of the street.
Three of them dashed into the flats
where the Smiths lived. They smashed
down the front door of the flat and
then kicked in the sitting room sliding
door. Neither Smith nor any of his
family were there, so they left.
They then moved in another family
into the house and made it clear that
if any attempt were made to dislodge
them those responsible would have to
deal with the Official IRA. Several of
the gang of 20 were known to locals
as members of the Official IRA. One
of the men taking part was the brother
of one of the most prominent members of the Republican Clubs in Belfast.
MAGILL APRIL 1982 11

inn Fein, the Workers Party, strenuously denies that

any of its finance comes from robberies. In spite of
these denials however we have identified the following robberies as having been carried out by members of the Official
IRA since 1975.

We have been able to identify robberies that amount to

only about half a million pounds in all and much of this
was recovered by the security forces. However, we are
aware that these represent only the tip of the iceberg that very very much more money has been robbed by members of the Official IRA over the last several years. One
former member of the army council estimates that the Offi-

Glens of Antrim (229,997)

On April 26, 1977 a Securicor van was halted on its way
from Limavady to Coleraine by a spiked chain thrown
across the roacl. Twenty three bags of money were taken
from it by five armed men. The gang was later arrested by
an RUC patrol as it was packing the bags of money into
meat carcasses in a disused quarry, four miles from the
scene of the robbery. The five men were convicted of the
robbery at Belfast City Commission on December 14, 1977.
Four were sentenced to 10 years imprisonment and one to
four years.
The convicted men were: James Michael Feeney of Seapark, Banbridge; Hugh Murphy of Richmont Gardens,
Lurgan; John Paul McGeown of Ridgeway, Craigavon;
Andrew Mumin of Drumbeg North, Craigavon; and William
Barr of Belmont, Derry. The latter, William Barr, was manager of Securicor Ulster Ltd. in Derry. Feeney and Murphy
admitted to being members of the Official IRA.

eIE Pay Office, Inchicore (150,000)

This was one of their most successful operations and it
took place on November 1, 1978. Five armed men held up
the cashier's office. They were armed with shotguns and
they were wearing scarves and balaclava helmets.
They locked the wages staff in the canteen after they got
the money and then drove away in a CIB van. The van was
later abandoned as the raiders got away in another vehicle.
Nobody was ever caught for the operation. We have
been informed by several sources connected with the move12 MAGILL PARIL 1982
or

cial IRA robbed a total of about 2 million since the 1972

ceasefire
- .

We have also been informed that two major robberies

were conducted. in the run up to the June 1981 general
election campaign. One of these took place in Belfast in
early 1981 when a bank on the Ormeau Road was raided.
The other robbery took place in the south and the takings
were very considerable. We are not aware of the precise
details of either of these operations and have therefore left
them out of this narrative. However we wish to point out
that there was a major jewellery robbery in McDowells
Jewellers in O'Connell Street, Dublin on April 24, 1981,
when jewellery valued at 100,000 was taken. We have no
evidence that this was stolen by the Official IRA but this
is the only robbery of its size undertaken in the run-up to
the 1981 election. Also, as outlined below, the Official IRA
was involved in another jewellery robbery in May 1980 and
therefore must have means of disposing of jewellery on the.
black market.

ment that this robbery was conducted by the Official IRA

to provide finance for Sinn Fein The Workers Party.

Dundalk Jewellers (60,000)

This robbery which took place on May 9, 1980, could
have proved a major embarrassment to the party because
the men involved got caught and were identifiable as being
associated with the movement. However, the media missed
the story at the time and the Gardai do not seem to have
realised the significance of the incident.
The jewellers shop that was raided was owned by John
Walsh and jewels to the value of 60,000 were taken. A
gardaon duty nearby gave chase to the raiders but failed
to catch them. However two men who correspond to the
description given by the Garda were later spotted by other
Gardai who also gave chase and, this time, caught them.
The car involved in the incident had been hijacked in
Belfast the previous day. The hijackers told the owner that
the car was being taken over by the Official IRA and would
be returned later that day. When this did not happen the
man went to the Provisional Sinn Fein incident centre on
the Falls Road and a man who liaises with the Official IRA
for the Provisionals contacted the local Official OIC in the
Cyprus Street Republican Clubs drinking haunt. He was
told that the car would be returned the next day. However
the car was then found to have been involved in the Dundalk jewellery robbery.
The two men who were caught were sentenced to eight
years imprisonment by the Special Criminal Court. They
were Leonard McAteer of Newry and James Tracey of

Hom Drive, Suffolk, Belfast. Two of the Gardai involved in

the incident were decorated.

Bank of Ireland, Westland Row (25,000)

This robbery took place on November 22, 1977 while
security men from Brinkmat security firm were making a
delivery to the bank. Three armed men accosted them at
the door of the bank and forced them inside. One of the
raiders was armed with a shotgun and the other two had hand
guns. They got off with 25,000 but missed a larger sum
of money which was still in the security van. Two of the
raiders escaped on a motorbike, while the third made off
on foot. The Gardai later apprehended a man and interrogated him but it was found that he was a barman in a local
pub who was confused by locals with one of the raiders.

man at the site at the time was able to remember only the
above details. Sources connected with the Official IRA
have informed us that they were responsible for the robbery.

International Meat Packers (30,000)

This, according to the Gardai, was a "particularly well
organised" job. The payroll arrived in the factory on Lower
Grand Canal St. at 9.00 am on Friday, July 22, 1977. Forty
five minutes later two raiders, dressed in white coats and
protective helmets (the uniform of workers on the site)
arrived. They held up the cash office at gunpoint as the
staff there were in the process of filling out wage packets.
They opened fire on a member of the staff who pursued I.
them and got away in a white Ford Cortina which had been
stolen and was later abandoned.

AlB, North Wall (11,000)

CIE Train Robbery
Three armed men entered the bank at 10.14 am. Two
jumped over the counter and one of them screamed "give
us the rent". They got away in a car which was driven by
the fourth man. Two of the men involved visited the scene
on the following day to point out the location to their girl
friends. One of these is a prominent trade unionist today.

Cork CMP Dairies (10,000)

This was probably the most embarrassing robbery for
SFWP because (a) the people involved were caught and (b)
many of them were very well known members of the movement. Five men, all armed, held up the wages office and
took 10,000. One of them fired at a wages clerk, Maura
Collins, who failed to comply swiftly enough with their
orders. She was hit in the lower back. The sound of the
shot alerted 3 Special Branch detectives who were investigating a break-in at the rear of the premises. They rushed
around to the front and exchanged shots with the raiders.
When one of the detectives produced a machine gun the
five raiders surrendered.
The five men were Thomas Patrick Cosgrave of Cork;
James Martin McKevitt of Newry; Rory O'Hagan of Dundalk; David Russell of Belfast and Hugh Gorman of Newry.
Counsel for the men stated at their trial in the Special
Criminal Court on October 9, 1978 "while there were
members of the Official IRA the incident in question was
of the nature of a maverick operation for themselves."
The statement, which of course was given in good faith
by the counsel, was designed to minimise the political embarrassment caused by the incident. It was, however, untrue, according to a variety of sources at~fched to the
movement. In addition, one of the men involved gave an
alias. This man was a prominent operative fo~the Official
IRA over the previous number of years.
\

This happened on Thursday, February 5, 1981 but

where we are not exactly sure. Neither do we know what if
anything the raiders got.
Two train hold-ups occurred on the same day. One on
Dublin-Belfast train, which left Connolly station at 17.30.
It appears that there were just two women involved in
this raid and they held up five crew members on the train
and threw out 5 mail bags onto the tracks. The mail bags
were later found by Gardai on the line between Skerries
and Balbriggan. While at least some of the bags contained
registered mail, it is not known what, if anything of value
the raiders may have got. Incidentally, the two female
raiders got off the train, when it came to an unscheduled
halt at Balbriggan.
The other train hold-up occurred later that same night
at Ballybrophy, Co. Laois on the Dublin-Cork mail train.
It appears that there was no money on this train and the
raiders left the scene in a state of some agitation.
The Gardai linked the two incidents together believing
that the same organisation was responsible. However, we
have discovered that one of the raids was conducted by the
Official IRA and the other by the Provisional IRA. We are
not sure which was responsible for which.

\
AlB Head Office Site (6,000)

This robbery took place in 1977 when the AlB headquarters was under construction. Two armed men forced
their way into the site office of Crampton's, the builders
and got away with 6,000 - a third man was waiting for
them in a car opposite the RDS. Specific details of this
robbery were not available from Crampton's - the foreMAGILL APRIL 1982 13

retaliation for the killing of the civilians in Derry during

Bloody Sunday. The leadership approved the operation
believing that over 20 senior Parachute officers would be
killed.
February 25, 1972: The Official IRA gunned down the
Unionist politician, John Taylor on a pavement in Armagh.
Relations now between SFWP and the Official Unionists
are very close, thus this incident seems all the more bizarre
in retrospect. However Goudling seemed quite dismissive
about the incident when interviewed some years later on
March 8, 1975 by The Irish Times. Referring to the Taylor
shooting he said: "I suppose you could say that, well, Brian
Faulkner should have been the target, he was in charge, but,
like everything else, availability of the target matters too".
March 6, 1972: Marcus McCausland, a former officer in the
UDR was shot dead by the Official IRA. The coldblooded
nature of this shooting as well as the fact that this was
a middle class target provoked particular outrage.
March 12, 1972: A woman was fatally injured in crossfire
in Leeson Street, Belfast, between the Official IRA and the
British army.
March 24, 1972: The Official IRA announced that it would
continue its campaign in spite of the prorogation of Stormont - this statement was almost as hardline as that issued
at the time by the Provisional Chief of Staff, Sean MacStiophain, which is much better remembered.
April 10, 1972: The Official IRA killed 2 soldiers in a
booby trap.
May 10, 1972: A 15 year old girl was beaten, tarred and
feathered by the Official IRA in the Leeson Street area of
Belfast.
May 21, 1972: An off-duty British soldier, Ranger Best,
who was at home on leave in the Creggan in Derry was shot
dead by the Official IRA. This incident led to the Official
IRA ceasefire which was announced on May 29, 1972.
Prior to the announcement of the ceasefire there was
heated debate at army council level on the issue of the Best
killing. Several members of the council condemned it and
said that public support had been devastated by it, others
pointed out that an explicit army council order had been
made some months previously stating that British soldiers
in or out of uniform were legitimate targets.
In fact, the issue had arisen some weeks previously in
Derry. The local unit had managed to set up a brothel in
the Waterside area and it was proposed to entice British
officers there and poison them. Explicit authorisation for
this action was obtained by the Derry staff for this operation from a very senior member of the Official IRA at the
time, now a senior member of the SFWP Ard Comhairle.
There was heated discussion at army council level on the
cease fire - it was vigorously opposed by Seamus Costello
and others.

However the terms of the cease fire were deliberately qualified in a manner that allowed a continuance
of the campaign more or less as before. The statement said:
"the IRA has agreed to this (cease fire) proposal reserving
only the right of self-defence and defence of areas if attacked by the British army or sectarian forces."
Throughout the rest of 1972 and the early part of 1973
the military campaign continued more or less as before. This
fact is best illustrated by just two incidents in this period.
On December 5, 1972 a massive mortar attack blitz was
launched throughout Northern Ireland. British army in-

stallations and camps and RUC stations were fired on in

Blight's Lane in Derry, Kilrea, Coalisland, Croagh, Co.
Tyrone, Lurgan and in Belfast at Silver City, Fort Monagh,
Ardoyne and North Queen's St. It was a huge undertaking.
Because of its size it was co-ordinated by the GHQ staff in
Dublin and explicitly supported by the army council,
This incident took place over six months after the
announcement of the ceasefire.
The other illustration of the extent to which the ceasefire initially was in name mainly was a statement issued by
the Command Staff of the Official IRA in Belfast on May
2, 1973, almost a year after the cease fire announcement,
claiming responsibility for the deaths of 7 British soldiers
"during recent retaliatory action in Northern Ireland".
Thus the pretence that the military campaign came to an
abrupt halt in the middle of 1972 is entirely false - the
campaign continued for at least a year afterwards.

owever it is true that from the middle of 1973 onwards the screws were put on military activity. This
was done not by any formal decision but by the more rigid
in terpretation of the terms of the cease fire . Operatives were
fmding it .harder and harder to get clearance for jobs and
even when clearance was given the delay involved meant
that the operation often couldn't be carried out anyway.
Also there was a problem of equipment. While the leadership repeatedly promised new, more and better arms and
explosives, the actual provision of these was a very different matter. There were always excuses why something
couldn't be delivered and it was only in retrospect that
volunteers recognised this as a means of stopping the military campaign altogether.
Thus the campaign was stopped not by fiat following the
cease fire announcement but by a gradual process which
effectively choked off military activity without any accompanying major decision to that effect.
It amounted to a masterstroke on the part of Cathal
Goulding who for the most part didn't want a military campaign at any stage. Yet he managed to bring the movement
with him into 1974 without any major rift, having effectively hoodwinked the organisation into a real ceasefire
to which it never really consented.

ut, in spite of the cleverness by which this manoeuvred, it was inevitable that it would give rise to tensions
andthese surfaced in the latter part of 1972. A convention
of the Official IRA was held in October and there a document presented jointly by Seamus Costello, and another
senior member, clearly defined the objectives of the movement in traditional republican terms, in contrast to the
more civil rights emphasis of Goulding. The Costello line
won through and Costello followed this up with a detailed
proposal for a resumption of the military campaign officially. In this he was heavily defeated at a resumed army
convention the following month.
But the differences didn't end there. Proposals emerged
for the restructuring of the organisation and a commission
was set up in early 1973 to examime proposals. One paper
dealt with Garland's concern of "the revolutionary party"
which he had first postulated the previous June in Bodenawn. The main aspect of this proposal was that one
organisation, the party, would be responsible for all the
activities of the movement - i.e. military as well as political.

Right: Sean Garland

Far right: Cathal Goulding
Costello had a strong case for retaining the existing
structure of two organisations, one political and one military, but with greater cohesion between the two. A third
paper was prepared by Eoin 0 Morchu who was editor of
United Irishman at the time but who was later to leave
the movement and join the Communist Party. He argued
for the effective disbanding of the IRA and its incorporation into the political organisation for certain specialised
activities.
The militarists within the movement perceived this
debate in terms of great alarm. They believed that it was
not only 0 Morchu who was in favour of doing away with
the IRA but also Garland who effectively wanted to emasculate the organisation and thereby abandon entirely the
struggle for national unity.
This debate, which effectively centred on whether there
should be an open resumption of the military campaign
waged through 1973 and early 1974. Seamus Costello was
suspended from the IRA for factional activity - he was in
fact attempting to win support for his position throughout
the movement in a manner that apparently contravened the
procedures for such debate.
He was courtmartialed at the party's educational centre
at Mornington, Co. Meath. He was found guilty of charges
and dishonourably dismissed from the IRA.
Undaunted, he continued his campaign within Sinn Fein
but was resoundingly defeated at the Ard Fheis of 1974
when a resolution calling for his re-instatement was thrown
out - he had been suspended from membership by the Ard
Comhairle . There were allegations of rigging in connection
with the Ard Fheis but it is clear that he would have been
routed anyway.
Costello then established the IRSP (The Irish Republican
Socialist Party) and the INLA (The Irish National Liberation Army) on the same day, a Sunday in December 1974
in the Spa Hotel in Lucan. Costello was to insist first thai'
there were no links between the IRSP and the INLA but
in fact the manner of their birth suggested otherwise.
About 90 people assembled in the hotel in Lucan. They
broke for tea, then reconvened as a separate group to form
the INLA. Actually some of the people who disapproved
from the outset with Costello's plans for a military organisation left during the tea break. Costello was to insist
that the two organisations were entirely separate and that
the political organisation would have no control over the
military one - it was this insistence that eventually led to
the resignation of Bernadette McAliskey from the party.

The formation of IRSP/INLA posed a very severe threat

to the Official IRA/Sinn Fein because its Northern membership had been in the main unhappy with the cease fire
and its strict enforcement. Entire units of the Official IRA,
such as that at Divis Flats in Belfast, immediately defected
to the INLA. Anxiety over the possible decimation of the
Official IRA must have been a contributory factor in the
feud that subsequently broke out between the two organisations - IRSP members remembered chillingly repeated
expressions of regret on the part of senior members of the
Official IRA that they hadn't wiped out the Provisionals
at their infancy (see separate report on page 10 and 11).
~llOWing
the IRSP split the proposed organisational
~
~hanges in the Official IRA did not go through, at least
not until after 1978, if at all. The significance of the Official IRA declined significantly however. Army Council
meetings which used to take place on a monthly basis began
to take place only on a three monthly basis. Its main topic
of discussion was proposed robberies and the control of
the political organisation.
The IRA was always used to control Sinn Fein and this
did not end certainly until well after 1978, if even then.
The IRA convention used to be held regularly prior to the
Sinn Fein Ard Fheis and there at the convention it would
be decided how the IRA should vote en bloc at the Ard
Fheis. Therefore military discipline was effectively deployed at the party level to influence decisions.
The level of robberies stepped up considerably after the
ceasefire, especially when the ceasefire became effective.
The robberies took place across the north and in the south.
A gang formed in Belfast especially for robberies, which
became known as "The Dirty Dozen" (initially comprised
of 12 men and later of 13), it reputedly stole 200,000
in one 4-month period. Targets were mainly post offices,
post office vans and security vans.

The IRA became primarily merely a fund-raising organisation but it served other purposes too. It kept order in the
vast drinking clubs that the organisation owns in Northern
Ireland and in Dublin. It maintained internal discipline
through intimidation and beatings. It also provided the
means of self-defense for the party which got into feuds from time to time with the Provos.
The Official IRA has also been responsible for running
MAGILL APRIL 1982 15

rackets in Belfast particularly.

This involved primarily the
operation of tax exemption
fraud, which the Provos have
also perfected. On many building sites lump labour is employed on a contractual basis.
The firms
which provide
this contracted lump labour
are provided with tax exemption forms by the authorities, which means that workers do not pay PAYE but
rather their tax contributions are paid on an annual
basis. The scope for abuse is
considerable and this is exploited by para-military organisations allover the North.
The building site on which
the para-military
organisations can conduct these rackets obviously can be only in
those areas where they have a
measure of control. Thus for
the Official IRA the building
sites where they operate the
tax exemption rackets are in
the Lower Falls, The Markets,
Twinbrook
and Bawnmore
areas of Belfast. Actually
their area of influence has
diminished recently with the
defection of one of their
major racketeers to the IRSP.
When these rackets were
working well for the Official
IRA it was estimated that
they were earning up to
3 ,000 per week from them.
They also got involved in
another
and more exotic
form of racketeering:
the
massage parlour business. Up
to about two years ago they
were running three massage
parlours in Belfast. One of
these, incredibly, was run in
conjunction with the UVF
but this was closed down
after a disagreement between
the two organisations - the
UVF and the Official IRA
often co-operated in recent

years and, reportedly,

exchanged information.
Another of the parlours was firebombed by the Provos and a
third was closed down by the
RUC. One of SFWP's candidates in the local elections of
May last year was convicted
of running brothels in the
Ormeau Road area of Belfast.

rr\ e

Official IRA is still

~ery visible in Belfast as

the incident in Ardmonagh

Gardens on January 29 of
this year shows (see page
10). It has less than 50 operatives in the city however and
these are organised into units
based around the drinking
clubs in Cyprus Street in the
Lower Falls area, in New
Lodge Road, in the Markets,
in the Short Strand, in Turf
Lodge and in Bawnmore.
The OIC in Belfast until

recently was a very promiment figure.

He apparently has stepped aside and his place has
been taken by a person who
is not significantly less prominent. The Official IRA is
also relatively strong around
the drinking club. There are
also members in the Craigavon area.
On a national level it is not
clear what re-organisation has
taken place but it is a certainty that the Chief of Staff
is a member of SFWP. So too
is the Finance Officer and the
Adjutant General. The Dublin
unit OIC is also a member of
the p irty.

There are about 30 active

members on call in the
Dublin area. These are engaged almost exclusively in
robberies. Some of these are
not members of SFWP or at
least deny membership.
By all accounts the organisation is well armed with
Russian Kalashnikov AK 47
carbines and sophisticated
357 Magnum revolvers. It
appears that many of the
Official IRA's arms were
dumped around 1975 - one
of the dumps was discovered
in Monaghan by Gardai in
September 1980. Among the
items found then were 6
handguns, 10,000 rounds of
ammunition,
walkie-talkie
radios and a quantity of silver
coins - left overs from a
bank raid. Training manuals
and other documents were
also found, leading Gardai to
conclude that weapons training had been carried out by
the Official IRA some short
time previously.

The courts are plagued with erratic sentencing, which encourages the belief
that the scales of justice are bent, if not broken

n Friday morning, March 5th, in

Courtroom 15 of the Central Criminal Court, Justice Frank Martin
made an example out of a 22 year-old
petty criminal named Gerard Cowzer.
Martin sentenced Cowzer to 12 years
penal servitude for the theft of 1,290
during a February, 1981, robbery of
the Irish Permanent Building Society
in Baggot Street.
During the robbery for which Cowzer was tried and convicted, three men
- one armed with a lead pipe and all
wearing balaclavas - entered the Baggot Street premises and demanded
money. The case was handed over
immediately and no one was injured.
Cowzer, who entered a plea of not
guilty to the crime, was convicted
largely on the testimony of one Irish
Permanent employee who claimed he
recognized Cowzer's eyes and on the
existence of a smeared fingerprint
which an expert witness said may not
have belonged to the accused. The two
other robbers were never apprehended.
Before passing sentence, Justice
Martin asked that crime statistics,
which showed a sharp increase in the
number of robberies in the Dubin area,
be introduced as evidence. When sending Cowzer to Mountjoy prison until
1994, the judge said that the stiff sentence should be a warning to all
would-be thieves that crime does not
pay in Dublin.
News of the l2-year sentence was
greeted with horror from several trial
lawyers who called it "savage" and
"barbaric". Several solicitors speculated that certain occurrences in the city
around the time of Cowzer's trial may
have contributed to the unusually
severe sentence. One factor, they said,
may have been the call for law and
order from both sides during the election campaign. A second element
might have been the shooting of Garda
Pat Reynolds in Tallaght just 13 days
before Cowzer's conviction.

Whatever the reason, the "lock

'em up and throwaway
the key"
philosophy of crime prevention was
clearly gaining popularity.
As the judge read out the sentence,
the Cowzer family sat in stunned
silence. They were amazed then, as
they are now, that Gerard was ordered
to spend 12 years of his young life in
prison as a one-man deterrent against
crime.
"He (Martin) read out crime figures
that went back to 1970 when my boy
was only ten years old," said Rita
Cowzer several weeks ago during a
bus ride back from Mountjoy Prison.
"There's no use in saying Gerard was
never in trouble, he was. If there had
been guns involved I'd never take his
side. But 12 years for 1,290 is ridiculous."
Indeed the Dublin-born Cowzer has
been in trouble. Ever since he was
caught stealing sweets from a sweet
shop at age eleven, Cowzer has been
involved in minor scrapes with the law.
It could be argued, however, that the
petty crimes on Cowzer's adolescent
record are not unusual for working
class youngsters growing up in the
Pearse Street area. In fact, until quite
recently, the Cowzer family - five
children and two adults - lived in a
one bedroom flat in the dilapidated
Markievicz Flats complex on Pearse
Street.

In recent years, Cowzer has been in

more serious trouble. He served a 12
month jail sentence for burglary and is
currently serving another one year
term, this time for maliciously damaging a building. (Judge Martin specified that Cowzer's l2-year sentence
should not begin until he has served
his full 12 month term).
Since that March 5th morning, the
Cowzer family has searched in vain for
a sentence more ruthless than the one
Gerard received. Each night the brothers and sisters contact their parents
- comparing sentences which were
reported in the Dublin papers that
day. With each passing newspaper edition, the Cowzers say they are more
convinced that unless Gerard is granted an appeal he will be doing time far
in excess of his crime.
.Adding to the sense of injustice
which plagues the Crowzer family, has
been the discovery of lesser sentences
- some would say far more serious
offenses - handed down around the
time of Gerard's conviction.
Just days before Cowzer was given
12 years, a Dundalk man named David
Ward was sentenced to only 3 years in
prison for kicking a mentally retarded
man to death.
Three days after Cowzer was sentenced, Francis Reilly, 21, was given
7 years for his part in an armed robbery in which two men were shot and

CRIME
Death (2 victims) by arson
Beating to death
Rape leading to death
Indecent assault at knifepoint
Armed robbery with fatal shooting
Robbery (2,000) and shooting
Three armed robberies (40,000)
Robbery (1,290) without violence

PUNISHMENT
2 years
3 years
4 years
5 years
6 years
7 years
7 years
12 years
MAGILL APRIL 1982 17

Crime and Punishment

sentenced to two years in prison for
deliberately setting a fire in the Liffey
Guest House last June. Two people
died in the blaze and O'Hullachain was
originally charged with murder. The
murder count was eventually dropped,
however, and he was convicted on
only an arson charge.
Last October, a 27 year-old man,
Niall Francis Kelly, pleaded guilty to
raping a 61 year-old woman who died
as a result of the attack. Charges of
unlawfully killing the woman were
dropped and Kelly is now serving only
fOUTyears in jail.
In February, John Meredith, 32,
of Ballymun, received a 6-year sentence
from Judge Barrington for his part in
an armed robbery in which Lorcan
O'Byrne was shot dead during his
own engagement party at the Angler's
Rest pub in Chapelizod. Meredith had
12 previous convictions including burglary and larceny.
Equally horrifying, although there

2,000 was stolen.

One week after the Cowzer sentencing Justice Frank Martin sent Derek
Quane and Patrick Higgins to prison
for five years for indecently assaulting
a woman at knifepoint. Martin expressed disgust for the crime and was
quoted as saying that in 25 years on
the bench he thought he had heard
cases which plumbed the depths of
human degradation. This crime, however, reached a new low, Martin said.
The maximum sentence the two men
could have received was ten years.
Deepening the sense of bitterness
and frustration that the Cowzer family
feels is the growing awareness that
only if Gerard had killed someone
would he have received a stiffer sentence. But even that isn't necessarily
true.

n January 28, in Justice Barrington's courtroom, a 36 year-old

man named John O'Hullachain was

was no loss of life, were the recent

crimes of Patrick E. Holland and
John Brett. Both received milder sentences than Gerard Cowzer.
Holland was convicted last year of
three separate armed robberies which
yielded more than 40,000. During
one of the robberies Holland carried a
sub-machine gun, a revolver, 127
rounds of ammunition and two smoke
grenades. Justice Neylon of the Central
Criminal Court sent him to jail for 7
years.
Corkman John Brett, together with
several companions, last year cut the
telephone wires to a house and then
entered the dwelling and terrorized
three elderly women for several hours.
One woman was 92, another was a
nun. Brett received a 3-year suspended
sentence for what Justice Barrington
called "an appalling crime against
three old ladies."
What the Cowzer's are discovering
through their own crude researching

The police claim that they need more powers to deal with crime.

Nicky Mulcahy
E

arlier this month, the Minister for

Justice Mr. Sean Doherty told the
annual conference of the Association
of Garda Sergeants.and Inspectors that
new legislationtto
increaseG1l,rda
powers was "at an advanced stage
preparation", but he refused to divulge
exactly what these new laws would
contain.
Mr. Doherty is at least the third
successive Minister for Justice to make
such a promise to the Gardai. As far
back as January 1980, the then Minister Mr. Gerry Collins was talking
about the need "to remove some of
the advantages enjoyed by the. cri. minf1.1s",and promised a Bill by ~aJCh
of .that year. Nothfug happened>' Actually as far back as the Cooney reign
in Justice there was talk of new measures "to strengthen the hand of the
Gardai."
Then last year Mr. Jim Mitchell

of

18 MAGILL APRIL 1982

prepared a memorandum incorporating the Heads of a new Criminal Justice Bjll which he 'iritended to introdue this March to coincide with the
Gard~O'~onferenyes 9 the Fine..G4el
Ard Fheis. This t
. able had been
agreed with the former Taoiseach Dr.
FitzGerald, but the general election in
February scotched his plans and the
proposals never even got to the stage
of Cabinet approval.
Now Mr. Doherty has made a vague
promise reiterating the intentions of
his predecessors, and he knows the
Gardai will sustain their pressure earnpaign for new laws ulltil they get w4a:t
they want. At theAGSI confere
their pn\sident Mr. Philip Callahan
the Garda position toMr, Doherty ina
most fortright manner: "We dori.;t
need any more assurances from you
today," he said bluntly, "instead we
want action."

This sort of plain-speaking from a

Garda representative -is nothing new.
For the last three years the Gardai'i
have repeatedly claim.
at the I
system .' .
icting t
ther
against
, in parti
e suspec
right to silence and the laws of evidence, which the Gardai claim are
biased in favour of the accused.
What the Gardai want are new laws
to make it easier for suspects to incriminate themselves, and the price to
be paid, they claim, is legal safeguards and civil rights which are sacrosanct in most liberal democracies. The
Garda proposals include:
* powe~i.to .detain.a .
pects Without catiti
hours
* power to search premises without
warrant
* power to take fingerprints, photographs, and forensic tests on all suspects held for questioning

techniques is what many legal experts

already know - that erratic sentences
are one of the major problems with
Ireland's judicial system.
In Ireland judges are given a set of
maximum sentences for each crime,
but no guidelines for sentencing within that framework.
Unlike in England and the US
where judges meet frequently to set
sentencing policy, Irish judges appear
to never meet to discuss uniform sentencing.
The result of this judicial independence is that sentences for similar
crimes vary wildly and leave the public
questioning whether justice is actually
being served.
"The court is brought into disrepute by uneven sentences," says
Mary McAleese, a professor of Criminal
Law at Trinity College. McAleese, who
has been a long time proponent of
consistency in sentencing, says that
Ireland has one of the most erratic sen-

tencing procedures in the West.

McAleese says that the Cowzer sentence was "simply outrageous", adding
that there is nothing "exemplary"
about a lengthy sentence which makes
the court look foolish when compared
with other sentences.
In addition to making the courts'
look foolish, vagaries in sentencing
leave people like the Cowzer family
feeling desperate.
As the Cowzer's search for a way to
get Gerard's sentence reduced or conviction reversed they say they believe
that there really is no justice for the
working classes. They say Gerard was
hit with a hard sentence because the
judge knew he was poor and on legal
aid, (there are, of course, no objective reasons to substantiate this charge
in this case.)
In their desperation, the Cowzer's
are trying to raise money to pay their
own senior counsellor whom they believe will "fight harder" for Gerard in

court. To get funds, Cowzer 's mother

and sister are working at a city hotel
and his father, Charles, who had twothirds of his stomach removed last
year and is afflicted with TB, is working overtime shifts in his jo b as a fitter
for Dublin Gas.
The family is also pooling their
valuables for quick sale when - and if
- they are notified of Gerard's appeal
being granted. Gerard's older sister
Deirdre says her diamond engagement
ring will be the first to go, then anything which can be pawned or sold
for quick cash.
"I never had any dealings with the
law before this happened with Gerard,"
says Deirdre Magrane, his 24 year-old
married sister. "When Justice Frank
Martin sentenced Gerard to 12 years
in prison he might as well have sentenced the whole family."

the right of silence to be qualified

so that the prosecution could comment on.this during a tria!
* the right to make unsworn statements to be replaced by cross-exami.nation under oath.
"" The background to Gardap.emands
.."for draconian powers as "outlined
above is a steadily rising crime rate and
an alarming fall in the Garda detection rate. In 1967, of the 20,555 indictable crimes recorded, 13,213 were
detected, giving a detection rate of
64%. In 1980, 72,782 crimes were
"p,;recorded, but onl~, 29,017 ",or 40%,
were detected. In other words while
more crimes are being committed, a
decreasing proportion of criminals are
being brought to justice.
However, once a criminal is brought
before the courts, the chances of him/
her being successfully prosecuted are
~extremel~:high. In 1980, the ,last year
;.for whicK figures are available, the
conviction rate on indictment was
93.7%, and 95% for summary trials.
When one compares the detection
rate with the conviction rate, it is evident that the Gardai have a lot more
to answer for than the judiciary, and
?the comment of Mr. Callanan of AGSI
iitllat "some membets of the Bench are vs
living on Mars rather than in Irish bandit territory", seems misplaced.
Clearly then, the problems the
Gardai face are not in the courts, but
in collecting evidence to lay charges in
the first place. 80% of prosecutions

rely on self-incrimination or confessions of guilt by the accused, and the

questioning of suspects is regulated by
the Judges' Rules, chief of which is the
right to silence .
As the law stands, the Gardai have
no power (except for scheduled offences under the Offences Against the
State Act) to detain a person on suspicion for the purpose of questioning
him/her unless that person is arrested
and charged. The police overcome this
problem by "inviting" suspects to go
voluntarily to the Garda station to be
interviewed. More often than not, suspects think they have little choice in
the matter and, ignorant of their right
to silence, confess to or implicate
themselves in the crime under investigation.
.
However, because of a court ruling
last year, suspects must now be cautioned as to their right to silence and
be told that they are free to leave at
any time. This ruling did not change
the law; it merely imposed on the
police an obligation to inform suspects of their rights.
The right to silence is not new or
unique to this country. It is a cornerstone of Irish jurisprudence, derives
from English law and is embedded in
the American Constitution. The rule
acknowledges the reality that most
suspects brought in for questioning are
ignorant of the laws of criminal procedure and are unaware that remarks
they make can be used in evidence

against them. It is also there to ensure that the police do not have the
opportunity to abuse their power by
intimidating or forcing suspects into
admissions of guilt.
What has changed though is the
awareness of this right, and in effect
the police are saying that the law must
be changed because they can no longer
rely on the suspect's ignorance. The
professional competence of the police
is threatened as a result, for in the absence of self-incriminating evidence,
they face the much more difficult task
of collecting evidence to prove their
case.
Of course the right to silence makes
a policeman's job more difficult, but
the laws are there to see that justice is
done, not to boost the police detection
rate, and the problem is that the interests of justice and the interests of
the police are not compatible.
The Mitchell proposals currently
being considered by Mr. Doherty include most of the demands being
sought by the Gardai, and are a direct
result of a concerted pressure campaign by the Gardai during the last
three years. Both the Government and
Mr. Doherty will have to decide whether they are prepared to trust the
Gardai with powers the judiciary consider they are not fit to exercise without the established safeguards, safeguards which strike a balance between
the community's right to protection
and the right of the individual suspect.

Pat Brennan
s far. as pol.itical deals go - and they go as far as, international a~rports
for villages in the West of Ireland - Tony Gregory s deal for Dublin was
among the most thought out of political bargains. Its strengths lie in the simple
fact that Gregory knows Dublin and its problems better than most. Its weaknesses lie in the fact that this is a last minute deal, not a plan that was studied,
costed, discussed, and finalised as being in the best interests of the people of
Dublin.
No one knows just how much the Gregory deal will cost. No one knows if it
is the most appropriate answer to the needs of the inner city. As yet, except
for a tax on derelict sites and a levy on office space, no one knows who is going
to pay for the Gregory deal, whether it will represent a transfer of resources
from rich to poor or a simple addition to the borrowing bill which will eventually be paid for by ordinary tax payers.

It may well be that whatever it costs is worth it - that

we will save in vandalism, police, prisons, health bills, and
the social ills of deprivation and urban blight. It may also
be the case that after the initial money is spen t and Tony
Gregory is not as central to Fianna Fail's power as he is at
the moment, that Dublin's poor will be no better off.
Dublin's inner city - roughly the area between the
canals - contains some of the poorest communities in
Ireland. The area is marked by overcrowding, poor housing
conditions, high unemployment,
and low educational
attainment. All these problems exist in other poor areas of
the country, notably remote rural areas and Dublin local
authority housing estates such as Ballyfermot. Other Irish
cities - following the same growth pattern of Dublin - are
also beginning to develop the same "inner city" problems.
However, in Dublin the problems are compounded by vandalism, violence, traffic congestion, and pollution. In
Dublin, the multi-deprivation factors are simply more
advanced and acute than they are in other poor areas.
Also, because the city is central to the business, political
and social life of the country, urban blight in Dublin costs
the country more, in terms of prisons, policing, lost business, costs of moving goods through congested traffic.
Between 1926 and 1971 the population between the
canals has been halved. In the 1970s this decline continued
at a rate of 2.4 per cent per year. The population of the'
inner city now stands at about 70,000. Most of these peo20 MAGILL APRIL 1982

pie are unskilled, poor and live in substandard accommodation. Many of them are unemployed. A high percentage
of them are old people living alone.
The decline of the city centre has coincided with the
growth of the Dublin region. Cities exist in the first place
because of economies of scale. Grouping people together
lowers the costs of services, and makes markets more
readily accessible. Since the late 1960s the large groupings
in Dublin have shifted from the city centre to the suburbs.
This was facilitated and encouraged by different local rates
in Dublin city and county areas. Simply, it was cheaper
to live in the suburban areas and people moved to the
suburbs.
Dublin city had a declining population from which to
extract revenue yet the need for revenue remained high
because people used the city during the day. And so services and maintenance of the city deteriorated. As the costs
of operating a business in Dublin rose, businesses, especially
manufacturing businesses, moved out. At the same time,
there was a huge influx of people from rural areas into the
Dublin area, further encouraging the growth of suburbs.
Now, there are almost no middle income people living
in the inner city and the economies of scale, that once
encouraged inner city business life, have shifted to the
.suburbs. The most obvious example of this is the growth of
shopping centres with late night shopping facilities, in the
suburbs, while city centre shopping diminishes.

The loss of economies of scale in the city centre has

been further exacerbated by the economic costs incurred
by traffic congestion. Dublin has been also damaged by incompeten t planning whereby road widening schemes are
organised' but never carried out - but the area originally
designated for road widening deteriorates because property
owners aren't willing to risk main tenance money.
The end result is a city centre which is overcrowded and
congested during the day, which is run by a local authority
which hasn't the funds to provide a pleasant environment,
and which is deserted and increasingly dangerous during
the evening when all but the 70,000 residents retreat to the
suburbs.

he first item on the Gregory-Haughey deal is the provision of 500 jobs for unskilled workers in Dublin
Corporation. This - it is hoped - will have a two-fold
effect. First, it should take 500 inner city dwellers off the
dole. Second, it will add 500 maintenance workers to the
Corporation's staff and Dublin will be a nicer place because
of it. The money was provided for these jobs in the last
budget, but the Corporation has not yet advertised for
workers simply because the Department of the Environment has not yet stated whether the jobs are to be permanent or short term. If they are to be permanent there
will be certain economic and social advantages. If they are
short term, once off jobs that won't be here next year,

the advantages are negligible.

There has been 2.s million allocated for this plan in
the budget. The average wage for an unskilled worker in
the Corporation is 90 per week. Obviously the incentive
for men with several dependents to come off the dole for
that wage will not be great, but the young unemployed
will benefit.
While unemployment is a problem of national significance, it is particularly acute in the inner city where it
is almost twice as high as in the .Dublin region generally.
Almost 20 per cent of all heads of households in the inner
city are unemployed. Most of those out of work are unskilled labourers (40%). A high percentage of the unemployed are young and have attained a low level of education.
Because of modernisation, relocation and closure of
factories, the area between the canals has lost 2,000 jobs
per year since the mid 1970s. Jobs that have come into
the area have been mainly in the information sector and
inner city residents haven't got the skills required to fill
these jobs. The modernisation of Dublin port has severely
reduced the numbers of unskilled workers employed there
and while overall employment in the port has reduced by
just 10 per cent in the last decade, those working in the
port increasingly come from the suburbs.
Because inner city residents are relatively unskilled,
they have proved not to be flexible workers, and generally
MAGILL APRIL 1982 21

 speaking have not moved with employment out to the

suburbs.
While the Gregory deal offers the possibility of 500
hew jobs and the environmental advantages these jobs will
create, there is no guarantee that they will go to inner
city dwellers. It is almost certainly impossible for the
Corporation to practice this kind of positive discrimination.

A"to

further 750,000 has been allocated for maintenance

men for improving inner city housing. The jobs will
go
skilled craftsmen most of whom will probably not
be Gregory's constituents. However, the real advantage in
this scheme is in improved housing. The inner city housing
stock is old, overcrowded and dilapidated. Most of the
residents of the worst dwellings are old people. Most of
the money will be spent on installing toilet and bathroom
facilities which are desperately needed. (One third of households in the inner city have no bath or shower).
The Corporation's maintenance section has been run
down- in recent years and this was further exacerbated
by the Coalition Government's decision to disallow the
Corporation the right to retain 40% from the sale of Corporation dwellings to spend on maintenance. The GregoryHaughey deal has reversed that decision.
Although there has been no economic analysis of the
spin off benefits from spending in these social areas, housing maintenance is one area that might well pay for itself
in terms of reduced medical and institution costs of elderly
people who live in substandard housing.

Land, in the inner city is expensive. It is made even more

expensive because it is allowed to become artificially scarce.
There is obviously low demand, or derelict sites would be
uneconomic to maintain. But by allowing widespread dereliction to continue supply is actually restricted and urban
blight encouraged.
The new tax on derelict sites will alleviate this situation
somewhat but what is really needed is a scheme to control
land prices and strict enforcement of zoning. Otherwise, the
cost of building public housing in the inner city will remain
prohibitively high. Also, the selling oflocal authority housing will have to stop if the envisioned "renewed" inner city
is not to become a haven for those with enough money to
buy what was originally intended to be public housing. As
it is, any urban renewal will automatically result in higher
house prices for private houses in the inner city - houses
which have traditionally housed low income families.
According to last year's NESC report on Dublin, one of
the fundamental causes of the decline of Dublin has been
short sighted planning, largely caused by the lack of coordination of the two planning authorities, the Corporation
and the County Council. The report recommends the establishment of a Greater Dublin Authority to oversee the
planning of the entire region, so that decisions made in one
area are not at the expense of the other. Against this background it is hard to understand the justification for 2
million for an inner city development authority. It is also
difficult to imagine just what this body will do that should
not already be done by existing authorities, except that it
might act as an advocate for the inner city. However, since
it is obvious that a halt to urban blight would benefit the
whole of the Dublin region, regional development of the
inner city could easily come within the brief of a combined
Corporation-County Council authority.
The educational section of the Gregory package is aimed
at breaking the cycle of low education, no training, unemployment - particularly since there is plenty of evidence
that inner city children whose parents are unemployed are
more likely not to attend school and also more likely to
come into conflict with the law.
None of the educational proposals have yet come to
fruition, but they state that the north city centre area
specifically be declared an educational priority area. Almost
three quarters of inner city residents have completed their
education by the time they are 15. A particularly strong
correlation between lack of education and unemployment
exists, according to the NESC survey, in the north city
centre area where it was found that nearly 80 per cent
of those aged between 15 and 18 had left school, nearly all
(86%) with no educational qualifications. Almost half were
unemployed. This is worse than it is in the local authority
housing estates around Dublin. There is also a correlation
between firstly, class size and non attendance and secondly
between non attendance and early school leaving.
The educational aspects of the Gregory deal are hardest
to quantify simply because they are vague and involve the
projected benefits of the interaction of a number of factors
- smaller class size, remedial teachers, links with the home
to establish a pro-education attitude. These, and other
vague parts of the package, are likely to fall by the wayside,
particularly if Gregory's political clout diminishes as it almost certainly will if Eileen Lemass is elected in the Dublin
West By-Election.
What he has accomplished is 500 jobs, improved housing
conditions, more inner city housing, 20 million to keep
the Corporation's services ticking over, a tax on derelict
sites and a levy oil office development. All of these are of
benefit to those who live in the city centre. However, it's
not enough to make a substantial impact on the environmental decline of the inner city, which is inextricably
linked with the deprivation of the people who live there.

ure. But it seems to me altogether

more likely that all two million copies
are daily snapped up for himself by
Sadly Smitten.
.

Monday 15th.

nother Davitt book is brought.

The hagiographers of this Lancastrian monster are inexhaustible.
Contemplating that period I sometimes repine over the many years I
spent guiding and steadying Bismarck's
hand. For, on my return to this country, I found that irreversible mischief
had been wrought by Davitt and
others of his kidney.
Great hordes of bumpkins had been
removed from that benign tutelage
which had preserved them in a station
congruous to their ignorance - or, perhaps, in ignorance congruous to their
station. Either way, their hands were
now turned to the construction of an
edifice designed to epitomise their
material and intellectual freedom and
maturation.
It was topped out in
Crosshaven in the 1950s and called
'The Majorca'.
Inside 'The Majorca' anthropocentrically actuated adjurations such as
"Gettum offa yah" and anatomically
axiomatic asseverations such as "between urn she hov it" found full,
frank, free and frequent expression.
And rewards of a synergic nether convulsive nature were unstintingly bestowed upon their most diligent and
stentorian articulators.
And the spawn in their season went
to Dublin. And lucidity became as,
scarce as food, and food as scarce as
truth.
Ah! if only during my Prussian absence C. C. O'Brien had been here to
keep his firm foot on the brake of history.
Thursday 18th.

order Casey of Galway to cease

impersonating
Desmond of the
Kingstown Party. My order is based
upon the requirements of artistic integrity which I explain to Casey as follows:
(a)
His logorrhoea, whilst adequate
in such properties as prosaicism
and irrelevance, is neither syntactically solecistic nor intellectually offensive;
(b)
He is not a troglodyte, nor yet a
hair on the brush of a mongrel
fox;
(c)
He does not consort with spivs
who gammon to "lead the workers of this country".
(d)
He is not a prick.
Monday 22nd.

inny Byrnt: and Pat Barry appear

with a report that Bracken has
been overrun by some dagos. I expect
they were on their way to get that
groom or farrier person out of his Salvadorean mess and strayed a little;
map-reading will soon, I fear, be an
extinct skill. I shall have to speak firmly to them, and I earnestly hope that

Miss Fiona Victory will not have been

lolling about half-dressed - there is
nothing more conducive to bolshieness
in the heathen.
Lest there should be some nastiness
afoot I shall have Randolph consult
with Mr. Tyrie and his stout lads. How
reassuring their devotion to our dear
Victoria is! I shall also alert the supporters of Manchester United, Chelsea
and Everton, which should be quite
sufficient to let the chilli bashers know
who's who.
Any scrap will have to be staged
before 1979 as dear Dickie Battenberg
and Airey Neave simply cannot be left
out: and a doughty duo they will make
when we put them together.
In any case, the macho muddlers
have in recent years rather concentrated on an anti-civilian strategy - as, in
fact, we have. How absolutely ripping
if some kind of tourney along these
admira bly less hazardous lines could
be devised! But there are only eighteen
hundred of these civilian creatures in
the place - hardly enough to go round
and see honour satisfied.
Thursday 25th.

am nauseated by malodorous vapour .about unemployment

from
the members of Dail Eireann. I commandeer the place in order to enlighten these possessors of status with
neither breeding nor achievement to
account for it. But I flinch in the absence of Flor Crowley's civilising
mansuetude and gracious support.
This age has no "employment" or
"unemployment"
problem: it has a
futility problem. The "employed"
waste their time doing things that
machines do much better; the "unemployed"
waste theirs campaigning to have perfectly efficient machines
put out of work. One hundred and
three years after the inception at
Knock
of transcelestial
levitation
Wilde's man disturbing dirt at a slushy
crossing should have had enough of
it.
Consider that you may find any
day many hundreds of overpaid illshaven little males in rubber gloves and
Volkswagens prowling the countryside
doing "work" that other males - bulls
- would do freely and frabjously.
Consider lexicographers and grammarians. Consider Independent Newspapers - briefly.
I shall shortly inaugurate a regime
which will allow superliterate citizens
the time to deduce the intent of
Magill ~ authors from the product of
its typesetters/proof-readers.
Lesser
citizens, if they exist, will continue to
buy the Indefensible
perhaps
the hedge-schools were, indeed, a fail-

Saturday 27th.

handi, Sheehy-Skeffington, Denis

Conroy and myself are elected
patrons of the GAA for all eternity.
We meet at Elysium, and Denis and
I take a stroll through the Fields.
Achilles, Cuchulainn, Father Murphy,
Tom Barry, St. Joan of Arc and Christy Ring rush to greet us. We firmly
snub them.
Further on we find Sidney Webb
and Bertrand Russell and eagerly participate in their examination of the
question whether, were he to lose his
copulatory faculty; Mr. Wells might
not cease to be a cad. Skeff and the
Mahatma join us. The question is not
susceptible of a ready resolution. A
sprite, remarkably resemblant of Claud
Cockburn, whispers that it has been in
contention since 1946. I fear that
Charlie Waish of Rome alone is competent to decide.
Paine and Connolly, Behan and Ho
Chi Minh, Swift and Carson saunter
by. They are civil enough, but at no
great pains to hide their relief that
they are not required to tarry with our
group.
We yearn for the day when Tom
Woulfe, J. A. Murphy and Sean Kilfeather will be there to put them in
their place.
Tuesday 30th.

strolling players return from

Connacht.
They are perplexed by the shock,
horror and outrage caused in those
parts by their mammary and procreative appendages. I cannot sympathise.
They should, directly upon entry to
that province, have noticed the natives'
total want of such paraphernalia. Mr.
Healy of Mayo frequently records in
print his wonder at sight of these engines attached to members of the
other provinces and Brussels. Besides,
there is the matter of the place's disappearing population.
I take the Reverend Murray's point
about the need for something a little
more traditional on St. Patrick's Day.
Next year I shall transport the populace of Sligo to March 17th 432 A.D.
I am not entirely convinced of my
ability to bring them back, but I don't
think Father Murray will feel out of
place if I fail.
Should I hear of even one death
from the shock of my company's alien
physiology I shall instantly proclaim
the people of Connacht an endangered
species, and decree that any and all
visitors to the West of the Shannon are
to have s. x .. 1 0 ... ns impounded at
the point of crossing for the duration
of their visits.
KEVIN CASHMAN
y

as a time when I knew all the

words to How Could You Be-

lieve Me When I Said I Loved You

When You Know I've Been A Liar All
My Life? And with a half decent guitar
in my mitts and a strong wind at my
back I can still do a fair enough job on
John Hartford's I've Heard That Tear-

Stained Monologue You Do There By

The Door Before You Go. And before
age withered my memory the drop of
a hat would launch me into the late
Johnny Mercer's first published song:

Out Of Breath And Scared To Death

Of You. (And considering
the frequency
of performance
there must
have been a lot of dusty hats around.)
Memory still holds fast to one of Mr.
Mercer's last successes: I Wanna Be

Around To Pick Up The Pieces When

Somebody Breaks Your Heart.
(The same Mr. Mercer was once
faced with completing
a triple rhyme
in a verse in which the first line ended
in "palace",
and the second in "chalice". For the third line, lesser talents
would
have settled
for "callous",
"malice"
or even "Dallas"
- while
even others might have gone in for
priapic rudeness - but Mr. M transcen-:
ded such banalities and rose to "Aurora
Borealis". This we can define as classy.)
What we are doing here is establishing credentials.
You are sharing the
same air as the man who can give you
verse and chorus of I Wish I Had Died

In My Cradle Before' I Grew Up To

Love You. ("I only wish someone had
told me the love that you gave was untrue/and
I wish I had died ...
etc".
And you thought I was kidding.) You
want a discussion of the lyrical intricacies of the lesser known Gershwin?
Or the change in Richard
Rogers
musical style after the transition
from
Hart
to Hammerstein?
Or maybe
you're
interested
in Cole Porter's
sublime
internal
rhyming?
I'll bring
the records,
you bring the cushions
and we'll crack a bottle of wine over
it. (By the way, did you know that the
word colporteur
is in the dictionary
and it means one who travels in the
sale of moral books? Not many people
know that.)

o, what we are getting around to

is me listening to the radio circa
the wee hours.
Three,
four,
five,
something
like that. The nights are
tunnels we must go through to reach
the days - that kind of night. Radio
Nova is doing its best to help. Phil
Collins, No Reply, a slice of an old
John Lennon. Then, silence for a beat,
and ...

Gotta write a classic ...

Yeah! Have you heard

this guy?
Perfect. What we have to do is dig a
hole, go down maybe a couple of hundred yards. Lead box, the works. Take
a copy of this thing down, bury it safe
30 MAGILL

APRIL

1982

from the big bang, attach one of those

beepy gadgets so when they come
down from the stars to investigate the
big flash they'll find it and from this
reconstruct
the essence of our civilisation.

Gotta write a classic ...

Yeah, baby! This is Adrian Gurvitz
singing the song of the moment, Classic. Tens of thousands of people have
put money on the counter for this,
pushed it into the top sellers. Bell,
Marconi and the people who discovered electricity,
everyone back to the
folks who invented
the wheel -all

though it's not the kids with spikey

who are listening to friend Adrian a lot
of what comes over the airwaves is on
the same level. Through the overdubbed,
synthesised,
fed-back,
multitracking the sound we're hearing is still
identifiable
as the scraping
of the
bottom of a barrel.
Anyway, it's time to change channels. It's coming up to the hour and on
the hour, every hour, Nova give you
the news. And on the hour, every
hour, it's the same news and its's interminable.
And it's read by Shiobhan
Purcell, who cayre-full-ee
ee-nun-ceeates ev-ree wurd lyke this.
Try Radio Sunshine. The Jam are
just finishing A Town Called Malice
and that's fine. Then, silence for a
beat, and ...

Gotta write a classic ...

Click. Schopenhaur
said that the
thought of suicide can be a great comfort and can get you through many a
bad night.

their efforts culminating

in this thing
revolving, lacing the airwaves with ...

Gotta write a classic ...

A classic what? you might ask.
Well, that's not the point. Mr. Gurvitz
sings with the poignancy of a man who
has just had hot tea spilled on his lap.
Behind the voice there's a little dutdut, a sparse backing that indicates
Significance.

Gotta

write it in an attic . . .

Images, images. He's gotta write a

classic and he's gotta write it in an
attic,
'cos that's
where classics are
written, right? We all know that. But,
hold on, this verse has got a triple
rhyme, we ain't heard nuthin yet.

Baby I'm an addict ...

It could explain a lot. One can almost see the syringe dangling from the
multi-tracked
arm. But no, Mr. Gurvitz
hastens to assure Baby that he's an ad-

dict for your love.

Should one go on? One must.

I was a stray boy ...

A line so meaningless that it must
be shoved in merely to provide an oy
rhyme.

And

you

was my

best toy ...

I would like to say something about

this - but the gunge is dripping off the
paper and fouling up the typewriter
keys. (Note the use of you was to
strengthen Adrian's street credibility.)

I found it easy to annoy you ...

Yes. Well. I think we'd better stop
this here. Having left my twenties back
in the distant past when Jack Lynch
was still just about hanging onto the
brass ring I am acutely aware of the
danger of winding up condemning
the
musical taste of The Youth. But even

Ow, you didn't really think that

I brought
you in here to talk
about pop songs, did you? The point is
that the world is being Gurvitzed. For
some months now we have been hearing about the new-found
honesty of
politicians - no promises, that kind of
thing.
(Boy, can this kid segue or can this
kid segue.)
They're Gurvitzing.
Image, innuendos of Significance, Honesty, Meaning,
Truth. But hustling is the name of the
game. Clawing their way into the Top
10, or the Top 166.
Members of Fine Gael might gaze
on Charlie
Haughey's
approach
to
Dick Burke and see it as a classic case
of the worst coming to the worst.
Some of us know better. Those of us
who are not surprised to see Charlie
and Garret firming up their political
bases by exploiting
the anguish of
women who must consider abortion an
option in deciding the course of their
lives. It's all to do with grabbing the
brass ring. Dicky Boy was offered a
60,000 job to stick a knife in FitzGerald's back, said yes, said no. Charlie upped the ante. If I'm still there in
1984 I'll reappoint
you. That's seven
years, total 420,000.
Not a bad price
for a hit job.
Then Charlie and Dicky Boy hold
hands and tell us, with straight faces,
that it's all in the national interest.
And even some Fine Gaelers try to put
a brave face on it by talking about best
man for the job, very committed
to
Europe, crap like that.
We old song buffs don't mind when
people hustle for a buck - that's the
way of it. But we can't abide it when
people look us in the eye and lie, lie,
lie.
Adrian Gurvitz for Taoiseach,

..

hen Ibsen's A Doll's House was

first produced in 1879 it caused
an uproar. To 19th century Europe
the idea of a woman forsaking her
marriage vows, abandoning her children, rejecting the idea of obedience
to her husband, was almost indecent.
That the play should actually make
the husband, not the rebellious wife,
look small, was particularly outrageous.
However, the controversy made the
playa success in Norway. Published in
1879 it was reprinted twice in 1880.
In Germany the theme was so unpalatable that Ibsen had to change the
ending for the 1880 German production. Nora this time didn't walk out.
Her husband, Torvald, makes her look
at her sleeping children and the curtain
falls just after she drops her travel
cases in resignation.
32 MAGILL APRIL 1982

The single most extraordinary thing

about A Doll's House, (now playing at
the Abbey) is that the play could be so
relevant today. Ibsen's heroine, Nora,
is the scatterbrained housewife who
grows up from the doll-child of her
father to the doll-wife of her husband.
Her devastating moment of truth
comes when she realises that there is
nothing more to her. life than this superficial existance.
In America in the 1960s Betty
Freidan hit the nerve of feminine discontent when she described "the problem that has no name". - the sense
of emptiness of the American middleclass housewife. But clearly the same
problem existed in
19th century
Norway and this forms the central
theme of A Doll's House.
Nora's key to survival was first her

father and then her husband. Her selfdefined function is solely to please
him. She is his "little skylark", "little
squirrel", "little songbird", or when
she is naughty his "little spendthrift",
"little prodigal". However inane the
nicknames, the inequality of the relationship is believable and uncomfortably recognisable in modern terms.
Yet, beneath all this saccharin, there
is more substance to Nora. In desperation, to save her husband's life, she
has borrowed money, and she has
broken the law and forged her father's
name as guarantor, to do so. Her husband doesn't know. "Torvald has his
pride - most men have - he'd be
terribly hurt and humiliated if he
thought he owed anything to me. It
would spoil everything between us and
our lovely happy home would never

be the same again."

Of course she doesn't really believe
this. She really believes that when the
truth comes out her husband will
stand by her because he loves her. In
the event, he doesn't stand by her:
"You've completely wrecked my happiness, you've ruined my whole future
...
I'm brought so pitifully low all
because of a shiftless woman."
Nora, at this moment realises that
her life has been a fraud and she makes
the decision to leave her husband. He
reminds her of her duty: "Before
everything else, you are a wife and
mother"; to which she replies: "I
don't believe that any longer. I believe
that before everything else I'm a
human being - just as much as you are
... or at any rate I shall try to become
one."
,

he question of the discontent of

housewives would seem to be
more contemporary than Ibsen's 19th
century drama. Most mothers and
wives of the 19th century were not unduly worried about the relevance of
their role. They were involved in a
domestic economy which included an
enormous amount of productive work
(making of clothes, tools, food, candles, soap, medicines etc.) It was fairly
obvious that their role in the community was important.
Ibsen's discontented housewife is
from a particularly affluent class a class where women were seen to be
decorative, and the home was a happy
place to which the harassed man of the
world could retreat. The leisure of this
Victorian middle-class housewife, obviously depended oil the exploitation

Above:

Fidelma

Cullen

as

Nora,

of other women - the women who

saw to it that her house was clean,
her dinners cooked, and her children
reared so that the decorative woman
of leisure could be a decorative woman
of leisure.
Ibsen, shrewdly enough, realised
that the bargain struck by middle class
housewives - financial security and
social respectability in exchange for
devotion, obedience and sexual partnership - was not only a lopsided, unsatisfactory arrangement, it wasn't
even a particularly stable or secure
one. There's no job security in being a
housewife.
Nora's childhood friend Kristine
MAGILL APRIL 1982 33

aeve Binchy's new book of

short stories, Dublin 4, used to
cost 2,87Y2p - until Ray McSharry
turned nice guy and took VAT off
books - and now it costs 2.50.
With four stories, this works out at
62Y2p a shot - not a bad deal. Personally, I'd go up a quid each for two
of the stories, the other two would
then work out at 25p a piece, which is
about right.
The first and worst story is Dinner
in Donnybrook, a meandering tale of
how a woman who's been done wrong
plans her revenge. Carmel is a bit
dawny , though it's implicit that her
life as a fully paid-up wife of a bank
manager has sent her that way. Appendage of an executive, that sort of
thing. Husband Dermot is having an
affair with assertive artist Ruth. Car-

Dublin 4, by Maeve Binchy, is published by Ward River Press at 2.50.

mel plans dinner party, invites best

friends
and Ruth.
Confrontation
coming up.
Except it doesn't. The story ends
before the dinner. Carmel has concocted a hare-brained scheme of revenge. Machiavellian, one might say
- if one can conceive of a dawny
Machiavelli.
There are a dozen characters popping in and out of the story to help
with the exposition.
"I think Mummy s a bit lonely,"
Bernadette said to Frank.
"I think Mother's coming out of
herself a bit more, darling," Anna said
to James.
"I think Carmel Murray is losing
her marbles," said Ethel at breakfast.
That kind of thing. The story takes
80 pages to reach some kind of conclusion. And this depends on Ruth, who
is anything but dawny , accepting two
improbable coincidences. Sorry, definitely 25p material.

The second story Flat in Ringsend ,

concerns a young Limerick girl coming
to work in Dublin. It's a slight tale
with a Woman s Own feel to it, complete with happy ending. Jo is unhappy in her new flat, lonely, can't
make friends. There's little feel for the
city and the story could be set in Galway, Belfast or Drumshanbo. Jo's problem is not the city - it's the fact
that she's eighteen and alone. The
happy ending consists of her making a
date with a fella.
If the first story is careless and the
second written with an automatic
typewriter the other two are well crafted. Decision in Belfield has Pat discovering she's pregnant. She knows
what the response from the folks will
be because a couple of years earlier big
sister Cathy had the same problem and
went through the old never darken my
towel again scene with mum and dad
and went to London. The scene is ripe
for some penny ante preaching - and
Binchy succumbs for a paragraph or
two.
"They're so liberal, they say they're
so liberal," she had scoffed. "They
keep say ing they're in favour of getting divorce introduced and they want
contraceptives, and they want censorship abolished, but they refuse to face
facts. They want me to marry a man
knowing it will ruin my life and ruin
his life, and probably wreck the baby s
life as well. What kind of liberal view
is that?"
You might well ask. Thankfully
Binchy doesn't ask it for long. She
soon gets down to the job of describing the inevitable cruelty and routine
hypocrisy that ensues when people try
to pummel real life into a shape demanded by middle class circumstance.
Murmurs in Montrose (isn't this
thematic thing being stretched a little?)
finds alcoholic photographer
Gerry
Moore leaving a nursing home after six
weeks on the dry. Can he keep off the
stuff, can he pull back together the
fine life that he and Emma and the
kids once had? It starts out being
about that - but the story is really
about whether Emma can accept tragedy, maintain her own integrity and
save herself from being pulled down
by the man she loves and has shared a
life with.
The two failures in this collection
happen when Binchy roasts an old
chestnut once again (Ringsend), or
tries to make too elaborate a meal out
of scarce ingredients (Donnybrook).
The two successes result from attempts
to use routine, believable stories to uncover the strains within and between
people trying to make sense and order
of a world where such qualities don't
come naturally.

for the sake of others, you don't do it

a second time."

Linde comes to visit. Mrs. Linde is a

widow - the only respectable option
for a single woman. She threw over the
man she loved and any hope for personal happiness to marry a man who
appeared to offer financial security
to both herself and her widowed
mother. As it turned out, the unloved husband died, left her nothing
and she has had long bitter years trying to work to support herself and her
mother. Kristine Linde accepted the
status quo, struck the bargain, and
lost. She is a changed woman because
of it: "When you've sold yourself once

he vapid nature of middle class

housewifery did not become a
public issue until the 1960s, when the
combined historical effects of western
affluence and birth control produced
large numbers of well educated women
who having reared their small, wellspaced families, sat back in their
suburban homes and asked, is there
life after coffee mornings? These
women began to feel that they, like
Ibsen's Nora, were cheated of their
own lives when they struck the bargain
offered in marriage.
Nora's comments on dependence
within marriage are apt: "When I lived
at home with Papa, he used to tell me

his opinion about everything, and so I

had to hide it from him or he wouldn't
have liked it. He called me his little
doll, and he used to play with me just
as I played with my dolls. Then I came
to live in your house ... I passed out
of Papa's hands and into yours. You
arranged everything to suit your own
tastes, and so I came to have the same
tastes as yours ... or I pretended to.
I'm not quite sure which ... perhaps
it was a bit of both - sometimes one
and sometimes the other. Now that I
come to look at it, I've lived like a
pauper - simply from hand to mouth.
I've lived by performing tricks for
you, Torvald. That was how you wanted it. You and Papa have committed
a grevious sin against me: it's your
fault I've made nothing of my lif~."
Today, the questions raised by the
economically
dependent
role of
women in the family home are still
unanswered. Women today are not so
much discontented at the role of wife
and mother, but object to the second
class status that role seems to imply.
According to the recent report by the
Council for the Status of Women on
the status of Irish women at home,
"Women in the home do not have an
identity or status. Examples of the
lack of status were: married women
being unable to undertake hire-purchase agreements in their own right;
and married women being asked for
their husband's occupation on hospital admittance forms."
The examples of contemporary
second class status .are relevant since
Ibsen's Nora's big crime was to trick a
money lender into giving her a loan.
Married women were not allowed
loans without a male guarantor, and to
comply with this stipulation, Nora
forges her father's name. Nora can't
believe that this act of love was a
crime: "I simply don't believe that.
Hasn't a daughter the right to protect her dying father from worry and
anxiety? Hasn't a wife the right to save
her husband's life? I don't know much
about the law, but I am quite certain
that it must say somewhere that things
like that are allowed."
But things like that are not allowed.
This is inexplicable to Nora because
like millions of women, and poorer
men and women, she is outside the
law-making culture of that society.
Nora's triumph is that she concludes
that she is right and the law and convention are wrong.
Today's Nora's point of view is no
longer perceived as startling. There are
millions of Noras. But the structure
and attitudes of society are still laden
with the thinking of the Torvalds. The
philosophers, including Ibsen, have
interpreted the world, the Noras have
yet to carry through the job of changing it.

always been traditional to house

thoroughbreds in loose boxes where
they have room to move and not in
stalls where they are tied up rather
like cows in a byre. Likewise the staid
old racing world has always fed its horses on hay and never on silage. A
couple of years ago, Osborne debunked all preconceptions when he housed
over 20 mares, shackled in stalls and
facing each other across the central
gangway. of an American style barn.
Osborne fed the mares on silage and
had tapes of James Last and Mantovanni played to them. Result was a lot
of happy mares, whose menstrual
cycles became much more regular. The
housing system meant an immense
saving in labour since only one part
of the stall, the back end, was soiled.
The breeding of horses is a highly
controlled and regulated business.
Humans interfere at every point of the
process. Inevitably this has led to some
mares becoming bad breeders, since
they resent being shackled and presented to a stallion, if and when it
suits the humans. Michael Osborne
decided to put such mares out in a
field with one of the Stud's cheaper
stallions, Tepukei, and allow them to
get on with it in their own good
time. The result was that all the mares
allowed to run with Tepukei went
in foal and that number included one
mare who had been barren forl6 years
in succession.

he resignation, at the end of last

month, of the manager of the
Irish National Stud, Mr. Michael Osborne, has come about because of the
sense of deep frustration felt by him.
Osborne's resignation comes at the end
of 12 years of spectacular and unprecedented success. In that period, he
transformed a ramshackle, loss making
stud (losses of 51,325 in 1970) into
a highly profitable international showpiece (profits of 390,650 in 1980.)
The frustration felt by Osborne vis a
vis what he feels is departmental/
governmental lack of interest in the
future of the bloodstock industry
bodes ill both for the National Stud
and for Irish racing.
When Michael Osborne was appointed to the National Stud in 1970, he
inherited, as his working brief, a set of
recommendations put forward by the
1965 Horse Breeding Survey Team
which had been set up by the then Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries, Charlie Haughey. That survey urged that
36 MAGILL APRIL 1982

among other things the National Stud

should: (l) Stand at least one prestige stallion (2) Be developed as a
showplace for Irish horses and Irish
farming practices generally (3) Run
training courses for stud grooms and
stud managers.
Osborne's management of the Stud
has thoroughly implemented these
recommendations and achieved much
more besides. Firstly, the Stud's buildings were completely revamped, with
three new yards being built. These new
complexes involved many innovations
in the design of the basic stable unit
- porous floors to enable urine to
soak away, sliding doors for safety and
durability reasons, anti-casting grooves
in the wall (casting is what happens
when the horse gets itself jammed
against the wall while lying down)
and abundant use of natural light
through skylights.
Many of the innovations introduced
by Osborne have gone totally in the
face of tradition. For example, it has

echnical innovations and a rebuilding programme would not, on

their own, have proved the value of
Osborne's management. The racecourse
success of horses bred from the National Stud stallions, both by the stud
themselves and by private breeders,
has made the point emphatically.
The first stallion purchase made
under Osborne's management was
Lord Gayle, bought in 1970 for
125,000. At the time, Osborne was
criticised for having purchased a horse
who was little more than a good handicapper. Twelve years later, the handicapper is the sire among many others,
of Blue Wind, winner of the 1981
Epsom and Irish Oaks.
Two years after the purchase of
Lord Gayle, Osborne made perhaps
the most brilliant purchase he has
made in his time with the National
Stud. On the Monday after Sallust
won the Goodwood Mile, Osborne
offered the horse's owner, .Sir Michael
Sobell, 250,000 for him. By the end
of the same week, the deal had been
clinched and the horse paid for.
Yet Sobell and his trainer, Dick
Hem, were keen to run Sallust in
Europe's premier mile race, the Prix
Du Moulin at Longchamps, Paris on
the following Sunday. Since Sallust
was now the property of the National

Stud, Osborne could have recommended that the horse be retired immediately and avoid the possibility
of being defeated in what was obviously
going to be the most competitive mile
race of the season. Osborne did the
reverse and the horse went to France
to win the Prix Du Moulin in record
time. Sallust had not been expected to
beat horses such as Lyphard, Daring
Display and High Top. In so doing he
had trebled his market value. Already
Osborne's acumen had saved the
National Stud over 500,000.
At stud, Sallust continued on where
he had left off on the track. He has
proved himself to be an outstanding
sire - among his progeny are Tap On
Wood (winner of the 1979 English
200 Guineas), and Sandetki (twice
winner of the Prix de La Foret
amongst other races). The success of
Tap On Wood was particularly satisfying for the National Stud, since he
was bred out of one of the stud's own
mares, Cat O'Mountaine. Tap On
Wood had been bought at Goffs for
12,500 and yet when he was syndicated for stud, he was valued at 1
million.
Up to the summer of 1980, Sallust
had sired the winners of over 1 million of prize money. For the last six
years his yearlings have totalled
1.9 million at public auction. In 1977
he was the leading individual 2 year
old sire, in 1978 he was the fourth
leading 2 year old sire and in 1979
he was 5th overall leading sire. Not a
bad return for an investment of ~
million.

Other outstanding successes on the

track, bred from National Stud horses,
include Kilijaro, by African Sky,
bought at Goffs for 4,200 guineas.
This filly was a winner in France, in
Ireland and in the United States and in
the course of her career won over
400,000 in prize money. Yet Osborne had been able to buy her sire,
African Sky, for 330,000.
Kilijaro,like Tap On Wood, had
been bred by the stud itself and this
meant that the successes of the two
horses would mean future earnings
for the stud, when their brothers and
sisters were offered up for sale. Thus
a half sister to Kilijaro and a full
brother to Tap On Wood earned
115,000 guineas and 182,000 guineas
respectively when sold at the 1980
Goffs Invitational Sale. The brother to
Tap On Wood, now called Americus,
has since gone into training with Vincent O'Brien and been the winner of
three races as a two year old, last
year.
Osborne has more than fully implemented the Survey recommendation that the Stud should run training courses for stud grooms and stud
managers. Since 1971, over 200 students from more than 25 countries,
have attended the six month horse
breeding courses run at the National
Stud. Since 1973 there has been a
Racing Apprentice Centre of Education and since 1976 a Farriery
Apprentice School at the stud, as
well.
Nor has Osborne's inevitable preoccupation with the Stud's horse

breeding activities meant that the

agricultural policy has been ignored.
Development and improvements to the
Stud's 800 acres mean that the Stud is
now self-sufficient in oats, silage and
hay. Over 2,500 tons of silage are
made each summer for the Stud's
600 head of cattle, while 100 acres of
barley, 200 tons of hay are made for
the horses. In addition, 150 acres of
oats are grown each year.

ichael Osborne's management

has quite obviously been a huge
success both in the promotion of a
prestige showpiece of Irish horsebreeding and in the consistent returns of profits. (Annual profits have
escalated from the modest 34,161
of 1971 to the impressive 390,650
of 1980.) Yet he feels that his efforts
have not received the kind of support
they now deserve from both the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Finance.
The most important question has
concerned the buying of a prestige
stallion for the National Stud. Although horses like Sallust and African
Sky are obviously prestige stallions,
they are now 13 and 12 years old
respectively, and as such should be
replaced or complemented by fresher
blood. Horse breeding is a business
which is highly influenced by prevailing fashions and in this sense it is
essential for a large stud to buy the
most recent big race winners. Since
such a horse now costs well over the
MAGILL APRIL 1982 37

2 million mark, the required initial

investmen t is intimidating.
Michael Osborne favoured using a
mixture of public and private finance
to overcome this problem. His idea
was that the State need only buy a
quarter of such a horse and have the
rest of the horse bought by a public
syndicate. The system is worked most
effectively at the English National
Stud, where the Stud owns only 9
out of 40 shares in Mill Reef, the
1971 Epsom and Irish Derby and Prix
De L'Arc winner. The. first 1978
Report of the Joint Committee on
State Sponsored Bodies on the Irish
National Stud acknowledged the validity of this suggestion. Item 16:
" ... the Joint Committee considers that in view of Ireland's reputation as one of the greatest nurseries
for thoroughbred horses, its National
Stud should have a prestige stallion
available to it. The Joint Committee
believes that because of the huge investment involved, it would not be
practicable for the Stud to purchase
such a stallion outright. It recommends
therefore that consideration be given
to availing of a partnerhsip arrangement with private enterprise for the
purpose of acquiring an interest, even
a minority one, in such a stallion."
To the intense frustration of Osborne and the board, this recomrnen-

dation has never been implemented.

Osborne is absolutely convinced of the
feasibility of such a method of purchasing and standing a top class
stallion:
"I have no doubt that private sup-

port would come to this sort of

scheme. The private breeders who already use the stud for their own IT! -res
would be queuing up to join in with lIS
in such a purchase."
In the meantime, Osborne has
found it difficult to buy even a rather
less than prestige stallion. At the Ascot
meeting, last June, he made tentative
arrangements for the Stud to buy Runnett, the John Dunlop trained sprinter.
The asking price for the horse was
approximately 300,000, but the
Stud's borrowing facility was only
200,000. An application had to be
made to the Department of Finance
to have the borrowing facility increased. By November, the facility was
indeed increased, but by that time he
horse had beaten last year's champion
sprinter, Marwell, in the Vernon's
Sprint and had thus upgraded himself. By November also, Runnett had
long since been sold to another Irish
buyer.

ccording to a Department of
Agriculture spokesperson, the
Department is not unaware of the problems of the National Stud. It is,
Magill was informed, a matter of priorities. Racing is a semi-luxury industry,
with exports of less than 20 million
_per year and as such cannot receive.the
same consideration given to other
areas of agriculture,
A problem facing Osborne and his
board in their negotiations with the
Department of Finance is the unpredictability
of their
demands.
Michael Osborne: "Buying a stallion
is not like buying a ton of peas. I
38 MAGILL APRIL 1982

cannot say at this time of year, April,

what sort of horse we will be looking
to buy in July or August. We might
decide that we would like to buy one
of last year's good two year olds and
then find that by the time August has
come, he had failed to train on and
wasn't worth anything. At this time of
year it is impossible to know either the
horse or his purchase price."
'osborne's problem is that he has to
wait and see how horses develop on
racetrack. He has to buy on the basis
of proven racecourse ability and
between April and October of a flat
racehorse's two or three season career
is the time when reputations are made.
made.
The Department of Finance, on the
other hand, would like precise projections for the forthcoming year and do
not take kindly to demands for immediate funding. Were Osborne to
announce six months in advance that
he intended to buy such and such a
stallion, he would face a very difficult
time when he came to strike his bargain over the horse. The seller would
be ready for him and have upped the
asking price considerably.
What the National Stud are asking
for is flexibility'. The case of the
attempted purchase of Runnett makes
the point. At the time, June, when
Osborne made his initial offer for the

horse, he did not have the necessary

borrowing facility at his disposal. Yet
he knew very well that by October,
when the stud fees are due to be paid
by the owners of mares who have
used the Stud's stallions, that he would
definitely have the funds available.
Osborne was not looking for a state
subsidy to continue in business. Simply he was looking for a four month
loan for investment.
The Department could not or
would not appreciate his difficulty and
thus a useful investment was missed.
The essential problem is that while the
Department of Finance continues to
treat the National Stud in the same
manner as any other semi-State body,
there will always be problems for its
manager. Horse racing and horse
breeding are not exact sciences for
which projections and advance assessments can be made with any realism.

Adding injury to insult and frustration, one of the few decisive interventions made by the Department of
Finance has been to reward Osborne
with a downgraded salary. In 1979 his
salary was demoted from Grade III
to Grave IV of the semi-State manager's salary scales, as defined by the
Devlin Report. This means Osborne's
salary is limited to a maximum of
15,000 per annum. It is probable
that Osborne's future employers, the
North Ridge Stud; USA, will be in a
position to offer Osborne three times
that amount.
Lack of adequate renumeration is
not Osborne's main frustration, but it
has certainly not helped. In his work
at Tully, he acts as a stud manager,
a PR person for Irish breeding, a
bloodstock buyer, a bloodstock advisor, a veterinary surgeon (he is a
qualified vet), a scientist carrying out
field experiments, a farmer and a lecturer (he lectures the students for one
hour every day). On occasion he even
works as a groom.
Last Christmas Day tells a story
about Osborne. Because of the cold
conditions, the horses automatic water
supply froze. Given the day it was,
staff were short and Osborne spent the
most of the day carrying buckets of
water round to the horses ... Grade
IV of semi-State managers, all right!

he three British and Irish

teams, England, Scotland
and Northern Ireland who
will play in the World Cup
Finals in Spain this summer
can expect little success. On
the evidence both of their
performances throughout the
last eighteen months in qualifying and more recently in
friendly matches, all three
sides are playing a crude and
ineffective soccer which will
see them dismissed from the
Finals at the earliest opportunity.
That Northern Ireland should be
candidates for an early return home is
hardly surprising. Of all the British and
Irish sides, they have the most limited
squad, both numerically and in terms
of talent. To have got so far is achievement enough. Or is it?
Elementary
mistakes for which
there is no excuse at international
level, repeatedly cost Northern Ireland
dear against both England at Wembley
in February and against France in
Paris, last month. When an opponent
has reached the byline and has sent in
a cross, it is not enough just to watch
the ball. The skill of the defender is his
ability to watch both ball and opponents. Four times against England and
France this Irish defence has both ignored the player arriving into the penalty area and simultaneously missed the
cross.' Four times the opposition

40 MAGILL APRIL 1982

scored easy goals.

Against England, the Northern Irish could have been
forgiven when in the opening
seconds of the game they failed to pick up Trevor Francis
as he made a forward run
down the right flank moving
into space to pick up a return
pass from Anderson further
out on the right. Players of
Francis's pace will always
trouble this Irish defence if
and when they run at it.
Again both Sammy Nelson
and
John
O'Neill could
have been forgiven for failing to stop
Francis on the right side of the penalty
area. However nothing can excuse the
way that the Irish captain Martin
O'Neill drifted away from Bryan
Robson who was following up the
Francis attack. Thus Francis's accurate
centre found Robson alone and three
yards from goal. Even Pat Jennings
cannot stop those sort of chances.
Again early in the second half, no
blame could be attached to John
O'Neill for not cutting out Trevor
Francis's cross from almost the comer
. flag. Yet it was absurd to find that
Above: Chris Nicholl, a member of the
inept N. Ireland defence. Below: Steve
Archibald - needs good service from t:
the Scottish midfield and Right: Butch &
Wilkins, who was hardly a success as ~
sweeper for England v N. Ireland.

Kenny Sansom. likely to be England's left back against France in England's opening World Cup game.
when that cross arrived on the Irish six yard line, the two
Irish defenders, Chris and Jimmy Nicholl failed to pick up
the lone English attacker, Kevin Keegan. Again an English
attacker was given a free shot at goal from less than six
yards.
Had these two goals come from situations in which any
one of two or three supporting players might have been the
target for the cross, then Northern Ireland could have been
excused. But both Robson and Keegan were alone and both
were the predictable target for the cross and yet both were
left totally unmarked. Nonsense soccer!

gainst Israel, the last match of their group, Northern

Ireland had looked embarrassingly limited. They appeared to be almost totally devoid of any constructive attacking idea other than a punt in the penalty box, aimed at the
, two big central strikers, Gerry Armstrong and Billy Hamilton. One could forgive them their unease on a night when
the pressure of winning to ensure qualification must have
cramped their style.
So negative and limited were the Israeli side that evening, that they conspired to mount the grand total of four
attacks. It was hard in the circumstances to gauge the durability of the Irish defence. Yet the impression, which such
as Svensson and Borg of Sweden, Jordao and Alves of
Portugal, had created in previous matches in this group, was
that this defence could be vulnerable when attacked on the
ground. After the game against France, vulnerable seems a
kind word.
Players who earn their living in the English League are
always going to, have difficulties adjusting to the low, on

42 MAGILL APRIL 1982

the ground constructed attack which sides like France

favour. The Northern Irish back four of Jimmy Nicholl,
Chris Nicholl, John O'Niell and Mal Donaghy will always
have to work overtime to deal with such a style of attack.
But they might at least, with all their experience of English soccer, be expected to know how to deal with a cross.
Yet against France, they continued where they had left
off against England, and allowed Xenier a completely free
header from three yards for France's first goal following
Giresse's cross. From a Soler cross in the second half
Genghini was also given the now statutory free shot from
less than ten yards as he notched France's fourth goal. On
this occasion the Irish defenders outnumbered the French
attackers three to one, and yet all three defenders ignored
the Frenchman, so diligent was their attention to the course
of the ball. Just to show that the Irish had failed to even
realise the extent of the problem, Bellone trotted into the
left side of the penalty box and while the Irish defence concentrated on Larios, who was about to cross out on the
French right, Bellone found himself alone and with space
to measure up Larios's cross and score with a spectacular
first time volley. Out of consideration to the Irish, the
referee managed to adjudicate that one of the French
attackers had been offside.
One can only speculate at the ease with which the precise play of such as Zlatko Vujovic, Vladimir Petrovic and
Safet Susie of Yugoslavia will take this Irish defence apart.
Nor can the thought of Zamora, Juanito and Satrustegui
of Spain give Irish manager Billy Bingham pleasant dreams.
Both Spain and Yugoslavia will have too much control in
midfield and too much pace in attack for Northern Ireland
to survive with them.

'T'

Top: Jimmy Nicholl

Was less than distinguished against
both France and N. Ireland.
Below: Kenny Dalglish, who scored a fine goal against
Holland, in Scotland's 2-1 win at Hampden Park.

he 4-0 win which England enjoyed against Northern

Ireland was an unreal result. For all the reasons outlined
above Northern Ireland presented England with gift goals.
Yet even in winning 4-0, England's serious failings were
obvious.
Throughout England's qualifying group matches, they
have suffered from an inadequate central defence. Phil
Thompson, Dave Watson, Russell Osman, and latterly Alvin
Martin and Steve Foster have all looked slow, have aligned
themselves in a straight, flat line and have all been easily
beaten by the pace and skill of such as Thoressen (Norway),
Sulser (Switzerland),
Jorandescu (Rumania) and Kiss
(Hungary).
In an attempt to bolster this glaring inadequacy, England
manager Ron Greenwood introduced a new concept against ~.
Northern Ireland - the back five. Faced by the less than
awesome attack of Hamilton, Armstrong and Erotherstone,
Greenwood chose to play Butch Wilkins as a sweeper,
behind the back four of Sansom, Foster, Watson, and
Anderson. Soccer history was made.
Sweepers have in the past played behind two defenders
against a two-man attack. Most often they play behind
three defenders who are marking man-for-man a threeman attack. The philosophy of the system is simple. Your
three defenders should look after the three attackers, but if
one attacker does get by his man, then the sweeper (or
libero) is there to intercept him before he gets any further.
The sweeper's position means that he is in a better position
to read what is happening and also provides a defence
against the through ball which might be chipped over the
heads of a typical back three or four.
It is quite incredible that English soccer has so far failed
almost completely to use the sweeper system. Faced as
most British club defences are with a three-man attack of
two central strikers and one wide striker, the British system
is to play two central defenders on the central attackers and
two full backs to cover the other striker and attacking midfielders or opposing fullbacks. There is no free (libero) man
at the back. The quality of British play out of defence has
suffered accordingly.
That Greenwood should be attempting to do something
about this is encouraging. But that he should mismanage it
so completely as he did against Northern Ireland is farcical.
Built into the concept of the libero is an element of daring.
As the free man he is not only the last line of defence but
also the first line of attack. He has to commit himself forward and run the risk of being caught out on the counter
attack. Players like Rud Krol (Holland and Napoli), Marius
Tresor (France and Bordeaux), Daniel Passarella (Argentina
and River Plate) have shown how this system can effectively be used without undue risk.
Yet Greenwood chose to use the libero system without
taking any risks. He lined out with a classic Britsh back four
and then placed another player behind them. This meant
that Robson and Hoddle were left to fend for themselves
in midfield. Outnumbered by Mcllroy, Martin O'Niell and
Donaghy, the English midfielders were in bother. For most
of the first half, Northern Ireland were a constant threat to
the English. Even the five-man defence could not stop Martin O'Niell and Sammy Mcllroy combining on the edge of
the penalty area to allow McIlroy dance past Foster before
shooting at Clemence. England's problems in the centre of
defence have certainly not been solved by Foster.
It was obvious that when Wilkins abandoned his deep
defensive position and moved forward into a more orthoMAGILL APRIL 1982 43

dox midfield role, that England began to function rather

better. The ultra-cautious way in which England set about
using the libero system illustrated perfectly both the tactical naivety and the basic uncertainty which are fundamental to this side. Such confustion will not last long against international sides who both know what they want to do and
are capable of doing it. Dither Britannia.
If England dither on in this manner against France and
leave only two men to contest the midfield against such as
Platini, Giresse, Larios, Tigana and friends, then they too
will be making an early exit from the tournament. Even
tightly marked, the French midfielders cause immense problems, as the Republic know only too well. But given space,
then England could be giving themselves exactly the very
problems that they do not need. Likewise the Czech midfield of Panenka, Berger, Kozak, Bicovsky would enjoy it
itself immensely against a two-man midfield.

hatever about the inadequacies shown by both England and Northern Ireland in recent matches, no
one could claim that it was a surprise to find that both
teams have severe problems. Scotland, on the other hand,
qualified for Spain on their own merits and not with the
help of an unlikely combination of results. Furthermore
Jock Stein has been carefully rebuilding and reorganising
this side since the great Argentinian debacle. In the qualifying eight games he used only 22 players (For comparison's
sake, England used 26, France 30, Holland 36 and the Republic of Ireland 25 in their eight games.) There are grounds
for suggesting that Scotland are the strongest British or
Irish side of the moment.
It was therefore all the more disappointing to find that
an admittedly understrength Scottish side failed to impress
in their recent 2-1 defeat of Holland. A dubious penalty
for Scotland, a disallowed Dutch goal and two easy chances
missed by the Dutch could all have combined to see the reverse result.
What was most alarming about Scotland was the extent
to which the midfield of John Wark, David Narey and Jim
Bett were almost totally eclipsed from the game in the
second half. Given that of these three, only Wark could be
regarded as first choice, it was hardly surprising that they
should be outshone by Metgod, Peters, Muhren. But it was
disconcerting to find that manager Stein could say afterwards in relation to this period of the game: "I admired the
way my boys kept at it, stuck at their game, they never
allowed Holland to get into the game where it mattered."
Stein's analysis of the match failed to acknowledge that
the Dutch winger, Simon Tahmatta, and the new cap, midfielder Rijkaard, were able to go down the flanks as they
liked, making as experienced a defender as Frankie Gray
look very ordinary. With Peters and Metgod knocking the
hall around in imperious fashion in the space of the midfield, many were the chances granted to Tahamatta and
Rijkaard to show their class. Like England and Northern
Ireland, and for exactly the same reason, Scotland too look
vulnerable to the attack on the ground. Skill will get past
this Scottish defence, where Alan Hansen was badly missed.
In his absence both Miller and Evans were suspect to the
chip over their heads. Holland scored twice (once disallowed) from balls which were knocked just behind the two
defenders for the attacker to run onto. One wonders what
the likes of Shengalia and Kipiani of Russia and Ze Sergio,
Paulo Isodoro and Eder of Brazil will do to such a static
defence.

44 MAGILL APRIL 1982

In the front line, the news for Scotland was better. Joe
Jordan elbowed his way through the Dutch defence and
showed that his presence can be still a nuisance, long before
he touches a ball. Archibald and Dalglish are obviously
players who, with a service from both midfield and the
wings, will trouble
any defence. On this occasion, (and
perhaps on occasions to come) they did not receive such
service and thus with the exception of Scotland's second
breakaway goals, neither player figured much in the half
of the game which they played.
The best news for Scotland came in the performance of
Alan Brazil, the Ipswich striker. Brazil was always on the
move, putting himself about so much that his marker, the
elegant Michel Van Der Korput, simply could not stay with
him. Even on those occasions when Van Der Korput did
stay with Brazil, he was still easily shrugged off by the
powerful running of the Scotchman.
Were Scotland to avoid a rather obvious flat defence and
were they to find a linking and a blending in midfield then
they might become worthy opponents for such as Brazil
and Russia. At the moment it would look like both Brazil
and Russia will so completely starve them in midfield, that
they will suffer embarrassing defeats.

inally, what of Holland, who are the Republic's first

opponents in the European Championship, next September? Having taken three points from Holland in the recent World Cup group, it might seem to some that Holland
should present no problems for Ireland. That could be a
dangerously complacent attitude. All the signs from the
arrogant and skilful control exercised by the Dutch was
that manager Kees Rijvers' team is just beginning to develop.
Rijvers, of course, had the unenviable task of taking over
Holland's side with two away games already lost in the
qualifying group. He had to begin rebuilding in the most
difficult of circumstances. Understandably, he came unstuck in Paris where he allowed an untypical caution to
dominate his thinking. Now with the pressure off, he was
able to iritroduce young players like Kieft and Rijkaard of
Ajax. Unlike his predecessor, Jan Zwartakruis who came to
Dublin with four new caps for a World Cup game, Rijvers
brought the two younger players in alongside the experience
of such as Jan Peters, Johnny Metgod, Arnold Muhren,
Simon Tahamatta, Michel Van Der Korput, Hugo Hovenkamp and above all, Rud Krol. Apart from Krol and
Muhren, there is no reason why all of the above will not be
playing in 1986. Kees Rijvers' contract with the Dutch FA
runs until the Colombian World Cup and it is clear that he
already has the nucleus of a side for that compeition, qualifying rounds for which begin in just over two years time.
It is obviously Kees Rijvers' intention to completely devalue the time-serving theory, so popular at the moment,
that Holland are finished as a world power. After the Scottish match, he could hardly contain his satisfaction with the
Dutch performance. Holland's strengths remain in midfield
and on the wings. Given that Ireland's one definite area of
weakness has been in the two full back positons, then Ireland can expect a difficult time next September in Rotterdam. On the other hand the defensive weakness of such as
Van Der Korput and of Spelbos, which were so evident
against the Scots, could mean that both Frank Stapleton
and Michael Robinson will again prove too strong for the
Dutch defence. At any rate another fine match is in prospect.

..

ome devaluation
of the punt is
now seen as a real possibility
by
monetary
strategists
within the EEC
commission.
Such a devaluation
is,
however, likely to be small - probably
not greater than five per cent. It could
come within weeks, or perhaps not for
six months.
Such a move should be seen in the
context
of any new re-alignment
of
the EMS, which would probably
involve a further
devaluation
of the
French
and Belgian francs.
In the
event of these currencies going down
we would, if we did nothing, in practice be revalued
upwards. And it is
against that possibility
that government action could be considered likely.
Not that a change in the value of
the punt would come as any surprise
to our EMS partners. There is evidence
that they, perhaps not understanding
our
government's
policy
properly,
have been expecting
a punt devaluation anyway.
On Saturday,
February
20 of this
year, for example,
members
of the
EMS Monetary
Committee
met in
Brussels to agree the latest re-alignment
of currencies. They met on a Saturday
because exchanges are by then closed
all around the world.
The committee
is composed of experts from finance ministries in the
national capitals, and leading the team
from Ireland was Mr. Maurice Horgan.
second secretary in the Department
of
Finance.

We suffered from what was

"basically the O'Donoghue
period" after we joined
the E.M.S.

In the course of the meeting Mr.

Horgan is alleged to have pointed out
that the Irish government
had no parliamentary
mandate
at that moment,
and only for that he might have been
seeking a devaluation on its behalf.
This interesting piece of news eventually found its way to the press via
the Luxembourg
ambassador
to the
EEC Mr. Dondelinger,
who is thought

to have heard it second-hand.

Journalists set about checking it out, and
eventually
got what they thought was
confirmation
from Italian sources that
Mr. Horgan had indeed said what was
reported.
On Sunday, however, Ministers for
Finance including
Mr. John Bruton.
gathered in Brussels to finish the work
of the re-alignment.
The outgoing
Minister duly denied that Mr. Horgan
had ever made a statement of the type
attributed
to him. The government
had
decided
"before
Christmas"
against a devaluation
of the punt, said
the Minister. The second secretary was
present during the Minister's denials
and endorsed what his political master
had to say. One journalist
present describes Mr. Horgan as having looked
"bemused and slightly sheepish".
Nevertheless
the false impression
about Ireland's
plans seems to have
hung on in financial circles in spite of
the denials.
On March 15, what looked like an
intriguing leak came from Copenhagen.
A prominent expert with a line to official thinking predicted a new re-alignment
"this
spring"
in which
the
Deutschmark
and Dutch Gilder would
rise in value by 3% against the Danish
Crown and the Belgian Franc, and by
6% against the French Franc and the
Irish pound.
When
this report
went
around
Europe on agency wires it was taken
seriously
enough to cause a serious
MAGILL

APRIL

1982

47

wobble in the French Franc. It did not

bring any particular
run on the punt,
but this caused little surprise in Brussels. The reason is simple and is agreed
by both commercial bankers and EEC
officials ...
it is virtually impossible
to speculate against the punt.
One of the chief suppliers of punts
to the continental
business community
is Mr. Liam Doyle of the Allied Irish
Banks branch
in Brussels. He says
there is a steady demand from international firms doing local business in
Ireland, where people for convenience
deal in punts.
He says: "It is possible to get punts
only on production
of an invoice for
goods, showing what the punts are to
be used for. This is quite simply a result of the Irish government's
exchange controls."
A senior EEC official who monitors
currency affairs took the same view: "I

McSharry and Bruton:

Doth they protest too much?

48 MAGILL

APRIL

1982

think you know what happened when

people tried to take money to Cheltenham. It is really quite difficult to move
punts out of the country.
"The only important
market in the
currency is Dublin, and if punts are
left without
a buyer there then the
Central Bank steps in and purchases
them. What you are getting is the Central Bank paying for the trading deficit. It is constantly
in the market
place, and there is no technical way
anyone can sell the country short."

f the
exchange controls
makes it
easier to hold the punt rate, the
converse is also the case. All observers
in Brussels agree that without the controls the Central Bank would not have
a snowball's
chance in hell of holding
our position in the EMS.
This douche of cold water will do

Without the controls

the Central Bank would
not have a snowball's
chance in hell of holding
our position within the EMS.

nothing for the macho satisfaction

we
seem to have been developing about
our EMS stability.
In his recent New
York speech the Taoiseach,
Charles
Haughey,
declared
that the external
value of the punt was of crucial central importance
to the country's
development
strategy. "For this reason,"
he said, "it has been the firm policy
of the Irish government
to maintain
value of the currency
within that
(EMS) system."
This assurance of stability bordered
on the absurd before an audience of
US bankers who would, if they were at
all interested,
have been aware of the
punt's headlong fall against their own
dollar over the previous year.
More than that, if they were involved in the matter at all, they would
have known that it had also fallen 25%
against the sterling over a somewhat
longer period.
The people who manage the EMS
are not such dumbells as not to see
this for themselves. While they are not
willing to be quoted by name, they
maintain that a steady position within
the EMS does not mean stability.
One source went this far: "I would
describe the Irish pound as a rather
heavily devalued currency."
The EEC
has even made an effort to assess how
much of a leg-up our industry has' received from the fact that we have depreciated
against
markets
taking
around 70% of our trade.
The figure, which is confidential
and has not been revealed
before,
takes into account various factors in-

eluding higher raw material costs. The

figure is known as the "cornpetitivity
index", and it shows that from 1979
until the third quarter of 1981 our
competitivity
in foreign markets for
industrial goods has risen by 7.5%.
One person involved in the computation of the index said that it had
been higher in the previous year or
more, but was now shrinking.
The
same person felt that, with reasonable
assumptions
about
future trends, it
could take "two to three years" for
the remainder of the advantage to evaporate.
What annoys officials in the EEC's
economics
directorate
is that the depreciation of the past 2Yz years has not
been accompanied
by strict measures
to maintain the advantages it brings.
Economics
commissioner
Francois
Xavier Ortoli has been advising the
Irish government
to take such measures ever since the start of the EMS in
1979. The latest piece of advice he
piloted through the commission
was
only some weeks ago. He lumped Ireland into a group of countries
on
which he advised: "Action to turn the
trend in extremely high inflation rates
and extremely
high public deficits is
now urgently required."
Such restrained
public words conceal much more strongly held feelings
within the commission.
One adviser
on the commission
staff told me that
we suffered from what was "basically
the O'Donoghue
period" immediately
after we joined the EMS in the spring
of1979.
The gap between
Irish and European inflation has grown steadily since
then. In 1979 our rate of 13.2'10 was
3.0% above the community
average. In
1980 our 18.2% rate was 4.1% above
the average, and last year's 19.7% was
7.1% above. The latest published comparative figures are for last November
when our 23.3% rate was a handsome
10.8% above the average in the EEC.
Our rake's progress is regarded by
officials in Brussels with nothing short
of alarm. As to remedial action it is
known that no one, from Mr. Ortoli
down. sees any virtue per se in holding
the punt at its present parity. But one
senior sourse in the commission said:
"There is little point in devaluing unless you also take stringent moves to
make sure the benefits stay with you.
You have had two severe budgets
within a year, last July and this March,
and they have hardly
dented
your
problem. Your borrowing requirement
is more or less unchanged
at nearly
1,700 million.
'
"I do not believe that Mr. Haughey's
govern ment has the political strength
to enforce
the kind of very severe

were attended by MichaelO'Kennedy's

farm aide John Cohalan, who says Dalsager's staff were clearly in favour of
devaluation.
He also alleges that the "purchasing
power parity theory", seemed to be
accepted round the table, even in large
measure
by Mr. Ortoli's
chef de
cabinet
Mr. Pierre de Boissieu . This
theory holds that the value of a currency will in large measure change to
relfect how far its inflation is out of
line with its trading
partners.
The
acceptance
of this theory has been
denied
on the Ortoli side on the
grounds that "we are constantly
trying to break the vicious circle of currency and inflation.

It is virtually
impossible to speculate
against the punt.

measures that would be needed for a

major devaluation."
The restrained concern in the Ortoli
department
is not repeated
in other
areas of the commission,
where a
devaluation
is treated
with
much
greater equanimity.
The agriculture, commissioner
Poul
Dalsager has been arguing semi-pu blicly that the Irish government
should
think about devaluation
if it wants to
solve the problems of its farmers.
Really quite indiscreetly
Mr. Dalsager
told
Irish journalists
during
March: "Devaluation
would help your
farmers but it is up to the Irish government." He said that Ireland's inflation
rate was about double that of Belgium
and Denmark which had recently opted for devaluation,
There is some indication
that Mr.
Dalsager thought his remarks were off
the record, but they were published,
and they are' said to have made the
minister
for finance
Ray McSharry
"very angry". An approach was made
through
diplomatic
channels to indicate the Minister's disapproval.
The two conflicting themes of commission thinking
came face to face
during the lengthy
preparation
this
spring of a report on inflation in agriculture. This celebrated report was the
brainchild
of some who thought
it
might just put a gloss of respectability
on extra help for farmers in places
where inflation is high - like Ireland.
As it turned
out it did no such
thing. But along the way, the meetings
apparently
turned up some interesting
views on devaluation.
The meetings

..

here is no doubt, however,

that
farmers get the rough end of the
stick from the EMS. Our farm prices
are fixed in central European figures,
and do not fluctuate so long as we are
steady in the EMS.
John
Cahalan
says: "The
farm
trade is unable to take advantage of
the rising sterling or dollar because of
the theory that the community
decides what the prices should be in Ireland and then imposes taxes on exports to make sure we don't get more."
It means that although the pound
may have depreciated
against, for example, the sterling, we do not get
the advantage
that our industrial
exporters
do. No one seems to have
quantified
the losses involved, though
they could approach. 100 million. No
other member state has run into the
problem on the scale we have.
The theory that we may, in due
course, go for a small devaluation
has
strong
non-agricultural
arguments
going for it as well. Our EMS rate is
fixed against a "basket of currencies".
Until now the five re-alignments in the
system involved some of our partners
moving up and others moving down.
So the "basket"
stayed around
the
same value and our rate against it has
been stable. But that may be about to
change.
One technical
expert in the EEC
commission
put it this way: "The
French and the Belgian currencies are
still under pressure, and if they devalue now it would lower the value of
the basket, and thus raise the official
rate of the Irish against it. "That
would put the Irish pound in with the
Deutschmark
and the Dutch Gilder as
the only currencies to have revalued in
the system.
There are arguments 'for
and against correcting
that and they
are fairly evenly balanced.
But you
can fairly
say there
is something
absurd about leaving a currency like
the punt in that situation."

MAGILL

APRIL

1982

49

rish agriculture is in the trough of a deep depression.

This depression has not been caused only by the slowdown in world economic activity in recent years, but has its
roots in a number of factors peculiar to agriculture, not
only in Ireland but in the EEC as a whole.
This depression, which started in 1979, is all the more
acutely felt because it follows a boom period which began
at the end of the 1970's and continued, with the occasional
sectoral hiccup, until 1978. The boom owed much to the
conditions created by EEC membership, and it is widely
felt that the depression is due partly to the fact that the
expected continuation of the EEC benefits did not materialise.
.
Confidence in farming is a very volatile quantity. When
things are going well, the sky is the limit for development
and expansion. This is an inevitable component of the classic cycles in many lines of production, particularly pig
production and cattle production. If profit margins are
SO MAGILL APRIL 1982

good, prices of young pigs and young cattle are bid up

rapidly by fatteners. Sooner or later, they reach the point
where profit margins at the final stage are so reduced that
activity falls off. Demand for young animals falls off,
returns to breeders fall, they reduce production and turn
to other enterprises, and the whole cycle begins again when
low prices for young animals make fattening profitable
again.
The classic cyclical pattern is made more complex by
the inter-relationship between different lines of production
- e.g. between milk production and beef production.iand
by the variety of outlets available for some products, as
for example in the case of cattle where slaughtering plants
compete for supplies with Livestock exporters.
When the cyclical pattern of production is superimposed
on a background of rapid inflation, it can result in a kind
of desperation, and a widespread view that there is almost
nowhere left to go.

I
E

EC membership brought about a profound change in

the economic conditions of agricultural production,
and in the income expectations of Irish farmers. It opened
up prospects of what seemed like almost unlimited markets
at price levels never before realized for most products. This
contrasted sharply with pre-EEC trading conditions in
which we produced mainly for the UK market, at "world"
market prices, in competition with suppliers from all over.
the world.
The EEC market support system offered price guarantees at relatively high levels, and an intervention system
involving public (EEC) purchasing of our main products if
the market did not produce a price equal to the guaranteed
. level. It also offered subsidies to cover the difference between guaranteed price levels and world market price levels
for products exported outside the EEC.

he period 1970-1978 covers the boom years, from the

time when the expectation of EEC membership began
to influence farmers' confidence in the future, to the time
when accelerating inflation and the cost-price squeeze
combined to undermine confidence.
Over that period, the gross volume of agricultural output (including the value of changes in livestock numbers)
increased by 35.5%, an average annual increase of just
under 3.9%. The volume of net output (i.e. gross output
less feed, seed and fertilizers) grew by 30.3% over the
period, an average annual increase of just under 3.4%.
The volume of the main farm inputs used over the period
increased by 50%, an annual rate of 5.2%.
Compared to the trends in previous years, this was a
very respectable performance, particularly in terms of the
growth in the volume of gross output, where performance
had traditionally been fairly sluggish. It was, of course,
notable that the volume of the main inputs used grew
faster than the volume of gross output. While on the face
of it this might be taken to indicate a drop in productivity,
the general view was that this was an inevitable result of a
gradual shift towards a more intensive pattern of production, and of a trend towards the concentration of growth
on the more intensively-managed farms.
The period 1970-1978 was one of very rapid increases
in farm incomes. Total farm income went from 181.1
million in 1970 to 834.5 million in 1978 - an increase
over the period of 361 % or an average increase of 21 %
per annum in money terms. Adjusted for inflation, the
real increase over the period was 71.3%, or an annual
average increase of almost 7%. That was the global figure:
the average increase in real income per head of the population working in agriculture was higher, since the number

of people working on farms declined over the period.

Over the period 1970-1978,
agricultural prices increased rapidly. By 1978, livestock prices were 3.8 times as
high as they had been in 1970, prices of livestock products
(including milk) had quadrupled, crop prices had tripled.
The rate of price increase for farm output far outstripped
the rate of increase in input prices, so that margins increased substantially. At production level, this created a
climate favourable to expansion.
The effect on farm living standards was dramatic. Large
sections of the farming community discovered for the first
time what the consumer society really was, and a substantial part of the income gains went into improving family
living-standards on farms.
One of the results of the favourable income and price
developments of the period was the creation of an expectation that margins and real incomes would continue to
increase iii. much the same way as seemed 1'0 happen as a
matter of course in others sections of Irish society.
Confidence in farming created a climate of confidence
in the food processing industry, and in other downstream
and upstream agriculture-related industries.
In the main processing industries, in the beef and dairy
sectors, it seemed that a continuing increase in supplies
of raw materials could be built into plans for the future.
That factor, in addition to the confidence generated by
EEC market support mechanisms and the availability of
both national and EEC funds for modernization and
expansion, ensured a substantial development in processing capacity and increases in employment. This was particularly the case in the beef processing industry, where
a number of new firms began operations and processing
capacity was updated and expanded.
The pound sterling proved to be fairly weak over the
period 1973-1978, and this created some problems in the
context of the system used for fixing farm prices. In order
to set common prices, it was necessary to define a "unit of
account" with a fixed value in relation to each of the Member States' currencies. This fixed value was called the
"green rate" of each currency. As long as currency exchange rates on international markets did not diverge from
the "green rates", the system worked without complications. Devaluations and revaluations, however, caused problems. In the interests of stability, it was decided that "green
rates" should not automatically change with market rate
adjustments.
As long as "green rates" were not adjusted, it was necessary to compensate for the difference by the introduction
of a system of compensatory border levies and subsidies,
called monetary compensation amounts (MCA's). For a
Member State with a depreciating currency, MCA's operate
as levies on exports and subsidies on imports; for a Member State with an appreciating currency, they operate as
subsidies on exports and levies on imports.
The system continues in operation to this day, and has
always been a point of contention during the annual farm
price fixing negotiations.
Given the effective weakness of sterling and the punt's
one-for-one relationship with it until March 1979, it was
frequently the case during the 1973-1978 period that the
"green rate" fixed for the punt was higher than the market
exchange rate.
. MAGILL APRIL 1982

51

It was clear from mid-1973 that an adjustment of the

Irish "green rate" to bring it into line with the market exchange rate would facilitate our export trade, and increase
the value of EEC price guarantees and aids expressed in
punts.
Thus, right through the period, the two successive
Governments followed a policy of adjusting the "green
rate" as rapidly as possible. This gave further impetus to
the rise in prices following the application of the EEC
systems in this country ..

hingsbegan to go wrong in 1979, and all the trends,

which had up to then been so positive, turned round.
The average annual growth in volume of gross output
in the period 1978-81 fell to just under 1.5%. The volume
of inputs, however, rose at the same average annual rate
(5.2%) as in the period 1970-78. Input prices rose in
1978-81 at an average annual rate of almost 14%, against
an average annual increase of 7% in output prices. These
factors put very severe pressure on incomes. From a total
of 834.5 million in 1978, total farm family income fell
to 7J4 million in 1979, 672 million in 1980 and 787
million in 1981.
The net result was that, in real terms, total farm income
was 42% lower in 1981 than in 1978. The sluggishness of
gross output was the result of a number of factors.
In the cattle sector, 1980 saw a massive wave of destocking, as producers sold off stock to try to generate cash
flow in the face of declining margins.
In the milk sector, output of milk for manufacturing fell
in both 1980 and 1981.
The volume of inputs purchased continued to rise, partly as a result of efforts to intensify production and partly
to compensate for the effects of two difficult growing seasons in succession.
On the output prices front, the period 1978-81 saw the
adoption of first a "prudent" price policy and then a "rigorous" price policy by the EEC Commission. This meant
that the Commission's annual proposals - the startingpoint of the negotiations - were pitched at a lower level
than had normally been the case up to then. This more
restrictive approach to EEC pricing policy coincided with
a resurgence of inflationary pressure at home, to produce
a severe cost-price squeeze, and acute pressure on farm
living standards.
In March 1979, the European Monetary System was set
up. Ireland joined, the UK did not. The central rate fIxed'
for the punt at that time proved to be stable and sustainable. By then, the "green rate" for the punt had been
brought more or less into line with the central rate. Apart
52 MAGILL APRIl 198Z

from minor adjustments resulting from re-alignments of

other currencies, there was no further room to supplement
annual common price increases at EEC level by devaluations of the "green rate", apart from a 3.8% change which
was added to the prices agreement for 1981/82, and which
resulted from a re-alignment of the lira and an adjustment
for sterling. Thus, the common price increases fixed at
EEC level became, apart from exceptional market circumstances, the only source of price increase available. Inevitably, EEC price increases were influenced heavily by the
fact that inflation rates in other Member States were running at much lower levels than ours.
One of the reasons underlying the fairly restrictive approach to EEC farm prices in recent years has been the
worry, shared by the EEC Commission and some Member
States, that the Community's
financing arrangements
might not be able to bear a higher level of expenditure on
the Common Agricultural Policy.
The main source of finance for the Community is a 1%
slice of the VAT now levied in all Member States. So far,
the Community has not in any year used up the total
amount of funds which could be made available in this
way. The decision on each year's Community budget specifies the percentage to be taken. The maximum limit now
specified, however, cannot exceed 1% unless a new decision is taken and ratified by the Parliaments of the Member States.
For the last two years, there have been fears that the
Community might run out of "headroom" in budgetary
terms, and find itself unable to meet its commitments.
Added to this, there has been the continuing dispute
about the UK's net contribution to the Community budget. Since 1979, the UK has applied considerable pressure
to its EEC partners in an effort to get agreement on a
reduction in its net contribution. Whatever the merits of
the UK case - and they are doubtful in a number of respects - the tactics used (including, on two occasions, the
blockage of decisions on farm prices) have led to a fundamental re-examination of the Community's budget structure.
In May 1980, the Council of Ministers drew up a "Mandate" to resolve the problem by means of structural changes in the Community's budget. The terms of the Mandate
given to the Commission were as follows: " ... the examination will concern the development of Community policies,
without calling into question the common financial responsibility for these policies which are financed from the
Community's own resources, or the basic principles of the
Common Agricultural Policy. Taking account of the situations and interests of all Member States, this examination
will aim to prevent the recurrence of unacceptable situations for any of them."
This expression of the problem attempted to mean all
things to all Member States, and of course allowed each one
to claim that its own particular problems and requirements
. were covered, no matter how much they might have been in
conflict with those of other Member States.
The UK position was quite straightforward from the
beginning : more money back for the UK and development
of policies from which the UK could benefit.
Other Member States had different requirements. A
number took the view that if refunds were to be made to

the UK, their share of the cost of these should be kept as

low as possible. There was some interest in developing new
policies, notably by France. A number of Member States
wanted to ensure that the re-examination of policies would
not lead to any requirement for an increase in the Community's overall resources. The problem could be expressed,
in crude terms, as being one of finding a way of making a
substantial refund to the UK and developing new policies
without allocating any extra funds to the Community
budget. Inevitably, attention was concentrated on the
CAP as being the largest single possible source of funds
for the operation.

he CAP, which now accounts for some 62% of total

Community expenditure (as against 75% only two
years ago) is the bete noire of a number of Member States.
Since 1973, there have been a number of re-appraisals
of the CAP - variously termed "stocktaking" or "reflections". On each occasion, strenuous efforts have been made
to secure fundamental changes in support mechanisms;
these have been vigorously opposed, notably by Ireland,
France and Denmark, Member States which would regard
themselves as being threatened by any fundamental changes.
The result on each occasion has amounted to limited
trimming around the edges of various policy mechanisms.
In addition to that, a number of decisions were made in
the last two years which resulted in reductions in the cost
of a number of market support mechanisms, particularly
in the area of export refunds on dairy products. These decisions were motivated partly by a concern to reduce somewhat the political profile of some areas of expenditure :
since they could be justified on economic grounds, they
were not too painful.
The Commission produced its report on the "Mandate"
in June 1981. That report suggested a number of "guidelines" for the CAP, which centred around the idea that
production targets should be set for the principal farm
products, and that if production exceeded the target levels,
the price guarantees should be reduced in. respect of the
excess quantities.

he publication of the Commission's report set off a

chain of complex manoeuvres, the aim of which was
to ensure the passage of the basic ideas put forward. The
Council Presidency, taken over by the UK in July, wanted
to keep the substantive discussion in the Foreign Affairs
Council, where the bargaining would be purely political
and aimed at securing agreement at the November meeting
of the European Council (Heads of State or Government),
and away from the "specialist" Councils, such as the
Council of Agriculture Ministers. A special "Mandate
Group", composed mainly of the Member States' permanent representatives in Brussels, was set up to prepare the
ground for the Foreign Ministers, who in turn were to prepare the ground for the European Council. Provision was
made for "orientation debates" by specialist Councils, including the Agriculture Council.
The formula for the "orientation debates" was in line
with the overall Presidency strategy - Ministers would
simply expound their views on the proposals, and the
Presidency would inform the "Mandate Group" of the
general line of the views expressed.
This, of course, was completely unsatisfactory from the
Irish point of view, since it was aimed at avoiding substantive discussion of agricultural issues by the Ministers with
direct responsibility. For a time, however, it looked as if
the manoeuvre might succeed, since the French and the
Danes who, with Luxembourg and Belgium should normally tend to follow a line similar to Ireland's, seemed to
be prepared to go along with the Presidency.
A great deal of persistence and lobbying by the Irish
side was required in the early Autumn to ensure that a
substantive discussion would be held by the Agriculture
Council, and the Commission was brought to agree to
produce a specific report on the agricultural aspects of
the Mandate.
The Irish side decided that the agricultural aspects
should be kept to the fore during the discussions, and
that as much attention as possible should be concentrated
on clarifying the budgetary figures involved, so as to illustrate the practical effects of proposals which the Presidency wanted to deal with at a purely political level. The
importance of the agricultural aspects was underlined by
the fact that the Minister for Agriculture attended all of
the discussions held by the Foreign Ministers - a practice
which was followed on a number of occasions by the
French also.
It quickly became clear that the discussions on the
Mandate would have a very substantial influence on the
farm price proposals for 1982/83. This posed something
of a dilemma for the Irish and, to some extent, for the
French, since there was a danger that specific demands put
forward in the context of special measures to accompany
the 1981/82 price proposals might be regarded as the
price of agreement on some of the less acceptable proposals
in the Mandate discussion. Thus, it was necessary to conduct two sets of negotiations separately but simultaneously.
There was the added complication that while, on the one
hand, the Commission and some Member States were openly trying to get agreement on reductions in CAP expendi-.
ture, the Irish requirement in terms of special measures.
required an increase in CAP expenditure in Ireland. At the
same time, Italy and Greece were playing for a substantial

increase in CAP expenditure in Mediterranean regions,

whatever happened to the overall total.
In view of all of these factors, discussions with the
Commission on specific, immediate Irish problems were
held in October and November, and concentrated on explaining the situation in detail and assessing the Commission's view as to what it might be able to propose. On the
whole, the reaction was fairly negative, with much emphasis
being placed on the view that the high domestic inflation
rate was the main cause of difficulty, and that it had to be
dealt with domestically. On the Irish side, the accent was
put on the fact that the proposals being put forward in the
Mandate discussion would have the effect of closing off
any line of action which would help to get agricultural
expansion going again.
The European Council in November failed to agree on
specific guidelines, and the brief was handed back to the
Foreign Ministers. At this point, the brief was still in very
considerable disarray, even though the Presidency tried to
present a picture of some agreement.
This cleared the way for suggestions for specific measures for Ireland in the context of the prices package, since
lack of agreement on the Mandate left the field still fairly
open in relation to prices. Indeed, the Irish approach up to
then had been aimed at avoiding any binding agreement in
advance of discussions on the farm prices.
Specific proposals were put forward in December. A

deliberate decision was made to concentrate on a limited

number of measures, since previous experience had shown
that if a long list were put forward, the Commission's reaction would normally be to pick up the least important. The
three specific proposals were for
- a calf subsidy, financed by the Community.
- continuation for four years of a special heifer
subsidy (already agreed for one year) with the
addition of Community finance.
- extension of the area covered by the Disadvantaged Areas Directive, and a reclassification of
some of the existing areas.
The Commission's initial reaction was negative to all
three, but since then has become more positive, to the
point where the calf subsidy has now been included in
compromise proposals.
On the Mandate front, Irish pressure brought some other
Member States along to the point where, in January, both
the French and the Danes came to support the line that no
decisions could be made until the budgetary implications
were clarified and the figures clearly stated. This represen- I
ted a considerable advance from the Irish point of view,
since only a clear expression of the figures would allow
Member States to see the implications of the purely political decisions which had been sought up to then.

THE RIGHT wing element in the

Labour Party is planning a major assault on the left's stronghold of power
within the party through the Administration Council. At the Party conference this autumn, an attempt will
be made to change the party constitution to change the membership of
the AC and to limit its powers. There
will also be a challenge to the chairmanship of Michael D. Higgins - Dick
Spring will probably be the right's candidate. If this assault should fail, then
Michael O'Leary, Dick Spring and
Liam Kavanagh will have a lot of
thinking to do and among their options clearly will be to resign from
Labour and join Fine Gael.

ONE OF the most curious aspects to

the Dick Burke affair was the handling
of the matter by Garret FitzGerald.
When he was told in the Dail chamber
on the Wednesday morning of Burke's
acceptance of Haughey's offer he
seemed quite surprised by the news
and asked to have its authenticity
checked. However, it has since emerged that he had been informed the
night before of the matter by Michael
Lillis, who had been his adviser in the
Taoiseach's Department on Northern
Ireland.

ONE OF the main criticisms directed

at Garret FitzGerald by Austen Deasy
at the Fine Gael Parliamentary Party
review of the election results was that
he (Deasy) and others had been
humiliated by the manner in which
Garret had appointed the members
of his Government last June. Deasy
made the point that a captain of a
parish football team wouldn't drop a
player without telling him beforehand.
Instead Garret appointed his Government with no consultation and hadn't
even bothered to speak to him (Deasy)
in the seven months since then.

THE ACCOMPANYING letter was

dispatched by Dick Burke to Fine Gael
county councillors throughout
the
country only days before Mr. Burke
discovered that the national and European interests obliged him to accept
the 60,000 a year a job in Brussels.
Mr. Burke's view of the crucial significance of his seat in Dublin West would

seem to have got lost in the more

global considerations of his overriding
responsibilities.

THERE IS much speculation about

the reaction of our Taoiseach to the
initial statement of our UN ambassador, Noel DOH, on the Malvinas dispute. Fact: the reaction was very adverse and quite properly so. Whatever
about the international legal niceties
of the "invasion/liberation"
there is
absolutely no reason why Ireland
should appear to side with a colonial
power, especially the British, in a
dispute anywhere. and if it was necessary to point out the transgression of
international law involved it should
also have been possible to make generally sympathetic noises in favour of
the Argen tinian case.

REMEMBER Tomas Roseingrave, the

former national director of Muintir na
Tire and presenter of that excellent
consumer programme on RTE,. Home
Truths? He is now President of the
Economic and Social Committee of

the European Communities and has

been presented with the Golden Medal
of the Foundation for European Merit.
Previous recipients of the awards include Jack Lynch, the Commission
President Gaston Thorn, the former
French
Prime
Minister
Jacques
Delmas, Roy Jenkins and the former
Belgian Prime Minister Leo Tindemas.

THE JACOBS radio and television

awards are an embarrassing occasion
enough in themselves. The aura of
self-congratulation
which attends so
much of the mediocrity which emanates from RTE is off-putting but that
this nausea should be inflicted on the
nation's audience, or rather that happily tiny fraction of it who watch
RTE 2, is something of a different
order entirely. If this cringe-making
function is to continue it should take
place in secret - Ely House should
have suitable accommodation - and
the occasion should be confined strictly to consenting adults.

Would

Billy

please

ring

Magilll