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7-13 December 2006 ¤2.95/£1.95 Issue 115

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politics By Vincent
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back 30 years on:
Arms trial

Charles Haughey

Garret FitzGerald

Jack Lynch

The IRA

Corruption
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Dublin Docklands Development Authority

embroiled in major conflict of interest and
evidence that board members may have
failed in their statutory duties
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CONTENTS 7-13 DECEMBER 2006 ^Website www.village.ie

NEWS AND VIEWS

5 Editorial
6 Call for inquiry into death of US
citizen in Northern Ireland
7 Recommendations on violence
against women not implemented
8 News
10 Dublin Docklands Development
Authority embroiled in major
conflict of interest
12 Braindead politics. By Vincent Browne
16 Vincent Browne on a collection of
essays about former Irish Times
Bright, Brilliant Days: Douglas editor Douglas Gageby
Gageby and the Irish Times 16 22 Interview: Nicky Kelly talks
to Justine McCarthy
24 Justine McCarthy on Ann Louise
Gilligan and Katherine Zappone
28 Fragments by Vincent Browne
Nicky Kelly talks to 30 Ecuador’s president-elect now
Justine McCarthy 22 faces his greatest challenge
32 Village map: the state of the world
34 The Great Wall of China in ruins
Braindead politics. 40 White Heat: Leo Enright on the
Hubble telescope’s great rival
By Vincent Browne 12
MEDIA
37 TV column:Maggie Kenneally
38 Radio column: Sara Burke
Newspaper Watch: Chekov Feeney
Ann Louise 39 Meejit by Harry Browne
Gilligan and LETTERS AND OPINION
Katherine 21 Opinion: Gerry Adams
Zappone 43 Letters to the editor
51 Opinion: Colum McCann
profiled 24
DURING THE MONTHS OF BOOKS
JUNE, JULY, AUGUST, 47 The late British poet John
VILLAGE MAGAZINE Betjemen: his biography and his
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9,447
48 Children’s books by Tony Hickey
49 Book Notes by Edward O’Hare
50 Max McGuinness reviews Michael
Frayne’s The Human Touch

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60 Art
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Editor
Vincent Browne
vincentbrowne@village.ie
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justinemccarthy@village.ie
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Emma Browne 01 642 5078
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General manager
Tom Vavasour 01 642 5067
tomvavasour@village.ie
Finance administration manager
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Frank Connolly 01 642 5075
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Village is published by Village Communications Ltd.
Readers are invited to contact Village with story suggestions
Proposed press council a joke
F
ianna Fáil TDs are some suckers if they buy There is a necessity for some such body. Media
into the trade-off of libel reform in exchange organisations have deliberately and flagrantly abused
for the press council. The libel reform will the privacy rights of citizens, again for profitability,
be exploited by newspapers to engage in fur- there being no public interest justification. If they
ther recklessness, while the press council will be treat- think a story will sell newspapers they will go for it,
ed by many papers with the contempt it deserves. irrespective of the privacy invasion and of the result-
The background to all of this is that the media has ant harm to those affected.
become a profit-aggressive enterprise. The primary Privacy is not an absolute entitlement. For instance,
purpose and driving force is not to enlighten citizens someone who murders another is liable to have not
in the exercise of their democratic entitlements, or just their liberty invaded but their privacy as the
any such lofty idea of the role of the media. The point criminal justice system and the media explore his/her
is to make money and as much as possible, on as low background. But only where there is a genuinely
a cost-base as possible, to the enrichment of its own- overriding public interest (note, not public curiosity)
ers and managers. Changing the libel laws is central justification should this be permitted.
to the profit objective. Libel awards leak a significant There should be a statutory independent press
amount of money from the company accounts of council, appointed independently of the govern-
these media corporations. ment and the media,
They have been campaign- invested with powers to
ing for almost 20 years investigate alleged abus-
now to rectify this, not to es of privacy on its own
bring the public much- initiative, and with the
needed information that capacity to impose sub-
otherwise would be hid- stantial fines and/or other
den from them, but to penalties on media
make more money. organisations that breach
That is the point of this privacy rights without
and don’t be deceived by just cause.
the spin. There has to be an
But there is a point to independent body to pro-
changing the libel laws. tect privacy rights
There are some media Media organisations have abused the privacy rights because those whose pri-
enterprises that do try to of citizens for profitability, not public interest vacy rights are abused
engage in responsible jour- very often will be reluc-
nalism and they are much constrained in that by the tant to go through the courts because this would
threat of libel. The recent award to Denis O’Brien of involve further painful invasions of privacy. So a
€750,000 for an admittedly outrageous libel published regulatory agency has to have the capacity to inves-
about him in the Irish Daily Mirror is disconcerting, tigate privacy invasions off its own bat.
although because of the nature of the libel and the The point of giving this statutory backing is so that
manner in which the newspaper handled the case, its decisions could be enforced by the courts and the
in many ways, it could be said, they were asking for courts could also have oversight of its conduct and pro-
it. cedures.
There is a strong case to be made for removing libel The press council announced recently is laughable.
penalties from the media when it can be shown It will have no powers, no sanctions available to it, no
that the newspaper or broadcast station in question entitlement even to require the media to publish its
made every reasonable effort to get the article in ques- decisions. Some newspapers have made it clear at the
tion right; that they sought the views of the other side; outset they will treat it with contempt – one editor
that the issue involved affected the public interest and has said that his newspaper’s press council will be its
there was no malice. In such circumstances it is readers.
unfair that penalties should apply, but only if these The consensus seems to be to give this press coun-
criteria are met. cil “a try”, but what is the point since it is obvious from
This would not absolve the media for defaming, for the outset it cannot and will not work, however dis-
instance, a private person (or indeed a public person) tinguished the panel of eminences that will make
on an issue that did not affect the public interest. appointments to it?
The quid-pro-quo for this libel reform is the estab- The only just outcome is for the Dáil and Senate to
lishment of a press council that, supposedly, would refuse to pass the libel reform bill until and unless
enforce proper media standards on the press and there is attached to it another bill establishing a
broadcast companies. These standards would have to statutory press council with powers.
do primarily with privacy. VINCENT BROWNE
7-13 DECEMBER 2006 | VILLAGE 5
NEWS&VIEWS ?????????????
NEWS&VIEWS
Calls to re-open case into US
citizen killed after RUC assault
^^ The family of US-born John Hemsworth
has called for an inquest into his death
and for the American government to get
involved in his case. By Frank Connolly
A
campaign has been
launched in the US to
establish the truth sur-
rounding the death of a
man who died after he was
beaten by members of the RUC
nine years ago. US-born John
Hemsworth, 39, originally from
Kearney, New Jersey, died in
December 1997, five months after
he was beaten by RUC officers.
His father, Michael
Hemsworth, from west Belfast,
said his son’s jaw was fractured
after an assault by the RUC in
west Belfast on 7 July 1997. Five
months later he died from a brain
haemorrhage which two British
doctors say was directly linked to
the assault.
Following his death, a state
pathologist ruled there should
be no inquest into the death after
he concluded it was not the result
of the assault by the RUC.
The attack on John Hemsworth
occured on the day the RUC
forced an Orange Parade down
the nationalist Garvaghy Road in
Portadown, Co Armagh. John
Hemsworth was assaulted on the
Falls Road in west Belfast after he
accidentally walked into a riot,
according to his family.
His family is campaigning to
have the case re-opened and an
inquest held into his death, the
only killing of a US citizen as a
result of the Northern conflict.
“The RUC killed my son and
and covered up its involvement.
They beat him and then taunted
him as he made his way to hospi-
tal,” Michael Hemsworth, 72, said.
The only witness to the assault,
other than the RUC officers
6 VILLAGE | 7-13 DECEMBER 2006
involved, was west Belfast man
Tony Carnaghan, who drowned
in 2001, according to Michael
Hemsworth.
While he accepted it was
unlikely any charges would be
brought against the RUC officers
involved, he said he wanted the
British government to accept his
son’s death was a result of what
he said was an unprovoked
attack.
On his release from hospital a
few days after the assault, John
Hemsworth instructed lawyers
to take proceedings against the
RUC.
“The American government
has a duty to get involved. They John Hemsworth died five months after he was beaten by the RUC
should be demanding why one of
their citizens could be treated munity to take up the issue,” Fr plaint alleging RUC brutality was
like this,” Michael Hemsworth McManus said. lodged with the Independent
said. He said the British govern- “We must arouse the con- Commission on Police Com-
ment had originally promised to science of Irish-Americans. It is a plaints. The complaints file was
hold an inquest into his son’s disgrace that the killing of this closed shortly after John
death but it has not been held Irish-American has received such Hemsworth’s death.
after nine years. little attention, and it is an out- “The US government holds the
On 2 December, ‘The American rage that his family key,” said Michael Hemsworth. “If
Father Sean McMan-
government has a has received no jus- they push the case I believe the
us, president of the tice,” said Fr Sean courts over here will have no
Irish National Cau-
duty to get McManus. other choice but to order an
cus in Washington, involved. They The case has inquest into John’s killing.
appealed to mem- should be received scant atten- “What is most galling for me is
bers of the new US demanding why tion outside of west when I see the American govern-
Congress for their one of their Belfast despite the ment meeting with the relatives
assistance with the citizens could be findings of two of other people who have been
case. treated like this’ British doctors – Pro- murdered in Ireland – the likes of
“We want Ameri- fessor Derrick the McCartneys and Raymond
can pressure to make the British Pounder of the University of McCord.
government keep its promise to Dundee and Professor Helen “I’m not criticising these peo-
hold an inquest. We want the Whitewell of the University of ple. I support their campaigns
Northern Ireland Ombudsman’s Sheffield – that the assault was for justice. What I don’t under-
Office to re-open the case. And we directly linked to John Hems- stand though is how American
want all Irish-American groups to worth’s death. politicians support them and they
rally to this cause. We ask the Amnesty International has also refuse to help with John’s case.
international human-rights com- taken up the case and a com- My son was an American citizen.”
Government ignores recommendations
to address violence against women
^^In 1997 the government published a task-force report on violence against women,
which looked primarily at domestic violence. Nine years later, most of the report’s
recommendations have not been implemented. By Emma Browne

I
n the nine years since the policy in the area. An NSC on vio- mendations made in the report
Report of the Task Force on lence against women was set up in have been established. It recom- WHAT HAS BEEN DONE
Violence Against Women was 1997, but it is not clear what work mended that the Garda publish SINCE 1997?
published, the majority of its it has carried out. There is no detail and gather more detailed statistics, • Nine additional refuges provided
recommendations have not been of its work on the Department of that the domestic-violence act be • Beds spaces doubled from 214 in
implemented. Justice, Equality and Law Reform monitored, that more thorough 1997 to 454 in 2006
Some of the major recommen- website and it has published just records be kept at refuges and • €8m a year provided in funding
dations not implemented includ- two reports in nine years. that the health and social services • Women’s Aid provided four one-
ed a 24-hour national helpline for The committee was also charg- maintain better records. None of stop centres
domestic-violence victims; a ed with running a national aware- these recommendations have • More information on domestic
national awareness campaign; ness campaign, to include TV/radio been carried out. violence and services offered to
compilation of statistics on domes- and poster campaigns. The first Even though all the recommen- women
tic-violence victims; training for poster campaign didn’t happen dations in relation to more Garda • National steering committee set
frontline staff; and counselling until 2003 and it was eight years training and a domestic-violence up in 1997
for victims at all refuges. Only 11 before a TV campaign took place – unit were implemented, Women’s
of the 28 recommendations have it lasted for three weeks. Aid said two thirds of their callers in 2005 due to lack of space. But
been implemented. A recommendation that all are unhappy with the way gardaí the HSE cannot provide any infor-
The most important recommen- frontline staff at the refuges be dealt with them. mation on how many women
dation related to Women’s Aid, trained to deal with domestic vio- One of the problems with the have been turned
who run a confidential helpline for lence has not been addressed area of domestic violence is that it away from
victims of domestic either. According to falls between three government their refuges
violence. The report Nine years later, Sharon O’Halloran departments – Health and Chil- nationally.
recommended the the Women’s Aid from the National dren, Environment and Local Gov-
helpline operate 24 helpline has no Network of Women’s ernment, and Justice, Equality and
hours a day, seven bed-bureau and Refuges, training of Law Reform. The HSE is also
days a week and that it over the years it staff “hasn’t improved involved and provides a lot of the
have a computerised has received at all and no resources funding in the area.
bed-bureau to locate little funding for are being put into it”. Village sent questions relating
beds for callers if need- advertising One of the problems to the task-force recommenda-
ed. The helpline was is that there is no tions to the HSE in June. It took
to be advertised nationwide. Nine accredited course for domestic- nearly six months to get an
years later, the Women’s Aid help- violence training. answer. Even then, the HSE was
line has no bed-bureau and over Another important recommen- unable to provide information on
the years it has received little fund- dation was the establishment of a range of areas it oversees or on
ing for advertising. one-stop centres in each local area how much money it spends on
The helpline cannot be run on which could provide information domestic-violence services every
a 24/7 basis because Women’s Aid on all the services available to vic- year, as it hasn’t compiled cen-
lacks funding and struggles to tims of domestic violence. This tral national statistics.
handle the calls it receives. Last has not been done. Improvements have been made
year it could not answer 40 per Counselling was also to be avail- (see panel) but a shortage of refuge
cent of calls – around 10,504 – able at all refuges. This was a pri- bed-spaces remains the major
due to a lack of resources. For the ority recommendation. According problem. According the figures
past two years Women’s Aid has to Sharon O’Halloran, “Very limit- released in the Dáil, 1,104
asked the government for an extra ed money is put into this area – it female victims of domestic vio-
€70,000 a year for the helpline is a major flaw and weakness in lence were
but has received nothing. the system.” The HSE was unable turned away
Also central to the task-force to provide any figures on what from the HSE
report was the establishment of a refuges they provide with coun- eastern-region
national steering committee (NSC) selling funding. accommoda-
on domestic violence to oversee None of the monitoring recom- tion centres

7-13 DECEMBER 2006 | VILLAGE 7

NEWS&VIEWS
Just two out of 14 ITs
have a disability officer
^^A survey of 14 institutes of technology has found that just two
institutes employ a disability officer and that in nine institutes the faculty
buildings are not accessible to disabled students. By Emma Browne
A survey of 14 institutes of tech-
nology across Ireland, who cater
for 1,366 undergraduates with
disabilities, was carried out by
AHEAD – the Association for
Higher Education Access and Dis-
ability in 2005.
The survey found that just two
institutes of technology employ
a disability officer and that the
faculty buildings of nine of the
colleges surveyed were not acces-
sible to students with disabili-
ties. It also found that only six of
the institutes have conducted an
access audit on their institutes
and 12 of them have no on-site
accommodation for students
with disabilities.
Most of the institutes have dis-
ability awareness training for all
their staff. However, participa-
tion is very low as it is volun-
tary.
Two young people per week
die from heart syndrome
Around 100 young people die
every year of sudden cardiac death
(SCD) syndrome in Ireland – near-
ly two every week. Most of these
fatalities are due to an underlying
heart condition which affects the
muscle or the electrical impulses
in the heart.
A group of parents who have
lost children to SCD have now
set up the Sudden Cardiac Death
(in the young) support group in
association with the Irish Heart
Foundation. The group provides
www.village.ie
8 VILLAGE | 7-13 DECEMBER 2006
advantaged backgrounds. The
FRANK MILLER / THE IRISH TIMES
officers said that they gave 40
per cent of their time to disabled
students.
Just four of the institutes give
full consideration to students
with disability in future plan-
ning and six institutes said that
they would only give this a 25-
per-cent level of consideration
in the future planning of their
institutes.
Olwyn Enright, Fine Gael
spokesperson on education and
science, welcomed the survey
and said, “A wide range of areas
Fine Gael’s Olwyn Enright: ‘A need improvement. While the
change of mindset is needed’ number of students with disabil-
ities has increased 300 per cent
Eleven of the institutes have an over the past five years, improve-
access officer to deal with dis- ments within the ITs have not
abled students but these officers kept pace and a change of mind-
are also responsible for mature set is needed.”
students and students from dis- EMMA BROWNE
information to families about SCD in Ireland will be held in
as well as offering support. Mon- Monkstown Parish Church, Co
ica Martin, one of the group’s Dublin on 9 December. They are
founders, lost her 16-year-old son expecting 60-70 families to attend.
to SCD last year. “When it hap- One of the main aims of the
pened to me I was just sent home support group is to get more defib-
and I had to get information on it rillators placed in schools, sports
from the internet.” The support centres and public places around
group provides an information the country as this could save the
pack to families about the causes life of somebody whose heart
and conditions behind SCD. stops.
To mark the first Christmas of ∏More scdyoung.com or
the support group, a memorial irishheart.ie
service for all the victims of SCD EMMA BROWNE
Live on 7 December. See page 26 for more details
Council calls
for Wheelock
inquiry
Dublin City Council has called
for an independent inquiry
into the injuries received by
Terence Wheelock whilst in
Garda custody at Store Street
and his subsequent death.
Terence Wheelock was
found unconscious in his cell
on 2 June 2005 and died three
months later. Gardaí say they
found Terence Wheelock with
a ligature around his neck,
indicating he hanged himself.
However, solicitor for the fami-
ly Yvonne Banbury says there
were marks on his body when
he was admitted to hospital
and bloodstains on his clothes.
Dublin City Council Deputy
Lord Mayor Aodhán O’Riordáin
tabled a motion calling for an
independent inquiry on 4
December. It was passed by all
but one city councillor. Mem-
bers of the Wheelock family
were present and were delight-
ed at the support for an inde-
pendent inquiry. The council
will now send a letter to the
Minster for Justice calling for
an independent inquiry.
The brother of Terence
Wheelock, Larry, also
approached Bertie Ahern this
week asking for some help in
getting the pathologists’
report, his brother’s clothing
and the internal Garda report.
The Taoiseach said he would
look into the matter.
An inquest into Terence
Wheelock’s death was recently
adjourned after it emerged
that state pathologist Marie
Cassidy had not viewed photos
which apparently show blood-
staining on his clothes.
EMMA BROWNE
Call to ban
dog- and cat-
fur trade
Pressure is being put on Ireland to
follow the example of the United
States and some EU countries by
banning the importation of cat and
dog fur. The United States banned
cat- and dog-fur production, importa-
tion and exportation in 2002 after
dog fur was found to be used to line
parka jackets and as fur on toy cats.
The European Commission has put
in place plans to eradicate the cat-
and dog-fur trade all across the EU.
Ireland has yet to propose a ban.
The Humane Society International
(HSI) has estimated that over two
million cats and dogs are slaugh-
tered each year in China and in
other Asian countries for their fur.
The HSI says they are reared in poor
conditions and then strangled or
electrocuted, or, in some cases,
skinned alive.
Avril Doyle MEP is leading the call
for the ban: “Ireland has no legisla-
tion banning the trade in and import
of cat and dog fur. Fifteen EU mem-
ber states have legislation in relation
to this issue, but we choose to do
nothing. It is time to tackle this des-
picable practice.”
There are no official figures avail-
able for the cat- and dog-fur trade in
Ireland – cat- and dog-fur farms are
unlicensed so it is hard to locate
them. A spokesperson for the Irish
Fur Breeders’ Association (IFBA),
which represents licensed fur farms
in Ireland, told Village they have “no
knowledge of any cat- and dog-fur
farms in Ireland” and that the IFBA
would “refuse membership” to any
fur farms involved in that practice.
According to the HSI, the majority
of the fur comes from China and is
sold on to several European coun-
tries. In December 2005, the HSI
announced that they had evidence
linking the Czech Republic with cat-
and dog-fur production.
Cat and dog fur is used as a cheap
substitute for more expensive furs,
in the lining of gloves, jackets and
ski boots, as the fur on animal toys
and in blankets and throws. Up to 24
pelts are used in the production of a
single fur coat.
GRACE FLANAGAN
NEWS&VIEWS

Claims of conflict of interest in

€1.46bn property development
^^ Evidence that Docklands authority board members may have failed to meet
statutory requirements and questions about the authority’s involvement in a
project for which it has a legal regulatory function. By Frank Connolly

T
here is evidence that
members of the Dublin

FRANK MILLER/IRISH TIMES

FRANK MILLER/IRISH TIMES

Docklands Development
Authority (DDDA) may
have failed to comply with statu-
tory requirements to desist from
any considerations of matters
before the authority in which
they may have a commercial
interest.
According to minutes of DDDA
board meetings obtained by Vil-
lage, two directors, both of whom
are board members of Anglo-Irish
Bank, have participated in discus-
sions on projects which their bank
was financing. The DDDA board
members are Sean FitzPatrick,
who is chairman of Anglo Irish
Bank, and Lar Bradshaw, a direc- Lar Bradshaw (left) and Sean FitzPatrick (right) are each members of the DDDA and Anglo Irish Bank
tor of the bank, both members of
the DDDA. These authority meet- DDDA investment, Village was with Davy Stockbrokers raising ings where they perceive they
ings concerned the development informed on behalf of Sean Fitz- the balance of his contribution to have a direct conflict of interest.
of the Spencer Dock site. patrick that he absented himself the project. In other less significant cases,
More recently, the DDDA has “where appropriate”. Village Lar Bradshaw, another director members advise of potential con-
decided to support, through an understands the same response of Anglo Irish Bank, is chairman flict so that the board is fully
investment, the development of applies to Lar Bradshaw. of the DDDA. Like Sean FitzPatrick informed.”
the former Irish Glass Bottle site This development is expected to he too has significant personal However, the DDDA would not
in Ringsend, with Bernard McNa- result in profits of several hun- shareholdings in Anglo Irish Bank. disclose what declarations of inter-
mara, the builder, and Derek dreds of millions of euro for the His involvement in the develop- est were made in respect of the
Quinlan, a financier. investors, who them- ment, along with that of Sean recent decision of the authority to
Even this initiative is
Lar Bradshaw’s selves are contribut- FitzPatrick, has raised claims that invest in the former Glass Bottle
seen as hugely contro- and Sean ing only a small they may have a conflict of inter- site or whether the two bank
versial because the FitzPatrick’s fraction of the financ- est. directors absented themselves
DDDA has thereby involvement in ing from their own On Tuesday 6 December, a sen- from the sensitive discussions.
involved itself in a the Glass Bottle resources. ior source in Anglo Irish Bank
major conflict of development Bernard McNamara told Village that Sean FitzPatrick THE SPENCER DOCK
interest in that it is has raised and Derek Quinlan stepped outside meetings about DEVELOPMENT
an investor in a proj- claims that they are investing €103m the Glass Bottle site development Anglo Irish Bank has funded
ect for which, legally, may have a into the scheme, the “where appropriate” in recent many developers involved in the
it has the sole power conflict of DDDA has invested months. Under the code of con- redevelopment of the docks along
to grant planning €32.17m and Anglo duct of the DDDA, board mem- both banks of the Liffey over the
interest
approval. Irish Bank is raising bers should declare an interest past decade. Among the most
Again Anglo Irish Bank are the the balance of the total cost of and absent themselves where important is the Spencer Dock
bankers for this project, providing €1.46bn. It is expected that the there is a potential conflict of development on the northside of
€1.4bn in loans for the develop- sale of the properties built on the interest. the Liffey.
ment. Asked if Sean FitzPatrick site will raise some €1.76bn on A spokesman for the DDDA told In October 2004, Anglo Irish
and Lar Bradshaw absented them- completion. It has been reported Village: “For board meetings, there Bank announced it was lending in
selves from the DDDA’s discus- that Bernard McNamara has is a practice of board members excess of €300m to the Spencer
sions on the project and the invested just €5m of his own cash, excusing themselves from meet- Dock Development Company, a

10 VILLAGE | 7-13 DECEMBER 2006

 ^Website www.village.ie

CYRIL BYRNE/IRISH TIMES

consortium led by Treasury Hold-
ings.
The minutes of board meetings
obtained by Village cover a period
between September 2002 and
June 2005 when the DDDA board
discussed the Spencer Dock devel-
opment and these minutes show
that both Lar Bradshaw and Sean
FitzPatrick were present for dis-
cussions on the scheme at a time
when they were directors of the
bank and when the bank was
funding the project. According to
these minutes, they did not
declare any interest or step out of
the meetings.
On 24 September 2002: the
board discussed the development
of offices at the Spencer Dock site
on North Wall Quay.
On 13 November 2002: the
board discussed the residential
development at Spencer Dock.
On 5 December 2002: the
board discussed an alternative
location in relation to affordable
housing on the scheme which
has been the subject of recurring to consider a composite applica- Lar Bradshaw purchased over Bradshaw and FitzPatrick
difficulties between the develop- tion for the development of the 15,000 shares in the bank during were present for meetings
ers and local residents. conference centre, hotel, offices this period. of the DDDA board when the
All three of these meetings were and apartments in the Spencer On 2 June 2005: the board again Spencer Dock site (above,
attended by Sean FitzPatrick, Dock area. At the meeting, also considered the social and afford- pictured in 2000 before
according to the minutes of the attended by Sean FitzPatrick, it able aspects of the scheme at development) was under
meetings obtained by Village. At was decided that a Section 25 cer- Spencer Dock and another Sec- discussion. The two were
that time, however, Anglo Irish tificate be issued to the appli- tion 25 certificate was issued sub- directors of the Anglo Irish
Bank had not confirmed its direct cants. ject to certain conditions. Both Bank at the time and the bank
financial interest in the Spencer On 12 February 2004: the Lar Bradshaw and Sean FitzPatrick was funding the project.
Dock development. board considered the social- and were present for this meeting but Anglo Irish Bank is also
On 9 January 2003: the board affordable-housing component of the minutes do not indicate that funding the Glass Bottle
met to discuss the application for the scheme and another section either of them declared their development
the proposed residential, office, 25 certificate was issued. direct interest in the project due
retail and creche development at In October 2004: Anglo Irish to their dual membership of the grounds of his considerable busi-
Spencer Dock. confirmed it was to provide board and of the project’s main ness experience.
At the meeting the board issued financing of €300m for the funding agency. “I think this is a matter which
a certificate of compliance for the Spencer Dock development, half Neither do the minutes indi- the Sipo might consider worthy of
overall scheme under Section 25 of the funding for the project. cate that either Lar Bradshaw or some investigation,” said Tony
of the DDDA Act 1997, which Clearly, the bank and the Spencer Sean FitzPatrick absented them- Gregory, who represents the
gives the authority power to issue Dock Development Company had selves from the meeting as Dublin Central constituency
development certificates – ie plan- been in negotiations for some required under the code of con- where the Spencer Dock project
ning permissions which are not time before this announcement. duct for the DDDA. By this time is located.
subject to appeal by residents or On 12 October 2004: Anglo- the DDDA also came under the The term of office of the DDDA
other parties. Sean FitzPatrick Irish bank announced that Lar provisions of the Standards in board expires early next year. Its
was not present for this meeting. Bradshaw had been appointed a Public Office Commission (Sipo). members also include Donall
On 6 March 2003: the board non-executive director. Curtin, Angela Cavendish, Declan
met to discuss the National Con- On 11 November 2004: an CONFLICT OF INTEREST McCourt, Mary Moylan (a senior
ference Centre proposed for inclu- application for a change of use Tony Gregory TD told Village that official with the Department of
sion in the Spencer Dock from hotel to apartments was he was concerned about a possible Environment), Joan O’Connor and
development. It was decided that considered. The board granted a conflict of interest, which he first Niamh O’Sullivan. Its chief exec-
a certificate under Section 25 be certificate under Section 25 sub- raised in a Dáil question in Octo- utive, Paul Maloney, who was
issued to the applicants. Sean Fitz- ject to certain conditions. Sean ber 2004. At the time the Minister appointed in 2005, is a former
Patrick was present for this meet- FitzPatrick was not present for for the Environment, Dick Roche, official of Dublin City Council
ing. this meeting but Lar Bradshaw defended Sean FitzPatrick’s mem- with responsibility for the city
On 5 June 2003: the board met was. bership of the state board on the centre.π

7-13 DECEMBER 2006 | VILLAGE 11

Brain dead

12 VILLAGE | 7-13 DECEMBER 2006

ad politics
Footage of Bertie Ahern was
shown on The Week in Politics
on RTÉ One so the audience
could rate his performance
© RTÉ
Politics is no more now than a game show.
Personality and style with an agenda stacked against
fairness and democracy. By Vincent Browne
I
ts official, politics has
become the new light
entertainment, the latest
version: ‘Politics You’re a
Star’. The contestants –
Bertie Ahern, Enda Kenny,
Pat Rabbitte, Michael McDowell,
Trevor Sargent and Gerry Adams
– perform in front of cameras,
the judges/commentators have
their say and then the jury gets to
vote, not just on the overall pres-
entation, but line by line as they
go.
No substance, no issues, no
debate on anything that matters
– just performance. Boring per-
formance, lightweight perform-
ance, credible performance, folksy
performance. The jury gets to
decide. Except in ‘Politics, You’re
a Star’ the jury is a studio audience
equipped with handheld mini
computers that record their every
sentiment and response. In the
real You’re a Star the jury is the tel-
evision viewers. More democratic
that.
And so it was on the special The
Week in Politics on Sunday 3 Decem-
ber. An American pollster, Frank
Luntz, renowned for spinning
anti-environment messages and
Iraq-war soundbites for the Repub-
lican Party (see panel), was flown
in to assemble a focus group from
Dublin, Meath and Kildare, have
them view snippets of speeches by
the party leaders and then pro-
nounce on their responses.
What was astonishing was that
the commentators assembled –
Terry Prone, Noel Whelan and
Ivan Yeats – all treated the out-
come with seriousness.
Not one of them said this was a
load of old cobblers, that one could and increasing tax credits, spend-
not possibly extrapolate from such ing more on social welfare pay-
a tiny sample the views of the ments and reducing the top rate
electorate as a whole. Not one of of tax from 42 per cent to 40 per
them said what are we doing cent.
here? Why are we examining if The ideological underlay of the
there is any significance to questions is revealing. First the
whether this tiny group thinks opening assumption: the Minister
Michael McDowell is boring, or for Finance will have around €2bn
Enda Kenny too lightweight? Not to give away in the budget. The
one of them asked why are we not idea conjured up here is that the
examining the state of Ireland Minister for Finance had a treas-
today, how various groups live, ure trove to dole out, as he and/or
what their problems are and how his government think fit, to one
it is proposed to address those sector of society or another.
problems? What was in fact happening
When such issues was that a redistribu-
do intrude, they do None of the tion of €2bn took
so through a narrow panel said this place – moneys
prism decided by was a load of old already contributed
the cognoscenti. cobblers, that by the public or to
The debate on one could not be contributed by
Budget 2007 centred the public – and the
entirely around how
possibly question was how
generous Brian extrapolate should this be redis-
Cowen was on the from such a tiny tributed: to what sec-
disbursement of the sample the tors of society should
€2bn-plus surplus he views of the this be given. It
had. There was the would have been
electorate as a
familiar and entirely open to the govern-
pointless pre-budg- whole ment to redistribute
et speculation, all within a tight far more than this €2bn if it chose
ideological framework, captured to raise taxes – maybe €5bn or
in a market-research survey pub- €8bn.
lished by the Irish Times the previ- But the underlying assumption
ous Saturday. is that there was just the €2bn
One of the questions asked was: there to redistribute and the ide-
“The Minister for Finance will ology behind that assumption is
have around €2bn to give away in that it makes no “common sense”
the budget. On which one of the to raise more money in taxes now
following would you most like to or that this is politically not on the
see the minister spending cards or no party is “mad enough”
money?” It then listed five items: to contemplate that.
more money into public services, So the choices offered to the
cutting stamp duty to help first- respondents were constrained
time buyers, widening tax bands from the outset by the assump-
7-13 DECEMBER 2006 | VILLAGE 13

tions underlying the questions.
And these assumptions precluded,
for instance, the option of a radi-
cal transformation of wealth and
income distribution to make Ire-
land a much more equal society.
On radio and television pro-
grammes and on media commen-
taries, the discussion is entirely
within the constraints of the invis-
ible but secure ideological strait-
jacket, with perhaps a few fleeting
concessions to other views.
There is now an opportunity to
use the huge wealth that has been
accumulated in the last 15 years to
transform Irish society in a way
that would make it fairer, health-
ier and, for many people, happier.
A way that would confront
endemic problems and go a long
way towards resolving them.
Just a year ago, the CSO released
data on poverty here that got
almost no coverage. The figures
show that in 2004 almost one fifth
of the population (19.4 per cent)
were at risk of poverty, by which
they mean one fifth of the popu-
lation were living on household
incomes of €9,680 or less (€186 per
week or less).
The report stated: “Excluding
social transfers (such as unem-
ployment benefits, child benefits
and pensions), the risk of poverty
rate would have been close to 40
per cent (of the total population).”
The report, EU Survey on
Income and Living Conditions,
stated: “Members of lone-parent
households and persons living
14 VILLAGE | 7-13 DECEMBER 2006
Former TD Ivan Yeats on the
© RTÉ
panel on The Week in Politics:
it was surprising how seriously
the panel treated the outcome
tion, housing, income and influ-
ence.
The second of these reports,
Inequalities in Perceived Health,
shows that those with lower
incomes are 52 per cent less like-
ly to be satisfied with their health
and 51 per cent are less likely to
have a good quality of life. It shows
that 82 per cent in the higher
income bracket have excellent or
good health, compared with just
49 per cent in the lower income
bracket. It says: “Generally speak-
ing, the likelihood of good health
increase with social class... There
is a strong income gradient in the
likelihood of good health.”
How is it that when issues such
as traffic have such a high priori-
ty on the political agenda, matters
alone were found to be among Reach: Inequalities in the Irish to do with life and death, and to do
the most at risk in both years Housing System, there are almost with quality of life and health,
[2003 and 2004], with over 48 per 106,000 households, or 250,000 rate not at all?
cent [of lone-parent households] persons, in need of appropriate There are a myriad of other
and 36 per cent [of persons living housing. The government is mak- major issues that hardly feature at
alone] at risk of poverty in 2004.” ing only token gestures in dealing all:
The report went on to state: with the issue and, in selling off
“When the risk of poverty is com- public housing into the private Sexual abuse
bined with an element of enforced sector, it is depleting the stock of The incidence of child and adult
deprivation, the survey shows that houses to deal with the crisis. sexual abuse is enormous. The
almost seven per cent of the pop- This is a hugely wealthy society government-sponsored authori-
ulation were ‘consistently poor’ in now. The per capita income of tative research on this shows that
2004, as compared to almost nine €36,000 (that is for every man, one-in-five women have had con-
per cent in 2003.” woman and child) is tact sexual abuse in childhood
The report states How is it that a colossal amount. and more than one woman in 20
that, without social when issues There is no social was raped as a child. Also that
transfers, nearly all such as traffic problem we could one-in-six men were abused as
old people (87 per have such a high not solve with that children and one-in-35 were
cent) would be at risk income – depriva- raped.
of poverty. The risk
priority on the tion, housing, The same survey shows that
of poverty was high- political agenda, health, education, one-in-10 women experienced
er for women than matters to do whatever. And there sexual abuse in adulthood and
for men. The report with life and would be lots to one-in-10 were raped, and that
notes a slight death, and to do spare. Why is there three per cent of men were raped
increase in the scale an unwillingness to in adulthood.
with quality of
of inequality from harness that huge These figures seem almost
one year to the next. life and health, income in the serv- unbelievable and were it not for
And yet poverty rate not at all? ice of people most in the reputation of the research
features not at all on need? company that undertook this
the political agenda. None of the The Institute of Public Health work (The Royal College of Sur-
main parties speak about it, the has published two reports on geons in Ireland) the results would
opinion-poll surveys don’t ask inequalities in health. One dealing be dismissed.
about it, the television pro- with inequalities in mortalities But not a single one of the polit-
grammes on politics don’t fea- shows that for all the major dis- ical parties – all of whom joined in
ture it. It is a non-issue and yet for eases those in the lower the hyper-alarm last summer on
one-in-five of the population it is occupational groups die much the release of a single sex offend-
a major issue. earlier than in the higher occupa- er from prison – have addressed
Housing is another major issue tional groups. This is not just this issue. There are tens of thou-
that also features not at all on the because of inequalities in health sands of sex offenders at large in
political agenda. Property is the care, although that certainly is a this society. Hundreds of thou-
preferred topic. factor. It is also because of huge sands of children, men and
According to a survey, Out of inequalities in education, nutri- women have been abused and
still it does not rate with traffic as to that illegality. Only for the
a concern. Supreme Court, that further abuse
of old people would have occurred. Frank Luntz – RTÉ’s
Road deaths
All of the parties express alarm Shannon
with the scale of road deaths. It has now been established
celebrity pollster
None confronts the major issues: beyond debate – the government Time magazine named Frank trimester termination to crush
that over 100,000 people are driv- acknowledges this is so – that Luntz among “50 of America’s the liberals’ argument in the lat-
ing lethal vehicles on public roads Shannon has been used to facili- most promising leaders”. The est abortion debate.
having failed driving tests; car tate CIA aircraft engaged in the Boston Globe said he was “the Until he came along, he
companies are permitted to mar- illegal kidnapping of terrorist sus- hottest pollster” in the US and he boasts, “Democrats sounded like
ket and sell cars that have capac- pects in Europe and elsewhere won the Washington Post’s Crys- social workers and Republicans
ities to be driven far in excess of and their transportation to undis- tal Ball award for being the most were awful because they sound-
the maximum speed limit; there closed places of detention (the accurate pundit in the 1992 elec- ed like morticians. In some cases,
is no effective enforcement of fact that such places are undis- tion. He has been fêted as a polit- they actually dressed like morti-
speed and drink driving. closed adds to the suspicion that ical heavyweight on Meet the cians.” Having a superior policy
Another 30 people will be killed torture and other abuses of Press, The Today Show and Good (as he believes the Republicans
on the roads before the end of human rights take place in such Morning America. He has conduct- do) is not enough, in Luntz’s
2006, another 30 families devas- centres). ed his famous focus groups for book. “You must be able to com-
tated. The state has the capacity The line of the Department of Newsweek and the Wall Street Jour- municate on a personal level,
to curtail this drasti- Foreign Affairs now nal and, in his spare time, has rather than a philosophical or
cally but none of the
Another 30 is that, because acted as a consultant to the TV ideological level,” he instructs.
parties has the will people will be there is no proof soap The West Wing. “Spin” is his bible. He pro-
to confront it. killed on the that any kidnapped Other Americans, however, duces an annual memo for
roads before the person was actual- are starting to wise up to the oxy- Republicans containing phrases
Suicide and mental end of 2006. The ly on board such air- moronic high-profile hidden per- to be used in debate. His three
health craft when the suader. Luntz, 44, has an Oxford fundamental tenets are: con-
Even more people die
state has the aircraft went doctorate in politics and a hand- vince the audience you are sin-
by suicide than die capacity to through Shannon, some bank balance. His clients cere; talk about “common
on the roads. It is a curtail this there is no complic- have included General Motors, sense” policy; and emphasise
symptom of a mental drastically but ity in the malprac- Disney, Pfizer and McDonalds shared rights and beliefs, ie “We
illness epidemic. Yet none of the tice. The actual but, most famously, the Repub- all want to move towards a
resources for mental parties has the facilitation other- lican Party, which he has healthier, safer future.”
health have been cur- wise of such prac- coached in the art of “convincing His appreciation of human
tailed, the proportion
will to confront it tices is not an issue sincerity”. His growing chorus of intelligence knows no depths.
of expenditure on mental health for any of the major parties, nor critics in the US accuses him of “We decide based on how people
of total health expenditure has for the media. obscuring the truth rather than look,” he preaches. “We decide
declined drastically in the last telling it. based on how people sound. We
decade and the person in charge Democracy Luntz was the political pro- decide based on how people are
of government policy on mental The idea of democracy is that the pagandist who extracted George dressed.” On another occasion,
health, Tim O’Malley, lacks ele- people in a state are both the sov- Bush from the Kyoto consensus he declared: “What matters
mentary credibility in handling ereign and the subjects. They on saving the environment by most in politics is personality.”
the issue. agree to obey the state because advising the president to keep Luntz’s gospel is encapsulated
they are the sovereigns of the repeating, throughout the 2000 in his belief that: “A compelling
Old people state, which means they run the and 2004 elections, that there story, even if factually inaccu-
The incidence of poverty among state, take the democratic deci- was no scientific agreement rate, can be more emotionally
old people, is especially high. sions on policies and how the about global warming. (Earlier compelling than a dry recita-
Increases in the old-age pension state is run. this year, he finally conceded tion of the truth.”
have helped but deprivation But democracy has been degrad- he was wrong, though Bush JUSTINE MCCARTHY
remains a major issue. Allied to ed by the emergence of a parlia- keeps on dissembling,
© MCT INTERNATIONAL

that the state oversight of the mentary system which oblivious of his guru’s
treatment of old people in nurs- sub-contracts democratic deci- conversion.)
ing homes, including even in the sions to a political class and offers By manipulating
homes owned and run by the popular involvement in the the language of polit-
state, has been shown to be woe- process only once every five years ical discourse, Luntz
fully inadequate. Even since the and through a mechanism (choos- largely credits himself
shocking revelations about Leas ing from a variety of very similar with the Republicans’
Cross there still is no credible job-lot policies) that is crude and success. It was he who
investigatory mechanism in place, undifferentiated. Only in the most wrote Speaker of the
no resources, too few personnel, peripheral sense could this be House Newt Gin-
no guidelines. seen as democratic. But the grich’s seminal “Con-
When it was discovered two process is even further devalued tract with America”
years ago that the state had been by the surrounding circus of elec- speech in 1994. He
illegally taking the welfare pay- tions – the personality parades, also explosively
ments of old people in state-run the avoidance of many of the main deployed the phrase
residences, the response of the issues, the construction of the “partial birth abor-
minister, Mary Harney, was to give debate and agenda. tion” for a second
retrospective legislative sanction Brain dead politics. π

7-13 DECEMBER 2006 | VILLAGE 15

DARA MAC DOMHNAILL / THE IRISH TIMES
Undermining
the trust
A collection of essays about the late Douglas Gageby reveals how the loan
to secure the independence of the Irish Times may have been used to
undermine that independence. By Vincent Browne
O
n Wednesday 23
March 1977
Andrew Whitak-
er, a former busi-
ness editor of the
Irish Times, visited
the then managing director of the
Bank of Ireland at the bank’s head-
quarters in Lower Baggot Street,
Dublin. At the time Whitaker was
not even an employee of the news-
paper. He was working for a man-
agement consultant, Peter O’Hara,
who in turn had been advising the
commercial head of the Irish Times,
Major Tom McDowell.
Whitaker made an extraordi-
nary proposal to the head of the
bank which had lent the Irish Times
£2m to finance the purchase of the
shares in the company by a trust
that had been established to secure
the independence of the newspa-
per. The proposal was all the more
impertinent, given that Whitaker
had no role whatever at the time
in the Irish Times.
The proposal was to get the bank
to remove the then editor of the
Irish Times, Fergus Pyle, and to
reduce the position of Tom
McDowell from executive chair-
man to that of non-executive chair-
man. In other words, Whitaker
was asking the Bank of Ireland to
exert its leverage over the newspa-
per, via its loan, to undermine the
very independence the loan was
designed to secure: the independ-
ence of the newspaper.
The Irish Times was in serious
financial trouble then. The board
of the company had projected a
profit in 1976 of £110,000; the out-
come was a loss of £477,000. The
board had no anticipation that the
outcome would be anything that
bad because of the chaotic account-
ing system then operated inter-
nally. The paper was also losing
circulation – down from 75,000
to 60,000.
Morrison revealed to Whitaker
at that meeting that Douglas Gage-
by had suggested to him (Morrison)
in the early 1960s that the two of
them (Gageby and Morrison)
would buy out the Irish Times. But
nothing had come of that.
Whitaker got even bolder as the
conversation went on. He suggest-
ed to Morrison that the bank, as
the major creditor, could have a
receiver installed to the Irish Times.
This would get over the difficulties
to do with the trust and also cir-
cumvent the contract that Tom
McDowell had as executive chair-
man, a contract which gave him
enormous powers.
Whitaker enquired why the
bank had funded the Irish Times
Trust in the first place. Morrison
confirmed this was indeed a good
question, for the Irish Times was
already in debt when the trust was
formed. Morrison said first that
McDowell, who was responsible
for establishing the trust, was a
good advocate. But he added inter-
estingly: The directors of the bank
– ie the court of governors, as the
Bank of Ireland directors are grand-
ly called – in 1973 feared the con-
junction of high inflation rates
and the activities of the IRA. They
wanted the Irish Times to be there
as “at least one voice of sanity”.
Whitaker left and wrote up
notes immediately afterwards in a
pub of his conversation with Mor-
rison.
This is certainly the most inter-
esting insight into the story of the
Irish Times from 1960 to 1986, as
told by essayists in these reminis-
cences of Douglas Gageby.
The Irish Times was seen by the
bank as a voice of sanity in difficult
times. It would be relied upon to
speak the sanity as perceived by
the then largest private financial
institution in the state.
The essays tell of the greatness
of Douglas Gageby as editor –
although two contributions demur
from that assessment. They also
reveal a lot about the Irish Times
and, in a few instances, about the
authors of the essays. The collec-
tion is edited by Andrew Whitak-
er, who, as business editor of the
newspaper, was not noted for the
elegance of his writing but, in fact,
his are perhaps the most elegant-
ly written and most interesting
contributions in the collection.
Whitaker and Wesley Boyd,
once of the Irish Times and later
head of news at RTÉ (among oth-
ers) tell of Gageby’s background.
Boyd says the Royal Academy,
which Gageby attended as a school
boy, was “a school for the middle
and upper classes and was also
favoured by the Jewish communi-
ty”. He says: “Its pupils were shel-
tered from the sectarian savagery
that afflicted the lower orders and
enjoyed a liberal and progressive
regime.”
The Royal Academy and its head-
master at the time, Alan Foster, had
a profound influence on Gageby. It
was from Foster he got his roman-
tic (naïve?) republicanism. From
there to Trinity, where he did bril-
liantly before leaving to join the
Irish Army’s intelligence corps,
where he read letters sent to and
from German prisoners. He left
the army to join the Irish Press and
became involved in the launch of
the Sunday Press, a project initiated
by Sean Lemass when he (Lemass)
assumed the position of chief exec-
utive while Fianna Fáil was out of
power from 1948 to 1951. He
joined the Irish News Agency, start-
ed by Sean MacBride with the help
of Conor Cruise O’Brien, in 1950
but then returned to the Irish Press
stable to become the first editor of
the Evening Press. From there he
was headhunted by the Irish Times,
which he had previously rebuffed.
He joined the Irish Times in 1959,
not as editor but as joint managing
director. He was probably unique-
ly unsuited to the position, espe-
cially at a time when the company
required strong commercial man-
agement because it was losing
money and several of its titles were
in deep trouble. In the event, five
of these – Radio Weekly, the Evening
Mail, the Sunday Review, the Times
Pictorial and the Times Weekly – were
ditched. Only the Irish Times itself
and the Irish Field survived, the lat-
ter being sold in recent years.
Gageby took part during that
period in the curious sacking of the
then editor of the Irish Times, Alec
Newman, about which Donal
O’Donovan, a former deputy edi-
tor, writes interestingly. Newman
was a chaotic editor, often delaying
the country editions of the paper,
holding up the trains that brought
newspapers down the country and,
thereby, incurring significant fines.
However, an inference in Donal
O’Donovan’s essay is that New-
man may have been fired for
another reason. Newman had cam-
paigned on the sectarian boycott of
Protestant businesses at Fethard-
7-13 DECEMBER 2006 | VILLAGE 17
on-Sea, Co Wexford in 1957. A
Protestant woman, Shelia Cloney,
had refused to have her children
reared as Catholics, in defiance of
the Catholic Ne Temere decree.
She left Wexford and her husband,
bringing her children with her,
causing the local priest, Fr Stafford,
to instigate the boycott. Newman
had also been critical of the then
Catholic Archbishop of Dublin,
John Charles McQuaid.
But Newman was fired in 1961
and the Fethard-on-Sea episode
occurred in 1957, so it is unlikely
that that was a major factor.
However, two senior journal-
ists, including Bruce Williamson,
resigned in protest – Williamson
later returned to work closely with
Gageby when the latter became
editor. Newman had told his col-
leagues, “The bastards have got
me,” referring to the directors,
who included Gageby. Surprising-
ly it was not Douglas Gageby who
succeeded Newman, it was Alan
Montgomery.
Montgomery was gregarious and
popular and, as had Newman, he
sought to change the ethos of the
paper from its former
unionist/colonial orientation.
But Montgomery lasted only a
year. The story of his going is
telling. He was invited by Guinness
to join an interview board for the
Gageby addressing the Irish
Times newsroom on his
retirement (above) and a
younger Gageby (below)
PICS FROM BRIGHT BRILLIANT DAYS:
DOUGLAS GAGEBY AND THE IRISH TIMES
18 VILLAGE | 7-13 DECEMBER 2006
appointment of a public-relations
officer for the brewery. In the
course of that assignment, Mont-
gomery noted how much better
paid the Guinness public-relations
officer would be and how less
stressed he was likely to be as com-
pared with being editor of the Irish
Times. He promptly applied for the
position, got it and resigned as edi-
tor.
Gageby was asked to replace
him. Apparently, he hated the
commercial side of the business
and was delighted to be back work-
ing with journalists and involved
in editorial. Nicholas Leonard, busi-
ness editor at the time and later
associate of Tony O’Reilly, writes:
“The contrast in style between the
austere, intensely focused and self-
disciplined Gageby and the gre-
garious, companionable charm
and warmth of Montgomery could
not have been greater. I can still
recall the sense of shock we all
experienced at the afternoon edi-
tor’s conference when Alan pro-
duced a bottle of whiskey and told
us that Douglas was replacing
him.”
Nicholas Leonard also recalls ically the ethos of the paper and and, thereby, Ireland.
that around the time Gageby recruiting brilliant journalists and In a stroke, almost, the old
became editor, the Irish Times was writers. In transforming the ethos authoritarianism and certainties
in serious trouble. It was losing of the paper, he captured the ethos were gone. Intellectually the coun-
£30,000 a year (a lot then) and its of a changed Ireland that was try was opened up. The authority
circulation was around 30,000. In emerging in the 1960s; not only did of the bishops wilted. There was
fact the circulation was probably he capture that change, he made questioning for the first time in
closer to 20,000 and it was Gage- the Irish Times an agent of that centuries and it spread to other
by’s triumph to turn this around in change. spheres.
a decade, increase sales to 75,000 One of his more perceptive ini- It could be argued that, political-
and leave the company in 1973 in tiatives was to send John Horgan ly, Gageby was all over the place.
a healthy profitable position. (now a professor at DCU) to the Sec- Certainly, the Irish Times was all
He did this by transforming rad- ond Vatican Council in Rome. That over the place in the 1960s but
council changed Catholicism glob- that incoherence too probably
ally but, arguably, it was Horgan’s enlivened the paper and its appeal.
reporting of that council in the Gageby saw himself as an Irish
Irish Times, allied to the coverage of republican, enthused by the
the council by two remarkable changes in the South but even
journalists with RTÉ, Sean more so by the changes in the
MacReamoinn and Kevin O’Kelly, North, following the election of
that changed Irish Catholicism Captain Terence O’Neill as prime

minister of the old Stormont
regime. But Gageby was beguiled
by the cosmetics of that change in
the North, did not understand the
deep-seated anger in the national-
ist community arising from
decades of oppression, the inade-
quacy of the O’Neill reforms and
signs of an incipient rebellion.
He sent Fergus Pyle, who was
later to succeed him as editor, to
Belfast as the first Northern editor
but the brief was to report at length
on the proceedings of the old Stor-
mont Parliament, not to gauge the
mood of the two rival communi-
ties and the signs of unrest. The
Irish Times might have helped to
head-off the convulsion that was to
follow had it uncovered the deep-
seated sectarianism that under-
pinned that old Stormont state.
But in failing to help head-off that
convulsion Douglas Gageby was in
the company of the editors of all
the newspaper and broadcasting
establishments.
As far as the South was con-
cerned, Gageby was probably part
of the consensus that the aban-
donment of the protectionist eco-
nomic strategy, inspired by Ken
Whitaker and Sean Lemass, was
welcome. He was not troubled, it
seems by the social fallouts. But he
did give prominence to two jour-
nalists who in very different ways
were troubled.
One of these was Michael McIn-
terney, who gets only a single pass-
ing mention in these essays, but
who was influential. McInerney
IT COULD BE ARGUED THAT, POLITICALLY, GAGEBY
WAS ALL OVER THE PLACE. CERTAINLY, THE IRISH
TIMES WAS ALL OVER THE PLACE IN THE 1960S BUT
THAT INCOHERENCE TOO PROBABLY ENLIVENED THE
PAPER AND ITS APPEAL.
PICS FROM BRIGHT BRILLIANT DAYS: DOUGLAS GAGEBY AND THE IRISH TIMES
was from Limerick. He emigrated
from there in the 1930s and work-
ed as a clerk on the railways in Lon-
don. He joined the Communist
Party, wrote for the Daily Worker,
became a clerk for the Great North-
ern Railway in Belfast, during
which time he edited the Irish
communist newspaper, Unity. In
1946 he became a reporter with
the Irish Times and in 1951 its polit-
ical correspondent. He remained
political correspondent until the
end of Douglas Gageby’s first peri-
od as editor.
It would have been fascinating
had there been an insight in this
collection of essays into the rela-
tionship between Gageby and
McInerney. Regrettably there is
nothing. McInerney pushed an
agenda not just in his commen-
taries but in his news stories that
was avowedly left wing – by then
very much “soft” left. There was lit-
tle disguise and it is strange it did
not seem to trouble Gageby, not
just became of its politics but
because of its questionable journal-
ism. McInerney was, I think, a
card-carrying member of the Irish
Labour Party at that time and that
seemed to cause no difficulty
either. McInerney was troubled by
the social injustices and inequities
that then prevailed.
But along with Michael McIner-
ney there was John Healy, a colos-
sus in the Irish Times and in
journalism at the time. Healy was
as uncouth as Gageby was suave.
Gageby was metropolitan, Healy
rural, peasant rural. But they
formed a close bond and became
best friends.
Healy was as avowedly Fianna
Fáil as McInerney was Labour.
Healy formed an association with
Donough O’Malley, the rambunc-
tious Fianna Fáil minister for
health and then education.
Through O’Malley, Healy got to
know Charles Haughey with
whom he formed a lifelong friend-
ship and loyalty. On the granite
flight of steps inside the front door
at Abbeville, Kinsealy, Haughey
had a bust of Healy.
Healy bought into the nascent
Celtic Tiger and was unashamed,
as was McInerney, in his avowal of
his preferences. Gageby sided with
Healy but, apparently, never inter-
fered with McInerney, who may
have been the more influential.
Healy’s one reserve about the direc-
tion Ireland was taking was his
perceived abandonment of rural
Ireland, about which he wrote
powerfully in the Irish Times and in
two books.
But there was a lot else going on
in the Irish Times of Gageby’s first
coming. He brought women’s jour-
nalism into the paper and it quick-
ly became feminist, led by the
likes of Mary Maher. That too had
a significant influence.
But above all the Irish Times had
become relevant: part of Irish soci-
ety and helping to shape Irish soci-
ety in a way the Irish Times had
never done before.
Then in 1973 a decision was
taken by the owners of the Irish
Times – of which Gageby was one
having acquired shares when he
joined in 1959 – to sell the shares
to a trust to safeguard the inde-
pendence of the newspaper. It also
had the benefit of hugely enrich-
ing the shareholders. The Bank of
Ireland, as recalled above, funded
the purchase to the tune of around
£2m, a huge sum at the time. The
decision was taken around the
time that Independent Newspa-
pers was sold by the Murphy fam-
ily to Tony O’Reilly and when there
had been some major newspaper
acquisitions in the UK. There was
a genuine apprehension at the
time that the Irish Times would be
bought over by one of these corpo-
rations and would lose the identi-
fy it recently had acquired.
The shares were sold, the share-
holders enriched, but not just that
– these shareholders in the main
became the trustees. It seemed to
many they had had their cake and
had eaten it as well. But there was
nothing underhand about it, let
alone fraudulent.
In his essay Kevin Myers tells of
how Gageby took an instant dislike
to him because, Myers surmises, of
his Englishness. Gageby certainly
7-13 DECEMBER 2006 | VILLAGE 19
had a strong antipathy to the man- Left: Gageby with Charlie

FROM ‘BRIGHT BRILLIANT DAYS: DOUGLAS GAGEBY AND THE IRISH TIMES’
ners and accents of the English Haughey
upper class. The studied
demeanour, mannerisms and arro- at a time when the Irish Times
gance of Myers may have irked had a few good writers.”
him particularly. Gageby was not Arnold goes on to allege that
an admirer either of the journalism Gageby took the Irish Times in a
of Kevin Myers. wrong direction by altering the
By curious coincidence, nor was pro-British, pro-unionist stance of
Myers an admirer of Gageby. the paper, without acknowledg-
Whereas everyone else who has ing that, when the paper was pro-
written for this collection, bar one British and pro-unionist, it was
other, thought Gageby was the moving towards oblivion.
outstanding editor of the 20th cen- Gageby hired and kept some of
tury in Ireland and he more than the best journalists of the last 40
anyone else had secured the future years: Conor Brady, Conor O’Clery,
of the Irish Times, Myers can see no Mary Maher, Nell McCafferty,
merit in the man at all. Not just was perceived as no longer that, Arnold, the art critic and writer Eileen O’Brien, Geraldine Kennedy,
that but much worse. now a threat to the established on politics for the Irish Indepen- Peter Murtagh, Joe Joyce, Frank
Myers writes: “But he was still a order of things. dent. He did not have a high opin- McDonald, Olivia O’Leary, Michael
crook, as the creation of the Irish But there is no doubt Pyle was ion of Gageby either. He says of Viney, John Horgan, Fionnuala
Times Trust suggested. Did Gage- not a success as editor and Gageby him, he was “a competent but O’Connor, Paul Tansey, Fintan
by feel guilty that he encumbered was persuaded to return in 1977 uninspiring editor” – an assess- O’Toole and many others. Almost
the company with debts that took and once again rescue the newspa- ment thoroughly refuted by all of these speak of the man in
20 years to pay off, in order to buy per. many of the other essayists. something approaching awe,
his shares, while he remained in There is little argument among Arnold had poor relations with acknowledging his contradictions
control of the newspaper through the contributors that Gageby was Gageby almost from the start. and his irascibility at times.
the trust?” again crucial to the survival and Gageby, he says, disliked his Eng- This collection of essays is almost
The characterisation of Douglas success of the Irish Times. But one of lishness and arrogance. Writing a fitting tribute to him. π
Gageby as a “crook” is a despicable the contributors, who acknowl- of himself Arnold says: “I was
libel, motivated, it would seem, edges how crucial Gageby was to self-assured, confident in my Bright, Brilliant Days: Douglas
by an impulse to seek retribution that success, James Downey, is one views and not without experi- Gageby and the Irish Times,
for the perceived snub Myers suf- of his sternest critics. ence of life.” He writes: “[Gageby] edited by Andrew Whittaker, is
fered by Gageby’s failure to recog- Downey was expected to suc- deliberately ignored my potential published by A& A Farmar, €20
nise and acknowledge Myers’ ceed Gageby as editor in 1987 and

JOURNALISTS
enormous talents. Or perhaps a was deeply disappointed to be
little attention-seek- passed over in
ing? Or both? The Irish Times favour of Conor
Fergus Pyle suc- had become Brady. That disap-
ceeded Gageby as pointment may
editor in 1973. Pyle
relevant under have affected his
was unsuited to the Gageby: part of judgment of Gage-
THE NORTHERN STANDARD,
position for reasons Irish society and by, nevertheless his THE DIAMOND, MONAGHAN TOWN,
of temperament and helping to shape insights are interest-
capacity. He was par- Irish society in a ing. One of the leading provincial newspapers in the north-east,
ticularly unsuited to He writes: “[The
the turbulence that
way the Irish Irish Times] needed
is in the process of expanding its Editorial Department.
engulfed the news- Times had never his ruthlessness, As a consequence vacancies have arisen for the
paper shortly after done before which left a good appointment of a number of Journalists.
he became editor. many victims well- .
The economic depression of the ing in the wake of his chariot Applications are now being invited for these posts.
mid-1970s saw advertising rev- wheels [regrettably, he does not
enues fall back dramatically. But cite who]. And it needed his prej- Successful candidates will have proven ability in the fields of news or
also the newspaper started to lose udices and contradictions, his sports coverage. They will be able to contribute effectively as part of
sales. descents into sentimentality, even a busy newsroom team and work efficiently to deadlines.
Ironically it was during the edi- his bizarre tastes in literature. Experience will be deemed an important asset in the filling of the
torship of Fergus Pyle that the “As a practitioner of second positions but consideration will also be given to journalism
newspaper began to display a guessing, sometimes on the petti- graduates who demonstrate the necessary attributes.
sharper edge. He started to publish est of matters, he had few equals.
the results of investigations by It would be an understatement to Applications, accompanied by a full CV and examples of published
Peter Murtagh and Joe Joyce into say that he was sparing in his work, should be forwarded to:
the conduct of gardaí during this praise. He was ungrateful, liverish,
time, notably the conduct of the erratic, often unjust and dictatori- MARTIN SMYTH,
murder squad, known colloquial- al, sometimes deceitful. EDITOR,
ly at the time as the Heavy Gang. “In the end he stayed too long. THE NORTHERN STANDARD,
It seems the “voice of sanity” that Men of his kind do.” THE DIAMOND, MONAGHAN TOWN,
impelled the Bank of Ireland to There is an unintentionally CO MONAGHAN
fund the Irish Times Trust in 1973 amusing contribution by Bruce

20 VILLAGE | 7-13 DECEMBER 2006


OPINION
McDowell, Hain and a blazling row
I
n the last session of talks
between the two govern-
ments and Sinn Féin at St
Andrews, I proposed to
Tony Blair that an Irish-language
act be brought forward at West-
minster by his government. That
last session was a very stormy
one – it was about putting
together a programme to get
the DUP into the powersharing
arrangements, as laid out in the
Good Friday Agreement.
The Taoiseach had been asked
by Blair to make a presentation to
us on the putative schedule or
time-frame which the govern-
ments intended to roll out after
St Andrews. In all of our discus-
sions with both governments, I
had asked that there be no sur-
prises and that everything be
pinned down, especially regard-
ing the schedule or time-frame
and commitments from the var-
ious parties, including the two
governments.
I was outraged at the attitude
of the Irish government and I
said so in no uncertain terms.
The Taoiseach’s presentation
had nothing pinned down. It
was all one-day-at-a-time. My
mood wasn’t helped when, as
Irish officials sat mute, British
officials started to provide the
answers to my questions to the
Taoiseach. Things got worse
when Michael McDowell told us
that the DUP seemed to be no
longer concerned about the call-
ing of a Sinn Féin ard fheis to
deal with the policing issue. All
of this seemed highly incredi-
ble and somewhat dubious.
It was towards the end of this
meeting that I asked Tony Blair
about the Irish-language act. He
seemed well-disposed to the idea.
After all, the Welsh have their
own language act and the Scots
have one too. The British Secre-
tary of State for Wales, Peter
Hain, who is also Blair’s represen-
tative in our part of Ireland, was-
n’t so well disposed. In fact, he
was a bit beside himself.
^Website www.villagemagazine.ie
Picture the scene. A room full The establishment and its sys-
of officials, mostly men, and
politicians, all men except for
GERRY tems in the North have always
resisted this. The fight back
Mary Lou McDonald. A blazing ADAMS against the Irish-language act is
row between me and Baile Átha already under way. Currently,
Cliath. The Brits staying out of it, been one of victimisation and the British government is
except to advise the Taoiseach. discrimination. Despite this hos- preparing a consultation paper.
Hain seated beside Blair, giving tile atmosphere, the Irish lan- Sinn Féin was told by British
forth sotto voce into the prime- guage has survived and is now officials that this paper would go
ministerial right ear that the flourishing. Its resurgence began out to consultation on Thurs-
unionists would go mad over an in the 1970s, led mainly by lan- day, 8 December. This is to facil-
Irish-language act. guage activists and parents itate the completion of the
So all other things to one side, involved in Irish-medium educa- 12-week consultation period
what’s that all about? tion, and also from within prisons necessary for the bill to be intro-
Peter Hain’s oppo- where republican duced into the British parlia-
sition to an Irish-lan-
Hain seated prisoners began to ment before the middle of
guage act is merely beside Blair, use Irish as their March 2007.
tactical. It is about giving forth sotto first language. Last week, we learned that
placating unionism. voce into the But the repres- the Department of Culture, Arts
In fact at earlier prime ministerial sion of the lan- and Leisure does not intend pub-
meetings he was right ear that the guage is still lishing the document until clos-
very open to the evident today in the er to Christmas. If this happens,
introduction of such
unionists would case of Máire Nic the consultation will not be com-
an act. So was his go mad over an An Bhaird, who was plete until the end of March,
prime minister at St Irish-language arrested and with the bill then becoming a
Andrews. But expe- act charged for giving matter for an assembly in which
rience has taught us her name in Irish unionists are committed to
that it is one thing to get a com- in Belfast earlier this year. opposing it.
mitment from the British gov- Despite this official and unoffi- None of us should be sur-
ernment – or for that matter the cial hostility, Irish-language prised at these machinations.
Irish government – but it is activists have succeeded in estab- We have seen the same manoeu-
entirely another matter getting lishing a network of Irish-medium vrings by the British govern-
them to implement it. schools across the North, and set- ment on other issues in the
You don’t have to tell Irish-lan- ting up newspapers, a radio sta- North, most notably policing.
guage activists across the island tion, businesses and organisations So, if we are to ensure that the
this. The reality and experience to cater for every conceivable area Irish-language bill is introduced,
of Irish-language speakers and of work and opportunity within it will require a vigorous cam-
activists living in the North has our neighbourhoods. paign. Such a campaign is also
required to iron out the defi-
ERIC LUKE / THE IRISH TIMES
ciencies in the Official Lan-
guages Act 2003 in the South.
If the Irish government were
so minded, it would have a com-
fortable majority to amend the
new regulations so that the
movement towards a bilingual
society could be advanced. But
the Irish government cannot,
with credibility, make the case
for the Irish language with the
British government if it is in
any way short-changing gael-
geóirí in the South.
Might as well tell us that that
the DUP is no longer concerned
about a Sinn Féin ard fheis to
William Hain’s opposition to an Irish-language act is ‘tactical’ deal with the policing issue.
7-13 DECEMBER 2006 | VILLAGE 21
O
ne of the sorest ist Party in 1974. As such, he was
lessons Nicky regarded as a prime suspect by
Kelly learned gardaí investigating the most
while he was on lucrative armed robbery up to that
the run in time (official estimates put it at
Europe and £221,000 but one of the real rob-
Justice
and the
America – convicted in his absence bers claims it was closer to £1m).
of involvement in the Sallins mail- Four other men charged in con-
train robbery and sentenced to nection with it were also IRSP
12 years’ penal servitude – was activists.
that, “I have a severe allergy to No forensic or circumstantial
Clairol.” Travelling on a false pass- evidence placed Kelly at the scene.
port under the alias “Barry Ryan”, His conviction solely depended
he regularly applied liberal doses on his signed “confession”, pro-
of red dye to his hair and beard to duced after sustained and repeat-
maintain his disguise, his skin ed beatings by gardaí while in
erupting in a stinging rash after custody in Dublin’s Bridewell. It
each treatment. To was the hey-day of
Irish way
exacerbate his Kelly’s the Heavy Gang, set
plight, no matter conviction up by former Garda Nicky Kelly skipped the country
how diligently he solely depended Commissioner Ned
followed the manu- on his signed Garvey and unoffi-
after he was wrongly charged of
facturer’s instruc-
‘confession’, cially licensed to tor- involvement in the Sallins mail-
tions to rinse ture detainees.
thoroughly, budget- produced after Between 1975 and train robbery in the 1970s. He
hotel pillow slips in sustained and 1979, 20 people died
Paris, Amsterdam, repeated Garda in Irish prisons and tells Justine McCarthy about his
Toronto and Balti- beatings in Garda custody. time on the run, his abuse at
more bore the Each death was
incriminating auburn stain of his recorded as suicide. the hands of gardaí, his political
recent presence. As for the Sallins investigation,
The Clairol quip has the fluen- not one of the 16-member IRA ambitions and his severe allergy
cy of a well-worn diversionary tac- gang who carried it out was ever
tic, sounding honed from years of held or questioned about it. In his
to Clairol hair dye
jocularly cutting conversations off book, McGarry quotes one of the
from voyeuristic sallies into Coun- gang leaders declaring the inno-
cillor Kelly’s past as a fugitive from cence of Nicky Kelly and the other
Irish “justice”. Not that he shows two men who were convicted,
any reticence once he decides to Osgur Breathnach and Brian
reminisce about that time. McNally. “I can guarantee you the
His quandary is that his whole state, the government, everyone After the Morris report there can be announcements of Fianna Fail’s
other existence as a local politician with the slightest interest, knew few people who don’t know the Joe Jacob and the Independent TD
in Wicklow since the early 1990s Kelly didn’t do it,” said this man, truth about what goes on. In Done- Mildred Fox. He only lost out to
continues to be overshadowed by using the pseudonym Frank. gal, most politicians on the health Fox by 19 votes, after an eight-
the state’s reluctance to investigate “Kelly and the rest couldn’t have board thought McBrearty was mak- day count in the 2002 election.
and punish those of its servants robbed a chip van.” ing it up. Ireland doesn’t have a Kelly fancies the justice portfolio
who framed him. A new book by Even now, Kelly occasionally great record of human rights. in government, an ambition artic-
Irish Times religious affairs corre- encounters some of the guards There’s no currency in it. No votes.” ulated without a whiff of humour.
spondent Patsy McGarry, entitled who assaulted him in the Bride- Despite a conviction in Wicklow “A lot of people in this part of
While Justice Slept: The true story of well (46 members of the force district court last month on car the world say I’m more entitled to
Nicky Kelly and the Sallins train rob- gave remarkably similar rebuttal tax, insurance and careless-driving it than Michael McDowell,” he
bery, powerfully contrasts the Irish evidence about the assaults during charges resulting from a crash a makes his pitch, “and I’d probably
authorities’ enduring complacen- two criminal trials). He mostly year ago, Nicky Kelly is expected understand it better than in terms
cy about Kelly’s case with the bumps into them at football to get the Labour Party’s second of glib soundbites and gimmicks.”
British and American investiga- matches and pleasantries are nomination in the constituency His faith in the criminal-justice
tions which, respectively, followed exchanged in the vein: ‘Sure, (deputy leader Liz McManus has system expired the weekend
the Birmingham Six and Guild- everyone makes mistakes... no already been selected) for next before the verdict was due to be
ford Four miscarriages of justice hard feelings.’ That attitude year’s general election. He sus- handed down in his trial in 1978.
and the human-rights abuses in enrages him. tained injuries to his spleen, ribs, On leaving court that Friday
Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. “It’s the old Irish solution to an chest and legs, having to be cut evening, a friend thrust £8 into
Nicky Kelly, whose name seeped Irish problem. It’s the Irish way of free from the Mercedes he was his hand and said: “Put that to
into the consciousness of a gener- dealing with injustice and corrup- driving. good use now.” Others had already
ation by the osmosis of ubiqui- tion,” he says, “and it goes all the First elected to Arklow urban been exhorting him to do a runner.
tous “Free Nicky Kelly With Every way up to our government. I’d district council in 1994 and to “I came to the conclusion that I was
Packet of Cornflakes” graffiti, quit prefer if they said nothing at all Wicklow county council in 1999 as not going to be sentenced for
Official Sinn Féin to become a than say that. an Independent, his chances of something I didn’t do,” he remem-
founding member of Seamus “There are very few people left election to the Dáil have been bers. And so he assumed the iden-
Costello’s Irish Republican Social- who won’t accept my innocence. enhanced by the retirement tity of overweight, red-haired,

22 VILLAGE | 7-13 DECEMBER 2006


bearded Barry Ryan, staying first in
friends’ houses in Dublin and
Clare, before moving on to Paris,
Amsterdam, back to Paris, Brussels,
Toronto, Baltimore and New York.
“I nearly got caught [by US
immigration officials] three or
four times trying to get across the
border from Canada and had to
turn back,” he recalls. “Then one
day at Niagara Falls I got talking to
a group of US sightseers. It turned
out they were Mennonites going
to a religious conference. I went
with them to the conference and
came back on their bus. I told the
leader on the way back I was try-
ing to get into the US illegally. I
thought I was finished when they
all got off the bus and started pray-
ing on the side of the road but they
got back on and said they’d been
praying for guidance and God had
told them to help me.”
During his 18 months on the
run, Kelly spent the first solitary
Christmas of his life, alone in a
New York apartment on enforced
CYRIL BYRNE/IRISH TIMES
holidays from his job as a truck kened official Ireland’s impulse dered. Because, this man
driver. “It was very lonely. I’d hon- to turn a blind eye to his disappear- explained, he was one of the sol-
estly and genuinely say my Christ- ance. diers who used to stand guard out-
mases in jail were better than that When it was reported that the side his cage with a loaded
one.” other two men charged with him, machine gun trained on him.
It was while in the US that the Breathnach and McNally, had After coming off the hunger
public Nicky Kelly campaign been released from jail, he strike, a posse of prison warders
began to sprout. informed the Irish came to his cell one afternoon,
Accounts of the ‘There are very consulate that he grabbed him and frog-marched
Garda beatings and few people left intended returning him down the corridor. As he was
forced confession who won’t home. He was met being bundled into a car, he was
surfaced in influen- at Shannon Airport followed by a clamour of prisoners
tial newspapers,
accept my by four gardaí, beating their cell doors tri-
such as the Philadel- innocence. After handcuffed and umphantly. It was only in the car,
phia Inquirer and the the Morris driven to Portlaoise when the news bulletin came on
New York Times. Kelly report there can prison, where he the radio, that he understood why.
started to hope that be few people stayed until 17 July He was being released.
he could return to a 1984. In 1992, he was invited to Áras
chastened Ireland
who don’t know In Portlaoise, he an Uachtaráin to receive a presi-
ready to put right the truth about went on hunger dential pardon from Mary Robin-
the wrong it had what goes on’ strike, lasting 38 son, one of the lawyers who
done him. On one days. He was trans- unsuccessfully attempted to take
occasion, he found himself sitting ferred to the army hospital in the his case to the European Court of
in the front row at a function Curragh and placed inside a steel Human Rights. The parchment
addressed by the Irish ambassador cage which was specially built for scroll of pardon now lies locked in
to Washington, convincing him- him. At a wedding some years the safe of a solicitor’s office. It is,
self that what he perceived to be ago, a stranger approached him says Kelly, too precious to hang on
an absence of eye-contact beto- and apologised. Why? Kelly won- a wall.π
7-13 DECEMBER 2006 | VILLAGE 23
PROFILE ANN LOUISE GILLIGAN AND KATHERINE ZAPPONE
Same sex,diffe r
When Ann Louise Gilligan, a former postulant nun, met
Katherine Zappone over 25 years ago, she had never heard
the word ‘lesbian’. Now the two await a decision in their
law suit against the Revenue Commissioners for failing to
recognise their marriage. By Justine McCarthy
D
estiny brought
Ann Louise Gilli-
gan and Kather-
ine Zappone
together more
than a quarter of
a century ago. One, a former pos-
tulant nun with the Loreto order
in Dublin, had travelled from
Europe’s western outpost, a bas-
tion of orthodox Roman Catholic
doctrine. The other came from
Seattle, Washington, a burgeon-
ing Bohemia for artists and liber-
als. They met in Boston College on
the first day of their theology doc-
torate studies – the only two stu-
dents who qualified for the
course.
At the time of their first
encounter in 1981 – two years to
the month after Pope John Paul’s
euphoric visit to Ireland when
he told the people of Limerick
that “marriage must include
openness to the gift of children”
– Ann Louise Gilligan, a middle-
class Dubliner in her early 30s,
had never heard the word “les-
bian”. Within a year, she was liv-
ing with Katherine Zappone and
they had taken a vow of fidelity to
one another.
The two women have estab-
lished a foothold in Ireland’s
establishment, after settling in
this country upon graduating
with their PhDs in education and
theology in 1986, seven years
before homosexual acts were
finally decriminalised at the direc-
tion of the European Court of
Human Rights. Zappone, now an
Irish citizen, is a former mem-
ber of the National Economic and
24 VILLAGE | 7-13 DECEMBER 2006
same opportunity for happiness
in marriage. To Katherine, it was
an astonishing revelation as she
had never confided in her sister
about her sexual preference.
The honeymoon did not last
long after the couple returned
home to Ireland and applied to
the Revenue Commissioners for
Social Council (NESC) and a for- conceal it either. When Gilligan the standard tax allowances
mer chief executive of the Nation- was being treated for breast can- enjoyed by married couples. The
al Women’s Council of Ireland. cer some years ago, from which reply they recieved quoted the
She is a philosopher, a teacher, a she has recovered, Zappone took Oxford English Dictionary’s defi-
public-policy research consultant a year off work to care for her, suf- nition of the word “marriage”.
and a member of the Irish Human fering the concomitant monetary Their application was refused.
Rights Commission. disadvantages of a single woman. On the Waterford beach, as they
Gilligan, a lecturer at St Neither has ever been active in walked, they discussed their
Patrick’s College in Drumcondra, gay politics. choices and decided, in con-
which is under the chairmanship So, when they took a stroll science, that they had to assert
of the Catholic archbishop of along a beach in Co Waterford their marital status. They agreed
Dublin, chairs the National Edu- after a late dinner one night in to take the Revenue Commission-
cation Welfare Board. 2003, they knew that the decision ers to court. They sought leave for
The couple run a they were taking a judicial review, which was grant-
second-chance edu- would hurl them ed by Judge Liam McKechnie on 8
cation programme
They are and their relation- November 2004.
as a non-profit ini- atypical of the ship into the glare of Described as “low-key” and
tiative for women Punch-style the public spotlight. “very popular women” by Frances
and children in lesbian-feminist Following a brief Fitzgerald, Fine Gael politician
Jobstown, west Tal- caricature – official engagement, and former chairwoman of the
laght. The pro- Middle-aged, Zappone and Gilli- Council for the Status of Women,
gramme has gan had formally they are acutely conscious of Gilli-
received funding
middle-class and married in a civil gan’s employment in a Catholic-
from Atlantic Phil- moderate in ceremony attended run college. The Irish Catholic
anthropies, the Ire- manner, their by both their fami- published an uncompromising
land Funds and the dress is the lies in Vancouver, editorial in the second week of
state. Both the business-like Canada on 13 Sep- the High Court hearing, reiterat-
Taoiseach and the tember 2003. The ing the church’s position on tra-
Tánaiste attended
uniform of marriage was made ditional marriage. After leaving
the official opening lecture halls and possible by a high- the Four Courts on the first day of
in 1999 of a new boardrooms court ruling in the case, Gilligan returned to St
centre, An Cosán, British Columbia Patrick’s College to interview
under the auspices of their organ- that opened the institution of applicants for places for a new
isation, the Shanty Educational marriage to same-sex couples, doctorate course.
Project. regardless of their country of res- “They’re genuinely very coura-
They are atypical of the Punch- idence. Zappone’s parents are still geous,” says Ailbhe Smyth, direc-
style lesbian-feminist caricature. alive and support her whole- tor of UCD’s school of justice and
Middle-aged, middle-class and heartedly. At the post-ceremony chairwoman of the National Les-
moderate in manner, their dress meal, her sister, for whom she bian and Gay Federation. “They
is the business-like uniform of had acted as bridesmaid 20 years both work either in the public eye
lecture halls and boardrooms, before, brought a cake and wept or in institutions that are run by
their language policed by the as the newly-weds cut it. Explain- the Catholic church. They did it
idiom of judgement-avoidance. ing her tears, she recalled worry- very bravely and, I think, not at all
They have never flaunted their ing on her own wedding day that easily.”
relationship, though they did not Katherine would not have the The case was heard by Judge
e rent story
Elizabeth Dunne over eight days The legal action, which is
in the High Court last month. expected to end up in the
Gilligan and Zappone were Supreme Court, is estimated to
represented pro cost about €50,000,
bono by Phil O’He- With thousands mostly due to
hir of Brophy solic- of other citizens expert witnesses’
itors, senior counsel potentially expenses and
Michael Collins and research. Fundrais-
Trinity College law
affected by the ing dinners and
professors Gerard outcome of their events have been
Hogan and Ivana High Court case, organised by the
Bacik. The claim the near-full KAL Initiative (tak-
they made was that public galleries ing the women’s ini-
the state and the
Revenue Commis-
in the courtroom tials) founded by
Grainne Healy, a for-
sioners acted were not a mer chairwoman of
unlawfully, that surprise the National
they contravened Women’s Council.
the women’s constitutional rights More than €20,000 has been
and were in breach of the Euro- collected so far. According
pean Convention on Human to Edel Hackett, a volun-
Rights. Alternatively, they sought tary press officer
a declaration that they are entitled for the couple,
to marry each other in this juris- their cause has
diction. With thousands of other attracted wide-
citizens potentially affected by spread support
the outcome (there were 1,300 from the gay
cohabiting same-sex couples in and lesbian
Ireland at the 2002 population fraternity as
census), the near-full public gal- well as busi-
leries in the courtroom were not ness, academic
a surprise. and women’s inter-
In his opening statement on 3 ests groups.
October last, Michael Collins told That is small
the court: “Doctors Zappone and change com-
Gilligan are not arguing for spe- pared to the
cial rights or extra rights. They are potential cost to
arguing for the same rights as Gilligan and Zappone if
anyone else. They are arguing for they are to be denied the inher-
the right to marry the person of itance rights of a married couple.
their choice.” Their assets consist of the home
On the most fundamental issue they share in Brittas, Co Dublin
of conflict in the debate about and a second property in Kerry
same-sex marriage, he said that which they bought as an insur-
neither Irish jurisprudence nor ance against a loss of earnings in
international law had ruled that the future.
procreation was essential to mar- Giving evidence during the
riage. “We view marriage court hearing, Ann Louise
between 80-year-olds as charm- Gilligan explained: “It’s
ing,” he said. “We see no objection not easy to share the pri-
on the basis of procreation. Why vate aspects of your life.
do we view it as less charming We did so because we are
that doctors Zappone and Gilligan married and we wanted that
want to get married?” recognised here.”π

7-13 DECEMBER 2006 | VILLAGE 25

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7-13 DECEMBER 2006 | VILLAGE 27

 FRAGMENTS
Enslavement of boys
and Liverpool FC
heikh Mohammed bin
S Rashid Al Maktoum, the
would-be owner of
Liverpool FC, prime
minister of the United Arab
Emirates, ruler of Dubai,
the 23rd richest person in
the world with a fortune of
€12bn, husband of two
wives – one of whom is the
half-sister of the king of
Jordan – father of 16
children, seven sons and
nine daughters, is
affectionately known as
“Sheikh Mo”.
He is a horse-racing
enthusiast and also a fan of
camel-racing. In September
2006, he and his brother,
Hamdan bin Rashid Al
Maktoum, were sued in a US
court for the enslavement of
How Roman
made his billions
nother high-profile owner
A of an English football club
is Roman Abramovich
(pictured) a 40-year-old Russian
oil billionaire, the richest
person in Russia (which is
saying something) and the 11th
richest person in the world.
Abramovich had an unhappy
childhood. While an infant he
lost his mother and father, he
was raised partly by uncles but
also in orphanages. He later
served in the Soviet army. His
business opportunity arose in
the late 1980s when the then
Soviet president, Mikhail
Gorbachev, introduced
reforms
permitting the
opening of
small
private
businesses.
Through
The Sheikh on the cover of his
book My Vision – Challenges In
The Race For Excellence
that, Abramovich got
involved in the trading
of oil and oil products.
In 1992, he was
accused of stealing
diesel fuel from the
state of Ukhta but he
was later cleared. He made his
fortune, then bought a number
of state companies when Boris
Yeltsin started a series of
privitisations. In association
with Boris Berezovsky, who is
suspected of major criminality
in Russia and who is now in
asylum in Britain, he became
the majority shareholder in
Sibneft, a major oil company,
in a strange arrangement
which involved loans from the
state.
In 1999 he was elected to the
State Duma (parliament) and in
December 2000 was elected
governor of Chukotk. He used
30,000 boys for use as
jockeys for camel-racing.
Later that month, the UAE
removed all the child
jockeys and sent them back
to their home countries,
such as Afghanistan,
Pakistan and Sudan.
He became the ruler of
Dubai on 4 January 2006
upon the death of his elder
brother, Sheikh Maktoum
bin Rashid Al Maktoum.
It’s nice that some of the
world’s most notorious
criminals are now privatising
English football.
Chukotka as a tax haven for
Sibneft.
He has invested about €700m
in Chelsea football club,
thereby buying the
Premiership two years in a row.
He married his first wife,
Olga, in 1987. They divorced in
1989. In 1991, he married Irina,
who worked as a stewardess for
Aeroflot and met him when he
was a passenger on one of her
flights. They have five children
but there are signs he is about
to divorce her also.
He has three luxury yachts, a
private jet and several
helicopters.
RTÉ
Christmas
cheer
he highlight of RTÉ’s
T Christmas fare is a new
episode of Killinaskully to be
broadcast on Christmas Day,
Killinaskully: The Christmas Concert.
Following hot on the heels of
that triumph is Winning Streak’s
Win A Million, which begins on
Wednesday 27 December and
runs every night until New
Year’s Eve when, we are
told, “One lucky player will
win a million euro.”
Other comedy will include
Aprés Match Christmas Special.
This, regrettably, is just a
rehash of their World Cup
Aprés Match items. Then
there is the final programme
in the four-part series
Jokerman: Tommy Tiernan Takes
on America, which will be
broadcast on 27 December.
There is a documentary on
Micháel Ó Muircheartaigh
(pictured) to be shown on
Christmas Day, and we are told,
“No Christmas movie schedule
would be complete without a
range of [film] classics, family
movies and musicals and RTÉ
Television will broadcast
favourites such as Gone with the
Wind, Mutiny on the Bounty, ET,
The Wizard of Oz, Singin’ in the
Rain, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and
The Sound of Music.”
And if all that doesn’t test the
nation, on New Year’s Day,
Miriam O’Callaghan and Craig
Doyle present Test The Nation –
The National IQ.
 VINCENT BROWNE

Questions and no answers

The following exchanges took
place during Leaders
Questions in the Dáil on
Tuesday 5 December:
Joe Higgins: At the main
discussions, or in any of the
side meetings, did the
Taoiseach discuss with the EU
heads of state the practice which
disturbed many people in the EU
in recent times of the CIA and US
intelligence agencies kidnapping
individuals and bringing them to
the Guantanamo gulag or other
places to be tortured? Recently,
the Taoiseach was quoted in the
Irish press as stating that last St
Patrick’s Day, “I was sat closer to
him than you are to me now,” in
reference to President Bush.
He also stated, “I looked at the
great –”
An Ceann Comhairle: It does not
arise out of these questions. The
deputy is making a statement.
Does he have a question relevant
to these questions?
JH: The question is clear. The
Taoiseach stated, “I looked at the
great President Bush –”
An CC: It does not arise. The
deputy is making a statement. It
is not appropriate.
JH: I agree. I object to any
attempt to thrust greatness on
President Bush, the man
responsible for one of the biggest
disasters in our time.
An CC: I ask the deputy to return
to the questions before us.
JH: The question is that the
Taoiseach stated he looked at
President Bush, and asked him
whether he could be sure to be
sure that so-called “extraordinary
renditions” did not involve this
country. He was assured this was
the case.
An CC: The question is on
Europe.
JH: Yes. Ireland was part of the
European Union the last time I
looked. It is –
An CC: Yes, deputy. Does the
deputy have a question that is
relevant?
JH: This must be one of the most
meaningful glances in the
history of the state in the sense
that an entire abuse of civil
rights, which involved the
European Union –
An CC: Does the deputy
have a question relative to the
questions before us? The
questions deal with a meeting of
European heads of state. If the
deputy has a question I will hear
it. If not, I ask him to resume his
seat and allow Deputy Ó Caoláin
to contribute.
JH: That is really intolerable.
An CC: It may well be. However,
the Standing Orders –
JH: I am sorry. The Ceann
Comhairle is intruding into the
body of my question which is
relevant, appropriate and in
order. I asked the –
An CC: The chair will decide
whether it is in order.
JH: It is in order. I can read
Standing Orders for myself. I
asked the Taoiseach whether he
discussed with EU leaders at the
meeting the involvement of
countries of the European Union
in extraordinary renditions. Is
that in order?
An CC: That part of the question
is in order. Going on to make a
Second Stage speech is not.
JH: I did not make a Second Stage
speech.
An CC: The deputy began one.
JH: I might as well come in
with an algebraic formula and
put it in front of the Taoiseach
if we are not allowed to utter a
single word outside of the Ceann
Comhairle’s extremely narrow
definition of what is in order.
Does the Taoiseach think, and
is there any suggestion, that
within the European Union,
which claims to be a zone where
human rights are respected,
there should be a common
position in absolute opposition to
this so-called “extraordinary
rendition”? What is the view of
other leaders in the European
Union with regard to certain
countries cooperating with the
kidnapping of individuals and
facilitating it?...
The Taoiseach: In respect of ...
extraordinary rendition was not
discussed at the recent meetings.
It was raised this time last year by
the Minister for Foreign Affairs at
the General Affairs and External
Affairs Council. The EU wrote to
the Americans. Following this,
the US Secretary of State,
Condoleezza Rice, visited Europe
and gave assurances. I reported
on the previous meeting on St
Patrick’s Day to the House at the
time.

ON THIS DAY: 7 December 521

Birth of Saint Columba
olumba was born in Donegal into the Uí
C Néill clan, a great-great grandson of Niall
of the Nine Hostages. He became a monk
around 560. Shortly afterwards he became
involved in a dispute over a manuscript with
another saint, St Finnian. This led to the
Battle of Cúl Dreimhne in 561, which caused
the death of many men. As a penance for
this, Columba went to Scotland as a
missionary, along with 12 companions. He
was given land on the island of Iona off the
west coast of Scotland. For reasons that are
not clear, given his earlier depredations, he
won acclaim as a diplomat and politician. He
founded several churches, converted many
people to Christianity, returned to Ireland
just once to fund the monastery at Durrow,
restored a man to life who had been killed
by the Lough Ness Monster and died in Iona
in 597, aged 76.

7-13 DECEMBER 2006 | VILLAGE 29

 Rafael Correa’s
(pictured) victory in
Ecuador’s
presidential poll
continues Latin
America’s leftwing
populist trajectory
©EMPICS

‘Give ’em the lash’

Ecuador’s president-elect has staked his political career insurrection and civil war”.
Noboa sought to present himself
on destroying an unpopular – but powerful – system. But, in a contrasting light: as a benev-
having surfed the Andean populist wave, Rafael Correa’s olent Father Christmas-type char-
acter, handing out cheques,
problems may just be starting. By Guy Hedgecoe computers and wheelchairs to
poor villages. His few concrete

R
afael Correa’s
emphatic victory in
Ecuador’s presiden-
tial election run-off
on 26 November
appears to have given the region’s
radical leftist alliance – led by
Venezuela, Bolivia and Cuba – a
new member. However, the com-
bative platform of this latest
Andean firebrand is likely to make
for a particularly conflictive peri-
od in an already unstable country.
Correa, a 43-year-old economist,
will be Ecuador’s eighth president
in a decade. With 95 per cent of
the ballots counted at time of
print, Correa had won 57.2 per
cent of the vote – compared to the
42.8 per cent of his rival, the
banana magnate Álvaro Noboa.
“The fight has been long and
intense. It’s been the fight between
David and Goliath, and history has
repeated itself because David has
won,” said Correa.
For much of the bitterly-fought
run-off campaign, polls showed
Noboa heading for a comfortable
win, casting his opponent in the
role of extremist. Noboa used Cor-
rea’s aggressive demand for polit-
ical upheaval to portray the
members of his Alianza País move-
ment as “the most extreme ele-
ment of the left... who want
policies focused on improving
political and economic ties with
the United States and using his
wealth to encourage investment.
Correa responded to Noboa’s
challenge, and to flagging poll
numbers, by adapting his tactics
and tempering his more radical
instincts. The native of Guayaquil,
who was virtually unknown prior
to his four-month spell as economy
minister in 2005, started compet-

30 VILLAGE | 7-13 DECEMBER 2006

ing with Noboa for the role of
benefactor, pledging jobs and hous-
es alongside his proposed political
reform.
With his good looks, forceful
charisma and eloquence, Correa
looked every bit the natural cam-
paigner. As the more awkward
Noboa – who had already lost in
the second round of presidential
elections in 1998 and 2002 – began
to see his lead slipping, he visibly
panicked, scaring voters with his
increasingly dramatic claim to be
“God’s candidate”.
Correa, who was already politi-
cally dominant in the sierra high-
land region, also managed a
reasonable performance along the
coast, usually the stronghold of
Noboa.
After victory
The scale of Correa’s win has qui-
etened concerns that the loser
would first refuse to accept the
voters’ verdict, then lead a divi-
sive campaign resembling Andrés
Manuel López Obrador’s in Mexi-
co. However, the president-elect’s
four-year tenure, which begins on
15 January 2007, promises to be
anything but smooth.
Early results from the second
round showed that up to 10 per
cent of votes had been spoiled by
Ecuadorian voters who refused to
sponsor either of two populists
from opposite ends of the political
spectrum. Correa’s relatively low
first-round vote – about 23 per cent
– showed that even if he turned out
to be the eventual winner, he
would not have the majority of
the country behind him the way
Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez did when
he registered his 1998 landslide.
In addition, Correa’s entire cam-
paign has played on his credentials
as a nationalist, anti-establishment
outsider. “Ninety-five per cent of
Ecuadorians say that they don’t
feel represented by congress,” he
said during the campaign, “and if
you accept that our congress is
supposedly the highest represen-
tative of a democracy and yet does-
n’t represent anybody, then
Ecuador needs a profound reform.”
In Correa’s plan, that proposed
reform would start with a referen-
dum seeking the approval of the
establishment of a constituent
assembly made up of ordinary cit-
izens, which would draw up a new
constitution. This idea, which crit-
ics say is unconstitutional, is the
centrepiece of the “civic revolu-
HUGO CHÁVEZ, FOR THE MOST PART, AVOIDED OPEN
INVOLVEMENT IN ECUADOR’S ELECTION CAMPAIGN.
HE MAY HAVE LEARNED FROM THE WAY HIS
MEDDLING IN PERU AND MEXICO TURNED SOME
VOTERS AGAINST HIS ANOINTED CANDIDATES
tion” that Correa has promised.
Throughout his campaign, Cor-
rea reinforced his image as the
enemy of the corrupt oligarchy
by swinging his belt above his
head and shouting “Give ’em the
lash!” (Correa means “belt”.) But
more riskily – or foolishly, accord-
ing to sceptics – he has backed up
his anti-establishment rhetoric by
refusing to present a single candi-
date for congress. Correa’s presi-
dency, therefore, will depend
enormously on his ability to
mobilise the general populace.
One group whose support Cor-
rea will undoubtedly need is the
traditionally leftist indigenous
movement. Correa, a mixed-blood
mestizo who speaks Quechua, the
Indian language, was nearly cho-
sen as the candidate of the indige-
nous party Pachakutik, but fell
out with senior Indian figures prior
to the first round. However, his
overtly left-wing stance – a clear
contrast with Noboa’s conserva-
tive, tycoon status – made him the
obvious candidate for the Indians
to back in the run-off.
This gives him a formidable ally.
Intense but relatively peaceful
protests led by Indians in the cap-
ital, Quito, helped to unseat two
recent Ecuadorian presidents, Jamil
Mahuad (2000) and Lucio Gutiérrez
(2005). But the power of Ecuador’s
indigenous movement is limited to
a great extent to preventing policy
through protest, rather than shap-
ing it through debate. Indians
make up over 40 per cent of the
population, but Pachakutik has
only a handful of deputies in con-
gress and an Indian has never been
head of state or government.
“We’re still one of the country’s
main forces. But since [Ecuador’s
Indian confederation] was created
in 1986 we haven’t managed to
build a lasting political platform,”
one indigenous leader, Auki Titu-
aña, told Spain’s El País newspaper.
The Indians’ closest brush with
power came during the govern-
ment of Lucio Gutiérrez, a former
army officer and coup leader
whose rebellious credentials
masked a deeply conservative
streak and who fell out with
Pachakutik a few months into his
short-lived term. The indigenous
movement will therefore be wary
of this latest non-Indian maver-
ick, but nonetheless is likely to
give him the benefit of the doubt.
Andean faultline
Correa’s relations with the US are
likely to be more strained. In addi-
tion to openly mulling a default on
the country’s $11m foreign public
debt, the incoming president has
made three pledges that more or
less explicitly challenge US inter-
ests in the country: to close the US
military base in Manta on
Ecuador’s coast, to refuse to sign a
bilateral trade deal and to reduce
the profits of international energy
firms operating in the oil-rich Ama-
zon region.
No wonder, then, that news of
Correa’s victory spooked Wall
Street and led to a sharp decline in
the country’s bonds. The disdain of
Correa (who studied economics at
the University of Illinois) for the
effects of the so-called Washington
Consensus of the 1990s, is overt; he
has frequently attacked what he
calls “the long dark night of neo-lib-
eralism”, scorned the IMF as “an
incompetent and arrogant bureau-
cracy”, and called George Bush
“tremendously dim-witted”.
If it is sustained, this kind of dis-
course is likely to place an Ecuador
led by Rafael Correa in the compa-
ny of the region’s more radical
leftwing administrations (such as
Venezuela and Bolivia) rather than
the more moderate, social-demo-
cratic ones (such as Brazil and
Chile).
Hugo Chávez for the most part
avoided open involvement in
Ecuador’s election campaign –
though he labelled Noboa “an
exploiter of child labour”, while
Correa, who has visited Chávez’s
home, claimed him as a friend.
The Venezuelan leader, fresh from
seeing his Nicaraguan ally Daniel
Ortega triumph in elections there
on 5 November, may have learned
from the way his meddling in Peru
and Mexico turned some voters
against his anointed candidates.
Ecuador’s president-elect has
staked his political career on
destroying a corrupt, unpopular –
but powerful – system, so taking a
moderate approach is not a viable
option for him. His first cabinet
appointments would appear to
bear this out, with several radical
intellectuals already named in key
posts. Moreover, his lack of allies in
congress – where the largest blocs
are those loyal to Noboa and
Gutiérrez – may further encourage
him to bypass established institu-
tions and set a bold course. π
© opendemocracy.net
7-13 DECEMBER 2006 | VILLAGE 31
 Village map: the state of the world
THE UK
Blair backs Trident renewal
Tony Blair told MPs
THE US it would be
Senate panel approves Gates “unwise and
A US Senate panel dangerous” for the
approved Robert Gates UK to give up its
(pictured) as the new nuclear weapons.
defence secretary to He outlined plans
replace Donald Rumsfeld to spend up to £20bn on a new generation
(who urged “a major of submarines for Trident missiles. He said
adjustment” in Iraq tactics the number of nuclear warheads would be
in a classified memo). cut by 20 per cent.
Gates, a former member
of the Iraq Study Group, said the US was not
winning in Iraq and urged contact with Iran
and Syria. Meanwhile the US’s abrasive UN
envoy, John Bolton, is to quit.

LEBANON
VENEZUELA
Army presence increased
Chavez hints at further term The Lebanese
President Hugo authorities
Chavez (pictured) won increased the army
a third term in office, and police
defeating rival Manuel presence in Beirut
Rosales. In a marked as protests against
softening of tone, the the Western-backed government continued,
US said: “We do not with hundreds camping outside the office of
want a relationship of confrontation.” Chavez anti-Syrian PM Fouad Siniora. Hundreds
said: “It’s another defeat for the devil, who attended the funeral of a protester who was
tries to dominate the world.” Chavez has shot dead.
suggested constitutional change to allow
him a fourth term.

Why does this map look strange?

Dr Arno Peters
Creator of the Peters
Projection

We have chosen to use

the Peters Projection, DR CONGO
an area-accurate projection of the world Mass grave found
map devised by the late German
A mass grave with
historian and cartographer, Dr Arno more than 30 men,
Peters. The Peters Projection portrays a women and
more accurate picture of the children who had
proportions of the under-developed been tortured, was
southern world compared with those of found at a military
the developed north, as projected for base. News of the
grave came from two soldiers now under UN
centuries in Gerard Mercator’s 16th-
protection. Among four arrested were senior
century “conformal” projection, which Congolese officers. The killings came
was designed to facilitate western- between the first and second rounds of DR
driven navigation and trade. Mercator is Congo’s recent historic elections.
still useful to seafarers and pilots
because of its straight lines of constant
compass bearings.

EDITED BY DAVID SHANKS

32 VILLAGE | 7-13 DECEMBER 2006

 IRAQ
Shia leader upholds Baghdad role
Amid signs of a US policy AFGHANISTAN
shift, one of Iraq’s most US report rubbishes police
powerful Shia leaders, Afghanistan’s police
Abdel Aziz al-Hakim force is incapable of
(pictured), told President carrying out routine law
George Bush he was enforcement duties, a
opposed to any foreign move to solve Iraq’s US government report
problems that bypassed the Baghdad said. The report blamed
government. Arguing against dependence on corruption, illiteracy, low
the US, Iraq’s deputy PM urged approaching pay, bad equipment, the
Iran and Syria for help. At least 150 people, insurgency and failings
including 13 US soldiers, were killed. in a $1bn training programme run by US
private contractors.

PAKISTAN
Musharraf offers Kashmir pullout
President Pervez
Musharraf suggested
Pakistan would give up
its claim over disputed
Kashmir if India accepted
his peace proposals. Gen
Musharraf called for a
phased withdrawal of
troops and self-governance for Kashmiris.
India responded, saying its position was that
the map could not be redrawn but borders
could be made irrelevant.

IRAN
Holocaust conference planned
More than 60 researchers VIETNAM
from 30 countries will
attend a controversial Hurricane leaves Philippines
conference on the Tropical Storm
Holocaust, starting on Durian, which
Monday 11 December. A killed an
Tehran minister said this estimated
was a response to the lack of answers to 1,000 people
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s assertion in the
that the Holocaust was a myth. He added: Philippines, hit Vietnam, killing at least 37
“And if it happened, why should the people. It swept away fishing boats,
Palestinians pay for this?” destroying houses and toppled power lines.

ISRAEL
Zionists complain about teaching truth
FIJI
Israel’s left-wing
education minister Australia stays out of coup
evoked a storm of The military chief
criticism from seized control as
Zionists by saying Australia and New
school textbooks Zealand refused
should show appeals for help
Israel’s pre-1967 borders. Meanwhile from the ousted
Palestinian Hamas PM Ismail Haniya PM Laisenia
(pictured) said in Doha that Qatar had agreed Qarase. Cmdr Frank Bainimarama (pictured)
to pay the salaries of 40,000 Palestinian had opposed a proposed amnesty to those
education workers for several months at a responsible for a 2000 coup and accused the
cost of more than $22m a month. PM of corruption. “What the military has
done is raped our constitution,” Qarase said.

7-13 DECEMBER 2006 | VILLAGE 33

China’s
Great Wall
in ruins
As the Chinese government finally introduces regulations to
protect its Great Wall, Jim Yardley visits China to discover
vast tracts of the centuries-old landmark no longer exist and
other sections are crumbling away

T
he Great Wall of
China was up there,
above the treetops,
hidden from view as
our small group fol-
lowed our guide, Yan Xinqiang,
up a narrow, rutted trail toward
a remote section of the wall
known as Jiankou. At 61, Yan is
old enough to be a grandfather
but he practically skipped with
excitement as we approached
this relatively remote section –
part of what is known as the
Wild Wall.
We had driven almost three
hours north of Beijing, parked in
a small farming village and
walked uphill for more than an
hour until we finally reached
the spine of the Great Wall.
The view was breathtaking, way. But now it has all crum-
but there is one notable problem: bled.”
the Great Wall is falling apart. Jiankou is just one of many
For the next few hours, Yan, a places suffering – at the Jinshan-
wall enthusiast, showed us ling section, some watchtowers,
where vandals have pilfered including one named Yao Gou
bricks or stones. In many stretch- Lou, are falling apart.
es, small trees and bushes had But the Great Wall is not just
pushed through the wall’s stone crumbling. It is disappearing.
flooring. In another spot, the Roughly half of the estimated
flooring had simply vanished: a 6,400km of wall built during the
rusted metal ladder, installed to Ming Dynasty no longer exists,
help navigate one potentially according to a recent report.
fatal descent, hung precariously It is also regularly being
in the air. abused. Recently, a company was
“When I was here a few years fined about $50,000 for build-
ago, it was in pretty good shape,” ing a road through a section of
said Yan, as he stood in the col- the Ming-era wall in Inner Mon- tourists visited the wall last year,
lapsed archway of an ancient golia. Last year, the police broke more than double the six million
watchtower. “I have a picture of up a huge dance party on top of of a decade ago, according to the
myself standing here in the door- the wall a few hours’ drive out- Great Wall Society, a non-profit
side Beijing. group of wall enthusiasts.
BOTH PICTURES BY CHANG W. LEE/THE NEW YORK TIMES

The Chinese government The biggest attractions outside

introduced the first national reg-
ulations to protect the wall on 1
December. Anyone who defaces
the wall with graffiti, removes
bricks or organizes events atop
sections not open to tourists will
face stiff fines and possible crim-
inal penalties.
The wall’s most inescapable
problem is the burden caused
by its growing popularity. Nation-
ally, an estimated 13 million
The wall’s greatest problem
is its popularity – 13 million
tourist visited last year
Beijing continue to be Badaling
and Mutianyu, each with long
sections of restored wall. Badal-
ing, a favorite photo-op for visit-
ing presidents, had 4.5 million
tourists last year.
But a growing number of Chi-
nese tourists are looking for a dif-
ferent experience on the Wild
Wall. This appetite for new des-
tinations and outdoor experi-
ences is transforming the
mountainous northern outskirts
of Beijing, where there is about
640km of wall, according to one
survey.

34 VILLAGE | 7-13 DECEMBER 2006


Weekenders are pouring out of
the city to escape noise and pol-
lution. In the city, outdoor shops
are selling hiking and camping
gear, while the great leap in car
ownership means people can
more easily visit remote areas.
The Great Wall, built to keep out
Mughals and other marauders, is
now under siege from the coun-
try’s own increasingly affluent
people.
Deterioration, to a degree, was
inevitable, given that construc-
tion of the wall ended in 1644
with the collapse of the Ming
Dynasty. The Ming wall was the
last of 16 built by different dynas-
ties -- a reminder that there is no
such thing as a single Great Wall
but, rather, a succession of walls.
By one estimate, these walls col-
lectively would stretch 50,000km
were they all still standing.
In the first half of the 20th
century, the wall suffered during
a protracted war against Japan, as
well as during the Chinese civil
war. But the Communist Party’s
ascension to power in 1949
marked a period of serious
decline.
Mao regarded the wall and
many other historical relics as
remnants of China’s feudal past.
Farmers were encouraged to use
bricks to build homes. An entire
reservoir outside Beijing was
built from bricks and stones
taken from the wall.
“The worst destruction came
during the 1950s through the
1970s,” said Dong Yaohui, head
of the Great Wall Society. “There
THE GOVERNMENT
ENCOURAGED
PEOPLE TO TAKE
BRICKS... THEY
THOUGHT THE
GREAT WALL WAS
ABSOLUTELY
USELESS.
was absolutely no protection.
And the government encouraged
people to take bricks. They did-
n’t know about tourism. They
thought the Great Wall was
absolutely useless.”
Today, the new national regu-
lations are part of a government
effort to improve protection. Offi-
cials concede they still do not
truly know how much of the
wall remains intact. This year,
researchers launched a long-term
project to determine the length
and location of the wall by using
satellites and other technology.
For now, though, the most pas-
sionate protectors of the wall
are people like Yan. He began
visiting the wall outside the city
in 1984 as part of an effort to
cheer up his six-year-old son.
“My wife went to America to
study and I needed a way to
make my son happy, so we went
to the wall and walked,” he said.
“There was no one up there, not
even villagers. We would sleep in
the watchtowers.”
His son lost interest after high
school, but Yan had found his
passion. He now makes regular
trips to different parts of the
wall photographing crumbling
watchtowers for evidence that he
can use to spur local officials
into action.
“They say there is only so
much they can do because they
don’t have enough money,” Yan
said. “Their attitude is that as
long as we have a few tourist
sections on the Great Wall that
we can protect, that is enough.”
We followed Yan for hours as
he navigated the uncertain foot-
ing atop the wall with the agili-
ty of a mountain goat. At one
point, we stumbled upon three
young men in full camping
regalia who greeted him like a
favorite uncle. They were among
about 100 people who had con-
nected via the internet because
of their shared interest in the
wall. They were camping out
together to celebrate the group’s
sixth anniversary.
“Our motto is, ‘Love the Great
Wall, Protect the Great Wall,’”
said Lian Da, who had come from
the coastal city of Dalian. “The
Great Wall is being ruined. The
purpose of our group is to photo-
graph it before it falls apart.”
Yan planned to join the
campers the next day for their
celebration. But first he led our
small group off the wall and onto
another trail through the woods.
This trail led to the weekend get-
away house of William Linde-
say, an excitable Briton who is a
leading foreign expert on the
wall and the director general of
the International Friends of the
Great Wall.
Lindesay is staging an exhibi-
tion on 6 December at Beijing’s
Capital Museum that compares
historic and contemporary pho-
tographs of different locations of
the wall to show how much has
been lost. He is still confident
that much of the wall can be
saved, but he notes with sadness
that many current maps of China
no longer include the wall, pre-
sumably because so much of it
has disappeared.
“There is great hope from peo-
ple who live near the wall, and
from experts who study it, that
the Great Wall can be recovered,”
Lindesay said. “It had a bad cen-
tury in the 20th century.”
© New York Times
7-13 DECEMBER 2006 | VILLAGE 35
MEDIA ^Website www.villagemagazine.ie

TELEVISION / MAGGIE KENNEALLY

DAVID SLEATOR/IRISH TIMES

Prime Time
packs a punch
^^ The power of Prime Time Investigates is that
it forces the government to respond to issues
such as care of the elderly and, more recently,
mental-health facilities for young people

T
he Prime Time Investi- Tom O’Malley, the minister for
gates special on Monday state with responsibility for men-
4 December on mental- tal health appeared on the pro-
health facilities for young gramme and, in response to
people was a powerful piece of questions about the waiting time
television. All the more so because for even an initial consultation
of the cooperation of families who on mental health – waiting times
have been ignored by the state in in some instance of up to four
the face of desperate need. years – he inferred that such sta-
A young five-year-old, Jordan, tistics were manipulated by ego-
was seen kicking, screaming maniacal psychiatrists who
obscenities, convulsed in a tur- gloried in the number of patients The parents of a boy with ADD spoke of a year’s wait for
moil of disturbance to the distrac- on their waiting lists. diagnosis, the prescription of a pill but no therapy
tion of his obviously caring Aside from the insult this con-
parents. At one calm moment, Jor- veyed to psychiatrists, it under- byword for neglect, dilapidation, not for the Prime Time report on
dan spoke with chilling insight scored the public indifference to indeed the abuse of its adult and Leas Cross. And the terrible reali-
about his condition. “Its like some- mental health, including the men- child inmates – and in saying this ty is not that these exposés alert
one is controlling me, like a robot. tal health of children. That some- I am not inferring the nurses and the authorities to what is happen-
A robot that can’t con- one of this calibre other professionals who tried to ing and to the need for action.
trol itself. I can’t stop
Prime Time has should be left with do their best were at fault, rather The authorities – ie the HSE and
it.” become a force. responsibility for this the likes of Tim O’Malley and the Department of Health and
His parents spoke One wonders area says all that those he represents. Children – know full well what is
of a year’s wait for what further needs to be said about Some of these children had going on. They knew everything
diagnosis, the pre- miseries old government concern. tried to commit suicide, so miser- that needed to be known about
scription of a pill but The programme able is their lives. Miserable in Leas Cross but did nothing about
no therapy, no help,
people would went on to feature large part because of yet another it. They knew, and know, about
no relief. The experts have had to others who had been abject failure by the state author- the scandalous inadequacies of
on the programme endure were it neglected scandalous- ities to take the elementary the mental-health services for chil-
spoke of how this con- not for its ly by the health serv- means of redress. Actually, not dren and do nothing. The power
dition, Attention report on Leas ices, including a poor just failure, indifference. of Prime Time is that it forces them
Deficit Disorder Cross man, Darragh, who It is blindingly obvious by now to respond.
(ADD), can be handled at the age of 15 was that this government (any gov- A reviewer is disposed to forgive
if caught in the early stages. But told he was not wanted anymore. ernment?) could hardly care less RTÉ a lot in light of a programme
they also spoke of the paucity of He had got involved in drugs and about children, in spite of all the like that Prime Time Investigates , but
the public resources available to crime, spent some time in prison posturing, the promises of consti- just one observation. Why base a
deal with it. and is now on the streets of tutional amendments, the lower- programme on the systematic
The programme said teachers Dublin. Had he been given the ing of the age of consent, etc, etc. humiliation of young people? That
had revealed that three-quarters of treatment required when he was At every turn, when it comes to is at the core of You’re a Star. It is
all classes are disturbed by children a child, he could have been spared taking hard decision on the allo- not everything the programme
with mental-health problems. That that misery. cation of resources children lose is about but it is intrinsic to it.
one in 20 children in schools had Another child was forced to out. Why is that ok?
been diagnosed as having men- spend four months in a general Prime Time has become a force.
tal-health problems and at least a ward of the psychiatric hospital in One wonders what further mis- Prime Time Investigates
similar proportion had undiag- Ardee. Jackie who was consigned, eries old people in nursing homes RTÉ One, Monday, 9.30pm
nosed mental-health problems. as a child, to St Kevin’s in Cork, a would have had to endure were it

7-13 DECEMBER 2006 | VILLAGE 37

MEDIA
RADIO / S ARA
Feelgood radio at its finest
L
istening to the three differ-
ent accounts on Bowman
Sunday Morning (RTÉ
Radio 1, Sunday 8.10am)
of Ronnie Delany running the
1,500m race on 1 December 1956
in the Melbourne Olympics was
good for the spirit.
The first account was from an
unenthusiastic Australian race
commentator who hardly men-
tioned Delany.
The second was the BBC
version which was heard by peo-
ple all over the country who
tuned into their radios in the
pre-dawn silence of grim 1950s
Ireland, holding their breaths
for the epic moment of an Irish
gold medal in athletics.
The third version was Delany on
Tonight with Vincent Browne giving a
most astute, honest account of
NEWSPAPER WATCH / C
Schooling in statistical illiteracy
I
t is grimly ironic that the long-
running debates in the media
about university fees, school
league tables and the relative
merits of private education have
been conducted through interpre-
tations of statistical evidence which
are riddled with the most elemen-
tary errors. On Monday 4 Decem-
ber, the Irish Independent published
the figures for university enrol-
ment in 2006, which revealed,
once again, the class divide in edu-
cation. Although only about 10
per cent of pupils attended fee-
paying schools, they made up 25
per cent of university admissions.
This imbalance has been per-
sistently used to argue for the re-
introduction of third-level fees.
For example, in March 2006, the
Independent summarised an OECD
report which argued, “Fees are
fairer since most benefits of third-
level education accrue to the indi-
38 VILLAGE | 7-13 DECEMBER 2006
B URKE
his momentous three-minute-41-
second victory.
It was the first Olympics after
the breaking of the four-minute
mile. Delany describes how he
was terrified at the start line, how
“you pray a lot to God for the abil-
ity to perform to the best of your
ability, you pray to your own
saints”. Delany prayed to Mary
and had his rosary beads and holy
water with him, not on his person
but in his kit bag.
The first two laps were fast and
comfortable. There were 12 run-
ners in a six-yard space. The
favourite, John Landy, was up
front. The bell-ringer forgot to
ring the last lap bell.
Delany held off but, with 80
yards and three runners to go, he
“kicked” – he made his spurt – and
then: “I knew, I knew I was going
vidual and most students come
from higher-income back-
grounds.” In August 2006, the Sun-
day Independent claimed. “The
abolition of third-level fees has
failed to increase access to univer-
sity in economically-disadvantaged
areas.” In order to assess such
claims, it would be necessary to
School league tables ‘rest on shaky ground’
to win the Olympics... You physi-
cally feel so strong and there’s no
one going to pass you. Five metres
from the tape, you throw your
arms up. I felt instantly I had to say
thank you to God, so I knelt down
and said a prayer in front of
120,000 people.
“It was so natural for me to do
that, it was so instinctive. I said,
“I thank God for this gift, for
winning this Olympics, for
achieving it’.”
Such material makes Bowman’s
rummaging through the RTÉ
archives worth listening to.
The first half of the programme
was material on Peter Kennedy,
one of Ireland’s great recorders
of traditional music. His
fascinating accounts of chasing
music-playing Travellers around
the Blue Stack mountains and Delany on his knees in prayer
HEKOV F EENEY
compare admission statistics in sion statistics have been mobilised
periods before and after the aboli- is as a means of measuring the
tion of fees, something which none quality of schools. The article in
of these articles do. If they did, the Independent which accompa-
they would find that the exact nied the figures for 2006 claimed
opposite is true – university admis- that they proved that “parents
sions have become less imbalanced who fork out heavily for second-
since the abolition of fees. level education increase their chil-
Another area in which admis- dren’s chances of getting into
university”. Pupils at private
ERIC LUKE / THE IRISH TIMES
schools are not a representative
sample of the population – they
are disproportionately wealthy
and have a disproportionate lack
of learning disabilities, amongst
other sampling biases which ren-
der simplistic comparisons
invalid. There is actually surpris-
ingly little evidence to suggest
that this section of the population
would do any worse if they were
sent to public schools.
School league tables rest on sim-
ilarly shaky ground. The Sunday
Times produces a ranking based

rural Ireland trying to record their
Irish ballads on tin whistles and
fiddles bring listeners in
2006 to another era, worth
remembering.
Another Sunday radio
programme that brings listeners
back in time is O’Brien On Song
(RTÉ Radio 1, Sunday, 7.02pm).
Jack O’Brien’s voice caresses as
much as the music. He assumes all
listeners have his knowledge of
music, he tells the stories of the
songs, he speaks about the singers,
writers and players as if they were
household names.
He introduces beguiling, natu-
ral, effortless sopranos, provides
glimpses into the salons of London
and the soirées of the nobility in
the late 19th century, worships
duets from 1700 and encourages
listeners to sit back and relish
arias from Don Giovanni by Mozart.
It is faultless, soothing, beautiful
radio.
Both programmes provide that
rare treat of feelgood, goosebump
radio that should be available on
loop as a tonic.π
upon the percentage of pupils in
each school that gains entry to
university. However, it is extreme-
ly difficult to say whether these fig-
ures are due to the quality of the
education provided by the school,
or whether they are simply down
to the school’s ability to select
pupils who are likely to do well
anyway. The Independent’s rank-
ing, based upon absolute numbers
of university admissions, is even
more obviously flawed. Blackrock
College is ranked at number four,
while Jesus and Mary Secondary
School in Salthill is ranked at num-
ber 25, despite the fact that a high-
er percentage of pupils from the
latter gain access to university.
However, when it comes to
abuse of university admission sta-
tistics, the winner of the gold star
is an article which appeared in
the Sunday Times on 5 November
2006, entitled “The brainiest chil-
dren come from Ranelagh”. The
fact that Ranelagh-based schools
draw their pupils from a wide
catchment area is just the most
obvious reason among many why
the article’s headline claim is com-
pletely idiotic.π
HARRY
BROWNE
MEEJIT
It’s only a theory
The Irish Independent made an
early Christmas gift to this col-
umn with its bizarre editorial
(30 November) on “conspiracy
theories”, wherein the newspa-
per intoned opaquely: “No fewer
than three news reports today fall
into that category.”
The confused editorial-writer
employed the usually dismissive
term “conspiracy theory”, but
also paused twice to admit that
the three conspiracies in question
– security-force collusion in loy-
alist killings, CIA “rendition”
flights through Europe, Russian
state involvement in poisoning
exiles – may be “more than mere
theories”. Well, indeed.
The first of these “theories” is
by now an established fact,
though its extent is mysterious;
the third awaits further infor-
mation; and the second isn’t a
theory at all – it’s a well-albeit-par-
tially-documented set of acknowl-
edged US operations. The EU
committee investigating the CIA
flights, the Indo said, “has its own
conspiracy theory”. Really? Has
it? What’s that then?
To throw the rendition flights
on to a pile of stories under
such a sceptics’ label is patent-
ly absurd.
I don’t, as it happens, think
this editorial was part of a clever
Tony O’Reilly conspiracy to con-
ceal politically-dangerous truths.
Frankly, it was too dopey for that.
It concluded: “Conspiracy theory
can also provide an easy and
quick outlet for anger directed at
targets that seem otherwise
invincible. That is the danger.
Even when we suspect the worst,
we must not allow conspiracy
theory turn into scapegoat theo-
ry.” Huh?
Consensual conspiracies
With the warning against dan-
gerous scapegoating of invincible
targets ringing in my ears, anoth-
er plausible conspiracy theory
^Website www.villagemagazine.ie
came to mind. Imagining myself
as a horny 15-year-old (a surpris-
ingly easy feat), I identified a
media conspiracy to portray sex
as an unparalleled source of
pleasure, power, intimacy, mys-
tery and mastery. But then the
conspiracy goes on to insist that
its inestimable gifts are avail-
able only to those who have
reached a certain, apparently
debatable age that falls some
years after puberty. Before that,
it’s nothing but trouble, and
should be illegal.
Now, my middle-aged self
doesn’t really think this wide-
spread sex-mythology is a con-
spiracy. The negative side of it is
mainly well-intentioned group-
think from people who are only
very slightly motivated by envy
of today’s sexually-active teens.
But it draws on such a deep well
of denial, ignorance and non-
sense, and makes such profound-
ly dubious claims, that I don’t
blame my 15-year-old-within for
his cynicism.
Mail sexuality
It’s no surprise that the Irish Mail,
fresh from its ridiculous but
steamy insertion of a reporter
“undercover” into the open Shell
to Sea campaign, and with its
British parent’s typical mix of
prurience and prudery, should be
the worst of a bad lot. It leapt
denouncingly on the proposal
that the age of consent should be
standardised at 16, with a front-
page headline pointing out that
you have to be 18 to smoke.
A dumb comparison? You
decide. Just remember that it is
not actually a criminal offence for
under-18s to smoke. Also recall
that smoking is an expensive,
unnatural, unhealthy addiction,
while sex, practised safely and
consensually, has the potential,
at least, to be precisely the oppo-
site in every respect.
Of course that doesn’t make it
necessarily a good practice for
any given young person in all
circumstances. But when pun-
dits line up – as some did on last
Sunday’s Marian Finucane pro-
gramme on RTÉ Radio 1 – to
warn direly about the horrible
and historically unprecedented
“early sexualisation” of today’s
young people, ask them to tell it
to Romeo and Juliet.
There’s nothing particularly
normal in the history of our
species about a gap of years dur-
ing which sex is biologically desir-
able but socially taboo and legally
forbidden. The fact that Ireland’s
age of consent remains among
the world’s highest says noth-
ing about sexual behaviour here,
and everything about the reality-
averse pseudo-moralism of our
political and media culture. The
sleazy populist opportunism of
the hysterical Mail-Fine-Gael axis,
even in “post-Catholic” Ireland,
is a reminder of how far we
haven’t come.
Below: Minister for Children
Brian Lenihan at the launch of
a report on the issues to be
considered when examining
the age of consent
DARA MACDONAILL / THE IRISH TIMES
7-13 DECEMBER 2006 | VILLAGE 39
40 VILLAGE | 7-13 DECEMBER 2006
W H I T E H E A T

Leo Enright

The Hubble,
only better
T
his improbable-looking spacecraft is designed
to replace the great Hubble Space Telescope in
the affections of a new generation of school-
children and astronomers around the world. It
is called the James Webb Space Telescope
(JWST), and because of a strong Irish involve-
ment in the project, it is to be the subject of a major interna-
tional scientific workshop next June at the Royal Hospital in
Kilmainham, Dublin.
The launch of the JWST, hopefully in 2013, will be a giant
step forward in the human quest to understand our place in
the universe. Its main telescope will view the sky in the
infrared wavelengths that we most commonly associate with
night-vision goggles; it will hope to detect the first faint
luminous glows of the earliest galaxies that formed after the
Big Bang.
In a sense, the JWST is a time In a sense, the
machine. By peering into the most JWST is a time
distant realms of space, it is observ-
ing objects that are very, very old.
machine. By
It should be powerful enough to peering into the
‘see’ objects 400 times fainter than most distant
those visible with Earth-based tel- realms of space it
escopes – potentially glimpsing is observing
objects 15 billion light-years away. objects that are
By contrast, the Hubble can see
objects 60 times fainter than those
very, very old
visible from earth.
The JWST will be more powerful than the Hubble in a num-
ber of ways. Its 6.5-meter-wide main mirror will have 10 times
the light-collecting power of the Hubble. It will also carry three
different types of cameras, all tuned to detect infrared light.
In contrast, the Hubble was equipped to capture mostly vis-
ible light and ultraviolet parts of the spectrum. (Another space
telescope – the less powerful Spitzer – already collects
infrared light but only has a 0.85-meter-wide mirror.)
However, capturing infrared light presents a unique set of
challenges. All objects emit infrared light as heat radiation –
including the space telescope itself. To keep the JWST’s own
heat radiation from interfering with its infrared imaging of
distant objects, the telescope will have to be supercooled to
an incredible minus 266ºC. The Hubble was only brought
down to 20ºC.
Powerful cooling systems will help the JWST to reach its
working temperature and a light shield the size of a tennis
court will unfold to hide the telescope from the light of the
sun.
The Irish team is led by Dr Tom Ray of the School of Cos-
mic Physics at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies.
Europe and the US have agreed to share in the development
of the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) that is at the heart of
the space telescope's powerful detector system.

7-13 DECEMBER 2006 | VILLAGE 41


VILLAGERS
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Automated anguish
Computer
says no to
booking
I have discovered the true
reason for our increased stress
levels: the automated phone
menu. The other day I
attempted to book a couple of
cinema tickets using a phone-
booking system. It was one of
the longest and most painful
discussions that I have ever had
with a machine.
After yes-ing and no-ing, and
up-ing and down-ing, I finally
reached the option to enter my
credit card number. I punched
in my number. The machine,
however, was in a terrible
mood.
It was like a “computer says
no” moment from the comedy
Little Britain. Due to a technical
fault – or bad humour – the
machine couldn’t book my
ticket. Instead it placed me in
the queue for a human
operator. My trouble was only
starting.
“You are number four in the
queue,” the machine said, in a
tone that made it clear I wasn’t
going anywhere. And I waited
and waited and waited.
Just before I hung up, a ray of
light: “You are number three.” I
dug deep into my vast reserves
of patience and held on in hope.
Still number three. Minutes
pass away. Then two. More
waiting and finally, one. I’m
next.
BRENDA FITZSIMONS / THE IRISH TIMES
Then shock horror: “Thank
you for holding, you are
number three in the queue”.
THREE? Evidently the machine
was in foul spirits. It is probably
on the minimum wage or has
had its pension changed.
Nonetheless, even machines
deserve a second chance, so I
persevered, chanting Hindu
mantras to keep my soul from
imploding. Finally, an operator,
a human being, and I began my
booking. But just as I gave my
credit card details, the call was
cut off (I suspect the machine).
My wife heard me screaming,
and I just held back from
thrashing the furniture. Oh the
pain, oh the anguish, and still
no film.
CIARÁN MAC AONGHUSA
Churchtown
Dublin 14
Opening up Croker
Ever higher
ticket prices,
but for what?
I am amazed at the increase by
over 32 per cent in the cheapest
tickets to see the soccer matches
which will be played at Croke
Park – they are now €50. The
GAA is a very wealthy
organisation and yet in our local
area children as young as eight
are doing sponsorship walks to
raise funds for tracksuits, etc.
Where is all this money going?
PAUL DORAN
Clondalkin
Dublin 22
azine.ie,
gers@villagemag azine, 44
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write to us at Vi 2 5001.
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Village retains th el.
for reasons of le
ngth or lib
New Ikea store
ALAN BETSON / THE IRISH TIMES
Thanks a billion: Ikea to
benefit from NRA cash
Why is our national roads other road users who have no
authority spending €1bn on
the M50 so that a foreign ‘flat
interest in the self-assembly of
magazine racks or designer
pack’ oversized furniture decking?
superstore can have a free KEITH NOLAN
driveway to its entrance and Carrick-on-Shannon,
cause severe congestion to Co Leitrim
Children’s hospital assertion that the closed-doors
‘task force’ which the HSE and
HSE inability Department of Health (and
Children!) set up to plan the
to plan is construction of a €500-700m
children’s hospital does not
shocking have even one clinical
paediatrician on it. Nor any
If you have led a sheltered life, representatives of the three
you may not be familiar with existing children’s hospitals –
the low-life critical assessment: the people who actually run
“They couldn’t organise a piss- children’s hospitals. They are
up in a brewery.” However, you now looking – urgently – for
would make the logical tenders and will award a
assumption that nobody would contract, preferably before the
try to plan the construction of a election, without consulting
multi-million euro brewery the people who will actually
without having a brewing have to work in the facility and
engineer on the planning team. care for the health and lives of
They would at least let a brewer our children and grandchildren.
look at their final plans. MAURICE O’CONNELL
You will, therefore, greet Tralee
with utter incredulity the Co Kerry
7-13 DECEMBER 2006 | VILLAGE 43
VILLAGERS
Éanna Ní Lamhna
‘Snap’ not so
satisfying for
poor mouse
How surprising and
disappointing to see Éanna Ní
Lamhna encouraging readers of
her nature column (Village, 30
November, below) to bait a trap
and wait for the “satisfying
snap” as a mouse’s neck or back
is broken.
Those seeking to evict
unwanted mice might instead
consider a compassionate
approach – a regularly checked
catch-and-release trap, for
example. Widely available in
hardware stores across the
country, these devices make it
unnecessary to kill what Mooney
Goes Wild hails as one of
Ireland’s most successful
mammals. Once caught, the
rodent can be relocated outside
(into a wooded area or meadow
ideally) and allowed to continue
living in nature.
Experts would agree that the
most effective way to keep mice
at bay is not to continually kill
them, but to mouse-proof your
house. This involves filling in
any exterior access points in
walls or around pipes (even
small, pencil-sized holes),
storing pet-food supplies and
garden seeds in sealed metal or
glass containers and ensuring
that bins are securely covered.
PHILIP KIERNAN
Mullingar, Co Westmeath
44 VILLAGE | 7-13 DECEMBER 2006
Anti social behaviour
Fine Gael out
of touch with
boot camps
Fine Gael’s proposed boot-camp
strategy sets the tone of things
to come. Fine Gael’s defence
spokesman Billy Timmins
(pictured above) has laid down a
marker with the election
looming. But is this a quest for
attention or a serious
consideration from the main
opposition? Or is it a knee-jerk
reaction to the current
government’s ASBO proposals?
A scenario whereby the
defence forces will be part of
the reform system in Ireland is
one of the most striking aspects
of this boot camp proposal.
Timmins confirmed on Monday
his plans and advised that the
defence forces “could be an
alternative for young juveniles
who would otherwise be
committed to prison for anti-
social behaviour or other minor
criminal behaviour”.
If, as Timmins advised, an
army-run disciplinary routine
was chosen as an alternative to
prison, then the values of
rehabilitation and
reconditioning would need to
be carried out in the same way.
But how could this be done
CYRIL BYRNE / THE IRISH TIMES
under a regime of oppressed
physical and mental duress?
The aggression associated
with boot camps, and inevitably
implemented by them, would
surely manifest in increased
levels of criminality. If a
breeding ground for aggressive
young adults is the aim, then
this is well-considered social
policy planning. It is likely the
aggressive activities of a boot
camp scenario would be
tempered by education and
psychological and emotional
counselling, but for what
reason would you need the
former when a focus on the
latter could be far more
resultant?
Boot camps were banned in
Florida in June of this year by
conservative governor Jeb Bush informants, it is reasonable to
after the death of 14-year-old
Martin Lee Anderson at the
hands of drill instructors. This is division for paramilitaries
only one example and there is
surely arguments for boot
camps that are convincing, but
if a conservative-run state in the has yet to be admitted.
US has outlawed boot camps,
can Fine Gael not see the
backward step they are
proposing? It must be
conceivable that Enda Kenny
and Billy Timmins could liase
with their policy-makers and
come up with something far
more sensible and humane.
BRIAN STRAHAN
Rush, Co Dublin
St Andrew’s Agreement
Time for
unionists to
share blame
Is Ian Paisley’s “abhorrence of
cohabitation with murderers of
one’s relatives and neighbours”
reasonable, when forces Paisley
supported did the same to Gerry
Adams’ relatives and
neighbours?
In the article, ‘Crossing the
Rubicon’ by Alan Murray, Village,
30 November, the IRA is
described as “engaged in [a]
campaign of murder and
atrocity”. In ‘I’m lucky to be
above the ground’, Village, 23
November, RUC constable John
Weir describes how he did the
same. He told his superiors, who
ignored him because they were
involved.
Johnston Brown’s RUC
memoir Into the Dark opens with
his savage beating from
colleagues for arresting UVF
members. RUC colleagues
nobbled raids on UVF arms
dumps. Loyalist ‘informants’
operated freely as assassins.
Brown’s recording of Ken
Barrett confessing to shooting
solicitor Pat Finucane was
sabotaged. Years later, Brown,
whose colleagues nicknamed
him a “proddy basher”, told the
Stevens Enquiry. After Barrett’s
second confession to BBC
reporter John Ware was
broadcast, he was convicted.
Since one in five were paid
assume that the RUC was an
officer-class and intelligence
devoid of direction toward any
goal other than the nearest
hated ‘taig’. British involvement
Ian Paisley habitually named
individuals as republican
“murderers” in Westminster. In
1999, SDLP leader Seamus
Mallon accused him of acting
with “the grossest
irresponsibility”, of putting the
individuals’ “lives, and the lives
of their families, at risk”.
Paisley accused Eugene
Reavey of setting up the 1975
Kingsmill massacre, when 10
Protestant civilians were shot
dead. In fact, Reavey was the
brother of two of five
nationalists shot the night
before by UVF-UDR assassins.
Paisley did not refer to this, or to
systematic and murderous
terror unleashed on nationalists
over a long period. He never
apologised for slandering
Reavey, whose Roman Catholic
brother died in hospital beside a
Protestant survivor Alan Black,
with who Reavey then became
friendly with.
The just-published Oireachtas
report noted “The [British]
secretary of state [thought it]
unfortunate that certain
elements in the police were very
close to the Ulster Volunteer
Force and prepared to hand
information to... Mr Paisley... the
army’s judgment was that the
UDR was heavily infiltrated by
extremist Protestants.”
‘Legitimate’ forces were partly
responsible for the 1974 Dublin
Monaghan bombings. Then
British ambassador, Arthur
Galsworthy noted, “The
predictable attempt by the IRA...
blame the British... has made no
headway”. Taoiseach Liam
Cosgrave blamed “everybody
who has practised or preached
violence”. The ambassador
Michael McDowell: doesn’t question the verbal assurances of the US administration on renditions
wrote: “It is only now that the
South has experienced violence
that they are reacting in the way
that the North has sought for so
long.” He told the Northern
Ireland Office, “It would be... a
psychological mistake for us to
rub this point in... I think the
Irish have taken the point.”
The Dail now appears to
accept that the bombings were
part of a campaign by Crown
Force. Perhaps history might
have been different had the
government accepted it then.
It may take longer for the
British to accept responsibility.
In 1972, 14 unarmed
nationalists were shot dead by
paratroopers in Derry. The event
was subject to two sworn
judicial enquiries. The findings
of the first were as significant an
impetus to IRA recruitment as
the shootings. The latest inquiry
began in April 1998 and is
expected to report in 2008. A
long time and a lot of money,
£270m, to hear what should be a
statement of the obvious.
“It would help greatly if the
DUP entered into direct talks
now with Sinn Féin.” It would
help if they were not given
spurious excuses for failing to
do so.
NIALL MEEHAN
Dublin 8
US use of Shannon
STATEMENT
Sycophantic
relationship
with the US
The sycophantic and craven
relationship that the Irish
government has with the
discredited current regime in the
White House was brought
sharply into focus with the
reactions in the Dáil to the EU
report on ‘extraordinary
rendition’ flights. Michael
McDowell seems to consider it a
Supporting
step too far to question the verbal
assurances on rendition from an single dads
administration which has
recently approved the use of Parental Equality is holding
coerced information in the a conference on Saturday 9
prosecution of alleged terrorist December. The conference
charges. This same is entitled ‘Sustaining and
administration which started a Supporting Single /
devastating war in Iraq based on Separated Fathers and their
false intelligence has since Children’. The event is
consistently undermined the being held in the family-
Geneva convention in its friendly Bellingham Castle
prosecution of this war. Hotel in Castlebellingham,
McDowell obviously considers Co Louth. This conference is
a bowl of shamrock a far more about sharing and reflecting
worthy cause than that of on statutory policies and
international law and respect for services, the life
human rights. experiences of fathers,
BARRY WALSH nurturing resources for
Blackrock, Cork fathers and their children
and, importantly, the
expertise of support groups
BRYAN O’BRIEN / THE IRISH TIMES
for fathers.
The recordings,
invitations,
correspondence and
presentations from the day
will subsequently be
broadcast and released as a
multimedia format DVD
which will be sent to each
delegate. Given the present
lack of research available
into men’s perspectives,
experiences, needs and
ideas around fatherhood,
this will form a valuable
resource toolkit for
effective work with fathers.
LIAM Ó GÓGÁÍN
Chairman, Parental Equality
∏ More For further details
on the conference
arrangements, contact Alan
Beirne on 087 7811218 or
visit www.parentalequality.ie
7-13 DECEMBER 2006 | VILLAGE 45
VILLAGERS ^Website www.villagemagazine.ie

Animal welfare perform in the ring, ie prods,

Awful plight
of circus
animals
Current media coverage of the
court proceedings relating to
the tragic death of a Galway
mother and daughter caused by
a detatched circus trailer has
highlighted once again the
appalling plight of circus
animals in this country.
Since the beginning of this
year, elephants and a plethora
of species have criss-crossed this
country in the cramped misery
of the circus-beast wagon. In
situ on sites, many of which are stimulation whatsoever that
totally unsuitable in terms of
size and condition, these
unfortunate animals endure the Dysfunctional behaviour is
most extreme confinement
imaginable. Elephants, for
example, are, as a matter of
course, chained to the ground
for long periods. Such is the
extent of their confinement and
the absence of any behavioural trained to perform the imbecilic Council, funding animal
these sociable and intelligent do in the ring we don’t know,
animals literally go mad.
clearly evident to anyone
bothering to go behind the
scenes of any of the seven
animal circuses touring this
country.
hooks and whips.
There can be little doubt that
the welfare of animals is
seriously compromised. Indeed
a study carried out on animals
in Irish circuses earlier this year
by the veterinarian Samantha
Lindley concluded that
unnecessary suffering, ie
cruelty, as defined by the
Protection of Animals Act,
occurs in circuses in Ireland.
Instead of addressing this
serious animal-welfare problem
by introducing a ban on the use
of animals in circuses (as a
number of other countries have
already done), this government
Just how these animals are is, shamefully, through the Arts
tricks which they are forced to circuses from the public purse. I
would urge all who are opposed
because no independent to animal abuse to make this an
observer has ever been allowed election issue when incumbent
to observe circus-training and aspiring politicians call to
routines. We do, however, get our doors.
some idea from the instruments NUALA DONLON
which are openly used to Spokesperson
encourage circus animals to Circus Watch Ireland

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46 VILLAGE | 7-13 DECEMBER 2006

BOOKS
Middle of the railroad
^^ A new biography of John Betjeman, the great
chronicler of the English middle classes, is a
judicious account of the late poet’s life, loves and
character. By Charles McGrath
The poetry of John
Betjeman is a little like
Marmite – a staple of
British life for which there
is no equivalent elsewhere,
and probably not much
appetite for it either. If you
didn’t grow up with the
stuff, it takes some getting
used to.
Betjeman, who died in
1984, was the great
chronicler of English
middle-classness. He wrote
about churches and
churchgoing, trains and
train stations, public
houses, seaside golf, pony
clubs, jolly girls playing
tennis and field hockey.
And he did so in verse so
clear and accessible, so old-
fashioned in rhyme and
metre, that it won him an
immense popular
audience. He was the
bestselling British poet
since Tennyson and in time
he became a beloved
television celebrity as well
– a balding, portly chap
with not very good teeth
who took his viewers on
tours of Victorian churches
and seaside piers. He was
once described as “looking
like a highly intelligent
muffin” and the shambling
appearance only added to
the appeal. He was revered
because he was both the
celebrant and the apparent
embodiment of an almost
vanished brand of
Englishness.
In his new biography, A
N Wilson compares
Betjeman’s popularity to
that of Princess Diana,
which seems way off the
mark. But even now, in the
centennial year of his birth,
Betjeman is a sufficiently
big deal in England. He
merited not only a
commemorative tea towel
but frontpage headlines
when early copies of
Wilson’s book turned out
to contain a purported love
letter from Betjeman that
was in fact an acrostic
hoax, with the first letter of
every sentence but the first
spelling out a scatological
insult to Wilson himself.
The perpetrator was
eventually revealed to be
Bevis Hillier, self-appointed
keeper of the Betjeman
flame and the author of a
three-volume biography,
which Wilson, famously
waspish, had trashed both
in public and in private.
Wilson’s book, the latest
to come off his seemingly
non-stop assembly line, is a
typically Wilsonian
product – swift, efficient COLLECTED
POEMS
and a little glib at times. It’s
not un-fond of its subject, By John Betjeman
Illustrated
but is more judicious in its Published by Farrar,
Straus & Giroux
claims than Hillier’s €19.10
overstuffed version and,
with access to some family
correspondence that Hillier
never saw, it’s more frank
and more gossipy about the
ironies and oddities of
Betjeman’s personal life.
To begin with, Betjeman,
far from being a man of the
people, was a climber and a
bit of a snob, who preferred
the company of the clever
and the well-born. In this
respect he resembled his BETJEMAN
friend and contemporary A LIFE
Evelyn Waugh, with whom By A N Wilson
Illustrated
he had a good deal else in Published by Farrar,
common – apparently Straus & Giroux
€20
including Betjeman’s wife,
7-13 DECEMBER 2006 | VILLAGE 47
 BOOKS
CHILDREN’S
BOOKS
TONY HICKEY
eter Regan’s series
P about the Under-
11s Riverside soccer
team based in Bray is one of
the most successful and
enduring series in modern
Irish publishing. The only
sad thing about Spring Fever,
the latest volume, is that it
may be the last for Jimmy,
the narrator, who is sitting
his Leaving Certificate and
will move into another
stage of his life.
However, shed no tears
for Jimmy just yet, because
Spring Fever is full of laughs
and thrills and sharp char-
acters and excellent dia-
logue that gives us a
wonderful, all-inclusive
view of life in Bray. Not
only does Peter Regan write
with all the skill of an
expert on soccer, but he
also demonstrates his
sharp, satiric touch in a
series of accurately-
observed details of the
adult world with which
Jimmy and his
RIVERSIDE: mates have to
SPRING FEVER cope. Jimmy’s
By Peter Regan
Dad is in
Illustrated by Terry Myler recovery from
Published by The his gambling
Children’s Press
€5.99 (ages 11+) addiction.
Jimmy’s sister,
to everyone’s amazement,
has got herself a fiancée.
Someone is stealing food
from the buffet of the Old
Bray Historical Society. Has
Victor accidentally filmed a
runaway building-society
robber? Will Little Hitler
scupper ther team’s
chances of success? What’s
the story of the fat man liv-
ing in the big house?
Brilliantly controlled pace
that encompasses an amaz-
ing number of plots in its
comparatively short length.
One for boys who think
they don’t like to read.
48 VILLAGE | 7-13 DECEMBER 2006
whom Waugh claimed to have died while on a pilgrimage to
slept with in the process of the Himalayas. But it was her
because of his religious
convictions, and at some
converting her to Roman 1947 conversion to level he remained attached to
Catholicism.
Waugh and Betjeman were
Catholicism (under Waugh’s
influence) that effectively
Chetwode. He made dutiful
visits to her while living on
both middleclass, ended the his own in a flat in London
though Waugh’s
Very little of marriage and by and enjoying a busy life – a
father, a Betjeman’s the early ’50s social climbers fantasy, really
publisher, was
more genteel
personal sorrow Betjeman had
makes its way into more or less
– with Elizabeth and her
circle, which included even
than Betjeman’s, the poetry, except permanently the royals. Betjeman was not
who had made transferred his without guilt over the pain
his money selling
in his recurring affections to these arrangements caused,
something called theme of yearning Lady Elizabeth but the person who suffered
the Tantalus – a and nostalgia for a Cavendish, most was Elizabeth, who not
drinks tray that simpler time sister of the only sacrificed her own
could be locked Duke of hopes of a family but wound
up to prevent the servants Devonshire, one of the richest up taking care of him during
from tippling and pilfering. men in England. a long decline when he
After unpromising careers at Divorce was out of the suffered from Parkinsons
prep school, both went to question for Betjeman, disease and bouts of
Oxford, where they slept with
boys before gradually making
the transition to women and
where they instinctively
gravitated to the smart set.
Both Waugh and Betjeman
dropped out of Oxford
without taking a degree, both
taught for a while –
disastrously – in dismal
secondary schools and both,
devoutly religious by this
point (Waugh a Catholic,
Betjeman staunchly Church of
England), found vocations as
writers. Betjeman, who had
always loved old buildings,
initially made his living and
his reputation writing for
Architectural Review and by 1933
he was sufficiently established
to marry Penelope Chetwode,
the pukka, horsey daughter of
the former commander of the
British Army in India. It was an
unlikely match from the start
and got weirder as it went on.
He called her Philth or
Propeller; she called him
Tewpie and all her life wrote
to him in imitation Cockney:
“Darlin Tewpie, oi AVE got
confidence in yer earnin and
writin powers, oi thinks yew
earns a tremendous lot boot oi
know it is in er soul-destroyin
way and that nearly arf is
removed in taxes.”
Chetwode was a premature
New Ager who studied
Sanskrit, flirted with
mysticism, turned the house
into an animal sanctuary and

depression and persecution
mania.
Very little of Betjeman’s
personal sorrow makes its
way into the poetry, except in
his recurring theme of
yearning and nostalgia for a
simpler time and in a
surprising number of poems
that are essentially fantasies
about being overpowered by
strapping young women.
Wilson writes, “If most of
Betjemans poems were suits,
you would say that they
needed at least two more
fittings at the tailors,” and
concludes that, of the
hundreds he wrote, only 30
are truly first-rate. That seems
a little on the generous side.
Betjeman’s taste in poetry
overlapped with his taste in
architecture: he had no use
for the modern. He was
actually a friend and former
prep-school pupil of TS Eliot
but he turned his back on
Eliot’s revolution and clung
instead to the model of the
Victorian poets who had
shaped him in his youth. To
contemporary ears much of
his work sounds a little quaint
and tinkly, like the old music
hall songs he loved so much:
Beside those spires so spick and
span
Against an unencumbered sky
The old Great Western Railway
ran
When someone different was I.
To coincide with the
publication of Wilson’s
biography, Farrar, Straus &
Giroux is bringing out
Betjemans Collected Poems.
Wandering around in this
hefty volume is a little like
inspecting one of those great
Victorian railway hotels he
was always campaigning to
save. You cant help marvelling
that people once built edifices
like this and noting that,
though you might not want to
stay in one yourself, for
generations of edified
travellers they had an appeal
that the modern equivalent –
spare, modest, virtually
without ornament – can
seldom match.
© New York Times
EDWARD O’HARE
BOOK NOTES:
INSIDER NEWS
MEMORIES OF THE
MISUNDERSTOOD
In his spoof memoir of an Irish-speaking
peasant, The Poor Mouth, Flann O’Brien
hilariously sent up the clichés common to such
books by endlessly repeating
the three words – ‘rain’,
‘potatoes’ and ‘eternity’ – like
some kind of demented
primeval chant. When it
comes to writing gloomy
and despairing personal
histories the Irish are
certainly the masters of the
art. The tendency of all Irish
autobiographies to be
unbearably depressing
made the gigantic
poularity of Hugo
Hamilton’s The Speckled
People even more of a surprise
than it should have been. This week, The Sailor in
the Wardrobe, Hamilton’s follow up, appears in
paperback for the first time. Hamilton’s past is an
impossibly tangled business. In The Speckled
People he recalled how he lived the childhood of
the ultimate outsider. Raised by his fanatically
nationalistic Irish-speaking father and guilt-ridden
German mother, Hamilton was misunderstood by
the Dublin community of the 1950s. The Sailor in
the Wardrobe finds him 10 years older but still
damaged and facing the same problems. The
unbearable weight of history has been passed on
and The Sailor in the Wardrobe is the story of how
Hamilton found ways to escape the sadness and
insecurity that blighted his parents lives.
LITTLE WONDERS
Booknotes sympathises with all you parents who try
to find a little space for a book or two amidst all the
designer clothes, DVDs, credit
cards and BMWs your children
want for christmas. Though it
seems they stand no chance
of competing with the latest
blood-splattered computer
game and will be swallowed
by a sea of torn wrapping
paper, books often outlive
the tacky frenzy of
Christmas day. But which is
the one for your beloved
little torment? Booknotes
would not dream of
sending you out into the mayhem
of Christmas shopping without offering some
^Website www.villagemagazine.ie
recommendations. Those
aged over eight might enjoy
The Horrible History of the
World by Terry Deary. This is a
compilation of the best of
Deary’s hugely sucessful
series which looks at colourful
characters from ancient and
modern history. Deary has
perfected a deliciously dry
sense of humour and his
hilariously illustrated
introductions to each historical
era may ignite a love of the past which will benefit
any child in the future. Children a little older might
consider Alone on a Wide, Wide Sea by Michael
Morpugo. Morpugo has spent a lifetime writing
perfectly crafted fiction for children and can always
be relied upon for his original, thought-provoking
stories.
THE ROAD TO NOWHERE
Many writers have destroyed the world. From
Nevil Shute to HG Wells to John Wyndham, the
possibilities of creating global annihilation in
print have proven irresistible for
conscientious imaginations
keen to illustrate the
awesome threat of
technology. The latest author
to take his readers on a tour
of the valley of the shadow of
death is Cormac McCarthy in
his new novel The Road.
McCarthy’s more recent books,
including No Country for Old
Men and The Outer Dark,
suggested the authors growing
concern about the fragility of
our species but in The Road he
addresses this directly. The Road
begins with the seemingly ordinary story of a father
and son as they undertake a journey accross the
United States to the coast. As the tale unfolds it
becomes clear that devastation on an
unimaginable scale has occurred. Every sign of
civilization has gone and bands of cannibalistic sub-
humans threaten the few survivors. With critics
analyzing just about every film, TV series and novel
for its post-9/11 subtext, McCarthy’s book is bound
to receive a similar interpretation. This would
underestimate a novel which paints a compelling if
terrifying picture of the twilight of
humanity. Of the many works of fiction
released this year this is one we should
all take note of.
7-13 DECEMBER 2006 | VILLAGE 49

BOOKS
Heavy hand
Michael Frayn may have weaved particle physics into a riveting
drama but in The Human Touch he gets bogged down in trying to
explain ‘life, the universe, and everything’, says Max McGuinness
Most philosophers cannot write.
The philosophical world is
divided into two intractable
camps, each equally unreadable.
On the one hand, followers of
the likes of Adorno and Derrida
celebrate high-flown opacity; on
the other, earnest logicians
combine complex formulae
with lifeless, technical prose.
If anyone can transcend this
stylistic quagmire, it is
playwright and novelist Michael
Frayn.
Frayn’s last two plays,
Copenhagen and Democracy,
conjured riveting drama out of
wilfully dull topics: particle
physics and German coalition
politics. Frayn’s philosophical
credentials are pretty sound too
– he studied the subject at
Cambridge and spent his early
years as a columnist at the
Guardian constructing endless
Wittgensteinian puns.
Frayn addresses the challenge
of reclaiming philosophy for
clear, clean, Orwellian prose at
50 VILLAGE | 7-13 DECEMBER 2006
^Website www.villagemagazine.ie
THE HUMAN
TOUCH: OUR
the beginning of his new book, are cosmic small fry, yet we still PART IN THE
The Human Touch, invoking have an awful lot of clever CREATION OF A
Richard Dawkin’s Law of the things to say about the big, bad UNIVERSE
Conservation of Difficulty. universe out there. The Human
By Michael Frayn
Dawkin stated: “Obscurantism Touch investigates the extent to Published by Faber &
in an academic subject expands which the latter constitute, in Faber
€25.99
to fill the vacuum of its intrinsic the words of the subtitle, a
simplicity.” relevant and lasting
The near 500 Frayn’s energetic “part in the
pages which follow empiricism creation of a understand all these things,
certainly feel like supports the universe”. though, we did!” he declares
philosophy but view that men are Frayn’s energetic excitedly.
Frayn wants to not mere cosmic empiricism Wittgenstein wrote in his
have his cake and supports the view Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus: “The
eat it. He guardedly
passengers that men are not world is the totality of facts not
introduces his mere cosmic things.” Similarly, Frayn wants
project by writing: “Is this really passengers. Empiricists reject to believe mankind is in charge
another attempt at philosophy? the view that knowledge is of a conceptual universe.
Not really. I shouldn’t have the inherent or somehow just there, But this anthropocentrism
courage to make any such claim, waiting to be scooped up. For veers towards the daftness of
because I can imagine how Frayn, all our knowledge of how Berkleyan idealism – which
scornfully it would be dismissed the universe works has been holds that nothing exists unless
by most professional painstakingly chiselled out of perceived – and Frayn hedges his
philosophers.” experience. bets again, finally concluding
Frayn is concerned with what Mathematics and descriptive that humans are “merely a few
he considers the paradox of language are uniquely human fleeting eddies on the surface of
mankind’s insignificance and triumphs, the fruit of an active the ocean”. In doing so, Frayn
importance. Since Copernicus, engagement with our hardly justifies the vastness – a
we have come to realise that we environment. “We did favourite term – of his work.
Focusing exclusively on
metaphysics and epistemology,
he also regrettably omits to
replicate the fascinating moral
studies of his plays.
There are flashes of analytical
and literary brilliance: a
genuinely comprehensible
account of Quantum theory and
a mercurial, comic dismissal of
Noam Chomsky’s theory of deep
grammar. But, like the super-
intelligent aliens in The
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,
Frayn too often gets bogged
down in trying to explain “life,
the universe, and everything”.
This, alas, is why most
philosophers tend to write
desiccated 10-page journal
articles rather than garrulous
500-page hardbacks.

NEWS&VIEWS OPINION
Make armies, not war
R
epresentative
Charles Rangel, a
member of the US
Congress, has over
the past few years made a
number of high-profile calls
for the military draft to be
reinstated. It sounds at first
like a right-wing rant. Con-
script all the boys and girls of
America. Suit them up in cam-
ouflage. Ship them into army
camps, knock off their edges,
trim them up. Send them off
to fight for freedom... whatev-
er the hell that means.
In fact, Rangel is one of the
more radical members of
Congress. He represents Harlem
and the Upper West Side of New
York. He is serving his 18th term.
A founding member of the Con-
gressional Black Caucus, he is one
of the edgier politicians in a coun-
try where the edge is hardly sharp
these days. He served in Korea
where he won a Purple Heart and
a Bronze Star. He knows his wars
and he also knows what sorts of
battles to pick. He has unsuccess-
fully sponsored legislation on con-
scription in the past, but now, with
the democrats holding the bal-
ance of power, Rangel is again
kicking up his heels.
The reason he wants a draft is to
kick sand in the faces of the ones
who wage war. He wants them to
sit up and understand what a war
means. It’s not a little playground
battle. It’s not a little jaunt on the
sands of elsewhere. It’s not some
abstract video game played in the
corridors of power.
Rangel knows that Bush and co
would never have invaded Iraq –
certainly not on the flimsy and fal-
sified evidence they had – if the
lives of their sons and daughters
had been at stake. His point is, if
^Website www.village.ie
COLUM McCANN
to serve. Instead, he says,
“young people would com-
mit themselves to a couple of
years in service to this great
republic, whether it’s our sea-
ports, our airports, in schools,
in hospitals”, with a promise
of educational benefits at the
end of service, a similar sce-
nario to that of the Israeli
military. Deferment would
be allowed for reasons of
health or conscience.
Of course, there’s little or
no support for his measures.
Repeated polls have shown
that about seven in 10 Amer-
icans oppose reinstatement
there was a draft in place, the mem- than walk into the shrapnel. They of the draft and officials say they do
bers of congress, the corporate big- are saying no to the travel plans of not expect to restart conscription
wigs and the wealthy of America Cheney and his cronies. any time soon. It’s just not going
would actually sit up and take a As a result, the US army is run- to happen. In 2004, Rangel pro-
healthy dose of empathy. The idea ning scared. It recently announced posed a draft covering people aged
of putting their own children in its intention to allow recruits to 18 to 26. It was defeated 402 votes
harm’s way is an altogether differ- sign up for 15 months of active to just two. This time around he
ent proposal than sending the poor duty service rather than the typi- may very well get a few more votes
black or Hispanic teenager. cal four-year enlistment. They have but in essence there will not be a
In the US, war is for poor kids. increased bonuses to $30,000. Edu- change in the country’s policy.
Rangel opposes the cational require- Still, that’s not his point. His point
In the US, war is
war in Iraq but he ments have been is that wars are fought for greed.
supports the troops for poor kids. suspended. They When our own personal lives stack
who have to fight it. Rangel opposes have enlarged the up against that greed, it becomes
He does not under- the war in Iraq corps of recruiters. an altogether different choice.
stand how anyone but he supports On TV and radio they I have lived in New York for
can support the war the troops who have instituted a almost 15 years. I have three young
and not support the repulsive advertising children. Two of them would be eli-
draft. He is a politi-
have to fight it campaign that makes gible for a draft in a decade. If
cian of decency and empathy. the military seem like a sexed-up there were to be a draft, I would be
What Rangel is doing is throwing nightclub. Undercover cameras posed with a dilemma, I suppose.
down the moral gauntlet. At the from NBC recently exposed the But the answer is easy enough. I’d
same time, he has stuffed it to the sham of the military come-on. simply leave. That’s it. Goodbye.
republicans who have called for Dozens of instances of fraud have God bless. Nice knowing you. I
more troops in Iraq. If they would- been reported. would leave behind a city, a life, a
n’t send their own sons, then it’s The army is worried and Rangel country for which I have much
just a further case of hypocrisy. exploits that worry by calling for a fondness and respect. And one of
In recent months the US has draft. the reasons for that fondness is
suffered a 30 per cent decline in Rangel says he will call for the that there still are politicians like
enlistments. Potential recruits are legislation in early 2007. Having a Rangel around who can force us to
disgusted by the war. They are also draft would not necessarily mean think by showing us exactly what
scared. They’d rather stay at home everyone called to duty would have road we walk upon. π
7-13 DECEMBER 2006 | VILLAGE 51
 COMMERCIAL REPORT

Carlow: primed
for business development
rom a business perspec- project to Carlow is expected to fin- in addition to its location, Carlow sold to the IDA. However, little was

F tive, Carlow has it all. It ish by 2010 (the road will eventual-
has achieved a certain ly link Dublin with Waterford).
level of inward invest- This will allow the town and coun-
also has the business infrastruc-
ture to support any moves into the
county. This is underscored by the
actually happening with the 70
acres until some enterprising local
businesspeople decided to build
ment over the years, much of which ty to better service its estimated fact that Teagasc recently moved its and advance building on the site,
is still in place. It has built on its agri- catchment of 100,000 people – head office to the agricultural facil- measuring 1,683 sq m – thus engen-
cultural and engineering heritage many of whom are already commut- ity at Oak Park (the facility which dering significantly greater levels
to create a local industry that it ing to Carlow for work and shop- developed the rooster potato). of interest in this strategic site since
both traditional and yet innovative. ping. A sizeable proportion are “There are about 20 business its completion earlier this year.
It has two third-level colleges, and also travelling to Carlow for college, parks throughout the county,” said “Whatever company lands first
an ever-improving transport infra- at either Carlow IT (which has McEvoy. “Carlow County Coun- will be lucky, in that it will have the
structure. It has a population of about 5,000 students) and St cil, under the leadership of Coun- pick of the people,” said McEvoy.
50,000 and growing. And, perhaps Patrick’s Carlow College (which ty Manager Joe Crockett, has been “There is a very high standard of
most importantly, it is only 50 miles has about 500). But the converse is proactive in attracting business people that makes up Carlow’s
from Dublin. that thousands of people are com-
“When people take muting out of Carlow
the time to look, they ‘Whatever (mainly to Dublin), peo-
can see all of the posi- company lands ple who have availed of
tives of Carlow quite first will be the cheaper housing
clearly,” said Mary lucky. There is and quality of life in
McEvoy, economic pro- the county, but who are
motion and develop-
a very high finding that they have
ment officer with standard of to travel for work.
Carlow County Coun- people that While this is not nec-
cil, a position which is makes up essarily a major prob- Carlow Business and Technology Park
funded by FAS, Enter- Carlow’s lem for Carlow, it does
prise Ireland, the workforce’ point to the fact that through rezoning land, and servic- workforce, and the town in primed
County Enterprise there is a young, ing sites such as those at Bagenal- for more growth into the future.”
Board and Carlow mobile, well-educated stown and Tullow, which have been One area of growth could come
County Council. workforce in the town which could snapped up very quickly. In fact, from a contentious source. Green-
Carlow’s location is obviously a be better employed closer to home. many private businesspeople are core, whose closure left many
major bonus, but its accessibility Indeed, a survey carried out recent- now looking to build business people out of jobs in Carlow, is
will be greatly enhanced in a few ly among the commuters suggest- parks alongside the county council currently hoping to redevelop its
short years with improvements to ed that 60% said that they would ones, in a good demonstration of site, with a claim that it will cre-
the road infrastructure. While the take employment in Carlow if it public and privaate enterprise ate 3,000 jobs at a business park.
journey on the M7 and M9 cur- was available, and 24% said that working side-by-side.” Whether this comes to fruition is
rently slows after Kilcullen, the they would take a pay cut to work Another good example of the still up for decision, but it at least
plans for a high-quality motorway closer to where they lived. partnership between public and it does show the potential of Car-
between Dublin and Carlow will Carlow’s location could also be private business can be seen at the low for future development – the
soon be realised – indeed, the first ideal for a company which wants to flagship Carlow Business and Tech- planned redevelopment would
phase of the upgrade (the Carlow maintain a head office in Dublin, nology Park. Just on the outskirts of be the largest single develop-
bypass) should be completed by but which wants a fairly accessible the town, this was originally a piece ment to take place outside of
2008, while the remainder of the off-site back-office operation. But, of County Council land which was Dublin.
Enterprise
at the heart of Carlow’s success
or all of its rural charac-
F teristics, Carlow has had
its fair share of enter-
prise over the years –
some of which had significant
impact on a national level.
“Carlow was never overladen
with Foreign Direct Investment,
and this fostered a spirit of self-
reliance,” explained Michael Kelly,
CEO of Carlow County Enterprise
Board. “Braun and Lapple are still
here, but the traditional industries
in Carlow can be traced back to
Irish Sugar, which had been manu-
facturing in Carlow since day one.
“Apart from the obvious econom-
ic benefits of having Irish Sugar in
Carlow, the training that many peo-
ple got from working there stood
them in good stead when it came to
setting up their own companies,”
said Kelly. “Look at the Burnside
group of engineering companies –
they worked and learned their busi-
ness in the Irish Sugar Company,
and they are now four separate com-
panies across the county. There has
always been a spirit of entrepre-
neurialism in Carlow.”
Kelly can point to a number of
companies working within the coun-
ty, especially in the engineering
sector, which are competing to a
world-class standard. He cites the
example of Keenans of Borris (for-
merly Keenans of Bagenalstown,
manufacturing agricultural prod-
ucts such as feed mixing wagons) as
a case of a company which is on the
Enterprise Ireland books and which
is seen as a flagship not just for the
county, but for Ireland in general.
There is another subset of entre-
preneurs which are putting the
county on the map – the micro-
enterprises, which Carlow County
Enterprise Board (CEB) has been
Michael Kelly, CEO of Carlow
County Enterprise Board
fostering for more than a decade.
Hot Irishman is a good example
of Carlow entrepreneurialism. Like
some of the best ideas, it was a fair-
ly simple one – bottling an almost
ready to serve Irish coffee, includ-
ing the whiskey, coffee and sugar –
all people have to do is add the hot
water and cream. The company has
won a host of international awards.
These companies benefited
strongly from the support, both
financial and otherwise, of Carlow
CEB. But, for the truly successful
companies, there comes a time
when they can no longer be support-
ed by the CEB, and fall under the
remit of Enterprise Ireland.
“We coach them, we grow them,
but it is a natural progression for
companies which are supported
by the Enterprise Boards to gradu-
ate to a higher level,” said Michael
Kelly.
The supports offered by Carlow
CEB are like those available
throughout the 34 other Enterprise
Boards throughout Ireland. And
while many start-up companies will
at first only be interested in the
financial supports, over time most
companies find that it is the softer
supports that are most welcome.
“We were one of the first boards
with a Women in Business Net-
work,” explained Kelly. “This has
grown from about 20 in the first
meeting to over 300 now. Similarly,
our Management Development Pro-
gramme has been very successful,
with more than 20 people per
annum taking part. The only regrets
that you hear about the programme
is that participants did not take part
in it sooner.”
County and City
Enterprise Boards
County and City Enterprise Boards
were established in 1993 to
support enterprise and
entrepreneurialism at a level which
was previously undervalued and
underfunded by the state. There
are 35 Enterprise Boards across
Ireland, corresponding to the
different local authority areas, and
each takes responsibility for micro-
enterprise throughout their
counties, with supports ranging
from financial grants, loans and
equity investments to “softer”
supports such as training,
networking and mentoring.
To qualify for CEB support, a
company must be located within
the county and must employ 10
people or less. Since its inception,
Carlow CEB has spent €5.5m on
direct financial support, and€4.5m
in soft supports, creating and
sustaining 785 jobs. More than
2,000 businesses and owner /
managers have availed of some
CEB support over the past 13 years.
Companies and entrepreneurs
within County Carlow who wish to
apply for supports (both financial
and otherwise), can call Carlow CEB
on 059 9130880, or visit
www.carlow-ceb.com
7-13 DECEMBER 2006 | VILLAGE 53
 ^Website www.villagemagazine.ie
GADGETS

Christmas novelties
Some must-have Christmas goodies for the office.
By Malachy Browne and Grace Flanagan

W hat makes the perfect Christmas

present? Dia-
monds or a Ferrari?
durable aluminium casing, it is basical-
ly the same as the current
nano range. The only dif-
What about an mp3 ference is that a portion
player that looks like of each sale of this partic-
it shops where Mr ular nano will go directly
Claus gets his santa to the Global Fund to
suits? With its shiny fight HIV and Aids in
red case and snowy Africa.
white earphones, it’s The iPod nano (PROD-
like carrying Christ- UCT) Red is available in
mas around in your two sizes – 4GB (€209) and
pocket. 8GB (€259). It can hold up
Apple are officially to 2,000 songs or 25,000
the kings of capturing photos. The iPod nano
the Christmas market. (PRODUCT) Red is the
This festive season, same price as the original
the must-have gadget nanos.
is the Bono-endorsed, ∏More: Not widely
limited edition iPod stocked in shops.
nano (PRODUCT) Red. Available online at
With a 1.5-inch colour www.apple.com or on
display screen and www.eBay.com

Lighting up the office

A dd some Christ-
mas cheer to the
office this year with a
USB-powered mini
Christmas tree. An
ideal Kris Kindle gift,
the tree’s blue LEDs
light up when plugged
into a computer’s USB
port. The package
comes with both a
Christmas star and Star
of David, so the gizmo
Handy napkin
can be transformed
from a Christmas tree
to a Hanukkah bush
A nother essential nov-
elty for the Christ-
mas season, particularly
the passenger window
and wait to be uncermo-
niously dumped at your
should office politics if large quantities of cock- front door. And remem-
turn to religious tails are consumed, is the ber to conceal your tick-
debate after several Cabbie Napkin. Scribble et home from
mulled wines. your address on the space mischievous friends who
provided, safely tuck it might replace the Cab-
∏More Compatible with away and, should the bie Napkin with a misdi-
with USB 1.0, 1.1, 2.0 evening’s merriment rected replica.
ports. Dimensions: 3.2” overwhelm your oromo-
in diameter by 4.5” in tor control, simply pres- ∏More One pack of
height. USB power cord ent the Cabbie Napkin 12 Cabbie Napkins retail
length: 40”. $9.99 at to your friendly taxi driv- for £2.50 at
www.thinkgeek.com er, hang your head out www.gizmoandwidget.com

54 VILLAGE | 7-13 DECEMBER 2006

 MISCELLANY
C I N E M A
Down there for dancing
In the South Pole, a solitary penguin sets out to save the environment, while
back in the city a traffic warden deludes himself into thinking he can save the
whole world. By Declan Burke
I
t’s not often you get to use
the words “traffic warden”
and “superhero” in the
same sentence, but meter-
man Les (Michael
Rapaport) is a comic-book fiend.
And when Les has a mildly
psychotic reaction to an
experimental medication, he
makes a mental leap that defies
logic: he comes to believe he
has superhuman powers.
A gentle, bittersweet comedy
about the power of self-
delusion, Special (12s) is a
quietly enjoyable experience
on many levels. The very fact
that Les’s instinct is to don a
cape and go forth onto the
mean-ish streets to do good
deeds makes for a refreshing
change, as does the makers’
refusal to mock his naívety. Co-
written and co-directed by Hal
Haberman and Jeremy
Passmore, Special celebrates
Les’s willingness to make a
positive contribution, to break
out of his cycle of quiet
desperation by helping those
around him.
Of course, the sight of Les
running full-force into walls in
the belief that he’s running
through them, and his
grappling of unsuspecting (and
harmless) shoppers to the
ground, is funny in itself, but
the reaction of his friends,
comic-shop owners Joey (Josh
Peck) and Everett (Robert
Baker), offers a touching
commentary on the esprit de
corps that exists among those
who find themselves
marginalised from the
mainstream of life. Rapaport
turns in a hugely compelling
performance that blends his
gauche attempts to
communicate with the world
around him with a genuine
desire to make even a tiny
difference to the lives of other
people, and it’s impossible to
resist his boyish charm.
Beautifully lit and shot by
cameraman Nelson Cragg, this
is Kafka’s Metamorphosis
redrafted by Kurt Vonnegut,
with all the huge-hearted
empathy for the plight of an all-
too-ordinary humanity that
that implies.
Humanity is the villain of the
piece in Happy Feet (PG), an
animated tale set among the
Emperor penguins of the
Antarctic. Born into a society
that bonds through singing,
Mumbles (voiced by Elijah
Wood) sings like a constipated
frog – but boy is he special
when it comes to dancing.
Unfortunately for Mumbles, his
birth coincides with a depletion
in fish stocks, and his passion
for dancing is blamed for this
wholly unnatural state of
affairs. Banished by the
colony’s elders, Mumbles sets
out to cross the barren wastes
on an epic journey to confront
the unknown aliens who are
strip-mining the seas.
A cartoon version of last
year’s surprise smash The March
of the Penguins, this is superbly
animated with a strong voice
cast (Nicole Kidman, Hugh
Jackman, Hugo Weaving, Robin
Williams), a number of
thrilling set-pieces and two
serious concepts for the kids to
ponder: one, it’s okay to be
different from everyone else,
and two, when it comes to
saving the environment,
everybody has a role to play, no
matter how small.
On the downside, the story
has a scattergun feel to it, and
those themes are treated in a
very simplistic manner. Still, if
it’s entertainment you’re after,
Happy Feet will get your toes a-
tapping and put a smile on your
face. Brace yourself for
penguin-mania.
Special ***
Happy Feet ****
7-13 DECEMBER 2006 | VILLAGE 55
 MISCELLANY
B I R D S catholic diet, which includes worms,
fish, crabs, insects, eggs and carrion, has
ensured its success, and it has proven to

BLACK-HEADED GULL be a very adaptable species. Though

common all year round, numbers can
swell dramatically in the winter with
(Sléibhín) Larus ridibundus the arrival of individuals escaping the
cold in northern Europe.
reland’s smallest resident gull, the The bird’s scientific name translates
I Black-headed gull, is also our most
widespread and numerous. By no means
as “laughing gull”, a reference to its
harsh, chuckling calls. To confuse
confined to coastal areas – which matters, there is a separate species from
demonstrates the inadequacy of the North America known in English as the
term “seagull” – it is equally at home on Laughing gull. In Latin, the term “black-
freshwater lakes, moorland, farmland headed gull” would translate as “Larus
and upland bogs. It is found throughout melanocephalus”, which is actually the
the country, often far inland. scientific name for yet another species,
Easily identified during the breeding the Mediterranean gull.
season by its chocolate brown (not ∏More To join BirdWatch Ireland and
black) head, in the winter the head turns support their conservation work, please
white, save for a dusky smudge on the call 01-2819878, email
feathers over each ear, as shown in the info@birdwatchireland.ie or visit
photograph here. Its distinctive thin red www.birdwatchireland.ie. All new
bill and legs remain unchanged, members receive a special free DVD
however, as do the pale grey back and guide to our common birds and a free
wings; the wings also show a distinctive garden bird pack, as well as four issues of
narrow white triangle towards the tip PICTURE BY KEN KINSELLA Wings magazine and free access to
when opened. BirdWatch Ireland’s nationwide events and
At just 35cm long, the Black-headed nature reserves, all for only €35 per year.
gull is dwarfed by the familiar Herring Membership also makes an ideal Christmas
gull, which is almost twice its size. Its gift for anyone with an interest in wildlife

W A L K S
Cabinteely Park,
Co Dublin
ear Cornelscourt and
N Cabinteely village, a park
of about 45 hectares is an oasis
in suburbia. In 1984, the
county council acquired part of
estate lands owned by Joe
McGrath of Sweepstakes fame
and fortune. The parkland
around Cabinteely House
retains the English-style
landscape features of such
Georgian properties, including
informal groups of trees which
create depth and perspective.
There are short strolls
through the park but, for a
longer walk, follow the
boundary walls. Selective tree
felling has opened up views
over the suburbs, city and bay.
In a project
inspired by the
Belgian surrealist
painter René
Magritte, trees
were recently
planted in groves.
One of their titles,
Every Day – Gach Lá,
is apt for walkers.
The project’s aim is
to fund tree-planting through renovating the main house for TONY QUINN
art sales. cultural and community use. ∏More www.dlrcoco.ie,
Beyond the walled garden, The park has many www.dlrtourism.com Access from
the artistic theme is expressed recreational amenities, N11 near Dunnes, Cornelscourt
through workshops in the including football pitches and a and the old Bray road. Dun
restored cow byre and grain specially-designed adventure Laoghaire-Rathdown County
loft, which has been converted playground for children of map. Foxrock & Cabinteely
to the Grainstore Youth Arts various age groups. Most paths Memoirs, compiled by Liam Clare
Centre. The county council is suit buggies and wheelchairs. and Padraig Laffan

56 VILLAGE | 7-13 DECEMBER 2006

 ^Website www.villagemagazine.ie

Solutions to last week’s puzzles: gentle, medium and tough

S D K
U O U
SUDOKU means, in Japanese, “only single numbers allowed”. Despite It sounds simple, but it’s unforgiving – make a mistake along the
its appearance, it doesn’t need mathematical ability: merely logic and way and you may not notice until much nearer the end, when you
patience. To solve the puzzle, each row, column and grid must contain won’t be able to find and undo the mistake and will simply have to
the numbers one to nine. MEDIUM start again.
GENTLE

TOUGH

Our Light Up A Life

Sponsor a Light on the Our Lady’s Hospice Christmas Tree to
Lady’s celebrate the lives of friends and relatives who have passed away.
To sponsor a light or purchase Christmas Cards, ornaments and

Hospice candles throughout the festive season...

Please call 1850 66 06 06
Harold’s Christmas Cards (12 cards at €10 per pack)
Cross in aid of Our Lady's Hospice and Blackrock Hospice.
Corporate overprinting service also available.

Card pack Type 1 Card pack Type 2 Card pack Type 3

Featuring image of Featuring image of the Featuring image of
Hospice crib Light Up A Life ceremony Angel with candle

7-13 DECEMBER 2006 | VILLAGE 57

MISCELLANY
N A T U R E
Singing in tongues
The birds aren’t all gone! There are plenty of avian visitors who
just love our soft winter weather, says Éanna Ní Lamhna
T
á an geimhreadh ann,
an geimhreadh / An
geimhreadh brónach
garbh / Tá na héin i
bfad thar sáile / Is na
duillí glasa marbh
The author of the above
quotation is right in saying that
winter is here and the situation
is sad and rough and that the
green leaves are all dead. But,
in the interests of scientific
accuracy, I have to point out
that all the birds are not gone
far away over the sea. There is a
whole constituency of birds
that make it their business to
be in Ireland during the winter.
We have one of the best
climates in the world. You
might not think so as you
endure 50mm of rain in one
day or wind speeds of over
100km an hour, as happened
on the last day of November
this year. But, from a wildlife
point of view, our temperate,
moist climate is the business.
No extremes of drought in
summer but, even more
importantly, no long periods of
sub-zero temperatures in
winter, when the ground and
the surface fresh water is
58 VILLAGE | 7-13 DECEMBER 2006
frozen and snow covers the
vegetation for weeks at a time.
Ireland provides a suitable
ecosystem at this time of year
for birds from several different
trophic levels in the food chain.
Herbivorous birds fall upon our
unfrozen grasslands with glad
cries. Wet grassland at this time
of year will be home to flocks of
Whooper swans from Iceland,
Brent geese from Canada,
White-fronted geese from
Greenland and Greylag geese
and Barnacle geese.
The carnivores are delighted
to find unfrozen mud to probe
with their long beaks to winkle
out the rich food crop of worms
and shrimp that live there. Salt-
marsh mud flats at this time of
year ring to the calls of waders
such as the Dunlin, Curlew,
Black-tailed Godwit, Red Shank,
Sanderling and Knot. Our
freshwater inland marshes are
the restaurants of the Snipe,
Golden Plover and Lapwing.
The unfrozen seas around our
shores can be scanned for Great
Northern divers and Red-
throated divers, Shelduck, Red-
breasted mergansers and
common Scoters – all
VILLAGE
NEWS
HOUND
Santa’s
sweatshop
BY KONOR HALPIN
Dear Kids,
Christmas is off. The elves
are cribbin’ about working
carnivores. These dive in our
winter coastal waters to collect 24-hour days with no toilet
mussels, bivalves and sand eels breaks.
as well as sprats, herring and Locked in the toy shop,
codling in the case of the they’re even refusing to
divers. Our lovely unfrozen eat their reindeer stew.
fresh-water lakes are sought Unless they get a rise,
out by such species of duck as they’re gonna tell Mrs
Teal, Wigeon, Mallard, Pintail, Claus all about that Lapp
Shoveler, Tufted duck as well dancer!
as Little Grebe and Great So just like George Bush,
Crested grebe. I’m gonna “smoke ‘em
And of course our ordinary out”. Anyone fancy
garden birds receive visits from barbecued elf for
their continental cousins from Christmas dinner?
Germany, Poland and Russia I’m up to my sack in
who can find no food in the Santa letters and my
frozen wastelands created by shredder’s on the blink.
the severe cold of a continental Now Mrs Claus has
winter. If you, like Doctor eloped with a snowman.
Dolittle, could understand She said snowballs are
what the birds were saying, better than no balls.
you would realise that in your Rudolf’s in a nursing
garden you had starlings home for old dears and
twittering in Russian, thrushes Dasher and Prancer have
singing with Scandinavian locked antlers after some
accents, blackbirds issuing heavy petting.
alarm calls in Hungarian and And look at the state of
robins singing in diverse my suit! Try flying round
tongues. The poet quoted the world stuck downwind
above may have been good at of a herd of reindeers. I’m
words, but he definitely needed like a brown snowman!
to get out more. Tá na héin i Now you greedy lot say
bfad thar sáile – my granny! you want a Sony
PlayStation 3, Xbox this
and iPod that, and all for a
measley glass of milk and
stale cookies.
Don’t expect anything
this year.
Oh alright, I can do
without that call from
Childline.
Just remember the
Viagra cookies for me and
amphetamines for Rudolf.
He’s not as quick as he
used to be.
Ho Feckin’ Ho.
Santa.
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MISCELLANY

A R T
.ALL HAWAII ENTRÉES / LUNAR REGGAE
International group exhibition
Imma, Kilmainham, Dublin 8. www.imma.ie, 01 6129900
30 November 2006 - 18 February 2007
n exhibition by 20 leading
A international artists based on
the physical and conceptual
processes involved in making and
exhibiting art.
The show comprises works in a
wide variety of media by cutting-
edge artists like Doug Aitken,
Douglas Gordon, Liam Gillick,
Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster,
Carsten Höller and Sarah Lucas,
many of whom are exhibiting in
Ireland for the first time. All of the
artists were involved with
researching and developing the
exhibition, whose title is an
anagram of the Irish and English for
“new galleries”, the building in
which it is being held.
The exhibition is curated by the
French artist Philippe Parreno,
director of the recent much-
acclaimed film on the French soccer
star Zinedine Zidane, and Rachael
Thomas, Head of Exhibitions at
Imma.

60 VILLAGE | 7-13 DECEMBER 2006

 BACKFOOT COMPILED BY COLIN MURPHY, EMMA BROWNE, JOHN BYRNE

? GOOD WEEK FOR...

> Progressive Democrats – Junior
Minister Tim O’Malley getting himself and his
BAD WEEK FOR...
> Visitors to US – Clandestine terror
ratings will now be given to every visitor to the
party plenty of bad headlines United States
> Michael McDowell – Tim O’Malley doing > Dublin – Cliff Richard (below) plays a double
RACHAEL McDowell’s job for him gig at the Point Theatre
ENGLISH > RTÉ – Prospect of aggresive confrontations > The Moon – New US invasion plans: NASA
STER with Pat Kenny on Late, Late means ratings must aims to build a space station on the Moon
RTÉ BROADCA ST
AND JOURNALI surely go up > The World – The richest two per cent of
air? > RTÉ – Ryan Tubridy receives a death threat, adults own more than half the world’s wealth,
oment live on
Your worst m just says the front page of a tabloid newspaper. More according to a study of personal assets
terviewee s ha
Any time an in an d is de te rmind good news for RTÉ > The Munster rugby team – qualification for
ody
libelled someb > NewsTalk – Sean Moncrieff (below) also receives Heineken Cup next year now extremely
ing so.
to keep on do a ‘serious’ threat, according to tabloid newspaper. unlikely due to bismal Celtic League
Why?
interviewee? An early Christmas for media consumers performance
Most difficult ic ians who
l of the polit
Apart from al av oi d an swer-
ned to
have been trai ’s very
, anybody who
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nervous.
/idol?
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’d both hate to s at
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One pr es en te r Sean O’Rou
ven Live pr od ucer,
former Five Se
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ing?
Currently read e
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The la te st
Naming of the D
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ers.
la rg e pi le of
Inbox
local newspap
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ing constituen
Most interest al . Fa sc in ating
Centr
So far, Dublin ua bbling
ters, lots of sq
cast of charac
and very hard
to ta ke
to predic
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w ho ’s
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Least interest C of fe y al w ay
Nic k
My colleague e m os t bor-
lare was th
argued that C th e co un tr y–
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ing constituenc as until Fine Gael send suggestions to
ly w
and it probab es in a colinmurphy@
ru n four candidat
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show?
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at
YOU NEVER CALL, YOU NEVER WRITE
Colin Farrell, actor
ss ed by th
n’t obse
in RTÉ who is There was a time when Colin Farrell was everywhere. But since his film flops Alexan-
idea. der and the New World, a stint in rehab last year and turning 30, he has been unusual-
te? ly reserved. He came to prominence in Ballykissangel in
ent the Late La
Would you pres red... 1998/1999 when he was 22. He then headed for Hollywood
offe
Well, if it was where he became an international star in the films The Recruit,
ched?
video you wat Phone Booth and Minority Report. The Hollywood media, and the
Last YouTube
ow intruder. ladies, loved him. He boasted that he took 20 ecstasy tablets,
The Late Late Sh
ics? four grams of coke, six grams of speed, half an ounce of hash,
out Irish polit
Worst thing ab e fa ct th at so three bottles of Jack Daniels, 12 bottles of red wine, 60 pints
t, th
At the momen in k th at and 280 cigarettes in a week. Having a son in 2003 did noth-
seem to th
many people n re su lt is a fore- ing to dampen his spirits. But he came out of rehab in early-
ectio
next year’s el 2006 a different man – out of the limelight and fighting court
on.
gone conclusi cases to stop the release of a sex tape he made with a former
girlfriend. He is now an official spokesperson for the 2007
presents The
Rachael English Satur- Special Olympics World Summer Games.
62 , RTÉ Radio One,
Constituency
days, 6.05pm
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