them.
It had - still has - the safety net of the State
I
HOPE YOU ARE ENJOYING THE
little sideshow we are getting from the decision
of Seamus Brennan to ensure a little bit of heal-
thy competition between the two national air-
lines, Ryanair and Aer Lingus. Brennan saved us
a rather expensive funeral with the loss of maybe
500 jobs and certainly a curtailment to the devel-
opment of regional airports by Ryanair going to
the wall.
I write in advance of the Ryanair annual re-
port. The scuttlebutt is that it has lost £6 million.
It went to Big Daddy Tony who put his hand
into his private enterprise pocket, fished out the
wampum and told Pl to take it and also the
knocker on the door so he wouldn't be back ....
In the meantime, a fairly heavyweight Cabinet
team went to work, starting with Padraig Flynn
who knew exactly what Knock owed to Ryanair
and how crucial Ryanair's survival was not only
for Knock but for Galway (add in Brennan's
voice and Iosagan Molloy), Waterford and Far-
ran fore (with Limerick's Dessie O'Malley, an
early Ryanair boomer and a great believer in
private enterprise and competition in the air,
looking after the Munster interests of Pat Cox)
not forgetting Sligo/Donegal.
Aer Lingus speeches at inaugural flights from
the regional airports might have been good PR
stuff (meaning Press relations as opposed to
Public relations) but in the battle for the public
mind, Ryanair made regional airports a reality
and did it by providing a full service rather than
a feeder service.
The people of the country are behind Ryanair
partly because it is a David to the Aer Lingus
Goliath and partly because it wants fair play.
The Dublin chorus on the morning of the an-
nouncement was something else again. All the
elements which sought to bury Knock Airport
came crawling out of the woodwork. Knock was
a danger to the nationalised airport: it was diffi-
cult to unionise. Ryanair was private enterprise
coming in to challenge the capital of feather-
bedding which was Aer Lingus. The State mono
opoly outfit had the crucified taxpayers always
in the wings to bail it out in lean times.
When Ryanair demonstrated you could fly to
London cheaper, Aer Lingus promptly undercut
coffers if it fell out of the sky. That is not a level
playing pitch as some Aer Lingus types tried to
suggest the other morning when they said they
didn't mind competition.
The new deal which denied the company ac-
cess to Stansted, the route which went to Rya-
nair exclusively, was "unfair" and it wasn't
competition.
In the meantime, to try and survive the Aer
Lingus assault on the Dublin-London price war-
fare, Ryanair twice jacked up prices from Knock
to Luton so that we had - still have -the spectacle
of a regional airport's continued growth threa-
tened by the State company's pricing structure
to blowout of the sky the private company
which brought hope and progress and business
to rural Ireland, opening it up. Knock must sub-
sidise Dublin!
The can of ideological worms which the Pro-
gressive Fianna Fail Government has opened up
is the issue of privatisation as against nationalis-
ation. The private broadcasters have come on
stream and constitute a threat to RTE. Privati sa-
tion is in. After five decades of creeping social-
ism, creeping nationalisation, we are now
watching what I have been calling for some time
"creeping privatisation".
RTE is one of the main bastions of socialism
and The Workers' Party is eminently satisfied
with its penetration of the medium. The Brennan
decision interested me as a case study of how the
Dublin Establishment works to protect the sta-
tus quo of socialism in action.
The overall reaction to the Brennan decision
was one of naked anger until you could be par-
doned for thinking Ryanair was the bad biggie
and poor little Aer Lingus was struggling to stay
in the air.
Seamus went on 'Morning Ireland' to be sand-
bagged by a question: how much did Big Daddy
Tony of GPA subscribe to Fianna Fail last time
out? The clear insinuation was that this was
payola for Big Daddy Tony. You could hear
Seamus Brennan half disbelieving his ears.
This was pure Baverstockism, of course.
(You haven't heard of Baverstockism before?
Sorry darling, it was a wee bit before your time.)
David Baverstock was one of those hotshot
BBC TV types whose technique might be de-
scribed as "eating" a politician a night as fair
game: you put the boot in without any apolo-
gies.
It goes in Britain but - despite all the imported
soaps and Americana - the Irish culture is diffe-
rent and while we have our own brand of sharp-
ness with politicians, we do give them the
entitlement, when they come on air, that good
manners prevail.
I caught the interview. There was nothing I
heard on the programme, or the news up to that
time, to say it had been alleged that Fianna Fail
were "on the take" from GPA. In our business
we know it as a "gut" question. It was inevitable
that the Government would look for an apology.
When Director General Vincent Finn gave it,
the Baverstock technique was employed in the
same way: did Vincent Finn have shares in Rya-
nair, he apologised so fully and abjectly. That's
another one we'll never see, or hear, resolved.
The Workers' Party led the charge in having a go
at the Government and Mr Finn: the apology
was "a shameful capitulation to Government
pressure."
The WPs are quite entitled politically to ask
the question. And will the NUl chapel round as
quickly on Brother de Rossa and ask him how
many card carrying members and sympathisers
he has in the station? Was he trying to fireproof
anyone? No, of course not: we are not all Ba-
verstocks. We are all objective journalists: is not
"objectivity" a synonym for journalism? But as
I've said so many times before, this is all good
clean fun and adds to the gaiety of nations.
And does it really explain why Padraig Flynn,
Minister for the Environment could go on Radio
and tell the nation the Government left £8.5 mil-
lion in Brussels because it wasn't worth the
hassle we'd have if we collected it.
"The Government," said Padraig, "have gone
as far as we could go in terms of regional consul-
tation. If you had to consult everybody, you
would need to hire Croke Park and you would
pic. Billy Drake
end up in a total shambles. You have to make
sure that the money is spent in a co-ordinated
way for the benefit of the economy."
The old disease is catching, isn't it? When I
used to accuse poor Garret of running an econ-
omy rather than a country, Fianna Fail was de-
lighted to take it up and wrap it, a second time,
around Garret's neck. But back in office Fianna
Fail has forgotten about "the country" and is
now running "the economy".
It is nice of Padraig, of course, to give us the
illusion that Charlie and himself are running the
economy but that's not the case either. No
sooner had Flynn set a little bomb off but our
permanent governors, the gurus in Finance,
were out in a statement to "clarify" the state-
ment. There was no question of Ireland having
"foregone" £8.5 million and it said:
"The £8.5 million referred to in relation to
local initiatives would have had to come out of
the total allocation of £2.86 billion. Despite any
impression to the contrary, there is no special
pool of money to support local initiatives."
"Ireland sat on its butt and couldn't bestir itself
to indent for a few millions for local initiatives?
And who took good care to see the Regional
Development Committees were abolished before
the £3 billion plus, the biggest little slush fund in
the world, arrived in Ireland?
That's right, the self same Department of Fi-
nance.
Here let me say there's not as much as a thra-
neen of difference on this matter as between
Dukes and Haughey: it merely depends who is in
and who is out of office.
When Alan held the reins, he had no time for
busybody local regional committees. Then Char-
lie was all for them, subsuming any policy docu-
ment from Macra or Muintir or the Masons or
Knights to be processed as part of The Way For-
ward or, as our permanent governors put it "the
goal of achieving the maximum benefit for the
Irish economy would not be achieved by di-
verting monies from the development measures
in the National Plan."
Anyway, it added, if we had taken the Flynn
money there'd have to be a pound-for-pound
matching expenditure "and this kind of money
has to be monitored by the Government and no-
body else." Which sort of puts us all in our
places.
Charlie is making heavy weather of picking
his famous Senate II?
Could it be that he's hoping there be a mass
meeting of Pee-Dee councillors in Brosna-in-the-
bog who'll tell him "the paaarty" doesn't want
any Pee-Dee man or woman to break ranks on
the issue of abolishing the Senate.
The latest wheeze now from FF circles is that
Charlie never promised them the Senate rose
garden of three seats at all at all -which is the
ultimate in progression from three to two to
none.
It makes a bit more sense from the Pee-Dee
end of the Progressive Fianna Fail Party by al-
lowing Dessie to hint he took Charlie off the
hook and let him facilitate some of the losing
TDs who felt they should have been elected/se-
lected. He has held on to at least one principle on
which the party was founded: there can be no
argument about that or the whys or the where-
fores if it was clearly seen you did not allow your
troops to participate in the charade you con-
demned.
As it is, not since Dr Conor Cruise O'Brien
condemned the Labour Party as "poltroons"
and "Uncle Paythers" and then joined the party
will we have seen so great a switcheroo. (It's only
Charlie who does U-Turns, darlings.)
Charlie is very busy these days. He has Paris
and Strasbourg on his mind. He follows the
French act come the New Year.
Following Jack-O and Garret The Good
means nothing to Charlie: he is not interested in
their forgettable performances.
You are not going to get Charlie taking a
document like the Spinelli Report and putting
Brian Lenihan's name on it to try and write him
into European history as Garret tried writing
Jim Dooge who would eventually reappear on
the Irish political horizon as the Single Euro-
pean Act, requiring a decision by referendum of
the Irish electorate. By that time, it was good
and truly confused.
But to return to the question of the year -the
naming of the lion the Taoiseach's team? I fear
the hopefuls must soldier on until the Dail re-
sumes and then, on the opening hour, all will be
revealed.
It has the ad vantage that The House is back
and Charlie can so order business that any re-
sulting flak can be fairly buried by Dail news.
That's Our Charlie for you!
C
ONCERN OVER THE UDR
has been a constant theme of
Anglo-Irish Conference meetings since the
signing of the Agreement in 1985 and
Article 8 of the first communique issued at
Hillsborough specified the principle that
'the Armed Forces, (which include the
Ulster Defence Regiment) operate only in
support of the civil power, with the particu-
lar objective of ensuring as rapidly as poss-
ible that, save in the most exceptional
circumstances there is a police presence in
all operations which involve direct contact
with the comm uni ty.'
At regular meetings of the Conferences
since then the question of accompaniment
of the UDR by the RUC has been raised by
the Irish side but they have been told that,
at most, 50% of patrols are constructed in
this way and that due to pressure on
human resources it is difficult to achieve a
higher ratio. With the charging of UDR
personnel in relation to the murders of
Loughlin Maginn and Lisburn barman,
Liam Me Kee, shootings claimed by the
UFF, the cover name used by the Ulster
Defence Association, the pressure is now
on the Irish government to extract some
concessions in this crucial area. The train-
ing of the 6,400 strong UDR with plastic
bullet rounds is a further matter for con-
cern for the Irish government who have,
under the weight of successive revelations
of security force collusion in Northern Ire-
land been forced into a more aggressive
stance, both publicly and privately.
In a television interview at the height of
the attention on the leaks of confidential
RUC, British Army and UDR files on
nationalists, including several living in Do-
negal, Ray Burke called for the very exist-
ence of the UDR to be justified by the
British government. He also described the
evidence of security force collusion with
the loyalist paramilitaries as merely the tip
of the iceberg.
A flying visit last week by Margaret
Thatcher to a UDR regiment, during
which she praised the integrity of the sol-
diers and recalled that 180 UDR soldiers
had died since 1969 was a swift and also
public rebuff to the growing belief in
southern political and security circles that
the UDR should be disbanded or at the
very least withdrawn completely from
nationalist areas where they have over the
years generated intense hostility.
hile the other regiments of the Brit-
W ish Army and the RUC have won
little favour with nationalists
either, the UDR have been held in particu-
lar contempt by virtue of the numbers of
their members who have appeared before
the courts on charges of murdering, as-
saulting, harassing and robbing Catholics.
While there are many instances, including
some celebrated ones, of British Army and
RUC involvement in serious crimes against
nationalists, the record of the UDR is, at
least in terms of convicitons, far worse.
Since their formation in 1969, more than
100 UDR members have been jailed for se-
rious charges including the passing of in-
formation to loyalist organisations. At
present, 16 UDR members are are serving
life sentences for murder. UDR soldiers
have been linked to some of the most no-
torious killings in the North including the
Shankill Butcher and Miami showband
atrocities. The bombing of a Catholic
church, and of an Irish pub in London of a
dance hall in Donegal and a pub in Co.
Down and of council offices in Lisburn are
also among the hundreds of offences attri-
buted to UDR personnel. Sending threat-
ening letters with bullets to nationalists,
armed robbery for loyalist groups, stealing
of firearms from UDR bases and very
many sectarian murders of Catholics are
among the many hundreds of cases involv-
ing members of the regiment which have
reached the courts.
During the hearing of a bail application
last week by UDR member Andrew
Browne , a former regular soldier from
Scotland, who is accused of the murder of
Maginn and McKee crown lawyers alleged
that he had targeted Loughlin Maginn six
times while on duty, that he had gone to his
home to identify him and keep track of his
movements, and of the registration num-
bers of cars visiting Maginns house in
Rathfriland and that on each occasion he
had reported back to his UDA contact
with the latest details.
He had also been keeping tabs on
another man he suspected of being in the
IRA and it was during this surveillance
that Lisburn barman Liam Me Kee came
under observation. McKee was seen talk-
ing to the IRA suspect and thus himself
became a UDA target. In his statement to
the police, Browne admitted passing am-
munition and magazine clips to the UDA
whom he knew had a UFF hit squad oper-
ating in the area. Browne, whose bail appli-
cation was refused and who is, as Mrs
Thatcher was quick to point out, innocent
until proven guilty, was attached to the
7/10 Battalion of the UDR based at Palace
Barracks, Holywood
It was 1971 when the first member of the
newly formed regiment, made up of many
former members of the disbanded B Spe-
cials, came before the courts. Ironically in
the light of the recent revelations of target
lists, he was arrested while returning from
Donegal and charged with the illegal pos-
session of a pistol. Over the past three years
court cases involving UDR members in-
clude;
May 1989- a British soldier and a UDR
woman received suspended sentences for
passing information and photographs to
theUVF.
March 1989- a former UDR soldier was
given a recorded five year sentence for il-
legal possession ofa machine gun.
February 1989- a UDR sergeant who
killed his wife and attempted to shoot him-
self was jailed for seven years.
November 1988- a UDR woman was
jailed for six months after admitting pass-
ing information to the UDA.
April 1988 - a UDR sergeant, John Mc
Farlane was jailed for five years for rob-
bing his armoury and selling 18 guns, pistol
magazines and bullets to the UDA. Me
Farlane was arrested in Dundalk following
the theft and was sent back to the North
for trial.
March 1988 - a UDR man was sentenced
to nine years and another received a sus-
pended sentence after admitting helping a
UDA gang to raid their armoury. Over 150
guns were taken but later recovered. One of
the UDR men had taken two UDA mem-
bers into the base in the boot of his car.
October 1987 - a UDR man was cleared
of involvement in two murders committed
thirteen years previously but admitted
arms offences.
May 1987 - a UDR man admitted hiding
28 weapons for use in the event of civil war.
Over the years 1000 UDR members have
lost their guns to 'unknown assailants.'
he theft of weapons from UDR ar-
T mouries is a recurring theme over the
past twenty years while the involve-
ment of UDR men in training UVF and
UDA members and participating in sec-
tarian killings of nationalists is also a reg-
ular occurence. Two UDR men, Jeffery
Harris and William John Me Dowell last
year pleaded guilty to the murder of Co.
Down businessman Jack Kielty in January
last year. Mr Kielty was shot in his office at
Dundrum and the trial of a further four
people implicated in the murder, including
a former UDR man is still underway.
The murders of Sinn Fein councillor
John Davey, solicitor Pat Finucane and
IRA member Gerard Casey are among the
several murders this year where collusion
by the UDR or other sections of the secur-
ity forces has been suspected. Fr Denis
Faul, among others has openly accused the
UDR of complicity in some of these mur-
ders. In the case of John Davey there is a
suspicion that he was stopped by an RUC
or UDR patrol at the entrance to a lane-
way leading to his house and was shot dead
in his car. His handbrake was on as were
the lights when his body was discovered at
the wheel of his car. He died a year to the
day of a previous attempt on his life.
Pat Finucane, who represented the rela-
tives of people shot dead by the RUC in
what became known as the 'shoot to kill'
controversy later investigated by John
Stalker was another victim. One of his
clients has claimed that when in custody he
was told by RUC members that Finucane
would be shot dead by loyalists. Recently
Finucanes' brother appeared on one of the
confidential files leaked from the security
forces to loyalist paramilitaries.
In 1976, UDR men Raymond Crozier
and James McDowell of Lurgan received
35 years each for their part in the Miami
showband massacre. Two other UDR
men, Harris Boyle and Wesley Sum-
merville died when one of their own bombs
A UDR border patrol
exploded during the attack on the band.
In 1987, UDR man Cyril Rainey of Ball-
ymena pleaded guilty to the manslaughter
of James Galway in 1982 as well as plead-
ing guilty to membership of the UVF, hav-
ing guns, armed robbery, training UVF
members, and supplying information likely
to be of use to terrorists. Rainey was the
0/C for the UVF in Ballymena and asso-
ciated with the notorious Shankill Butchers
who brutally murdered Catholics in ran-
dom attacks in the late 1970s and early
1980s.
Rainey was a member of the intelligence
unit of the UDR and gave several files over
to the UVF. He also drove the Shankill
butcher, Lenny Murphy, who was later
shot by the IRA and James Galway to a
building site where Murphy shot Galway.
Rainey was given 12 years imprisonment
and was sentenced along with 12 other
men, four of whom were UDR members.
This catalogue of UDR crimes and the
overlapping membership of personnel of
the regiment with the loyalist UVF and
UFF, and the recent furore over leaked se-
curity documents has renewed calls for the
disbandment of the UDR, calls that are
likely to be resisted by the British govern-
ment for the forseeable future. While ef-
forts may be made to phase out the part-
time element of the regiment and to pro-
fessionalise it, with closer vetting of appli-
cants and more controls on sensitive
information, security considerations which
dictate that locally recruited personnel
should take the front line of battle where
possible means that Irish government calls
for even it's withdrawal from nationalist
areas are likely to be resisted.
For many nationalists, it is not just the
UDR who generate fear but the RUC and
British army as well. According to Fr Faul,
who has submitted 2000 complaints
against the RUC, and 1000 against the
British army and UDR since 1971, without
the slightest success, the recent murders of
Catholics bear all the hallmarks of direct
collusion with security forces and the Ste-
vens enquiry is most unlikely to get to he
root of the problem.
'Last year in Castlereagh, Gerard Casey
was told by the RUC that they would
shoot him. Although no-one can prove it,
his family believe that his killers came from
the UDR centre between Ballymoney and
Coleraine, known locally by nationalists as
the UVF centre,' Fr Faul said.
pic. Pacemaker
'There are reports that the UVF were
asked by RUC branchmen in Castlereagh
to carry out the shooting of Pat Finucane
and they turned down the request. It seems
the UFF took it up from there. In the case
of Loughlin Maginn he was also told by the
RUC that he would be shot. Although he
was harassed very badly and almost every
day, he was not stopped once during the
three weeks prior to his death giving rise to
the belief that the RUC knew he was to be
killed. There were no roadblocks set up on
the night of his killing but the next evening
everyone coming to the wakehouse was
stopped and searched by the RUe.'
'The fact is that information for attacks
on Catholics has been released from the
UDR, British Army, RUC, the prison ser-
vice and even by officials in the dole of-
fices. People here are extremely cynical
about this latest Stevens enquiry. It looks
like another scapegoat operation and the
terms of reference are too limited. There
should be an enquiry not just into collusion
by the security forces but actual conspiracy
to murder. Catholics are being targetted,
roads are left open for the assassins, and
there is a failure to operate procedures
after these killings,'Fr Faul argues.

LAUNCHING THE FIRST new
metropolitan daily newspapers in
the United States for over 30 years, Ralph
Ingersoll said in an interview "people today
want newspapers to think for them, to
make things briefer, more condensed -just
like television".
His new newspaper, St Louis Sun,
launched on September 25 last, matches
that standard. It is full of "briefs" and
boxes, colour tints and photographs - con-
summately undemanding. It is a local ver-
sion of USA Today nicknamed after the
fast food conglomerate, MacPaper.
Its editorial line is situated somewhere
between conservative and reactionary.
In an interview with Business Week
magazine, published in its September 25
edition, Ingersoll criticises the mildly libe-
ral opposition paper, The St Louis Post
Dispatch. He states that its liberalism is out
of step with the heartland of America. He
argues instead for "commonsense Yankee
values" on such issues as local education
and health care, which, he believes, will win
readers among conservative Missourians,
the state in which he has launched his Sun.
"The now discredited liberal orientation
depends on distributing shares of a pie
that's never been baked", he says. "The
Sun will be more interested in the art of the
possible than the art of the desirable. The
subjects on its editorial page will not be
NATO policy, South Africa, or the saving
of whales, but something that connects
with St Louis readers".
He went on to accuse the Post of "hyper-
coverage" of racial tensions and segre-
gation in St Louis and he promised that his
newspaper would not dwell on such un-
pleasantries. "I see nothing constructive in
continuing to lambaste the white base in St
Louis for these perceived wrongs". -St
Louis is a black majority city, with the property is one direct way of increasing the purchased from syndicates, and prefer that
blacks living predominately on the poorer operating cash flow necessary to service ac- editorials be confined to local issues.
north side and the whites on the south side. quisition debt. Young Ingersol feels his greatest impact
The city has a high crime rate. The refer- Ingersoll says he has to cut somewhere on the editorial operation of his newspapers
ence to "perceived wrong" reflects a white and the people they try to retain are the most (and the thing that gives him most trouble
conviction that the blacks are poor not be- efficient and capable people, which in some with his editors) is his insistence that they
cause of any wrong done to them but be- cases (but not all) means letting senior hire more copy and desk editors (the equiv-
cause of their own lack of effort. people go. alent of sub-editors in Irish newspapers, who
As the prospective new co-owner of The Asfor the question of interference, he and rewrite copy written by reporters or sent in
Irish Press these highly conservative and Geyer (one of his senior executives in the on wire services) and specialised part time
vaguely racist views will jar with the US) prefer to call it education, but he does correspondents andfewer full time reporters.
paper's radical traditions - its first editorial concede that his editors and publishers re- His editors do not like this because good in-
in 1931 espoused what would now be re- ceive constant guidance from Lakeville (the house editors are hard to find today, when
garded as a socialist line. Ingersoll headquarters) for the obvious rea- every young journalist wants to be an investi-
Ingersoll's own pedigree, ironically, son that he feels he and Geyer know more gative reporter.
would have seemed quite suited to Burgh about modern newspaper publishing tech- Apart from the new St Louis newspaper,
Quay. His father, also called Ralph Inger- niques than the editors and publishers who the young Ingersoll has concentrated a
soll, was one of the most formidable figures come with the papers they buy. great deal of his attention on the free news-
in American journalism in the 'thirties and
'forties. He was one of the founders of Life
magazine with Henry Luce and he was also
of one of the founders of Fortune.
He was the creator of one of the most
innovative newspapers, PM before the
War - it was a New York daily newspaper
and was distinguished by not carrying ad-
vertising. It was his fortune and newspaper
empire which the young Ingersoll inhe-
rited, or rather grabbed - he pushed his
father aside in 1982 in a bitter internal
coup.
The elder Ingersoll's politics were rad-
ical. He had prominent associations with
members of the Communist Party in the
'forties and he was one of the key support-
ers and even speechwriters of George Me-
Govern in the Presidential election of 1972
against Richard Nixon.
His sense of journalism was also very dif-
ferent to that of his son. He would never
have spoken of readers expecting newspap-
ers to think for them, for would he have
been happy with the "fast food" genre of
journalism. He was what was known as a
"crusading journalist", sponsoring causes -
it would have been unthinkable for him to
have spoken of "the perceived wrongs" of
the black population of St Louis.
The young Ingersoll is an open admirer
of Rupert Murdoch and was impressed by
what Murdoch did to the New York Post -
the Columbia Journalism Review wrote "the "Of the five newspaper publishing discipli- paper sector, notably in St Louis itself but
New York Post is no longer merely a
nes", says Ingersoll, "a publisher will have also, most spectacularly in the Long Island
journalistic problem (this was after Mur- no doubt come up through one of them and is area outside New York.
doch had left his mark on it). It is a social probably weak on the other four. You can do There Ingersoll produces 100 editions of
problem, a force for evil". what my father did and throw them in the a "Total Market Coverage" newspaper on
In a biography of the elder Ingersoll by water and see if they can swim. And often a weekly basis in competition to Newsday
Roy Hoopes, published in 1985, there is a you lose your man. Or you can yell at them the Long Island daily newspaper. He has
section dealing with the young Ingersoll's or bully them, which sometimes works with recently done the same in the British mid-
attitude to the papers he acquires. the right person." What young Ingersoll pre- lands, where a new free newspaper Focus is
Young Ingersoll does concede there is fers is to teach them - the Ingersoll way. produced in 50 editions, each with a cir-
"some truth" to charges that the transition But he insists that there is never any effort culation of no more than 15,000.
during the "takeover" of a local newspaper to interfere with editorial policy by dictating While Ingersoll preaches that the stan-
can be rough on the staff "When we buy a whom the paper should support in local and dards of free newspapers must be on a par
paper at market prices, we have to earn a national elections or what positions it should with paid-for newspapers, in reality the edi-
certain rate of return on sales in order to take on local or national issues. They do re- torial content of his free newspapers is
service debt. Cutting staff in an overstaffed quire that editorials be locally written, not threadbare.

ON THEEVENING OF Sep-
tember 4, 1931, at a historic site
in Burgh Quay, Dublin, the sister of two
1916 leaders, Margaret Pearse, pressed a
button to start newspaper presses rolling,
for a print run of 300,000 copies. It was to
be the first edition of The Irish Press and it
was almost a sell out.
The historic site was that of the Tivoli
Theatre, which was first a music hall and
later a cinema but had been bought over in
1929 as the location for the new "Republi-
can" newspaper - the old jokes about it
being still a music hall have persisted down
the years. Prior to it being a theatre, it was
the site of the Conciliation Hall, from
where Daniel 0 Connell launched the Re-
peal Movement in the early 1840's.
The new newspaper had come into being
because those who had taken the anti-
treaty side in the civil war and who had
later joined to form Fianna Fail believed,
with good reason, that the two other main
newspaper groups, The Irish Independent
and The Irish Times would not fairly cover
republican politics or fairly represent their
views.
The circumstances of the birth of The
Irish Press were controversial at the time
and continue to be. A large part of the
£200,000 capital that was raised to fund the
new newspaper was money that had been
raised in the United States as a Dailloan in
1919by Eamon deValera.
A total of $5m was raised in America in
1919 but only half this was remitted to Ire-
land, the remainder was on deposit in a
New York bank. In 1922 the Cosgrave
government obtained an injunction pre-
venting this money on deposit being paid
to the republican faction in the civil war.
Five years later another court however de-
cided that the money should not be paid to
the Free State government but should be
returned to the original subscribers.
Several of these subscribers assigned
their rights in this to Mr deValera for the
purpose of founding a republican news-
paper. There were allegations of impro-
priety about this at the time but, of late,
concern has centred on how the deValera
family have come to have an effective
stranglehold on The Irish Press, when
those who originally subscribed for the
--
Council (the equivalent of today's Taoi-
seach) was asked if he intended to suppress
"this Republican rag" by a Cumann na
nGaedhael TD. He replied that he did not-
the paper would suppress itself shortly.
The paper did not suppress itself shortly
- it went on to become one of the major
media institutions in the country and to
give rise to two other newspapers, which
also established themselves as market
leaders in their niches.
The Irish Press itself went on to establish
a steady circulation at around 150,000 co-
pies per day.
In 1949 it was joined in the Burgh Quay
stable by The Sunday Press, which was
launched at the instigation of Sean Lemass
who had come into The Irish Press as man-
aging director when Fianna Fail went out
of power in 1948. The Sunday Press was a
huge success in commercial and particu-
larly in sales terms attaining a sale of over
half a million in the 'fifties, far surpassing
its rival, then and now, The Sunday Inde-
pendent.
The success of that venture was followed
in 1953 with another hugely successful
launch, that of The Evening Press, with
Douglas Gageby as editor.
By the early 'sixties, the three papers
were by far the most successful in the
country in their respective niches and even
10 years ago all three papers were far ahead
of its rivals, with the exception of The Irish
Press itself which even then was showing
signs of decline.
In June of 1981 The Irish Press reported
sales of 104,902, while The Irish Indepen-
dent reported sales of 185,829.
But The Sunday Press was still then far
ahead of its rivals at 381,792 to just 271,214
for The Sunday Independent and 351,728
for The Sunday World - the gap between
The Sunday Press and The Sunday Indepen-
dent, the two "mid market" Sunday news-
papers being a hefty 110,578.
The Evening Press had a circulation in
June 1981 of 178,091 to a circulation for
The Evening Herald of 133,450 - the gap
here being 44,641.
Eight years later, in June 1989, the situ-
ation had drastically changed. The Irish
Press circulation had dropped from
104,902 to 63,904 - a fall of almost 40%.
The Sunday Press sales had dropped from
381,792 to 215,814 - a fall of 43%. The Eve-
ning Press sales had dropped from 178,091
to 105,196•.a fallof41%.
More critically, while in June 1981, The
Irish Press was selling 80,927 a day fewer
than The Irish Independent, by June 1989
the gap was 88,609. The Irish Times which
in June 1981 was selling 18,624 copies
fewer than The Irish Press was, by June
1989, selling 27,981 copies more.
Even more depressing from the Burgh
Quay perspective however has been the
relative decline of the two papers that were
market leaders 8 years ago. The Sunday
Press, which sold 110,587 copies more than
The Sunday Independent in June 1989 was
selling 7,869 copies fewer - a turn around of
118,456. And the healthy gap of 44,641
that had existed between The Evening Press
and The Evening Herald had dwindled to
an insignificant 691 - indeed in readership
terms The Evening Hearld had overtaken
The Evening Press, with the Joint National
Media Research (JNMR) survey showing
that the former was read by 17% of the
adult population for the year July I, 1988
to June 30 1989 and the latter read by only
15%.
The Irish Press newspaper itself is in the
most precarious position, with circulation
showing at just 63,904 for the 6 month pe-
riod January to June 1989.
The current reality however may be
much worse by now for circulation has
continued to fall - it would not surprise the
industry if circulation were now around
55,000 and the readership figure under
10%.
But that it not all the story.
The Joint National Media Research
(JNMR) survey published last month (Sep-
tember) reveals that the newspaper is actu-
ally in far worse shape commercially than
the top line readership data would suggest-
the paper is read by 13% of all adults.
The survey shows that 28% of the read-
ers that it had in the period July I, 1988 to
June 30, 1989, were over 54 and the vast
majority of its readers - 63% -were in the
low income bracket.
Newspapers make sense in advertising
terms either if they have a high proportion
of readers in the higher socio-economic
groups or if they have a large number of
readers overall. The Irish Press has neither.
On top of that 55% of Irish Press readers
are rural.
The decision to turn The Irish Press into
a tabloid in April 1988 has not proved suc-
cessful. There was a temporary surge in its
circulation but that has now turned into a
precipitous decline. The stage has now
been reached at which there is no per-
suasive case for advertisers to stay with the
paper. It has all the symptoms of terminal
decline.
Can Ingersoll do anything to save it?
His most likely reaction, if not to close
the paper, will be to drive it further down
market into an Irish version of MacPaper.
Doing that will certainly alienate what core
of traditional readers the newspaper has
left and given that over a third of them are
in the 50 plus bracket, this would have very
serious repercussions in the short term.
There is also the problem that for this to
work the group would need new printing
presses - the present presses are nearly 40
years old and cannot print colour, what-
ever colour is printed is done outside.
There is the additional problem of person-
nel -even if the "education -the Ingersoll
way" were to be undertaken it would take
quite some time and time is what The Irish
Press does not have.
There is a further possibility: that Inger-
soll would turn The Irish Press into a free
newspaper for distribution in the Dublin
area. This might work but it would involve
very considerable "restructuring" (i.e. re-
dundancies).
The newspaper that W T Cosgrave said
in 1931 would "suppress itself' is, appar-
ently, now doing so, some 60 years later.
W AVES OF SHOCK AND
horror rippled through world
journalism last month as word spread
about new restrictions on hacks' freedom
imposed by Washington Post executive
editor, Ben Bradlee.
Bradlee is the author of a new code of
ethics which has just been issued to Post
staff and which, were it to apply generally,
would radically change the conduct of
journalism.
The craggy veteran of a thousand inves-
tigative triumphs declares that journalists,
who frequently pontificate on the beha-
viour of others, must be above all suspicion
of sharp practice themselves.
Pious declarations of this sort are, of
course, currently priced at around a dime a
dozen: however, Bradlee has gone con-
siderably farther than others on either side
of the Atlantic by making his code part of
the conditions of employment at the Post
any breach earns the sack. And he has in-
cluded in it such decrees as a prohibition
on "free admission to any events that is not
free to the public ...''.
This provision on its own would not
only change working practices but the en-
tire way of life of a sizable element within
the press-pack of these islands. One of the
reasons the NUl card is much sought-after
is that it can frequently secure free admis-
sion to night-clubs, 'receptions', sporting
fixtures and the like - which helps explain
why the NUl is under permanent siege
from people clamouring to 'join the union',
hardly any of whom turn out after admis-
sion to have the slightest interest in trade
unionism.
More importantly, Bradlee is suggesting
that journalists, who commonly claim to
do their pontificating on behalf of 'the pub-
lic', should experience the events that they
cover in the same way as members of 'the
public' - a proposal calculated to provoke
consternation in all the relevant watering-
holes and with obvious and profound
implications for coverage of, for example,
musical events, the theatre, or internatio-
nals at Lansdowne Road.
(An admittedly trivial, but nonetheless
telling illustration of what's involved here
happened at the Brandywell in Derry last
month when the management of Derry
City Football Club tried to move the hacks
from their long-established perches high in
the stand - so that the seats could be sold
- and into the new press-box which was
purpose-built, comfortable and perfectly
positioned but which happened to be on
the unreserved side of the ground and ac-
cess to which was obtainable only via the
terraces. A deputation representing local
and national sports hacks met with the
City board to protest against this intoler-
able slight on the status of the ancient craft.
One member of the deputation explained
that "this is an insult to the ordinary people
that we represent!" Sadly, the Derry man-
agement backed down and the hacks are
again able to cover matches without having
to come into physical contact with all-
weather fans like this column.)
B radlee has aiso forbidden hi,
journalists to accept free trips of
any kind, an edict which would effectively
put an end to travel journalism as we know
it and deprive us additionally of all those
extensive, glowing features from abroad
about pop acts who coincidentally are
about to play Ireland, the tab for which is
generally picked up by the concert pro-
moter/record company without readers
being alerted to this rather relevant fact.
P otentially "'0 more damaging to
current journalistic practice is
Bradlee's insistence that all sources for
facts cited should be mentioned in the text
of stories. This would, at a stroke, kill off
'well-informed sources', 'Government
sources', and 'sources close to the investi-
gation', as well as 'close friend of the vic-
tim' and 'neighbours of the hunted man',
not to mention 'a member of the Royal
household' and myriad other long-stand-
ing and reliable providers of the crucial
quote. (It is this column's experience that
the remainder of any sentence beginning
'Neighbours said last night...' can safely be
regarded as total fabrication.)
The code also instructs journalists to de-
sist from the type of value-laden for-
mulations most frequently deployed to
convey a sly judgement, such as, for
example: "He confessed to being a member
of the Progressive Democrats"; it forbids
journalists to involve themselves in 'poli-
tics, community affairs, social action and
demonstrations', a regulation which, if ap-
plied rigidly in Ireland would either deprive
RTE current affairs of half its staff or the
Workers' Party of half its journalistic ad-
herents; and much more along the same
lines.
The general intent is to try and ensure
that journalists come clean with readers
about all the circumstances in which stories
are compiled, and that they record events
rather than participate in them. Given
Bradlee's enormous prestige in the indus-
try, his code is likely to be influential
 far beyond the Post group and indeed be-
yond the US. Already, according to Amit
Roy writing in the Sunday Times, Bradlee's
code is being studied by the committee
under David Calcutt which was set up after
the Hillsborough disaster to look into the
British press's methods of news gathering.
There is a nice irony here, in that the
circumstances in which Bradlee acquired
this remarkable influence also helped
create the style of journalism which now
seems to perturb him.
As executive editor for a quarter of a
century of the main morning newspaper in
the capital of the US, Bradlee would have
been a substantial figure in world journal-
ism anyway. But it was the Watergate af-
fair in the early Seventies, and particularly
the Redford/Hoffman Hollywood account
of it, 'All the President's Men', which made
the Post, and Bradlee himself (played by
Jason Robards), into standard bearers, and
standard setters, for western world journal-
ism. (Bradlee, the series producers have
agreed, was ther real-life role model for
television's personification of compassio-
nate journalistic integrity, Lou Grant.)
The irony lies in the fact that Post's ex-
pose of sordid shennanigans in Nixon's
White House could not possibly have been
accomplished under Bradlee's new code.
Instead, Watergate reporters Bob Wood-
ward and Carl Bernstein would likely have
been disciplined for dodgy methods.
Woodward and Bernstein relied
throughout their investigation on a series named 'Deep Throat'). A reading of
of 'well informed sources', the identities of
Woodward and Berstein's own account of
whom remained hidden not only from Post
the affair, on which the movie was based,
readers but from Bradlee himself and other
leaves no room for doubt that almost all
senior executives on the paper. (In US
the Posts Watergate coverage, which made
journalistic circles there has since been con-
Bradlee '74 into the world's best-known
siderable speculation, and outright scepti-
editor, would have been spiked by Bradlee
cism, about the existence, never mind the
'89.
identity, of the key Woodstein source code
More generally, Watergate gave journal-
ism, and journalists, a spurious sheen of
glamour from which the trade is still suffer-
ing. It boosted the notion of the journalist
as star, who naturalIy doesn't experience
the aspects of life under journalistic scru-
tiny in exactly the way ordinary folk do,
and who is not ony entitled but duty-
bound to intervene in events rather than
passively record. Woodward and Ber-
nstein, with the backing of Bradlee - so
the movie suggested and hacks everywhere
were avid to accept - brought down the
government. Journalists, it was clearly
implied, are by no means mere recorders of
passing events, but men and women with a
mission, to defend truth, justice and the
movie-American way ....
Now Bradlee tells us that journalists
must 'remain in the audience, stay off the
stage and report the news, not make the
news', etc. etc.
A bit late, Ben.
(It should be recorded that sources close
to Mr Bradlee insist that the injunction
that journalists "stay off the stage" is not
aimed specifically at BP Fallon.)
15 JANUARY: Former Tullylish, Gilford, Co
RUC reservist Harry Fourteen people died In September In the continuing violence arising from the political Down, was the second
Keys (23) from Ballycas- conflict In Northern Ireland. Ten members of the Royal Marines died In an IRA explosion member of his family to
sidy, Co Fermanagh, at Deal, Kent, In England. The death toll this year Is fifty-nine and since 1969 Is 2769. be killed by random
was killed outside his
girl-friend's home in Ballintra, Co Done- Tyrone. Josie Connolly was born in Glas- loyalist attack. In 1975 his uncle John was
gal. gow in August 1968 and was a bricklayer shot by the UVF in Portadown. Patrick
18 JANUARY: Ian Catney (27) aCatholic by trade and a well-known amateur boxer. Feeney was manning a security gate at the
from Smithfield in West Belfast was shot 9 FEBRUARY: Tony Fusco (33) of Mil- Ewart Liddell linen mill in Donaghcloney
dead in the Smithfield market by the UVF, ford Row, Divis Flats was shot by the UVF five miles from his home where he had
who alleged that he was a member of the as he walked to work in the Smithfield worked for ten years. A man charged with
INLA, a claim disputed by the IRSP. Market in Belfast city centre. His family the killing was also charged with the UFF
25 JANUARY: David Dornan (26) a Prot- denied a UVF claim that Mr Fusco was a claimed murder of Mr Terry Delaney in
estant from Ballynahinch, Co Down, was member of the IRA and said he was shot July 1988.
shot dead in Lisburn by loyalists appar- solely because he was a Catholic. 22 FEBRUARY: Lance Corporal Norman
ently in a case of mistaken identity. His 12 FEBRUARY: A solicitor Patrick Finu- Duncan (27) was shot dead by an IRA unit
killers, according to the RUC, thought he cane was killed by a UFF squad in front of as he drove from Ebrington barracksin
was a Catholic. A Free Presbyterian, he his wife and children at his home in Fort- Derry to the nearby Ebrington primary
was shot at 8.30am by two men as he sat in william Drive in North Belfast. Mr Finu- school to collect the children of soldiers in
his mechanical digger at a site on Knock- cane was solicitor for Bobby Sands during a school bus. The soldier was a native of
more Road just outside Lisburn. the 1981hunger strike. Craigellanchie in Scotland.
28 JANUARY: Constable Stephen Mont- 14 FEBRUARY: John Davey, a Sinn Fein 26 FEBRUARY: Joseph Fenton (35), a
gomery (26) was killed and another RUC councillor in his late fifties, from Maghera- father of four, from Sawel Hill, Andersons-
man seriously injured when a drogue bomb felt, Co Derry, was shot dead as he re-
town, was shot dead by the IRA in Bunbeg
hit their vehicle close to midnight at Sion turned to his home after a meeting of
Park, Lenadoon. The dead man's father,
Mills in Co Tyrone. The bomb was thrown Magherafelt District Council. Exactly a
Patrick Fenton, said that he accepted the
from a roof top. The IRA claimed re- year earlier he had survived a similar assas-
sponsibility. sination attempt. UDR collusion was sus- IRA's claim having been given evidence
31 JANUARY: Private Nicholas Peacock pected in the attack although it was that his son had worked as a paid informer
(20) from Grantham, Lincolnshire, was claimed by the loyalist UVF. RUC since 1982.
killed in an IRA bomb attack at the side of 18 FEBRUARY: Stephen McCrea (36) of 28 FEBRUARY: Retired RUC Inspector
the Rock Bar at the junction of the Falls Ebor Street, off the Shankill Road, died Gabriel Mullaly of Kirkliston Park, Belfast
Road and Rockmore Road in West Bel- two days after being seriously injured in an was killed when a bomb exploded under his
fast. In the North for less than a month, attack by the IPLO on the Orange Cross car at the junction of North Road and
Private Peacock was the first British soldier Social Club on the Shankill Road. The Upper Newtownards Road. The IRA
to die in Ireland in 1989. IPLO claimed that several recent loyalist claimed responsibility for the killing.
6 FEBRUARY: James Joseph Connolly assassinations of nationalists had been 7 MARCH: Leslie Dallas (39), Ernest Ran-
(20) an IRA volunteer, from Castlederg, planned in the club. Mr McCrea had ser- kin (72) and Austin Nelson (62) were killed
Co Tyrone, was killed when a bomb he was ved a lengthy prison sentence for his part in when an IRA unit attacked a garage in
planting under the car of an RUC officer the murder of Catholics some years ago. Coagh, Co Tyrone which they claimed was
exploded prematurely at Drumquin, Co 20 FEBRUARY: Patrick Feeney (32) of being used by the loyalist UVF to
prepare sectarian attacks on Catholics in
the area and specifically republican sup-
porters.
8 MARCH: British soldiers Private Miles
Daniel Amos (18) and Private Stephen Jeff-
ery Cummins (24) died after a massive
landmine blew their landrover off the Bun-
crana Road in Derry near the Donegal bor-
der checkpoint. The second of two vehicles
in the army patrol was completely de-
stroyed and six other soldiers were injured,
two seriously.
10 MARCH: Mr James McCartney (39),
was shot dead outside the Orient Bar on
the Springfield Road in West Belfast where
he worked as a security man. Another man
was seriously injured when the loyalist
UVF gang shot into the crowded bar.
14 MARCH: Thomas John Hardy (48) a
part-time UDR man was shot dead at the
Granville Meats plant, Dungannon, Co
Tyrone. Mr Hardy from Dungannon was
shot dead after he drove into a loading bay
at the company premises on the Augnacloy
Road. Hejoined the UDR on its formation
in 1970.
16 MARCH: John Irvine (49) was shot
dead on the street outside his shop on Ske-
goneill Avenue in North Belfast. The IRA
who claimed the killing said that Mr Irvine
who was a defendant in the Budgie Allen
supergrass trial some years ago was an ac-
tive member of the UVF, a charge denied
by the loyalist organisation.
17 MARCH: Niall Davies (42) a Catholic
senior civil servant was shot dead in front
of his wife and daughter at their home in
Glengormley, North Belfast. Loyalist at-
tackers used a sledgehammer to break
down a door at the Davies home on
Church Road and then shot their victim at
least three times in the chest.
19 MARCH: David Braniff (63) a father of
13,was shot dead at his home in Alliance
Avenue, Belfast as he knelt with his wife
and one daughter reciting the rosary. Two
loyalist UVF members burst into the house
and killed Mr Braniff despite an attempt by
his wife to save his life.
20 MARCH: Chief Superintendent Harry
Breen (51) from Banbridge, Co Down, and
Superintendent Bob Buchanan (55) from
Moira, Co Down died when the car they
were travelling in was attacked by an IRA
unit near Jonesboro in South Armagh. The
two senior officers had just crossed the bor-
der from the south, following a meeting
with senior Gardai, on an unapproved
road when they encountered an IRA
checkpoint.
4 APRIL: Gerard Casey (29) of Shamrock
Road, Rasharkin, Co Antrim was killed in
his bed by loyalist gunmen. Mr Casey who
leaves three children was a member of the
IRA who claimed that there was RUC and
UDR collusion in the attack.
II APRIL: Joanne Reilly (20) was killed
when an IRA bomb exploded prematurely
in Warrenpoint, Co.Down outside the
RUC barracks. The IRA said that one of
it's members accidently triggered off a de-
vice which caused the bomb to explode be-
fore warnings were given.
19 APRIL: Francis Galbraith (29) was
shot by loyalists near the Sydenham by-
pass, close to his parents home in east Bel-
fast. A nephew of loyalist supergrass
Joseph Bennett, Mr Galbraith was appar-
ently killed in an internal loyalist dispute
over weapons. He leaves four children.
21 APRIL: William Thompson (26) was
shot dead in his black taxi on the Crumlin
Road in north Belfast. The IRA alleged
that Mr Thompson had been involved in
the sectarian kiilings of nationalists in
north Belfast, a claim denied by the dead
man's family.
4 MAY; John Griffiths (37) was killed
when a bomb planted under his car ex-
ploded as he left his home at Ballynick
Road, Loughgall, Co.Armagh. The IRA
claimed responsibility for the murder of
Mr Griffiths, who was on his way to the
Maze prison where he worked as a nurse
having previously served in the British
army and UDR.
4 MAY; Corporal Stephen Mc Gonigle
(30) was killed when a roadside bomb ex-
ploded as he was on foot patrol in the
countryside near Silverbridge, South Ar-
magh, on the main Newry-Crossmaglen
Road. From Newark in Nottinghamshire,
he had been in the British army for 14years
and was married with two children.
16 MAY; Malachy Trainor (34), a father
of two, from Annalong, Co. Down was
killed by the UVF as he worked in the in-
tensely Rathcoole estate in North Belfast.
15 JUNE; Marine Adam Gilbert (21)
from Aldershot was accidentally shot by
fellow members. of his patrol when they
fired on a stolen car at the junction of New
Lodge Road and Antrim Road in Belfast.
24 JUNE; Liam Mc Kee (36) of Donard
Drive, Lisburn was shot dead at his home
after a UFF gang broke down the front
door with a sledgehammer. His mother was
injured in the attack.
24 JUNE; Constable David Black (34), a
full time reservist with the R.U.C. was
killed when an IRA bomb exploded under
his car as he left his home at Ballyheather
Road, near Strabane.
I/JULY; Constable Norman Annett (56)
died when two IRA men shot him as he sat
with his elderly mother, in the living room
of her home at Carhill Road, between
Maghera and Garvagh, Co. Derry.
2 JULY; Corporal Steve Smith (43) was
killed at Kaiserallee, a residential area of
Hanover, West Germany when a bomb ex-
ploded underneath his Mercedes car. A na-
tive of Yorkshire, the dead soldier was
based with the Royal Tank Regiment in the
city.
18 JULY; John Mc Nulty (48) a business-
man from Warrenpoint, Co.Down was
killed by the IRA who alleged that he had
been an RUC informer since 1972 and had
contributed to the arrest of Raymond Me
Creesh in Armagh in 1976, who sub-
sequently died in the 1981 hunger strike in
Long Kesh.
23 JULY; John Devine (37), a father of
three was shot dead at his home in Fallswa-
ter Road off Broadway in West Belfast as
he sat reading his newspaper with his thir-
teen year old son.The Red Hand Comman-
dos,a cover name for the loyalist UVF
claimed responsibility for the sectarian kill-
ing.
25 JULY; Constable Alexander Bell (39)
an RUC officer died two weeks after an
IRA landmine destroyed the armoured ve-
hicle in which he and two fellow officers
were travelling at the Red Arch at Water-
foot, near Cushendall, Co. Antrim. The
other two officers were also seriously in-
jured in the attack.
9 AUGUST; Seamus Duffy (15) of Bally-
garry St.in the Oldpark district of Belfast
was killed by a plastic bullet fired by an
RUC patrol during anti-internment cel-
ebrations in the city.
15 AUGUST; Private Mark Anthony
Mason from the Staffordshire regiment
died from gunshot wounds accidentally
fired by a colleague while on duty at the
Clooney army base on the Limavaddy
Road near Derry city.
25 AUGUST; Loughlin Maginn (28), was
shot dead by a UFF gang who burst into
his home at Rathfriland, Co. Down where
he lived with his wife and four children. He
had been the victim of regular harassment
by the British army and RUC over a period
of 18 months and threats were made by
soldiers on his life. Later the UFF showed
pictures of alleged IRA suspects, including
Maginn to a BBC reporter which they had
acquired from security force sources. Sub-
sequently a member of the UDR was
charged with his murder.
2 SEPTEMBER; Patrick Mc Kenna (43)
was shot dead as he walked in the Crumlin
Road area of Belfast near his home in Far-
ringdon Court, in Ardoyne. Two UVF
members opened fire from a motorcycle at
close range in a busy shopping area at
1O.00a.m. Mr Me Kenna was a victim of a
random sectarian killing.
2 SEPTEMBER; Brian Robinson (27) of
Forthriver Crescent who was on the
motorcycle as it drove away from the scene
of Mr Me Kenna's killing was shot dead by
a British army undercover patrol in nearby
Flax Street. Two soldiers in an unmarked
car first rammed and then shot Mr Robin-
son, whose associate was arrested. The
UVF claimed Robinson as a member and a
large contingent of loyalists attended his
funeral. His mother died of a heart attack
soon after hearing of her sons death.
7 SEPTEMBER; Heidi Hazell died after
an IRA attack near the married quarters of
the British Army base at Unna Messen,
near Dortmund in West Germany. The
wife of a British soldier, Ms Hazell was
driving an army car with British registra-
tion plates. The IRA warned that anyone
travelling in British army vehicles were
likely targets. September 15; Staff Sergeant
Kevin Frogett (35), a native of Derby, En-
gland was shot dead as he repaired a radio
mast at Coalisland RUC station, Co. Tyro-
ne.The IRA claimed responsibility for the
killing of Sergeant Frogett, a member of
the Royal Corp of Signals.
22 SEPTEMBER; Ten members of the
Royal Marines died at the Royal Marines
School of Music in Deal, Kent in England
when an IRA bomb exploded at 8.22 a.m.
as the men sat in their canteen before their
morning rehearsals. Ten bandsmen were
killed and 21 others were injured in the
blast which was the most serious attack on
British military forces in England for sev-
eral years. The Deal deaths bring to 17 the
total number of British soldiers killed as
the result ofIRA attacks in 1989.
MAGILL October 1989 21

S O WHAT'S IT LIKE BEING A
full-blown AIDS person? That is a
difficult question to answer. I went th-
rough the classic period of denial one goes
through on hearing.bad news. AIDS would
not make any difference to my life. Then
suddenly the realisation that yes, I had full-
blown AIDS. Panic. There were the mood
swings, hyperactivity and enthusiasm fol-
lowed by depression.
In going through these cycles, in think-
ing, talking and writing about my health
situation I have over this past year almost
come around to a kind of "so what I've got
AIDS" attitude. The drama of it all has
gone. Such drama couldn't have been sus-
tained. AIDS is so firmly entrenched in my
consciousness that I cannot imagine now
my life without AIDS. It is an integral part
of me and what I am.
In one sense I've realised over this time
that having AIDS is no big deal. The diffi-
culty has been accepting the reduced life-
span (at present two-to-four years) and the
probability of some awful illnesses. But
don't the old also have to face the same
scenario? I am not alone. If I didn't have
AIDS now wouldn't I possibly have to face
in myoid age exactly the same reality. The
only difference is that the old have had
time to adjust. As you grow into your for-
ties, fifties, sixties and beyond you grad-
ually adjust to a reduced time horizon and
illness. A seventy-five-year-old person
knows that in all probability they will not
reach eighty.
Granted, they don't think about that
every moment of their lives. But there is an
awareness of this fact. My future is the
same. It's just that I didn't have such a long
adjustment period. At a physical age of
thirty-two I had to develop a mental age of
seventy-five. I had mentally to press the
fast-forward button. That's right, I'm
thirty-two going on seventy-five.
Like the aged I have become both more
intolerant and more tolerant at the same
time. I am now so impatient of incompe-
tence, laziness and time wasters. If you
want to do something, it doesn't matter
what, then get on your bike and do it. For-
get what the begrudgers say, just do it. The
critics have never produced anything but
criticism on what someone else has done.
Don't dither. There may not be time to
waste. As someone else said about life "It's
not a dress rehearsal".
ytolerance for the under-dog has
M increased manifold. Maybe that's
because I've hit the bottom of the
pile. Not only am I gay, and that makes
you enough of an outcast anyway, but I've
got AIDS. 0 my God, how low can you
get? An outcast in a group of outcasts.
Who would have thought that a nice Dub-
lin middle-class white boy with such a fine
education would be sitting around with the
same illness as some intravenous drug
abuser from a disadvantaged part of town?
But that's the story. I'm beginning to see
what it's like being disadvantaged.
Having to reduce my workload has
made me realise the benefits of work. It
isn't just money. But it's a way of making
friends; challenging yourself; giving your-
self a purpose; providing you with a sense
of independence. The unemployed and the
retired don't have these. Life on the dole
must be so difficult. Without work feeding
one's self-esteem. One must grow so de-
spondent. There is a reduction and loss of
human respect and a feeling of self-disgust.
In having AIDS I have joined two great
ranks of the rejected in our society - the
old and the ill. Society denies us so much.
For example, it takes away our sexuality.
The old are considered "past it". Society
decides that at a certain age the old ought
to have given up this "messy business" as if
sexual desire can be switched off. And if
the old continue to display sexual interest
then they are the subject of ridicule. We
find revolting the image of an old body en-
gaged in the sexual act. They become dirty
old men or shameless old women and they
are sneered at.
However the statistics show a sexual ac-
tivity amongst the aged that would shock
the adolescents and the middle-aged but it
has been driven out of sight, underground.
It is another of our taboo subjects. Psycho-
analysts have shown that genital disin-
volvement often means that the sexuality
of the aged moves back to the oral and anal
stages. As for the ill, the notion that they
have sexual desire is almost considered ob-
scene. But they do. The difficulty in its ex-
pression can result in such frustration. One
priest said to me that a wank is preferable
to some than the Last Rites.
When I write that having AIDS is in one
sense no big deal, that I've just had to de-
velop the same mentality of the aged within
a short space of time, I am aware of the
horrible huge price I've paid for AIDS.
You do not go through the psychological
adjustment required unaltered. It is not
natural. The joy in the recreation of the
young and healthy, sex, is gone. Sex has
become fraught with tensions, difficulties
and guilt. I have become more distant,
withdrawing into myself, at times obsessio-
nal about my AIDS. This personality
change has been difficult for me and those
close to me. I just hope that I'll be remem-
bered as the person I was before AIDS
and not the person I am now.
I am very fortunate in having family and
friends who are supportive and who listen.
But there came a point during the past year
when that just was not enough. I wanted to
meet someone else with AIDS just to see if
the thoughts I was thinking were the same
kind of thoughts they were thinking. I
wanted it confirmed that I was not unique.
Now to find someone else with AIDS.
And I don't just mean anyone but someone
I could relate to, while at the same time not
being public about my full-blown status.
I am not convinced that some of the self-
help groups that have emerged here in
Dublin are confidential. So that ruled them
out. Would I go to London and seek some-
one there? But many Irish gays who are
either HIV positive or full-blown have
moved over there (we export them like our
women with unwanted pregnancies) that in
making contact with the self-help groups in
London, I was bound to run into them.
Within a short space of time the grapevine
would have the story back in Dublin. I
didn't want that. A doctor suggested put-
ting me in contact with another patient
who was HIV positive. But I wanted to
speak to someone who was full-blown. I
have gone through that HIV positive stage,
the adolescent phase in AIDS. I wanted to
speak to someone else in maturity.
Just as I was getting desperate Faber and
Faber published Emmanuel Dreuilhe's
book Mortal Embrace. In this gay guy, th-
rough his book, an essay on his life with
AIDS, I met a friend. That's not to say that
I feel everything he feels. But we have a
sufficient number of feelings in common
that I know I'm not odd in what I think.
He gave me confidence in my reasoning
process.
Throughout his book he uses the mili-
tary image when referring to AIDS. Such
an image. But it is his. The book just deals
with his life after AIDS and rarely refers to
his life before AIDS. Found this frustrating
because you couldn't see or appreciate the
changes that have had to take place. This is
why in the earlier articles in this series I
dealt with aspects of my life before AIDS. I
want to illustrate these changes and to try
and make them real for the reader.
My forthcoming book in bringing all my
writings on AIDS within two covers hope-
fully will make this ever clearer because the
before and after will be there together in
stark contrast.
In his prologue Dreuilhe makes
probably his most important observation. I
quote:
"For AIDS is perhaps above all a men-
tal illness, not so much because the virus
may affect our brains as because it
forces upon us such isolation and angu-
ish that it drives us mad. Since the onset
of my sickness, I have come to unders-
tand what a nervous breakdown can
be".
Scribbled in my diary on a black night
last January in a fit of anxiety, before I had
read his book, are the words "You are on
your own being a full-blown AIDS per-
son." Now I know 1 am not alone. There is
always Dreuilhe.
In the early stages of Dreuilhe's AIDS he
looked after his lover, Oliver, who died
from AIDS related infections after just
three months of endless agony.
"I was jealous of Oliver's AIDS: it was
more spectacular than mine."
So Dreuilhe has the insight both of the
AIDS sufferer and the AIDS carer. His ho-
nesty in the latter role is frightening and
refreshing all at the same time. (Do my sis-
ters and close friends, I wonder, feel some-
thing similar?) AIDS had raised a barrier
between Dreuilhe and Oliver and they had
become strangers to one another because:
"I did not yet belong to his world of
serious illness; I'd accompanied him as
far as I could go, to the very threshold
of death, but he had to make his way
through his last weeks of martyrdom
alone ... By dying, he allowed me to live,
releasing me from the burden of his sur-
vival, which had clearly brought me
close to collapse that winter ... I'll never
freely admit that I hoped his end would
come quickly, not only to release him
from his agony but also to allow me to
concentrate on my survival. I'm tor-
mented by guilt at having watched my
own "partner" - to use my visiting
nurse's discreet term - die in my place
... When the muffled wheezing of his
respiration died away, when the heaving
of his wasted rib cage ceased at last, my
sobbing betrayed my cowardly relief'.
This barrier imposed by AIDS has been
raised between me and the rest of the
world. I'm not yet in the world of constant
serious illness but I'm on the way. I've the
explosive charge inside me. The healthy -
all those HIV negative people - don't. Be-
lieve me AIDS puts human relationships to
the test in a gruelling manner. The non-
AIDS person has to deal with death and
duty while the forces of life within them,
clamour for pleasure. They do not want to
deny themselves these pleasures by fighting
for a cause that is not yet their own.
Like Dreuilhe my AIDS physical ill-
nesses have concentrated in the bowel.
There was a strong identification with
the following paragraph:
"My intestinal war broke out again this
week and it's a constant worry to me.
Judging from my previous experience
with these bouts of diarrhoea, I'm af-
raid I'm in for a bad time of it. The
colour, odour and consistency of the
faeces are as distinctive as the different
types of aircraft launched in a bombing
raid by the enemy. Instead of an oven
producing compact and solid faecal
matter like bricks baked in the sunshine
of health, my guts have become a cess-
pool, a walking slop bucket full of
nauseating gases and liquids, a tepid
culture medium warm with the myriad
amoebas and viruses of my personal
chaos. The functioning - or, rather,
the inertia - of, my bowels is com-
pletely beyond my control. When I
climb out of bed some mornings, I can
almost hear myself sloshing, while
"good days" find me holding firm, like a
block of marble, with order temporarily
restored."
How comforting it is to meet someone
else who also uses blackmail to get what
they want. The only morality I respect now
is my own meaningful survival. When my
audience -family and close friends -seem
to lose interest in my AIDS, a discreet little longer, my only focus is bed. Getting tired
casual remark intended to reveal the loneli-
ness heroically borne is let slip. Now I can
get what I want. My game of playing on the
guilt of the healthy can be so successful.
And while I do not want other people's
pity, I also need it.
I have to use this blackmail and I need
this pity of others for before AIDS I often
turned to sex to relieve the depression we
all feel. Sex for some of us gays was our
traditional refuge. There were those who
maintained, ten years ago, that an evening
in the sauna was worth weeks of therapy.
Now I fear and distrust sex. This comfort is
denied to us AIDS patients at the very mo-
ment when we've been hurled into the im-
mense solitude of AIDS.
And both Dreuilhe and myself have re-
alised that all our lives has been leading up
to this, to AIDS and we didn't realise it.
Writing has helped us to understand the
complexity of feeling this situation arouses
in us.
I have always been proud of my homo-
sexuality. It is not something that I've hid-
den. There has been no shame. (Sure
haven't I shouted about it in these very col-
umns?) So I don't feel that my AIDS has
revealed a secret part of my life. Many
men, who have never been comfortable
with their homosexuality, feel exposed by
their AIDS. The full story is out now.
Some feel so guilty. I pity them with this
extra burden.
My only feeling of guilt was that I was
putting my two sisters and close friends th-
rough my AIDS. What had they done to
deserve this? I've seen thc toll extracted on
my family by my father's lingering death.
Then I realised that being allowed to
watch someone die is a privilege. I saw and
watched my father waste away. I sat beside
him during his struggle. A few days before
his death his plea "Why are you keeping
me alive?" emphasised my powerlessness.
My sisters and close friends will also be
powerless but I will allow them be present
at my death just as my father allowed me
be present at his death. There is nothing
greater to give. To deny them that would
be the worst insult. I no longer feel guilty.
Have I answered the question I posed at
the start of this article, "What's it like
being a full-blown AIDS person?" Not
fully. I have left out the tiredness and the
depression.
I need more sleep than before. After a
normal, note not tough, just normal, days
work, when I can feel my heartbeat and my
legs just cannot support my body any
so easily is boring and frustrating. I've got
to pace myself. Plan everything. If I am to
go out this evening then I've got to make
sure that I leave work early to get home to
sleep for an hour before I head out again.
Otherwise I just wouldn't last. I need many
hours rest. The result, less can be done.
But there are times when I wonder if my
desire to sleep isn't just a way to escape
from the world. Curled up under the blan-
kets one is secure. In sleep you do not have
to face the solitude. AIDS has barricaded
me mentally. Life cannot be lived as nor-
mal. Yet I have to pretend to the world that
everything is normal. The strain of that lie.
There are times when I retire from the
world, shut-up in my flat. I take the phone
off the hook. Refuse to answer the door.
And go to bed. Sleep. I have persuaded my-
self that that is what I need. When I wake
I'm furious with myself for having wasted
another afternoon. If I was feeling so low
why didn't I go for a walk by the sea or just
do something/anything. I could have con-
tacted a friend or gone for a coffee or even
read.
Sit in the chair. Flick from one channel
to another on the TV trying to avoid the
advertisements. I know the game shows,
the talent competitions, the cookery ex-
perts. Another hour passes. Why am I
wasting my life? Here I am in good health.
Now I've got to make the best of it. But
with AIDS the time bomb could go off at
any moment. I just do not know when. So
the pleasures of the moment are gone.
AIDS has cut me off from both the present
and the future. There is just the romanti-
cised past.
The TV is switched off. I just sit there.
No writing has been done today. The next
deadline for Magill is looming. It takes me
ages to produce these articles. Why don't I
get down to some writing now? I argue
with myself to wait for another hour before
I start. And I just sit there. So I both win
and lose that argument.
And sitting there on a black day it just
becomes too much. The misery of it all. I
might go back to bed. Oh, for the comfort
of sleep. Or like last Sunday. I just cried
and cried. I know what I have to do to get out of
these fits. I have to go out more and meet
friends. I have to force myself,. And I know
there are many many people who are a lot worse
off than I am but that just doesn't help.
These bouts of depression started to get more
frequent this summer. Maybe I had more time tol
brood. Or maybe I just know that time is slip-
ping away. That my luck in having such good
health as a full-blown AIDS person is due to run
out soon. But there are times when I wish I
would get some serious illness I couldn't hide.
I'm fed up with these current minor infections.
Then everyone would have to know I have AIDS
and I wouldn't have to pretend anymore and
people would say: "Oh he's got X disease." This
limbo of waiting and pretending isjust awful.
What triggers these depressions? Sometimes I
cannot figure that out. I go low and enter that
long dark tunnel.
Other times I can pin it down to something. It
might be to see the label on yet another sample
to the hospital with the words "Beware AIDS"
in red written all over it. You realise that you are
a person set apart.
This weekend the depths were hit because
some guy I fancy made a pass at me. Jesus, I
should be delighted. But I couldn't respond un-
less I told him my health status, otherwise the
guilt would be too much. I don't want to tell my
health status. That produces its own problems.
There was a time when I would have hopped
into bed with a bloke at the mere suggestion of a
pass. But times have changed.
And sitting here in my flat over the weekend I
said to myself: "What is the point now in going
out, in socialising? I can only communicate with
others on a bland superficial level. I cannot re-
veal the real me. I lie. I am alone." And I just
cried and cried and slept and did nothing.
"T AKE A PHOTOGRAPH
of me in my patched clothes
holding my naked child who is suffering
from malnutrition and show that to Presi-
dent Daniel Ortega", called Ramon Marti-
nez (45) as we passed the corner store in the
small mountain town of Esquipulas, where
he is standing with a number of poor-Iook-
ing campesinos.
Four days earlier the Nicarguan Presi-
dent Daniel Ortega had made a much-pub-
licised visit to the inaccessible town and
spoke of his fears for the safety of an esti-
mated 1,845 abducted Nicaraguans who
were being held in Contra camps north of
the border in Honduras. A woman, Jorling
Ubeda, had just that week become the first
escaped prisoner from the underground
Contra prison at Yamales to give a full,
public account of her years in captivity.
Her story was given a page each day for
four days in the Government newspaper
Barricada. She had been held naked, re-
peatedly beaten, repeatedly raped - some-
times by large groups of men - she had
been on occasion tied to the ground or
hung from overhead beams, and she had
given birth to a boy fathered by one of her
rapists. Now there were fears that with the
coming disbandment of the Contras, pris-
oners who had witnessed such crimes
would be killed rather than have them give
testimony as to what they had seen or suf-
fered. During his speech Ortega had
shouted slogans which, in places such as
Managua, would invariably be echoed by
loud shouted replies from the crowd. In Es-
quipulas his slogans were received with
near-silence by the reserved and suspicious
peasants.
We went over to talk to Ramon and the
other men standing outside the store. His
child was one year old, and its stomach was
bloated in the way of malnourished chil-
dren. There were unhealthy-looking
blotches on its bottom. Ramon was an oc-
casionallabourer in the town. "Any money
I can get is worth nothing. Our money is
worth nothing any longer. We can get no
sugar, we can get no soap. Our clothes are
second-hand clothes that come from your
country", he complained. "Look at my
patched clothes. Look at the patched
clothes of this campesino". He pointed at a
thin, oldish man who had a home-made
wooden saddle on his sorry-looking horse,
and who wore heavily patched jeans and a
heavily patched shirt, and even had patches
on his wellington boots. The campesino
had a sack of kidney beans which were
being looked at by the owner of the store.
"You know how much this campesino
earns? Ten thousand Cordabas (about 30p)
a day, that's all! Ten thousand Cordabas. I
tell you we are no lovers of this govern-
ment, and we will get rid of them. Not with
bullets but with the ballot. We will get rid
of this government in the elections next Fe-
bruary".
It is very early on a Sunday morning.
The rain had stopped just an hour earlier
- for the first time in over 20 hours -and,
though the sun is shining, the temperature
is still pleasant. Others come and listen to
Ramon complain. They nod their heads in
agreement and it seems as if he is speaking
on all their behalfs.
But why blame the government for the
economic crisis, we ask. Surely the econ-
omic crisis is due to the war, and is the fault
of the Contras? "Yes, yes, the war. We
want no war, we want peace. But who pro-
voked this war? This government did,
that's who!"
"Somoza was not good", he continues,
referring to the dictator toppled ten years
previously. "We are not Somosistas, but
Uno (the opposition umbrella group of 14
parties which includes both right-wing par-
ties and the Nicaraguan CommunistParty)
are not like Somoza. We will vote for
them".
There is a little shrine in the wall of the
parish priest's house in Esquipulas. In the
wall-cavity is a photograph of the mur-
dered EI Salvadorean archbishop, Oscar
Romero, taken just after his assassination.
He is lying on the ground with blood flow-
ing from his mouth, nose and ear. Two
nuns are kneeling beside him, expressions
of horror and bewilderment on their faces.
A third nun is crouching over, whispering
in the dead or dying man's ear. "Oscar Ro-
mero, Con EI Senor - 24-3-80", is written
in crayon beside the photograph. Under-
neath is a roll-call of the local "victims" of
the Contra war. "I. Juan Flores Mairena
(17), 10-3-'83.2. Francisco Raudex (38) 10-
3-'83.3. Segundino Raudez, (36), 10-3-'83.
3. Hipolito Raudez (27), 10-3-'83. 4.
Fausto Raudez (22), 10-3-'83. 4. Pastor
Jarquin (35), ... and so on. There are 49
names. The ages range from 15to 60.
"Ortega chose to come here to make his
speech because support for the FSLN (the
Government party) is not strong in this
area at all. They're quite worried about this
whole area, about how people feel", says
Fr Charlie Martin, the Marynoll priest
from New Jersey who is parish priest at
Esquipulas.
"You see most of the people around here
had some piece of the pie before the revol-
ution. They were doing alright. Some of
them lost out in the confiscations and the
break-up of the larger estates and planta-
tions. Not that any of them owned them,
but the people here made their living ser-
vicing them in some way, as drivers, help-
ing in distribution, in marketing, that sort
of thing. Now they find that their lives have
not improved and yet their sons are being
drafted and sent off to war, getting killed
or maimed. I say to them: 'But there is a
war on! Every government has a draft for
young men when there is a war on!' And
they say: 'Somoza never had any wars' ".
T he two plump young women sat at a
table in the middle of the dark, dirty,
fly-infested cafe in Matagalpa fram-
ing the small poster celebrating the 10th
anniversary of the EPS, the Sandinista
Army. When they were finished they drag-
ged a chair over to the wall and hung the
frame from a nail high up in the center.
Dirty-faced little children watched them at
their task. They smiled at us and the reti-
cent one, the one who had not served us
our lunch, said, when asked if they would
be going to the celebrations that night, that
she would and that she was still a member
of the irregulars. She was shy and slow to
answer questions, but eventually she
moved to our table and began to talk more
freely.
Her name was Jeannie Roa, she was 26
years old, and one of the dirty-faced little
girls was her daughter. At 13 years of age,
Jeannie began to scrawl revolutionary and
anti-Somoza slogans on the walls of her
town. Soon she was throwing home-made
bombs in attacks on the security forces and
giving political talks to peasants and villag-
ers, explaining to them what the FSLN was
fighting for. She left her family home and
moved up into the mountains with the
guerrillas. The fighting grew more and
more intensive, and then, in July 1979,
their collective dream came true, and they
took power from the hated Somoza dic-
tatorship.
After the revolution she joined the local
battalion of irregulars. The Contra war es-
calated and, just six months after she had
given birth to her baby girl, she left to play
her part in the war. She travelled to the
camp at Mulu Kuku, in the Zealaya De-
partment, and it was to be two years before
she next saw her daughter. She lived in the
mountains, hunting and being hunted by
the Contras, supplies being dropped to her
unit from helicopters. Twice they were am-
bushed by Contras and members of her
unit killed. There was a lot of Contra at-
Campeslno blames the
Sandlnlstas for
his childs malnutrition
tacks on settlements in the area. Once the
Contras took a member of her unit alive
and chopped him to pieces like a butcher
would cut up meat. They had chopped him
up slowly, making him live as long as poss-
ible through the agony. Later they came
across the bits of their former comrade, his
identification papers clutched in the fist
that lay in the grass. In 1987 they came
across the aftermath of the Contra attack
at Paiwas, Rio Blanco, arriving just two
hours after the enemy had fled. Most of the
buildings had been burned. Among the vic-
tims were women and children. A number
of the women had been decapitated, one
infant had had its head shot to pieces by
machine gun fire. They followed the Con-
tras for three days and three nights, hating
them and longing to avenge the attack at
Paiwas. They caught up with them and
overpowered them and, instead of killing
them took them prisoner as the comman-
dantes had instructed. They had fed them
and dressed them and brought them back
down from the mountains so they could be
put into prison.
When they came down from the
mountains and finished with the fighting,
they all had to receive psychiatric help.
Jeannie had lost a lot of weight, from a
mixture of irregular food supplies and the
nervous tension. Her hair is tied up behind
her head, but she releases it and lets it fall
down around her shoulders. She turns her
head and shows how the entire back of the
skull is completely hairless, one of the ef-
fects of the psychiatric strain.
Now the Contras they captured and
brought down from the mountains will all
be released in the amnesty which forms
part of the package for ending the war. "I
don't think it is right at all that these
people are to be let out of prison" , says
Jeannie. "In the guerrilla war it was soldier
against soldier, but these Contras they
were attacking defenceless people."
The key to everthing is the ending of ther
war with the Contras. The economy could
then begin to grow again, and the Govern-
ment relaunch its programmes for increas-
ing the standard and quality of the people's
lives.
A major breakthrough in ending the war
was achieved by the FSLN Government
following a lengthy meeting with opposi-
tion parties in August. At 9am on August
2, Ortega opened the session, saying they
would "stay here until three in the morning
if necessary". In the event they stayed until
eight the following morning, with agree-
ment not being reached on the 30-point Ac-
cord until 8am, on August 4. The
agreement outlined their common wish
that the war end and that the Contras be
demobilised, and it offered a "broad and
unconditional amnesty" once the demobili-
sation had occured and relocation or re-
patriation of the Contras in Honduras was
completed. A suspension of recruitment to
the army, changes in the powers of the po-
lice, and an extensive list of conditions
which would govern the election campaign
and February election itself, made up the
rest of the agreement.
The day after the successful 23-hour ses-
sion, Ortega travelled to Tela, Honduras,
for a meeting of the five Central American
Presidents. After two days of talks the
Presidents emerged to say that they had
come to an agreement for the demobilisa- .
tion of the Contras. Their plan envisaged
the demobilisation of the estimated 10,000
soldiers, most of them in camps in southern
Honduras, by December 9. An Internatio-
nal Commission of Support and Verifi-
cation (CIA V), made up of UN and
Organisation of American States represen-
tatives, would oversee the implementation
of the plan.
"The Contras are finished, it's only a
matter of time", believes Manuel Condero,
Director of US and Canadian affairs with
the Ministry for External Relations. "The
US want to keep a core group of Contras
to be re-activated and to keep as many
Contras in this group as possible given the
political situation in the region and in the
US. The idea would be to use this group to
re-activate the war if they thought they
could do that. I don't think this will hap-
pen because as the peace process goes for-
ward it will be more and more difficult for
them to get the money and the political
support for such a policy".
he us effort to destabilise Nicaragua
T is still very much alive however. The
trade embargo shows little sign of
being lifted, loans from the international
lending agencies are still cut off, and the
US campaigned heavily in Western Europe
against Governments commiting support
to Nicaragua during Ortega's tour there.
The Bush administration is continuing
with the policy of criticising the Nicara-
guan electoral system, and claiming the
country is not· a democracy. (A plan to
build a canal in southern Nicaragua which
could accommodate larger vessels than can
the Panama canal is considered viable by
Japanese business interests, but they will
not get involved in the project as it would
anger the US).
"Also they send finance to the political
opposition so they can confront the
government and persuade the electorate to
vote for them," claims Condero. "There
have been measures introduced to stop
such support, but it is impossible to pre-
vent them giving sums of money to indi-
vidual politicians and to newspapers".
Nicaraguan policy is to make it as diffi-
cult as possible for the US to attack their
electoral system and sound credible. The
current election campaign is being moni-
tored by a UN group, and the February
elections themselves wil1have a large num-
ber of invited international observers, in-
cluding Jimmy Carter. "So it wil1 become
more and more difficult for the US to sel1
its story to the public - but that doesn't
mean that they would not continue to try".
Chilean economist Senor Jorce Leva, is
an advisor to the Planning Ministry in Ni-
caragua, the most important economic
ministry in a country undergoing enor-
mous economic change. Last year, he ex-
plains, defense was allocated 60% of the
total government budget, a figure which, in
an economy like Nicaragua where the
government budget is equal to a much
higher percentage of the GNP than in a
country like Ireland, meant that 30% of
the GNP was being allocated to the war
effort.
"I don't know of any country which has
ever allocated so much money to defense. I
don't know if the US has ever allocated as
much money as we did. I don't think so.
Perhaps Germany did during the war. I
don't have the figures but I doubt if
England did. Not such a large amount of
the Gross National Product".
This year the goal is to reduce the De-
fense budget to 35% of Government
spending, and if al1 goes wel1with the de-
mobilisation of the Contras, to 25% in
1990. It is hoped that most of the money
taken from the defense budget next year
can be allocated to the health and educa-
tion budgets, which have suffered greatly
in the economic crisis.
In the year of the insurrection, 1979, the
economy contracted by 10%. In 1980 and
1981 the economy grew, a drought in 1982
caused another contraction, but in 1983 the
economy began to expand again. Then in
1984 the Reagan administration upped the
scale of the war being fought by the Con-
tras. The idea was more economic destabi-
Iisation than direct military overthrow.
The economy began to decline, slowly at
first, but the difficulties became progress-
ively more and more serious. Some of this
hardship was postponed by the govern-
ment, partly by "printing money", but
economic reality caught up with Nicaragua
last year. By the year's end inflation was
running at 30,000%, and the trade and fis-
cal deficits were at untenable levels. The
government introduced economic
measures of great harshness.
There were three massive devaluations,
the value of peoples' money diminishing
overnight. Imported goods and products
that used imported raw materials shot up
in price. The Government announced
 dramatic plans to cut the fiscal deficit from
17% to 8% of the GNP. They sacked
50,000 government workers. The shock
measures have shown results that exceed
government expectations. Inflation will
most likely be under 10% for 1989, the fis-
cal deficit has been practically eliminated,
exports are up by over 20%, and imports
down by 18%. The government target of
20% growth in the economy is likely to be
exceeded for 1989. Large areas of land
where farmers had grown coffee or bred
cattle and which were abandoned during
the worst years of the Contra terror are
now being brought back into production
again. The goal for increased beef pro-
duction over the next five years is likely to
be achieved within the next twelve months.
The government called the economic
measures "concertacion". The idea is "for
the different sectors to come to an agree-
ment on some basic issues in order to res-
cue the country from the economic crisis,
without each social sector rejecting its ob-
jectives", as veteran FSLN figure Tomas
Borges put it. The Social programmes were
to be suspended until economic stabilis-
ation was affected.
"These are the kind of economic ad-
justments which always have a negative
impact on the distribution of wealth", ad-
mits Leva. "Firstly the reduction in
government spending, though it has mainly
effected the defense budget, has also af-
fected spending on health and education happy with its operation.
and services to the poor. There have been Leva can think of no model similar to
reductions in the level of production as a the economy which the Nicaraguan
whole and so a reduction in the number of government is creating. "What is being
jobs in the formal sector of the economy. created here is an economy where prices
And then the government has sacked thou- have significance for economic decision -
sands of its employees." which means that the mechanism of the
There is very little unemployment - sell- market is working here for the allocation of
ing cigarettes on street corners or shining resources and the distribution of wealth. It
shoes are always options - but the num- is not just a market economy. The import-
ber of people underemployed probably ance of the public sector makes it very rel-
equals one-fifth of the workforce, the Plan- evant to the final distribution of wealth. It
ning Ministry estimates. The government is a mixed economy with the importance of
has introduced a number of programmes in the public sector allowing the government
an effort to shelter the poor from the ef- to make very significant decisions as re-
fects of the economic measures, but it is gards production and distribution".
accepted that these measures have not
worked as effectively as the tough econ- By the end of our talk with Jeannie Roa her
omic adjustments. eyes had grown a bit moist. We asked her if
Demobilised soldiers and unemployed she thought it had been worth it, all the
workers are being encouraged to work the pain and grief. She was sure that it had
land which is now becoming safe to popu- been. There were the literacy programmes,
late again, and to produce export crops the health programmes, the educational
such as tobacco, coffee, cotton and beef. programmes. And there were other less
The peasants who grow the basic grains are tangible benefits gotten from having
being guaranteed a minimum price for fought and freed the country from a ruth-
their produce - which ensures their sur- less regime. "If you really want a pair of
vival, but little more. In Managua and the blue jeans you love them a lot more if you
larger towns there are programmes to en- have to work for them than if they are just
courage small industry and handicrafts.
given to you", she says trying to explain
There is a National Programme for the De- how she feels. We asked her how she would
fense of the Life of the Child, which is de- feel if the people opted to oust the FSLN in
signed to channel milk and food to the the February election. But she considered
children of the impoverished, but the the possibility unthinkable and said that it
government admits they are as yet un- just could not happen.

IT WAS THE MINI THAT REVOL-
utionised the interior space to overall
vehicle length ratio of small cars when it
was introduced to the motoring public
back in 1959. And ten years later it was
Fiat with the Autobianchi designed trans-
verse engine/transmission layout that gave
mainland Europe its first hugely popular
FWD small family saloon the 128, and 3
years later the first true Super-mini - the
127 3-door hatchback. Like the Mini, the
127 was fun to drive, it was fast, it handled
well, it was economical and its hatchback
body offered versatility and roominess.
Needless to say it was a runaway success.
A new market segment had been created
and the opposition were caught with their
pants down because their Super-mini con-
tenders like the Peugeot 104 and the Re-
nault 5, were still on the drawing board.
It's a different story today however with
no less than about 15 Supermini marques
competing for a slice of the 35% Supermini
segment of a 12.5 million per annum Euro-
pean total car market.
And Ford with its bigger and better
Fiesta replacement has, by setting new
standards of roominess for this class of car,
really put the cat among the pigeons to the
extent that future Supermini designs will
have to at least match the Fiesta if they are
to compete on equal terms.
If anything can be said about the Fiesta
design, it is that since its original introduc-
tion back in 1976 it has had tremendous
staying power with sales holding up year
after year in the face ofrepeated new model
launches from the opposition. It was the
top selling car in Ireland for ten years and
prior to the launch of the new Fiesta this
year it was the best selling car in its class in
Germany and the UK, and was fourth in
Europe overall, despite the availability of
only a three-door body style.
The new Fiesta's chassis performance is
as good as Europe's supermini best with
excellent ride comfort, reduced road noise
and good handling characteristics. How-
ever the Fiesta's steering lacks directional
'feel' at speed and has a tendency to over-
steer.
Ford engineers have stuck with the exist-
ing and reliable push rod engine with nu-
merous modifications to improve its
overall efficiency, wear qualities, quietness
and strength. Our 1.1 litre test car pro-
duced what we could best describe as ad-
equate power for the job, but by no means
a sparkling performer especially when fully
loaded.
Although not the cheapest supermini on
the market it is the roomiest package for
the price and more pleasurable than most
to drive. Prices range from £8,705 for the
1.1 litre 3-door C Model to £ 11, 108 for the
1.4 litre 5-door LX model.

• Peugeot's very successful 205 model
first introduced back in 1983 received
an internal facelift about a year ago
along with a completely new engine-
fgearbox unit (the same family unit that
is used in the Citroen AX).
Our recent 350 miles of testing in the
3-door Junior model priced at £8,595
served as a reminder that the 205 is a
great car for traversing in comfort over
typical Irish secondary roads with its
long wheel-travel suspension and good
road noise suppression.
The new engine adds refinement and
excellent fuel economy to what will be
Peugeot's supermini contender for the
foreseeable future. And the 205's inter-
ior styling is typically French with a new
nicely sculptured dash layout and thick
rimmed steering wheel.

At th'''' minutes past five 00 Sun-
day September 17th, the Cork
captain, Denis Allen, turned his eyes from
Mick O'Dwyer and the others in the RTE
"crows' nest" commentary box and looked
to the thousands of supporters gathered
below on the green field:
"I'd like to thank the Mayo team for
their brave-hearted display here today ...
they will have to take consolation in look-
ing at the Cork team - this is our third
year and they will have to take consolation
out of that. And to the Mayo supporters,
it's now your team need you; they need you
now more than if they won the match, so
remember that please, Mayo support-
ers ... "
Down on the field, among the thousands,
John O'Mahony stood utterly alone, to-
tally dejected. The tears from his bloodshot
eyes flowed down his face. "You gave it a
good shot, John, your best shot" said a
friend, offering sympathy.
"But our best wasn't good enough. It
wasn't just good enough" O'Mahony re-
plied.
Twenty four hours later O'Mahony had
tears in his eyes once more. A force nine
wind and heavy rain hadn't prevented
seven thousand people from gathering
around Connacht Airport to welcome
Mayo home. The plane was late arriving,
many of the supporters were drenched.
They didn't care. Kevin McStay went a
deathly pale when he saw the thousands,
their faces pressed against the perimeter
fencing, clapping and cheering. Padden,
true to form, went towards them and
shoved fingers through the wire in an effort
to shake hands. "Willie Joe, Willie Joe" the
crowds chanted. From the Airport Control
tower, Henry McGlade watched on: in his
hand he held a phone and all the details of
the emotional homecoming were being re-
layed live on MWR FM, Mayo's local
radio station.
That first night John O'Mahony sat
down to eat trifle at 4.50 am in the Down-
hill Hotel. The procession through the
towns and villages in East Mayo had taken
nine hours and the tour through the rest of
the county would last four more full days
and nights. O'Mahony and his players bled
in private and in public many times that
week - they saw how deep the hunger for
football success cuts into the Mayo psyche.
Time will tell how influential the Mayo
mourning of September 1989 will be during
the Championship season of 1990.
• 1989: THE GALWAY GAMES
The bit of niggle is nothing new to Galway-
/Mayo games. Back in the summer of 1971
John Tobin strolled out in his white boots
to take up the corner forward position for
Galway in the minor championship match
against Mayo in Castlebar. "Toby" was
some prospect at that time, a trickster and
crowd-pleaser. Long before the ball was
thrown in, the Mayo corner back belted
him several times - the protagonist, an
impressionable Ballaghadereen youngster
called John O'Mahony, was, like the Ger-
man soldiers, carrying out orders.
On June 25th 1989 at Tuarn, in the Con-
nacht Senior football semi-final between
Galway and Mayo the "softening up tradi-
tion" was exercised once more. Aodhan
Shea. Galway's half-back, began clipping
Kevin McStay early on. The match of-
ficials noticed nothing. Five minutes into
the game O'Shea went high for a ball and
as he landed, Mayo's young corner for-
ward, Michael John Mullen, tried a body
charge but bounced off him. A fracas de-
veloped and as referee Sean Mullaney
sought to control tempers, Tomas Tierney
dislocated Kevin McStay's jaw and the vic-
tim was taken off. Mayo's attempt to re-
tain the Connacht Championship
before Gay McManus scored a goal in
for the
first time since 1951 was off to a lousy start.
Several fascinating incidents took place
extra time and forced a replay. The veteran
Martin Carney missed three frees as Mayo
struggled in the first half; he was dropped
afterwards and never regained his place.
Young half-back Pat Holmes also
struggled in the windy conditions
when he was replaced by John Finn, Mayo
moved up a gear.
Eleven minutes into
the second half.
Mayo were trailing
by a full six points
- Finn played a
crucial role in res-
cuing them.
John O'Mahony,
the Mayo manager,
was left with lots to
digest, particularly
about the role of
two key players.
Liam McHale,
named at full-for-
ward, had a huge
influence when he
came out to mid-
field. Dermot Fla-
nagan looked
distinctly unhappy
at centre-half back
and his opponent,
Gay McManus,
scored a goal and
three points. Mayo were rmssmg John
Maughan for the position - all through
the championship he struggled
unsuccessfully to get a botched knee back
in shape. His absence would haunt Mayo
the whole way to Croke Park. Two weeks
later in Castlebar, Mayo saw off Galway in
a comical affair. They each got penalties
they didn't deserve: Sean Maher and Mi-
chael Brennan were sent off following out-
rageous ham-acting by John Finn and
Liam McHale added a touch of seriousness
by scoring a brilliant goal.
• 1989: THE ROSCOMMON GAMES
A story to try and define the relationship
between Mayo and Roscommon - during
their 1988 championship meeting Mayo's
Sean Maher hit Eamonn McManus a fierce
belt and actually cracked his ribs. Roscom-
mon were enraged that the referee, Mickey
Kearns, didn't send off Maher; McManus pea ted during his Sunday Game television
a was out of football for several weeks with the appearances.
injury. When the sides met again in the Lea- John O'Mahony and John Prenty, the
gue, a number of the Roscommon players Mayo Co. Secretary, have a lot in com-
had a victory as their second priority as they mon. They were in UCG together, they are
ran onto the game they tripped him, hit him both secondary teachers and their wives
and trampled on him. And the more they Ger and Mary are understanding "GAA
abused him, the better he played. They ended widows". O'Mahony shares team selection
up with the impression - he's willing to take duties with Seamie Daly (Mulrany), Ch-
abuse as well as dish it out, he's not a bad fella risty O'Hare (Ballinrobe), Charlie Collins
at all. And there the matter ended. (Lacken) and the county chairman, Mick
Higgins of Kiltimagh. But he also bounces
M ayo "d Roscommon clashes
are always hard but generally
stop short of being dirty. And so it was in
ideas off Prenty. In the week leading up to
the Connacht Final replay the decision was
taken to carry out major surgery on
Mayo's defence. Denis Kearney's tendency
was taken to carry out major surgery on
their Connacht Final clash at Castlebar on
Mayo's defence. Denis Kearney's tendency
July 23rd. Roscommon have a shrewd to foul cost him his place and Dermot Fla-
management team, Martin McDermott (a nagan went back to the No. 4 position.
and polished organiser) and two wise hands, And TJ. Kilgallon was drafted in at
centre-half back in an attempt to stabilise
the line. It was a
daring gesture - in
full health, Kilgal-
Ion purrs around
the field like a Mer-
cedes but he was
coming back extra
quick after a se-
rious knee injury.
The final was
magnificently excit-
ing. Referee,
Mickey Kearns, set
the tone by award-
ing Roscommon a
controversial pen-
alty in the opening
minutes and Tony
McManus con-
verted it. (A Mayo
player later con-
firmed that Kearns
had been absolutely
right - Peter
Forde was holding
Mayo A ll-Ireland finalists 1989 HENRY WILLS Paul Earley after
John Kelly and Sean Kilbride. On the field fisting a ball clear). Then Mayo stormed
corner forward, Tony McManus, was in back with a marvellous Noel Durkin goal.
inspirational form, greatly helped by fine Kearns almost lost his nerve late in the sec-
displays from Donal Brady, Vincent Glen- ond half by refusing to award Roscommon
non and John Dowd in the brat pack. As a second penalty when Tony McManus
Mayo ran onto the field, many of their sup- was brought down inside the square but he
porters were surprised to see Gabriel Irwin had to award the kick when Junior McMa-
on in place of the injured goalkeeper, Eu- nus was impeded seconds later. And then
gene Lavin. Three minutes from the final that marvellous incident ... Tony McMa-
whistle Paul Earley brilliantly poked a ball nus converts the penalty, Roscommon are
through the legs of Kevin McStay and was a point ahead ... Gabriel Irwin digs the ball
on his feet to take the return pass from Vin- out of the net, McManus tries to stop the
cent Glennon. The sides were level at the kick out but it's too late ... the ball is down
time; any score would kill off Mayo. Irwin the field, Michael Collins has possession
had his mind made up as soon as he saw and the ball is in the back of the net. But
Earley in possession ... he charged off his play is called back; like placing an each-
goal like a madman; Earley, in fact, was way bet, the referee has awarded Mayo a
gambling on a goal. Irwin bore down upon free which they are bound to convert. Fitz-
him and blocked the ball. As Mayo cleared maurice puts the ball over the bar and the
their lines, Earley let loose a four-letter scores are level. Roll on extra time. That
word, the likes of which could not be re- afternoon RTE's radio sports programme
 ~ emarkable men, these Australian
Ih
winemakers. Take Bob Oatley,
. founder and chairman of the
i country's most famous vineyards,
Rosemount Estate.
\lot content with the international acclaim
Rosemount wines have achieved in the space
Jf just 14 years since they first went on to
the market, Bob Oatley and his family have
reveloped an extraordinary range of other
nterests. The estate, in the fertile Valley of
the Upper Hunter River, includes a Charolais
cattle stud,a Merino sheep property and a
:horoughbred horse stud, as well as 1,000
sores of vines across 7 different vineyards.
Ihe Oatleys come from pioneering stock and
:he family has played an active role through-
Jut Australia's history - there is even a sub-
irb named after them in Sydney.
Nhen Bob Oatley and his family purchased
:he Rosemount land - which had, incidental-
y, been a vineyard for 50 years or so in the
ate 19th century - they intended from the
iutset to establish a reputation for fine
Nines. The first commercial wines were
'eleased in 1975 and they won an incredible
38 medals at Australian wine shows!
Jver the years, Rosemount Estate has
become one of the most sought after wines
in Australia and in the traditional fine wine
markets around the world, including Ireland,
where it is the major name in Australian
wine.
At the International Wine and Spirit
Competition in Bristol in 1982, a Double Gold
Medal was awarded to Rosemount for their
Chardonnay, the only Australian wine ever to
receive the award.
Another key figure in the Rosemount story is
the company's Managing Director, Chris
Hancock, born in Adelaide, who qualified as
an oenologist and subsequently went into the
management side. He began his career with
Penfold wines, joining Rosemount Estate as
General Manager 1976, just as the company
was starting its second vintage. As well as
acting as winemaker for a time, he has devel-
oped the sales and marketing side of the
business.
Chris Hanncock will be visiting Dublin in
November to conduct a tutored tasting for
trade customers of distributors Grants of
Ireland (Sales) Ltd.
A third personality who has a leading role in
the Rosemount story is the Estate's gifted
Winemaker, Philip Shaw. A measure of his
prowess came three years ago when he won
the coveted international Robert Mondavi
Winemaker of the Year Award, which was
presented to him in a ceremony at Britain's
House of Commons by the President of the
International Wine and Spirit Competition,
Doctor Max Lake, himself an Australian.
Rosemount and Philip Shaw shook the
French wine world not long ago when their
Show Reserve Chardonnay was only just
pipped at the post as the top Chardonnay in
a blind tasting of 80 Chardonnays from
around the world, organised by the presti-
gious international Decanter magazine.
Although, today, the two Rosemount winer-
Ies use the most up to date equipment in the
industry, its wine making philosophy is fun-
damentally traditional, and each wine is
"hand-made" in terms of the personal atten-
tion it receives.
TASTING NOTES
SO, how do these much-praised Rose-
mount wines taste? A quick guide to the
range available in Ireland.
THE WHITES
Rosemount Estate Chardonnay
This award winning Chardonnay is aged
for 6 months in oak and has a crisp
lemony aroma. On the palate, it has plen-
ty of soft, buttery fruit and a hint of oak.
Show Reserve Chardonnay
This superb complex wine that has won
at so many wine shows, is rich and full
with beautiful balance of tannins and
fruit. Excellent finish.
Roxburgh Chardonnay
Rosemount's finest: a single vineyard
wine which is superb, luscious, full
flavoured - packed with very ripe fruit yet
is balanced with acidity. A wine of out-
standing complexity. Only limited quanti-
ties available.
Rosemount Estate Fume Blanc
From the Sauvignon Blanc grape this has
an elegant herbaceous aroma and crisp,
fresh taste.
THE REDS
Rosemount Estate Shiraz
Known as "Syrah" in the Rhone Valley
this grape produces a peppery aroma but
on the palate is soft and rich with pleas-
ant spicy flavours and a firm tannic fin-
ish.
Rosemount Estate Cabernet Sauvignon
Aged 15 months in the cask, this wine
has a fine, deep colour and a beautiful
blackcurrant aroma and flavour, under-
lain with toasty oak. Delicious!
was concentrating on the Dublin and
Meath Leinster Final so in many parts of
the west households were turned to MWR
FM -five wildly excited Mayomen shar-
ing a microphone, led by young Liam
Horan of Ballinrobe on his first broadcast.
Steam radio so gripping that it made Gerry
Ryan's Lambo story sound like Thought
For The Day.
Did Roscommon deserve to win that
Connacht Final? They played sensible,
flowing football, building from defence in
quick movements - the hallmark of Clann
na Gael. Brady and Tony McManus were
magnificent, once more. They were unfor-
tunate that Paul Earley came off second-
best in a bloody scrap with Peter Forde.
But the decision to put Pat Doorey in at
corner forward was a dreadful mistake -
he belted Michael Collins and Jimmy
Browne but his football contribution was
negligible. Flanagan, his marker, gained
sufficient confidence from the game to last
right through the championship. Ulti-
mately, Mayo's spirit carried them through
- Finnerty's equalising goal four minutes
from the end of extra time; Fitzmaurice's
beautiful point from play and finally,
Burke's push-over try into the net.
Frank Noone played an enormous part
in giving Mayo that vital edge. Just as the
late Bill Kenny earned a place in Mayo
folklore by waving a fist while being car-
ried off the field of play with the broken
limb, Noone had made an extraordinary
symbolic gesture. After a push by Roscom-
mon's Vincent Glennon, he fell awkwardly
and caused serious damage to his knee.
Then while Mayo regrouped before extra
time, Noone left his stretcher and dragged
the leg the width of the field to offer encou-
ragement. One can only speculate about
the exact nature of the wisdom uttered. A
few weeks before, Noone told a reporter
from the Western People that cham-
pionship football is the same as a honey-
moon - to enjoy the experience properly,
you have to relax.
If one incident sums up the frenzy
among spectators on that Sunday after-
noon, it was the sight of John O'Gara, the
former Roscommon footballer who owns a
bar near Hyde Park, leaving the ground
and then returning three times. As the
score changed hands over and over again,
O'Gara, pulled by the roars, was running
hither and tither, his allegiance torn
between Roscommon, Mayo and the prob-
lem of when would he have to start pulling
pints.
ALL-IRELAND SEMI-FINAL
Several months ago during a brief conver-
sation with "the master", Micheal 0 Muir-
cheataigh, the question of Mayo's current
crop of footballers arose. "They're fine foot-
bailers ... Iovelylads, lovely lads ... but maybe
they're too nice."
Many observers have reconciled Mayo's
failure to win an All-Ireland since 1951 and
the county's endless supply-line of good foot-
bailers by concluding 'they lack the steel.'
When John O'Mahony succeeded Liam
O'Neill as Mayo manager in 1987, he
decided to approach the problem from a
different direction. His diagnosis suggested
a lack of self-belief was at the root of
Mayo's problems. The remedy would have
to involve building up self-confidence and
a sense of brotherhood among his players.
Management involves having to make
tough decisions about team selection.
O'Mahony's record proves he's not afraid
to bite the bullet - as a result of players
being dropped, switched or injured, no
member of the Mayo panel lasted in a par-
ticular position for all six games of the 1989
championships. But in his dealings with
players O'Mahony attempts to be straight
and consistent.
They deserve nothing less because they
are, in a most practical sense, amateur
sportsmen in the purest form. Padden's 120
mile round trips to training in Castlebar,
after his working day as an ESB linesman
in the Erris peninsula, are well-known. But
there's also Durkin, who gave up a good
job as an electrician in England to return
home for the championships. And Forde,
who broke his usual habit of spending the
summer working in the US. And 32-year-
old farmer, Jimmy Burke, who damaged
his back while pulling a calf, and went th-
rough the pain barrier endless times to
force himself back to peak fitness. And
John Finn who checked himself into hos-
pital during February to have a breathing
difficulty solved in good time for the Con-
nacht championships. And John Maug-
han, the bravest case of all, in vain pushing
himself night after night. And Jimmy
Browne, whose job as a printer kept him up
into the small hours, working on the match
programme on the eve of the Connacht
Final.
, Knockmore neighbour, Ray Dempsey, got
0 Mahony's handling of Pa-
draig Brogan, the Stan Bow-
les of Mayo football was highly significant.
Brogan, at his best, is lethal, a strong, nat-
urally gifted player with one attribute
that's not too common in Mayo - an
ability to take scores. But he has an equally
strong tendency to play games off the field.
O'Mahony didn't pick him in '88 for the
semi-final against Meath. Brogan turned
up in a Sunday newspaper pictured playing
a tin whistle in a pub, the pied piper who
could lead Mayo to the promised land.
By June 1989 Brogan had put in three
solid months of disciplined training. O'Ma-
hony took notice but didn't pick him for
the Galway game in Tuam. Brogan was
brought on as a substitute. For the replay
he was on the bench, and when Michael
John Mullan was replaced, Brogan's
the nod. Brogan again sat out the drawn
Connacht Final and when the team for the
replay was announced, Dempsey was in
from the start. Brogan went AWOL. Ironi-
cally, had he turned up for that match in
Roscommon, he would most likely have

been brought on because Mayo used six
substitutes before the end of extra time. In
refusing to put the team's needs before his
own, Brogan had confirmed O'Mahony's
judgement. No player would be accommo-
dated at the expense of the team.
O n Monday, August 7th, the
Mayo captain, Jimmy Browne,
was driving along the Foxford/Ballina
road when he came upon a fatal accident.
A car had smashed into a van, killing the
woman driver. The victim was the mother
of Ray Dempsey, Mayo's youngest for-
ward. Days before he had set up a Mayo
goal against Roscommon and was heading
for Croke Park. The eldest of a family of
four, his life was now shattered.
Many experts tipped Tyrone to see off
Mayo in the All-Ireland semi-final. They
seriously misrepresented Connacht foot-
ball because Roscommon as well as Mayo
would have beaten the Ulster champions.
For a long time Mayo played within them-
selves. John Finn found himself extra busy
because Sean Maher began wandering up-
field, leaving too much space behind. Ga-
briel Irwin settled quickly in goal and had
an outstanding game. McHale's feeling
was a joy and he was a pivotal figure in
most attacks. But among Mayo's much-
maligned forward line three players
twinkled. Fitzmaurice, the 21-year-old,
continued his education as a marksman.
And Durkin was utterly magnificent. After
McKenna's brilliant goal put it up to
Mayo, Durkin was the crucial figure as
they clawed their way back. His covering
was ceaseless; he contested and won hos-
pital passes from McHale and Forde and
his distribution, particularly one pass that
led to Kilkelly's score, was crucial.
T he game was a milestone for Kevin
McStay and his relationship with
O'Mahony. Twice in the first half Jimmy
Burke could have put McStay through to
score but delayed and lost out. Isolated on
the wing, McStay looked anxiously to-
wards the bench several times early in the
second half. He could hear the roars from
the Hogan Stand .. "change him, get him
off ... ". But O'Mahony stuck by him. In the
closing quarter McStay put in several cru-
cial tackles, made a number of telling
passes and scored a vital point. Just as
O'Mahony gambled correctly on leaving
Mayo a man short while Willie Joe was
being darned on the sideline, he put his
faith in McStay coming good. Five weeks
later, McStay would repay the debts in full .
• ALL-IRELAND FINAL
At times Liam McHale looks like Mike
Tyson. He'd literally tell you his confession in
an interview situation. For one so talented,
his tendency towards self-criticism is startling
... "my shooting badly needs to improve ... I
missed an awful lot against Roscommon in
Castle bar ... I tend to lose concentration a lot
... those points, I was just lucky with them."
His priorities are straight-forward. He
loves sport -basketball, and then football, in
that order. He likes watching sport too -the
only satellite dish over the row of houses in
Ballina's Corcoran Terrace sits on McHale's
chimney. He's very close to Kevin McStay
and one afternoon as they trained in the gym
of the Downhill Hotel, McHale caught sight
of a poster announcing Christy Moore as due
to play there that night. He smiled. The last
time that Christy was on circuit Liam was in
the front row, buzzing after a few beers and in
great chatting form. Moore looked down and
identified the sound source as the 6 ft. 5 guy in
the US university t-shirt, "Hey you, I'm sure
that university must be in Texas because you
certainly have a mouth as big as a Texan."
W
ith the championships reduced
to two teams, Mayo were
coming in for attention on a scale they had
never before handled. On Tuesday Sep-
tember 5th, they had an open night for the
press in Castlebar. The dozens of reporters
were joined by a thousand spectators in
McHale park. The usually disciplined
training session was quite chaotic. In one
corner three players were drinking milk for
a photograph arranged by the sponsors,
NCF Co-Op; in another O'Mahony was
giving an interview and the captain of the
1936 team, Seamus O'Malley was being
filmed. Later that evening the visitors were
feted in the Welcome Inn hotel. Padden,
obliging and gregarious to the last, came in
and chatted, churning out the quotes, sip-
ping a soft drink, as men all around him
scribbled and supped pints.
Ten days before the game O'Mahony
stole his charges off to Donegal. The inten-
tion was to train in Ballyshannon and relax
over the weekend in' McNiff's Great
Northern Hotel, away from all the hype.
But the word leaked out and they were
swamped with well-wishers. As the final
approached, the pressure intensified. Mick
Higgins, the county chairman, promised a
caller to RTE radio that he's do his best to
fix him up with a ticket and suddenly half
the country believed a secret store of un-
sold Hogan Stand tickets existed. The Irish
Press ran a story that some journalists were
barred off the Mayo team flight from
Knock while television was being accom-
modated.
"Cripes, we'd need a jumbo shuttle ser-
vice to satisfy everybody" was O'Mahony's
exasperated reply.
3 pm, September 17th, outside Croke
Park, proof that the age-old theory about
 church and state in Ireland is no more - a
priest, in full rig-out, wandering up and
down frantically looking to buy a match
ticket. Two factors affected that great
game to Mayo's detriment. O'Mahony's
luck ran out and a handful of key players
played below themselves.
All through the championship O'Maho-
ny's decisions on when to substitute and
when to retain had worked splendidly. But
a serious injury to Jimmy Burke towards
the end of the first half forced his hand.
Anthony Finnerty was brought on ... in
Connacht he had shown the capability to
convert a goal chance ... sometimes only
the one.
Burke's accidental injury was most un-
fortunate because he was having a good
game. And plugging the gap in the for-
wards diverted Mayo from addressing un-
expected weaknesses that were emerging
elsewhere.
John Finn, Mayo's brilliant half-back,
was by his own standards having a night-
mare. Behind him Dermot Flanagan was
performing heroics as tidal waves of press-
ure rolled through. And Mayo's diamond,
the key formation of four big men, Kilgal-
Ion at centre half, McHale and Maher in
midfield, and Padden on the 40, was wilt-
ing. Kilgallon, the Mercedes, was burning
oil; McHale's ability to fetch was cancelled
out as soon as he landed because Cork
slapped away his hard-won possession.
And yet, for a 10 minute period Mayo
had Cork by the throat ... even without
Finnerty's chance of a second goal, had he
scored that point from play ... had Maher's
long-range effort gone over ... had Maher's
shot for goal not been blocked or had he
settled for a point ... had McHale kept hold Tuesday, two days after the game, a kitchen
of the ball after that majestic catch late in
in Ballaghadereen. John O'Mahony is not yet
the game ... one of those breaks and maybe
back to the teaching job in St. Nathy's. Fr.
spirit would have taken them clear.
Dan, a curate in Ballymote and a former
In defeat Mayo couldn't forget Michael
Sligo full-back, knows how deep the disap-
Collins who snuffed out Barry Coffey and
pointment runs in his brother, so he drops in
saw him substituted. Durkin again covered
every blade of Croke Park. And the doubt- to give quiet support. Ger, the stoic GAA
ers who dismissed McS~ay as a funk saw widow, makes the grub, answers the phone
and shares the pain. The fact that Cork were
him practically put his teeth through boots
while blocking tackles. there for the taking is still burning a hole in-
side O'Mahony. It may never be as easy
again. The thoughts spin -McStay has can-
celled a trip to the Lebanon but will Durkin
return to England ... Fitzmaurice is being rec-
ognised as a potentially great forward but will
Jimmy Burke be able for another campaign ...
the panel could be strengthened ... what of
Brogan?
In 1988 O'Mahoney and Mayo fell in the
All-Ireland semi-final. In 1989, they went one
better. If the trend is to continue, they'll have
to win the final next year. And what a road
they have to travel: probably Galway in the
Connacht semi-final and Roscommon in the
final. Then Cork or Kerry in Croke Park and
Dublin/Meath (or a dark horse from Ulster)
in the decider. O'Mahony thinks about it all
while looking towards the kitchen floor. A
task so daunting that he begins to forget
about his sorrow. There's the slightest hint of
a smile on the tired face.
"Oh, Roscommon must be favourites to
come out ofConnacht."
 ONLY ONE I NOTICED
among them all - and because of his prolet-
arian disguise - was Brecht. He was very em-
aciated. He had a hungry face, which looked
askew because of his cap. His words came out
wooden and choppy. When he gazed at you, you
felt like an object of value that he, the pawn-
broker, with is piercing black eyes, was apprais-
ing as something that had no value. He was a
man of few words; you learned nothing about
the results of his appraisal. It seemed incredible
that he was only thirty. He did not look as if he
had aged prematurely, but as if he had always
been old'. Canetti's description of the enigmatic
German playwright late in 'The Torch in My
Ear' offers a characteristic blend of the human-
ity, wit and detailed observation which the 1981
Nobel Prize winner displays throughout the first
two volumes of his life.
While biography, torn between diligent inves-
tigation and voyeuristic intrusiveness, struggles
to be recognised as a legitimate literary genre,
autobiography at least is the subject's own ver-
sion of the events. Everything depending, of
course, on exactly how much the autobiographer
is prepared to reveal.
Canetti, acknowledged by Dame Iris Mur-
doch, as "one of our great imaginers and solitary
men of genius", emerges as one of the more ho-
nest of self chroniclers. Admittedly, most of the
most vivid scenes are found in the childhood
memories of volume one. At five, Canetti frus-
trated when being left out of the secret art of
reading by an older cousin, once playmate, who
has now started school, attempts to kill her with
an axe. Adult life rarely supplies such passion.
Still, few writers could invent a childhood as
multi-dimensional as Canetti's spent criss cross-
ing Europe, its cities and its cultures. Nor could
the most imaginative of novelists create a multi-
cultural and polyglot family such as Canetti's in
which both parents nursed unfulfilled theatrical
ambitions and abandoned the family business in
Ruschuk, Bulgaria for Manchester. The writer's
father was so bitterly cursed by his own father
that his mysterious death in England at the age
of 31 when Elias Canetti was only seven, was
always viewed as the direct result of the old
man's anger.
Author of the sociological study of crowd be-
haviour, 'Crowds and Power' which appeared in
English in 1962, Canetti was born in Ruschuck
in 1905, the eldest son of what turned out to be
the most radical wing of a wealthy Sephardic
Jewish clan. Although he reserved his greatest
affection for this father who supplied him with
his earliest books and always encouraged the
boy's imagination, Canetti the man was most
shaped by his domineering, intellectual and very
disappointed mother who found herself a widow
at 27 with three children and spent the rest of her
life parading literary references and lecturing
Elias, in hetwcen stints atthc sanitarium.
Her husband's death, after an argument con-
cerning the attentions given to her by a doctor,
wrested a demonstration of grief from her wor-
thy of a character in a Russian novel. From then
on, as the family moved to Switzerland, Vienna,
back to Switzerland, this time to Zurich where
Canetti experienced 'the only perfectly happy
years', and on to Frankfurt, before returning to
Vienna, he played the role of eldest son to the
point, at one stage, of almost becoming a surro-
gate husband. But his relationship with his
mother was never particularly easy. Both suf-
fered from chronic jealousy.
It was his mother who taught Canetti to speak
German, through methods which relied heavily
upon bullying and ridicule. He duly arrived in
Vienna with enough German to get by on, while
still speaking English with his younger brothers.
Language is one of the dominant themes in Ca-
netti's story, that alongside his fascination with
crowds; of which he says 'The dissolution of the
individual in a crowd was the enigma of enigmas
to me'. He recalls how this interest developed
from an epiphany, which he refers to as an 'il-
lumination' experienced when walking down a
street in Vienna, 'While its intellectual content-
may be so simple and small that its effect is inex-
plicable, I nevertheless drew strength from it as
from a revelation - the strength to devote thirty
five years of my life, twenty of them full years, to
the explanation of what a crowd really is, how
power comes into being from a crowd and how it
feeds back upon it'.
His life was paralleled the major events of the
century. He can remember as a seven year old in
a house of weeping women the night the Titanic
sank, asking why the band kept on playing as the
boat was sinking, to the horror of the mourners.
Five years later, in 1917 Canetti at twelve was
passing a Zurich coffee house with his mother
and "she pointed at the enormous skull of a man
sitting near the window, a huge pile of newspap-
ers lay next to him; he had seized one paper and
held it close to his eyes. Suddenly, he threw back
his head, turned to a man sitting at his side and
fiercely spoke away at him. Mother said: "Take
a good look at him. That's Lenin. You'll be
hearing about him"."
As a schoolboy in Zurich, Canetti tasted racial
hatred when the Latin master who had once
'criticised me for sticking my hand up too
quickly when he asked us a question' encou-
raged a slower pupil, saying, "Just think Erni,
you'll come upon it. We won't let a Viennese Jew
take everything away from us". Eventually he
drew up a petition against the anti-Semitism pre-
vailing in the school and had to wait six weeks
before the headmaster acted, through his assis-
tant.
Both volumes are written in a lively, witty
style although Canetti claims 'laughter has re-
mained a riddle for me, which I have thought
about a great deal; it is still an unsolved riddle
for me, even today'. He has been very well served
by Joachim Neugroschel's translation. Whereas
'The Tongue Set Free' presents Canetti's per-
sonal world view of one boy's self discovery,
'The Torch in My Ear' concentrated more fully
on his intellectual rather than emotional devel-
opment. Canetti the post graduate chemistry
student aware of Freud and obsessed with
another great Viennese writer, Karl Kraus, has
to invent a number of non-existent girlfriends to
distrct h is mother away from his real romantic
interest Veza who will in time, the next volume,
become his first wife.
Berlin in the 1920's with characters like Brecht
and Isaac Babel is evoked as a restless centre for
aspiring artists and intellectuals "impelled by the
need for self manifestation ... if you didn't want
to be forgotten, you had to be seen". Vienna
during the same years introduced Canetti to
Breughel's paintings, 'The Six Blind Men' and
'The Triumph of Death' at a time when Mahler
was becoming a cult figure, yet still unknown
outside the city.
In the autumn of 1931, Kant set fire to his
library and burned to death with his books. For
Canetti, 'This death affected me as deeply as if I
had gone through it myself. The incident left its
mark on the novel Canetti had been occupied
with. And in 1935 'Die Blendung' appeared, ele-
ven years later it was published in English as
'Auto Da Fe', one of the great European novels
of the century. Peter Kien, a sinologist at the
mercy of his nasty housekeeper who cons him
into marriage, lives for his books with near
Faustian zeal. In addition to the appalling The-
rese, Kien must contend with an evil, chess-play-
ing dwarf. Finally Kien frees himslef, by setting
fire to his books. 'When the flames reached him
at last, he laughed out loud, louder than he had
ever laughed in all his life'.
Not only do Canetti's charmingly readable
and perceptive memoirs tell us about him, they
present a detailed portrait of European cultural
and political life as interpreted by a great
thinker.

'A
ny work of art in its essentials
is simply a solution to a techni-
cal problem', says John Banville who re-
gards fiction as a high art and sees his own
books as 'ludicrously simple'. Most would
agree that fiction can reach varying levels
of art and that it certainly does the way
Banville creates it. Far fewer, however, ap-
pear to accept his description of the Ban-
ville oeuvre. Banville, one of the most
gifted writers of prose and increasingly
coming to be ranked amongst the finest of
international novelists, is aware that he has
suffered for too long as a result of his repu-
tation for crafting 'demanding' novels.
In an age in which the 'novel of ideas' is
approached with the utmost caution, Ban-
ville's brilliantly funny burlesques on life
and art, with their meditations of the liter-
ary, artistic and scientific imagination,
have often been labelled as 'difficult' and
'intellectually elitest'. Appraisals which
probably don't surprise Banville as much
as he intimates.
Two elements dominate the fictional
world he inhabits, his superb mastery of
language and the blackly grotesque com-
edy. Both of which are well served by a
distinct narrative voice usually operating at
a highly refined pitch of eloquent exasper-
ation.
His Booker short-listing with 'The Book
of Evidence' has not come as a complete
surprise, but more as an example of a rec-
ognition that was long and seriously over-
due. Banville himself admits that after the
initial pleasure, a feeling of righteous vindi-
cation took over; 'I thought I'd been writ-
ing good, competent novels all along, but
no one appeared to be taking much notice',
he said with his characteristic amused half-
smile, adding, , yes, you could say I feel
vindicated'. Winning the prize itself would
more likely prove anti-climatic considering
the struggle its been to make that most
prestigious of short lists.
In 1982, he had narrowly missed being
Booker short-listed because English novel-
ist, Margaret Drabble, herself author-of in-
creasingly long, turgid state-of-the-nation
tracts and a Booker judge that year,argued
that at 92 pages, the chilling and beauti-
fully controlled 'The Newton Letter'was
"too short" .
Four years later, 'Mefisto, which proved
a nightmare for Banville to write, and
which had many thematic echoes of 'Birch-
wood' (1973), his hilarious tale of Ireland
in chaos, also failed to make the short list
as expected.
It's not that Banville believes that the
Booker Prize holds the definite authority
on literary excellence, but he does accept its
clout built up over the past 21 years. Of the
myriad of literary prizes now on offer, it
remains the one which " has the greatest
say in shaping the public's awareness of the
fiction which is on offer, that's something
one can't ignore, as I want to be read".
'The Book of Evidence'the incredibly
lucid monologue of one Freddie Mont-
gomery, imprisoned for an unneccessary
murder, the outcome of an unneccessary
theft, had been tipped for a place on the
Booker short list following its publication
in March. Critical reaction in Britain was
very positive and although Banville's stylis-
tic mastery had been noted with his earlier
work, this time reviewers appeared less in-
hibited. Accessibility was the determining
factor as much as linguistic virtuosity
which secured Banville's shortlisting. He
acknowledges this, although he has never
felt that his previous books were less than
accessible. It's very satisfying for him to
note that at the centre of 'The Book of Evi-
dence' is the painting Freddie steals. Also,
along with Freddie's mad rationalizing of
his crazy actions lies Banville's ongoing
questioning oflife, art and reality.
J ohn Banville is a small, high fore-
headed, dapper man with lively yel-
low green eyes and an expression of mild
amusement which often yields to mock
innocence when accompanying one of his
laconic asides. He has a preference for
black silk shirts, expensive shoes and
favours a gold pocket watch. On a recent
vacation in France, a friend presented him
with a silver ball. When Banville returned
to Dublin, he removed it from its black vel-
vet pouch with a magician-like flourish, an-
nouncing "listen to the music of the
spheres" as it made a sound rather like a
seashell. In many ways, his demeanour is
decidely European and Banville's courtly
manners appeal even to those who are in-
timidated by his cleverness. Banville has
never wasted words in conversation much
less on the page and he speaks slowly, with
much deliberation in the accentless accent
of Dublin's university classes to which he
never belonged.
A lmost deadpan at tim". he is in '0'
riably understated to an unnerv-
ing degree and he can say more with a look
than most people convey with entire para-
graphs. However, his formidable intellect is
tempered by a fine sense of the absurd.
Those who don't know him see him as
cool, remote, detached and "a bit fright-
ening". Those who have met' him remark
on his wit and surprising approachability.
Yet even his friends comment on his impla-
cable reserve. As well as this, there is the
Banville self discipline, a quality which has
shaped his personality as much as his prose
style.
His books, he says, are the result of years
of grief and are a way of dealing with the
violence and anger "around and inside us".
It is interesting to note that despite the cool
elegance of his writing and the very obvi-
ous fact that Banville the novelist appears
far more preoccupied with ideas and lang-
uage than with people, a palpable sense of
humanity runs through the novels - indi-
viduals are viewed at their weakest, their
craziest, their most vulnerable.
John Banville was born in Wexford on
December 8th 1945, he describes himself as
'a typical product of a lower, middle class,
Catholic upbringing' .As the youngest of
lIJ1lIiDl
.•.moved from the predominately
three, (his eldest brother, Vincent jiub-
lished a novel set in Africa, 'An End to
Flight'which is due for a paperback re-issu-
ing shortly) Banville says; " I had the ad-
vantages of being an only child with none
of the disadvantages". Many of his boy-
hood birthdays were spent in Dublin on
those traditional December 8th Feast of
the Annunciation shopping days. He began
writing at 15, "one of my aunts had an old
typewriter on which I used to pound out all
my bad immitations of Joyce."
After leaving St Peter's College, he took
one of the better jobs then available to the
Irish school leaver, a clerical post with Aer
Lingus. Extensive free travel eventually
palled on him and Banville had a suc-
taneous combustion and the family are left
to bury little more than a pair of boots.
Banville agrees that it's an extremely politi-
cal novel and searching for a way out of
what he calls a 'literary crisis', he found it
cession of forgettable jobs before becoming in the lives of two Renaissance scientists.
a sub-editor with the Irish Press. Where, as When it became known that Banville
he has said several times in the past, he was writing a novel about Copernicus, opi-
spent his days busily brooding, " waiting to nion decreed' he's gone mad' and Banville
write the Great Novel". He admits that adds" some people were going around ask-
during those years, he was probably even ing 'what's he writing a book about a fuck-
more intense than observers thought he
was "and that was very intense." Now ap-
proaching 44, he says he is no longer "
quite as angry and is expecting a lot less
from life."
'Long Lankin', a short story col-
lection, appeared in 1970 and the following
year, Banville at 25 published his first
novel, 'Nightspawn' which focussed on a
character from one of the 'Long Lankin
'short stories. This debut novel was very
much the work of an angry young man, its
hero was full of heady self rebellion, prob-
ably rather like Banville was himself at the
time. He however is reluctant to concede
this and says it was the work of a young
man who had read too many of the wrong
books. Nowadays he admits a certain
fondness for the book. But a few years ago,
he described it to me as a novel labouring
under an 'uneasily contrived aggression'.
Two years later, 'Birchwoodappeared
and with it, success. Although it was mis-
read by many as yet another 'Big House'
novel, it was enthusiastically received -par-
ticularly in America despite Banville's US With 'Doctor Copernicus' Banville was
editor suggesting that he drop 'all the cir- faced with "inventing a great deal" and he
cus stuff because I don't get it'. adds, "there's not much known about Co-
'Birchwood' is a clever, often gro- pernicus's life, he was distant, cold ... but I
tesquely funny, parody of the Big House as found him very sympathetic". The novel
an allegory for Ireland in chaos. Written won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize
during the first onslaught of the present in 1976 and Banville remains very proud of
trouble in Northern Ireland, it was well re- it. He then turned his attention to Kepler, "
emotive I think he was a wonderfully human
'writing of the time. An Irish ascendency character and he had such a bloody awful
family grappling with communal madness, life I didn't have to invent things, I had to
disappointment and incest, inhabit the de- leave them out - no one would have be-
caying, disputed ancestral seat of the title. lieved it if I had told it as it happened.
Characterization has never been fore- Kepler was a busy little man ... he was ob-
most in Banville's mind, he tends to rely on sessed with little things and mad scheme-
casts of eccentric stereotypes and 'Birch- s.. .I'm a bit like that myself". 'Kepler' won
wood'offers a violent, onc~handsome cad- the 1981 Guardian Fiction Prize. Banville
dish rake of a father ; ~-Ioving though has no problems about reconciling the in-
unloved wife sliding into a weepily pic- herent dangers of using history and biogra-
turesque insanity; her not-to-be-trusted phy within a fictional framework, " the
and now-paying- for-her-sins sister; the novelist enjoys full imaginative freedom -
domineering, indestructible grandmother, anyhow, I don't believe in ghosts".
her senile, ever-dribbling spouse; the arti- In 'The Newton Letter', the narrator, a
culate narrator son and his less graced step writing blocked academic, misreads the
brother. Gabriel sets off on a quest to find personal circumstances of the failing gen-
a missing sister and the narrative appears try from whom he rents a gate lodge. In-
to change course, moving on from family stead of completing his stalemated study of
saga to picaresque jaunt complete with Newton, he has a frenzied, loveless affair
some more made to measure grotesques, a with one woman, while becoming obsessed
Dickensian team of circus folk. Granny with another and eventually realizes that
Godkin's demise is attributed to spon- he is making love by proxy; " so much is
unsayable; all the important things. I
spent a summer in the country, I slept
with one woman and thought I was in
love with another; I dreamed up a hor-
rid drama, and failed to see the com-
monplace tragedy that was playing
itself out in real life" .
But the early eighties were difficult
years were Banville, the deaths of his
parents were compounded by the
problems he encountered writing the
novel which caused him the most anex-
ity to write, according to Banville,
'Mefisto'was 'bloody impossible'
'Mefisto'was published in 1986, and
returned Banville to the Ireland of
'Birchwood' as well as to his earlier
themes of duality and twinship.
Another Gabriel tells his story and un-
like the Gabriel of 'Birchwood " this
Gabriel knows all about his twin from
the start, the dead brother " I came
first. My brother was a poor second.
Spent swimmer, he drowned in air".
Mathematics also dominates. Why is
Banville, with no formal training in the
sciences so fascinated by them? "I see a
beauty in mathematical form. Didn't
Einstein say that if you were presented
with three possible solutions to any
mathematical problem, the most
beautiful one is always the correct
one?"
He has never had any difficulty with
being an 'Irish' writer, but he has never
belonged to the Irish tradition, some
would say he had made an active at-
tempt to escape it. He says he likes liv-
ing on an island and yet regrets being
cut off from the continent, " I miss the
whole European cross fertilization of
cultures." Banville's intellectual
grounding certainly comes from the
19th century German poetry, philos-
ophy and historical writings which
have provided his major literary influ-
ence, however as a fiction writer he has
Prizes are important
for esteem but
for Banville
they confer 'freedom'
always looked towards the US and en-
vied the scope writers there enjoy.
Most of the fiction appearing now-
adays appears to send a shudder of dis-
pair through Banville who sees
language being constantly abused by
unoriginal writers re-cycling dull ma-
terial and over-worked themes. Still,
when he comes across a book he ad-
mires, Banville makes no attempt to
conceal his enthusiasm. Three novel-
s,all American, which impressed him
most during the past year were Don de
Lillo's 'Libra, 'The Sportswriter' by
Richard Ford - which Banville pro-
nounced as 'the real thing' and Corman
MacCarthy's stunning, 'Blood Meri-
dian'. None of the three excited quite
the reaction from him, however, as did
Claudio Magris with 'Danube', a quasi
historical, geographical and anthropo-
logical journey down the 1,800 mile
nver.
Since September of last year,John
Banville has been the literary editor of
the Irish Times where he was pre-
viously subbing on the news pages on
returning to journalism after a period
in which it was hoped that he could
live by his writing alone. Things didn't
work out as planned and a wife, two
sons and a mortage in Howth meant
he had to let financial pressures dictate
how he would divide his time and fit
his writing in rather than let it shape
his days. Prizes are important for es-
teem, but for Banville they confer
'freedom', as he says himself, "money
simply permits one to buy one's free-
dom, in my case the time to write"
Many readers have suggested that
'The Book of Evidence' owes some of
its inspiration to the harrowing Ma-
cArthur case, speculation which Ban-
ville himself has consistently refuted,
saying 'The Book of Evidence'is a
"work of fiction". Of the novel which
he himself said shortly after publi-
cation, "it's a terrifying book, it will be
read by readers who will sit and about
a week later, quietly explode", he also
remarks, " very few readers or re-
viewers to whom I have spoken appear
to have noticed that on the last page
and indeed the last lines of the book
there is a very ambigious disclosure by
Freddie Montgomery; is Freddie being
as honest as he seems to have been
throughout the book?" The novel
closes with Freddie answering the in-
spector as to the honesty of his testi-
mony. 'True, Inspector?'1 said. 'All of
it. None of it. Only the shame.'
T hey came from inner space; from
the throbbing void in the corpo-
rate mind of the early fifties America, post-
war, pre-Presley and in felt need of new
heroes.
The great stars of the Golden Age had
returned from the war, their hair going
grey or just going and their auras palely
fading. Television, rock-'n-roll and a gen-
erational shift in the balance of consumer
power were imminently to alter the nature
of pop-cultural stardom. But the studio
bosses who famously knew nothing about
anything hadn't sussed this out either and
were on red-alert for any new Gable, new
Flynn or Deanna Durbin who might fill the
glamour-gap.
So the Hollywood sign seemed still to be
smiling like it was constantly saying
'cheese', and the loners and the losers, the
tired and the twisted, continued to swarm
in. For some, it wasn't so much to be
make-or-break as to be broken in the pro-
cess of making it.
And since they'd all been drawn to the
same place and were driven by the same
dream it wasn't surprising that their lives,
personal and professional, should overlap
and intermesh into a single, seamless story.
A famous five adventures in Hollywood
which could have provided any fantasy-
soap with a whole season's story-lines were
Liz Taylor, Montgomery Clift, Rock Hud-
son, James Dean and Natalie Wood. They
all dazzled early and died dreadfully, all
except Liz Taylor who is still alive, if un-
well and living occasionally in the Betty
Ford Clinic for super-rich addicts.
•Liz had been the first to arrive, hitting
town in 1940, aged seven and equipped
with oval, violet eyes, an ambition crazed
mother and the self-possession of one who
had successfully twirled at age three before
Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret Rose at
ballet school back in England before the
family had fled England at the outbreak of
the war.
I
ttook Liz's mum, Sara, three years
hard slog around studio bosses, agents
and auditions before the ten-year-old was
picked to play alongside leading collie star
Pal in the low-budget 1943 heart-render,
'Lassie Come Home.' War-distraught
audiences bawled with unrestrained plea-
sure and child Elizabeth was instantly a
star.
She was one of the few who managed the
transition from child star to romantic roles
without effort or awkwardness, maybe be-
cause she'd never sampled real childhood
herself. At sixteen she was dating Howard
Hughes, at seventeen, a ten-movie veteran,
she'd married hotel owner Nick Conrad
Hilton, announcing "I shall love this man
for the rest of my life", which was to prove
one of her favourite lines. She was to amass
seven husbands in all, including Richard
Burton twice.
By eighteen she had made her debut as a
divorcee and given her first screen perform-
ance that demanded to be taken seriously,
which was due in large measure to meeting
Montgomery Clift.
Clift, the son of a wealthy Omaha stock-
broker, had been the sensation of Broad-
way in the mid-forties, taking star roles at
the age of seventeen and becoming the
sought-after associate of writers like Tru-
man Capote, Thornton Wilder and Ten-
nessee Williams, and dining room
companion of mega-folk like Marlene Die-
trich.
H e was alternately frightened and
fascinated by the blandishments
of Hollywood agents. However, 200,000
dollars a picture tipped the aesthetic ba-
lance and by 1951 he was on his fifth
Hollywood movie, co-starring with Ms
Taylor in George Stevens's classic, 'A Place
in the Sun'. She has recounted how he
coached and coaxed a performance from
her of which no-one, including herself, had
imagined her capable. Two years later,
Clift was to do the same for Frank Sinatra
in Zimmerman's 'From Here to Eternity'.
E ndlesslyatwitch with neurotic in-
tegrity, Clift was not a happy man
in Hollywood. Not sure that he wasn't
abasing himself by being in movies at all,
and terrified lest the gossip hacks expose
his homosexuality, he drank heavily, pop-
ped a small pharmacy of pills daily, and,
after 'Eternity', made only eight further
films. He turned down parts in 'Friendly
Persuasion' (taken by Gary CooperO, 'On
the Waterfront' (Marlon Brando), 'On A
Hot Tin Roof( (Paul Newman), 'Moby
Dick' (Gregory Peck) and scores more.
His personal behaviour became bizarre.
He'd sleep in a coffin and was sometimes
found comatose on Skid Row after a low-
rent night out. He seems to have enjoyed
scarcely a moment of relaxed contentment
once he'd opted for the money and the
movies.
Through it all, Ms Taylor remained his
most loyal friend, ready to rush to his side
when he was in deep drug-depression, fier-
cely protective of him against studio sharks
and news scavengers. She would flirt with
him in public to deflect the rumours, then
drop him off to meet a male lover.
On the set of another Stevens's movie,
'Giant', in 1956, Ms Taylor met another of
Hollywood's leading gay stars, Rock Hud-
son. Thirty years later, she was one of the
few who stayed literally by his side as he
died slowly of AIDS.
Born Roy Scherer into abject poverty in
Winnetka, Illinois, Hudson travelled to
Hollywood in 1947 and took to hanging
around studio car lots hoping to be 'no-
ticed', just like it said in the fanzines. He
spent his last sixty-five dollars having pho-
tographs taken which he sent to every
agent in town, one of whom, Henry Wil-
lson, reckoned that this big wholesome boy
who had no pimples and smelled of milk
might just be a marketable item, which is
exactly as it says in the fanzines. Hudson
ambled his way through a series of appal-
ling oaters before landing the male lead in
Douglas Sirk's 1954 high-gloss weepie,
'Magnificent Obsession'. And that made
him a star.
He never did learn to act, but eventually
specialised in light comedies - often
alongside Doris Day - and was
Hollywood's highest earner by the mid-
Sixties. He had a seriously high sexual
drive and regularly risked exposure as he
cruised for boyfriends with whom he
cheated on a succession of live-in lovers.
On one occasion, Willson bought off Con-
fidential by giving the rag-mag the dirt on
another of his clients, Rory Calhoun, in-
stead.
As a screen hero Hudson was the anti-
thesis of the third star of 'Giant', James
Dean, whose mannered mumbling obvi-
ously his long-lasting appeal, his image
being used to merchandise Maltesers on
telly-ads to this day.
Hudson dated Dean, whom he sus-
pected, probably rightly, of using his
'Method-acting' tricks as much to unsettle
his co-stars as to enhance his own perform-
ance. Jimmy would maybe lie on the floor
in the foetal position for around ten min-
tues, growling, before leaping up and
launching himself into a scene, at which
point his fellow actors were expected to be
fully in character and ready to chime in on
cue.
Jimmy came from a warm, comfortable
and protective family on a 300-acre farm in
Indiana, a circumstance which seemed to
cause him turmoil. He drifted to New York
in his teens and into a number of not-bad
live plays on early television, before head-
ing for California just as fashion-moguls
were musing on the possibility of juvenile
delinquency being the next Big Thing.
'Blackboard Jungle', made for pennies, was
pumping profit at a ridiculous rate.
Jimmy, the perfect epitome of the crazy
mixed-up kid, was an immediate sensation.
The parts of Cal in 'East of Eden', Kazan's
reactionary mis-reading of John Stein-
beck's great novel, and the lead role in the
(unintentional) laugh-a-line 'Rebel With-
out a Cause' (both 1955) were his for the
angsting. The following year he made
'Giant' with Taylor and Hudson and then
immediately impaled himself on the driving
column of his Porsche, which, legend-wise,
was one of the most brilliant career moves
in Hollywood history.
T
he love of Jimmy's live had been
the fine Italian actress, Pier Angeli,
whom he'd met while making 'Rebel'. But
her mother made her marry the bad
crooner Vic ('On the Street Where You
Live') Damone on account of Vic being a
nice Italian boy.
Vic beat her up and the marriage ended
in a viciously contested divorce. Ms Angeli,
her happiness shattered beyond redemp-
tion, never recovered. She sank into drug
addiction and killed herself with an over-
dose in 1968.
Jimmy's best friend from his 'Rebel'
days, bit part player Nick Adams, embit-
tered that he never made it as a star, killed
himself the same year, also by an overdose.
Jimmy's pen pal in 'Rebel', Sal Mineo, was
stabbed to death in a back alley in
Hollywood in 1976. 'Rebel' director, Ni-
cholas Ray, died an alcohol and addict in
1979.
In 1981, Jimmy's girlfriend in 'Rebel',
Natalie Wood, dived into the sea of Los
Angeles after an argument with her hus-
band, Robert Wagner, and drowned.
Natalie had made her screen debut
alongside Orson Welles in 'Tomorrow
Forever' at the age of eight in 1947. Welles
describes has as "so good she's terrifying".
Like Liz Taylor, she made a smooth tran-
sition from child star to romantic parts in
the fifties but, confined by the studios to
girl-next-door characters for years, despite
sturdy
'Splendour
performances in, for example,
in the Grass' (1961) and
'Gypsy' (1963), she never did find out how
good she might have been. Married, div-
orced and then married again to Wagner,
she eventually seemed to settle for domes-
ticity and an occasional bit part.
It was ony after her death that her sister,
Is Lana, revealed how empty and drug-dulled
her life had been towards the end. Maybe
she killed herself.
L iz Taylor and Rock Hudson held
hands at the graveside as Natalie
was buried in Westwood Memorial Park.
, bedazzled people to wish her well.
Hudson had lumbered through a sixty-
movie career until the early seventies when,
tastes having turned from bunk-heroes to
antis, he was displaced by the likes of Hof-
fman, Me
Queen, Nicholson et al Pacina. Even then
he was able to pick up 120,000 dollars a TV
episode of 'McMillan and Wife' and, later,
double that for 'Dynasty', in which, in
1984, aware that he had AIDS, he wet-
kissed Linda Evans. That, when he was
rumbled by the reptiles, lost him almost
every friend he had, although not, needless
to say, Ms Taylor.
She'd completed her set of seven hus-
bands by then and was in effective and
fabulously rich retirement, some of which
she now spent still holding Hudson's hand
as he sat, a crumple of bones, in the bed-
room of a sump to us Hollywood mansion
which after he died nobody would buy
until it has been fumigated three tiems and
the walls of the bedroom hosed with disin-
fectant. She marked his death in October
1985 with a spirited attack on the Reagan
administration for refusing adequate funds
to AIDS research.
Liz Taylor is the last of her sort left. She's
had an unreal life, encased in an impregna-
ble sheen of glamour since childhood. One
of her early husbands, Mike Todd, used to
give her a present -a diamond, a Degas, a
racehorse - on their weekly anniversary.
She would have no experience to draw on
even to act an ordinary person.
But there's been a natural decency about
some of the things she'd done and some of
the ways she'd reacted to events. Earlier
this year she was admitted yet again to the
Ford clinic. It's possible for ordinary, un-

T axes on personal income are
very high in Ireland - for those
who are forced to pay them. While
Ireland may not exhibit the rigid
and formal class boundaries found
in older European politics, the op-
eration of the Irish tax code is cre-
ating a new cleavage in Irish
society. It has divided those at
work into two groups. The first
consists of those trapped in the
narrow confines of the PA YE in-
come tax net. This group are forced
to surrender a large proportion of
their gross income to the Exche-
quer. The second group consists of
those who have managed to nego-
tiate their way out of the net, some
by exploiting the tax code to their
advantage. Others by disregarding
it altogether.
Over time, the social divisions
between these two groups becomes
entrenched. Those who must bear
the a heavy burden of personal tax-
ation have little or no chance of ac-
cumulating capital, even where
their gross incomes are high. Those
enjoying a favoured income tax
status, by accident or design, will
have the ability to accumulate.
Then comes the twist in the tail.
The Irish tax code takes a lenient
view of ownership and thus taxes it
with a light hand. There are vir-
tually no effective capital taxes in
Ireland. As a result, the social clea-
vage engineered by the operation
of the income tax code is reinforced
by the absence of capital taxation.
Commenting on the operation of
The weight of the
income tax burden
on ordinary people's pay
packets sparked off a
wave of tax protests
in the late 1970s
the Irish tax system, the Organisa-
tion for Economic Co-operation
and Development (OECD) in its
1988/1989 Survey of the Irish econ-
omy, noted:
'while overall tax pressure is
among the highest in OECD
countries, there are several areas
where tax rates are relatively low
and/or the tax base rather nar-
row, putting a heavier burden on
those persons or activities that
are effectively taxed, in particu-
lar on contractual labour in-
come ... The personal income tax
features marginal rates which
are among the highest inthe
OECD area, despite the re-
ductions in both standard and
top rates in the 1989 budget,
while the tax base is quite nar-
row ..... The Residential Property
plays a minor role in tax rev-
enues ..... The revenue share of
other capital taxes, for example,
on capital gains or inheritance, is
minor.'
The operation of the Irish tax
system does not simply breed social
inequality, it also stunts economic·
development. In its second report,
published in March 1984, the Com-
mission on Taxation pointed to the
depressing effect exerted by high
levels of direct taxation on econ-
omic activity. It stated;
'In our examination of incen-
tives, we have been conscious
that
(i) the existing high level of
taxation is a serious disincentive
to productive effort;
(ii) a major contributory factor
to high rates of taxation has been
the erosion of the tax base by the
very large number of incentives
which have been provided.
(iii) tax avoidance is widespread
and has been facilitated by the pro-
vision of special incentives, which
inevitably provide scope for ma-
nipulation, and
(iv) the cost of (tax) incentives
must be matched by higher tax-
ation on other activities.'
The weight of the income tax
burden on ordinary people's pay
packets sparked a wave of tax pro-
tests in the late 1970s. These mass
demonstrations were met, noit with
tax reform, but with yet higher
taxes.
As can be seen from Table 1,
taxes on personal incomes climbed
throughout the 1980s, reaching a
peak in 1988, the year of the tax
amnesty. Successive governments
increased the revenues gathered
from personal income taxes both
by increasing the yields from exist-
ing taxies and by introducing new
taxes on personal income.
The taxes levied on personal in-
comes during the 1980s have been
of four types. First and foremost,
there is income tax itself. Income
tax yielded the Exchequer just over
£1 billion in 1980. During the
1980s, income tax receipts accruing
to the Exchequer increased at a far
gfaster pace than inflation. By
1988, revenues collected from in-
come tax exceeded £3 billion, the
governments tax take being swol-
len that year by the announcement
of a tax amnesty. However, even
the budgeted target for income tax
receipts for 1989, at just under
£2,700 million represent more than
a two-and-a-half fold increase on
the yield achieved nine years ear-
lier.
Thus, between 1980 and 1989,
the government increased its in-
come tax take by £1,684 million or
166%. Over the same period, infla-
tion, as measured by consumer
prices, increased by an estimated
105%. As a result, the average in-
clime tax burden became con-
siderably weightier through the
1980s.
In essence, successive govern-
ments used inflation itself as a form
of disguised taxation. By refusing
to increase tax allowances and to
widen the tax bands in line with in-
flation, it was easy for governments
to sequester an increasing share of
personal income.
However, the taxation of per-
sonal income did not stop with in-
come tax, as Table 1 shows. The
second form of income tax col-
lected from employees' incomes
consists of employee's social insur-
ance contributions increased at a
faster pace thanb receipts from in-
come tax during the 1980s.
Not content with pumping up
the yield from existing taxes on
personal income new income taxes
were introduced during the 1980s.
The Youth Employment Levy was
introduced at a rate of 1% of gross
income in 1982. Despite a change
of name to the Employment and
Training Levy in 1988, it continued
The standard VAT rate
in Ireland, at 25%,
is the highest
amongst the 24
industrial countries which
belong to the OEeD
to be charged at a rate of 1% on all
incomes. It is expected to yield
£105 million in 1989.
The fourth and final form of in-
come tax charged during the 1980s
was the 1% Temporary Income
Levy charged during the 1980s was
the 1% income tax levy. This addi-
tional income tax was introduced
in 1983 but dropped in 1986. Dur-
ing its short life, it managed to earn
some £22 million for the Exche-
quer.
The results of all this taxing be-
haviour are summarised in Table 1.
As can be seen, all taxes on per-
sonal yielded the Exchequer £1,169
million in 1980. By the budget of
1989, the total take from personal
income taxes was estimated at
£3,282 million, representing a rise
of 181% over the decade.
The results can be summarised
even more starkly in terms of the
share of Gross National Product
absorbed by taxes on personal in-
come. In 1980, income taxes ac-
counted for 13%, or just over £1 in
every £8, of Gross National Prod-
uct. By 1988, the proceeds of the
tax amnesty had pushed up per-
sonal income taxes to 19.6% of
GNP, representing almost £1 in
every £5 of national income. On
the basis of this years budget esti-
mates, and even with the tax con-
cessions announced in the budget,
income taxes in total will still yield
the Exchequer the equivalent of
16.6% of Gross National Product
- or about £1 in every £6 of this
year's national income.
BUSINESS TAXES
An attempt to isolate the taxes paid
by business is made in Table 2.
Usually, in this sphere, attention
focusses on the relatively small
amounts of corporation tax paid
by businesses in Ireland on their
corporate income. The low yield
from corporation tax in Ireland. re-
flects the low rates of corporation
tax and the extensive allowances
available to businesses in comput-
ing their taxable income. The low
rates of tax stem from the existence
of Export Sales Relief, where cor-
porate income earned from exports
is relieved 100% from corporation
tax, and of the 10% rate of corpo-
ration tax applied to manufactur-
ing industry.
However, while the yield from
corporation tax is undeniably low,
it is by no means the only form of
taxation levied on business. In fact,
throughout the 1980s, social insur-
ance contributions paid by employ-
ers on behalf of their employees
yielded the Exchequer more than
twice as much income as corpora-
tion tax itself. In 1980, business
paid only £140 million in corpora-
tion tax, but employers paid £306
million in social insurance contri-
butions. By 1987, the corporation
tax yield had advanced to £256 mil-
lion, but again this was dwarfed by
the £696 million paid by employers
in social insurance charges.
Rates are a property tax paid to
local authorities, and as such, are a
form of local taxation. The aboli-
tion of rates on domestic dwellings
in the late 1970s left farmers and
business as the only subscribers.
Then farmers dropped themselves
out of the system, so that all rates
are now paid by enterprises, in-
cluding public enterprises such as
the ESB. As can be seen, rates are a
not inconsiderable source of in-
come for local authorities, with an
expected yield of almost £250 mil-
lion in 1989.
Taxes on personal
income constitute
one of the
two major sources
of revenue of
the Exchequer
The fourth form of taxation
borne by business is duties paid on
the motor vehicles it uses. This fig-
ure is segmented out from the
motor vehical duties paid by pri-
vate mtorists in the National In-
come & Expenditure accounts.
Motor vehicle duties paid by
business amounted to an estimated
£59 million in 1987.
The four major identifiable
forms of taxation paid by business
are outlined in Table 2. As can be
seen, they increased from £565 mil-
lion in 1980 to just under £1 ,400
million in the 1989 budget esti-
mates. Throughout the 1980s, they
have remained relatively constant
as a share of Gross National Prod-
uct, rising slightly from 6.3% of
GNP to an estimated 7% in 1989.
The minimal amounts collected
by way of capital taxes is shown in
Table 3. Despite the use of six sep-
arate instruments of capital tax-
ation during the 1980s, the yield
from capital taxes never exceeded
£62 million in a single year. Except
for 1988, the year of the tax am-
nesty, the yield from all capital
taxes never exceeded one quarter of
one percent of Gross National
Product. Such taxes may engender
controversy; they do not collect
revenue.
Taxes on personal income con-
stitute one of the two major
sources of revenue for the Exche-
quer. The other major source of
Exchequer income is taxes on
goods and services, also known as
taxes on expenditure. The trends in
such expenditure taxes is shown in
Table 4.
As can be seen from Table 4,
Value Added Tax has taken over
from customs and excise duties as
the principal contributor to rev-
enue from taxes on spending. As
late as 1980, customs and excise
duties yielded twice as much rev-
enue to the Exchequer as VAT.
However, VAT revenues exceeded
those from duties from 1984 on-
wards. The growth in the relative
importance of VAT derives from
the progressive dismantling of cus-
toms duties on import from other
member-states of the European
Community, the failure of excise
duties on goods such as alcohol
and cigarettes to keep pace with in-
flation and the upward trend in the
standard rate of Value Added Tax.
The standard VAT rate in Ireland,
at 25%, is the highest amongst the
24 industrial countries which be-
long to the Organisation for Econ-
omic Co-Operation and
Development. The revenues accur-
ing to the Exchequer from VAT
have quadrupled in the course of
the 1980s.
Other expenditure taxes include
stamp duties, which reflect, inter
alia, trends in the purchase of sec-
ond-hand houses, levies and fees,
the latter including motor vehicle
duties paid by private motorists.
Taxes on expenditure have al-
ways been an importance source of
government revenue in Ireland.
However, their importance has in-
creased further in the course of the
1980s. Expenditure taxes stood
equivalent to 15.2% of Gross Na-
tional Product in 1980. They in-
creased their share of GNP in the
early 1980s, reaching a peak at
18.5% in 1984, declining thereafter
to 17.5% of GNP by 1987. The fig-
ures shown for 1988 and 1989 are
illustrative only, since they are
compiled on a budgetary rather
than a national income accounts
basis.
The four tax categories exam-
ined individually in Tables 1 th-
rough 4 -taxes on personal
income, on business, on capital and
on expenditure - are aggregated
in Table 5 to derive figures illus-
trating the trend in total taxation in
Ireland during the 1980s.
Tble 5 shows that Irish Gross
National Product at market prices
doubled between 1980 and 1987,
rising from £9,003 million to
£18,032 million over the period.
Over this span, total domestic tax-
ation rose more than two-and-a-
half fold, increasing from £3,119
million in 1980 to £7,658 million in
80 MAGILL October 1989
1987. taxes on corporate income and on
As a result, the share of GNP property accounted for less than
taken in taxation rose sharply, by 8% of the total taxes gathered,
some eight percentage points. In whereas in 1965, they represented
1980, total domestic taxation stood almost one-quarter of the total tax
equivalent to 34.6% of GNP. By take. Taxes on goods and services
1987, total domestic taxation had also diminished in relative import-
risen to 42.5% of GNP. This rep- ance, falling from 52.7% to 41.8%
resents a rise of startling pro- of total taxes over the twenty-two
portions. year period. In compensation for
The figures for 1988 are less re- these declines, personal income
liable, for two reasons. First, the taxes rose greatly increased their
tax amnesty that year gathered in share of total taxation. Taxes on
taxes which had been unpaid in personal income rose from one-
previous years, swelling the re- sixth to more than one-third of all
sources in the Exchequer's coffers taxes collected while social insur-
to an artificial extent. Second, the ance contributions - income tax
tax yields shown for 1988 are in another guise -increased from
6.5% to 14.1% of the Exchequer's
The overall Irish take.
tax take is lower These compositional changes in-
than in the Netherlands, dicate a significant narrowing of
Belgium and France the national tax base. A higher pro-
but higher than in portion of taxes were collected
West Germany and Britain from personal incomes while the
shown as they appeared in the taxation of property and corporate
budgetary outturn for 1988 income diminished.
whereas figures for previous years These changes were not taking
place in a static tax environment.
are derived from the National In-
come and Expenditure accounts, For since 1965, the overall tax take
of the government rose by the
where the definitions used are
slightly different. equivalent of twenty percentage
points of national income, from
Nevertheless, is spite of these ca-
veats, there is no doubt that tax 24.5% in 1965 to 43.8% in 1987.
yields rose sharply again in 1988, as Thus, an increasing share of a ris-
many taxpayers settled their out- ing tax burden was loaded on per-
standing tax bills. In approximate sonal incomes. It is hardly
terms, the Government's total tax surprising, given these two factors,
take in 1988 rose to some 47% of that resistance to the tax system be-
Gross National Product. came so widespread.
Using a slightly different form of A comparsion between the struc-
classification, the evolution of the tur of the Irish tax system and
Irish tax system over the past two those prevailing in other countries
decades is shown in Table 6. As can is shown in Table 7.
be seen, in 1965, more than half of Of the ten countries surveyed,
all taxation collected was taken Ireland ranks fifth in terms of the
from impositions on goods and ser- overall tax take. Total Irish taxes,
vices. Personal income taxes con- at 43.8% of GNP in 1987, stand
tributed only one-sixty of the total well below those inflicted in Swe-
tax take while, between them, taxes den, but wei above those charged
on corporation income and prop- in the United States and Japan.
erty taxes accounted for one-quar- Within the context of the European
ter of all taxation gathered. The Community, the overall Irish tax
overall tax take was relatively low, take is lower than in the Nether-
equivalent to less than a quarter of lands, Belgium and France, but
Gross National Product in 1965. higher than in West Germany and
Over the ensuing two decades, Britain. On this data, Ireland is not
the composition of the Irish tax a pecularily heavily taxed country
code changed radically. By 1987, by international standards. One
 important caveat must be entered,
however. All of these countries
enjoy a much higher national in-
come per person than Ireland.
Thus, the real position that Ireland
.finds itself in is that of a middle
income economy with a high in-
come economy's tax rate.
In terms of the composition of
the tax take within the ten coun-
tries surveyed, the relative share of
taxes on goods and services is far
higher in Ireland than elsewhere.
However, in terms of relative

shares, taxes on corporate in-

come and social insurance contri-
butions are far lower in Ireland
than in other countries. Thus,
Japan finds one-fifth of its total tax
take from corporate income taxes,
where in Ireland only 3.3% of total
taxes is raised through impositions
on corporate income. Social insur-
ance contributions account for
only 14.1% of the total Irish tax
take, whereas in Japan and the
United States, they account for
30% and 29.8% of total taxes re-
spectively.
The proportion of total taxes
taken from personal incomes is
also very high in Ireland at 36.2%.
This leaves Ireland behind only
Sweden in terms of the severity of
personal income tax.
In essence, from the domestic
and international data illustrated
herein, it is clear that Ireland has
only two substantial forms of tax-
ation - takes on personal incomes
and taxes on goods and services.
Even within these two spheres, the
tax take is skewed by exemptions,
special allowances, tax breaks and
zero tax rates. If progress is to be
made in introducing both equity
and efficiency into the Irish tax sys-
tem, two developments must be ini-
tiated.
First, the tax base must be
broadened. Second, the tax treat-
ment of different sectors within the
existing tax code must be equal-
ised. The necessity for tax har-
monization as the European
Community drives towards estab-
lishing a single market may provide
the impetus to change which has
been so sadly lacking domestically.
YOU MAY REMEMBER THE NOT tion' ? And the lads all go nudge-nudge we're on Again now the cry is going up about the RSP
very complimentary remark passed by a very se- a right one here, and pick up the tickets straight which is about to create havoc among house own-
nior person in the Labour Party when Proinsais away. This year the delegation is led by David ers. Once again it simply isn't true. The amount
De Rossa's election was announced by the re- Andrews of Fianna Fail and Jim Mitchell of involved this year after all the wailing and gnash-
turning officer for the Euro elections. In the WP Fine Gael. ing of teeth is about £5 million. That compares
with £2,697 million which will come into the Ex-
man's hour of glory the Labour man looked him
5 APRIL IS A DAY WHEN MICHAEL chequer in income tax. And the really well to do
in the face and said "The working class can kiss
Smurfit, Tony O'Reilly and similar well shod will cough up all of £45 million in capital taxation
my ass, I've got the double job at last".
Irish entrepreneurs with foreign homes will avoid in the current financial year.
Not the most generous or comradely re-
being in this country. One of the odd provisions of It's simple, really. Those what have it don't
sponse. But the Labour man might have felt
the Residential Property Tax is that it applies not want to give it away. It will start all over again if
even more entitled to his barb when he saw the
just to property in this country but to 'residential and when any government takes up the Health
way the Workers Party had divided up its parlia-
property situated abroad if the person is domiciled Commission proposals to phase out health insur-
mentary duties having become the fourth largest ance tax relief. That benefit is worth about £42
in Ireland on that date'.
party in Dail Eireann. Surely, you would have million each year to those who belong to the VHI.
The current controversy - or rather hysteria
thought, time to pass around some of the better That would bite. And if, in the interest of greater
-about the tax is almost identical to the alarmist
portfolios? propaganda of the well off in the seventies when equity in the tax system a government were to do
Not a bit of it. Now, comrades, it's Proinsias the then coalition government taxed wealth. Little away with the tax relief on mortgage interest you
de Rossa TD, MEP, President of the Workers enough money was involved but Fianna Fail were are talking about mega bucks ---1iomething of the
Party, Workers Party spokesperson on Finance, a willing front for the well heeled in predicting dire order of £155 million. Which is why all the main
Workers Party spokesperson on Foreign Affairs. consequences with money pouring out of the parties dodged commitments on the issue during
country. It was all a great con. But it worked. all recent elections.
IT'S FUNNY WATCHING THE US TV
news and reading their newspapers on the 'escape'
of East Germans to the free west. They go on
about how the tyrannical and rigid regime of
Erich Honecker (no great ball of laughs, it's true)
and how great it is that the West opens its arms to
those who want to better themselves with new jobs,
proper pay and decent career structures.
But, hold on a minute. Wasn't Gerry Collins in
the United States only last month begging the
Americans to let our young folk in to better them-
selves with new jobs, proper pay and decent career
structures? And does not Uncle Sam say any of
them who creep in across the border in the dead of
night are to be deemed criminals once they are
captured ? And don't the Americans refuse to
allow young people from this country go on hol-
ida y to their country just in case they might take
to the notion of staying there illegally because
they have found a new job, with better pay and a
decent career structure?
Funny lot, the Yanks.
What's even funnier is that in at least one re-
spect they do treat even the Irish as second class
citizens despite their white faces, speaking the
lingo and all that. Since last year British tourists
planning to spend less than 90 days in the US for
their holidays don't need a visa at all. But if you're
Irish - join the queue, sonny.

ST JUDE IS SAID TO BE THE PATRON

saint of lost causes but out in the far east they
believe that Irish TDs are yer only men for the
job. There's the North Koreans down the years
pinning their faith on the Workers Party to save
them from the angry masses. And in Taiwan it's
the centre conservative parties they lean on. De-
spite fighting a lost cause, each year the Taiwa-
nese ring up the lads in Leinster House and tell
them 'hi folks, it's us again, anyone interested in
coming out for a little bit of political re-educa-