Fianna Fáil Moves North – Again

Posted on 07/05/2013 by Séamas Ó Sionnaigh (An Sionnach Fionn)

Fianna Fáil, back from the dead ( (Íomhá: Séamas Ó Sionnaigh, Binn Éadair, Cúige Laighean, Éire, Meitheamh 2012)

Will this be another false dawn for Fianna Fáil’s oft promised yet rarely materialised intention to organise as a political party in the north-east of Ireland?

“Thirty Fianna Fáil members met last night to launch a new Belfast unit. The inaugural meeting took place at The Pavillon, Stormont Estate, Belfast.

Peter Armstrong, an IT entrepreneur from South Belfast, was elected acting Chairperson of Belfast Fianna Fáil. He explained: “Fianna Fáil has a growing membership throughout Northern Ireland, particularly young people involved in our youth group Ógra Fianna Fáil. Ógra have a very active cumann at Queen’s University that meets once a week during term time. We’re now establishing a senior party unit so we can retain university members after they’ve graduated, and so we can continue to recruit new members from across society in Belfast.”

“There is a growing frustration across the north that the current political establishment in Belfast, the DUP and Sinn Féin, are more interested in playing to their political bases than they are in addressing the big challenges facing our community . Fianna Fáil can bring fresh policies and new thinking to the north of Ireland, we can develop new policies that will work right across the island, we can bring our communities closer together and we can further the causes of peace, integration, prosperity and unity, in line with our republican values. We welcome new members of all ages from all communities throughout the greater Belfast area.”

“Fianna Fáil had a very successful Ard-Fheis last weekend at the RDS Dublin attended by more than 4,000 delegates and the largest ever northern contingent. Key motions were passed that will see Fianna Fáil create a northern roadmap with a view to developing the party structure across Northern Ireland. We will work with Party Headquarters in Dublin to move this forward and bring the Fianna Fáil message to more and more communities.”

Another empty announcement to add to a decade of such empty announcements? One would hope not but we will have to wait and see (and wait, and wait, and wait…).

Interestingly Hoboraod draws attention to a claim in the Irish News that Fianna Fáil’s new leader in Belfast, Peter Armstrong, is the son of Rankin Armstrong, the current editor of the Unionist-leaning Belfast Newsletter.

FF Set Up A New Unit In Belfast (hoboroadblog.wordpress.com)
Fianna Fáil Belfast (politics.ie)

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Ain’t Nothing Change But The Weather

Posted on 27/03/2013 by Séamas Ó Sionnaigh (An Sionnach Fionn)

Éamon Gilmore – Calm The Rich, Con The Poor

One definition of madness is doing the same thing over and over but expecting a different result each time. So take the words of Robin McAlpine in the Scotsman newspaper on the SNP’s policies for an independent Scotland and more importantly the example of Ireland’s calamitous slide into cowboy capitalism during the 1990s and 2000s.

“Currently, the SNP exists in a third-way fudge between two political philosophies. Critics have named this delusion “the myth of Scandimerica”, the belief that you can have Scandinavian social services with US-level taxes. Actually, there was no need since the delusion already had a name – the Arc of Prosperity.

The Arc of Prosperity was a knowing fantasy predicated on the belief that corrupt, housing-and-speculation-gone-mad Ireland was actually the other side of the coin of socially democratic Norway.

The opposite is the truth; economically and socially the politics of Ireland were diametrically opposed to Norway. The former followed unstable get-rich-quick doctrines with an unsustainable faith in short-term trickle-down. The latter emphasised productive growth, a balanced economy and long-term investment strategies where the equality and high standard of living these generate make higher taxes painless.

Let’s call these the neoliberal model and the European social model. There isn’t space here to detail their characteristics but very loosely one promotes progress-through-conflict (markets, competition, wealth-creators) and one promotes progress-through-mutuality (productivity, balanced economy, public services).

…they are more-or-less mutually exclusive. The things you do to increase real productivity work against short-term speculative gain. The things you do to encourage competition create unbalanced economies. The ideology of “wealth creators” is at odds with the ideal of a strong welfare state.”

Which begs the question, why are the three establishment parties of Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and Labour working so hard to revive a socio-economic model that has proven to be such an economic, social, cultural and environmental disaster for our island nation? What is driving the political, business and media elites in this country to recreate the Celtic Tiger economy and society of a decade ago when they – and we – are well aware of its superficial and ultimately corrosive nature? Are the political classes in Ireland so lacking in wit that like a dog returning to its vomit they must nose at the mess they have created in the hope of lapping it up again?

We Fight For Neither King Nor Kaiser (Íomhá: éirígí)

Or do they wish to replace a failed Celtic Tiger economy with another certain-to-fail Neo-Celtic Tiger economy that is little more than a self-perpetuating Ponzi Scheme for the top 1%? And where does that leave the other 99% of the population who have nothing for their labour but bitterness and resentment? What then of any concept of social or communal responsibility by the majority when a minority can simply act as if they exist above such things?

We have a choice in Ireland. We can become the Celtic Norway or Finland of western Europe with our social and cultural mores reflected in our economic structures. Or once again we can become the Wild West of Europe, where society and culture are dirty words, where concepts like responsibility are deemed to be an unnecessary restraint on our freedom to do our worse.

Comment: Why SNP must tap into their inner Borgen (scotsman.com)
One of Ireland’s ugly economic realities: snakes on the loose (seattletimes.com)
Socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor – “Tempered with Reality: Economic Theory and the Real World” (irishcentral.com)

When In Doubt Kick Fianna Fáil Out!

Posted on 01/03/2013 by Séamas Ó Sionnaigh (An Sionnach Fionn)

Join The Fianna Fáil PARTY – Ah, those were the days.

Two days away from An Sionnach Fionn sitting in an anodyne hotel conference room with twenty strangers doing ISO Audit training and I wake up to a blather of pontifical grandstanding from Michéal Martin, the leader of resurgent Fianna Fáil. The majority of his speech was devoted to regurgitating well-rehearsed attacks on his party’s (southern) rival’s in Sinn Féin with the odd dig at the DUP. Oh there was a wee bit of flag waving in there too but not of any major kind. Not the type of flag you’d actually run up a flagpole and give an oul salute to. More like those little toy flags on white sticks that they give to children on St. Patrick’s Day to shake as some bloke in a foam leprechaun suit walks by waving at the (usually sodden) crowds.

From the Belfast Telegraph:

“The leader of the Opposition in the Irish parliament has launched his strongest attack ever on Sinn Fein and the DUP’s record in Government.

Fianna Fail’s Micheal Martin accused the two largest Assembly parties of happily exploiting the risks that others took and being mainly motivated by party political interests.

The TD said that both opinion polls and events showed “a clear and growing disillusionment with Government… in significant parts of both communities”, which the Executive, London and Dublin must tackle.

“The greatest responsibility lies with those who spent nearly a decade standing in the way of full implementation of the Agreement,” he said. He hit out at Sinn Fein’s behaviour during the Queen’s visit to Dublin. “Where was Sinn Fein when the British monarch bowed her head in tribute to Padraig Pearse and James Connolly? It was on the street outside chanting and holding protest signs… these were empty and divisive stunts, witnessed by millions,” he said.”

While some have their interpretation of the speech one is tempted to simply remark, “Well, Michéal, fine words are all well and dandy but actions speak louder than words. So perhaps its time to put-up or shut-up?”

As for ISO Auditing the most important thing I learned over two days also has the widest application in the real world: “When in doubt, fuck it out…”

Much like the Irish electorate did to Fianna Fáil in 2011.

Another Poll – Fianna Fáil Voters Abandon The Fine Gael Fold (ansionnachfionn.com)
Voting Fianna Fáil – Like A Dog Returning To Its Vomit (ansionnachfionn.com)

Voting Fianna Fáil – Like A Dog Returning To Its Vomit

Posted on 17/02/2013 by Séamas Ó Sionnaigh (An Sionnach Fionn)

Fianna Fáil, back from the dead ( (Photo: Séamas Ó Sionnaigh, Binn Éadair, Cúige Laighean, Éire, Meitheamh 2012)

Another weekend, another poll, this time a telephone survey of 1000 voters by Millward Brown on behalf of the Sunday Independent newspaper. I’m always wary of examining polls in newspapers that fail to provide a link to the hard data of the survey and this one is no different. We are relying on the journalists and editors to provide us with the substance of the poll free of any predefined spin. In the case of the “Sindo”, an agenda-driven right-wing newspaper which has traditionally curried favour with the two big political power blocks of Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil, that is something of a challenge.

However, for what its worth, here are the results of the telephone questionnaire:

“Fianna Fáil 27%

Fine Gael 25%

Sinn Féin 20%

Labour 13%

ULA 1%

Greens 1%

Others 14%”

The most obvious thing to note is the slow drift back to Fianna Fáil, which has now been played out across a number of different opinion polls and can no longer be simply dismissed as “snap-shots” of voter dissatisfaction or statistical blips (or as Jason Walsh so memorably puts it: “As a dog returneth to his vomit, so an Irish voter returneth to his Fianna folly“). Though we continue to have a very volatile electorate with high levels of “don’t knows” or “undecideds” it is clear that FF has managed to stabilise its core vote (albeit at a historical low level) and is successfully building upon that.

On the other hand Fine Gael is rapidly shrinking back to its electoral inner heartlands. There is no good news in the survey for the party and quite a few TDs elected on narrow margins must be beginning to worry about their future prospects. Eventually such worries will be made known and sooner rather than later.

For Sinn Féin it is a case of no news is good news. While the party seems to be having trouble making or sustaining a 20%+ breakthrough in the polls it can be fairly confident that any drop in voter satisfaction is not going to be too significant for its percentages. For a political party that in the electoral lifetime of many its sitting TDs was normally in fifth or sixth place in the opinion polls to find itself a regular number three must be satisfying indeed. However the party’s position, though laudable, is still lower than it should be. The SF ceiling is arguably in and around 25%. While it is very hard to see how it could progress beyond that in the near to medium term it certainly should be questioning why it is failing to approach anywhere near that figure.

The core membership of the Labour Party (or those left after the WP/DL putsch) must be ruing the day they followed their executive-hungry leader into power. In effect all that Labour managed to achieve was to clear out an electoral space for Sinn Féin to grow (and for a while the ULA with it). It is debatable whether the party will get back that traditional or Labour-tending floating vote not to mention the many first-time voters who bypassed the Labour Party altogether and went straight to SF (both now and in the future).

The ULA will be similarly depressed with these results, as must be most activists on the non-Sinn Féin or non-Labour Left across Ireland. This is their time, if any time is, and they have simply failed to exploit it both in political and electoral terms. The ULA debacle, and all the animosity and bad blood surrounding it, will make for a hard sell with voters come the next general election. Increasingly parties of the further-left seem likely to be character-driven, one or two politicians popular with local constituents around whom a political party operates. It is all-but certain that the Socialist Party or the People Before Profit/Socialist Workers Party will never become major national parties in Ireland. They will remain local, parochial even, but with unfulfilled higher aspirations.

As for the Greens… I can’t even bear to bring myself to comment.

Another Poll – Fianna Fáil Voters Abandon The Fine Gael Fold (ansionnachfionn.com)
Polls, Politics And Conspiracy Theories (ansionnachfionn.com)
Millward Brown Poll: Scary buns for Fine Gael? (sluggerotoole.com)
Labour at the next election ……10 seats? (cedarlounge.wordpress.com)

Another Poll – Fianna Fáil Voters Abandon The Fine Gael Fold

Posted on 09/02/2013 by Séamas Ó Sionnaigh (An Sionnach Fionn)

Fianna Fáil – Back With A Bang! Thanks To All Those Former FF-Turned-FG Voters

Two weeks ago I queried the possibility of the next incarnation of An Dáil becoming more like the Israeli Knesset: a host of independents, small parties and shifting political alliances with a handful of big fish around which other groups coalesced. Following the latest Irish Times / Ipsos MRBI poll that certainly looks more likely:

“Fianna Fáil 26% (+5%)

Fine Gael 25% (-6%)

Sinn Féin 18% (-2%)

Labour 10% (-2%)

Green Party 1% (-1%)

ULA/Independents/Others 20% (+6%)”

However two important facts must be borne in mind about the survey. Firstly it comes with a significant margin of error of +/-3%, a statistical figure many commentators and journalists simply choose to overlook (or don’t understand). Secondly the poll was taken before the crucial (and divisive) debates and deal in Dáil Éireann on the so-called “promissory note” which will certainly effect any future polling (the Red C / Business Post poll is some two weeks away, as of now). With those things noted it is clear that recent polling indicates an upward trend in Fianna Fáil’s support amongst the electorate with a corresponding fall in that of Fine Gael and the Labour Party.

The prolific Adrian Kavanagh at Political Reform has number-crunched the figures and come up with the following estimates for Dáil seats:

“Fianna Fáil = 54

Fine Gael = 45

Sinn Féin = 24

Labour = 13

Green Party = 0

ULA/Independents/Others = 22″

More than ever it seems clear that Fine Gael’s phenomenal general election results were in part dependent on disaffected FF voters some of whom also registered a preference for Labour. With Fine Gael effectively following the same socio-economic polices as the previous coalition of Fianna Fáil and the Greens, albeit without the deft populist touch of FF, many former FF voters are now returning to the fold. Fine Gael it seems is now being punished by the electorate for pushing through the very same austerity measures favoured by Fianna Fáil. Ah, the fickleness of the Irish voter!

But one must hand it to FF. As I pointed out before, they have adopted the previous post-atrocity tactics of Sinn Féin: go low, keep your core happy, issue a few platitudes or inoffensive phrases and wait for the heat to die down. And die down it did. While some Irish voters may never forgive Fianna Fáil for the mismanagement and corruption of recent decades (in and out of office) others are more forgiving and quite prepared to shake hands with the devil they know. How many cheques and donations will be flowing FF’s way over the next two or three years from the usual sources now that Fine Gael is in trouble? Its called hedging your bets. A little bit of largesse here, a little bit there.

How are Fianna Fáil’s recently dire party finances now, I wonder? That would be interesting to know and an indicator of where the “smart money” thinks its best hope for future influence lies.

So could the unthinkable happen? Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael in coalition following the next general election? No. Those who believe such an alliance to be the likely outcome of voter fragmentation at the ballot box simply don’t understand the intensely factional nature of politics in Ireland. Or how institutions of any sort conduct or perceive themselves. No institution chooses to deliberately help its rivals; and when all is said and done FF and FG are rivals. And bitter ones at that. Each wishes to drown the other, not toss it a lifeline. Even at the risk of their own survival. If the Socialist Party and the People Before Profit/Socialist Workers Party couldn’t make the United Left Alliance work, let alone merge with each other, what chance of a united FG-FF coalition (or a Fianna Gael. Or would it be Fine Fáil?).

As for the smaller parties, Sinn Féin keeps bobbing along in the high teens, up to 20%, down to 15%. If the old rule of thumb of previous polls is true (the SF vote is always underestimated through voter reluctance to admit a preference) then the party should be content with 18%. However its mediocre performances of late (especially in the north of the country) should be a cause for worry. 18% is good but it should be better. The glass ceiling for Sinn Féin votes hasn’t been reached yet and that is largely through the party’s own inadequacies (and admittedly a resolutely hostile media establishment that runs the gamut from newspapers to television).

SF will remain possible partners for a future FF administration, either in coalition or through some procedural chicanery in Dáil Éireann. That still leaves the Labour Party who one suspects will be Fine Gael’s only hope of a coalition ally unless the much-prophesied PDs Mark II emerges from the shadowy wastes of Ireland’s political Right (with a few wayward Independents thrown into the mash). As it is Labour is on its continued downward spiral. The only question is when will the crew start bailing? Or do they intend to go down with the captain?

The Independents, the rump ULA and such flotsam and jetsam as rises to the surface of Irish politics, continue to see an improvement in their standing as far as the polls are concerned. Some are motivated by genuine social and economic concerns and beliefs (despite her recent troubles, and my own personal views, Claire Daly is still someone to watch – which goes some way to explain the media fascination with her). Others are a downright embarrassment. But where will a significant vote for various “Others” get us? A more diverse Dáil Éireann certainly but also a more fractured one too.

Meanwhile in the north-east of the country another poll, albeit a regional one this time (via Hoboroad’s Political Highway):

“DUP 25.1%

SF 21.7%

SDLP 18.6%

UUP 13.2%

APNI 10.4%”

However several seasoned observers strike a note of caution in relation to the figures. Interesting but a bit unlikely seems to be the general impression. Of course the figures here are more telling of changing political demographics than any amount of voter surveys.

UPDATE 17.00: Talking of the “promissory note” Football Clichés has some pertinent thoughts while NAMA Winelake highlights the continued asset-stripping of the Irish nation. Also check out Tomás Ó Flatharta for his take on the recent polls.

After thee years of witnessing the abuse and manipulation of Irish democracy my own feelings on Ireland’s continuity state, the political establishment of Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and Labour, the parasitical and amoral business and media elites, and the self-serving bureaucracies of the EU, et al, are probably best summed up by the below. Our new national anthem?

Polls, Politics And Conspiracy Theories (ansionnachfionn.com)
Government Sign Emergency Bank Legislation Before Mum & Dad Get Home (donegaldollop.wordpress.com)

Polls, Politics And Conspiracy Theories

Posted on 28/01/2013 by Séamas Ó Sionnaigh (An Sionnach Fionn)

An Taoiseach na Chófra – Those were the days!

One weekend, two polls, and the results look good for both Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin. However things are not so rosy for Fine Gael and are positively awful for Labour.

From the latest Sunday Business Post Red-C survey:

“Fine Gael 28% (no change)

Fianna Fáil 21% (+1)

Ind/Other 21% (no change)

Sinn Fein 19% (+2)

Labour 11% (-3)”

Ouch. Meanwhile the “Oirish” edition of the Sunday Times has the results of its Behaviour & Attitudes poll:

“Fine Gael 26% (-4)

Fianna Fáil 24% (+2)

Sinn Féin 19% (+5)

Ind/Other 18% (-1)

Labour 11% (-1)

Green 3% (no change)”

That has gotta hurt. Political Reform crunches the numbers and comes up with the following seats based on the Red-C poll:

“Fine Gael 56

Fianna Fail 38

Sinn Fein 25

Independents, Green Party, United Left Alliance and Others 24

Labour 15”

Taking the Behaviour & Attitudes results the extrapolations yield:

“Fine Gael 51

Fianna Fail 42

Sinn Fein 26

Independents, Green Party, United Left Alliance and Others 24

Labour 15”

Based on this polling (and the ongoing trends) I think several members of the present FG-Lab coalition will be breathing sighs of relief that the next general election is some way off. I certainly wouldn’t like to guesstimate the make-up of any future government with surveys like this. Could we end up with a politically fractured Dáil that has more than a passing resemblance to the Israeli Knesset? And would that be good or bad for Ireland’s democracy?

As others have pointed out Sinn Féin seems to be hollowing out Labour’s “working class” vote while scooping up quite a few former Fine Gael voters too (though the latter should probably be regarded in most cases as ex-Fianna Fáil and some at least will continue their electoral journey back to the one-time Republican Party). Oft-made media predictions that the SF vote would fall back to pre-2011 general election levels (in and around 9%) seem more and more like wish-fulfilment than political analysis. The Sinn Féin vote has bobbed up and down in the 14% to 20% range for some time now and there it is likely to remain for the foreseeable future (and if it does change significantly the direction of movement seems likely to be upward not downward, bar some unforeseen catastrophe).

Fianna Fáil must also be be quite satisfied with its rising polling, not to mention expressing a fair degree of wonder at how the hell it got away with not paying the ultimate price for being part of the disaster that enveloped this nation in 2009/2010. The switch from a near electoral meltdown to a respectable 20%+ poll proves the party strategy of simply hanging on until people’s memories faded, and the Fine Oibre coalition of FG and Labour created plenty of unpleasant new ones, has paid off. Ironically FF took a leaf out of the Sinn Féin playbook – in times of trouble keep your head down, keep your nose clean, mumble a few inoffensive platitudes, and simply wait until the trouble blows over. As it always does.

On the other hand Fine Gael must be starting to worry with the old rival coming within a hair’s breadth of out-polling it though there is certainly no sign of a panic yet. People may express dissatisfaction in mid-term surveys but come election day?

As for the minnows of the coalition, the Labour Party (emphasis on the “parrrrty!”)? Well that leadership putsch by former WP/DL apparatchiks isn’t looking so great now, is it?

Though there is some sort of good news for Labour as the United Left Alliance (ULA) enters true meltdown mode with the Socialist Party bidding it a not so fond adieu. What is left now of the ULA is pretty much a rag-bag of independent Left activists, effective and (more often) ineffective, not to mention the Socialist Workers Party – sorry, People Before Profit (ahem…). At a time when Ireland needs a genuine left-of-centre voice on politics, economics and society the further reaches of the Left seem to be spending as much time campaigning against each other as against the reinvigorated phantasm of anglo-american capitalism. Which of course suits Labour. Not to mention Sinn Féin.

Any bets on SF emerging as the dominant left-of-centre party in Ireland over the next decade?

Meanwhile in some real news, the type of news that some of the parties above should be screaming from the rooftops, the always excellent NAMA Wine Lake reports that:

“Not content with receiving a bailout of €21bn – without which, the bank would be utterly bust – not content with shoveling €1.1bn into its pension fund last August 2012 – without which, AIB would be in the same position as myriad pension schemes around the country and have to renege on pension benefits – and not content with giving redundant staff five weeks pay per year of service - when staff at Vita Cortex had to fight tooth and nail to get 2.9 weeks, this afternoon we learn via the BBC in Northern Ireland that several AIB staff are to receive GBP 2m (€2.3m) of bonuses and contract-increment payments.”

Nice work if you can get it.

Anti-democracy protest leader and British Unionist militant Willie Frazer poses in front of a British terrorist wall mural, Belfast, Ireland

Talking of which David Ford, leader of the liberal Unionists of the Alliance Party and the Justice Minister in the regional administration in the north-east of the country, is making a play for some of the SDLP’s voters. With anti-democracy protests from the militant extreme of the British Unionist minority ongoing the future of the Alliance Party in all those nominally Unionist constituencies with significant Roman Catholic or small “n” Nationalist voting blocs is looking increasingly in doubt. Naomi Long is probably on her way out in East Belfast as far as the Westminster seat is concerned and several Alliance MLAs look to be in trouble too. So to Ford’s forlorn hope of attracting a few disaffected SDLP voters to make up the numbers. However, in typically schizophrenic Alliance mode the party is attracting more avowedly Unionist politicians and activists than ever before with former UUP and Tory types drifting into the fold.

Which hardly adds to its attractiveness for Nationalist voters. Even the palest of pale green.

Of course it could be worse. Here is Willie Frazer, the very public face of the anti-democracy demonstrations, in Q&A with James Bennett at the University Times:

“Q: There is a video of you on YouTube saying that protests over the flag will always be peaceful “except when certain elements who are working for the British government get in and create violence.”

A: Well if I said it that way I probably meant that whenever people attack peaceful protesters they will defend themselves. I was talking about elements within the republican movement… but also elements within the police force. Not every police officer though, because 99% of them are good.

Q: Are you saying that members of the PSNI have purposefully incited violence?

A: Yes. I’ve seen it myself.

Q: How have they done that?

A: Well, for example, if you hit a woman who is standing on the street who is seventy years of age… If you hit her with a baton…

Q: Is this recently?

A: Yes, in the last few weeks. That’s only one. I’ve seen a lot of women being beaten to the ground.

Q: By police officers?

A: By police officers.

Q: Are you saying that the Irish government knew about 110 murders?

A: Yes… There were people… involved. Just to give you an example… We know for a fact, and it is in Irish government documents, that the Irish government authorised the Irish army to give 500 weapons out of the army barracks in Dublin in 1972 to the IRA around the border. We want to know why that was allowed to happen. That’s not hearsay; that is fact. If he can come down here and call up an inquiry into Pat Finucane, we want an answer to that. We want to why they did not arrest the men who hijacked the minibus in the Kingsmill massacre, when they knew the name of the men involved.

Q: The IRA were involved with putting horsemeat into beef products?

A: Yes.

Q: Why would they do that?

To make money. It’s the same with cows that have to be sold within a certain number of months after they’re born. Basically old fat cows that are 30 months old have been put into the food chain because the republicans have the means of getting it in. And a blind eye has been turned to it. This is the kind of thing that’s going on that we’re sick of… There is a blind eye being turned to so much fraud so that they don’t upset the peace process. That is what is creating the problems here.”

Oh dear…

Some Political Musings

Posted on 16/11/2012 by Séamas Ó Sionnaigh (An Sionnach Fionn)

Binn Éadair, Lúghnasa, 2011 – Mother Nature Comments On The Green Party

As a Gaelic Republican I suppose my politics lie somewhere on the social-democratic centre-left. Sometimes my opinions veer towards the centre-ground, sometimes towards the far left. In the days of my (callow) youth I used to vote Fianna Fáil and Labour. Yes, that’s right, I was one of those fabled left-wing FF types. We did exist you know, until greed and corruption forced us to turn away from a party that we thought we knew (but perhaps never truly did). Fianna Fáil and Labour was the dream ticket for those like myself on the left of both, the desirable coalition with the proper balance of republicanism and socialism. Though never enough of both, if truth be told.

One detected early on that something was not quite right in the Fianna Fáil camp. A certain attitude or culture. A tendency to say one thing while doing the other. The generation of the party that spawned the Celtic Tiger scorned a belief in ideology or a core set of principles and eventually dumped their own to seize whatever seemed popular or advantageous at the time – however deplorable or ultimately destructive it may have been. They stole the clothes of Fine Gael and the Progressive Democrats, and covered them with a thin veneer of mindless populism. Power, avarice and cronyism became the guiding principles of the party and its leadership. As for Labour I could never bring myself to be wholehearted in my support. There was something not quite right about them too. A certain holier-than-thou, faux-liberalism that I couldn’t stomach. Some of the biggest snobs I’ve met in my life were young Labour activists. No one can condescend quite like a Labour Party member.

With the FF and Labour pigs wallowing in the trough during the hey-day of the Celtic Tiger I was left voteless, as it were. No question of supporting Fine Gael. For all sorts of reasons that was repugnant and remains so. Some might ask, why was the Fine Gael dog not as openly corrupt as its Fianna Fáil counterpart? The answer of course is that it didn’t need to be. The dog at the top of the dunghill does not need to worry over-much about the rivals fighting it out below. The so-called hard left (silly term) weren’t much better. Back in the day I had more than the odd clash with members of the Workers Party. Some were thoroughly honourable people, genuinely committed socialist republicans. However those at the top were less so, and increasingly less so as they took the reins of power and galloped the party off into near oblivion. Now days of course they sit atop the Labour Party, one time rivals infiltrated from within in classic Communist style (anyone remember the days of the Militant Tendency? The irony!). Of course these guys (and gals) had no more interest in Marx (or Trotsky) than they had in a hole in the wall. Well, except perhaps a hole-in-the-wall cash machine. Mercs and perks here we come. So no WP for me (though in fairness I’m not even sure what their politics are these days). As for the far distant outliers of leftwing politics in Ireland, the Socialist Workers Party, Socialist Party, et al. No thank you. The Socialist Party in particular left me stone cold and still does so. They have too much of the myopic internationalist about them, a party that would seem more comfortable on the streets of London than Dublin. I can’t but help think of the thoroughly disagreeable Kate Hoey when I see the opinions of some SP types (and she’s still at it!). There were indications of change but they have yet to appear (apparently).

For a while I found myself drifting towards the Greens until they showed their true colours. Teamhair was the start, Daingean Uí Chúis the last of it. Never again in my life will I vote Green. Never. These days I usually throw my number one to Sinn Féin (albeit with the odd sigh or two). I have a lot of issues with the party but there are precious little other choices. Truth be told there isn’t a political party out there that truly represents my views. But then again, doesn’t everyone say that? (unless you vote Fine Gael).

All of which rambling leads to nothing in particular

Micheál Martin, The Irish Citizens Of Belfast, And Opposition Hypocrisy

Posted on 22/10/2012 by Séamas Ó Sionnaigh (An Sionnach Fionn)

Hmmm. Micheál Martin, leader of the discredited centre-right Fianna Fáil party, has stated at the annual Wolfe Tone Commemoration in Baile Uí Bhuadáin that the local population in the North of Ireland are citizens of the Irish state. Well, sort of. Discussing the high rates of child poverty in Belfast the Irish Times reports that Martin says on behalf of FF that:

“As a Republican Party we have to care about these issues. As long as any Irish citizen is being failed by politics, we need to take an interest and do what we can to address it.”

So, if the people of Belfast are Irish citizens, by virtue of being born and living in the city of Belfast, then surely they should be living under the jurisdiction of the state, the same as the rest of us? Surely they should be accorded the same legal and constitutional rights as other citizens of the state, even those, say, born and living in the city of Dublin? Surely they should be participating in the national legislature of the state through their elected representatives, just as we do? And surely Fianna Fáil, the “Republican Party”, should be standing for election in Belfast and elsewhere across the north-east of Ireland seeking a mandate from all the citizens of the state, not just those south of the border?

Or is all this talk of Irish citizens in the North of Ireland just another piece of Opposition rhetoric that is quickly forgotten when taking up the greasy reins of power?

Éamon Ó Cuív – Republican Dissident?

Posted on 30/04/2012 by Séamas Ó Sionnaigh (An Sionnach Fionn)

Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin in government together? Something surely to send the Seoníní elite at the Irish and Sunday Independent newspapers into a bug-eyed frenzy of outrage and opposition to a new “Pan-Republican Front”. Yet here is Éamon Ó Cuív in the Oirish Mail on Sunday:

“Éamon Ó Cuív has called for Fianna Fáil to consider coalition with Sinn Féin in a move that would reunite the parties split by his grandfather, Éamon de Valera.”

Did Éamon de Valera split the revolutionary era Sinn Féin? I thought it was the Pro-Treaty faction who split from Sinn Féin and formed Cumann na nGaedheal, the forerunner of Fine Gael, in 1923? Oh well. History and journalism in Ireland doesn’t really go together. Er, Irish history that is.

“Mr Ó Cuív insisted that Sinn Féin’s recent history would not be a problem, declaring: ‘They’d be as acceptable as were the Workers’ Party, which now runs the Labour Party.

‘They have a bit of history and one of them is Tánaiste now,’ he said, referring to Éamon Gilmore’s past as a Republican Clubs [Official Sinn Féin/Official IRA] and Workers’ Party member before Democratic Left merged with Labour.

However, Mr Ó Cuív acknowledged that there would be major ideological and policy differences.

Asked if a coalition with Labour remained a possibility, Mr Ó Cuív was dismissive.

‘I don’t think Fianna Fáil are compatible with Labour at all. The one time we were in with them it didn’t last long. I don’t think we’re compatible with Fine Gael either,’ he said.

‘What’s the difference between Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin when it comes down to it – except that it took them 70 years to recognise the Dáil? We’re both republican parties and we both come from the same stable.’

Fianna Fáil has 19 seats in the Dáil and Sinn Féin has 14. The Fine Gael-Labour Government has an overwhelming majority.

However, Sinn Féin surged in the most recent polls – to 21% – on the back of its opposition to the water and household charges and the coming referendum.”

Flag flying by Ó Cuív on behalf of the few Republican dissidents left in a political party that has all but divested itself of any pretence of Republicanism? Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin in coalition? Unlikely (and given the ferocity of Micheál Martin’s continued – and increasingly anti-historical - attacks on SF he certainly believes so) but a breakaway faction of FF under Éamon Ó Cuív?

Or is Ó Cuív lining himself up for a tilt at the leadership of Fianna Fáil itself, with an appeal to grassroots that are considerably greener than the party’s elected representatives? He seems to have a vision for the future of FF; and its not just one of crude survival and precious little else.

What About Our Irish Rights? (ansionnachfionn.com)
Smells Like No-Irish Spirit (ansionnachfionn.com)
Fianna Fail ….Post Mahon (cedarlounge.wordpress.com)
Sunday Times poll suggests Sinn Fein leading in the battle of the opposition parties… (sluggerotoole.com)
FF fury over senator’s Civil War jibe (teddyoshea.wordpress.com)
Sinn Fein move up 6 points in latest Irish Times poll… (sluggerotoole.com)

The Mahon Report – A Plague On All Your Houses

Posted on 22/03/2012 by Séamas Ó Sionnaigh (An Sionnach Fionn)

The Mahon Tribunal has finally published its long-awaited report and like the lifting of the proverbial rock all sorts of nastiness has been uncovered lurking underneath. While the media focus will be on rump Fianna Fáil and An Taoiseach na Chófra, Bertie Ahern, don’t let this distract you from the other main conclusions of Mahon and co. It suits much of our still intact Post-Colonial Ascendancy, the members of the political establishment and their many willing helpers in the national media, to blur the truth by throwing up all sorts of drama to hide their own culpability in the “mafiaization” of the Irish state from the 1970s onward.

But look at the facts and figures, the long list of politicians investigated by the Tribunal in its search for the truth behind the repeated allegations of corrupt or suspect practices in local government in the 1980s and ’90s, specifically in the rezoning of land in Quarryvale, in west Dublin. In some ways the report is almost a who’s-who guide to notable people in Irish local and national politics at that time. Some of the names are startling. More so as it quickly becomes clear that this is not simply a tale of just one political party’s malfeasance but a tangled web of petty corruption that dragged in all the major political parties in Ireland – and in just one small region of the country.

One has to ask: if just one local authority in the media-cockpit that is Dublin was that bad, what was the rest of the country like? And what is it like now?

TheJournal.ie carries a list of local councillors named in the report, many of whom are well known figures, with details of their activities. It makes for sober reading:

“SEAN ARDAGH (FF)

The Tribunal was satisfied that, Ardagh had been considered an “important and valued supporter of the Quarryvale project from 1992 onwards”, and had received relatively modest political contributions from Frank Dunlop and developer Owen O’Callaghan.

It also noted that Ardagh had been “less than frank with the Tribunal as to the extent of his contact” with Dunlop and O’Callaghan…

CLLR MICK BILLANE (DL)

The Tribunal reported that – as a matter of probability – Cllr Billane had at some point met with and was lobbied by Dunlop and/or O’Callaghan.

Following a meeting in October 1997, O’Callaghan provided a charitable donation of IR£10,000 to Citywise, a registered charity which provided services to city centre youth. The Tribunal was satisfied that Billane had secured this contribution at the meeting, despite his testimony that he had no recollection of the meeting itself and only “vaguely” recalled his involvement in securing the charitable donation

CLLR CATHAL BLAND (FG)

Cllr Boland told the Tribunal that he had received a sum of IR£4,000 in cash from Dunlop by way of an election contribution from anonymous donors on 11 November 1992.

Boland said was not lobbied by Dunlop in relation to the Quarryvale project and had had no concerns about taking the money from him, even though he knew he was a lobbyist, because he had always found Dunlop to be upright and had considered him “a pillar of society.”

Boland said that he absented himself from the 17 December vote because he had been approached by another party asking him to vote against the plan and offered £500 for doing so. He said that did not accept the money, but still he felt he had been compromised by the incident…

CLLR PETER BRADY (FG)

On 30 March 1998, the Tribunal Counsel noted an interview with Alan Dukes TD, in which Dukes alleged that Cllr Peter Brady, had told him that Cllr Brian Fleming had been offered £100,000 if he (Fleming) could ‘deliver’ the Fine Gael vote to secure the rezoning of the Quarryvale lands”.

On the issue of the conflict between Cllr Brady and Alan Dukes, the Tribunal found in favour of Dukes evidence. As such, it concluded that at some point between 1995 and 1998, Brady did relay to Dukes that Fleming had been offered IR£100,000 to deliver the Fine Gael vote in support of Quarryvale.

LIAM T COSGRAVE (FG)

The Tribunal was satisfied that Dunlop gave IR£2,000 to Cllr Cosgrave around May or June 1991, and concluded that the payment was “in all probability” solicited by Cosgave in the course of being lobbied by Mr Dunlop in the period leading up to the Quarryvale rezoning vote.

The Tribunal said that it believed that at the time at which Cosgrave was solicited and accepted the election contribution, he was aware of Dunlop’s ongoing role in relation to Quarryvale – and described his conduct as “improper”.

The Tribunal accepted Dunlop’s account of having met Cosgrave at Newtownpark Avenue in Blackrock on 11 November 1992, and that on this date he had given cash donations of IR£2,000 (later returned) and IR£4,000 respectively to Cllrs Pat Rabbitte and Cathal Boland.

MICHAEL J COSGRAVE (FG)

Tribunal satisfied that M J Cosgrave solicited and received payment of IR£1,000 during the time of his January 1993 Seanad Election campaign…

The Tribunal described Cosgrave’s request for money and his acceptance of it “compromised his required disinterested performance of his duties as an elected representative, and was improper”.

LIAM CREAVEN (FF)

Creaven acknowledged having been lobbied by Dunlop, stating that he had been lobbied both for and against rezoning.

In response to the Tribunal’s inquiries as to whether or not he had received any payments in relation to Quarryvale, he said that he had received a “hamper” from the parties involved in the Quarryvale Shopping Centre.

JIM DALY (FF)

The Tribunal was satisfied that Cllr Daly was lobbied by Dunlop in relation to Quarryvale and that it was “probable” that Daly requested an election contribution, given the imminence of the local election. However, it noted that – whether or not Daly had solicited the contribution – he had accepted it in the knowledge that Dunlop was a lobbyist for Quarryvale.

PAT DUNNE (FF)

The Tribunal was satisfied that Dunne solicited money from Dunlop for the 1991 local election campaign…

It accepted Dunlop’s evidence that he had given Dunne a sum of IR£15,000, and was satisfied that this payment was corrupt.

MARY ELLIOTT (FG)

Elliott said she had not attended any public meetings in connection with the re-zoning of Quarryvale other than Council meetings, but acknowledged that she had been “lobbied by local organisations”…

She said that she never received any payment or donations from parties involved in the project and, while admitting that she had dined in the company of Dunlop and O’Callaghan…

JIM FAHEY (FF)

The Tribunal was satisfied that Fahey solicited a payment of IR£2,000, and that such solicitation and acceptance of funds had been improper.

TONY FOX (FF)

Cllr Tony Fox was identified by Dunlop as a recipient of £2,000 in cash during the local election campaign.

CYRIL GALLAGHER (FF)

Despite Dunlop’s testimony that there had been no express link between a IR£1,000 payment to Cllr Cyril Gallagher and Quarryvale, the Tribunal was satisfied that Gallagher had been ware of Dunlop’s role as a lobbyist for the project.

SEAN GILBRIDE (FF)

The Tribunal said it was satisfied that the “primary purpose” of Cllr Sean Gilbride’s decision to take a leave of absence from his teacher’s post and place himself on O’Callaghan’s payroll was “to enable Gilbride devote himself on a near full time basis to promoting the Quarryvale project for Mr O’Callaghan”.

It described as “incredible” the suggestion that the political ambitions of an elected councillor could be properly served by that councillor placing himself on the payroll of a developer at a time when that same developer was promoting the rezoning of lands…

RICHARD GREENE (IND)

The Tribunal was satisfied that a cash donation of IR£500 received by Greene had been given to him by O’Callaghan via Dunlop, and the developer’s “generosity to Cllr Greene was not unconnected to his zoning ambitions for Quarryvale”.

TOM HAND (FG)

The Tribunal was satisfied that Dunlop paid Cllr Hand IR£20,000 in cash in two tranches of £10,000 each specifically in return for his support on Quarryvale, and that the payment was corrupt.

FINBARR HANRAHAN (FF)

The Tribunal was satisfied that, during the course of the 1992 general election, Dunlop in all probability paid Cllr Fibarr Hanrahan either IR£2,000 or IR£2,500, with the principle reason for the payment being to secure his support for Quarryvale. It concluded that such a payment was “improper”.

JACK LARKIN (FF)

The Tribunal concluded that a payment of IR£1,000 to Cllr Jim Larkin during a period around the 1991 Local Elections had been made. It was satisfied that a request for the money had probably been made by Larkin after he had been lobbied to support Quarryvale…

DONAL LYDON (FF)

The Tribunal rejected Cllr Donal Lydon’s evidence that he did not solicit a payment of IR£1,000 in or about May 1991, and concluded that such a payment had indeed been made between 16 May 1991 and 6 June 1991.

MARIAN MCGEENIS (FF)

The Tribunal noted Cllr Marian McGennis’ “significant role” in relation to the Quarryvale rezoning proposal over the course of 1991 to 1993, and also noted that – in her initial dealings with the Tribunal – she had not been forthcoming about the extent of her involvement with Dunlop and O’Callaghan.

The report was satisfied that McGeenis solicited a IR£1,400 cheque from Dunlop in July 1991, and that over a period of two months had been the recipient of a total of IR£6,500 from individuals closely associated with the Quarryvale issue.

COLM MCGRATH (FF)

The Tribunal was satisfied that McGrath solicited a payment of IR£10,000 that was “in all probability” requested on the basis of the assistance he was giving O’Callaghan.

It added that further payments of IR£10,700 and IR£20,000 could neither be described as political donations or “loans”, as had been suggested, and that such payments were corrupt.

OLIVIA MITCHELL (FG)

The Tribunal said it was satisfied that Cllr Mitchell received a sum of IR£500 in cash from Dunlop at the time of the 1992 General Election.

TOM MORRISSEY (FG)

The Tribunal confirmed that Cllr Tom Morrissey had remained “staunchly opposed” to the rezoning of Quarryvale as a town centre at all times.

The Tribunal was also satisfied that there had been no improper motivation from any party in relation to Morrissey’s firm producing diaries for Dunlop’s firm at a cost of IR£377.52…

ANN ORMONDE (FF)

According to the report, Cllr Ann Ormonde received in total at least IR£1,650 from Dunlop between the period January 1993 to 1998 – in the knowledge that he was a lobbyist in circumstances in which she herself was involved.

GUSS O’CONNELL (IND)

The report noted that the absence of Cllr Guss O’Connell’s from the County Council on 17 December 1992, the date on which votes on a motion relating to Quarryvale were cast, had been beneficial to O’Callaghan.

However, it was not satisfied that this situation had been “orchestrated”…

JOHN O’HALLORAN (LAB/IND)

The Tribunal’s report noted that Cllr John OHalloran “had not been, in general, frank with the Tribunal” in the manner in which he responded to requests for information in relation to payments made by Dunlop and O’Callaghan.

In 1993, O’Halloran received an IR£5,000 cheque from O’Callaghan/Riga – and the Tribunal pointed out that, just weeks later, he was one of five signatories to a letter to the Minister for Finance in which tax designation was sought for Quarryvale.

O’Halloran also received a payment of IR£250 in or around the time that he signed a motion on Quarryvale, and that he did on occasion receive small payments of IR£500 over the course of the making of the Development Plan 1991 – 1993.

The Tribunal was satisfied that O’Halloran solicited a payment of IR£2,500 in 1996 from Dunlop…

PAT RABBITTE (DL)

The Tribunal accepted Dunlop’s evidence that Cllr Pat Rabbitte had been listed as a recipient of IR£3,000 in cash in 1992, and that that sum had later been returned to him by means of a cheque.

THERESE RIDGE (FG)

The report described Cllr Therese Ridge as not merely a staunch supporter of the Quarryvale campaign but also a person who “actively engaged” in providing advice in relation to the strategy generally, and specifically in relation to motions relevant to Quarryvale”.

The report added that she was “handsomely rewarded” for her efforts – both in the form of cash donations totalling IR£1,000 and by Dunlop taking care of printing and other costs associated with her election campaigns.

COLM TYNDALL (PD)

The Tribunal was satisfied Tyndal had been lobbied by O’Callghan in relation to the Quarryvale rezoning proposal – and that Tyndal (on behalf of his company Marine & General Insurance Ltd) had likewise lobbied O’Callaghan for his company to be appointed insurance broker to companies associated with O’Callaghan.

The report concluded that Tyndal had exploited his position as an elected councillor in circumstances which benefited a company with which he was closely associated…

Tyndal testified that he could not confirm whether he received a donation of IR£500 from O’Callaghan in 1999…

GV WRIGHT (FF)

In relation to a payment of IR£10,000 by Dunlop and O’Callaghan to Cllr GV Wright in November 1992, the Tribunal said it was satisfied that the motivation for such a payment was to “ensure Wright’s ongoing support for the Quarryvale project.”

Reading through the report, the all too familiar names, businesses and organisations that crop up again and again and again, one is reminded of a variation of that old curse: a plague on all your houses.

Smells Like No-Irish Spirit (ansionnachfionn.com)
Former Irish PM Bertie Ahern ‘failed to give truthful account of cash’ – The Guardian (guardian.co.uk)
Ahern failed to account for IR£165,000, Mahon finds (teddyoshea.wordpress.com)
Mahon Tribunal rolling news blog… (sluggerotoole.com)
The Mahon Report… (cedarlounge.wordpress.com)
Former Irish PM Ahern lied over finances-inquiry – Reuters (reuters.com)

One Race But Three Victors

Posted on 29/10/2011 by Séamas Ó Sionnaigh (An Sionnach Fionn)

Well its all over bar the shouting (or gnashing of teeth) and three clear victors have emerged from the election for the next President of Ireland. First and foremost of course is Labour’s Michael D. Higgins who managed to expand on his party’s core vote to almost certainly win through to the Áras. From RTÉ’s report yesterday evening:

“2115 National FIRST COUNT: Higgins 39.6% (701,101), Gallagher 28.5% (504,964); McGuinness 13.7% (243,030); Mitchell 6.4% (113,321); Norris 6.2% (109,469); Scallon 2.9% (51,220); Davis 2.7% (48,657).”

With the elimination of the also-rans Davis and Scallon their votes were distributed to the other candidates with a second count result coming in early this morning:

“Higgins: 730,480 votes (+29,379); Gallagher 529,401 (+24,437); McGuinness 252,611 (+9,581); Mitchell 127,357 (+14,036); Norris 116,526 (+7,057)

The quota is 885,882.”

Since none of the candidates met the quota requirement to be elected outright counting will resume this morning with the strong presumption that Higgins will eventually hoover up enough preferences from a third or fourth count to be elected (the votes coming from Mitchell and Norris). As well as a personal achievement for the former TD from Galway it is also a good result for the Labour Party, especially after its repeated drubbing in recent polls (the latest placing it in third place behind Sinn Féin). However, many in Labour are well aware that the vote for Michael D. Higgins was very much a personal one in an election dogged with controversy and that they have in no small part the dramatic intervention by Martin McGuinness on RTÉ’s Frontline Debate to thank for a significant chunk of their 39.6% vote. Remove the “outing” of Seán Gallagher as an unofficial Fianna Fáil candidate rather than the Independent nominee that he presented to the general public and we might have a very different story here today.

It also remains to be seen just how much of that nearly 40% support Labour might retain in any future election. Though they are having a good week electorally (including yesterday’s by-election victory in Dublin) there is little doubt that in real terms their national vote is nearer to 20%, and perhaps lower still. This may be the best Labour vote ever but it is also a very much an exceptional one.

Despite the criticisms of Seán Gallagher in the last week of the race and the controversy that whipped up around him he still managed to accrue a good 28.5%, clearly indicating that the supposed demise of Fianna Fáil as a political entity has been grossly exaggerated. While its doubtful that the party itself could capture such a high vote in a general election at this moment in time (part of the Gallagher vote is clearly of the “floating” variety and the FF “brand” remains faintly odious to many) who can say what will happen five years from now. If a week is a long time in politics five years is a lifetime. The party will also be buoyed by their healthy showing in the Dublin by-election referred to above where they took a respectable second place. Talk of Fianna Fáil renaming and rebranding itself is just that: talk. Talk of Fianna Fáil repackaging itself with Seán Gallagher somewhere near or at the top is a lot more realistic.

For Sinn Féin and Martin McGuinness that 13.7% is a good, if not spectacular, result. While some in the Commentariat were focusing on some wilder polling predictions (McGuinness at 19% for instance) few in SF believed it likely. Their aim was 13-15% of the vote and they have more or less hit that target. 15% would have been nice but nearly 14% leaves them set up for future groundwork in constituencies across the country. That they managed to achieve this despite a ferocious storm of criticism from the political and media establishment in Ireland says much for where SF is right now, in electoral terms. While there is, and will be, no Sinn Féin “revolution” at the ballot box in this part of the country we are clearly seeing the benefts of the party’s slow and steady strategy. Just as SF gradually built up its electoral base in the northern part of Ireland so too are they doing the same here. While critics may try and focus on McGuinness’ high standing within the party and spin the story into a Sinn Féin loss or rejection by the southern electorate that is to completely misunderstand the situation and what SF hoped to achieve. Or rather what they have achieved.

If there is any real loser in this election then surely it must be Fine Gael’s Gay Mitchell. A 6.4% result is beyond terrible. However for the party itself, riding high and nearly unassailable in the polls, the principal fallout will be internal recriminations. We are unlikely to see much of knock-on effect in the polls for FG. At least until the worsening economic situation becomes apparent to voters.

Enter Bagman (ansionnachfionn.com)
Michael D. Higgins: “Hamas Is More Advanced Than The IRA” (ansionnachfionn.com)
Michael D Higgins to become Ireland’s next president (guardian.co.uk)
Higgins ahead in Irish presidential election (guardian.co.uk)
A pot shot from McGuinness hands Irish Presidency to poet (independent.co.uk)
Michael D. Higgins wins Irish presidential election (telegraph.co.uk)
Michael D. Higgins Set to Be Ireland’s New President (nytimes.com)
First Preference Vote in Presidential Election (cedarlounge.wordpress.com)
Michael D. Higgins Favored to Win Irish Presidency (abcnews.go.com)

Enter Bagman

Posted on 26/10/2011 by Séamas Ó Sionnaigh (An Sionnach Fionn)

The damage delivered to Seán Gallagher’s presidential ambitions as a result of the revelations on RTÉ’s Frontline Presidential Debate is continuing to send disruptive ripples across the media and bloggosphere but it remains to be seen if the outcome will prove fatal. Gallagher was accused by Martin McGuinness of personally receiving a five thousand euro cheque from a local businessman in County Armagh for a Fianna Fáil fund-raising drive. Despite several opportunities to confirm the accusation Gallagher denied everything until in a series of increasingly desperate about-faces he admitted the substance of the charges.

Slugger O’Toole carries a transcript of the latter exchanges between the two candidates:

“Gallagher: You’ve described me also as a businessman, yes and I’m proud of that, and I’m proud that I created jobs. With regard to the fundraising, the fundraising event in particular, was set up by Fianna Fáil headquarters, I was asking as a local businessman to inform those in the community that might wish to attend, I suggested and invited perhaps three or four… There were not thirty… There were not thirty people there, Pat….

Kenny: Can I ask you for… for a clarification by the way… Seán have you been to Cairde Fáil dinners, have you bought tables at Cairde Fáil dinners.

Gallagher: I was, I believe at about two Cairde Fáil dinners over the last twenty years.

McGuinness: Pat… Pat I actually spoke to a gentleman who attended that fundraiser in Dundalk in the Crown Plaza Hotel, two hours before I came to this studio.

Kenny: When was that fundraiser?

McGuinness: It was two years ago.

Gallagher: It was 2008 I believe.

McGuinness: It was two years ago according to my information. This gentleman told me there was between 30 and 35 people in the room, he also told me that after the event, that Seán called around to his house, and took a cheque for five thousand euro.

Gallagher: Not true.

McGuinness: Seán didn’t even address in the course of [Interrupted] his, in the course of his commentary,

Gallagher: I’m just finishing…

McGuinness: He says it’s not true, he’s begging… he’s begging for someone to come forward, and say that it was true, and I would caution you Seán at this stage, that you’re on [Sic] very murky waters, because one thing is for absolutely certain…

Gallagher: Perhaps you….

McGuinness: If I’m elected president of Ireland, I will stand against croneyism, I will stand against greed and self- [Inaudible]. [Audience applause] …and I will stand against, I will stand against the brown envelope culture that effectively destroyed our economy.

Gallagher: I have never been involved in that culture let me explain to you. Let me ask Martin, perhaps he might identify the name and background of the individual he’s referring to. I can tell you quite clearly, that I invited perhaps 2-3 people to that event, at the event, people were asked would they like a photograph as is normal at these functions. I personally delivered, if that’s the case then I don’t remember it, delivered a photograph… I can tell you…

McGuinness: But that confirms what the gentleman told me, he also said that when you arrived at his house you took away a cheque for 5,000 euro…

Gallagher: That is not correct…

McGuinness: That is not correct?

Gallagher: Absolutely not…

McGuinness: Alright then… I have to say I think you’re in deep, deep trouble.

Kenny: I want to try and move on but I think we can clarify some of the….

[Programme break]

Kenny: A development which I want to put to Seán Gallagher, on the Martin McGuinness for President Twitter account, Sinn Féin are saying they are going to produce the man who gave you the check for 5,000. Do you want to change what you said or are you still saying that it just simply didn’t happen. Are they up to dirty tricks or what?

Gallagher: “Well, you know I’ve always tried to stay above any negative campaigning and I understand from a query during the week in one of the newspapers and when my campaign team sent back the information on the said character, I don’t want to cast any aspersions on him….”

Kenny: “So you know who he is?”

Gallagher: “He’s a convicted criminal, a fuel smuggler, investigated by the Criminal Assets Bureau and rented the office out to Gerry Adams, Martin’s colleague, in the last general election. I don’t want to get involved in this, I don’t believe….”

[Audience noise]

Kenny: “Can we put this to rest now. Did you get a cheque from this guy or not?”

Gallagher: “I have no recollection of getting a cheque from this guy…”

[Audience boo and hiss – someone shouts “Liar!”]

Gallagher: “I can tell you, let me explain this very simply.”

McGuinness: “The man said you went to his house Sean.”

Gallagher: “I explained that they’re were two or three people that I asked….invited, I don’t know the man very well that’s in question…”

Kenny: “Hang on a second, you’re saying you went around to a fuel smuggler and all sorts of things and invited him to a Fianna Fáil do?”

Gallagher: “I’ll tell you quite simply Pat, I was asked…”

Kenny: “No, You labelled him one thing and yet you invited him, so which is it? Or are you happy with both?”

Gallagher: “I wasn’t aware at the time 3 years ago. I’m just making the point that I was asked to pass the information on to local business communities which I did. I want to say one thing. This is not what the presidential election should be about.”
[Audience clap – someone says “absolutely”]

Kenny: “Martin McGuinness, do you want to…..? Briefly?”

McGuinness: I think Seán should answer the question. And the question is, did he go to a man’s house, a man who spoke to me on the telephone several hours ago, and collect a cheque for €5,000 euro?”

Gallagher: “What Martin has said is that I drove to the man’s house to deliver a photograph of the event and that he gave me a cheque. I may well have delivered the photograph if he gave me an envelope… I…”

[Audience laughs]

Gallagher: “The point is, if he gave me the cheque, it was made out to Fianna
Fáil headquarters and it was delivered, and that was that. It had nothing to do with me.”

McGuinness: “That’s a clear admission of what I said earlier.”
[Audience claps]

Kenny: Michael D Higgins, do you want to say anything on this, Michael D
Higgins?

Michael D Higgins: “I think that it’s very important that there be absolutely full and total disclosure and resolution of this and as quickly as possible. You know, what you say when you take the office of President… I dedicate my abilities to the welfare ofthe people of Ireland… That’s all of the people of Ireland and it’s far beyond any of this kind of thing, quite frankly, and I do think we should, in a way if we can, I think these matters should be clarified, they’re quite urgent…”

Kenny: “Hang on a second Michael, it’s all very well to be pious and all the rest of it.”

Higgins: “No, it’s not pious, it’s a man being straight.”

Kenny: “No, hang on, you want to be judged on your record. If there are things that we need to know about all the 7 candidates, about their record, we need to know it. So, you want to walk away from this particular controversy…”

Higgins: “No, I don’t at all. Could I have said more clearly that the matter needs to be clarified? And as a matter of urgency and immediately. And I think that’s very… that’s what the public want, you know in the end it isn’t about us seven here, it’s about what’s good for Ireland and what’s good for the Irish people.”

Since the dramatic revelations in the debate the Gallagher campaign, and the candidate himself, have been desperately spinning their PR machine trying to deflect the storm of criticism while rounding on McGuinness and anyone else with the temerity to question the new Golden Boy of Irish politics (who is actually looking very much like just another Old Boy).

However Hugh Morgan, the businessman it is claimed gave Gallagher the cheque for Fianna Fáil, has issued his own detailed statement:

“I wish to clarify and set the record straight in relation to the dealings I had with Sean Gallagher which resulted in my attendance at a Fianna Fail fundraiser in the Crown Plaza Hotel, Dundalk, on the 1st July 2008.

Sean Gallagher , who I had never met previous to this, contacted me by phone. He first phoned me on the 6th June 2008 and invited me to attend the above fundraiser. In the course of the call he requested a donation of €5,000.00 for Fianna Fail. He advised me that this type of fundraising would replace the annual Galway Tent Fundraiser. In return for the €5,000.00 donation I was promised a private audience with the Taoiseach and I would get a photograph taken with him.

He told me that the Taoiseach would give an up-date on the economy in the South which in his words was ‘beginning to wobble’

On the 9th June he again phoned me to confirm my attendance . I confirmed that I would attend and was prepared to give the donation he requested. He left two mobile phone numbers for me to contact him on.

On the 27th June Sean Gallagher visited my business premises at Killean, County Armagh. I wrote a cheque for €5,000.00 and gave it to him personally. I still have the stub of the cheque , This payment is declared in my Company accounts and was cleared through my bank on the 1st July 2008.

I then attended the fundraiser which was also attended by other businessmen from South Armagh, North Louth and across the Northeast. Sean Gallagher greeted the guests on arrival and directed us to the room at the top of the Hotel where the fundraiser was held.

Brian Cowen gave a speech on the economy and predicted a soft landing. At the end of the night Sean Gallagher introduced me to Brian Cowen and facilitated a photograph to be taken of myself and him. Approximately one week later Sean Gallagher called back to my business and gave me the photograph.

It is a fact that approximately fourteen years ago I was convicted of tax evasion in relation to fuel smuggling in Northern Ireland. As a consequence to that, I have repaid the Exchequer and paid a substantial fine. I was never investigated by CAB or any other agency in the Republic.

Since that time I have developed a successful international business known as Morgan Fuels.

I employ over eighty people in Ireland ,both North and South. I have business interests in Ireland , Britan and Europe and the Morgan Fuel card can be used up to 4,000 service stations in fourteen countries across Europe.I am also the official sponsor of the Armagh County teams of the GAA.”

Meanwhile the Irish Independent reports further on Seán Gallagher’s particular ways of earning a wage which are very far from the entrepreneurial image he likes to project:

“PRESIDENTIAL frontrunnerSean Gallagher charged GAA clubs in his home county of Louth as much as €5,000 to help out with applications for sports grants, the Irish Independent has learned.

Mr Gallagher charged the fees for as little as 20 hours’ work in order to help the clubs get funding from state agencies, such as theNational Lottery, when Fianna Fail led-governments had enough money to hand out the cash.

Local sources last night told the Irish Independent: “He was inside with Fianna Fail and the ministers and (he had) the inside track, he had been (Dr Rory) O’Hanlon’s secretary. Once you got him to do it, you were going to get the grant.

“We weren’t going to him looking for ham sandwiches, you know. There was unspoken word.”

Mr Gallagher charged the fees to clubs seeking to expand around 2002, near the time he was setting up his ‘Smarthomes’ business.”

Is this the end of Seán Gallagher’s presidential hopes? Judging by some online commentators and activists a significant number of people seem unconcerned by the many, many questions hanging over the nominally Independent candidate. What this says about the citizenry of Ireland, and the morality of our society corrupted as it was by the Celtic Tiger years, is open to question.

Only the election day will tell us whether the Irish people are prepared to turn their back on the squalid crony politics of the last three decades or whether they are willingly prepared to be hoodwinked yet again.

From The People Who Brought You The IMF And The ECB – President Gallagher (ansionnachfionn.com)
Sean Gallagher – lifelong FF insider – the proof! (politics.ie)
That SF Presidential campaign… (cedarlounge.wordpress.com)
He did what? Presidential Election Debate Update! (cedarlounge.wordpress.com)

From The People Who Brought You The IMF And The ECB – President Gallagher

Posted on 24/10/2011 by Séamas Ó Sionnaigh (An Sionnach Fionn)

Well, we’re in the final stretch of the race for Áras in Uachtaráin and it is claimed that the great Irish public, or at least a sizeable minority of it, may have decided to plump for the “Independent” candidate Seán Gallagher. No amount of revelations about his decades old allegiance to Fianna Fáil, his receipt of government largesse through investments in his companies or membership of cushy quango boards, his less than inspiring business record, his somewhat unorthodox accounting methods, his unapologetic loyalty to the Anglo-American form of exploitative capitalism and cultural narcissism that all but destroyed our nation, indeed his contempt for the history of our nation full stop with his wish to dump our national anthem born of a democratic Revolution, none of these things will deter those eager to repeat the mistakes of the past.

Will this report from today’s Irish Independent outlining Gallagher’s career in the political party that sold away the sovereign independence of our Republic, carry any weight? Or are we really, as a people, so far gone that we are beyond even saving ourselves?

“In a newly obtained letter, Mr Gallagher instead gave countless examples of his work for Fianna Fail at the highest levels.

“I have a long record of involvement and commitment to Fianna Fail over the past 30 years,” he said.

The two-page letter, complete with Mr Gallagher’s personal mobile number and email address, was sent just two years ago to the heads of Fianna Fail branches (cumainn) in Louth. At the time, Mr Gallagher was seeking their votes ahead of the party’s Ard Fheis that year to get elected on to the party’s national executive as one of the Louth representatives.

Mr Gallagher pointed out his service with former Health Minister Rory O’Hanlon as a full-time political secretary and his work with Charlie Haughey.

In his letter, Mr Gallagher also wrote freely about his fund-raising work for Fianna Fail.

“I later worked full time for the party in Fianna Fail headquarters, supporting members like yourself in raising much needed funds for the work of the party,” he said.

Last week, Mr Gallagher admitted he had invited guests to a secret corporate Fianna Fail fundraiser attended by then Taoiseach Brian Cowen in the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Dundalk in 2008 — but strongly denied that he had asked them for any money.

In his letter Mr Gallagher talked about his role in helping Fianna Fail’s Seamus Kirk retain his seat in the 2007 general election by acting as his director of elections.”

I’ve highlighted much of this before and in detail, has have many others, but one fears that the message isn’t getting through. It may be a cliché but it is one that applies here: “If you are not part of the solution you are part of the problem”. Seán Gallagher, and the party and organisation he was associated with for decades, were not just part of the problem – they were the problem. He, and they, are most assuredly not part of any solution we need to find.

A vote for Gallagher is a retrospective mandate for those who brought us the excesses of the Celtic Tiger years, those who poisoned and disfigured the moral and cultural soul of our nation. This isn’t just about a seven-year term for a president. This is about how we view ourselves as a people and how we wish to go forward into the future. To vote for Seán Gallagher is to take a step back into a past that we wish to leave behind, an era that fed on the worse impulses in men and women and not the best, an era that transformed us from an Irish nation into a crude American and British clone. Urged on by an establishment elite we abandoned our own sense of ourselves and took upon us a distorted image of Ireland and Irishness derived from the views of others. We defined what we were not by our own history, or culture or language, but by what we saw on British and American television shows, read in British and American newspapers and magazines, and what we imagined they wanted us to be.

We became the wage-slaves of others, of international corporations and an unregulated global market. Our indigenous businesses, our indigenous entrepreneurs, were abandoned in the beggarly pursuance of their foreign counterparts lured here by glorified bribes. We kowtowed to their every wish and whim and in the process became their prisoners, as our own people were rendered nothing more than tradable commodities, assets and numbers on a balance sheet.

That is the Ireland we created in the Celtic Tiger age, and that is why, when we ran out of barterable means, or others offered greater prizes than we could compete with, the international businesses we enrichened by coming here abandoned us with such alacrity and ease. Cosseted corruption at the top, cosseted corruption in the middle, while those at the lowest paid for all of it.

If you think of Seán Gallagher think of the IMF, think of the ECB. Think of voodoo economics and property busts, think of ghost estates and boarded-up shop windows. Think of factory closures and crying parents and their offspring in our airports. Think of motorways through Tara, or demolished monuments in Moore Street. Think of crippling taxes and slashed budgets. Think of young men taking their lives and young mothers seeking refuge in hostels away from broken partners. Think of rising crime, rising alcoholism, a rising black tide of despair that seems ready to engulf us all.

Then remember. Remember those who brought us to this place. And then go out and cast your vote.

Seán Gallagher – A Fianna Fáil Sockpuppet? (ansionnachfionn.com)
Seán Gallagher And Health Rights USA (ansionnachfionn.com)
Playing The Race Card In Ireland (ansionnachfionn.com)
The Fianna Fáil Revival Starts Here (i.doubt.it)
Sheehan (INDO) Gallagher is old Fianna fail (rotten to core) (politics.ie)
Vote anybody but FF Sean Gallagher (politics.ie)
Gallagher is not being honest with the Irish people – the evidence (politics.ie)

Seán Gallagher And Health Rights USA

Posted on 18/10/2011 by Séamas Ó Sionnaigh (An Sionnach Fionn)

I wrote a substantial piece earlier dealing with the Fianna Fáil background of the “Independent” presidential candidate Seán Gallagher, a background which dates to the early 1980s. However in my researches some weeks ago I came across some information that I have been debating whether or not to discuss. Firstly it is (as far as I can tell) a strictly personal matter for Mr. Gallagher and therefore should be off-limits. Politics I do, people’s private lives, whatever area they work in, are their own concern. Unless (yes, a caveat) those private affairs effect their public work. In this case the information I’m going to write about is not a secret but is in the public domain, available on the internet (and on other media), and may be of some concern to the candidate. Especially should he succeed in his campaign and be elected to Áras an Uachtaráin.

In August 2007 Gallagher took a trip to Israel, staying at the Lot Spa Hotel. While there he apparently met one Matthew A. Katz, who later went on to found Health Rights USA, one of those very American medical outfits that claim a not-for-profit status, mixing a “wonder diet” with trips to the Dead Sea health resort mentioned above. According to a November 2007 blog posting by Katz:

“If you are suffering from psoriasis then you know how this can complicate your life. However, this need not be lifelong affliction. In fact, if you take a look at this video of my own recovery, you will see the results. Meanwhile, I came across this remarkable video on YouTube about a group of young people whose parents paid for their treatment overseas. They, too, saw their psoriasis clear up in record time.

The mission of this blog is to invite Jewish and Christian philanthropists to lend their support to assist as many people as we can to experience the same benefits rather than suffer. It is known that many cannot afford this treatment because it is not covered by health care plans in the United States, Canada, England, and Ireland. Contact us for more information regarding giving to this worthy cause at…”

He also posted in November 2007:

“Sean Gallagher from Ireland and Matthew Katz from New Haven, CT landed in Tel Aviv early this past August on a sweltering 110 degree day. Both were bound to the Lot Hotel spa and clinic on the Dead Sea the. Neither man knew the other nor what was about to happen in the next 21 days. Each experienced nearly 100% remission.

Each man had left home with an extreme case of psoriasis which they had lived with for more than 2 decades and within 21-days they were clear of most lesions!

As remarkable as this may sound, it’s common place at the Dead Sea clinic where Dr. Harari and his team has been working to help cure patients for over 15 years. It is a popularly accepted cure in Israel and in some European countries where healthcare pays for nearly 100% of this full-month stay at the hotel and spa/clinic. It can run as high as $3,500 for room, board and medical care, plus airfare. So, you can imagine how Mr. Gallagher and Mr. Katz felt shelling out this many “sheckles” in Israeli dollars with no guarantee of success and without any medical reimbursements in either Ireland or the U.S.A.

But, with the effort they made, they were rewarded with a clean bill of health and there is no price that they can put on this.

Returning to their homelands, Mr. Katz and Mr. Gallagher have remained close friends and each are encouraging everyone they meet who has either psoriasis or arthritis and rheumatism conditions to make the journey to the Dead Sea clinic.

Mr. Katz is even returning with a group next summer. For information about his treatment plan before and after for more information about this healing or to order the booklet please contact Mr. Katz at…”

Since then Katz has moved on to a business website (which repeats the description of the meeting with Seán Gallagher, who is pictured) with a more professional look, offering a means to reverse psoriasis, arthritis and type 2 diabetes, and treatments for $11,995.

“We will train you in 21 days how to “Eat Right” – “Exercise Properly” and “Reduce Stress.”

The Dead Sea and sun are known for positive effects on skin and joints. Look at this YouTube to see families around the world who go for their skin clearing.

HealthRightUSA, Inc. also includes a five-year follow-up by board certified family physician, Dr. Joel Fuhrman to commit to keeping you on track with continued wellness. This is our commitment to you! You need to be as committed to your success in order to remain clear-skinned and strong.

This 5 year program begins with a 21-day Dead Sea spa vacation and tours of historic sites plus includes:

All doctor fees, weekly checkups and prescribed creams.

Dead Sea and sun solarium treatments daily.

Hotel room rental fees and taxes.

All Meals (Kosher “vegan” prepared for autoimmune diseases).

Educational programs (each evening lectures after daily sun/sea treatments).

Access to exhibit hall during meals for questions with professionals.

Discount on all products (ie: books, CD’s, vitamins, water filters, juicers)

Free daily classes (yoga, guided meditation, group discussions, funny movies!).

Hiking and outdoor educational programs designed for fitness, stamina and confidence building.

Vegan food preparation and cooking lessons.

Site-seeing included to historic Israeli sites.

“ALL INCLUSIVE 5 year Wellness and Health Support Vacation Program” with a 3-week stay at our Dead Sea clinic is $11,995 per person. ONLY $995 extra per spouse/partner* Airfare is NOT included due to multiple departure locations. Group rates are available via our airline company.”

All of which profit-making for a non-profit organisation seems to have caused trouble with Google, as this appeal by Katz in 2010 makes clear:

“Dear Team,
We are a new non-profit with Google Grant acceptance #994-225-6178.

We would like to go through an appeal process with staff person at Google who knows about IRS 501c3 criterion for accepting us as a non-profit. We have been highly scrutinized by the IRS and they have checked our mission (see this link please). It’s a treatment approved for decades by Dermatologist around the world and doctors at the Dead Sea in Israel along with our Medical team in the U.S. has 30 years of documented success with diet for Psoriasis, Arthritis and related issues.

But GoogleAds system will not allow us to use the keywords such as “Psoriasis” in our ads. They don’t understand our “scholarship” program and alternative treatment choice. This is the right of patients to choose their own type of treatment. They kicked out our proposed keywords as “medical claims for miracle cures.” This rejection of direct advertising terms like Psoriasis or Eczema Treatment forces us to come up with other ways to promote our treatment, such as our books on diet, etc.

Why can’t GoogleAds allow us to do our mission? See our 501c3 letter on our “Why Donate” page, which demonstrates that we don’t make claims of cures, but we are providing a service to those interested in alternative treatment. Please give us a reasonable way to promote our safe treatment program using keywords that get patients to learn exactly what we offer.

All that we have worked with you for months is to get help to give FREE scholarships to those who cannot afford care.

I greatly appreciate your support.

Matthew A. Katz
http://www.HealthRightUSA.org
203-508-2423

makatz54@yahoo.com”

The free scholarships referred to above are explained here:

“Your tax-deductible donations go to scholarships and spreading the word about our mission for general wellness and a natural, non-drug Psoriasis treatment.

Many cannot afford this treatment because it is not covered by health care plans countries like the United States, Canada, England, and Ireland. Our mission is to invite individual givers as well as large philanthropies to lend their support.Our initial goal is $1.4 million to cover the costs of a full year of program planning, professional fundraising and advertising. Any amount that brings us closer to this is greatly appreciated. This goal includes 50 patient scholarships per month. ALL DONATIONS ARE TAX-DEDUCTIBLE. (see our 501c3 certificate below the Donate button).

Would you be able to give:
$18, $36, $72, $100, $150, $200, $250,
$500
$5,000
…or another amount?

Every scholarship patient must have income less than $45,000 per person, $75,000 per couple, $85,000 per family. Each individual at this program costs $8,995 and any partner or spouse costs $995 which includes hotel, food, and all program fees for a full 21-day stay. Airfare is not included. This is what your scholarship dollars support.”

I’m presuming the donations (via a payment through a Chipin login, a somewhat unusual method) help with running the organisation in addition to the payments made by patients themselves though I find the arrangement somewhat puzzling. Maybe that is just a cultural thing as the organisation – and its functioning – is very American as can be seen elsewhere on the business website:

“Qualified College Students Can Apply for Internship Experience from anywhere around the World who speak these languages!

Seeking qualified college students who speak multiple languages (Chinese, Indian, Japanese, Russian, Spanish, French, Italian, Greek, Slavish & English) to assist in blogging, social networking and contacting other nutritionists who can refer chronic psoriasis patients for treatment tours to the Dead Sea.

Demographic studies show that there are 125 million in India, China, Japan and in Europe which includes 7.5 million alone in the U.S.

To discuss Internship options, please fill-out the form on the right and we will email you a “getting started” package.

Once trained, you may also qualify for our “Payment Plan” by becoming a Tour Marketing Salesperson.

HealthRightUSA, Inc. pays Intern/Salespeople $200 per patient referred who registers for at our Dead Sea clinic for one of these sessions. An additional $50 if the partner/spouse joins them at the clinic.”

The website also includes links to several videos on YouTube where diet books and other materials available for sale from Health Right USA are discussed. In fact the diet part of these offers seem to be based (or linked) to the much-debated American nutritionist Dr. Joel Fuhrman as the site makes clear:

“We offer FULL SCHOLARSHIPS* for Psoriasis, Eczema, Psoriatic Arthritis and type-2 Diabetes patients programs to help them heal at the Dead Sea in Israel. We use natural methods of sun treatments, special sea mineral baths and physicain supervised healthy vegan diets.

We teach them “healthy living” through proper vegetarian style diet, exercise,meditation and attitudes that will help them maintain their general health and maintain clear skin for years to come.

We have in place ”Five Year Wellnes Program” to enhance long-term remission and further document the value of Dr. Fuhrman’s natural treatment program

*Scholarships are based on the economy and our fundraising efforts currently underway. Please give generously to help others receive this treatment!”

Okay. I’m not questioning the validity or otherwise of the treatments or programs offered by the American-based organisation, HRUSA, Inc. Nor do I question the ways by which it raises donations or earns revenues. It states that it is registered in the United States as a “501(c) organization”, that is a tax-exempt, nonprofit corporation so presumably it has been examined in some way by US federal authorities to see if it qualifies for that status (there is a letter of confirmation from the Internal Revenue Service, though it is addressed to the organisation via one Sandra L. Cox and a PO Box number rather than a company address).

My only question centres on the very public association of a man wanting to be the next President of Ireland with this group and the need for this relationship to be clarified. It does not touch upon whatever private medical condition or treatment that Seán Gallagher may have had in the past (or currently still does). That is no ones business but his own, and rightly so. We all have private lives, even politicians, and not everything needs to be known.

However, what does need to be known is how Seán Gallagher is linked to Health Rights USA, Inc. and why does it use his name and image in its promotion? Are there no links? If so should he not request that they alter their website to remove his name and photographs? This is not a “muck raking” exercise since, as far as one can tell, there is no muck to rake. It is a simple matter of clarification and the need for someone who may hold the highest office in this nation to be above reproach. It may well be (and I presume it is) that Mr. Gallagher is unaware of the unusual prominence he is given on the Health Rights USA site. Or perhaps he is a donor and wishes this philanthropy to remain private (a laudable stance, if so, and I apologise for raising it)? Whatever the case a speedy answer will put this question to rest.

Seán Gallagher – A Fianna Fáil Sockpuppet? (ansionnachfionn.com)
“He’s a good FF man… ” RTE hampering Gallagher (politics.ie)
What exactly is Sean G qualified in? (politics.ie)
Morning Ireland : FF can now vote for one of their own (politics.ie)
Sean Gallagher joins frontrunners in Irish presidential race (guardian.co.uk)
Sean Gallagher refuses to debate with Michael D Higgins (politics.ie)

Seán Gallagher – A Fianna Fáil Sockpuppet?

Posted on 17/10/2011 by Séamas Ó Sionnaigh (An Sionnach Fionn)

If one were to believe the polls (and some commentators) the “Independent” candidate for the presidency, Seán Gallagher, may be a serious contender for becoming the next Uachtarán na hÉireann. We are told that he is well-ahead of his nearest rival, Labour’s Michael D. Higgins; so much so that the Higgins’ campaign came up with a rather slick trick to downgrade the other runners in the hopes of siphoning off some of their votes (or at least transfers). However, just how independent is this particular Independent? In fact, as we shall see, he is anything but.

In 2009 Seán Gallagher, as a Louth member of Fianna Fáil’s Ard Comhairle (the party leadership), appeared at the Ógra Fianna Fáil National Youth Conference in Bundoran. His account of the event was posted on Fianna Fáil’s website and I include it in full so there can be no doubts about where he stands:

“Last night I had the honour of speaking at the Ógra Fianna Fáil National Youth Conference in Bundoran. It was a fun night, full of excitement as we watched the Ireland match unfold and as always with these occasions there was plenty of cheer and goodwill as the Ógra members celebrated another successful conference.

This wasn’t the first time I had attended a Fianna Fáil Youth Conference, back in the 1980s I was also a member of Ógra Fianna Fáil and served on the National Youth Committee. I think it’s fair to say that a lot of the lessons I learnt back then have stood to me over the years and have certainly helped me in my business career.

The thing about Ógra Fianna Fáil, and about politics in general, is that it teaches you all about people. It gives you great experience in meeting new people, making contacts and forming friendships. Any businessman, salesman or manager will tell you just how important those skills are. People are the foundations upon which any successful business operation is built and it is the relationships you form and how you foster them that will determine whether your business lives or dies.

I was also reminded of the other ways that my Ógra involvement has helped shape my career. It obviously thought me the fundamentals of public speaking, a skill that will stand to anyone who has to make presentations or pitches. You learn how to address an audience and to get your message across. That’s a skill that a lot of businesspeople I encounter still haven’t mastered – you only have to take a look at some of the presentations on the Dragon’s Den to see that.

There certainly was no shortage of dynamic young talent at the Ógra Fianna Fáil Conference. I came across so many impressive, confident and intelligent young men and women, busting with ideas. I was greatly encouraged that the political and business leaders of the future will certainly help move this country forward.”

So, how politically “independent” does that sound to you?

In 2010 the Irish Independent reported that Gallagher was the favourite to stand for Fianna Fáil in the Louth constituency, and just how integral he was to the party machine there:

“The businessman is considering seeking the Fianna Fail nomination in Louth following Mr Ahern’s announcement of his retirement.

Mr Gallagher masterminded the vote management strategy at the last general election in the constituency, which saw Mr Ahern’s vote kept down to ensure Fianna Fail TD Seamus Kirk got elected.

Despite Mr Ahern’s high profile, Mr Kirk actually finished ahead of him on the first count in 2007.

Mr Ahern claimed credit for the plan working, but Mr Gallagher is attributed as the real brains behind it. Fianna Fail sources say there is little love lost between the pair.

Local party activists said they were “not sure” Mr Ahern would back Mr Gallagher’s candidacy.

Mr Gallagher is regarded in Fianna Fail as potentially part of a new wave of politicians. He has experience from county enterprise boards, youth work, disabilities and north-south bodies, so there’s a broad mix of enterprise and community involvement.

The 48-year-old was also appointed to the new board of FAS earlier this year.”

Seán Gallagher was more than just a Fianna Fáil appointee to FÁS. In fact they lauded him with several cushy quango positions including the Drogheda Port Company and Intertrade Ireland, augmenting his (debatable) business interests. Unfortunately that last one has got him into a wee bit of trouble as the Irish Independent has detailed:

“ONE of Independent candidate Sean Gallagher’s firms got cash from a state enterprise quango he served on.

He was appointed to the board of North-South body Intertrade Ireland at the end of 2007 — and annual accounts for that year reveal they gave €41,970 to his Smart Homes company.

Yesterday, Mr Gallagher became impatient and declined to answer the question when asked if getting the funding was a conflict of interest, and said to speak to Intertrade Ireland.

He also became irate when asked why he had missed so many of the board meetings.

“I have been working for the last four years,” he told the Irish Independent.

“Did you ask about the subcommittees, the equity network and the work that I do to help fund small businesses?

“Give me the dates and come back and ask me for specific reasons and I’ll give you the dates that I was probably doing stuff.

“I would love if you guys would go and do positive stuff.

“Do you have any other understanding of the amount of schools I have spoken to, the enterprise agencies I have spoken to, of the universities I have spoken to, of all the small companies I have helped, and these are the questions you want to ask me?” he added.

Intertrade Ireland said the grant from its technology transfer fund was approved before Mr Gallagher joined the board in December that year — and denied there was a conflict of interest.

But it also emerged that he managed to miss half of all Intertrade Ireland board meetings over the past two-and-a-half years — despite getting €30,000 in fees.”

And Gallagher didn’t just mastermind the campaign of FF Louth TD Seamus Kirk in 2007. He also stood shoulder-to-shoulder with FF Mayo TD Dara Calleary during his re-election run earlier this year, as examined by the Herald:

“HE INSISTS he’s no longer a member of Fianna Fail, but that didn’t stop Sean Gallagher from claiming that it was the only party to get the country back on track.

Launching the election campaign of Dara Calleary, Gallagher stood shoulder to shoulder with the Fianna Fail TD and announced that he was the ‘face of change’ that would fix the future.

Speaking at the time to hundreds of party faithful, Gallagher showered praise on the Fianna Fail politician.

“I believe that Dara is the face of change in the political environment,” he said.

“What we have had up to now to get us here, will not work to get us to the future. But it can change, and with people like Dara it will happen and it will work again.”

The Dragon’s Den star went on to describe the outgoing Minister of State as “a fabulous, outstanding debater and communicator at all levels”, during the official campaign launch held in Downhill House Hotel in February.”

Such was Seán Gallagher’s long involvement with the Fianna Fáil party that he virtually became synonymous with it. If there was a Fianna Fáil opening of an envelope Gallagher was there to hold it (though no brown envelopes, I should add). This perhaps explains his inability to condemn Fianna Fáil’s deplorable record in government on RTÉ’s now infamous Primetime Debate while his campaign PR staff went into hysterics (or so I’ve been informed). But he was soon back into voter-friendly mode after some late night, erm, discussions, as the Irish Times outlined:

“INDEPENDENT CANDIDATE Seán Gallagher has moved to distance himself from Fianna Fáil’s performance in government over the last four years after appearing to equivocate on the issue when questioned on the RTÉ Prime Time debate.

Mr Gallagher said yesterday that he “abhorred” the decisions made by the previous FF-led administration and said he was disillusioned with the party’s loss of contact with its grassroots when he resigned from Fianna Fáil earlier this year.

Asked by Miriam O’Callaghan if he felt Fianna Fáil had let the country down, Mr Gallagher said that he couldn’t answer for the party.

He said the reason he was seen to hesitate when asked the question was that he was seeking to distinguish between Fianna Fáil ministers in cabinet and its ordinary rank and file members.

“I was asked to condemn Fianna Fáil and the first thing that came into my mind was the thousands of ordinary decent men and women who are the grassroots of Fianna Fáil . . . and I didn’t want to condemn them because they weren’t in government, they weren’t in cabinet.””

Hmm…

Another Gallagher problem as been his memory (not the first Fianna Fáil member to have that problem, of course). He has been somewhat confused about when exactly he quit the party. Gallagher’s campaign had initially claimed that he had quit FF in March 2010. Except he hadn’t. He had in fact quit in January 2011. The Journal reports that:

“SEÁN GALLAGHER HAS clarified the timing of his departure from Fianna Fáil – insisting that in practice he left the party 18 months ago.

The Independent presidential candidate acknowledged that he resigned in writing only in January of this year. But he said this was merely a formality and he effectively left his local cumann in March 2010.

Speaking to RTÉ News, Gallagher said: “I left officially on March 1 2010. That was my last meeting when I stepped down at a meeting of my local cumann.” He added that he had “officially resigned in writing earlier this year because my position [on the national executive] hadn’t been filled and I thought it prudent to tidy that up.”

Questioned about his role on the party’s national executive, Gallagher insisted it was merely an organisational role and “doesn’t deal with issues or policies”.”

Okay. First things first. Seán Gallagher “officially” left his cumann (local branch) of Fianna Fáil in March 2010. He then “officially” left Fianna Fáil’s Ard Comhairle (national leadership) in January 2011. Yet he was campaigning for Fianna Fáil candidates in Mayo (the FF TD Dara Calleary mentioned above), Donegal (FF’s nominee Charlie McConalogue) and Monaghan (FF candidate Margaret Conlons) in February 2011. A year after he left the party?

No surprise then that Celia Larkin should pen an impassioned public defence of Gallagher and Fianna Fáil, calling for both to take on their opponents. Or that in return Bruce Arnold (!) can point out the many holes in the claims of the ”Independent” candidate Seán Gallagher, as he details in an article for the Irish Independent:

“Sean Gallagher’s picture of himself and Fianna Fail is now being amended in the light of facts previously muddied. He says on his campaign website — or did until this weekend — that he was ‘a sporadic’ party member.

Yet his Fianna Fail career was full-on and privileged. It lasted much longer than he says; it was anything but sporadic.

He says he “got involved in the 1980s”. This was with Ogra Fianna Fail, which he headed, in Cavan, “for a year”. This would be difficult without becoming a party member. He does not tell us about that or when it happened. He gives the impression that he drifted away, coming back to help in the government’s ‘alcohol education programme’ and to work with Rory O’Hanlon and Seamus Kirk.

He claims he left Fianna Fail “in terms of being a member of the party, or being active, back in 2009″. And he gives the reason: “The party had moved away from its grassroots, the ordinary people who were struggling.”

Yet in January 2011, he was still a member of its National Executive, which is not possible without being a party member. When he ‘resigned’, on January 5, 2011, by letter to the Fianna Fail Party Secretary Sean Dorgan, it was simply as “a constituency delegate” to the National Executive.

He concluded: “I want, however, to express my continued support to you and your colleagues in this challenging period for the party.”

Fianna Fail was then in political freefall, facing an annihilation it richly deserved and got. Yet Gallagher remained a member, sympathetic to the senior leadership. He helped senior figures in the following general election.

His campaign team has so far been unable to establish whether he has resigned from the party, and if so, when. None of the above has anything whatsoever to do with the reasons he gave on October 3 for the parting of the ways in 2009. What he said about that did not in fact happen.

Moreover, he has rejected all political parties because their fight is “about who was going to be in power”. Yet he went on being heavily involved for a further two years in Fianna Fail — both as a National Executive member and still longer as a party member.

In July of this year… he told Pat Kenny yet another, quite different, story about his Fianna Fail membership.

He joined “to advance the introduction of important legislation”. So there were now two completely different and distinct reasons, the first being the legislation, the second representing Louth.

“Let me explain about Fianna Fail,” he told Kenny. He then gave yet another reason for his Fianna Fail membership: the need for youth services.

What he did not tell Kenny was the story of his close and continuing relationship with Fianna Fail throughout the whole period of his presidential challenge.

This was because the party held the key to his gaining the councils on which his nomination depended. In some of them, the Fianna Fail party whip was imposed in his favour.

Gallagher represents Fianna Fail. He is their default candidate. He has made little of close ties with the party.

He cannot tell us, through his campaign team, when he left Fianna Fail, suggesting he has not left.

Fianna Fail is also being coy. Last Saturday night, the party said it would not comment on whether Gallagher was still a member of the party, saying it was up to him and his campaign team to deal with this issue.

The team is silent on this.”

Well they might be silent for they know the answer as well as we do. Based upon the evidence above most readers would conclude that Seán Gallagher is nothing more than a Fianna Fáil sockpuppet. This campaign is not about the election of a head of state. It is about the re-launch of the Fianna Fáil brand, repackaged for the old party grassroots and the newer converts. It is about reinvigorating the party locally and giving an electoral dry-run to a person who, if he doesn’t succeed this time, will undoubtedly run for Dáil Éireann in the near future. Seán Gallagher, next president of Ireland? Or Seán Gallagher, next president of Fianna Fáil?

Michael D. Higgins: “Hamas Is More Advanced Than The IRA” (ansionnachfionn.com)
Labour Versus British Unionists – A Snapshot Of Irish Political History (ansionnachfionn.com)
Playing The Race Card In Ireland (ansionnachfionn.com)
When exactly did Gallagher change from being FF to Independent? (politics.ie)
A FF ‘President Seán Gallagher’ would be the final insult to the Irish people. (politics.ie)
Is Sean Gallagher the new Bertie Ahern? (politics.ie)
Michael Fitzpatrick and Fianna Fáil (cedarlounge.wordpress.com)
Sunday Independent Stupid Statement of the Week (cedarlounge.wordpress.com)
Sean Gallagher’s Fianna Fail National Exec resignation letter obtained by Politics.ie (politics.ie)
The latest poll from the Sunday Independent… (cedarlounge.wordpress.com)
Gallagher …. The Last of the Independents (cedarlounge.wordpress.com)
Dragons’ Den star emerges as main man in Ireland’s presidential race (guardian.co.uk)
Sean Gallagher refuses to debate with Michael D Higgins (politics.ie)

Playing The Race Card In Ireland

Posted on 12/10/2011 by Séamas Ó Sionnaigh (An Sionnach Fionn)

Poor old Kevin Myers is at it again: propagating his “race theory” of Irish politics (and society) thanks to the platform provided to him by his acolytes in the Independent group of newspapers. His latest attempt to whip up some “ethnic tensions” centres on an old and cherished theme of his: that Fine Gael, Ireland’s centre right conservative party, is made up of people ethnically different from those of other political parties. In Myers’ peculiar world view the “right sort of folk” are those in Ireland he believes to be descended from British settlers, in particular the medieval Norman-British who came here in the 12^th and 13^th centuries. These men and women he argues can be identified through their surnames, even after several hundred years of their ancestors living here, and are quiet distinct in temperament and intelligence from the native Gaels.

By Gaels Myers of course means the Native Irish but he cannot bring himself to use those two words together (and horror of horrors – capitalized!). He believes that “Gael” is not the same as “Irish” (no matter what the history books or dictionaries may say). No. Gaels are another thing altogether. A separate people, race, lingering on in Ireland and quiet distinct from the broad swath of people who call themselves “Irish” today. They, the monolingual English speaking, reading, writing (thinking) men and women of the island of Ireland are now the true Irish (including those like yourself born and raised in England, hey, Kevin, me ol’ darlin’?). The Gaels on the other hand are those who speak the Gaelic language (a dead language that no one speaks, dontcha know), and who adhere to Gaelic culture and a Gaelic identity. They are the people of the GAA, of Celtic myth, of nationalist violence, of Fianna Fáil, Sinn Féin, Óglaigh na hÉireann, of 1916 and 1919. They are a poisonous vein in the body politic, an unwelcome reminder of Ireland’s primitive pre-English, pre-British past. Or so he likes to think.

Thus Squadron Major Myers can write stuff like this in the Irish Independent and be lauded for it by those who follow a similar crooked path:

“Fine Gael really doesn’t know what it is, or what it wants. It largely accepts the gospel as written by Fianna Fail, that party of bamboozling boozers, frauds and terrorist-appeasers, which declares that Fine Gael is not authentically Irish. Which is pretty good, considering that Fianna Fail was founded by one man whose ancestors were (allegedly) from Spain… Actually, the only authentically “Irish” person left is probably some naked wet Hobbit huddling under a stone in Inishmaan.”

“Authentically Irish”? “Naked wet Hobbit”? Is this considered intelligent writing amongst the Anglophone establishment? And “Insihmann”? Is that what the rest of Irealnd (and the world) calls Inis Meáin? Wow. He can’t even bring himself to write in Irish. Oooops! Sorry. I meant of course, Gaelic.

And so on to his next big ball of crazy.

“Firstly, Fine Gael should start by slowly renaming itself.

…ditch the ridiculous name, Fine Gael the Republican Party. Firstly, all those Lucinda, Simons, Marks and Garrets are as much family of the Gael as they are the family of Dayaks. The best way for the party to rename itself is… by appending a slogan to the party name, which in time takes over the whole. Thus, Fine Gael: the Constitutional & Democratic Party can, by careful mutation, become The Constitutional Democrats.

The CDs will not do a tribal war dance at Bael na mBlath or Bodenstown. They will not “celebrate” the Rising. They will stand four-square behind the rule of law. Their children will learn politeness, punctuality, the piano and Chinese.”

Ah, and it’s off to the races – the racial kind anyway. No Gaels here, please. All those lovely “British” names, not an ugly Gaelic one in sight. We are definitely nothing to do with those people. Y’know. The others. The (whisper) “natives”. We vote Christian Democrat! Our kids speak English and learn Chinese, and trace their ancestors to good honest English folk. The seed of Britannia!

I know. It’s utterly risible. The ravings of a madman. But a madman who is given a prominent place of comment and opinion in our national press, and who is a regular guest on our news and current affairs shows. Which raises the question: where the hell does our media come from? A born-again Pale?

This stomach-turning bile, however insane it may seem to normal-thinking folk, is a familiar theme in Myers’ writing and one he has grown rich upon. Back in 2010 he wrote:

“…the nature of Fine Gael. It is defined by self-doubt and equivocation. With all its Lucindas, its Simons, its Garrets, its Olwyns and its Richards, its silly name notwithstanding, it is not a family of Gaels. It is a perpetual minority, largely of non-Gaelic, Anglo-Norman Catholics in ethnic origin: strong farmers, smalltown merchants and lawyers.”

Settler politics, hey? No Gaels in Fine Gael, just non-Gaelic (non-Irish!) Norman-British ethnos: an embattled minority surrounded by a sea of hostile, recalcitrant natives. What do Fine Gael members and voters actually think of this stuff? It’s the loonier fringes of British Nationalist and Unionist blogging. What next, descent from one of the Lost Tribes of Israel? Or have the British ethnic minority in the north-east of the country got that one all sowed up?

“Fianna Fail, with its eighty years of being in the driving seat — with the Simons being occasionally permitted to take over whenever Cuchulainn got tired at the wheel — still gets the obedient Soloheadbeg vote. But with so much political power for so long, it has colonised the old unionist boroughs of Pembroke and Kingstown, and the salubrious postal districts of Dublin 4 and 6. It has created a mandarin class whose accents and manners are identical to those of Fine Gael. Fianna Fail children go to Clongowes and Gonzaga, and their social camouflage is completed by their gloriously Protestant names: the Emmas, the Jessicas and the Jennies whose great grandfathers (or so the family legend maintains) were in the GPO.

The daughters of these Fianna Fail mandarins might speak Californianised Kingstown — omigod, no way Lucinda! — but the pike lies in the spiritual thatch still. Take them to a social gathering of Sinn Fein/IRA, Fine Gael, Unionists, and they’ll join the Shinner table. Their suits might shimmer with expensive threads, but they embody still the weird morality of Fianna Fail, in which clan and conspiracy, cronyism and ancestral cordite define loyalty.”

Whey! Religious and racial intolerance in two easily digestible paragraphs. Why be a racist bigot when you can be a sectarian one too?! You show ‘em, Caoimhín. Imagine. Bah to Cú Chulainn! Ooops, sorry. There I go again. I mean, Cuchulainn. The horror of it all. Where is Cœur de Lion when you need him? Or Henry VIII? Or (tremble) the great Winston C? Oh, for the elysian fields of Eton. Sugary tea and wrinkled-up sandwiches, warm beer and the beat of leather on willow. Dieu et mon droit!

Of course, Squire Meyers being Squire Myers, it could be far worse. In fact, earlier this year, it was:

“A comparable survey at Trinity College Dublin showed that Fine Gael TDs are disproportionately more likely to have Anglo-Norman surnames — again, this comes as no major surprise. Our ancient origins can leave a far greater imprint on us than we usually care to admit, and the social residues might remain in our conduct, just as herds of sheep continue to leap over the part of the field where there once stood a now-levelled hedge.

The social hierarchy that exists in England is vaguely similar to that in Ireland; both bear the imprint of a Norman Conquest. Of course, other conquests followed here, in which the Anglo-Norman classes lost most of their old privileges, especially if they remained true to the Old Church. But even then, they remained self-consciously aloof within the mass of Catholic Ireland. Edmund Burke was a Norman; so too was Nano Nagle, the founder of the Presentation Sisters. Garret FitzGerald is clearly Anglo-Norman, no matter the absurd Gaelic confection that he occasionally translates his name into.

Indeed, the name Fitzgerald gives us a useful barium meal into social immobility over the centuries. Some 52 men of this largely Anglo-Norman Irish name were killed with the British army during the Second World War. Ten (20pc) were officers.

Of soldiers with the Anglo-Norman Irish name of Burke, 7pc were officers. But the proportion is strikingly less for men with Irish Gaelic surnames.

Of the 62 men named O’Reilly or Reilly, only one (1.6pc) was an officer. Of the more than 200 soldiers called Murphy, less than 4pc were officers. The 44 Nolans had one officer — as did the 41 Maguires — roughly 2.2pc.

No doubt the now extinct and largely unfeline Celtic Tiger raised the social status of many people of aboriginal Gaelic stock…”

“Aboriginal Gaelic stock”? What a sort of lunatic, mid 20^th century Untermenschen talk is this? And “Irish”? Where is that? Oh yes, with the Anglo-Irish. The real Irish in the eyes of Kevin Myers and the rest of his “ethnicity” on this poor bloody isle of ours. It lies with the schizophrenic madness of folk who claim Irishness as their own while also embracing another identity of another nation. We are Irish! We are British! We are Anglo-Irish! We are we don’t know what…!

Welcome to the world of Kevin Myers. Angloland!

Gay Mitchell: Blue Shirts And Blue Bloods (ansionnachfionn.com)
Fine Gael: The Terrorists We Embrace And The Ones We Don’t (ansionnachfionn.com)
The Ó Muircheartaigh For President? (ansionnachfionn.wordpress.com)
Gay Byrne Claims Provisional IRA Were “Gangsters”. Sorry, That Should Read, Gay Byrne Claims Old IRA Were “Gangsters” (ansionnachfionn.com)
Sinn Féin And The Labour Party, Head-To-Head (ansionnachfionn.com)
Dublin West and how Fianna Fail and Labours Electoral messages have changed since February … (cedarlounge.wordpress.com)
Fine Gael core beliefs/ideology. Do they exist? (politics.ie)
Fine Gael finally has a website that doesn’t suck (politics.ie)

President Mary Lou Or Gildernew? Sinn Féin’s Options

Posted on 07/09/2011 by Séamas Ó Sionnaigh (An Sionnach Fionn)

From the Irish Independent:

‘SINN Féin is set to steal a march on Fianna Fáil by running a candidate in the presidential election.

There is widespread speculation the party is set to announce former Northern minister Michelle Gildernew as its candidate at the Sinn Féin Ard-Fheis in Belfast this weekend.

Ms Gildernew is the former Agriculture Minister in the Northern Ireland Executive and the MP for Fermanagh / South Tyrone.

Sinn Féin is also considering running party vice-president Mary Lou McDonald…’

Hmmm. This makes for some interesting speculating over on Slugger O’Toole, including the claim by the once upon a time would-be candidate Niall O’Dowd that Mary Lou McDonald is the favoured one from amongst the SF ranks. Placing aside O’Dowd’s strong links to Sinn Féin (or is that former strong links?) I think this is still too hard a decision to call. Sinn Féin know they have a good hand to play with and are going to drag this game out for all its worth but it does seem that this weekend’s Ard-Fheis in Belfast may be one line in the sand, with much media anticipation of some announcement one way or another over the race for the Áras. At the moment though it is till very much a guessing game.

Sinn Fein and The Presidency (cedarlounge.wordpress.com)
Could Martin McGuinness be Sinn Fein’s candidate for President? (politics.ie)
Settler Versus Native – Culture Wars In The North Of Ireland (ansionnachfionn.com)
Can Sinn Féin benefit from FF’s terminal decline and Labour’s betrayals? (politics.ie)
Sinn Fein Presidential Candidate to be known by end of next week: Martin Ferris (politics.ie)
Sinn Féin unveil clar for historic (politics.ie)

Sinn Féin And The Labour Party, Head-To-Head

Posted on 07/09/2011 by Séamas Ó Sionnaigh (An Sionnach Fionn)

The Cedar Lounge Revolution carries news on a Sunday Times poll that places Sinn Féin a percentage point ahead of the Labour Party (though, it should be said, still within the statistical margin of error):

‘What an interesting poll the Sunday Times brought us this weekend. A poll which decisively points to Fine Gael dominance, potentially for quite some time to come. Isn’t it a sign of how things have changed that polls now come but rarely and that in some respects we have much less sense of the temperature of the polity than even six months ago. And that too is – perhaps a sign of FG dominance.

Most intriguing aspects? A Labour Party which has crashed not just below Fianna Fáil but also Sinn Féin.

I should stop right here and say this is but a single poll and it doesn’t appear to have a continuity with previous ones taken earlier in the Summer, but we can only work with what we get.

So granted this could be a rogue, and yet there are reasons that any consideration of the political environment as it now is suggests for a weakening of Labour Party support.

Think about the most high-profile issues other than the relationship with the IMF/EU, the subsidiary ones. JLCs, welfare cuts and so on. Hardly the stuff of dreams for a Labour Party which even still must look to its left flanks in order to shore up its support.

This site has argued long and hard that there’s a terrible misconception at the heart of much of political activity in this state, a misconception willfully or otherwise generated in part by the media. It’s the idea that if ‘hard’ decisions taken, a shaken but eventually grateful electorate will ‘reward’ those taking them.

There’s not much to support this viewpoint. Quite the opposite in fact. One can critique the Rainbow Coalition of the mid-1990s for many things, not least its less than full-blooded enthusiasm for the peace process [and strange how antique that term suddenly sounds] but in matters economic it was, compared and contrasted with its successor both moderately progressive and fiscally cautious. Yet for all that stability it takes but a second to remember the ‘It’s payback time…’ headlines in the Independent. No great reward there. No great reward for Fianna Fáil or the Green Party following their implementation of the ‘hard’ decisions, even if some of that lack of reward was due to the sense that there was no end to the ‘hard’ decisions. Two political formations that had solid histories in this state both in the contemporary period and longer, much longer in the case of FF, broken and broken badly by impact with the electorate. So where is this chimerical reward?’

The full article is well worth reading for the type of refreshingly honest views on Ireland’s political and socio-economic woes, and the farcical solutions offered, that rarely make it into the pages of the establishment press. Which of course raises the question, what is Ireland’s news media for if they have simply abdicated all responsibility both for contributing to the dire straits we are in or giving any real critique of the continued use of the same failed voodoo economics that got us here in the first place? If Ireland’s journalists and media folk are not part of the solution then surely they are just another part of the problem? Unfortunately we can’t vote in editors (or proprietors) as we can politicians but we can vote with our euros and simply stop supplying these economic terrorists with the oxygen of publicity.

The Labour Party And The Official IRA – They Haven’t Gone Away, You Know (ansionnachfionn.wordpress.com)
Sunday Times Poll: The Labour mud-guard on the Fine Gael led government? (cedarlounge.wordpress.com)
Labour councillors urged by Sinn Féin to vote against waste service privatisation on Monday (cedarlounge.wordpress.com)
The Ó Muircheartaigh For President? (ansionnachfionn.wordpress.com)
Sinn Fein and The Presidency (cedarlounge.wordpress.com)

The Ó Muircheartaigh For President?

Posted on 17/08/2011 by Séamas Ó Sionnaigh (An Sionnach Fionn)

Well the speculation is continuing to gather as to whether or not the much-loved TV sports broadcaster and Irish rights activist Micheál Ó Muircheartaigh will run for the office of Uachtarán na hÉireann. According to the Irish Examiner:

‘Retired GAA broadcaster Micheál Ó Muircheartaigh has said the President of Ireland should have a strong appreciation for the Irish language.

The Kerry man, who will announce next week whether he intends to run as a candidate in the Presidential election, feels the head of State should have an appreciation for the Irish language and the part it has played in our history and culture.

He said he had been approached by a number of political parties, and planned to take at least a week to consider the matter.’

Well he may well have just got my vote.

Micheál Ó Muircheartaigh has campaigned tirelessly on behalf of the Irish language and culture, both at home and abroad, over the last forty years, and enjoys almost universal popularity. In fact he could be described as the Lilly to Gay Byrne’s Poppy (if you get my meaning… ahem). With Gaybo exit stage right (left? right? centre?) the Ó Muircheartaigh seems to be the next big name under the spotlight, though this time with the definite whisper of some realistic political backing behind him.

According to the Irish Times:

‘Presidential candidates require the support of 20 Oireachtas members or four country councils.

A Fianna Fáil spokesman said: “There’s been no contact with Micheál Ó Muircheartaigh,” while a Sinn Féin spokesman said: “We didn’t approach him”.

Independent TD Finian McGrath, who had been co-ordinating Independent Senator David Norris’s aborted campaign to get the signatures of Oireachtas members, could not be contacted.

Mr Ó Muircheartaigh spoke at a Sinn Féin-hosted conference, “Uniting Ireland – Towards a New Republic” in Cork in June.

At that time, he said the visit of Queen Elizabeth to Ireland had helped move towards achieving a united Ireland.

Sinn Féin TD for Donegal North East Pádraig Mac Lochlainn said there was a “growing desire” within the party to enter the contest.

With 14 TDs and three Senators, Sinn Féin would need to enlist the support of three more Oireachtas members to field a candidate or facilitate the nomination of an Independent.’

Hmmm. Micheál Ó Muircheartaigh would certainly be acceptable to most Sinn Féin and Fianna Fáil voters, with the added plus of enough cross-party appeal to attract some Labour, Green and even Fine Gael support. The big question though, and it is big, is how Ireland’s thoroughly Anglicised and Anglophone media establishment will react. While up to now most pieces on Ó Muircheartaigh have used words like ‘legend’, ‘beloved’, ‘admired’ and so on there are plenty of Oirish journos who wouldn’t spit on an Irish-speaker if he or she was on fire. In fact a few of them would probably be looking around for a can of petrol.

Surnames with an Ó, Mac, Mag, Ní, Nic, Uí or de are like a red rag to a bull with the regressive set and it is only a matter of time – if Ó Muircheartaigh announces his candidacy – before the knives get pulled out. In fact if you listen carefully you can probably hear the noise of metal on whetstones as we speak.

In Ireland’s century-old low level civil war over language and culture, between the Irish and English speaking communities, Micheál Ó Muircheartaigh may become the next victim – or the next victory.

Sinn Féin’s Dual Strategy To A Reunited Ireland? (ansionnachfionn.wordpress.com)
Presidential election (thepressnet.com)
The Presidential Election Campaign – No. 4 of a continuing series Farewell Gay Byrne, perhaps we knew you all too well… (cedarlounge.wordpress.com)
Don’t talk to me about heroes (cedarlounge.wordpress.com)
British Unionists Target Irish And Immigrant Families In Portadown (ansionnachfionn.wordpress.com)
Seán Garland, The Workers Party, And The Fools Republic (ansionnachfionn.wordpress.com)

Bertie Ahern: Grotesque, Unbelievable, Bizarre, Unprecedented

Posted on 28/07/2011 by Séamas Ó Sionnaigh (An Sionnach Fionn)

News from the Irish Independent on former An Taoiseach na Chófra, Bertie Ahern, and his flourishing new career out of office (and Ireland):

‘FORMER Taoiseach Bertie Ahern is charging American companies a fortune to present a new lecture — about how he transformed our economy in the Celtic Tiger boom.

The man targeted by many as the architect of our crippling recession, is charging more than $40,000 (€27,554) a time for speaking engagements with the elite Washington Speakers Bureau.

During the lecture, Mr Ahern offers tips to bosses of leading firms on how to be competitive.

His fee, which is listed as being more than US$40,000, is in the top bracket and shared by just 57 other mostly American speakers, including former US President George W Bush.

A gushing profile, listed on the website of the bureau, pays tribute to what many regard as Mr Ahern’s greatest achievement in office — his key role in forging the Good Friday Agreement.

But it is his speech on the economy which promises to reveal how Irish citizens accepted “short-term sacrifices to achieve long-term gain”, which has raised most eyebrows.

The outline of the speech reads: “Leading the turnaround of an entire country is akin to the constant evolution companies and organisations must undergo to remain competitive.

“Bertie Ahern dedicated his career to re-inventing his country’s economic and political stakes in global affairs. He persuaded his fellow politicians and citizens to accept short-term sacrifices to achieve long-term gain.

“His ability to persuade his constituents to follow his vision provides lessons for even the most seasoned executives.”‘

Jesus. If we thought Ahern couldn’t sink any lower he has certainly proved us wrong. To say that the man knows no shame must be the understatement of the century.

Meanwhile of course, thanks to Bertie ‘re-inventing’ our economy, we are on our way to a new 100 euro ~~Poll~~ Household Tax. Ah, life in Saor Éire. Or is it Daor Éire these days? It seems we can’t even take a leak without the permission of our EU/IMF overlords.

Meanwhile:

‘A SCHOOL that provides specialist teaching for children with autism will close tomorrow after the education minister rejected new funding proposals.

Until now, the parents of the eight pupils at the Achieve ABA school in Donaghmede, Dublin, have funded much of their children’s education themselves.

But because of mounting debts, they can no longer afford to do so. Parent Daniel O’Mahony, whose son Aidan (8) is a pupil, said that a funding shortfall has grown to €100,000 over recent years and they have been left with no choice but to close.

Mr O’Mahony, a chartered accountant, said he had costed proposals that showed their model of providing ABA (Applied Behavioural Analysis) is more than 25pc cheaper than educating autistic children in special-needs schools.

He said the privately funded Achieve ABA in Donaghmede can educate a child, for one year, for €30,000. This compares to €38,000 in a special-needs school and around €36,000 in the Department of Education and Skills.’

Ireland, a nation once again.

Bertie: Business Guru (cedarlounge.wordpress.com)
Bertie bags $40,000 – for tips on Celtic Tiger ‘success’ (politics.ie)

An Sionnach Fionn

Éire Ghaelach – Éire Shaor

Tag Archives: Fianna Fáil

Fianna Fáil Moves North – Again

Ain’t Nothing Change But The Weather

When In Doubt Kick Fianna Fáil Out!

Voting Fianna Fáil – Like A Dog Returning To Its Vomit

Another Poll – Fianna Fáil Voters Abandon The Fine Gael Fold

Polls, Politics And Conspiracy Theories

Some Political Musings

Micheál Martin, The Irish Citizens Of Belfast, And Opposition Hypocrisy

Éamon Ó Cuív – Republican Dissident?

The Mahon Report – A Plague On All Your Houses

One Race But Three Victors

Enter Bagman

From The People Who Brought You The IMF And The ECB – President Gallagher

Seán Gallagher And Health Rights USA

Seán Gallagher – A Fianna Fáil Sockpuppet?

Playing The Race Card In Ireland

President Mary Lou Or Gildernew? Sinn Féin’s Options

Sinn Féin And The Labour Party, Head-To-Head

The Ó Muircheartaigh For President?

Bertie Ahern: Grotesque, Unbelievable, Bizarre, Unprecedented

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