Tuesday 21 May 2013
WITH just 25 women TDs in the Dail, it's perhaps unfair to expect the debate on the Protection of Life in Pregnancy Bill to be more feminised than it has been to date. Fortunately, women are well represented in the medical professionals informing the committee hearings. But female TDs with liberal credentials appear reluctant to speak up. Conservative women have no such qualms.
N ATIONAL politics is all about spin, about message management, about pushing through big-ticket items that often have little to do with the lives of the country's citizens. For example, on the order of business in the Dail today was the Ministers and Secretaries (Amendment) Bill. Important, yes, but it won't get your bins collected.
ALAN Shatter has landed himself in a right mess and it's entirely of his own making. Tempting as it might be to cite Albert Reynolds's line about how, in politics, you trip up over the little hurdles, it doesn't even apply here.
Since Alan Shatter stewarded through the Dail the pardon for (and apologies to) those Irish soldiers who had joined the Allies during World War II, the question of our neutrality in 1939-45 has again been raised in the public realm.
Cringe. The annual Eurovision Song Contest post-mortem is under way, and it is even more depressing this year given our dismal performance in Malmo on Saturday night. Oh the pain of coming 'Paddy last'.
There have not been many great days for Cavan senior football teams in recent times but yesterday was certainly one of them.
GOT a tracker? Stay put, don't move, even if you need to relocate.
A FEW weeks ago, when some TDs allegedly felt threatened by excommunication over abortion, Rev Eoin De Bhaldraithe, of the Cistercian Abbey at Moone, wrote a lucid letter to the Irish Times, explaining why those who voted for abortion – as distinct from those who directly carried one out – were not liable for excommunication.
I was listening last Thursday morning to the BBC's flagship news programme, Today, when I lost my rag and began shouting at the radio about pusillanimity.
'What the xxxx," asked the wag on Twitter, "is Sir Alec Guinness doing at the Dail's Public Accounts Committee?"
Last week, Alan Shatter, Minister for Justice, couldn't stop himself from behaving peculiarly. If we had a Taoiseach who cared about such matters, the minister would be in deep trouble. As it is, I doubt his behaviour will have any comeback.
WHEN did the last person in receipt of an American Civil War pension die? Bear in mind that the American Civil War ended in 1865. The answer to the question is 2001. The recipient was the widow of a civil war veteran. He was very old when she married him in the 1920s and she was very young. She inherited his veterans' pension after he died.
JOHN McGuinness, the chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, has long been happy to be portrayed as the Steve Silvermint of Irish politics: the cool, clean hero tackling waste, excess, mismanagement and inefficiency in the public sector; a straight talker who pulled no punches and avoided no toes that required stepping on.
You know what, I'm sick of it. I'm just bloody sick of it. No, I'm not referring to the bankers who drove us to ruin. Or the voracious speculators who gambled against the house and now want us to cover their losses.
AS Croke Park II gets a reboot, with optimism advancing gingerly that a deal might be struck, here is a question that perplexes me: who is safeguarding the taxpayers' interests?
EU Fishery policy has been aptly described as the "apportioning of misery". The experts believe that two-thirds of EU waters are over-fished, too many boats chase too few fish, and the industry is in retreat, with huge job losses in fishery intensive economies like Spain.
ABOUT 10 years ago, I shared a radio studio on the late-lamented Sam Smyth programme with Mary Hanafin when she was a junior minister responsible for children – a brief that encompassed the departments of Education, Justice and Social Protection.
The news that Michael O'Leary will stay at the helm of Ryanair for another five years has provoked a predictable response in some circles – a bizarrely ungrateful mixture of scorn and contempt for both the man and his incredible aviation success story.
LIFE is short. Tragically for some, life is far too short. Donal Walsh only got 16 years on this earth, but the impact he made in this short space of time was phenomenal.
Abortion is once more back at its rightful place of destroying the national conversation and Irish politicians are worried that they are faced with the ultimate ecclesiastical red card – excommunication from the Catholic Church, if they vote for the proposed Protection of Life During Pregnancy Bill.
AFTER so much controversy about the rights of the unborn, it was timely to see the body politic turn its attention to born children this week. Not for the first time, the plight of children in trouble with the law and in need of detention or protection rose to the top of the agenda. This time it was Ms Justice Ann Ryan who made it her business and ours to point out that she had nowhere to place juveniles in need of detention and rehabilitation following sentence.
THE space elevator is a science-fiction standard. Like teleporters, laser guns and green-skinned ladies with a twinkle in their eyes, space elevators are part of the sci-fi cannon.
KEVIN McAleer's three-part series Our Friends in the North finished on RTE last Monday. The films followed the personal journey of the famous Tyrone stand-up comic, who comes from a Catholic nationalist background, to find out more about the culture and traditions of his near neighbours, the Ulster-Scots Presbyterians. It was one of the best things I have seen on television for some time.
IT'S not all bad news. Sometimes, it's like the country is on a downward spiral into permanent stagnation. But, occasionally there's some really good news. For instance, have you heard that Goldman Sachs, the controversial cabal of international bankers, is pulling out of the International Financial Services Centre? Reliable sources say Goldman Sachs doesn't want to do business in this country anymore. Whoopee!
THE smell of pork is in the air – that most delicious of dishes when politicians hand out cash to those they hope will assist them, or those who frighten them most.
I RARELY meet bank directors these days. David Duffy, the 10- grand-a-week boss at AIB refuses to return my calls. I spot distant Bank of Ireland directors, like Richie Boucher, high on the platform at their AGMs.
Royal watchers are in a bit of a frenzy over Queen Elizabeth's future. Might she be planning to abdicate?
How do you close the yawning educational gap between middle-class children and children from less well-off backgrounds? Several news items this week focused attention on the question.
Okay, I think this is my stop, I'll think I'll get off here. You can include me out. I'm referring, of course, to the latest tech-glasses – just the latest in a seemingly relentless attempt by new media to utterly eradicate any sense of privacy we might have once had.
This has been one of the best National Football Leagues for many a year, with a host of exciting and high-quality games that have made a mockery of those team managers who claim they never take the league seriously.
Last Wednesday morning I rose at an unearthly hour. The Bank of Ireland, with diabolical cunning, had decided to hold its AGM early in the morning. It was a 9.30am start for small shareholders in Dublin's Burlington Hotel. The rush-hour traffic around the Burlington at that time of day would deter all but the most determined – or disillusioned – from attending. The price of overnight accommodation in Dublin would ensure that few from outside the capital could afford an overnight stop there.
Charles Moore's brilliant biography of Margaret Thatcher is also a manual of practical politics. It should be read by all aspiring candidates attending the Fianna Fail Ard Fheis. Here let me declare an interest. I have known and admired Moore since I first met him in 1996 when he was editing The Daily Telegraph.
LOOKS like Keynes got it wrong. Arguments over what to do about the Great Contraction have swirled around the figure of the legendary economist John Maynard Keynes. What would he have said?
THERE is a solution to this abortion mess – a solution that follows logically from the makeshift compromises and political cowardice of the past 30 years. Presently, I will outline this rational and workable solution. It's consistent with our current abortion policies and it would work. Many people, however, will find it unpalatable.
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