The fine line between grift and graft – Irish politicians get ‘stuff done’ - VIDEO

The recent debacle surrounding Michael Lowry has made him a poster boy of sorts for basically everything that is wrong with Ireland. Even though the man is basically six-odd feet worth of shenanigans, the people of North Tipperary keep voting him in like it’s going out of style. In fact, his vote has gone up steadily throughout the myriad damaging revelations of the McCracken and now Moriarty tribunals. The reason? He “gets stuff done”, whatever the hell that means. Such is the skewed mentality of some Irish voters: sure if the local TD gets the potholes fixed or sorted out the local school with an extension, what odds if that they fiddled their taxes, accepted bribes or subjected errant constituents to water boarding?

This line of thinking isn’t unique to North Tipperary of course. A whole host of constituencies have, in the past or present, elected people who made parochialism not just a virtue but an electoral cash cow. Sometimes merely feigning activity does the trick. The singling out by both the media and everyone outside a thirty minute radius of Thurles of Lowry as a bad example of how to do business is one prong of a wider call for much-needed reform on a national scale, but even if Lowry is censured by the Dáil and dipped in a tar pit, the type of politics he represents won’t go away. And a lot of people wouldn’t let it either.

Counter-intuitive it may be, but Lowry has made a lot of hay over the whole notion of the “Dublin witch-hunt”, and the sense of anti-establishment that endows. Local politicians of every stripe often take to showing themselves off as renegades taking on the jumped big city boys who just don’t get the spirit of the people of insert-county-here, and it inevitably goes down well because people feel the need to elect the local man who’ll have very few degrees of separation between them. Thus, the reasoning goes that if all the other towns in the area have such a councillor, so should you.

That’s fine with the council, but the problem is these fiefdoms are extrapolated for national elections. Unfortunate as it is, people are more inclined to vote defensively for reasons of geography rather than positively for someone whose ideas they find more compelling. It’s a hard habit to break, but the general election this year did strike a blow for candidates who are keen to rise above the parochial scene, though to go too much the other extreme would be harder still.

In response to the exhausted state of gombeen politics, there is a new school of thought that TD’s should deal with national issues first and foremost. That in itself is great, but in a TV debate recently such an advocate found herself rather awkwardly on the wrong side of an argument. When asked if a constituent came to her asking for help getting a hospital place for an ill parent, Labour TD Ciara Conway replied with a clinical answer about providing information that sounded as if it was what she thought she should say rather than what she actually thought. The reason why the likes of Lowry prosper is that he probably would have tried to cordon off a ward if someone asked him to, and people are more inclined to respond to the right thing for the wrong reasons than the wrong thing for the right reasons. Especially if it’s a burning issue they have.

Should TD’s focus on big national questions rather than man-marking their own patch? Unquestionably, but nor should they be too high-handed or precious to help a constituent in need with a problem. The key is balance: helping the local school secure an extension or keeping the local hospital open is noble work, but when representatives start making solo runs for credit on ensemble projects or, as Lowry himself did recently, send letters back home with students of the school he helped extend for their parents to remind them who’s good to them, that’s when things start getting deplorable. Politicians who work hard for their locale and by extension their country are as welcome as they are needed, but glorified concierges are certainly not.

Sketch from RTE comedy show "The Savage Eye" which sums up this mentality -

Irelands Census 2011 and Catholicism - the demise of organized religion in Ireland

Read more: The Irish are fast losing their religion say experts

On Sunday, 10th April the people of Ireland will fill in their census forms under wildly different circumstances than when they last did so in 2006. But aside from the inevitable stark figures surrounding employment and the people who’ve had to leave the country to get it, there is another question that will also speak volumes: the question on religion.

Apart from the usual campaigns to get Jedi Knight or Pastafarianism officially on the books, or this year in particular augment the number of people who claim no religion, this year’s religion statistics will be a crucial chapter in an intriguing story.

In 1981, when priests were still more feared than the guards, the percentage of Roman Catholic people in Ireland was 93%. In 1991, a couple of years before my first communion, the figure was 91.6%. By 2002, around the time our school chaplain conducted our catechism-heavy Leaving Cert religion class, that was down to 88.4% and by 2006 it was down again to 86.8%. Now granted, the physical numbers of people self-identifying as Catholic has actually gone up along with the population, but that may be coming to an end.

First of all, in the same thirty year stretch that self-identifying Catholics went down by 6%, the amount of people claiming no religion quadrupled. Secondly, what the figures don’t account for is the amount of nominal Catholics, those who go to mass at Easter or Christmas and other such events but otherwise wouldn’t attend religiously. As it were. It’s those people that will likely signal a watershed moment in Irish life. For while the changes in Ireland’s economic structure have been noisy and tumultuous, a much more quiet social revolution has been building steam over the last few years, and it’ll come to a head soon.

Back in 2006, I wouldn’t have dreamt of putting down anything other than Roman Catholic on the census form. Now, there’s no way in Hades I’d tick that box. In 2006 I was happy to belong to the broad church, as it were, comfortable with the idea that mass was the way I demonstrated faith even if I personally disagreed with large swathes of Catholic doctrine, focusing more on the spirit rather than the letter of the law. Five years later, a combination of the deplorable revelations of the Murphy and Ryan reports and general exasperation at the Church’s increasingly insane intransigence eventually made me give up. I’m hardly the only one.

If as I suspect the number of people identifying as Catholics drops quite sharply in this census (or indeed the one after) that in itself will be significant, but more significant still will be the way that bears out in real life. A great many social events in Ireland still revolve around the Church, like baptisms, communions and confirmations. A lot of people who aren’t ardent mass-goers still attend these events, either through social convention, a residual sense of duty, keeping up appearances or just wanting a quiet life. More and more, they’re treated as pageants with an hour-long sit surrounded by stained glass attached anyway. Priests may disapprove of that, but so weak is their bargaining position nowadays, they can hardly turn down the business. But what happens when people eventually decide they won’t go through the pseudo-religious motions anymore, especially people of my generation who’ll likely be having the majority of their kids in the next decade or so? That answer to the question will depend on education.

The Church doesn’t just hold a lot of the cards in terms of social functions; it also controls the vast, vast majority of primary school administration. If you apply to be a teacher in a primary school a priest will be on the interviewing panel, and if you want to send your child to that school then communion and confirmation prep will form a large proportion of their second and sixth class, with a healthy dose of religion thrown in all the other years. If you’re not comfortable with that, your options aren’t exactly extensive.

In certain situations the Church seem willing to relinquish that control and if they do, like the census figures themselves, the attendance at religious rituals not really adhered to will slide gradually but noticeably, as indeed is proper. But if the Church doesn’t move quickly enough, or far enough, then a new generation of non-believers who have no allegiance to Catholicism, aren’t afraid to say as much and not inclined to pass it on will not be slow to question the absurdity of the status quo. The census on the 10th April is, in one form or another, likely to prompt a High Noon that’s been a long time coming. Thank God for that.

Read more: The Irish are fast losing their religion say experts

Ireland needs to grow up - Queen Elizabeth's visit to Ireland

At the risk of getting a pasting, here goes: I fully welcome the Queen’s visit to Ireland in May, or whenever it is she’s coming.

You’d think in an Ireland that has done a lot of growing up in years passed this would go without saying, and for the vast majority of people it probably won’t be an issue, but already I can hear the hysterical cavalry saddling up. Within days of the announcement, I began hearing all sorts of reasons why she shouldn’t come: the expense, the worry that her coming will cause trouble, or simply because she’s the Queen. None of these pass muster. 

First of all, why so hostile? When it boils down to it, the Queen is just another head of state, like Mary McAleese with a room full of jewels, visiting a neighbouring country, as heads of state are wont to do. And if the notion that the Queen is “just another head of state” horrifies you, why on earth would it? Even when the Anglo-Irish relationship was at its most fractious, the Queen’s role in the defining moments of The Troubles was negligible. It’s not as if she ordered the introduction of internment without trial, ordered people shot on Bloody Sunday or took a horrifyingly obstinate line against the hunger strikers personally. In that respect the Queen is a victim of her position: she can’t speak out against government policy no matter how much she might abhor it, as all hell would break loose otherwise. If you have a gripe with, as Gerry Adams referred to them as, “legacy issues”, then blame Margaret Thatcher, or Jim Callaghan, or Harold Wilson, or Ted Heath. Not the woman who spends her days visiting factories and youth centres and Commonwealth countries. 

Let’s consider that phrase Gerry Adams used in reference to the visit, actually. “Legacy issues”. I mean, where do you start with that one? Throughout the general election campaign I was critical of the way Micheal Martin insinuated Sinn Féin still had a whiff of dodginess about them, and how it was wholly disingenuous of him to encourage Sinn Féin into power-sharing and talking about a new future in the North while simultaneously intimating they weren’t fit for office and their old past in the South.  Now sadly it seems Gerry has used that same act on the Queen. Given the fact power-sharing was delayed in the North for so long by the likes of the Democratic Unionist Party because of the legacy issues they had with Sinn Féin, it was a bizarre choice of words. Nearly two years ago to the day Martin McGuinness called the dissidents who killed the soldiers at Massarene Barracks “traitors”. That was a huge leap from the dark days of “These shootings are inevitable given the actions of the British Government”, or words to that effect. Why a woman in her eighties still bothers them so much is beyond me. 

And then there’s the money issue. We can’t afford visits like this, apparently. An economic situation like ours will inevitably account for an increase in utilitarian deficit hawks, but the cost of such a trip would be miniscule compared to, say, the cost of buying and then storing voting machines. Then of course, the old Wilde maxim about the difference between price and value comes into play. Within the space of twelve months, we’ll have had the first British monarch to visit the Republic of Ireland, and an unvarnished mea culpa from the British Government on Bloody Sunday. The Saville Report, incidentally, cost £200 million, a figure scorned by those on the troglodyte wing of the DUP. You can’t put a price on banishing old ghosts. 

That the Queen coming would stir emotions is unsurprising, but it certainly isn’t logical. It is however a chance to show that Ireland doesn’t have to feel like a victim for the whole of its existence, that it can look at its past with acceptance and its future with hope, and that it can look its neighbour and former foe in the eye as equals. And even if the silent majority of Irish people don’t, as Ward Bond put it in The Quiet Man, “cheer like Protestants” during her visit, polite indifference would do much the same job. And if the loud minority could keep it down, the kind of people who shout “800 years ya c**t!” at an (Irish) DJ friend of mine with an English accent while he’s working, or who talk about the occupied six counties despite having never been further north than Athlone, that would be even better.

Election after maths - a default victory for Fine Gael's Enda Kenny?

In and around the 2007 mark, some of the higher lights of my existence were regular discussions I’d have with a friend of mine called Estella. Punctuated only by the occasional intake of tea and or scones in our favourite Galway haunt, we’d talk about all sorts of things but invariably, at some point or other, the conversation would swing to our mutual and often acidic dislike of Fianna Fáil. Neither of us could abide the fecklessness, the smugness, the successive waste of opportunity and money, and we were similarly astonished how they seemed to consistently get away with it all.

Estella is at Exeter University now, and in her absence I tried to keep her updated on the seismic events of Election Day we couldn’t have imagined years ago. It’s just a shame she, like a lot of my friends who’ve had to leave Ireland for one reason or another, wasn’t able to vote on this one. It certainly wasn’t for lack of interest.

But if voting was out of the question, revelling in the cataclysmic embarrassment of Minister after Minister would have to do for Estella and everyone else. Mary Coughlan’s vote more than halved  in Donegal South West and was eliminated on the fourth count. Mary Hanafin and Barry Andrews barely scraped 15% between them in Dun Laoghaire while serial poll-topper Willie O’Dea’s vote share dropped by nearly two thirds, an occurrence more embarrassing than having his insane eyebrows shaved off.

The real 'piece de resistance' of this election, the political nerd’s answer to the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, was the downfall of Dick Roche and John O’Donoghue. While they’d have been turfed out on their asses decades ago in most other countries, The Bull and The Roche hung on until last weekend, when their gout-ridden fingers finally gave up the ghost. Dick Roche, who became a terrifyingly present fixture on British TV during the darker moments of the IMF intervention, could only drum up 5%, while O’Donoghue’s vote collapsing by 10% provided him with the opportunity to make a statement that would make even the most sure-stomached among us vomit in outrage: “I hope that the irony will not be lost upon you, that I stand here on my evening of defeat, in a hall, this magnificent sports complex, which I helped to build”. May his kind never be elected again.

Specific cases aside, the big picture of this election is startling. Fianna Fáil have gone from never not having a TD in every constituency to having no party representation in 25 of the 43 constitutuencies.

In Dublin, they have 1 TD out of 47. It’s unbelievable to the point of anomaly. As such if Fianna Fáil’s performance was borne out of mistake after mistake, Fine Gael’s rise to 76 seats was borne out of avoiding too many of them. Enda Kenny didn’t so much win this election as defeat the others on away goals, and at some invisible point during the campaign people decided that a Fine Gael – dominated government was what they wanted and they’d tolerate Kenny to have it.

That sense of default victory combined with the constrictive state of the public purse means that in this, the most transformative election in living memory, the public mood has stayed basically the same. It’s unlikely Enda Kenny can summon us out of our torpor. And with Labour looking all but certain to become junior partners in government, that would leave Fianna Fáil, battered and bewildered though they are, as the single biggest party in opposition. The numbers may be skewed dramatically, but the reality is political reality is the same as it ever was, and from that position Fianna Fáil can rebuild just in time for the centenary of the Easter Rising. After the 2007 election, Estella and I would regularly ask each other “How did Fianna Fáil stay in?” The chances of us in 2017 asking each other “How did Fianna Fáil get back in?” look all too likely

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A look back at the national distraction that was the Irish General Election campaign

As campaigning finally ends and people go to the polls to administer electoral justice, my current thoughts on the general election are summed up by a question President George H.W. Bush asked Dan Quayle, as reported by the former VP to the LA Times: “I know you've had some rough times, and I want to do something that will show the nation what faith that I have in you, in your maturity and sense of responsibility. Would you like a puppy?”

The campaign has been an exasperating one, and at this point distraction is the only thing that makes it any way endurable. But while it’s been an incredibly disappointing few weeks for illuminating discussion with any social element or planning into the future, it hasn’t been at all bad when it comes to amusing sideshows.
Fine Gael have furnished us with the majority of the comic relief (whether or not that’s an omen is anyone’s guess), the first incident being Enda putting a bet on himself to win the election. With a guide dog behind the counter. Enda’s personal popularity ratings started to steadily rise following his meeting with Clive The Awesome Labradoodle. Coincidence, I think not.

But if his meeting with Clive gave him a bump in the polls, Enda’s jumping about in platform game format gave everyone else a stitch in their stomach from laughing so hard. “Go Ireland”, named after the action seeing the game would want you to do, involves Enda hopping around icing opposition TDs in his quest to do whatever the hell it is he wants to do. It’s awful, though not as bad as their previous amendment on whack-a-mole involving government ministers. If Fine Gael’s approach to running the country is even slightly similar to their approach to technology, then we are well and truly done for.

If only it stopped there. Over the campaign one story has been flying round the internet (but very few other places) that Enda Kenny dropped the N-bomb back in 2002 during an anecdote about the assassinated former leader of the Democratic Republic of Congo Patrice Lumumba, and then told the journalists in the audience not to report it. Our next Taoiseach, folks.

Not that Kenny has been the only leader in a racial embarrassment the likes of which generally only happen to Larry David. Micheal Martin wandered into a bizarre impression of a Chinese person saying how good Ireland was at making software. Far and away the best interlude of the election though was Enda’s running mate Michael Ring being accosted by a reveller at a hen party who, wielding a giant inflatable penis, pushed it through the window of the van in which he was travelling. Captions on a postcard please to the regular address.

And while we’re handing out awards, the title of “most hardcore” candidate in this election would have to go to Betty Holmes. A couple of days after declaring she’d run, she damaged her ribs after a rough landing at City of Derry Airport and spent a couple of days in Altnagalvin Hospital. Having discharged and got her papers in hours before the declaration deadline, she then spent a couple more days in hospital in Dublin, having an angiogram and stents put in a major artery, all within a week of the beginning of the campaign. As a health lobby candidate, she certainly has relevant experience.

Betty Holmes was one of the candidates who participated in the Donegal Youth Council debates I hosted last week, and while she performed well, there was one candidate who really stood out. The redoubtable Councillor Ian McGarvey, who’ll turn 81 this year, emphatically made his mark on the group of young people in the audience by showing up 90 minutes late, taking his seat at the top table, and launching into a statement that began “There are two things in this life: nonsense and reality...”. He got a standing ovation when he finished. As election campaigns go, this one confused nonsense and reality like no other I can remember.

State of independents: gearing up for the Irish General Election

The general election due to take place in Ireland is likely to be one of the most extraordinary we’ve ever had. Not only is the economic situation more consumed by more dire straits than Mark Knopfler’s studio technician, but confidence in pretty much every major Irish institution is hanging comically round the ankles.

So while people may be united in loathing, their voting preferences are all over the shop. Fine Gael are riding high as a party and Enda Kenny, previously only marginally more popular than shin splints, is now getting kudos for not screwing up more than anything else. Labour are slipping behind, with even Eamon Gilmore’s personal popularity falling. Fianna Fáil are hoping their numbers go up thanks to Micheal Martin, the theory being it’s very hard to be angry at somebody who agrees with you and doesn’t argue back, but it’s not working. Sinn Féin and the United Left Alliance are picking up support in the polls but that tends to fall off when people actually reach the ballot box.

Add to that the multiple (some might say numbing) TV debates this year, and with offhand comments all but impossible to bury now in our internet-omnipresent age, there will also be an unprecedented opportunity to see parties and party members screw up. And while the state of the parties will no doubt leave us wholly exasperated, that leaves the way open for a group unusually prevalent people in Irish politics anyway to really make their mark this time: Independents.

Due to Ireland’s proportional representation system it’s much easier for an independent to get elected here than in the UK or the US, and this time round it’ll be easier still. Traditionally, independent candidates are also either ex-members of parties with a strong local base like Neil Blaney or Michael Lowry, a campaigner on a particular community issue like saving the local hospital such as Tom Foxe or Paudge Connolly, or left-leaning candidates with a broader focus who don’t correspond to any label and benefit from the anti-establishment tag political independence gives them, like Tony Gregory or Finian McGrath. And of course, some independent candidates are just plain nuts.

But this time, the “feck-ye-all” sentiment affecting parties, combined with a concerted effort in some quarters for a technical Independent group of TD’s to keep them honest, means that an unprecedented number of non-party politicians look likely to take their seats in the Dáil next time. And while big names like David McWilliams and Fintan O’Toole have declined to run, there are more than enough individuals willing to pick up the mantle who could win a seat, making a political landscape in flux even more volatile.

Senator Shane Ross is one of the bright lights of the field, and he’s almost certain of getting a seat in Dublin South, but there are plenty of others in the capital who could be sitting next to him. Markets analyst Paul Somerville, youthful muso Dylan Haskins and the Christy Moore-backed Mannix Flynn are all running on their own steam in Dublin South East, one of the most consistently competitive and difficult to call constituencies in the country. Across O’Connell Bridge in Dublin Central ex-Sinn Féiner Christy Burke could not only embarrass Mary Lou McDonald (who couldn’t win a Mary Lou McDonald lookalike contest) but Fianna Fáil too. Now Bertie Ahern has absconded Fianna Fáil’s candidates are sitting TD Cyprian Brady, who got fewer votes last time than a High School Class President but got in on Bertie’s coat-tails anyway, could cancel out local councillor Mary Fitzpatrick, allowing Burke to come up through the middle. In Dublin North East, the leading light of the motley New Vision alliance might convert his burgeoning media profile into a decent showing.

Beyond the pale dishevelled property developer Mick Wallace might make something of it in Wexford, while down the road in Waterford popular city councillor John Halligan is looking very good for a seat in a constituency full of new faces and lacking any real big hitters. While in Cork there are a throng of independent candidates running, they’re in a crowded and talented field which should hamper their progress, but in the rest of Munster their chances are better. Tom Fleming and Mattie McGrath are ex-Fianna Fáilers and in spite of their baggage will still probably poll rather respectably, though probably at the expense of another Independent, Michael Healy-Rae, son of former Minister for Combovers Jackie.

In Clare James Breen, who crashed out of contention in 2007, rallied back enough at the local elections in 2009 to put him back in the mix. Galway City might return two independents, as Labour rebel Catherine Connolly and PD survivor Noel Grealish both look in good shape, while further up Connacht Micheal Kilcoyne could cause an upset in Mayo. In Roscommon-South Leitrim, Luke “Ming The Merciless” Flanagan, one of the most well-known politicians in the country for various reasons, might raise the amount of independents in the Dáil and the gaiety of the nation if he finally makes it this time, and up north in Donegal South West Thomas Pringle will push hard for the third seat after a strong showing at the recent by-election.

In the rest of Leinster not many indies stand out, but former Fianna Fail councillor Kevin “Boxer” Moran could throw a cat among the O’Rourkes, while the rather sedate race in Kildare South has just been livened up by Clifford T Reid, who ran in the 2004 European elections under a “Stop The Paedophiles” ticket.

Paddy Kennedy in the same constituency stands a better chance of being elected, while in the bordering constituency of Kildare North Catherine Murphy is in great shape to win back the seat she lost in 2007.

If even a fraction of the candidates I’ve mentioned get elected, and if a few other pop a surprise out of nowhere, then you would have a very strong group of between 10 and 15 independents who, given the fractious state of the big parties, could wield enormous power in the formation of the next government. And with such a large group with such varied placings on the political spectrum, that’s where the fun begins.

Youth Council debates in Ireland - candidates that stand to change the face of Irish politics

Far be it from TV3 or RTE to hold sway over all the debating fun over the next few weeks, as this week the Donegal Youth Council are hosting debates, which I’ll be moderating, on the 15th and 16th of February. On the 15th the candidates in the North East constituency will plead their case in Letterkenny, while the following night the candidates in the South West in Donegal Town will take their turn. It promises to be an interesting and illuminating couple of nights.

For starters this is a debate where the topics of discussion will be provided by the young people in attendance, and will be free to comment and ask questions of any candidate at any point. As young people feel more acutely than ever, unemployment, education and future prospects are serious issues in this election, and these debates will give a golden opportunity for them to directly question their prospective new TD’s on the issues that matter to them most, and ascertain who most corresponds to their own worldview. And even though a great deal of that audience will be under 18, the choices those candidates make after they’re elected will have a big effect on how the next five years and beyond of their lives go. And they know it.

Discussing election topics they wanted brought up on the night with the youth councilors last week was truly inspiring. The range and depth of the discussion, with young people ranging from 13 to 17 years of age, was seriously impressive. We talked for two hours but we could’ve easily talked for another two. Whatever and about the rest of the country, this was an apathy-free zone, and it was beyond refreshing.

It’s that spirit that we’ll hopefully capture on the night. There’ll be plenty of debates – three way debates, five way debates, debates in Irish, swimsuit debates probably – that will deal with technical issues, or sound like a theory exam, or worse yet just take shots across the room from each other.

But this debate will hopefully get beyond that theory, and we’ll see what the candidates really think and how their ideas will translate into action.

And rather than talking about oblique concepts like “the smart economy” or creating jobs” or “political reform”, the candidates will be fielding questions from young people living and breathing the situations they’re asking about, issues ranging from road safety to health provision to the school curriculum and emigration and many more besides. The willingness and graciousness of all the candidates who have so readily agreed to participate in these Youth Council debates just goes to show how valuable the candidates consider young people’s voices to be. And with the amount of candidates running, young people ought to be getting plenty of answers.

On the declaration deadline on Wednesday, there were a massive 20 candidates declared between the two constituencies, and given the dramatic events of the last couple of weeks everything is to play for. Not only that, but the state of play in both constituencies couldn’t be more different that the last election. Back in 2007 when the Youth Council organized similar debates, Niall Blaney told the audience that the vote was being held on a Thursday to make sure people who were perhaps going to their holiday homes at the weekend would be able to vote without problems. Not only is Niall Blaney gone now, but so are most of the second homes.

It’s fitting that debates featuring candidates that stand to change the face of Irish politics forever are being hosted by the newest batch of Youth Councilors, only in the job themselves a couple of months. While they’re only starting out on their careers in public service, their passion, interest and engagement is prodigious. They may not have a vote, but they have a voice all the same, and a big stake in how this country is run now and into the future. And that’s why these will be the antidote to televised debates.