The EU and Ireland - the importance of being close to Boston and Brussels

During the tremulous time following the 1992 general election, the embattled Taoiseach Albert Reynolds was handed a lifeline. With his grasp on power hanging in the balance, Reynolds went to an EU summit in Edinburgh at the end of that year and secured £8billion in European structural funds. Even his most optimistic supporters were expecting something closer to six. Emboldened, Reynolds told his press secretary, “Now watch me put a government together”.

That money was not only was an instrumental element in keeping Reynolds in power, it also became a vital element of policy. In the years since 1992, all manner of capital projects have the EU’s starry prints all over it. From the Luas and the M50 to research facilities and local enterprise boards, and whether it’s widely known or accepted or not, the EU’s structural funds helped build an entire national infrastructure.

Small wonder then that the EU’s Open Days event, run by the Directorate General for Regional Policy, is such a big draw. It’s the single biggest event the EU hosts every year, with thousands of interested parties coming from every townland in Europe. This year, I was one of them. 

A couple of things struck me from the start. First, structural funds may not be the silver bullet they once were, both because of relative year-on-year improvements and the banking cataclysm, but they’re still vital as a means of realising key investments. The second thing I found striking was how clear the focus was on what those key investments would be: emerging business and research. It may have been roads in the past, but from here on in, it’s SME and R&D.

There were other talking points and debates that ran through the week. “Macroeconomic conditionality” became the unlikely catchphrase of the whole event, with a strenuous debate revolving round whether sanctioning regions or countries that don’t use their funds properly would disproportionately affect the poorest countries who needed the money most. Then there was the issue of credit. For once in a European context, we weren’t referring to the debt kind.

Often, money distributed to the respective government departments of Europe is appropriated as such. Since any structural fund money has to be matched by national governments, the European influence can often be underplayed or lost altogether. In a time when passive Euroscepticism is becoming more and more fashionable, the way the EU asserts itself in this regard is becoming more and more important. 

Plenary sessions and debates aside there were also a host of seminars where people could showcase the ways they used their funding. One particularly interesting session involved Holland and its approach to tackling youth unemployment, the scope of which puts our own much-maligned Job Bridge to shame.

Over the next weeks I’ll be considering the finer points of some of the issues brought up in Brussels, and with the announcement in the last week of The Gathering in 2013, it’s important to balance the relationship with our friends within and without Europe. Being close to Boston doesn’t mean we have to ignore Berlin.

Debating with the stars - candidates for president put to the test

Irish presidential candidates

We’re up to our eyes in Presidential al debates at the minute. First Sean O’Rourke took the magnificent seven into RTE’s far-from spacious radio studios for a ferocious grilling, followed by Ryan Tubridy’s parboil on the Late Late. But on Tuesday night, TV3’s Vincent Browne lobbed them all in a microwave and set it to high for 90 minutes. 

Vincent Browne’s interviewing style can easily be summed up in one phrase – “Why aren’t you crying yet?” – and therefore the debate, while compelling TV, generated more heat than light as it highlighted Vincent’s ability to be a relentless badass above pretty much everything else. 

So in view of the showmanship that has become a prerequisite of the campaign, and given the fact Dancing With The Stars is concurrently cutting a swathe/rug Stateside at the minute, I figured the only way to assess the Presidential candidates was Len Goodman-stylee:

Martin McGuinness

Vincent’s interrogation style was water off this duck’s back and he came across very composed, as Gay Mitchell’s insistence on throwing epithets at him just gave him a chance to look more Presidential. 

Vincent pulling out a range of books alleging he was in the IRA was a sensational stunt, but the thud of a library on his desk drowned out some pretty ground-breaking things said by McGuinness, including referencing the Somme and Ulster Solemn League and Covenant in relation to centenary commemoration. His insistence on telling us he only wants to be paid in tea and biscuits is getting a bit repetitive, but his steady performance combined with the hysterical bleating his candidacy is causing is making him a contender. Score: 8/10

Mary Davis

Even with the strutting in neon suits on her posters, there’s something oddly staid about Davis. Her attempts at positioning herself as Mary III aren’t working, and it’s hard to even recall any great zinger she came out with during the night beyond the usual gubbins about her board appointments. This was borne out on the TV3 website, the viewers of which deemed her to have placed joint dead last. On the face of it, someone with her experience and background should be a much more appealing candidate, but something is missing. Rating: 5/10

Michael D Higgins

Ireland’s own wizard poet took an economical approach to speaking during the debate, backing away from the contentious scraps and speaking in measured, statesmanlike tones. He probably demonstrated that he gets the role best of all the candidates, quoting articles of the constitution left, right and centre. The only one sticky issue was when Vincent attacked his role in government being at variance with being an independent thinker, particularly in relation to the tax amnesty of ’93. Michael D responded with rare straightforward honesty: he wasn’t proud of it but used the money to buy Collins Barracks military museum. Score: 9/10

Dana

Disaster. No matter what the topic, she brought it back to her central point: that the President is the only person that can stop the EU from plying the constitution with sweeties and bundling it into a van. More suited to running for Mayor of Wasilla than President of Ireland. Score: 1/10

Sean Gallagher

The country version of 30 Rock’s Jack Donaghy has gone up in a lot of people’s estimation since the campaign, even coming second in a recent poll. He did however get a hammering about his Fianna Fáil past. He talked with clarity and confidence, but I can’t really remember what he was saying while being clear and confident. Score: 6/10

Gay Mitchell 

Somebody needs to have a word. There may be a parallel dimension in which Gay Mitchell constantly going after Martin McGuinness is working, but it’s not this one. He spoke well at points but ultimately comes off too tetchy and obsessed to make any real impression. Call off your goons, Gay! Score: 5/10

David Norris

His penchant for pressing the big red button strikes again. Most commentators compared his inability to answer the legal questions surrounding his letters to Israel to Brian Lenihan’s “mature Recollection” meltdown on the RTE news 21 years ago. The sad part is that when he spoke well he was excellent, on mental health issues and his fight to get homosexuality decriminalised for instance, but his cumulative performance did him no favours. Score: 6/10

What’s the point of a United Ireland? - Martin McGuinness' presidential campaign raises questions

Martin McGuinness

Last week’s column on Martin McGuinness has, to say the least, prompted a great deal of debate. While a lot of it was regarding the rights or wrongs of the circumstances of McGuinness and by extension Republicanism in general, some involved the nature and rationale of the conflict itself. But really, what possible reason could there be for a united Ireland?

There are certainly no logical reasons for such a move. In a lot of cases, it seems to me, the desire to unite Ireland comes from a deep-seated case of geographical obsessive compulsion: Ireland is an island, that stands alone on the north Atlantic, and having another country administering a small part of it is just plain messy. The anti-partition school of thought in favor of a United Ireland is related to this, in as much as they claim every political problem from social inequality to the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa could be solved by scrubbing the border.

And then there’s the good old irredentists, the ones who maintain the Brits are occupying the six counties and that Ireland is for the Irish, whatever the hell that means. None of these have any real life application. I’ve lived on the border basically all my life and I don’t understand the fervency towards what is and has always been an infeasible pipe-dream.
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The reality is that green post boxes in Strabane will not make Strabane any happier or more prosperous a place to live in. It will not make the villages between Strabane and Derry that paint their curbs red, white and blue and brandish union flags and ensigns any more favorable to Ireland, or any less attached to Britain. It will not change the fact that whatever the nationality of the people who live in those villages, they can probably trace their family roots as far back on this island as anyone.

Besides, a lot of Donegal Catholics have Scottish planter lineage too who converted at some point along the way. They’re hardly more Irish because of that. Britain handing over the deeds to Northern Ireland would not have any positive transformative effect. Combining our forces will not create a land of milk and honey.

As the recent Life and Times survey bears out (see link above), this isn’t a niche opinion. Most people in Ireland, northern Catholics or otherwise, are much more concerned about tackling social and economic matters than eternally gazing through a national prism. Besides, Ireland has always been much more complex and interwoven than the irredentists like to imagine.

Taking Donegal as an example, we have much more tangible connection with Glasgow than we do with Cork, lovely a place as it is. It’s much easier and quicker to get to Glasgow from Letterkenny than it is to Cork too. People where I’m from who live in the Republic often do a lot of their shopping, socializing and even working across the border, the presence of which forms no impediment to traveling or interacting. In Padraig Pearse’s proclamation nearly one hundred years ago, he talked about freedom and liberty, about equal rights and opportunity, about pursuing happiness and prosperity.

As our access to the world and its different cultures becomes greater and greater, so long as we fight for those principles does it really matter what flags are flying overhead?

Martin McGuinness' run for presidency may insult some but we can't run from our past

Presidential candidate Martin McGuinness

I had to admit I was slightly surprised at first that Sinn Féin were seeking an internal candidate to contest the Presidency, on the basis that the touted names wouldn’t exactly be setting anyone’s world alight.

Mary Lou McDonald? As electable as diabetes. Michelle Gildernew? Barely known south of Aughnacloy. But then, they pulled the rabbit out of the hat: Martin McGuinness. I can’t imagine for the life of me why.

Of course, on a certain level it makes a lot of sense: a republican heavyweight recognised around the world attempts to become President bang on time for the 100th anniversary of the Easter Rising. But of course the flipside to that is the whirlpool of questions about his role in some of the darker corners of his and the country’s history the Presidential race has become.

McGuinness himself seems to have been genuinely surprised at the focus on his time in the IRA while he falls over himself to be statesmanlike and magnanimous, which demonstrates either surprising naiveté or a man so post-nationalist he’s genuinely forgot all about it.

While you have to wonder at the wisdom at the move, and how prepared all concerned were, his candidacy has unearthed the curious double standard at the heart of Irish politics.

First of all, to put my own cards on the table: I’m as much of a republican as James Connolly was a Progressive Democrat. I can’t think of an issue I care less about than the physical unity of Ireland: as long as I can talk freely to my friends in Belfast who grew up in different communities to me or roam into Derry whenever I want I don’t care if the place is governed by Ireland, Britain or Tuvalu.
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While the resurgence of the IRA didn’t happen in a vacuum in the late 60s and it’s easy to understand why people joined in those early days, I’ve never thought what they considered to be their war to be anything but counter-productive, misguided and ultimately malevolent. In many ways, I’m probably typical of the West Brit media types Martin McGuinness has been railing against in the last couple of days. But while I don’t have any intention to vote for him, and while I think he was mad to run in the first place, I have no inherent hostility to his candidacy either.

The whole point of the drive for peace and reconciliation is that it’s infinitely better for republicans who were violent in the past to be brought in from the cold, to categorically accept the mechanisms of a democratic state and reject and condemn their past sins and work towards a situation where that can never happen again, rather than be isolated for ever more. Taking everyone who had a damaging role during The Troubles and winging them into a far-flung cave might make certain people feel better, but it solves no problem.

It’s only right that McGuinness is rigorously taken to task over his past now he’s resolved to try and become head of state, and he really should do some manning up and react to these concerns in a less tetchy, victimised manner, but there seems to be a case of historical statute of limitations among some of his critics. Eamon de Valera became Commander in Chief of the defence forces less than forty years after prompting a civil war and promising to wade through the blood of the soldiers of the Irish government.

Sean Lemass, generally feted as one of the best Taoisigh the country has ever had, famously referred to Fianna Fáil as a slightly constitutional party at the start of his career. Some FF TD’s had guns in their pockets on their first day in the Dáil. Michael Collins, father figure of Fine Gael and heralded on television by one Michael McDowell as Ireland’s greatest ever figure, hardly lived a bloodless life either. And even excluding all that, in five years time there will be massive nationwide celebrations of the anniversary of a small minority of the Irish Volunteer Force unilaterally declaring insurrection while a programme for Irish self-determination was agreed upon and ready to be enforced by elected Irish officials. To the best of my knowledge, the men and women of the Rising didn’t fight the Brits by lobbing water balloons at them.

The sad fact of Irish history is that it is drenched in blood, and that has left a legacy we all struggle with, but we have to deal with that legacy in its entirety: if we deplore the use of the gun in 1972, we can’t intellectually detach ourselves from the fact the use of the gun was deplorable in 1922 as well.

Whether McGuinness’ run for the Presidency was a naive political miscalculation, a case of ego clouding better judgement, or even a deliberately high risk strategy to wipe Fianna Fáil’s eye, the announcement has opened up an uneasy and ill-tempered argument. While disappointing, if for no other reason than so much time is being spent discussing the last 40 years of a man who isn’t going to win anyway rather than focusing on what the candidates can do in the next seven, if the debate makes us think more widely about the leaders of our bullet-riddled past and acts as an ultimate last stand for sympathy of any kind for those sort of politics, perhaps it will be worth it.

Race for Irish Presidency - possible candidates begin to emerge

I have to hand it to you Americans: you’re very early starters.

About a year and a half to go before Obama attempts to get re-elected and already high-profile Republicans are queuing up to get on the good ship More Heat Than Light. We’re not nearly as organised here.

Which is strange, considering our race for the Presidency is a lot more open than the one you’ll be having next year. No incumbent, a range of quality candidates either in the ring or loitering with intent around the ring, but with a couple of months to go the race for the Presidency is still very much in the blocks.

General Election fatigue and bewilderment may have a hand in it (“Did Dick Roche really get such few votes?” a friend of mine is still moved to ask even now) though slowly but surely candidates are getting ready to charge.

David Norris was the first to do so, though he has also been the first embroiled in a scandal, such as it is. In an interview nearly a decade ago, Norris discussed the ancient Greek concept of pederasty, and claimed he might have rather enjoyed an older man mentoring him in the facts of life, as it were.

It of course being impossible to discuss an idea without going along with it, the article kicked up a bit of a fuss, though probably not enough to damage Norris too much. That said, if anyone is going to come out with a statement that becomes the talk of the campaign proper, it’ll be Norris.

Even though Norris is as it stands the hot favourite he still may not yet be allowed to run, as he needs the backing of at least 20 Oireachtas members or four county councils, a bemusing and unnecessary obstacle for independent candidates. But within the bigger parties the state of play is no less clear.

Labour will have to choose between Michael D Higgins, charity CEO Fergus Finlay and health campaigner Kathleen O’Meara, with former Minister Higgins the popular favourite to emerge. In Fine Gael, MEP and ex-TV presenter Mairead McGuinness is seeking nomination as is her colleague in Brussels, the tempestuous Gay Mitchell, but by far their most intriguing candidate is someone who isn’t even a member of the party.

Former European Parliament President and PD representative for Cork Pat Cox is now in the running for the nomination of the biggest party in the Oireachtas following the drop put of big hitters Sean Kelly and John Bruton. He may just win it and he’d be a formidable candidate if he did, but it’ll do nothing to refute his detractors’ impression of him as a vain opportunist.

Meanwhile the shattered remains of Fianna Fáil may not even run a candidate at all. Genial MEP Brian Crowley, who has long held ambitions of a Presidential run, stands the best hope of being an internal candidate who wouldn’t be annihilated, but as it stands the bandwagon is getting behind TV businessman Sean Gallagher, the type of dull bottom line hunter that seems to appeal to people but not to anyone I know.

As usual though, it’s the independents that make races like this. Norris aside Special Olympics head honcho Mary Davis will be a strong candidate and already has a bit of Presidential experience, having sat on Mary McAleese’s Council of State. And then there’s Niall O’Dowd, who I understand is a publisher of some sort.

His entry into the race, while probably leading to manys a Trump-esque column inch, would certainly alter the axes of the race beyond all recognition, as the diaspora is generally an issue where the only action ever committed is raising a glass in their memory.

Our candidates may not be as well-prepared as yours, but I know which one I’m looking forward to more.

President Obama and Ireland - a love story

PHOTOS:  President Obama's trip to Ireland - photo gallery

At the end of this week, we’re likely to feel a bit bereft.

After all, given the febrile flurry of the last fortnight where we’ve hosted the Queen, the President and, eh, Portuguese football fans, you’d be forgiven for wondering who was next. The Pope maybe? The ghost of Che Guevara? Shirley Bassey? Alas, no. No visitors next week. But even though Obama has left us, at least we have the man who nicked his lines in front of his face.

Throughout President Obama’s visit, Enda Kenny looked like a man who could scarcely believe he was doing all the things he was doing, like Scott Bakula at the start of an episode of Quantum Leap. Unfortunately for him, Kenny’s moment where he looks in the mirror and says “Oh boy” occurred in front of a massive crowd on College Green. No doubt conscious of the gravity of introducing President Obama to a podium, Kenny had some fine words to impart before handing over to his good friend Barry. Unfortunately they were almost identical to the words Obama himself used after beating John McCain in November 2008, with references to “America” crudely scribbled out and replaced with “Ireland”. Enda claims the whole thing was a deliberate homage, and as a man who once wrote a sketch performed in secondary school that was almost exclusively lifted/homaged from Frasier, I’m inclined to take him at his word.

With the exception of a comic interlude where Obama and Kenny were interviewed in leather chairs, and the President talked while Enda had a look on his face like he was pretending to understand medieval French, the Taoiseach had no other real part to play, as Obama ramped around the country wielding shovels, drinking Guinness and meeting the relatives. As if often the case with visits like this, what’s rendered is often secondary to the fact that rendering is being done at all, and in that respect the informality and clear enjoyment exhibited by the President and the First Lady on their trip will live long in the memory.

And as memories go Obama’s speech on College Green, with a crowd that looked as if it enveloped pretty much everything south of the Liffey stirred a considerable amount of nostalgia. The last time such a venture was attempted Bill Clinton achieved nigh on demi-God status for his emotional investment in the Irish peace process, that was fifteen years ago. That day he acknowledged that Irish people admitted “they weren’t there yet” when it came to the foundations of a lasting peace, but this week Obama paid tribute to the progress we’ve made since then. Small wonder the mood was so buoyant.

And if he didn’t do a good enough job of winning Ireland over with his love of porter and his high-flying well-done-you-rhetoric, the fact he got The Beast stuck on a grill sealed it. There’s nothing more Irish than driving down a road you shouldn’t.

PHOTOS:  President Obama's trip to Ireland - photo gallery

My favourite revolutionary Thomas “Ken” Whitaker

Loads has been written about the effect and purpose of the leaders of the Easter Rising and it’s not a topic I’ll be adding to in any great detail, but it has caused me to think a lot about the men involved, and whether the country they died for paid a blind bit of notice.

Patrick Pearse, for instance, would likely be horrified that the education system’s “Murder Machine” he railed against a hundred years ago is still basically in place. James Connolly would be similarly horrified that Ireland became such a seedily acquiescent place for ostentatious high-rollers and amoral profiteers. Easter Rising commemorations seem to boil down to histrionic admiration for people whose ideas - or methods - we’re happy to ignore. 

That the leaders of the Easter Rising should be so commemorated is not something that’s going to go out of vogue anytime soon, but there are other Irish revolutionaries deserving of as much if not more praise that we should think about now and then. One of them, my own personal favourite revolutionary, was only born in 1916. His name is TK Whitaker. 

A civil servant who bounded up the ranks with immense and unusual velocity, Thomas “Ken” Whitaker was appointed Secretary of the Department of Finance in 1956 before he turned 40. While there, he initiated the First Programme For Economic Expansion, a red-letter document that shook Ireland out of its protectionist torpor and opened the country up to the world. After leaving the Department of Finance he became Governor of the Central Bank and was a key figure in getting Ireland signed up to the European Common Market. In his later years he founded the Economic  And Social Research Institute, the ESRI, as well as serving as Chancellor of the National University, as a Senator and as Chairman of committees on issues like penal and constitutional reform. But he also had another string to his bow beyond the economic or academic: his expertise on the North.

It was Ken Whitaker along with his northern counterpart Jim Malley that masterminded the historic meeting between Sean Lemass and Terence O’Neill which was the first time opposite numbers from both sides of the border discussed issues of common interest, or indeed anything at all. As a senior advisor to Jack Lynch, he was a resolute voice of moderation when the pressure to respond militarily to civil rights atrocities in the North was beyond intense.  He also wrote papers on Northern Ireland’s constitutional position, with analysis on how the situation there came to be and how it could develop. We may not realise it, but over the last half decade or so Ireland has walked down a road almost single-handedly created by Ken Whitaker. 

Not only was he the first to see the potential of opening up Ireland’s economy, and engaging with Northern Ireland through proper diplomatic means, but he also devised plans to make them reality. Most revolutionaries are willing to die for a country that ought to be, but TK Whitaker dedicated his life for a country that was, and changed it emphatically for the better. And we should commemorate that at every turnabout.