John Ó Néill – Page 7 – Slugger O'Toole

Attorney General re-opens #Ballymurphy inquests

John Ó Néill on November 16, 2011, 12:16 am

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Eleven people were shot dead by British soldiers in Ballymurphy in the three days following the introduction of internment without trial on 9th August 1971. Today, more than forty years later, John Larkin, the Northern Ireland Attorney General, has ordered fresh inquests into the deaths. The original inquests returned an open verdict in 1972 but there was no serious investigation into the behaviour of the paratroopers who carried out the killings. In 1998, some of the families of those that were killed began …

Are the Fine Gael donors the bondholders?

John Ó Néill on November 11, 2011, 12:34 am

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Fine Gael won’t reveal who fund them or the identity of the bondholders who received a $1 billion payout last week. With a further unsecured, unguaranteed, bond due early next year and some major cuts coming in the December budget, surely it is time for Fine Gael to come clean about the identities of it’s donors? The ban on corporate fund-raising by the party was lifted when Enda Kenny took over as party leader. Since then, the party has managed to build up significant financial resources …

#FreedomWaves now en route to #Gaza.

John Ó Néill on November 3, 2011, 9:59 pm

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For Update see below. Two ships are currently in international waters on their way from Fethiye in Turkey to try and deliver medical aid to Gaza. The Palestine Chronicle reports that, on the Freedom Waves flotilla, there are twenty-seven activists from nine countries, including the US, Canada, Denmark, Belgium, Germany and Australia alongside Palestinians from Bethlehem and Haifa. One of the two ships in the flotilla is the MV Saoirse, the Irish boat which was sabotaged en route to join an aid flotilla earlier this year. There was no …

I share the Irish public’s dismay at the cost and unfairness of this policy

John Ó Néill on November 3, 2011, 12:21 am

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In this morning’s Irish Times, the Taoiseach, Enda Kenny, offered everyone the wisdom of his thoughts on the payment of a €700m unsecured unguaranteed Anglo-Irish Bank bond. The whole piece is worth a read. He states that: Part of the existing agreement with our external partners is not to allow any Irish bank, including Anglo Irish Bank, default on its debts to bondholders for fear of paralysing wider European financial markets. I share the Irish public’s dismay at the cost …

Lab + SF = FF + FG + 18.4%: #aras11 warm down

John Ó Néill on October 29, 2011, 12:19 am

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Presidential elections don’t tend to tear the space-time fabric of Irish politics. But as mood shifts, Mary Robinson and Mary McAleese both managed to encapsulate subtle moves away from the manichean nonsense of patrician Catholic ‘civil war’ politics south of the border. The soon to be returned 9th President, Michael D, will happily cite them as examples of why any judgement on him should be deferred to hindsight. At least he won’t be burdened by the dire forecasts that the 8th President carried into office with her. While …

For that reason, Sean, I’m out: #aras11 injury time.

John Ó Néill on October 25, 2011, 1:48 pm

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Sean Gallagher, the Fianna Fáil independent candidate who has been leading the latter stages of the #aras11 race must be hoping that the finishing lines comes as quickly as possible. Martin McGuinness presided over a a very public unfolding of Gallagher’s memory of collecting donations for Fianna Fáil on the final debate on Frontline last night (although no-one seems to have noticed that he had instant recall of the individual he claimed to have had no memory of seconds before). This included a dreadful gaffe in referring to an …

After all they did, are FF set to win #aras11?

John Ó Néill on October 19, 2011, 8:00 am

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After all they did, are Fianna Fáil going to win the Presidential election? Or, perhaps as pertinently, are the media going to win it for them? While Mick suggests that they are right to protest that Gallagher is not their ‘dog without a collar’, the limited ability of the media to amass any significant details of Gallagher’s Fianna Fáil CV is in contrast to the detail being presented on the other candidates (with the obvious exception of Michael D). Gallagher …

While Ireland still holds these graves…

John Ó Néill on October 14, 2011, 8:00 am

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There is nothing that casts the gulf in language and empathy between nationalists and any sort of long term reconciliation within the UK in such stark contrasts as episodes like Pat Finucane’s murder by agents of the state, and, the unfolding of the subsequent attempts by the state to simulate a process of legal and judicial redress. Both nationalism and unionism regularly struggle under the weight of their preferred histories but the diametric perspectives offered by their differing requirements for a relationship with London can often find ways to securely root those histories in relatively …

Michael D, the Government candidate: entitlement and #aras11.

John Ó Néill on October 12, 2011, 12:41 am

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This evening saw the latest in the seemingly endless set-piece ‘debates’ between the Presidential candidates. And it showed up the first significant flaw in the campaign of Michael D Higgins, who has, by and large, been alone in being given a free run in the media thus far. Tonight’s debate was chaired by Matt Cooper and broadcast live on Today FM (you can catch up on it by listening back to The Last Word from today on here). The clamour for US-style debates in Irish and British electoral campaigns began a few years ago but …

Seán Gallagher, a Fianna Fáil member in the #aras11 race?

John Ó Néill on October 9, 2011, 12:40 am

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Having managed to mostly fly below the radar, it will be interesting to see if Seán Gallagher, now having shown well enough in the opinion polls, suddenly comes under tighter focus. On RTE, he finally put to bed some of the issues around his membership of Fianna Fáil today. Well, actually, as it turns out, he didn’t, as David Cochrane, over at politics.ie, has adroitly pointed out. It seems that Gallagher’s resignation from the National Executive of Fianna Fáil was only in January this year (p.ie has …

Hogan hits the panic button: #aras11

John Ó Néill on October 2, 2011, 11:51 pm

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While the Dunphy show had the Mitchell v McGuinness face-off, the real fun was elsewhere, including today’s Sunday Independent which had a direct attack on Sinn Féin’s candidate by Fine Gael’s Phil Hogan (amongst others). It is hard to believe (looking at this morning’s paper) that the campaign is still a long way out from election day. Hogan, a Carlow-Kilkenny TD, is the party’s blunt director of elections and general fixer (and erstwhile Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government). While the paper contained a number of articles, Hogan’s intervention in the presidential …

Gay Mitchell and the Commonwealth

John Ó Néill on September 30, 2011, 11:51 am

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Gay Mitchell may be no stranger to Slugger, but for those unfamiliar with the other candidates in the presidential election, Cormac McQuinn’s critical piece in the Daily Mail back in July provides a useful introduction to the Dublin MEP. That Slugger piece from 2006 links back to Mitchell’s address to the annual Fine Gael Collins-Griffith memorial in August 2006 on the Fine Gael website, an item which is no longer accessible (or archived) although some quotes and more comments can be read here and here. …

From #aras97 to #aras11: has the media decommissioned?

John Ó Néill on September 27, 2011, 9:22 am

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Áras an Uachtaráin - residence of the Irish President, and soon to be home to Northern Irish bees

Some more of the commentary on the 1997 Presidential campaign. While many new media tools are available for #aras11, the behind-the-scenes briefing and leaks are probably no different (the end products are summarised here by Mick). While politics inevitably includes a deep interrogation of individual candidate’s past utterances, the contribution of the media to the shape of past election campaigns tends to be kept below the radar by the, eh, media. Similarly, northern commentators, for long briefed by the NIO and security ‘sources’, don’t tend to be reflective when it comes …

#aras11: If I am wrong about my own people, then so be it.

John Ó Néill on September 21, 2011, 3:02 pm

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Rather than merely add to the growing fascination with Martin McGuinness on here, I fished this out of The Irish Times archive. The comments below are the main substance of an article entitled “Why Mary McAleese must be stopped: In a reply to his critics, Eoghan Harris sets out his reasons for trying to block Mary McAleese’s campaign for the Presidency” which was published on the 24th October 1997 (in The Irish Times), with the election six days later. I’m not suggesting you should make …

#aras11: He doesn’t know it’s a damn show. He thinks it’s a damn fight!

John Ó Néill on September 17, 2011, 8:34 am

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There was genuine surprise at last night’s announcement that Martin McGuinness is being considered as a Presidential candidate by Sinn Féin. He still has to cross two obstacles, though: ratification by the Sinn Féin Ard Chomhairle; and, acquiring three additional nominations to add to the seventeen Sinn Féin Oireachtas members for the necessary twenty proposers to guarantee entry to the race. While the first is surely a formality, one would have to assume that the latter is also in the bag since a failure to reach …

“Utter fucking chaos” (Fianna Fáil)

John Ó Néill on September 16, 2011, 2:07 pm

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Those were the words used by one witness in describing last night’s six hour meeting of the Fianna Fáil Oireachtas members, as reported by Ivan Yates on Newstalk (comments are passim through the podcast, but check out Parts 3 and 4 in particular). The Oireachtas group were discussing policy regarding the Presidential election, which Fianna Fáil had already decided not to contest. It appeared that the party had already squeezed sufficient and significant negative mileage out of not contesting the Presidential election by trying to recruit Gay Byrne whilst …

Libya and postcolonial karma

John Ó Néill on September 2, 2011, 4:48 pm

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As the EU has signalled the lifting of sanctions on Libya, quite a lot of that $110 billion of Libyan assets will presumably get unfrozen in the very near future. As part of that, expect much backslapping over the removal of Gaddafi (when it has actually been confirmed). At this point, it is worth noting Laura Seay’s interview with Zachariah Cherian Mampilly about his book Rebel Rulers: Insurgent Governance and Civilian Life During War. Based on his own experiences, Mampilly notes that the exisitng literatures didn’t conform to the …

Götterdämmerung in #Tripoli

John Ó Néill on August 21, 2011, 11:27 pm

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Expect a fairly fevered rumour mill over the next few hours and days as the curtain falls on the #Gaddafi regime in #Libya. Reports by @MalikAlAbdeh of Muamar #Gaddafi’s death in #Tripoli have been recanted, having been rapidly and widely retweeted. Various live #Gaddafi speeches have also been broadcast although his exact location and status are far from certain. Various sources, including @AJELive, have two or three of #Gaddafi’s sons in rebel hands (as of 11pm or so) with little resistance …

Serious issues of independence and effectiveness in the Police Ombudsman’s Office

John Ó Néill on August 17, 2011, 9:22 am

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Sinn Féin’s policing spokesman Gerry Kelly has added his voice to calls for the removal of Al Hutchinson as Police Ombudsman and restoration of independence and effectiveness in the office. Barry McCaffrey, over at The Detail, has seen the draft version of a Criminal Justice Inspectors report on the Office of the Police Ombudsman (OPONI) and it appears to make for damning reading. This follows swiftly on from the the Committee on the Administration of Justice (CAJ) publishing a report on Human Rights …

Tweeting the twelfth

John Ó Néill on July 11, 2011, 3:22 pm

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Since Mark and company will be in the field (in all senses), I’ll try and keep a feed running here on CoverItLive which will automatically update from twitter. At the moment it includes the most common hashtags (#twelfth, obviously, and #orangefest, #niparades and #glorious12th) but I can include others if people feel they are trending sufficiently. You can comment below or use the hashtags and join in via twitter. Anyone who wants to relay tweets into the comments can feel …