Republic – Page 36 – Slugger O'Toole

DUP and the cross border bodies…

Eamonn Mallie on November 11, 2009, 4:09 pm

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With a meeting taking place today of the North South Ministerial council there is increasing contempt for these meetings in DUP circles. Sources close to the DUP ministerial team ‘snigger’ at the cross-border bodies. They view them as an unnecessary expense which is not giving money for value. No one has said that the existence of these cross-border bodies served by a dedicated secretariat in Armagh will become another precondition for the transfer of policing and justice powers. The sense …

“Now, let’s all try to think very hard”

Pete Baker on November 10, 2009, 5:36 pm

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In the Irish Times Fintan O’Toole highlights the Irish government’s [unwitting? – Ed] “clever campaign to destroy political satire by making it entirely redundant”. Discussing the distressing incidents of kidnappings of bank staff, [Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern] began to ponder a great mystery: “The question must be asked why is it that we are one of those societies where there is a high proportion of cash in our system? Ourselves and Italy, we understand, are the two countries where …

Cameron will not be holding a referendum on Lisbon after all…

Mick Fealty on November 3, 2009, 4:16 pm

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(Poster is courtesy of DizzyThinks) With the ratification of Lisbon by Ireland, Poland and the Czech Republic, frankly there is no point. The deal was done when the Irish people kicked the idea of further resistance firmly into touch last month. Most of the rest has been spin. And the pretension that the UK can ‘repatriate’ powers ceded under this and/or other treaties is just that, a pretension. Unless, as Dizzythinks (one of the few Tory inclined blogs to cover …

“People are free to travel to Northern Ireland.”

Pete Baker on November 2, 2009, 10:00 pm

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No doubt with his mind on the recently published figures on the activities of Irish shoppers, the BBC have picked up on comments by Finance Minister Brian Lenihan, as reported in the Sunday Independent. Mr Lenihan is confident that the expected ending of the VAT reductions in the UK as well as increased taxes will eliminate the attraction of heading north, but he is not ruling out a move on VAT in the Budget. Speaking about his plans to react …

A proud Republican can wear the poppy…

Mick Fealty on November 2, 2009, 9:45 pm

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In the first of what I hope will become a series, John McGuirk argues that there is no conflict in interest in an Irish Republican wearing a poppy in remembrance of those who died in past wars… For him it is about standing up for what you believe in, not against what you don’t believe in: specifically, the universal freedom of humanity that saw the liberation of the death camps of Bergin Belsen and other places…By John McGuirk Over the …

The threat is greater now than it has been for the last ten years…

Mick Fealty on October 30, 2009, 6:06 am

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Excellent piece from Newsnight the other night, in which Liz McKeen draws out some of the moral and political dilemmas facing the dissident Republicans who are backing a return to armed struggle. Gary Donnelly, formerly of Sinn Fein, now of the 32 County Sovereignty Committee: “‘It would be perfectly legitimate to target anyone who is promoting British rule in Ireland’. But when I asked him about targeting their families, after a long pause, he described that as a ‘thorny issue’”. …

Two wars in which Irish Catholics fought but choose not to remember…

Mick Fealty on October 29, 2009, 9:20 pm

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It’s getting close to Remembrance Day, and if it’s not exactly a political hot potato the discussion of remembrance opens up significantly differing narratives for unionists and nationalists (and even northerners and southerners)… Fionnuala O’Connor notes that regardless of their personal views on the matter, the BBC requires all its presenters to wear a red poppy. In our house it is – and it always was – a matter for individual conscience. I’ve known English ex servicemen who’d served in …

East-West co-operation on disqualified drivers

Pete Baker on October 28, 2009, 10:02 pm

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As RTÉ reports “A new deal has been made between the UK and Ireland to ensure that disqualified drivers do not use the roads in either country.” Announced by UK Road Safety Minister Paul Clark, MP, it is “the first practical step of its kind in Europe” and is due to come into force in February 2010. The Northern Ireland Environment Minister Edwin Poots borrows some of Paul Clarke’s lines for his press release. [Good to see the government press …

Finessing a strengthened Seanad could be the doorway to a “Second Republic”…

Mick Fealty on October 28, 2009, 12:50 pm

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Elaine Byrne puts her finger on a real problem with Irish politics (and not even Irish politics, but everywhere populism is providing short to medium term pay-offs to opposition parties). She finds that Kenny’s threat to unilaterally abolish the Seanad one step too far towards demagoguery. And more importantly, it is missing an opportunity to make the whole Irish legislature a great deal more functional than it has been for many years. She argues that some small reforms could be …

Hayes and Leyden on whether the Seanad is beyond reform, or not…

Mick Fealty on October 27, 2009, 7:03 pm

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I managed to grab Brian Hayes at the BIPA last week as the Irish political system was reeling from Enda Kenny’s shock announcement that he was going to do away with the Seanad altogether (since FG no longer have any ‘career Senators’, one with limited home damage)… An easy hit says Noel Whelan in last Saturday’s Irish Times… And, as Senator Terry Layden wryly notes in his interview below the fold, a vote of confidence in his current party Senators… …

“The consequences for jobs and revenue, particularly in the Border region, are profound”

Pete Baker on October 27, 2009, 12:30 am

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The BBC report on the Northern Bank’s Consumer Confidence Index notes that “People in Northern Ireland remain cautious about spending in the run-up to Christmas”. So it’s probably just as well that consumers in Ireland are picking up the slack here. From the Irish Times SOME 250,000 households in the Republic are now regularly doing their grocery shopping in the North, up 25 per cent since the end of last year, according to new figures. There has also been a …

A recursive cycle of ‘Vingince’ that underlay the Tiger Years…

Mick Fealty on October 26, 2009, 4:00 pm

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Fintan O’Toole has been sequestered away scribbling on what was for him the phoney architecture of the Celtic Tiger bubble… In the process, he has unearthed a quintessential theme within the Irish psyche… “Vingince, bejasus!”… Not least within those late millionaire developers who once ostentatiously planted the Irish flag right in the privileged heart of ‘the oul enemy’… …if you listened hard, you could hear, unspoken but implied, the famous (and surely apocryphal) reply of a republican activist asked in …

“whether I’m totally responsible for that, partially responsible for it, we have changed Ireland”

Pete Baker on October 21, 2009, 11:35 pm

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At the Cedar Lounge, WorldbyStorm spotted the report of reaction to former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern apparently attempting to claim credit for the ‘Gregory Deal’. But on a recent edition of BBC’s HardTalk Mr Ahern appeared to claim credit for a whole lot more… Pete Baker

Do you know what the BIC does?

Mick Fealty on October 19, 2009, 3:32 pm

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At the British Irish Parliamentary Assembly this morning, the first point raised in debate (really just fielding Q&As for Peter Hain speaking on behalf of the British Irish Council from the parliamentarians in the body of the hall) came from one of the few Tory MPs, Bob Walter… (Bob’s in a safe Tory seat that just got marginally safer after boundary changes) most of his colleagues are busy conjuring up next years… I wanted to ask an intelligent question about …

Put all government information on the net…

Mick Fealty on October 19, 2009, 1:17 pm

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In May I remember walking down Thomas Street in Dublin with Gavin when he started to talk about his plans for reshaping Irish government practice. Well, that’s not actually what he said, but it may be actually what he achieves. At the time he’d just finished helping John Handelaar put together Kildare Street – a resource that too many Senators and TDs still seem too unaware of, but which may offer them a way to compensate for the MSN’s attention …

Discipline and proportionality are what failed the former Ceann Comhairle…

Mick Fealty on October 16, 2009, 4:42 pm

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Interesting defence of John O’Donoghue in today’s Irish Times: Other than a general sense that he was tearing the arse out of it, we still have no settled view of the precise nature of O’Donoghue’s sin. Everybody agrees that some of his expenses were excessive, but nobody has set out a clear measure by which this could be judged, or proposed any guidelines by which, in future, the scale of similar accusations might be assessed. Quite so. Although I don’t …

Ireland signs the Lisbon Treaty…

Mick Fealty on October 16, 2009, 3:41 pm

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As it is a moment in history, Mary McAleese has ratified the Lisbon Treaty on behalf of the Republic… Mick FealtyMick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a regular guest and speaking events across Ireland, the UK and Europe. Twitter: @MickFealty

A national theatre should be about more than celebrating past ‘glories’…

Mick Fealty on October 15, 2009, 8:08 pm

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Two cheers for David Norris’s excellent suggestion that the Abbey Theatre should be relocated to the historic building of Dublin’s GPO… First of all it is owned by the State and due shortly to be vacated as a postal facility. There is therefore no acquisition cost. Moreover, it has historical associations with theatre. For many years it was the headquarters of Radio Éireann and all major radio drama was broadcast from there. Second, the existing Abbey site could either be …

After O’Donoghue: More from Duffy’s Circus or real and open structural reform?

Mick Fealty on October 14, 2009, 6:20 pm

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I was waiting for the ‘raging Bull’ metaphors in the papers describing John O’Donoghue this morning. Miriam Lord had already unleashed hers a few days back, after Eamonn Gilmore dropped him on the spot last week, and he went looking for a china shop to go and wreck. He didn’t quite do that yesterday, but he did make a fist of trying to justify himself above the insinuation that he was somehow a dishonest man. As Déaglán de Breadun notes …

On the bizarre inconsistency in standards in Irish public life…

Mick Fealty on October 13, 2009, 2:08 pm

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It’s rare to get Fintan O’Toole, Kevin Myers, Fergus Finlay and Richard Waghorne (sadly, not online) all singing to the same tune on any matters political, but that is the dubious achievement of the Green party this morning… Each of them though, like the blind men and the elephant describe quite different parts of what ails the Irish body politic. Mr Myers first examines in detail what happened last week when Labour and Sinn Fein defenestrated the Ceann Comhairle: The …