The Aristocrats

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Green Party Leader Eamon Ryan, a past pupil of Gonzaga College, Dublin

“It’s just a different style, you know, maybe newer people in the Greens might want him to go in and bang the table and roar at Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael all the time, that is not not his style and it’s just as effective as someone who goes in and roars the odds working with people…

Dermot Ahern… speaks really highly of Eamon Ryan… said he and Trevor Sargent were two of the most effective ministers of the recent decades and a lot of people round that cabinet table they really appreciated he could reach out and work across them…

…with Ryan they saw someone who reached across the table across subjects and was well able to work and, you know…

Someone who knows him a while says it’s kind of like that Gonzaga type, you know, patrician quality you know we will get things done, that himself, Brian Lenihan, Simon Coveney, they kind of have that ‘let’s get along and everything needs to be done’ mentality, but I think his method of working is conciliatory but that doesn’t mean it’s not effective.”

Fiach Kelly, Deputy Political Editor of the irish Times on the ’Inside Politics’ podcast with Hugh Linehan

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11 thoughts on “The Aristocrats

  1. realPolithicks

    Eamon Ryan seems like a decent sort of a bloke but his desire to prop up the FFG cabal is frankly inexplicable and I’m guessing that a lot of new Green party members think so too.

  2. Kevin Quinn

    The Jesuits do devote a lot of time and effort into teaching their kids how to think, and between that, the difficult entrance exams (now banned by the Dept of Education) and the generally high expectations of the type of parents who go out of their way to send their kids to Jesuit schools and have the means to do so, it’s hardly surprising that there is a discernible ‘Gonzaga’ or Jesuit way of thinking. That doesn’t mean that they have the same thoughts, though, and especially doesn’t mean that they all have the same political views. Sure, John Redmond was a Jesuit boy, but so was Kevin Barry. And Fidel Castro, and James Joyce, and Miguel de Cervantes, and Robert Mugabe and Jacques Delors and Freddie Mercury…

    1. Rob_G

      I mean, its not that interesting: public libraries tend not to stock any but the most popular works in sociology. The vast majority of people who would be interested in reading this book are sociologists, who can access it in some university library.

      1. Verbatim

        Well, isn’t that a shame so, because even if it never left the shelf in a public library, just the title itself “Elite Schooling and Social Inequality: Privilege and Power in Ireland’s Top Private Schools” would be educational for the Joe Soap who use public libraries.

  3. scottser

    What we want is a bare-faced liar who will give us all tax breaks and cushy jobs. And a slogan, and maybe stupid hair.

  4. Gabby

    There’s no point in blaming the Jesuits, a sub-theme that seems to be brimming under the surface of this post. The Christian Brothers schooled a lot of top people too – some of them have bitten the hands that fed, and beat, them and claimed that they rose to where they got in spite of schooling. Ask some of the Top Women about their schools and especially the Nuns. Some people discover their talents and have their attitudes formed in school. Others educate themselves outside school in their homes and among friends and contacts. The Greens may or may not go into coalition government; but it’ll have nothing to do with Clongowes or Gonzaga. Will we have an election in the autumn? Ask the Jesuits: they know as much as the pol corrs.

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