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Daithí – folk/electronica from Galway
What you may need to know…
01. Last time we checked in on Daithí, he’d been touring his recently-released extended-player, his first formal release as an independent artist.
02. Using elements of Irish pop-culture and music in his improvised, audiovisual live show, his work is another element in the modernisation of the trad/folk oeuvre.
03. Streaming above is the video for new single Aeroplane, featuring regular vocal collaborator Sinéad White. In his own words:
“Sinead and I wrote this song inspired by old Irish TV dramas from the ’80s and ’90s. True to the people of Ireland at the time, the characters in these shows all seem to have a hard time expressing their feelings, and we wanted to write a song that imagined what was going on in their heads, while they stumbled through talking to their love interest.
The video for the song uses footage from a short film that was shot in my home town Ballyvaughan, Co. Clare, in the 1990s. The video stars real locals from the area, and deals with the hardships of being a bachelor in rural Ireland. I had completely forgot about it until I came across the tape in my parents’ house, and some of the footage is just incredible.”
04. This Friday, he plays the Roisín Dubh in Galway, followed by a Saturday night date in Dublin’s Opium Rooms and a Bank Holiday Sunday show at Cyprus Avenue in Cork. Check social media for more info/times.
Thoughts: More polished pop than jigs ‘n’ reels referencer, Daithí and Sinéad White’s thematic drawings on the Irish condition accompany an expansion of his sound.
Pic by Ruth Medjber
From left: Mary Carr, Marion Schmoranzer and Emily Coffey
Splutter!
To mark the Citizen’s Assembly vote…
Artists Orlagh Gilsenan and Caitríona Giblin write:
Here at Dublin Body Paint HQ the Repeal campaign is very important to us, so we wanted to support it in the best way we know how – through creativity. We women 9models, artists and photogrpaher) gathered together to work on this project to express our commitment to the campaign. Progress has been made this week already, but we’re not there yet. Please feel free to share
Lovely fonts, in fairness.
FIGHT!
Pic: Noleen Kavanagh
Does the prospect of “hallucinogenic piano-pop” tickle your feathers? If so, young beat combo Dr. Mindflip have what you’re after.
And they’re crowdfunding more goodies to tie in with their debut album, a concept piece based on cringe-cinema monolith The Room.
The band writes:
We have spent the last 2 years creating our debut – it’s a psychedelic B-movie rock opera (complete with voice acting and cinematic sound design) that we’re really excited about.
We’re running a Kickstarter fundraiser to make physical copies. So far, we’ve raised enough to create CDs and we’re halfway towards raising enough to do a vinyl pressing – it’s always been a dream of ours and we’re delighted with the support we’ve received so far.
The Kickstarter campaign is running until midnight on Friday 12th of May and you can view it here.
Streaming above: last week’s video for single Massive Pockets.
From top: A remembrance ceremony for the mother and babies of Tuam in Salthill, Galway on Sunday evening.; Ciaran Tierney
The Tuam Mother and Baby revelations have given survivors a new voice.
Ciaran Tierney writes:
I met an extraordinary man last night, only he doesn’t really believe he’s so extraordinary.
In recent months, he has found a voice he never realised he had. Now in his 60s, he has learned how to tell his story and speak out against injustice.
He spent much of his childhood in the Tuam Mother and Baby Home, a place which is now notorious all over the world.
It took him an awful long time to learn to love and take care of himself.
It’s not easy to care about yourself when you are told you are inferior to others.
When you walk to school in hobnail boots and you are forced to sit apart from the rest of the class.
When you are beaten for the most minor transgressions, not given enough food, and branded with labels like “home baby” and, worse, “illegitimate”, because your mother committed a terrible crime just by bringing you into the world.
It didn’t even matter if your mother was raped, or terrified to reveal the identity of the father. That’s just the way it was in those days.
It’s not easy to let go of that kind of baggage, especially when you live in a rural community.
Oh, look, there’s your man, the “home baby”. The one who was adopted because his mother, shockingly, never got married, or the one who arrived late and didn’t smell too good at school.
It’s the kind of baggage you carry with you well into adulthood, if you ever manage to shake it off at all….
…And, yet, in recent months his life has changed.
He has begun to find his voice. The global headlines generated by the “Tuam Babies” scandal have allowed him to talk about his sense of injustice and even do media interviews for the first time.
He wants justice for the 796 and he wants people to listen. He’s full of praise for Catherine Corless, the historian who first told the world the truth about what happened in that terrible home.
By making it clear that the truth about the “Tuam Babies” was worth fighting for, she made him see the value in his own life.
He says he’s one of the lucky ones, because eventually he was shipped out to a lovely foster home.
His childhood was not all bad, although he can’t say the same for many of his old friends and contemporaries.
In Tuam, he has helped to set up and organise a support group for survivors. They find great comfort from meeting up and talking and healing, and he’s found that he of all people has the gift of being able to express their pain.
He doesn’t want much, he says. Just some recognition that a terrible wrong was done to him and the other children in homes around the country, in the name of the Irish State.
It would help if those in authority would reply to his letters or answer their phones.
For months, since the start of the year, he’s been trying to get the Taoiseach, Enda Kenny, to come and visit his little group of survivors down in Tuam.
It wouldn’t be a huge burden on the Taoiseach, the Irish Prime Minister, to take a little detour from the road to Castlebar on his way home some weekend.
Just to sit with the survivors and to hear their stories, the stories they were afraid to tell for most of their adult lives.
But when he rings the phone goes dead. Or a faceless official makes a non-committal promise that he or she will get back in touch. But never does.
He knows the abuse, the denigration, the labelling didn’t happen on the current Taoiseach’s watch, but it was done to him and his friends with the collusion of the Irish State.
It wiped out his self-esteem, to the extent that he could not hold his head high in the local pub, and he just wants to sit in a room with a few other survivors and tell the Taoiseach what that was like.
How he didn’t kill himself or drown himself in drink.
He wants some acknowledgment of the pain that he and others went through and the huge transformation he had to go through to be able to stand and talk to a reporter in a Galway park on a Sunday evening.
His friend had a little sister he never knew about, who may or may not have been buried in a septic tank. He’d love the Taoiseach to come to Tuam and just listen to their honest words.
They are not going to be able to turn back time, but it might help the healing process if the most powerful people in the land sat and listened and acknowledged the hurt caused.
He watched a new scandal erupt in Dublin last week, involving nuns who have been awarded a national hospital despite their refusal to pay adequate compensation to the victims of childhood abuse.
He watched the Taoiseach visit the White House last month and give a wonderful lecture about immigration to US President Donald Trump.
And wondered how he could make his way across the Atlantic to Washington, but not sit in his car and take a short trip down to Tuam.
After more than half a century of pain and needless shame, is that asking too much?
Ciaran Tierney is a journalist, blogger, and digital storyteller, based in Galway
Hey, Enda – is it really such a long way to Tuam? (Ciaran Tierney)
From top: National Maternity Hospital chairman Nicholas Kearns; Dr Peter Boylan
Dr Peter Boylan says he will not resign and says he feels a loyalty to the women of Ireland. pic.twitter.com/ylcRevFhad
— RTÉ News (@rtenews) April 25, 2017
A spokesperson from the hospital has clarified the reason Dr Boylan was asked by text to stand down from the board is that that is the means by which he chose to communicate on Sunday with the Deputy Chairman and the Master of the National Maternity Hospital.
In his text message to Mr Kearns and Dr Mahony Dr Boylan said:
“I’m sorry it’s come to this but I did try to warn you. The way out for both of you is to make it clear that you were misled by SVHG [St Vincent’s Health Care Group], you accepted their bona fides and assurances…Both of you and the Minister are inextricably linked in this and you will either sink or swim together. The way to get the hospital is to insist on CPO of Elm Park golf club land on periphery and establish links to SVH via tunnels/corridors. Minimal design alterations needed.”
Mr Kearns replied to Dr Boylan:
“Both the Master and I have received and read your text sent to us at 13.47 today.We are now asking for your immediate resignation from the Board of Holles St – both because of your public intervention to criticise and oppose the overwhelming majority decision of the Board taken in November last to approve the agreement reached with SVUH for the transfer of Holles St to Elm Park – a vote on which you abstained – and in addition because of the content of your text sent today. It’s intimidatory tone is most regrettable.
“The Board will clearly require to be briefed on Wednesday as to the contents of your text communication if your resignation as sought is not forthcoming.”
Speaking on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland, Dr Boylan told presenter Cathal MacCoille he would not resign.
Cathal MacCoille: “This call on you to resign followed not just the meeting, several meetings which discussed this proposal but, specifically, a text that you sent at the weekend, can you just tell us about that text? Who you sent it to? And what you said?”
Peter Boylan: “Yes, I was becoming increasingly concerned about the controversy that had erupted following Patsy McGarry revealing, in the wider public…”
MacCoille: “This is in The Irish Times?”
Boylan: “The Irish Times, about a week ago now I think. And I was away when it was published. I only arrived back the next day, in the middle of the day to the furore that erupted. And I was becoming increasingly concerned that, as with the passage of time that the board members or the governors of the National Maternity Hospital, the shareholders had not been consulted about the deal which, one had the impression that it was completely agreed by the National Maternity Hospital. But I’d been assured, the board had been assured by the Deputy Chairman that the governors would be consulted and would take a vote on whether or not they agreed the deal.”
MacCoille: “Sorry, is there a difference between governors and board?”
Boylan: “Yes, there are 21 board members but there are 100 governors. So the shareholders had not agreed to the deal. So I was increasingly concerned about this. Originally, I was going to stay quiet until the meeting of the governors and raise the issues concerning, about my real concerns which I’d raised regularly at board meetings. I was getting kind of tired of it. And then the whole thing became public. And I was away and I was phoned, I got back, almost inevitably, by The Irish Times and I spoke to them and they said they would publish my comments the next day but Sister Agnes’s [Reynolds] intervention then took precedence.”
MacCoille: “Of the Sisters of Charity?”
Boylan: “Of the Sisters of Charity and she made it clear that in point of fact there was some doubt over whether or not the Catholic Church teaching would hold sway in the new maternity hospital and that was absolutely confirmed by Bishop Doran over the weekend and by a letter from the chairman of Ireland East [Hospital] Group Tom Lynch to the secretary general of the Department of Health some time ago warning that there would be ethical issues if the hospital was built on land…”
MacCoille: “Right. So. Sometime on Sunday, you sent a text.”
Boylan: “So, sometime on Sunday, I kind of felt, look, we need to sort this out and can we not sit down and talk about it and have some, there’s been call for calm heads and, you know, a lot of talk about misinformation which it transpires, actually, I was right. I wasn’t giving them misinformation…”
MacCoille: “Who..”
Boylan: “I sent a text..”
MacCoille: “To..”
Boylan: “To Nicky Kearns, the deputy chairman and to Rhona Mahony, the Master. I said:
I’m sorry it’s come to this but I did try to warn you. The way out for both of you is to make it clear that you were misled by SVHG [St Vincent’s Health Care Group], you accepted their bona fides and assurances… Both of you and the Minister are inextricably linked in this and you will either sink or swim together. The way to get the hospital is to insist on CPO of Elm Park golf club land on periphery and establish links to SVH via tunnels/corridors. Minimal design alterations needed. Peter.
MacCoille: ‘And just for the purposes, so people know the whole story. That’s what you sent, the text you sent to Nicholas Kearns and Rhona Mahony and you got a text back from Nicholas Kearns, saying, Peter, I have it here and they’re happy that we should read it out:
“Peter, both the Master and I have received and read your text sent to us at 13.47 today [Sunday]. We are now asking for your immediate resignation from the Board of Holles St – both because of your public intervention to criticise and oppose the overwhelming majority decision of the Board taken in November last to approve the agreement reached with St Vincent’s Hospital for the transfer of Holles St to Elm Park – a vote on which you abstained – and in addition because of the content of your text sent today. It’s intimidatory tone is most regrettable.
“The Board will clearly require to be briefed on Wednesday as to the contents of your text communication if your resignation as sought is not forthcoming.”
MacCoille: “First question arising obviously, are you going to resign?”
Boylan: “No.”
MacCoille: “Why not?”
Boylan: “I don’t feel I should resign. There’s been questions about loyalty to the board. I feel a loyalty to the women of Ireland. The function of the National Maternity Hospital is to offer care to the women of Ireland. To believe that by granting ownership of the hospital to the Roman Catholic Church and the company that is tasked with running the hospital to the Roman Catholic Church, to construct a board which four of nine members would have fundamental objections to a lot of activity going on in that hospital, just is not a runner. And then when Bishop Doran came out on Sunday and said – a great article by Justine McCarthy and full credit to her for getting that – that any land owned by the church is ecclesiastical property and subject to Canon Law and the governance rests with the Pope. Now this is 2017 in Ireland. I tried to say to the board many times, ‘look when this gets public, it’s not going to fly’ and also, it’s not right that a maternity hospital, of all hospitals should be granted to the Catholic Church.”
MacCoille: “When this decision, the terms of this agreement were approved by the board did you vote against it?
Boylan: “No, I abstained, it was clear from…”
MacCoille: “Why?”
Boylan: “Well, it was clear, out of a sense of loyalty, I think to the Master and to the…”
MacCoille: “If you think, for the reasons just stated now, again, if they were your views, why didn’t you…”
Boylan: “Well, maybe I should have voted against it but I kind of felt look, the thing is going to pass anyway because there was overwhelming support for it, there was only four people, not three, who objected and, importantly, the three previous masters had reservations and did not support it with a vote.”
Boylan refuses to stand down from National Maternity Hospital board (RTÉ)
Previously: Nun So Blind
Dunnes, Rathmines, Dublin, yesterday evening
(Thanks Colin Walsh)
MORE to folly
RTÉ journalist David Davin Power on tonight’s Six One
Yesterday.
The Citizens’ Assembly voted by 52 votes to 29 (or 64 per cent) to allow access to the procedure with no restriction on reasons.
Of the 52 who voted for this access, 25 stated abortion should be available up to 12 weeks’ gestation, 23 voted for a 22-week limit, while four said there should be no restriction on gestational age.
Further to this.
Tonight, on RTÉ’s Six One news.
RTÉ journalist David Davin Power spoke to Sharon Ní Bheoláin about the results of yesterday’s Citizens’ Assembly.
Sharon Ní Bheoláin: “We’ve been kicking this can, this most difficult and contentious of issues down the road for decades, David. Has the time come where we’re finally going to deal with it?”
David Davin Power: “Sharon, we might be approaching the end game but, as always, the timing is critical. The first thing to say is that the very liberal package of recommendations from the Citizens’ Assembly took people very much by surprise here. There was astonishment across all parties that they had recommended something that, it has to be said, is politically unsaleable.
“Only around 24% of the electorate, in the last comparable opinion poll, backed a regime that is that liberal. So, the task of this committee that will be meeting from June onwards is essentially to water down these proposals to the point that they’re not politically toxic. Because if these, if this package was put to the people, the view in Leinster House, certainly is, that it would surely fail.
“But, of course, the timing and the timescale is a problem because, with the best will in the world, this committee, if it sits in June and reports in September, if it works through the summer, there’ll be very limited legislative time. And the Dáil returns in October, we have the budget, we have the social welfare bill, so, effectively, the first time we could contemplate having any referendum on this is next year, maybe around April next year.”
“And, of course, that’s the time when you could be facing a general election, if the package between Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil unravels. but one thing I have detected around Leinster House today is that there does seem to be, there does seem to be a will to crack on with this now. If only to make sure that the issue is disposed of before that general election but ultimately this will be a problem for a new Taoiseach and, potentially, a new Government.”
Watch back here