Category Archives: Misc

THis morning/afternoon.

Kildare Street, Dublin 2.

Women of Honour members Honor Murphy (top left) and Karina Molloy (above right), who are part of a group of former Defence Forces members who detailed allegations of sexual abuse, harassment and discrimination in the military, on their way into the Dáil (Leinster House) to meet Taoiseach Micheál Martin accompanied by opposition TDs. Aontu’s Peadar Toibin (above left) and Social Democrat TD Gary Gannon (above right).

Meanwhile, via BreakingNews:

Karina Molloy told RTÉ radio’s Today with Claire Byrne show that the group was “deflated” despite assurances from the Taoiseach that a statutory inquiry will go ahead if recommended by the review.

The Women of Honour group was concerned that the Department of Defence was writing the terms of the review, which meant they were essentially investigating themselves, she said.

A statutory inquiry was needed to root out the systemic problems within the force, added Ms Molloy.

When asked why the group had not walked out of the meeting with the Taoiseach as they had done during a meeting with Minister Simon Coveney last week, Ms Molloy explained that Mr Martin had not revealed that a statutory inquiry would not be going ahead until an hour and a half into the meeting.

“We had hoped to talk more and to persuade him.”

Women of Honour ‘deflated’ following meeting with Taoiseach (BreakingNews)

Sasko Lazarov/ RollingNews

This morning/afternoon.

New guidance for workplaces has been published to ‘reflect the recent relaxation of most public health measures’.

Transitional Protocol here

Meanwhile…

Speaking on RTÉ’s Today with Claire Byrne programme, Head of Communications with Fórsa Bernard Harbor said the legislation published last week was more of a “right to refuse” than a right to request remote working and is out of kilter with what is actually happening in workplaces.

He said the legislation needs to be radically revised if it is to capture the benefits of remote working.

Mr Harbor said the legislation does not help the most vulnerable who would benefit most from remote working arrangements, but has an employer who may simply refuse the application.

He added there is a danger that workplaces will simply revert to old work practices because the emphasis is on the phased return to work, rather than the long-term benefits of remote working.

New workplace guidance following easing of Covid restrictions (RTE)

Zero alcohol?

Hic.

This morning.

It’s not a caption competition until you insist.

Rishi Sunak frontrunner to succeed Boris Johnson if PM ousted, IpsosMORI poll reveals (Evening Standard)

Thanks Tenpin Terry

Pic via Flickr

Fulham FC’s Craven Cottage ground on Saturday

Saturday.

Via RT:

Two separate English football matches had to be halted on Saturday afternoon following further incidents of fans suffering medical emergencies in the crowd.

Around 10 minutes into the first half after the hosts went 1-0 up, play had to be suspended at Fulham’s Craven Cottage as they took on Blackpool when paramedics rushed to a supporter in the Hammersmith Stand that had been taken ill.

Medical staff of both clubs helped the professionals, as fellow fans used flags to block the view and grant privacy to first responders.

Meanwhile…

Up in the northwest, a similar incident occurred as Oldham hosted Rochdale at Boundary Park in League Two.

About 18 minutes into the derby, with the score tied at 0-0, one of the home team’s faithful suffered a scare in the Main Stand which also prompted professional help.

Fan medical emergencies halt two football games (RT)

Meanwhile…

Pic: Fulham FC

Yesterday.

Derry city.

Speakers Eamonn McCann (above right) and Bernadette McAliskey (above left) address crowds after the Bloody Sunday March For Truth and Justice, which recreated the Civil Rights March in 1972 where 14 people taking part were killed by British Soldiers.

Earlier: Remember Sunday

Sam Boal/RollingNews

Above from left: Minister for Housing Darragh O’Brien, Tanaiste Leo VaradkarTaoiseach Micheal Martin, Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications Eamon Ryan at Government Buildings,Dublinlast week; Eamonn  Kelly

The week that was

By mid-week the taoiseach was insisting that FFG is not the “elite”, but were just ordinary Joes the same as everyone else. Which might well be true in terms of fry-ups on Saturdays and a pint at the weekend, but the salaries of our top politicians, like our top civil servants, particularly in comparison to the minimum wage, combined with the cost of housing, the cost of renting and the general cost of living, really seals the entire “elite” argument.

As politicians are often fond of saying, “The figures don’t lie.”

By Friday, the Irish Times, which isn’t elitist either, was running a very helpful article on the topic of Micheál Martin’s “Working Class Roots”, from behind a paywall.

But sure, everyone in Ireland has working class or farming roots. You don’t have to go back very far to find us all lurking in tenements or thatched cottages, back-biting the Lord of the Manor. But these days, since the measure of everything is money, Micheál and the rest are the elite, even if they don’t think they are.

The Meaning of a Job

A strange thing happened earlier in the week. The Tánaiste, Leo Varadkar, a neo-liberal, asked employers to raise wages to help staff to meet rising living costs. Now why would he do that?

One reason could be that unless wages are realistic in terms of living costs, the idea of a job itself is hopelessly undermined.

The idea of a job has already been seriously undermined by the pandemic, since it became clear that the “oceans of money sloshing around out there” that millionaires are often heard referring to, does actually exist, and it is not being translated into realistic wages that can allow a worker to buy a house.

Distraction

But there are other reasons why the Tánaiste would be concerned about the idea of a job being undermined. It is that the idea of a job, as a moral imperative, an idea mainly imported from the United States, of having the ability to “hold down a job”, is often used as a distraction by neo-liberals to further the larger project of rolling back the welfare state.

Politically, the idea of a job, as already demonstrated by Leo Varadkar with the welfare cheats campaign, can have the effect of dividing workers, along with providing cover for the transfer of public services into private hands.

Remote Working

The idea of a job was further challenged when the hope of remote working, which could have helped towards alleviating pressure on the climate, was essentially closed down as the elite worked to regain control of workers through the employer/worker relationship.

So even despite the so-called “great resignation” in the US, when US workers found that their jobs, in terms of a life choice, often didn’t make sense; combined with the possibility of environmental budgeting in terms of lessening traffic, the idea of remote working was dashed.

The new legislation that might have seen a more progressive and environmental way of incorporating remote working into the idea of a job, was instead rigged to give the employer the opportunity to deny the whole idea on various convenient get-outs.

Propaganda

On Thursday RTÉ ran a story by Conor Hunt basically saying that Irish people “don’t want to work”, the story being about delays in hiring staff from outside the EU. The angle worked was to elicit guilt, bringing up staff shortages in nursing homes.

Everywhere, it seemed, the establishment entities were essentially playing the same tune of getting workers back in line, while freshly enforcing the morality of “having a job”, regardless of how out of touch with living costs wages might be.

Past Crimes

Also on Thursday, Fintan O’Toole was saying how he couldn’t vote for Sinn Féin because he couldn’t forget the atrocities committed. I’m near the same age as Fintan and I remember those atrocities too, and they do give me pause for thought. It’s all very disturbing.

But I also remember the Ansbacher tax swindle by the upper middle-classes of Ireland. No doubt the same clientele has made alternative arrangements for tax avoidance. I remember Charlie Haughey’s Charvet shirts, and the culture of the brown envelope; and Ray Burke, and Liam Lawlor, and Pee Flynn’s second house, and all the tribunals that only ever seemed to benefit the legal fraternity; and Enda Kenny blaming the financial collapse on ordinary people for going overboard during the boom, and so on.

The Blind Elite

The problem with the Irish elite is that it doesn’t see itself as an elite. We’re “ordinary” is the catch-all cry. And yet the share of life chances and opportunities and educational advantages and salaries do not bear this out.

Because “ordinary” these days, for most people, especially the young, is minimal life chances, minimal educational opportunities, maximum rents and minimum wages. Working a full-time job and spending half your earnings on accommodation to a greedy elitist landlord, squeezing the last drop from every miserable asset.

A system where everyone clamours and compromises and remains schtum in an attempt to be “good”, and to hopefully find a niche in the elite’s world.

Russians

The Russians responded to Irish requests to take their training exercises out of our economic zone and not be upsetting the fish. The Russians did so, as a gesture of good will. Does this mean that the initial encroachment was a gesture of bad will?

They possibly see us basically as a kind of little USA. And with good reason. We don’t believe in public services or taxing the wealthy, all the major US companies live here, and our homeless figures are very competitive per capita with the big boys.

Eamonn Kelly is a Galway-based  freelance Writer and Playwright.

Previously: Eamonn Kelly on Broadsheet

RollingNews

D. Cullen – Radio

Don’t touch that dial.

With Irish pop and rock-loving DJs an increasingly rare species on the airwaves these days, we really hope that this lush, perfectly crafted tune gets the airplay it deserves.

Radio is taken from Darragh (top) aka D. Cullen’s forthcoming debut album, Sing My Story, Tell My Song, which is in the middle of a crowdfunding campaign on IndieGogo. The album will be released in Autumn 2022.

D Cullen writes:

“The lyrics to Radio speak to the huge distress I felt in 2021. As with most of us, I was locked down, isolated from friends and family, and without any outlets or release from all of the world’s stress.

“The one thing that kept me going was being able to dive into my record collection, dive into great music, and dive into the radio. Music is the most invaluable method of escape, and this song is a tribute to that.”

Nick says: FMmmm bop.

D Cullen

From top Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Coveney; Derek Mooney

After a decade of defence issues being pushed so far down the political agenda that you’d need a bathysphere and a decompression chamber to even spot them, they came roaring back up that agenda this week. With a vengeance.

Each day brought a new story. It started with the concern over the build up of Russian forces on the Ukrainian border and the not unconnected tumult over Russia’s plans to mount naval exercises in Ireland’s exclusive economic zone.

It then continued with the policy-making-on-the-hoof announcement by Taoiseach Micheál Martin and the Communications Minister Eamon Ryan that they plan to come up with a plan to close Cathal Brugha barracks and use it for housing.

This “plan” was quickly exposed as mere whim, when our part-time Defence Minister told the Dáil that while there would be a feasibility study, there definitely was “no predetermined outcome”, even if it is “…an issue on which the Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan, has firm views”.

Regrettably, our Defence minister lacks Ryan’s capacity for firm views, even when it comes to commitments he made. The Women of Honour discovered this during a disappointing meeting with Coveney. Hopefully this morning’s engagement with An Taoiseach will be more productive.

Then, to finish off a week of difficult defence headlines, the front page of the Sunday Independent led with: Defence Forces admit they cannot meaningfully defend Ireland.  A story based on some extracts from the Commission on the Defence Forces draft report.

The one thread that connects all the above is the decade long denial of political attention to both the Defence Forces and defence policy. We see this in the way the story about the Russian military exercises emerged and played out.

It has long been the custom and practice for the Defence Forces Chief of Staff of the day to start off the year with a cup of tea and a sponge cake with the individual members of the diplomatic corps.

Even calling these encounters “meetings” is to overstate their significance. There were simple courtesies extended by the Defence Forces to the various Ambassadors based in Dublin. An opportunity to say hello and exchange pleasantries for a organisation that values its role in UN peacekeeping.

They are non-controversial engagements. They should still be. The fact that the Russian ambassador saw fit to widely publicise his meeting, tells you a great deal more about the Russian embassy’s “active measures” agenda here, than it does about the Chief of Staff

Simon Coveney has done almost four years as Defence Minister and is now on his third Chief of Staff. He knows about these courtesy calls at the Chief of Staff’s office at McKee Barracks, so there is no excuse for him telling theFine Gael parliamentary party meeting that he was “surprised”.

I have no doubt the Minister was embarrassed when the photo appeared online courtesy of the Russian Embassy’s Twitter account. I am certain that he was truly scarlet when his Fine Gael colleagues took him to task over it. That said, I bet he was not nearly as disconcerted as the Chief of Staff and his senior officers were when they saw it.

Nor as perturbed as the officials in the Minister’s twin departments of Foreign Affairs and Defence were by their own failure to anticipate that the Russians would use and abuse a courtesy call on the eve of announcing a major naval exercise in Irish waters.

Rather than further embroiling the Chief of Staff in what everyone now accepts was an unwise engagement, perhaps Coveney might focus his ire on the behaviour of the Russian embassy. If he needs any pointers on dealing with the Russians, he could do worse than consult with Brendan Byrne of the Irish Fish Processors and Exporters Association, whose own encounters with the Ambassador delivered results worthy of the Sopranos.

While the Minister focused on the minutiae, the Russian exercise has focused attention on the glaring gaps in our ability to monitor, never mind protect our waters and the critically important infrastructures that pass under them.

Three years back the 2019 Defence Force Review (which I have discussed here before) highlighted the fact that three quarters of all the transatlantic cables in the northern hemisphere pass through or near Irish waters. Cables that deliver over the vast bulk of all data and information transmission. What has been done since? Nothing. In fact, Defence Force preparedness is lower now than it was then with half the naval service’s nine ships regularly out of service due to staff shortages

Not that all the blame attaches to Minister Coveney. Though an ineffectual minister at best, he still tries, in his own words:

“…to look after the interests of the Defence Forces”.

Can we say the same about An Taoiseach, Micheál Martin? The evidence does not favour him. After committing, in opposition, to appointing a full time Defence Minister and giving defence policy the political prominence it merited, Martin blithely forgot all that when the seal of office was handed to him and defence was push back down the political agenda.

How else can you interpret his telling the Housing for All update press conference last week that:

“I’m pleased to confirm we have now agreed to conduct a feasibility study for the use of the Cathal Brugha Barracks site in Rathmines, Dublin to provide housing”.

Who, apart from the father of this idea Eamon Ryan, imagined it would make sense to deflect attention from real progress in delivering on the Housing for All plan, to talk about some notional scheme to close a working barracks that would take years the guts of a decade to only deliver 1000 houses? (Minister Ryan’s estimate, not mine)

Not Housing Minister, Darragh O’Brien, that’s for sure. This is the second time the ebullient pharaoh of Fingal has had to silently stand by as his party leader sabotages news coverage of the work he supposedly wants to promote. last September I discussed Martin’s petulant upstaging of the Housing for All press launch.

Cathal Brugha Barracks in Rathmines is not some unused vacant site. It is home to the 2 Brigade headquarters plus the 7th Infantry Battalion, as well as the Cavalry Squadron and a range of 2 Brigade combat support, combat service and training units. Not to mention the Defence Forces Reserve, the Army School of Music, the No 1 Army Band and the Military Archive.

Assuming that the Taoiseach wasn’t hoping the Defence Force personnel retention problem would look after it, to where was he planning to move the thousand plus troops, while his hoped for building work goes on?

Has he forgotten how long it took for the barracks closed in 1998, including Murphy barracks in Ballincollig, to be redeveloped? Clancy Barracks in Islandbridge, which looks well now and shows how listed military buildings can be incorporated successfully in a modern residential and commercial setting, still sat idle for the best part of 14 years. And that was a wholly private development.

It’s the equivalent of declaring that you plan to develop the St Vincent’s hospital site for housing, before giving a single thought to where you’ll put all the staff and patients.

I was reared in Rathmines. I know Cathal Brugha barracks well, but I am not so emotionally attached to the facility that I cannot imagine it as anything other than a barracks.  I once even fostered the notion of moving the entire military establishment from Cathal Brugha to a modern barracks at Casement Aerodrome in Baldonnel, but only after first moving an enhanced and expanded Air Corps to a new purpose-built facility with longer runway access at Shannon Airport.

But, until I could identify where you would find the extra 100s of million Euros needed to pay for all of this expansion, I kept the notion as that: just a notion.

What a pity the Taoiseach and Minister Ryan hadn’t the cop on to do the same. A single Euro spent now on their planned feasibility study would be a Euro wasted – and given how the last few governments have cut defence spending to the bone, that is not something to brag about.

In a few weeks we shall hopefully see the full report of the Commission on the Defence Forces. I look forward to commenting on it when it is published as it will offer the best opportunity, since the 2000 White Paper, for a grown up conversation on how we create a Defence Force that’s resourced to meet the modern threats we face and project the type of country we wish to be.

Derek Mooney is a communications and public affairs consultant. He previously served as a Ministerial Adviser to the Fianna Fáil-led government 2004 – 2010. His column appears here every Monday. Follow Derek on Twitter: @dsmooney

RollingNews

Taoiseach Micheál Martin lays a wreath to mark the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday in Derry on Saturday

Yesterday.

Meanwhile…

Anyone?

PA