DUP leader Arlene Foster on BBC

BBC reports:

Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar “should know better” than to “play around” with Northern Ireland over Brexit, the leader of the Democratic Unionist Party says.

Arlene Foster accused Mr Varadkar of being “reckless” as Brexit talks enter a “critical phase”.

She was speaking after meeting Theresa May at Downing Street.

The Irish government says any hard border with Northern Ireland should be off the table.

…Speaking to BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg, Mrs Foster said: “Some people are taking their moment in the sun, to try and get the maximum in relation to the negotiations – and I understand that but you shouldn’t play about with Northern Ireland particularly at a time when we’re trying to bring about devolved government again.”

WATCH INTERVIEW: Irish PM should know better over Brexit, says Arlene Foster (BBC)

Yesterday: Leo’s Day In The Sun

BBC

SPARK-Ireland tweetz:

When a pregnant abused mother goes to court and gets a safety order and explains to @welfare_ie why she can’t get maintenance, is it appropriate they then write threatening letters like this? Should vulnerable files not be flagged and protocols put in place?

Chris Donoghue and Sarah McInerney

Further to reports that Communicorp’s Group Political Editor and Newstalk host Chris Donoghue is to leave the radio after 14 years to become a special adviser to Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Coveney…

Jennifer O’Brien, in The Times Ireland edition, reports:

Sarah McInerney, the journalist and broadcaster, is set to leave Newstalk at the end of the year.

The presenter, who joined the station from The Sunday Times, is planning to write a book and is concentrating on her Sunday afternoon current affairs show on TV3.

A station source said: “Sarah handed in her notice last week and will be leaving around December 23. She wanted to pursue other options and felt she didn’t have as much time to commit to the station.”

McInerney follows co-presenter in quitting radio job (The Times Ireland edition)

Rollingnews

Tommy Tiernan

Tommy Tells His Dream

(after Martin Luther King and T. Tiernan)

But, I say to you tonight, my fellow silver chins of every imaginable orientation, let us not dribble too long down the gully of despond.

Though we now face the catastrophes of others with equanimity, I once had a dream. A dream whose roots stood frailly, but proudly, in the droplets of Royal County cow dung sent by God the Mother, Auntie & Uncle as a sign to confirm how impressed the average orthodontist in the greater Navan area is with how far I as a country have come.

When I was growing up you weren’t allowed to be cross-eyed. Now I can look at you whatever way I want, and I’m a country at ease with having as its temporary head god a homosexual of Indian extraction who secretly thinks all the screaming injustices in this amazing country I have become could be sorted by allowing a free market in the fingernails of the indigent so we can develop an environmentally friendly alternative to ivory.

I had a dream, dear investors in this frantic little country I have become, that one day homeless thirteen year olds would sit trying to understand the practical application of Pythagoras’s Theorem and who was who in the War of The Roses while younger siblings shrieked their times tables on temporary mattresses whose stains have paid for themselves many times over.

I had a dream that one day, in the amazing country I always planned to grow up to be, little black boys and girls would spend years at the breakfast table with a peculiar bloke from Azerbaijan and in the process fatten the owner of the draughtiest hotel in town before eventually being allowed to pass go.

I had a dream that one day Californian Turkey Vultures, with offices in the Virgin Islands, would be invited in by the Department of Finance to usefully pick clean unnecessary flesh from the skeletons of rough sleepers and be able to claim tax relief for the upkeep of their beaks.

I had a dream that one day every pit would open its jaws wider, and quietly clear its throat before swallowing many of you, that every mountain would be made more exalted and that on each peak, from Mount Errigal to the McGillycuddy Reeks, there’d sit a guy like me telling Ryan Tubridy how he (or she) once had a dream.

Kevin Higgins

Context

Pic RTÉ

Eglinton Road, Bray, County Wicklow

Anon writes:

In Eglinton Road, in Bray there’s four vacant houses, all two-storey gaffs with converted basements. They have been vacant for years. They back on to a Wicklow County Council site that’s set to become a shopping centre…

Anyone?

Empty gaffs to broadsheet@broadsheet.ie marked ‘Empty Gaffs’

Rosemary Fearsaor Hughes (left with guide dog Quilla) and Eileen Gleeson

An open letter to Eileen Gleeson, Dublin Regional Housing Executive, Dublin City Council

As a sight-impaired rough sleeper, I wish to point out some of your misconceptions. Your statement on the causes of homelessness is discriminatory at least and ill advised at best.

I am writing this as a homeless person angered at your flagrant disregard towards other human beings, since you seem to forget that we are human, to rebuke you for the sweeping statement you have made about individuals who find themselves without accommodation.

How many homeless people do you know on a personal level?

We are not all in this situation through “bad behaviour” or through substance abuse. I was without a home and family overnight: not all “homeless people” are bums who want to live off welfare. Many find themselves homeless as a result of landlord greed, or through escaping abusive relationships.

Legislation governing the selling of handicrafts and other honest means of making a living make it impossible for individuals to save money to access private rented accommodation.

I am a Big Issue vendor, on many occasion I have experienced persecution for selling handicrafts that I have made, postcards and other small souvenirs on the streets, I want to earn a living and I will never beg. I am not in receipt of Social Welfare.

I, like many other rough sleepers, do not abuse any substances, including tobacco or alcohol, which is one of several reasons why I wish to have nothing to do with your inadequate and inaccessible hostels, accessed through a degrading freephone number.

Most of the “emergency accommodation ” facilities are unsuitable for an individual with mobility issues or sight impairment. If an accessible bed was available I would gladly accept it, that said there are not enough beds available anyway. The facilities are undignified and individual privacy is minimal.

I am computer literate and want to give something back. I not only read Braille, but I can teach it. I know many other homeless people who want opportunities to contribute to the society which has literally left us in the gutter.

However, once you have the stigma of having been homeless your prospects diminish greatly and your opportunities for obtaining meaningful long-term employment vanish. You are perpetuating that stigma by implying that all who have been or are homeless are in that position through their own wrong doing!

I am going to cast some aspersions of my own. I can be reasonably certain that you have never been without food and not known how you were going to find your next meal, nor that you have ever needed to find cardboard to bed down in a doorway.

You have had an easy life where wants and needs are easily confused. You are out of touch with the reality of what it is to survive with little or nothing and I cannot see how you can be of any benefit to the DHRE, because you have little idea about homelessness.

What is certain is that, on your watch, precisely nothing has been done to solve the long-term problem of homelessness in Dublin. I commend those charities who are doing what they can, which is more than I can say for the DHRE.

So I ask you Eileen Gleeson, how can someone so ill-informed about homelessness and clearly and demonstrably incompetent stay in a job for she is unsuitable with the DHRE?

Rosemary Fearsaor Hughes

A rough sleeper on Grafton Street

Previously: “Years Of Bad Behaviour”

Thanks Realpolithick


From top: Gerry Adams with Mary Lou McDonald (front centre) at the Sinn Féin Ard Fheis in the RDS, Dublin on Saturday. Derek Mooney

After months of will he, won’t he, Gerry Adams, Irish politics enduring enigma has announced that he plans to shortly stand aside as leader.

Cue the long lap of [dis]honour as his fans hail the great negotiator and peacemaker and his detractors remind them that he was even more responsible for the mayhem and pain that preceded the peace. Yes, he is entitled to top marks for his role in the peace process, but his total score has to be calculated over his whole career, not just the heavily revised latter portion.

Adams’ longevity is due to many factors, not least his enigmatic persona. What we know about Adams is what he wants us to know, whether it is his penchant for writing poetry, his fondness for his teddy bear and crème eggs or his passion for naked trampolining with his dog. The Adams that he would have us know is a mass of contradictions that allows some to project onto him all those talents and skills they would wish to have in a leader.

But the reality is very different. The real Adams is rarely on show, but when it is, it is unpleasant, especially when he does not think he is on the record as with his November 2014 Enniskillen speech or his responses to the provo victims.

It is also easy to seem like a skilled negotiator when you have a band of paramilitaries and a cache of weaponry that others want you to dismantle. Curious how Adams’ abilities as a negotiator have diminished since decommissioning?

Adams standing down as leader should not be confused with him relinquishing the leadership of the provisional movement. Instead, Adams moves from centre stage to behind the curtain, but have no doubt that his control, not to mention that of the others on the Army Council, will not be surrendered just yet.

If you don’t believe me then look at the situation north of the border. There Michelle O’Neill is the de jure leader, but the de facto leader remain Adams. Indeed the early and untimely death of Martin McGuinness allowed Adams and his coterie of old Belfast comrades to increase and strengthen their grip on the organisation in the North. The Northern party, once the bedrock of the Shinners set up, now must play second fiddle to the needs of the organisation in the South.

Michelle O’Neill is no accidental puppet, she was picked specifically for the role as she knew and accepted the limits that would be placed on her. This is not acquiescence, it is the provo-real-politik. She knows who truly runs the show and she is fine with that.

Just as Mary Lou will be fine with a similar situation on this side of the border. Mary Lou does not flatter herself to think that she will actually be anything more than a titular leader who will deal with the minor day-to-day tribulations while Gerry and the lads handle the big stuff, she just hopes we will not realise this – a point I will come back to, shortly.

But moving backstage does not mean that nothing at all will change. With Adams departure the provos lose their biggest celebrity whose draw and pulling power when it comes to media attention and fund raising, should not be underestimated.

While Adams will still exercise leadership over the big policy questions and directions from behind the curtain, the provos will soon feel the loss of his authority and presence when it comes to exercising day-to-day discipline and control.

Answering Mary Lou back will not be as scary and foolhardy a notion as answered Adams would have been. Unlike Adams, Mary Lou cannot invoke the whiff of cordite to engender respect and dominion.  The closest Mary Lou has come to cordite is the bang bang chicken in Wongs of Castleknock

She may wish that she had to judge from her eagerness to preside at provo gatherings, but she didn’t. Back in those more troubled and difficult days she eschewed the provo chic and was more content in Fianna Fáil in Dublin West. Indeed this, and her wish that she had taken a more central and prominent role in the past which may prove her greatest undoing.

Remember that apparent Dail dust-up between Mary Lou and the Taoiseach back in September? Most political correspondents saw the row as being provoking by comments made by Leo Varadkar. But they missed the real cause. While Mary Lou’s exit from the Dail chamber may have immediately followed Varadkar’s remarks, they did not cause it.

Fans of the West Wing will recall an early episode entitled Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc loosely translated as: after therefore because of. In the episode Bartlet points out that this is rarely the case in politics that because one action follows another that it was caused by it.

So it is with the Mary Lou dramatic exit. The comments that really got under Mary Lou’s skin came from Micheál Martin in an exchange a few minutes before.

The Toaiseach was answering questions on British-Irish relations in both the context of Brexit and the absence of an Executive in Northern Ireland. Martin referred to his own experience of negotiating with the British when Mary Lou chimed in, the following exchange comes from that day’s Dáil transcript:

Mary Lou McDonald: “Deputy Martin’s words demonstrate remarkable ignorance.”

Micheál Martin: “I have been there. I have been in negotiations with all parties.”

McDonald: “I have been there with the Deputy.”

Martin: “Deputy McDonald was not. She was never in negotiations.”

McDonald: “I have, and I have seen Deputy Martin at close quarters.”

Martin: “When I was Minister for Foreign Affairs, Deputy McDonald, was nowhere. What tended to happen was that certain people came out for the photo calls. The Deputy was never at negotiations with me or Shaun Woodward. Commitments that were given then were not dealt with or seen through.”

My point is that it was not the Taoiseach’s name calling and needling that got under McDonald’s skin, she is far too wilely and experienced to allow something that innocuous to irk her.

No, it was Martin disclosing her non-role in the talks and reminding her, publicly, that she has not been the central player she would have others, even within Sinn Féin, imagine her to be.

It is her Achilles heel then and will become a greater vulnerability as leader.

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 Tuesday morning. Follow Derek on Twitter: @dsmooney

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