Tag Archives: GE16

“If Enda Kenny is not here this evening, I am because I want to stand up for him. And I want to stand up for this Government. Robert Frost was asked, in front of the press, in 1965, ‘what is the greatest attribute a human being can have?’. And he answered, ‘courage’. Well, if you want to talk about Enda Kenny, we have to talk about courage, we have to talk about commitment and we have to talk about conviction. Yes.

“I have…I have the privilege of going around this country talking to groups and organisations and people and when I go around Mayo and I look at the magnificent Wild Atlantic Way, I can tell you this: I do not want to go into a ship that’s going into a storm. I want to be with a steady, recoverable government, that continues what it began. And you should be with it too.”

Right so.

You may recall Ms O’Donnell’s glowing report of Enda Kenny to Pat Kenny on RTÉ, following the general election in February 2011.

Ms O’Donnell was nominated to the Seanad by Mr Kenny on May 20, 2011.

Watch show back in full here (go to 90mins for Ms O’Donnell)

Previously: The Next Time You Blame Americans For Stereotyping The Irish

The Mellow Mick Road

Admin at 12:35 pm February 23, 2016

The Wallace Is Out There.

A new video recapping independent TD Mick Wallace’s general election campaign by Strawberry Films, who say:

Football, doorstepping, death and smear campaigns during Mick Wallace’s 2016 General Election campaign in Wexford.

Bonus extra: ‘sheet throb Dr Julien Mercille.

Music: Sabotage by The Beastie Boys, Fallen Angel by Neil Young.

Thanks Chris

Not Phelan It

Admin at 8:48 am February 23, 2016

From top: The 15 general election candidates for the Carlow-Kilkenny constituency at a debate at KCLR 96FM this evening; Labour TD Ann Phelan

An election debate took place at KCLR 96FM in Kilkennyl ast night

It involved the 15 candidates from the Carlow-Kilkenny constituency, including Labour TD Ann Phelan..

How did that go?

Ann Phelan is “fed up of the whole bloody lot of ye” and is leaving the debate. #GE16

— KCLR 96FM (@kclr96fm) February 22, 2016

Oh.

Minister Ann Phelan walks out of KCLR’s Election Debate (KCLR)

Thanks Bertie Blenkinsop

Let The Poet Speak

Admin at 3:58 pm February 22, 2016

From top: (From left) Theo Dorgan, Ruth McCabe, Dylan Haskins, Conor Lenihan and Andrea Pappin; and Theo Dorgan on RTÉ’s The Eleventh Hour in 2011

In yesterday’s Sunday Independent Gene Kerrigan recalled poet Theo Dorgan’s contribution to the 2011 General Election.

Not a poem but a crafted monologue that literally (as we used to say on the ‘sheet) rhymed with the mood of the day. It was also one of the sheet’s earliest transcripts.

Mr Dorgan spoke on the evening of the election – Friday, February 25, 2011 – on RTÉ’s The Eleventh Hour, hosted by Daire O’Brien as the count was under way.

He shared a panel with actor Ruth McCabe, Independent candidate Dylan Haskins (damn his beautiful unelectable eyes), Conor Lenihan of Fianna Fáil and Andrea Pappin, a former Labour Party press advisor..

Daire O’Brien: “Are we on the cusp of a big change here, Theo?”

Theo Dorgan: “I think we’re going through a great change. I think the Irish people have dealt the first decisive blow to the old politics. The biggest political party and the biggest political organisation on the island has been dealt a death blow. And next time out the exact same thing will happen to Fine Gael.”

O’Brien: “Unless…”

Dorgan: “No no. No unless. I’m absolutely predicting this. Nothing in this election has persuaded me that Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael or a great chunk of Labour understands just exactly truly a) how desperate the situation is, b) how powerless the old politics is to deal with it, and c) what’s coming down the line behind Dylan [Haskins] and the other young candidates, the other young Independent candidates especially, who are coming.

“I think Fianna Fáil is a dead piece of roadkill at the moment. It’s only hope is that the great lost leader of the Labour party, Mícheál Martin, takes a decisive leap to the centre and to the left and recovers its 1930s roots.

“Fine Gael is going to absolutely lose the run of itself in office, and it’s already riven with contradictions; you have Lucinda Creighton saying the basic rate of tax is 55% and Michael Noonan saying that this is bizarre when Pat Rabbitte repeats it in the Dáil.

“There is going to be, I think, a decimation of Fine Gael the next time out. People are going through a very strange, slow-motion crash of the State. They’ve dealt with one of the great monoliths. They’re now scrupulously giving the other monolith in the old politics its shot, and when that proves itself – as it absolutely will, I’m completely certain of this – a busted flush, then the new politics will happen. So it seems to me this is an interim moment in a long, unfolding process of change.

“And the crucial thing is, actually in a strange way, to ignore the State over the next two to three years, and resume and deepen the debate on civil society that was temporarily interrupted by this.”

Later

“It’s not just the political system. It’s the self-appointed political class. There’s a managerial approach to the Republic. There’s a distinction now, a profound and unhealthy distinction between the State and the people and, in there, the idea of the Republic has got lost… You now have a line-up, an alignment, between senior managers in the public and private service, senior managers in the private sector, senior politicians, senior civil servants and senior media figures – who have a sense that we, between us, know what’s going on and you are the little people. Now the actuality, when you look at it, is the rather embarrassing spectacle of Enda Kenny rushing over sort of to kowtow to Caesar, to Angela Merkel, without having the brains to realise she’s on the way out…there is a subservient strain in the Irish political class because, objectively, it has to be described in a comprador and a colonised situation and, yet, we’re not. So that contradiction is going to widen and deepen.”

Later

“If you look at Dylan’s website, you’ll see a model of how the new politics is going to go, it’s interactive, through a campaign.”

Later (when asked for reasons to be optimistic)

“Precisely the generation that’s rising up. I’m constantly, I always find you can go back to Bob Dylan for a quote. When he says, ‘When you’ve got nothing, you’ve got nothing to lose’ which I’ve always found, as an impoverished artist, a very useful mantra. He also says, ‘Something is happening and you don’t know what it is, do you, Mr Jones?’.

I think this generation [points to Dylan Haskins] knows it. And I’ve found what, you know, travelling the country in the last four or five years, there are, it’s actually a new way of thinking is struggling to be born and it’s not ready yet to be cut off at the neck and co-opted by the spinmeisters and by the image consultants. Incidentally, very old ways are coming back as well. We still have that feel for the prophetic insight and I offer you one, in light of the election. Today, in Salthill [Co. Galway], the school, the polling booth at St Enda’s National School, the floor collapsed, there’s a harbringer – the floor of St Enda’s National School…We’re at the diagnostic stage, we have to diagnose what’s wrong before we can talk about it.”

Later

“A large turnout in a general election is people reclaiming their democracy. It’s absolutely true that there was a big revenge component in this but I think it’s a big mistake to think that that’s all there was. People have been drilled and educated in the issues and they’ve said, ‘you’ve made a mess of it, step aside’.

But the sights of the exact same people who voted for change, apparent change, today, will now be on the same government with the same lack of mercy for bullshit and lies and spoofing. And I’m waiting, will it be a week or two weeks before, “oh, if we’d seen the books, we’ve had said differently…” There’s a dreary predictability about this but the people are waking up.”

Watch the panel’s discussion in full here

Previously: You’ve Seen The Trees. Here’s The Wood

Marley And Me

Admin at 12:43 pm February 22, 2016

A reggae-fueled promotional video from TV3 ahead of Vincent Browne’s 40th – and final – People’s Debate tonight.

Jah Rastafari bumbaclot.

*jogs on the spot*

Thanks Sarah Geoghegan and Robert Keane

Suicide Squad

Admin at 12:18 pm February 22, 2016

Clear Haze writes:

“Recently a well-known comic musician from Limerick described his generation as either getting on planes or jumping in rivers. With a suicide rate of about twice the national average, Limerick City is an extreme example of the national mental health and suicide crisis.

Jack Olohan met with the Corbett Suicide Prevention Patrol to discuss their work and the problems being faced on a daily basis. In the run-up to the election the issue of mental illness and suicide rates in Ireland must be clearly addressed.”

Previously: My Generation

Earlier: Facebook Update

Corbett Suicide Prevention Patrol

February 2016

Admin at 11:14 am February 22, 2016

February 2016 (A Dubliner’s Protest)

What need you, other more than cents,
Why fumble in the streets and moan?
You value halfwit over wit,
Tick ‘none of the above‘ to groan
and make a powerhouse void of power,
Yet no Plan B have you to claim;
Pro-Active Ireland’s dead and gone,
It’s now with Lenihan, in the grave.

Yet we are now a different kind
To those old names who made us free.
What right have we to claim ’16,
When Mother Erin’s daughters bleed?
But only out of sight, of course –
Keep the provinces holy, save!
A woman’s Ireland was never born,
While Markievicz spins in her grave.

Was it for this our children fled,
With grey steel wings over every tide?
For this that citizens’ blood has shed,
For this Veronica Guerin died,
And Declan Flynn, Savita too?

Did your grumbling avenge their souls some way?
An innocent Ireland’s dead and gone,
It’s with Shane Geoghegan, in the grave.

Yet you could claim freedom again,
Remember heroes for as they were,
In their sacrifice and pain,
You’d cry ‘Some drag queen’s yellow hair
Has maddened every voter’s son,
But then, that May, we saw the power
Of what hopes and aspirations made;
So go, take action, of hope lose none,
And leave the past within the grave.

Scott De Buitléir

Top Pic via Kirkbadaz, who writes:

Homeless man beneath bridge before Boland’s Mills where Dev saw no action for a week 100 years back.

Scott De Buitléir

September 1913 (WB Yeats)

Facebook Update

Admin at 10:21 am February 22, 2016

From top: RTÉ2’s Facebook Election Special at the Facebook headquarters in Dublin last night; Cat O Broin and Shane Gillen; Vanessa O’Sullivan; and Eamon Ryan, leader of the Green Party

Last night, RTÉ 2 broadcast an Facebook Election Special from the headquarters of Facebook in Dublin, presented by Keelin Shanley.

There were seven politicians in attendance – Fine Gael’s Minister for Health Leo Varadkar, Sinn Féin TD Mary Lou McDonald, Green Party leader Eamon Ryan, Labour Minister of State Aodhán Ó Ríordáin, Fianna Fáil TD Timmy Dooley, Independent Senator Averil Power and People Before Profit’s Adrienne Wallace.

The topics discussed were prompted by questions from members of the audience and the questions, in the main, related to mental health, education, and abortion.

In relation to mental health, Cat O Broin spoke about her late brother Caoilte O Broin. Readers may wish to note that Cat was scheduled to appear on the Late Late Show last Friday but her appearance was postponed until March 11.

On the subject of abortion, Vanessa O’Sullivan told how she had to seek an abortion abroad after she was raped and refused access to the morning after pill.

And during the discussion on education, Eamon Ryan, of the Green Party, raised the issue of corporation tax in Ireland – and Facebook.

Mental health

Cat O Broin: “It’s a very long story but I suppose it starts years and years ago but, mostly, about probably 14/15 months ago. My dad died and one my brothers, who was very, very ill for a long time became a lot worse. He was already self medicating for his mental illness with alcohol but it became an awful lot stronger after my dad passed away from his grief response. He became very, very violent.”

“He was screaming at all hours of the night. I’ve a little brother, he’s only 13 now, all of us were attacked by my brother who was unwell. We were living in fear of our lives, our home, everything was going wrong.”

“We had huge difficulty finding help for him, within our health services here. We were told because he was drinking, he couldn’t receive the proper care for mental health services but addiction services wouldn’t look after him because he was so mentally unwell. So he was hospitalised, I’ve lost count how many times.”

“In a two-week period emergency services were at our home eight times. He tried to commit suicide five or six times, it came to a point that we weren’t allowed to meet with his doctors or anything, because of doctor/patient confidentiality.”

“I wrote an article for Joe.ie going public with this, to try and find help because we could get help no other way. We did finally manage to get a meeting with his doctors but nothing really came of it and on January 2, he was pulled from the River Liffey.”

“Since we became public with our story, our brother Caoilte was missing for several days and we had a social media campaign to try and find him and, obviously, a lot of people got to know us through that.

“And the stories I’ve been hearing since then, every day there’s a new person contacting me, saying ‘we’re going through the same thing’, ‘this happened to us before’, ‘please help me’ and I can’t help people. But I know there are people in this country who can – ministers who are looking for reelection who can help us, to not be the problem that it is.”

“Right now, in Ireland, dual diagnosis is a problem, mostly depending on where you live. In Donegal mental illness and addiction are treated together and they’re such an entangled problem that I think that needs to be the case all over the country – they need to be treated one and the same. I think it’s 85% of people who have an addiction also have mental health problems so you can’t separate them out.”

“There also needs to be far more contact with families. My brother was discharged to us, every single time he left hospital, we had no way to care, we didn’t know how to care for him. I didn’t even know until after his death a lot of his diagnoses, I still don’t know everything that went on.

“But we were picking him up off the floor, calling ambulances, this that and the other. Constantly. When we had no training. We didn’t know what to do for him and, obviously, we couldn’t save him in the end. But we believe, you know, it could have been avoided.”

Abortion

Vanessa O’Sullivan: “Where I’m coming from, well I’ve been a Choice activist since I was 16 but about four years ago now nearly, I was raped by a friend. I was denied the morning after pill because of the conscientious objection clause that’s in the legislation with the pharmaceuticals. Pharmaceuticals have the ability, if it goes against their conscience, to give emergency contraception to women which is outrageous in the 21st century.”

“And one of the issues I take with the Labour proposal and I’ve brought it up with Aodhan O Riordan before is that it looks at this conscientious objection clause for, if the 8th amendment is removed, to give the option for doctors to refuse to actually serve their patients. They put their own personal view before their patients.”

“…What happened with me was, and there’s no guarantee the morning after pill would have worked, but what happened to me, as a result of the rape, I ended up pregnant, I had to leave my own country, which I pay taxes in, for my healthcare. I was denied my healthcare, I was denied my choices. I was made to feel like a criminal.”

“The issue with the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act is that it criminalises women up to 14 years imprisonment if they’re seen to go against the morals of the Government of the time. So, if I had had the, if I had bought the abortion pill online which is on the World Health Organisation’s list of basic, basic and essential medicines, I could have been jailed for up to 14 years. If my rapist had been prosecuted, he could have been imprisoned for up to 7 years. So that’s the disparity.”

“So, as has been said before, women have abortions in this country so let’s trust the people of this country to actually have a say on the referendum or on the 8th amendment. It is no use to us having a nicely nice conversation about it and kicking it on further down the road. Women’s lives are at stake, women’s healths are at stake, and I think now is the time to deal with instead of constantly, constantly kicking it down the road.”

“We need to deal with it now.”

Education

Eamon Ryan: “Where do we get half a billion is the question. The Financial Transaction Tax, I’d be all for that but I’m not sure we can get it in the next year or two. And I meet a lot of companies like Facebook and Google and others, and they say the same thing, we need better graduates, we’re not getting high enough quality out of our colleges. Well I think one of the ways we could raise the money is getting the money from corporations like Facebook and Google and all the other large corporations here.”

“There’s a one trillion gap in unpaid tax due to the tax avoidance measures across Europe…I’m not picking against any company, I’ve a lot of time for Facebook and Google but Google just put 27.5 billion in the last two years through Holland and off to the Cayman Islands or Bermuda somewhere and didn’t pay proper tax on it.”

“Facebook in the UK aren’t paying any proper, real tax and we need to start having fair, proper rules, transparent and simple rules so that if we say it’s 12.5% or if we say, on the intellectual property rights, we’re saying it’s 6.5%. But we all know the way it works is that there’ll be some complication, money hidden going this way and the other that it doesn’t actually turn out to be the 6.5%.

“So I would say to the companies here, if I could and I don’t mean to be rude about it, is that’s one of the ways we could raise the money and we should put it into education cause these companies would benefit from graduates coming from high quality colleges.”

Meanwhile…

#rte take note of #cherishingallchildren. Last minute cancellation of special needs topic for tonight’s debate is causing huge anger.

— sca (@wab0607) February 21, 2016