Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny has received the seal of office of
Taoiseach from the President after being re-elected this afternoon with
the help of nine independents and the tacit support of Fianna Fail, who
abstained as part of an historic agreement with their traditional foes.
After 70 days of convoluted negotiations, Kenny won by a margin of 59
votes to 49. In the end, he had the support his own party as well as
five of the six members of the Independent Alliance, two of the five
rural Independent TDs, as well as unaligned Independents Michael Lowry
and Katherine Zappone.
Speaking in the Dail, Mr Kenny claimed that at the heart of a programme
for government agreed with Fianna Fail was a realisation of the
potential of all the people of Ireland. He said it was a “great honour”
to accept his nomination as Taoiseach for a second term.
The new ministers will take over their departments on Monday. It is
expected Michael Noonan will return as Minister for Finance, Leo
Varadkar as Minister for Health and Frances Fitzgerald will return to
the Department of Justice.
Tension had been building in the Dail chamber throughout the early
afternoon as last-minute crisis background talks continued with the
Independent Alliance. The situation required some filibustering to
delay the vote before the deal was done.
As part of the deal, it is understood the Independent Alliance has been
offered one senior ministry, a super junior ministry, a junior ministry
and a rotating junior minister, with Shane Ross as the senior minister.
Details of the local pork-barrel projects offered to the independents
for their support have not yet been revealed.
Roscommon TD Michael Fitzmaurice, aligned to Euro MP Luke ‘Ming’
Flanagan, failed to support the new coalition over the issue of turf
cutting, but talks are said to be continuing on that issue.
Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin, Sinn Fein’s Gerry Adams and Labour’s
Joan Burton all noted the Independents luke-warm support.
During his speech Micheal Martin took credit for the postponement of
water charges but added: “Water policy is not the most important policy
facing the country and has taken too much time.”
He hit out at the Labour Party for continuing to argue that charges
should remain, saying: “Alan Kelly suffering from the withdrawal of the
drug of his choice.”
He also took a swipe at Sinn Fein saying: “The very people who have
condemned us for allowing Fine Gael back into government spent two
months trying to force us into government with them.”
Labour’s Joan Burton, who is expected to step down as Labour leader
shortly, described the Fine Gael-Fianna Fail deal as “tawdry” and
allowed Fianna Fail to put its boot on Fine Gael’s neck and pull down
the government whenever it chooses.
Ruth Coppinger of the left-wing AAA-PBP said that she has never seen an
incoming Taoiseach looking “so unhappy”. She added that 75% of people
did not want Kenny returned as Taoiseach.
“The traditional rules [on opposition] apply, because the two
traditional parties had to come to an agreement. This isn’t a grand
coalition, but it’s certainly a first cousin of a grand coalition,” she
added.
Ms Coppinger said there will be “collective groan” from people around
the country who did not want Mr Kenny to return as Taoiseach. She said
the suspension of water charges was not due to pressure from Fianna
Fail but rather down to the anti-water charge movement.
While criticising the “Enda Dependents” for supporting Mr Kenny, Sinn
Fein’s Gerry Adams noted that many of them “were among the most vocal
opponents of Fine Gael and Labour’s policy agenda”.
He described joint Fine Gael-Fianna Fail programme as a “masterclass in
waffle and bluster. No real ambition. No big ideas. No costings. Little
real detail.
“Never was so much negotiated for so long, for so little. Their joint
paper contains a few miserly lines – not even a section – on health.”
He also noted there was no commitment on the construction of social
homes “whatsoever”.
“All we have is a reiteration of the haphazard approach to a social,
State-endorsed housing and homelessness emergency that Fine Gael and
Fianna Fail caused in the first instance.
“On the issue of water, which was the main point of contention between
Fianna Fail and Fine Gael, we are told that Irish Water remains and
water charges are merely suspended, completely contrary to the Fianna
Fail manifesto.”
He also noted that the Taoiseach had vowed not to form a government
beholden to Independents.
“Another election promise out the window,” he said. “However long it
lasts, Sinn Fein will fulfil our obligations as the leaders of the
opposition. And in the interest of citizens, we will hold this
Government – comprising Fine Gael, Fianna Fail and the Independents
propping them up – to proper and robust account.”
RADIO FREE EIREANN this week will expand from 12noon until 2 pm New York time, as the program will combine up to the minute election results and analysis from the Stormont elections across the six counties with its pledge drive.
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First time candidate Dr. Anne McCloskey will discuss what campaigning in Derry where her opposition included Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness and SDLP Party leader Colum Eastwood
Author ,retired FDNY member,Vietnam Vet Billy O’Connor will give his ironic view of the Bronx Irish community as revealed in his book “CONFESSIONS OF A BRONX BOOKIE”
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Carrie Twomey and her husband Anthony McIntyre. Photograph: Dara Mac Dónaill / The Irish Times
The British government has lodged a subpoena with Boston College seeking access to taped interviews given by former IRA prisoner Dr Anthony McIntyre, it was stated on Monday.
Ed Moloney and Wilson McArthur, who were centrally involved with the Belfast Project – an oral history of the Troubles – said that the British government, acting on behalf of the PSNI and the office of the North’s Director of Public Prosecution, had served a subpoena on Boston College seeking access to Dr McIntyre’s personal interviews.
Former director of the project Mr Moloney and Mr McArthur, who interviewed former UVF members for the oral history, accused the authorities of engaging in an illegal “fishing expedition” in seeking access to Dr McIntyre’s tapes.
Boston College’s spokesman Jack Dunn said that the “subpoena was issued in proceedings that the United States District Court ordered sealed, and Boston College was requested to treat the proceedings and the subpoena as confidential”.
“Nevertheless, the university notified Mr McIntyre of the subpoena because it concluded that he should know that his materials had been requested. Given that the pending proceedings remain under seal, Boston College is not able to comment further on the matter,” added Mr Dunn.
Historian Dr McIntyre, who served time in prison on an IRA murder conviction, and Mr McArthur respectively interviewed 26 republican and 20 loyalist former paramilitaries for the project.
Dr McIntyre also gave an interview about his IRA involvement during the Troubles to another interviewer as part of the project.
Interviewees were given commitments that there would be no disclosure of their interviews until after their deaths. Two of those who gave interviews were former senior IRA figure Brendan Hughes and former UVF member and Progressive Unionist Party leader David Ervine.
After their deaths their testimonies were included in a book by Mr Moloney called “Voices From the Grave” which contained information from Mr Hughes about the IRA’s abduction, murder and disappearance of Jean McConville in 1972.
Subsequently, as part of its investigation of Ms McConville’s murder the PSNI sought access to the Boston tapes. Ultimately under legal pressure Boston College handed over a number of tapes that are believed to contain reference to Ms McConville.
The release of the tapes also resulted in the arrest of veteran republican Ivor Bell (79) who also engaged with the project. He is charged with aiding and abetting in Ms McConville’s murder as well as membership of the IRA. His trial has yet to take place.
“This action by the DPP and PSNI is simply a fishing expedition, which is prohibited by international law,” said Mr Moloney and Mr McArthur.
“We do know, in particular, that this request does not have anything to do with the disappearance and murder of Jean McConville, which was the event that motivated this PSNI trawl five years ago,” they added.
“The subpoena request provides no details of specific charge, investigation or offence of which Dr McIntyre is accused, no names of alleged victims, no dates, no places. Instead the originators of this shoddy document mention matters which are so over-broad, that literally anyone alive during the Troubles in Northern Ireland could be accused of some association with them,” said Mr Moloney and Mr McArthur.
They added that Dr McIntyre has engaged Belfast human rights solicitor Kevin Winters “to resist these efforts to raid his personal memoirs”.
Mr Moloney and Mr McArthur said the arrest and charging of Mr Bell was an “abuse of process” as was the action against Dr McIntyre. They called on the Irish Government “not to co-operate with the British authorities should any effort be made to extradite Dr McIntyre from his home in Drogheda to Belfast for the purposes of yet another futile and inordinately expensive show trial”.
They added that the DPP and PSNI had requested, and the US Department of Justice had agreed, to a “demand that Boston College keep these legal proceedings secret, away from the prying eyes of the international press”.
The PSNI said it was not “commenting on the matter” while the DPP’s office was not in a position to comment at this stage. At the time of writing there was no response to queries from the Northern Ireland Office.
‘Oh wise men riddle me this, what if the dream come true? – PH Pearse
The recent tsunami of revisionism has sought to draw a direct parallel between the noble self-sacrifice of those who those who struck for Irish Freedom on Easter Monday 1916 and those who were senselessly and cynically ordered ‘over the top’ at the Somme bloodbath a few months later. The former have in recent times been depicted as mere dreamers, poets and artists. They were of course all those things and so much more, the only Irish soldiers to die in the period of the ‘War of the Cousins’, during which the ruling elites ensured the mass slaughter of so many. The latter were mere cannon fodder enticed to their deaths by a sectarian desire to trump democracy in Ireland or even worse, by false promises to allow Irish people limited control over Irish affairs.
The Proclamation of the Republic always had pride of place in my late grandfather’s house. As a very young boy I struggled to read some of what were to me then very strange words that I had not yet encountered in any of my early school books. Today, when I read it or hear it read aloud, I marvel again at its construction and content, a tri-partite treatise summing up our historic campaigns for freedom, a charter for fundamental human rights well ahead of its time and an Augustinian reminder of all that was sacred in a just war.
Typeset by Christopher Brady from equipment commandeered by Michael Molloy and later distributed throughout Dublin by Helena Molony, The Proclamation was read first by Padraig Pearse on the plinth of the GPO and later by Thomas J Clarke at the foot of Nelson’s Pillar. Few if any listening could have envisaged its importance or the bravery of those acting on its legitimacy. The following days and weeks fully illuminated their courage and their steadfastness. Sixteen of them paid the ultimate sacrifice in Kilmainham, Cork and Pentonville prisons.
Each political party who claim some sort of lineage from 1916 has in their turn betrayed the high idealism of the Rising for narrow political shortterm gain. And yet 100 years on those Republicans who still cherish the dream have hope. The law of unintended consequences ensured that the deaths of the leaders of breathed new life into the War of (partial) Independence. Time and again democracy rears its head. Scotland almost tore the ‘United Kingdom’ apart and will no doubt be more successful on the next occasion. A ‘Brexit’ would remove at a stroke any cover for the lie that ‘the conflict is over’ with new ‘watchtowers overlooking Aughnacloy’.
Others may again accuse those who refuse to accept British rule in any part of our country of being dreamers. That is hardly an original criticism. Somehow, someday, the matter of ensuring that Republic ‘takes her place among the nations of the world’ will be determined democratically by ‘the suffrages of all her men and women’ through a One Ireland, One Vote referendum.
Plunkett Nugent (above right) is a lifelong Irish republican from the Galbally area in East Tyrone and a founding member of the PH Pearse Society Galbally – Cappagh. As a keen advocate of human rights he works as a Barrister At Law and is highly valued in his local community, with his many and varied contributions to local politics, history and culture widely respected in Galbally, its hinterland and beyond.
An award-winning journalist credited with writing the definitive account
of the 1981 Hunger Strike has died in South Africa.
David Beresford passed away in his Johannesburg home this week. He
worked for the Guardian newspaper and was their Ireland correspondent
during the late 1970s and early eighties, covering many stories from the
conflict
It was during this time he reported on the prison campaign by republican
PoWs and Margaret Thatcher’s government attempts to criminalise the IRA.
He later penned the book Ten Men Dead, one of the most detailed accounts
of the period which saw 10 republicans fast until death in the H-Blocks.
Given unique access to source material, Mr Beresford pieced together the
story of the protest through interviews and secret communications
carried in and out of the prison.
The respected journalist later moved to South Africa where he covered
the period leading up to the end of apartheid including the release of
Nelson Mandela from prison in 1990.
In 1991 he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. Despite his illness
he continued to work as a foreign correspondent and underwent radical
treatments to try to beat the disease.
Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams paid tribute to the journalist last night
and described Ten Men Dead as “probably the best book written about that
period”.
“David was an exceptional journalist,” he said.
“He was also the Guardian’s reporter in South Africa during tumultuous
changes in that country. He also faced huge challenges in his own life
battling Parkinson’s disease. I want to extend my deepest condolences to
David’s family.”
YOUNGEST BLANKETMAN
Meanwhile, a west Belfast man who was the youngest to take part in the
H-Block blanket protests during the conflict has also passed away.
Father-of-three Peter Kavanagh died on Saturday at a Belfast hospice
surrounded by his family following a long battle with cancer. Known as
Dee, he was aged 16 when he spent nearly three years from 1978 on the
republican blanket protest while in the H-blocks of Long Kesh. The
protest was against Thatcher’s attempts to force IRA PoWs to wear prison
uniforms.
His family told on Monday how he held onto life long enough to cradle
his second grandchild, Daniel Peter, who was born just hours before he
passed away.
“The little baby was brought over from the Royal hospital before he
died. I think he held on to see him,” Ms Connors said.
Mr Kavanagh wore only a blanket, refusing to wear prison clothes, after
being jailed for throwing a petrol bomb, a charge his family say he
always denied.
His older brother John Kavanagh said: “He was 16 and he was caught up in
trouble during the queen’s visit. He was sentenced for throwing a petrol
bomb – he was never in court in his life.”
Carrie Twomey and her husband Anthony McIntyre. Photograph: Dara Mac Dónaill / The Irish Times
