Paul Malpas

Life in Ireland is no different to life in England except really in two different ways.  The casual immigrant, as I class myself as being, one who never did his homework before coming here, one who classed Ireland as his or her’s spiritual home and had to get here come what may, all of a sudden runs up against matters that do not seem to make sense.  Take for example the Health Service here.  If you step outside your door intent on a visit to the doctors, the euros start to clock up.  If the doctor is at his surgery and you nod in his direction he charges you €40 if you are lucky, then there is another €20 for a blood test and when you go to the chemists with a prescription you can be charged anything.  I remember being asked for €193 for some pills for my wife.  There is also 50 cent government  levy on each type of medication you walk away with.  I did not of course pay the €193 but handed same back to the pharmacist explaining how my wife has decided to take the old fashioned remedy and chosen to ignore her complaint because in most cases complaints fade away unless they are very serious and then the doctor or pharmacist cannot really help.  All pharmaceutical products and doctors work on the fear factor to cower you in to partaking.  Why cannot they set up a National Health Service here.  A think tank of doctors and health professional spent a year recently looking into this ideal and came to the conclusion that the transition could be done smoothly and at no real cost if the motivation was there but it isn’t and the consultants and medical practitoners continue to make hay without any real discipline as they have always done so.

So with these kind of costs clicking up like a till register in a superstore, the potential patient has to be quick on his feet to avoid bankruptcy and like most problems Irish there is of course a way round the problem but you need to take a combined 3rd level course in computers and psychology to prevail.  Either that or take a lesson off the simple man in the street who at all times and in every country has found out a way round every barrier known to man.  So within weeks after taking some very intense lessons on life and how to live it, stood at the various bars around town, I passed my examination with flying colours and now the mazuma stays in my pocket and does not grace the doctors.  This medium is not the place to relate the secrets in which I matriculated but if you, like me, will stand at the bar or better still sit on a high stool at your favourite watering hole and invest in copious quantities of Arthur’s finest cordials, your investment will be well rewarded.

Another happening yesterday made me stop and ponder on the conundrums of Irish life as opposed to the puritan English.  Mary Lou McDonald, the Sinn Fein TD and Deputy Leader of her party, and champion of all that is foolish about her party, stood up in the Dail and roundly criticized the Coalition’s minister for Social Services, Joan Burton, for once again attacking the very poor in this country.  The reason for this broadside was the fact that under the present rigourous belt tightening that the Fine Gael/Labour Coalition Government is imposing on the inhabitants of this fair isle, Joan was looking seriously at the social service payments paid to thousands of parents throughout the country for Communion and Confirmation dresses hopefully intended for their little cherubic daughters to go lightly tripping up the aisle of their parish church on those two annual sacramental days ordained by Holy Mother the Church.

Now I do not know how the lads fare out in this fashion parade and I hope they are not left with their arse hanging out of a scraggy pair of trousers they have worn every day for the last two years, but yesterday in the Dail only Communion dresses were mentioned.  It might be a case of the Government giving early lessons in cross-dressing which would ease their financial problems no end with the thought of the word gender being thrown out of the window and the lack of need for distinguishing the sexes.

However the thought that these little Catholic children of Christ are getting free party dresses while the poor Church of Ireland, Methodist, Presbyterian and all the other myriad of religious and non-religious parents do not get even a sock fills me with distaste.  Is it a fact and so I was told since being knee high to a grasshopper, that the Catholic religion is God’s chosen course and that all the rest of them and now me included, are damned or is the Catholic Church in Ireland after years and years of abusing these little children getting more than its fair share of the financial cake?

Now it is obvious to the casual observer that because of this clerical abuse of the little children of Christ and their abuse of so many things, in so many walks of life, that the attendances at mass are dwindling and that the congregations at Catholic churches now seem to be limited to people over 70 years old who stopped thinking about their redemption 40 years ago.  So why should it be that the thrusting and vital young parents of today, who only see the inside of a church at Baptisms, Communions, weddings and funerals find the need to equip their loved ones in the finest couture the government can buy.  The answer is obvious, because it is there.  Once you see an apple on a tree it is nature’s course to want to pluck it.  The communion dress serves a variety of purposes and if the mother is wise she will design the dress that it fits the child for every social occasion for the next seven years and after puberty is passed, can be cut down by the able and made into very decent curtains for the back bedroom.

Last year the average payout per child was €242 and Joan said yesterday, whilst under constant attack from that party who value family life above everthing else, she might have to limit the payment to €120.  Tell me why in this day of total financial insecurity, where handicapped children are being denied their basic rights, where every government penny is counted, is it even thinking of giving parents, who never dream of going to church, unless there is a party afterwards, €120 towards a new frock.  I am not annoyed, I am slightly shocked but I am also completely dumfounded.

I live in a really beautiful part of Ireland, in Boyle in north County Roscommon.  Our house is so close to the Boyle River that from a distance it looks as though the river runs through our front room and in fact it often tries to do.  Down the river a few hundred yards, the waters spill out into historic Loch Ce, a lake of christian pilgrimage for a thousand years.  The Premonstratensian, Augustinian and Franciscan monks all built abbeys on its shores and islands following on from St. Columcille’s monks who built a monastery on Church Island and a church at Drum on the river, at the side of our house in the 7th century.  The lake is six miles long and 4 miles wide and dotted so they say with as many islands as there are counties in Ireland.

Sail to the northern end of the lake and take the road through the village of Corrigeenroe (Little Red Rock) and you are taken along the eastern side of Lough Arrow which is just over the Sligo border.  You are in the ancient Barony of Tirreril, the Land of the McDonaghs, an ancient royal clan that owed allegiance to the McDermots, who were the royal chieftains of this area since the 10th century.  In Tirreril lived the O’Higgins family, a highly thought of family with big estates and a history going back to the O’Neills in the 6th century.  The O’Higgins were liked by all the local big-wigs, the McDermots, the O’Rourkes, the O’Garas and the McDonaghs for their poetry and their intellect.

It was here in 1720, on the shores of Lough Arrow, Ambrose O’Higgins was born in much reduced circumstances because of the Cromwellian persecution and later Jacobite/Williamite upheaval.  It was the time of the Penal Laws, when Catholics were disarmed, stripped of land and reduced to the level of servants.  They were disenfranchised, forbidden to marry Protestants,  join the Army or receive a decent education.  It was a time when most gifted and doughty men left Ireland and filled the ranks of the military and civil service in all the countries in Europe.  They called it the Flight of the Wild Geese.

The O’Higgins family became tenant farmers for the Rowley family in Meath after their land was eventually all taken off them.  In about 1750, aged 30, Ambrose took the plunge and ended up in Cadiz in Spain where he worked for the powerful Irish/Spanish merchant family of Butler.  After some few years in Cadiz, Ambrose decided to seek his fortune in South America.  He worked in Venezuela, Peru and Argentina before getting his big chance.  He worked out a route from Mendoza, in western Argentina, over the Andes into Chile, thus joining up two Spanish colonies that previously had had little contact for most of the year other than by sailing round the Horn.  This route worked and for the first time ever the two colonies could remain in contact all year long.  By now he was enlisted in the Spanish Imperial Service and besides developing this route, he was asked to stay in Chile by the Spanish authorities and join the Army, which he did and sucessfully put down an Indian uprising, humanely and not cruelly, for which he was thanked by both sides and eventually he was upgraded to the position of Governor of Concepcion in 1786.

In 1788 king Charles III of Spain made him Baron of Ballinar for his services to the colonies.  He soon became leader of the Spanish Army and eventually Governor of Chile.  He entered on a programme of road building and rebuilding of ancient towns.  For this service the new king Charles IV made him the Marquis of Osomo in 1796 at the age of 76 and appointed him Viceroy of Peru, the land of which covered present day Peru, Chile, Bolivia, north west Argentina and western Brazil.  It was the most powerful position in Spanish America and he died suddenly from overwork in 1801 at the age of 81.

In 1777 Ambrose at the age of 57 fell in love with an 18 year old girl, Isabel Riquelme, of a powerful mixed race family.  In accordance with society’s rules at the time, he was not allowed to marry her at the risk of losing his hard won position but in 1778 Isabel bore him a son, Bernardo.  Ambrose never met this boy and never ever recognised him but he provided the money to bring him up and pay for his education in London.  It was here, at the age of 18, influenced by South American independence seeking  politicos, did Bernardo start to put his thoughts together towards an independent Chile, free of Spanish rule.  After a short time in Spain he returned to Chile in 1802 and started farming a large piece of land willed to him by his father.  In 1806 he entered the Chilean Parliament.

The Independence thinkers were helped considerably by events in Europe, Napoleon of France took control of Spain in 1808 and whilst he was involved in his European campaigns the Spanish/Chilean ruling class formed their own government, ruling the couintry in the name of Napoleon’s captive king, Ferdinand VII and Bernardo was elected deputy in the first National Congress of Chile in 1811.

After Napoleon started to lose his power in Spain after Wellington and Nelson had given him a bloody nose, the Spanish imperial forces invaded Chile to regain control of the country  but Bernardo defeated them at Linares.  In October of that year he effectively took command of the Chilean Army and defeated the Spanish forces again at El Roble with the famous cry of “Lads!  Live with honour, or die with glory!  He who is brave follow me”  However at a later battle at Rancagua, the Chilean forces were soundly beaten and Bernardo was lucky to escape with his life, scurrying into Argentina.  He returned to Chile in 1817 and defeated the royalist forces at Chacabuco.  Bernardo became Supreme Director of the newly independent Chile in 1818.  He founded the Chilean Navy but after five years with the cost of arming the new country it teetered on the edge of bankruptcy only saved by a £1 million pound loan from England but by then he had run foul of the country’s opposition party and in 1823 at the age opf 45 he was deposed.

He left Chile, never to return, in a British naval vessel intending on returning to Ireland but he met up with Simon Bolivar in Peru and joined him in his successful fight for independence and then went into retirement for the next 20 years.  By 1842 the tide of public opinion had turned towards him in Chile and he was invited back and given back his old rank of Captain General of the Army but on his journey back he suffered a heart attack and was buried in Lima in Peru.

His remains were exhumed in 1869 and brought back to Chile and he lay in a marble coffin in Santiago whilst it was decided where he should be buried.  He had wanted Concepcion but the Chilean people wanted Santiago.  It was not until General Pinochet finally put him down in 1974 in Santiago was the argument decided.  Wherever you go today in Chile, Bernardo’s name shouts out from street names and statues, districts and docks.  He is their Deliverer.

Not bad for two men from Tirreril whose countryside was bypassed by the 20th century.  Even today there isn’t much change from the countryside Ambrose knew.  It is a quaint, quiet backwater but full of more history than most parts of Ireland.  So this evening as you settle by your fire in your favourite armchair, lift your glasses of Cabernet Sauvignon or even better, Carmenere, because without these two boys you might not now feel so smug.  Do not forget that the South American vines saved the European wine industry in the late 19th century when an outbreak of phylloxera nearly killed every vine on the Continent.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Ambrose and Bernard!

Some of the latest rubbish coming out of the Catholic Church in Ireland this week was first of all from Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, a man I have some time for and a man I exhorted to resign over a year ago at the antics of his fellow bishops.  He was telling all the “stay at home” Catholics to stay at home and resign from the Church.  Mass attendance had fallen to 17% of the Catholic population and he was getting mightily fed up of these once or twice a year Catholics claiming expensive and worthwhile places at Catholic schools but not allowing and not showing their children the Catholic way of life.

What it seems he wants is a hardcore of regular church going Catholics with Catholic children ministered by a diminishing group of priests.  With his reduced revenue from this 17% he can then try to cope for a few more years.  By getting back to basics, he is hoping by then that all the abusing priests are dead and the few can cope.  This negative mantra is where the Church as got itself to today and what a shame because the Church does so many good things.  Bring on the women and ordain away and come out fighting you depressed bunch of eejits.

The other item this week that could be classed as amazing if it was not so awful was what came out of the publication of the redacted Chapter 9 of the Cloyne Report which was published last weekend.  This chapter dealing with Fr Ronat (not his real name) and his antics in the diocese over a thirty year period was the longest in the report and was left out when it was published last July because it could prejudice future court proceedings.  Well there was none and it looks like the numerous complaints against this man are going to brushed aside.  Which makes potential survivors loath to come forward if they want justice in Ireland.  The Cloyne Report divorced the Irish government from the Vatican because of the criticisms of the Diocese’s handling of the affair which was atrocious, yet only one of the 19 priests reported was ever brought to court.  It does not make sense, especially when most of them had been eventually removed from ministry.

The blame was rightfully and correctly laid at the feet of the diocese and its priests yet nothing happened.  Why did Enda get himself in such a tizz with that marvellous speech in the Dail and why did the Vatican recall their Papal Nuncio? Was it just posturing for posturings sake.  But Fr Ronat had been abusing children for over 30 years, the first complaint I think was in 1979 and he was eventually removed from his duties in 2005.  Why is it that ordinary folk like myself can only think that brown envelopes have returned to the Irish landscape.  Indeed we are daft to allow these things to happen in the way that they do.

The reasons put forward by the Diocese and by the Archbishop of Cork, Dermot Clifford, who was put in charge of Cloyne when Bishop Magee did a runner in 2008 or euphemistically stepped down, said that the priests who had been reported had been enticed or beset by their victims and that the priests who knew about this abuse did not let it go any farther has they considered these acts to be sins and not crimes.  Are we daft enough to take this rubbish.  Can priests who spend 15 years of their senior education working out the ins and outs of  their religion  seriously think that way.  I can only suggest they are alzeimic.

When you put those arguments along with the recent one in England where it was suggested that Bishops were not vicariously liable for their flock of priests, it shows you the extent of idiocy the Church can go to, instead of paying out a few quid to deserving victims.  Thank God we came on a strong judge who gave a massively strong rebuttal of the Diocese of Portsmouth’s argument regarding vicarious liability.

For some reason as I was thinking of all this claptrap I was reminded of the couple of lines in JP Dunleavey’s book “The Ginger Man”, the quite remarkable book illustrating 1950s Dublin.  When the hero of the story, Sebastian Dangerfield, when offering his manhood up to his virginal, middle aged, Catholic lodger, Miss “Lilly” Frost in bed, who had his back turned to him, said “Lilly, why did you want me to do it this way.”  “Oh Mr Dangerfield, it’s so much less of a sin”.

Immediately this impared logic brings Bill Clinton, the erstwhile President of the United States of America and the Catholic Church in Ireland to mind.

Tomorrow, October 27th 2011 sees the end of the political circus that is the Irish Presidential Election.  This political sideshow as been running officially now for two months, although some of the characters have been squaring up for over a year and it has been taking our hearts and minds off the job in hand, which is digging our way out of the financial turmoil, in part brought on by the last Fianna Fail government and in part by the greed of the international banking system.  Enda Kenny, the Irish Prime Minister, could not have played his cards better than to have this hysterical floorshow distracting us this long while.

It has been a seven horse race, but using the word horse in this contest is a massive term of abuse to our equine friends, with a tawdry a bunch of wannabes as you could ever imagine.  To get into the frame you have to be a citizen of the state, over 35 years old and be nominated by at least 20 serving members of the Oireachtas, the Irish Parliament. or if you are of independent bent, you have to have the support of at least four county or city councils.

This election is taking place at the end of the present President’s second term of office.  Mrs Mary McAleese for 14 years and Mrs Mary Robinson before her have elevated this position to one with international clout but unfortunately in this new bunch of candidates there does not appear to be one of the same calibre.

The three political parties with 20 or more members of the Oireachtas who can nominate a party representative are Fine Gail, the Labour Party and Fianna Fail.  Fine Gail eventually elected Gay Mitchell, a Dublin MEP, as their candidate; the Labour Party elected Michael D. Higgins, a long serving TD and Senate member, although Fergus Finlay of Bernardo’s, my original fancy, put up a good fight.  Fianna Fail, still hurting from their 2010 hammering in the Dail elections of 2010, hummed and aghed for months before deciding not to run a candidate.  Sinn Fein who did not have enough seats in the Oireachtas (17 only), sought the help of four independent TDs, Michael Healey-Rae and Tom Fleming, both from South Kerry, Ming Flanagan from Roscommon and Finian McGrath from Dublin and nominated Martin McGiunness, the darling boy from Derry.  I suppose it does show the political affiliation of these so called independent TDs if ever the shit hits the fan over here.

On top of these three a number of independent candidates sought the support of 20 Oireachtas members.  This turned into a Lannigan’s ball with the candidates stepping in and out and eventually nobody in the end being able to satisfy all the criteria necessary.

The independent minded and thicker skinned of the survivors then approached the councils and eventually four of them gained the right credentials.  Mary Davis received 13 council nominations, Sean Gallagher received the necessary four.  David Norris having tried the Oireachtas path and pulled out and then tried again, eventually impressed four councils on the eastern seaboard to back him and last and least, Dana Rosemary Scallon persuaded four councils to nominate her, one of which was Roscommon County Council, my bete noir, which showed its true colours in spades with this nomination.

So by the 28th September the scene was set for this 30 day tango to take place.  Seven candidates, all arguing and fighting among themselves like a crowd of fishwives with not a scintilla of sense or positivity coming from any of them.  In order of my preference I will try and paint a brief picture of each:-

Michael D. Higgins, my eventual choice, educated at University College, Galway and Manchester University, who by far outshone all the others, in that he had by far the fewer skeletons in the cupboard.  Smoking a spliff in the States 50 years ago as a student and by being a member of Fianna Fail in 1966, his biggest sins.  He is 70 years old and that might be too much for seven years in such a demanding role, made so by the last two female incumbants, but not by the previous male recipients of this position.  He is the only candidate to be perfectly fluent in Irish which seems to matter to some in this country.

Mary Davis is 58 years old, educated at Leeds University and the University of Alberta in Canada, has spent her life physically educating the disabled.  She is a “Committee Woman” who has developed the quango spirit and is officially described as a social entrepreneur, which needs some kind of explanation for me to understand the term, earning your money as an entrepreneur and a quango sitter appear in direct opposition to each other.  To put it mildly, Mary, although probably a very nice woman, is neither one thing or the other, I would consider her to be translucent, nothingness personified, which is a pity really as the position calls out for a woman.  Most women have empathy in bucket loads, look at the last two presidents and empathy is the keyword of presidency.  Men do not seem to have this quality.

David Norris, a 68 year old Joycean scholar who was educated at Trinity College in Dublin and has more or less championed gay rights in Ireland for 38 years.  He will, if elected, be the first openly gay head of state in the world.  A gifted man who has unfortunately turned this whole charade into something less than a fairground attraction, using his snobbish airs to their full malfunction.  Typically his gay history caught up with him when it was reported that he had sent a letter on parliamentary paper, pleading with an Israeli court for clemency for his erstwhile lover, Ezra Nawi, who had been convicted of the statutory rape of a 15 year old boy.  Norris was highly fancied at the beginning of the campaign but as each of the 30 days has ticked by, so as his support.  Certainly if elected he would make an entertaining President but I think gravitas matters more and that is why Higgins is my man.

As far as the other four candidates are concerned I cannot separate them, they are all equally poor in one or more characteristic or other.  I would not and will not honour them with a transfer vote.  They are:-

Sean Gallagher, aged 49, who says he is an independent but he is in fact steeped from head to toe in Fianna Fail politics, which he has been trying to disassociate himself from for the whole of the campaign.  Educated at Ballyhaise Agricultural College in Cavan and at NUI Maynoth, he is another of these political/professional entrepreneurs who looks as though he has never done a days work in his life but has attended many a committee meeting.  In the last week of the campaign his approach seems to have burst through and he held a massive lead going into the last few days, but as with all things Fianna Fail, his past caught up with him and brown envelopes containing nothing less than 5,000 euros came tumbling out of the cupboard.

Martin McGuinness born in 1950 and is currently deputy First Minister in Niorthern Ireland.  Although never having been troubled with anything other than a basic education, he preferred the School of Hard Knocks and the University of Life, he is a very able and now serious politician.  However as with everybody who takes the violent approach,  his being through the IRA, the past always catches up.  The majority of people cannot stand the way the IRA sought their way through the morass and as the campaign went on he was more and more often confronted with the families of IRA victims.  None more so than the family of Garda detective Gerry McCabe who was shot dead in Adare in Limerick in 1996.  I can forgive McGuinness most things but I learn that he is a member of the Pioneer Total Abstinence Association and I can never trust a man who will not have a drink.  Probably his claim to fame is that he had a cousin, Patrick McGuinness, who taught my daughter French at Oxford University and did an excellent job.

Gay Mitchell is 59 years old and was educated at Dublin Institute of Technology and at Queen’s, Belfast.  He is a career politician who has served Fine Gail all his life without distinction.  The best that can be said of him is that he is small and insignificant, which just about sums up the qualities necessary to become a political big wig in Ireland.  His denials of truths are historic and legendary and the only thing going for him is that his cousin is a famous Dublin gangster.

Last and least is Dana Rosemary Scallon, born in 1951 but answers to any age between 20 and 30 and whose only claim to high office is that she won the Eurovision Song Contest in 1970.  A fellow Derry child along with McGuinness she also received a scant education.  Her music career gave her the propulsion she needed to enter politics but her campaigns on the Catholic ticket, especially her opposition to abortion, contraception and divorce, especially in this clerical abuse atmosphere have led to a massive drop in sympathy for her cause.  Her failure to win over support as led to all kinds of nonsense, not least her reports of an attempted assassination attempt when a tyre burst on her car.  Her lack of intelligence and the patronising old fashioned way she has with voters does not help her cause either.  She will be lucky not to lose her chance of the government  reimbursing her election expenses as she is forecast to receive only about 1% of the vote and this amount could be in the region of 200,000 euros.  Not to be sniffed at in these impoverished times.

So there we have it, a right collection of toe rags and I do pity the state of Ireland’s adult qualities if this is all they can put up, but it may be that the Presidential Office is not worth the seven years at 249,014 euros per annum after all the candidates have mauled themselves to death after 30 days and when the media can tell everybody when was the last time each candidate had picked their nose or even worse.  The wise man or woman is better to steer clear and leave it to the eejits.