Archive News
Anticipating problems and pitfalls for Government in the year ahead
Date Published: 16-Jan-2013
Prediction is very difficult,’ goes the saying coined by a Nordic physicist, ‘especially about the future’.
Sometimes such predictions do indeed come back to haunt you, especially if you stick your neck out, or are so arrogant not to recognise your own hubris. There was a coterie of economists who told us the economic boom would last indefinitely. And they were discredited along with a lot of our captains of banking and speculation.
As political journalists that’s part of our stock in trade. We analyse the past and the present, and punt about the future. More often than not we are wrong but besides the odd anorak out there on twitter, we are called out surprisingly little on it.
I remember journalists predicting confidently back in 2007 and early 2008 that Fianna Fail would romp home to a fourth term in 2012 – seriously.
And last year a well-known columnist went to the other extremes – predicting the demise of Fianna Fail. That’s not going to happen either but, hey, it sounded right at the time.
For the rest of us, we didn’t get all that much wrong but, then, we didn’t get everything right either. Most of us just accepted pat what we are being told about property and the economy without really noticing that the king was running kind of skimpy in the clothing department.
All that said, there are a number of events in 2013 that are worth marking your cards about. All of these things will happen – what’s not fully known is the impact or effect that they will have.
The first and most proximate is abortion. The Government has already decided that it will press ahead with legislation and guidelines that will include the threat of self-destruction as a substantial risk to the life of the mother. The debate on this issue will revolve around suicide.
I have no doubt that the legislation and the guidelines will pass through the Oireachtas. The whole of the Labour Party will support it. And as a three-line whip is being imposed on Fine Gael TDs and Senators, it will be a big decision for any Fine Gaeler to rebel and vote against the Government.
But I’ve no doubt that some will rebel. I sense though that the numbers will be small, or comparatively small. I’d be very surprised if more than half a dozen TDs and Senators jumped ship.
That’s a big number by any historical yardstick. But given the divisiveness of this issue – and the fact that it is an issue of huge moral conscience for some – such a rebellion would be liveable within the circumstances.
There were a number of Fine Gael TDs who were definitely swayed into supporting the legislation by the evidence given by medical experts at last week’s Dail hearings (which were much, much better than I had given them credit for). It will also be interesting to see how Lucinda Creighton will respond to the legislation when it’s published.
The next big landmark in 2013 will be the end of March when the next tranche of the €30 billion promissory note to shore up Anglo Irish Bank falls due for renewal. That particular burden is a form of IOU for which the taxpayer was ladeled with a bill of €3 billion plus for ten straight years.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
People’s living conditions less than 100 years ago were frightening. We have come a long way. We talk about water charges today, but back then the local District Councils were erecting pumps for local communities and the lovely town of Mountbellew, according to Council minutes, had open sewers,” says Galway County Council archivist Patria McWalter.
Patria believes we “need to take pride in our history, and we should take the same pride in our historical records as we do in our built heritage”. When you see the wealth of material in her care, this belief makes sense.
She is in charge of caring for the rich collection of administrative records owned by Galway County Council and says “these records are as much part of our history as the Rock of Cashel is. They document our lives and our ancestors’ lives. And nobody can plan for the future unless you learn from the past, what worked and what didn’t”.
Archivists and librarians are often unfairly regarded as being dry, academic types, but that’s certainly not true of Patria. Her enthusiasm is infectious as she turns the pages of several minute books from Galway’s Rural District Councils, all of them at least 100 years old.
Part of her role involved cataloguing all the records of the Councils – Ballinasloe, Clifden, Galway, Gort, Loughrea, Mountbellew, Portumna and Tuam. These records mostly consisted of minutes of various meetings.
When she was cataloguing them she realised their worth to local historians and researchers, so she decided to compile a guide to their content. The result is For the Record: The Archives of Galway’s Rural District Councils, which will be a valuable asset to anybody with an interest in history.
Many representatives on these Councils were local personalities and several were arrested during the political upheaval of the era, she explains.
And, ushering in a new era in history, women were allowed to sit on these Rural District Councils – at the time they were not allowed to sit on County Councils.
All of this information is included in Patria’s introductory essay to the attractively produced A4 size guide, which gives a glimpse into how these Rural Councils operated and the way political thinking changed in Ireland during a short 26-year period. In the early 1900s, these Councils supported Home Rule, but by 1920, they were calling for full independence and refusing to recognise the British administration.
“I love the tone,” says Patria of the minutes from meetings. “The language was very emotive.”
That was certainly true of the Gort Rural District Council. At a meeting in 1907, following riots in Dublin at the premiere of JM Synge’s play, The Playboy of the Western World the councillors’ response was vehement. They recorded their decision to “protest most emphatically against the libellous comedy, The Playboy of the Western World, that was belched forth during the past week in the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, under the fostering care of Lady Gregory and Mr Yeats. We congratulate the good people of Dublin in howling down the gross buffoonery and immoral suggestions that are scattered throughout this scandalous performance.
For more from the archives see this week’s Tribunes here
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
SLIGO 0-9
GALWAY 1-4
FRANK FARRAGHER IN ENNISCRONE
GALWAY’S first serious examination of the 2013 season rather disturbingly ended with a rating well below the 40% pass mark at the idyllic, if rather Siberian, seaside setting of Enniscrone on Sunday last.
The defeat cost Galway a place in the FBD League Final against Leitrim and also put a fair dent on their confidence shield for the bigger tests that lie ahead in February.
There was no fluke element in this success by an understrength Sligo side and by the time Leitrim referee, Frank Flynn, sounded the final whistle, there wasn’t a perished soul in the crowd of about 500 who could question the justice of the outcome.
It is only pre-season and last Sunday’s blast of dry polar winds did remind everyone that this is far from summer football, but make no mistake about it, the match did lay down some very worrying markers for Galway following a couple of victories over below par third level college teams.
Galway did start the game quite positively, leading by four points at the end of a first quarter when they missed as much more, but when Sligo stepped up the tempo of the game in the 10 minutes before half-time, the maroon resistance crumbled with frightening rapidity.
Some of the statistics of the match make for grim perusal. Over the course of the hour, Galway only scored two points from play and they went through a 52 minute period of the match, without raising a white flag – admittedly a late rally did bring them close to a draw but that would have been very rough justice on Sligo.
Sligo were backable at 9/4 coming into this match, the odds being stretched with the ‘missing list’ on Kevin Walsh’s team sheet – Adrian Marren, Stephen Coen, Tony Taylor, Ross Donovan, David Kelly, David Maye, Johnny Davey and Eamon O’Hara, were all marked absent for a variety of reasons.
Walsh has his Sligo side well schooled in the high intensity, close quarters type of football, and the harder Galway tried to go through the short game channels, the more the home side bottled them up.
Galway badly needed to find some variety in their attacking strategy and maybe there is a lot to be said for the traditional Meath style of giving long, quick ball to a full forward line with a big target man on the edge of the square – given Paul Conroy’s prowess close to goal last season, maybe it is time to ‘settle’ on a few basics.
Defensively, Galway were reasonably solid with Gary Sice at centre back probably their best player – he was one of the few men in maroon to deliver decent long ball deep into the attacking zone – while Finian Hanley, Conor Costello and Gary O’Donnell also kept things tight.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
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