Archive News
As FG meet, î Cu’v throws down gauntlet on septic tanks
Date Published: {J}
The elephant in the room at the Fine Gael Parliamentary Party meeting in Galway this week was whether the Gay Mitchell could win the Presidential Election from a position where, at present, he is more than ten per cent behind Michael D Higgins.
Of course there is a long way to go still before polling day, but, barring the introduction of some remarkable candidate whom nobody has thought of yet, the two front runners are Mitchell (FG) and Michael D Higgins (Labour), according to the polling.
Right now, the decision looks like it will be between those two front runners – on the edges of the meeting in the Radisson this week, TDs were quietly prepared to concede that a possible outcome could be both of them in the running to the end with Higgins winning out, or Gay Mitchell maybe going out at the latter stages of the contest and electing Higgins.
The polls also show that Higgins is a very strong ‘draw’ for transfers … though it is important to state that this week only saw the launch of the Fine Gael campaign and the rumours were that they had quite a ‘war chest’ for campaigning, up to maybe a million euro.
That figure may be exaggerated and funding does not equal votes, as any politician will tell you. What will matter will be the campaign on the ground by TDs, Senators and councillors and Enda Kenny was very firmly spelling out this week the level of effort he is demanding from all levels of the organisation.
The party will be putting Gay Mitchell forward on the basis of his vast experiene in politics at all levels, together with a programme of using the Presidency to rebuild Ireland’s repuation abroad.
Said West Galway TD Brian Walsh: “Gay Mitchell has a remarkable electoral record of never having lost an election in a long career. He is a fighter and, no matter what the opinion polls say, that margin willl be tightening now that the Fine Gael campaign is getting underway in a big way.”
Meantime, at the conference in the Radisson, the TDs and Senators were being prepared for the tough economic announcements which are to come in the budget and for the tax and spending cut changes which are to stretch out over a few years yet. FG lost one TD, Liam Naughten, over the closure of Accident and Emergency in Roscommon County Hospital, but the word at the conference was that TDs will have to hold their nerve in the face of very difficult decisions to come as budgets are slashed by billions.
But if there were never those extraordinary budget difficulties, TDs in the west especially would have to contend with issues like the turf cutting controversy … but that sounds like very small potatoes indeed compared to the new difficulty in relation to septic tanks and the need to licence them which has broken.
County Galway certainly would be among the highest for concentrations of septic tanks, especially in the west of the country where former minister Éamon Ó Cuív (FF) this week spelled out his objection, and said he would not pay the new charges. It will be a conflict in which newcomer TDs like Sean Kyne and Brian Walsh will find themselves embroiled more than most because of the sheer preponderance of septic tanks in West Galway where they were the only option for people who wanted to build their houses and were miles from water and sewerage schemes.
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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