Bradley Bytes: Mayor’s travel sends his rivals around the bend(s)!

Bradley Bytes – A Sort of Political Column with Dara Bradley 

The bends, or decompression sickness, is a phenomenon that affects scuba divers.
It is caused when divers surface too quickly, after a deep dive, and the nitrogen gas they use to breathe underwater, gets into the body’s system.
Close associates of Mayor of Galway, Niall McNelis, fear that he may develop the flying equivalent of the bends, such is the level of air travel he’s selflessly undertaken since assuming office. Apparently, it’s closely associated with Mayoritis, a condition that afflicts one local politician every year.
The Labour Party City Councillor has already had to endure long-haul flights – including to China – and short-haul flights – including to Coventry and Europe – as he fulfils his mayoral duties.
Other Galway politicians putting on the green jersey abroad were Ministers Ciaran Cannon (Canada and US), Seán Kyne (US), and Independent TD Noel Grealish (US).
Cllr Declan McDonnell, we hear, was in Romania at the European Committee of the Regions. This wasn’t so much a Paddy’s Day trip, rather one that coincided with it.
But City Councillor colleagues of Mayor McNelis are particularly concerned of the impact his latest overseas jaunt will have on the city centre jeweller.
The itinerary of his 10-day St Patrick’s Day trip to the United States reads like a truncated bucket list of an NUIG student’s J1 Visa: he was in Seattle, Washington (Galway’s sister city), Boston and New York. Not that his City Council colleagues are jealous of the high-flying mayor; they were just concerned that he got back on ‘terra firma’ in one piece.

No 2020 vision on Fleadh
Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann in Derry in 2013 was a massive success . . . This is a preview only. For more Bradley Bytes, see this week’s Galway City Tribune. Buy a digital edition of this week’s paper here, or download the app for Android or iPhone.