Archive News
Kenny must ensure those stirrings among backbenchers arenÕt first sign of a mutiny
Date Published: 17-Oct-2012
Are we witnessing this Government’s first serious mutiny, its first brush with what became almost a weekly event during the last chaotic months of the dismal Fianna Fáil and Green coalition?
The letter published in the Irish Examiner on Monday was written by eight Fine Gael TDs. It laid down a direct challenge to both Fine Gael’s coalition partners Labour and also to the party leader Enda Kenny, who has acquiesced to Labour over the Croke Park agreement to ensure other Fine Gael ‘wants’ can be pushed through.
The letter itself majored on comments by PJ Fitzpatrick the previous Thursday. Fitzpatrick is the independent chair of the body that implements the Croke Park agreement. He told the Public Accounts Committee last Thursday that neither allowances nor automatic increments for public servants were explicitly included in Croke Park.
That came as a surprise to many people as Government Ministers had spent the previous year giving the strong impression that they were expressly included.
Fitzpatrick’s disclosure gave the impetus to this group of young Fine Gael TDs to put their heads above the parapet and make public their long-held private misgivings about Croke Park. In so doing, they set themselves up as defenders of Fine Gael principles. Of course, the corollary was that Kenny wasn’t adequately defending the party’s core values.
The combination of the eight is interesting. They are all male, and most are in their 20s and 30s. All were elected for the first time in February 2011 and are – with the exception of Brendan Griffin in Kerry South – the second-, or third-, ranking TD in the constituency.
This isn’t the first time this group have come together. Earlier this year, the eight TDs were part of a group of ten who organised parallel meetings to Fine Gael’s parliamentary party apparatus.
The ten included three Galway TDs: Sean Kyne and Brian Walsh from Galway West and Paul Connaughton from Galway East. Walsh has since left the group but Kyne and Connaughton remain key members.
These new TDs came into a parliamentary party with many new Deputies like themselves. But there were also the long-term TDs already there. And those who had not received preferment to the ministerial ranks were still carrying the scars of the leadership challenge in June 2010. Very quicly new TDS found themselves in the middle of a tug-of-war between the pro-, and anti-, Enda camps.
This particular group of TDs, who socialise together in Dublin, did not see themselves being aligned to any camp and began to try to distinguish themselves as a ‘third way’ in the party. The reason for this was obvious. The party had 76 TDs. They were so far down the pecking order they did not have a hope in hell of getting promotion. If they did not show initiative, they would end up being "lobby fodder", to use Barry Andrews’ neat phrase that described the fate of the backbencher.
The group of ten organised meetings, coordinated their approach and strategy to certain issues that came up in the parliamentary party meetings, and generally began to assume the shape of a classical political awkward squad – those within a party who resist the status quo.
The group scored a few successes – highly effective critiques within the party of Croke Park’s frailties and on Phil Hogan’s poor handling of the household charge.
But before they could gather momentum, Enda Kenny’s people got wind of what they were doing. Kenny carpeted the group telling them there was no room for "five-a-sides" in Fine Gael.
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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