No free speech in calls for a Dáil clap-o-meter

Bradley Bytes – A sort of political column by Dara Bradley

Twitter and Facebook – and some national media organs too – were awash last week with commentary, speculation, and criticism of Catherine Connolly.

The charge? That the Independent TD for Galway West, and Leas-Cheann Comhairle, either A) did not clap, or B) did not clap enthusiastically enough at the conclusion of the Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky’s address to the Houses of the Oireachtas.

It brought the anti-Connolly brigade out of the woodwork, but it was not just the usual suspects.

Critics lumped Cat in with the People Before Profit quartet of Paul Murphy, Richard Boyd Barrett, Gino Kenny and Bríd Smith, who defended their decision not to applaud, in the face of calls from opponents that they were an embarrassment and should apologise for not clapping.

The Irish Times reported that Donegal TD Thomas Pringle clapped initially to support Ukrainians but then stopped because he was “concerned about what he described as the ‘talking-up’ of NATO and what he felt were attacks on Irish neutrality”.

It suggested that Catherine Connolly and Joan Collins, another leader of the Left in Dáil Éireann, had “adopted a similar approach”.

Because life is too short for studying Dáil video footage frame by frame, and zooming in on screenshots, we simply asked Cat about her clapping; did she clap, and if so was it enthusiastic enough and if not, was there a reason why, and was she making a point about NATO she’d like us to know about?

The response was similar to the criticism levelled at her applause – short and sweet!

“I stood and I clapped, end of story,” she said. So now you know.

But back to the four PBP TDs, who didn’t clap. Most people would not agree with them and most people, if they we were in that situation, would probably applaud Zelensky out of courtesy and out of solidarity with those suffering most from Russia’s invasion.

Surely, though, the whole point of a healthy democracy is there is scope for diverging views. You know, ‘I disagree with what you say but will defend your right to say it’.

This may sound naive, but isn’t defending difference of opinion, freedom of speech, sort of what the West’s response to this war is supposed to be about?

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.

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