No-nonsense Noone lays down the law

Bradley Bytes – A sort of political column by Dara Bradley

Malachy Noone is the right man for the job as chairperson of the County Galway Joint Policing Committee (JPC).

You get the sense Malachy, the Fianna Fáil councillor and bus driver, missed his calling as a Garda chief.

He certainly rules with an iron fist – there’s no messing at the JPC when Malachy is in the hot-seat.

If Malachy was a copper in a game of Cops and Robbers, the robbers would have no chance. He’d ‘ate’ them without salt.

The usual thing that happens at meetings involving politicians is the politicians, far too fond of their own voices, if allowed, will talk endlessly.

Regardless of whether five, 10 or 15 previous speakers have said the same old nonsense, the politician will still want to get his or her ‘spake’ in.

It’s tedious, and particularly so at City and County Council meetings. It is not so bad at JPC meetings but there is always repetition.

Not when the bould Malachy is chairing, though. He’ll have none of it. He’s had two meetings as chairperson and on both occasions the members knew who was boss.

At the most recent one, he began proceedings by warning committee members: “I’m not going to be listening to the same thing again and again”.

When the members – robbers – did attempt repeating the same nonsense of previous speakers, they were shot down by wannabe-cop Malachy.

In fairness, at his first meeting he had them well warned.

Malachy told them he would be starting the meetings on time (11am), and they would be finishing on time (1pm), and there was no way he was going to be listening to members “rambling on”.

When one councillor did start talking bull, and was rambling on, Malachy gave the analogy of the farmer, whose cows had broken into a field and were eating that winter’s silage. Malachy, like the farmer, said: “It’s on yourselves you’re doing it!”

And at the end of the last meeting, after telling-off a few councillors for breaking his rules, Malachy justified his strictness with reference to the Mafia crime movie The Godfather: “Remember it’s not personal, it’s strictly business.”

Rumour mill in overdrive

By rights, politicians looking for sympathy should be directed to a dictionary where it can be found somewhere between the words scurvy and syphilis.

But you’d have to have a heart of stone, or none at all, not to have some compassion for Galway West TD, Brian Walsh, who claims to be the butt of a dirty tricks campaign.

According to poor Brianeen, some little upstart, possibly in his own Fine Gael party, has started a rumour that the former mayor will not be running in the general election in Spring 2016.

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