Archive News
Noonan uses his legendary political nous to smooth over all the cracks
Date Published: 05-Dec-2012
When Michael Noonan rose to speak in the Budget debate yesterday it was the thirteenth speech he had given either as Minister for Finance or as the main opposition spokesman. And it was a toss-up as to whether yesterday’s speech or the one last year were the least memorable of the lot.
For when it comes to set-pieces on the most important day in the Dail calendar, it is the bounden duty of the Minister for Finance to deliver all the detail in the most tedious manner possible. That more often than not involves bad news and lots of necessary but boring detail.
The best you can hope for is a bit of a rhetorical flourish at the end, or the rare announcement (almost extinct these days) that translates into good news for the TDs to bring back to their constituents. Mostly though it is dismal stuff – we are going to tell you exactly how we are going to make you poorer and more miserable.
On the other hand, when you are in Opposition you are not spancilled to any formal niceties. You are free to say what you want and no opposition spokesman has been freer or funnier in his day at delivering memorable lines and colourful metaphors than Noonan at his best.
Anyway besides Charlie McCreevy’s decentralisation bombshell back in 2003, Budgets these days tend to be pre announced several times before they are actually announced. There are several important strategic reasons for that.
It allows a Government to fly a kite and see if a measure will be more unpopular with the public than they had imagined.
It also allows them to distract. Put something out there that is away harsher than the measure actually planned and the grateful and gullible public will accept the slightly more palatable castor oil that you eventually dole out.
Some Ministers went to town on it last year and so it was all kept tighter than usual this time round. Until the last week when it all came gushing out. Sure, there were some details yesterday that we didn’t know about.
But mansion tax? Check.
The €10 reduction in children’s allowance? Check.
The abolition in the €127 per week PRSI exemption? Check.
The hefty hike in motor tax and VRT? Check.
It’s not to say that Noonan as Minister for Finance has suddenly become a humour-free zone. At a press conference earlier this year when asked by a reporter what his minimum request would be to the ECB when it came to reducing Ireland’s debt burden, he replied with a reflex reaction to the reporter: "You have never been to the Fair of Glin or sold a calf! Sure, if I told you what my minimum would be that’s what they would give me!"
The veteran Limerick politician has revelled in the role as minister and I just can’t see him being prepared to give way when the reshuffle happens towards the end of 2013 or in 2014. Three years ago, Noonan seemed a spent force, a politician who had had his shot at being leader and failed, whose future was now behind him.
But serendipity in the shape of the challenge to Enda Kenny’s leadership played into his hands. When Richard Bruton’s challenge failed, Kenny turned to him and offered him a chance to return from the wilderness.
Noonan has been one of the great successes of this Government. What’s remarkable is that he has been very successful without achieving very much. The Government is pinned down by the Troika and its bailout programme.
When drawing up budgets the Government is given the same choice that Henry Ford gave purchasers of his Model T: "You can have any colour you want as long as it’s black".
Noonan’s main role has been to try and negotiate down Ireland’s massive State burden derived from carrying bank debt, both through recapitalisation and the provision of the Anglo promissory note.
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
images/files/images/x3_Courthouse.jpg
Families queue up for school’s offer of free house
West has lower cancer survival rates than rest
Galway minors continue to lay waste to all opponents
Gardaí and IFA issue a joint appeal on summer road safety
Marathon Man plans to call a halt – but not before he hits 160 races
