Archive News
So much for transparency Ð because this Coalition may be the most secretive of all
Date Published: 28-Nov-2012
It’s been a strange November from a politics perspective. Usually, even during the good years, political discourse was dominated by budget speculation during November. Arguments abounded about taxes and cuts or whether or not the Minister for Finance would apply the scalpel to the "auld reliables" of alcohol and tobacco.
But this year, the run-up has been very subdued compared to other years, especially last year. This has to do, partly, with the manner in which the Savita Hapallanavar case has predominiated. But it also stems from the decision of those at the top of the Cabinet to stop a repeat of last year’s leak-fest. That decision to keep things tight seems, to me at least, to be intrinsically anti-democratic in its nature.
Let’s cast our eyes back to last year. From late October, first leaks, and then deluges, of pre-Budget information started to seep out of Government departments, mostly Health and Social Protection. It seemed like every social gain and welfare stance of the past fifty years was going to be ditched from child benefit to pensions to medical cards.
But in the last few days the flotilla of kites were hauled in and the Budget that materialised seemed very reasonable indeed compared to the scary stuff. Having said that, the Coalition shipped a lot of collateral damage for this serial leaking.
And the solution this year? Well, obviously no leaking.
And how does that happen? Well one of the tactics has been to make sure that none of the Ministers have anything to leak to the wider world.
So how did they do that?
Well, a Cabinet meeting is not exactly a beacon of openness to begin with. The principle of Cabinet confidentiality means you hear less verbiage after the meetings on Tuesday than you will hear in a Poor Clare convent.
Every week in Leinster House, political correspondents are ‘briefed’ on what happened at that week’s meeting of Ministers. Briefed is a very generous term in that context. For besides being told what army officers or Gardaí have been promoted and what ambassador has presented his or her credentials, you will get maybe one line – two if you are lucky – about what happened during the remaining two or three hours.
Often, a matter of national importance has been decided at Cabinet but a decision has been taken not to let people know. That information may come to light weeks later. Reporters tend to speak to individual ministers or those close to them to find out what is really going on.
So what has happened this year that’s different? Well, it seems the decision about drafting the Budget has been taken out of the Cabinet and given to the Government’s own star chamber, that is its economic management council. That is made up of the Taoiseach, the Tanaiste, the Minister for Finance and the Minister for Public Expenditure and their senior officials and political advisers.
Increasingly, when it comes to the country’s finances it is this group of four which is deciding everything. And increasingly, the role of the wider Cabinet is to rubber-stamp what has already been decided.
And so this year, it seems that most Ministers have been kept in the dark about what the Budget will hold until the very last moment, besides the bilateral meetings they hold on an individual basis with the Minister for Public Expenditure.
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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