Thirty years later – and I still have the infamous 1978 ‘Dunkellin Wellingtons’

Date Published: {J}

There was a time in this country when you could tell we were on the eve of a General Election – as sure as the first swallow heralds the summer, if a minister started waffling about ‘draining the Shannon’ you knew we were likely to be off-and-running within a matter of weeks.

The equivalent early warning signs these days have to be things like a total discipline collapse among FF Dail Deputies and Senators, and Green ministers rushing through legislation about dogs, stag hunting and same-sex partnerships.

Years ago, once ministers mentioned ‘draining the Shannon,’ you could start dusting off the posters.

Draining that damned river was one of the great unfulfilled promises of decades of governments of all political persuasions. It didn’t seem to matter that the only action was a lot of huffing and puffing from ministers …. the ‘old chestnut’ was trotted-out, election after election, without so much as a blush about the previous proposals and promises.

In Galway, meantime, the local equivalent promise in those days was that politicians started waffling about ‘draining the Dunkellin.’ At the mere mention of ‘the Dunkellin,’ the likes of TDs such as Johnny Callanan, Mick Kitt, Brigid Hogan-O’Higgins, and others, would scent the air like hunting dogs, and be off and baying.

Of course, in those times, there were other definite signs also. If Minister Bobby Molloy turned up in the newsroom of The Connacht Tribune, then you knew something was brewing. Molloy was never one to court the media – local or national – and his presence in the newsroom was as big a giveaway as the call of the first cuckoo heralding summer.

But, I never thought I would hear of the Dunkellin again. It was like old times when I read the Dail debate from last week and no less a personage than Minister Martin Mansergh became the umpteenth minister from an umpteenth government to say there were proposals.

He was replying in the Dail to FG Dail Deputy Paul Connaughton (Galway East) on planning some work which will impinge on the Dunkellin and the Aggard stream, following the disastrous flooding of last winter, when flooding forced families out of the homes and farms. (You can read the reply elsewhere and the news story about it).

My memory of the Dunkellin as a political ‘hot potato’ goes back to a field trip in 1978 which went into journalistic history.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.