It Occurs To Me: Going, going, gone…forgotten?

Well well, so poor Tweedlelou won’t be our next Taoiseach. 

Tweedledum and Tweedledee are back…in fact, they haven’t gone away, you know! 

As for Gerry Hutch, rumour has it that he’s joining an enclosed order and wants to simply be known as ‘The Monk’. 

Hopefully we won’t have to look at his fizzog on the front of the tabloids every day, unless he’s doing another perp walk in Spain. 

His nasty reaction to Paul Reynolds of RTÉ summed his character up. As regards Fine Gael in Donegal, if they want to seek answers for their demise in Donegal, I suggest they parse Nikki Bradley’s comments: “That title of Donegal being the forgotten county - I have seen it in headlines, I have seen it in interview and I have seen it too many times. If I had one wish it would be that we stop using that term and stop associating it with Donegal. We have so much to offer the rest of the country and we are an incredible county.  The people of Donegal need to remember that. I do think that there is a little bit of moaning and groaning going on about certain issues.  If people just stopped, took a minute and concentrated on what they do have rather than what they don’t have. I understand why they feel that way and there is work to be done.”

Nikki asthor, the reason that nobody from your party was elected, the reason that Charles Ward was successful, the reason that Pearse Doherty got the highest first preferences in Ireland was because thousands do genuinely feel ‘forgotten’. 

I have often used the term here over the years, not in a ‘moaning’ sense, but because of the serious lack of infrastructure, the appalling public transport etc. and the sense among many that Dublin doesn’t care. 

Pearse Doherty was much more insightful when he observed in the Indo that Fine Gael’s impending wipe-out in Donegal showed people would not stand for it being a forgotten county. 

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“The old certainties are gone,” he said. “The people’s choice in this county is Sinn Féin, and that sends a very clear signal to governments that you can’t ignore a county.”

In fairness, Jimmy Kavanagh has been honest and pragmatic in his assessment of the party in Donegal, but countrywide - Kerry is a prime example - if FG insists on imposing candidates on constituencies where the locals know best, there will only be one outcome. 

 ‘The reason that Pearse Doherty got the highest first preferences in Ireland was because thousands do genuinely feel forgotten’

The problem with canvassing like a Duracell Bunny is that the batteries can get a bit spluttery…Simon should learn from Micheál that ‘steady as she goes’ invariably achieves greater results. 

Sadly, for many Fine Gael voters up here, the party has managed to be ‘gone’ and, if not quite ‘forgotten’, heading into an uncertain future. Meanwhile, Grainne Seoige observed: “We actually had a lot of craic on this campaign, a lot of moments that I’m going to treasure.” Except for the result, I presume. In any event, it was an eminent US politician with strong Inishowen connections, Tip O’Neill, who coined the phrase: “All politics is local.” 

A Donegal Healy-Rae might be the solution to changing from ‘forgotten’ to ‘formidable’.

                                               Away in a manger

God between us and small harmers, but when I saw the Hutch video calling for more gardaí on Irish streets, I thought of an old lady who was wont to exclaim “Yerra musha, thon buck’s away with it!” 

Listening to the ridiculous right-wing chameleon Malachy Steenson, whose second preferences went to Gerry Hutch, I was reminded of a funny ‘meme’ I received last week, entitled The Irish Far-Right Nativity Scene, showing an empty crib and this explanation: “No unmarried mothers…no Middle Eastern people…no refugees, no one seeking emergency accommodation…and definitely no wise men!”

The bould Malachy  claimed that Hutch  was “put into this race” by the State to prevent a Steenson victory. The reason I refer to him as a chameleon, is that, up until 2012, he was a member of the Workers Party, and in the past was also associated with  Republican Sinn Féin, the 32 County Sovereignty Movement, and the Irish Republican Socialist Party. In 2022, he began organising protests for anti-immigration and far-right causes and was a guest speaker at the Irish Freedom Party's annual conference that year. 

Mind you, some of his far-right bedfellows really take the biscuit (I needn’t detail the Donegal ‘wans’ as voters soundly rejected them, other than say that Kim McMenamin’s criticism of Greg Hughes and Highland Radio was ridiculous in the extreme), but here’s one national example of the type of loodamaran that our wonderful PR system coughs up. 

Tom McDonnell, a builder from Newbridge, who believes a secret cabal of “Khazarian Jews” are running the world and are trying to flood Europe with immigrants as part of plot to replace Irish people, got 534 votes in the Kildare South constituency,

After he was elected to Kildare County Council in the local elections, he said Irish people were in danger of dying out because Irish women were not breeding enough.

In an interview with the Sunday World after the same elections, he said he said he has no problem with mixed-raced relationships – as “most black women have fine bodies”.

                                         Words to the wise

“Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.” - Mark Twain

“Don’t hit your knee off a stool that’s not in your road!” - a Derryman many years ago

                                Remembering Evelyn Byrne

The Just William series is a sequence of thirty-eight books written by English author Richmal Crompton chronicling  the adventures of the schoolboy William Brown.

The main character in the series is an eleven-year-old schoolboy in a village in England. Leader of the Outlaws, William is unique in schoolboy literature – confident, strong-willed, independent-minded with original world-views, a born leader who is keen to be chief in any undertaking of the Outlaws.

The books were published over a period of almost fifty years, between 1922 and 1970. Throughout the series, the protagonist remains at the same eleven years of age, despite each book being set in the era in which it was written. My uncle Michael Byrne, a school principal in Slane in Co Meath, married a lovely lady from near Killaloe in County Clare, always ‘Auntie Evelyn’ to us. They met because of a mutual interest in drama and the arts, and Evelyn never failed to land in Bogagh, Kilcar,  without reading material for me. When I was in my early teens, she came with some 20 books from the Just William series, and so began a lifetime of voracious reading and interest in literature, for which I will be ever in her debt. 

Auntie Evelyn was laid to rest in Slane last Saturday and the numbers in attendance from Donegal and Clare paid testament to the affection in which she was held. She and Michael formed the Slane Credit Union in 1968, and she was also involved with the GAA, the ICA, to name but a few, and after his sudden death at the age of 50 in 1978, she had to find another job and learn to drive. Up until ten years ago, when her eyesight started to fade, we e-mailed each other, and she was as positive and formidable as ever.

In his wonderfully moving tribute, our cousin Stephen Byrne read one of her short stories about growing up in Clare. She recalled her family’s serious concerns about Hitler and the second world war, and the Rosary being said, with an additional three prayers for Peace and…three for Chastity! That elicited a great laugh in the chapel.

She and Michaael had a holiday home in Malinmore and were regular visitors. She loved Glen, and as Stephen reminded us, before she learned to drive, they made the long five-plus hour journey by bus to Donegal one Christmas. Evelyn, a very young Stephen and a frozen turkey, travelled by a circuitous route through the midlands towards Sligo, but somewhere around Roscommon, it started to thaw very quickly and eventually Dustin was abandoned somewhere in the vicinity of Yeat’s grave in Drumcliffe. Evelyn would have loved that irony…’Cast a cold eye on life and death, turkey pass by!”  They had chicken for Christmas dinner in Malinmore! 

Like ‘Just’ William Brown, Evelyn was confident, strong-willed, independent-minded with original world-views, and a born leader…God rest her creative soul.