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Solicitor struck off after Law Society falsely imputed an undertaking, and relied in part on a forged document and evidence from a fraudulent solicitor By Frank Connolly Allegations of “repeated skulduggery on the part of officials of the Law Society” are likely to be aired in the Supreme Court in the not too distant future when struck-off solicitor, Colm Murphy, finally gets his day in court. Embroiled in a complex legal battle with the society long before, and since, he was struck from the Roll of Solicitors in 2009, Murphy is determined that his former colleagues will no longer delay a full hearing of his claim for damages for breach of duty, negligence, defamation and misfeasance of public office. Kenmare-based Murphy has claimed in a detailed submission to the Supreme Court that his striking off was based on spurious and inaccurate information provided by the Law Society to its Disciplinary Tribunal and the High Court ten years ago. Key to the decision to strike him from the roll was a claim by a society official, Linda Kirwan, that Murphy had breached an undertaking he had given to the President of the High Court. Kirwan insisted in an affidavit seen by Village that she had been in the High Court on the day the undertaking was made. It was only after the unfortunate Murphy was struck off that she admitted, on affidavit and in a letter to Murphy in 2010 that she was not in fact in the court when the supposed undertaking was made. No such undertaking is recorded in the order from the court issued on the day in question. Murphy was also able to prove, again after the strike off, that the Law Society had taken attachment and committal proceedings against him based on a document forged by Frank Fallon who was subsequently jailed for two seven-year terms. Frank Fallon had claimed that he had not received title to a property even though he had paid Murphy and received a copy of the Deed from the then solicitor. It later turned out that the Deed in question was forged by Fallon and that no such transaction had taken place. Fallon, from Charleville in Cork, was sent to jail in Britain in 2009 after he was convicted of conspiracy to defraud by forging the wills of up to twelve people and stealing more than £500,000. The Law Society case against Murphy also included an incorrect claim that he had attended an auction of the Brown Pub in Kealkill, County Cork, in August 2006 in breach of its rule that a a retired solicitor without a practising certificate cannot participate in the sale of a property by a former client. This error sparked what are known as Section 18 procedures against the former solicitor. Murphy’s submission goes on to list various other defamatory allegations pursued by the society including an incorrect implication that his client account was overdrawn. Further, he claims that a suggestion by the President of the High Court, Nicky Kearns, back in 2010 that a full hearing of the case should take place was frustrated by the society which instead sought to restrict matters to a trial of ‘preliminary issues’ rather than a full civil action. When the case came before Kearns again in June 2012 he queried why Murphy’s substantial case against the society had not gone ahead, as he had recommended. In his comments, Kearns referred to the case as a “spread-eagled mess” and referred to the claims of “alleged repeated skulduggery on the part of officials of the Law Society”. If this was not the sort of thing that could bring the Law Society into disrepute, the back story to the whole affair raises even more disturbing questions about its modus operandi in dealing with allegations of wrongdoing by its members. Murphy has insisted that his fall from grace originates in 2001/2002 when he complained about another member of the roll, Fergus Appelbe, who also had a conveyancing practice in west Cork and south Kerry. At a recent Disciplinary Tribunal hearing in Dublin, Appelbe admitted to various trangressions, including putting together false deeds, updating deeds to defraud the Revenue and creating a double mortgage over the same property which he owned (the same misconduct as Thomas Byrne’s). Appelbe, who through his various companies may have incurred debts in excess of €50 million, is due to learn his fate in mid-February. What is most extraordinary about “the spread-eagled mess” is that the society appeared to have based at least some of its unfounded suspicions about Murphy on information in complaints sent to it by Applebe over ten years ago. As far back as 1987/1988, Appelbe was the subject of no less than two investigations by the RTE ‘Today Tonight’ programme into his somewhat unorthodox conveyancing practices in the south west. The late Cathal O’ Shannon listed a series of allegations involving unusual land deals against Appelbe who, despite the unwanted attention, went on to invest in an impressive portfolio of properties including Waterford Castle through various companies before the crash and his rapid descent into catastrophic debt. In August last year, a liquidator was appointed to the four-star castle, hotel and golf complex in Ballinakill after the operating companies, Negold Ltd. and Cendant Ltd. ended up with debts to the NAMA vehicle, National Asset Loan Management (NALM), of just under €34 million. Appelbe is one of four directors of the companies described in the High Court as hopelessly insolvent and unable to pay their debts. In 2010, Allied Irish Banks (AIB) secured summary judgment orders for some €18 million against Cronin’s Wood, a development company for which Appelbe acted, over its failure to repay a loan to re-finance a property acquisition in Killarney, Co Kerry. Mr Justice Peter Kelly granted the order against Cronin’s Wood Developments Ltd, South Mall, Cork, at the Commercial Court. He also entered judgment for €10 million arising from guarantees over the loan provided by Appelbe,
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by Ronan Lynch Although Belfast woman Una Crudden is terminally ill with cancer, she’s using her time to raise awareness that ovarian cancer is commonly misdiagnosed as irritable bowel syndrome. When she started suffering stomach pains in 2010 at the age of 56, Mrs. Crudden’s GP diagnosed irritable bowel syndrome. Returning to the GP three months later, she was referred to a gynaecologist, and further tests established that she had ovarian cancer. Although the diagnosis was late, it allowed Mrs. Crudden to receive treatment. Others were not so fortunate. Mrs. Crudden discovered that she was one of five women living in a four-mile radius who had been misdiagnosed with irritable bowel syndrome. She is the only one of the five still alive. A case currently underway at Dublin Coroner’s Court may throw light on similar situations in the south, after a Dublin woman was diagnosed in 2009 with irritable bowel syndrome and returned to hospital a year later to find that she had inoperable stage 3 uterine cancer. The inquest, which holds its next session on August 29, is into the 2011 death of 74-year-old Dublin woman Maureen Desmond. After suffering from vaginal discharge in 2007, Mrs. Desmond was referred to the Mater Hospital after scans at the Charter Medical Centre showed a thickened endometrium (or membrane of the uterus), which can indicate early stages of uterine cancer. A hysteroscopy in 2008 and a CT scan in 2009, both at the Mater Hospital, returned “normal” results, but a further hysteroscopy and scan in 2010 found that Mrs. Desmond had stage 3 cancer that had spread beyond the uterus and was inoperable. Doctor told inquest hysteroscopy is “gold standard” The inquest was requested by Mrs. Desmond’s son Stephen, a senior lecturer at Southampton Solent University who regularly travelled back to Dublin during his mother’s treatment to accompany her to the hospital. Mater Hospital consultant gynaecologist Dr. Bill Boyd, medical oncologist Prof. John McCaffery, general medical consultant Dr. Jack Lambert and histopathologist Dr. Ciara Barrett appeared as witnesses on the opening day of the inquest in September last year. Dr. Boyd told the court that Mrs. Desmond was first referred to him after she attended the Charter Medical Centre in Smithfield, Dublin in November 2007 with abdominal discomfort and vaginal discharge. An Ultrasound and CT scan test at the centre showed a 14mm thickening of the endometrium (the membrane of the uterus). Dr. Boyd said he first saw Mrs. Desmond in April 2008, when he organized for her to undergo a hysteroscopy and D&C. Dr. Boyd told the court that the hysteroscopy and D&C was performed in August 2008, and the result was deemed normal. No sample was obtained. Dr. Boyd said that the hysteroscopy had been performed by Dr. Moses Abe, as he was himself not present that day. The notes of Dr. Moses indicated that a pipelle suction curette had been attempted, but no sample had been taken due to an “atrophic” or ultra thin cavity. Dr. Boyd said that it was not an infrequent occurrence for a hysteroscopy to contradict CT scans, which he said can “overread” the evidence. Dr. Boyd said that a hysteroscopy where the sight of both ostea (openings to the fallopian tubes) is obtained is the “gold standard”, and overrides the results of CT and ultrasound scans. Dr. Boyd read for the inquest the notes of Dr. Moses, which he described as “very well-written and very exact.” According to Dr. Boyd, Dr. Moses Abe recorded “Left ostia, seen, right ostia seen, NAD [no abnormality detected], no lesion.” The procedure did not obtain a tissue sample for biopsy, as the patient’s endometrium was “atrophic.” Dr. Moses Abe discharged Mrs. Desmond from the Mater following the examination. The coroner asked Dr. Boyd if he had interacted with Dr. Moses Abe following the junior doctor’s decision to discharge Mrs. Desmond, and Dr. Boyd replied that he had not. He said that any further interaction with Dr. Moses would have been inappropriate, as Dr. Moses was an experienced doctor, and was required to be allowed to work on occasion without supervision. Independent report raises issues around waiting times and hysteroscopy Mr. Desmond told the court that he had obtained an independent medical report from Dr. John Monaghan, a consultant gynaecological oncologist based in Newcastle, England and author of textbook Bonney’s Gynaecological Surgery, which raised questions about the events leading up to, during and after the hysteroscopy performed on Mrs. Desmond in 2008. Mr. Desmond requested the coroner to call Dr. Monaghan as a witness. Village has seen the report by Dr. Monaghan, who is of the view that there had been a clear breach of duty in Mrs. Desmond’s care. His report states that the nine month delay before the first biopsy was unacceptable and negligent. According to Dr. Monaghan, the initial pipelle procedure may have been acceptable had the junior doctor been supervised and if the findings had been checked, but he found the failure to follow the unsuccessful first pipelle biopsy with a full hysteroscopy and D&C to be substandard and negligent. He also stated that it was unacceptable to presume that because no sample has been obtained that the endometrium must be atrophic, and said that the discharge of Mrs. Desmond without any review of the case or the patient was also substandard and negligent. Mr. Desmond told the coroner that the fundamental issue was whether it was reasonable for the Dr. Moses to conclude that he had obtained no tissue sample on the basis of the endometrium being ultra thin, in spite of the scans showing a thickened endometrium. He told the court that he had been present with his mother on the day of the initial hysteroscopy in 2008. Dr. Moses Abe took Mrs. Desmond into a cubicle in the day surgery ward, while Mr. Desmond sat outside. Mr. Desmond told the court that there was a tall window at the rear of the cubicle, and that he heard the nurse
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Armstrong wrong on dairy by Catherine Logan Frank Armstrong’s article ‘Contrary about Dairy [Village, June-July) contains numerous inaccuracies regarding dairy. Dairy foods play a significant and important role in a healthy, balanced diet and are included in dietary recommendations throughout the world. Inaccurate information and communications on dairy, or indeed any food/nutrient, may lead to misconceptions and adverse dietary implications. Here in Ireland, dairy foods have been enjoyed for generations. The taste and versatility of these foods are greatly appreciated but, moreover, they are an important feature of the Department of Health’s Food Pyramid. The Food Pyramid aims to provide guidance on achieving a healthy, balanced diet (for adults and children over five years). Recommendations advise three servings from the ‘milk, yogurt and cheese’ food group each day as part of a balanced diet, increasing to five daily servings between the ages of 9-18 years of age due to the importance of calcium during this life-stage. Also, as mentioned previously, these foods are acknowledged in dietary guidance throughout the world. It is true that lactose intolerance may impact the intake of dairy foods. But, it is important to realise that the frequency of lactase-nonpersistence in Ireland is estimated at just 4% (lactase is the enzyme which is responsible for lactose digestion). This figure is very much at odds with the impression portrayed in the article (i.e. around 70%). Furthermore, variation in individual tolerances to lactose among people with lactose maldigestion is recognised and intolerance does not necessarily mean the elimination of dairy from the diet. Acknowledging some dietetic guidance can assist in the management of lactose intolerance while maintaining some level of dairy in the diet. For example, consuming milk with other foods, spacing dairy intake throughout the day, recognising the lower lactose content of many cheeses and possible increased tolerance of some yogurts. The article also refers to saturated fat, but, again, acknowledging up-to-date, scientific thinking is vital. Scientific evidence is emphasising the importance of the ‘whole food’ and the ‘whole diet’ in relation to health, as opposed to focusing on single nutrients. For example in relation to cardiovascular health, numerous studies show no adverse effects of regularly consuming milk and dairy foods. In fact, in some cases, particularly for milk, a cardio-protective effect has been observed. The presence of specific nutrients and bioactive components in milk, which may potentially benefit various cardiovascular health parameters, may, at least partially, underpin such observations. Since it is a very complex disease, many factors are thought to influence cancer development and progression, including genetics and lifestyle choices. There are a number of measures you can take to help reduce your risk of cancer. For example, the Irish Cancer Society released a press release earlier this year stating that “Cutting smoking, reducing the amount of alcohol you drink and maintaining a healthy weight are key to cancer prevention”. Research is continuing to strive to identify effective diet and lifestyle guidance for cancer prevention as well as successful treatment approaches. Calcium is probably the nutrient most commonly associated with dairy – this is due to the fact that milk, yogurt and cheese provide a particularly important source of calcium. As implied in the article, there are other sources of calcium in the diet, however, these foods should be considered in terms of calcium content, bioavailability and the frequency with which they are typically consumed. National surveys clearly demonstrate the importance of milk and milk products to the intake of dietary calcium in the Irish diet – the recent National Adult Nutrition Survey showed that milk and yogurt were the highest contributor to calcium intake in the diet of Irish adults, contributing 30% in adults aged 18-64 years and a similar level for adults aged 65 years and over. Cheese contributed an additional 9% and 7%, respectively. Sustainable food production is certainly a pertinent issue at present and research in this area is very much evolving. Reports and analysis often use different and conflicting methodology – often resulting is different conclusions. One key point to note is the nutritional consequences of changing dietary patterns. Furthermore, worldwide, the dairy industry (as well as many other food sectors) is working to continue to provide nutritious, tasty and affordable, foods whilst addressing the natural environment and sustainability considerations. Finally, to address farming practices and standards, farming practices described in the article are by no means reflective of the high quality of dairy farming that exists in Ireland or the basic quality standards accepted for quality and regulatory compliances. Ireland is recognised globally for the high quality of our pasture-based farming, with a number of milk quality programmes being rolled out by organisations such as Teagasc and Animal Health Ireland to help farmers keep up to date with the best available practices. For detailed information on dairy farming practices in Ireland – please contact Teagasc – the agriculture and food development authority in Ireland. The National Dairy Council strives to ensure the promotion of accurate, science-based information regarding dairy, nutrition and health. We produce many resources for health professionals, media and consumers, facilitating well-informed food choices. Dr Catherine Logan is Nutrition Manager of the National Dairy Council Frank Armstrong says Dairy Council just an industry mouthpiece Far from proving ‘numerous inaccuracies’ Catherine Logan does not identify a single inaccuracy in the article I wrote on cows’ milk products. I quoted extensively from the website of The Harvard School of Public Health which is a free online resource which does not bow to vested interests. On the other hand, Catherine Logan promotes dairy consumption on behalf of the National Dairy Council and her arguments are tainted by that association, a reality that her scientific qualification should not mask. This is PR spin. As regards lactose intolerance which is a reality for 70% of human beings, this may be lower in Ireland than elsewhere but simply because dairy is tolerated does not mean that it is beneficial. By way of analogy, unlike many Asians, most Europeans have evolved an enzyme
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Village August-September: in shops now
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Formulaic and incestuous – promoting journalists and politicians along with a strange number of PR and legal voices (see spreadsheet below) The discussion on Marian Finucane’s radio show (Sunday 25 May) had turned to the financial troubles of former billionaire businessman, Tony O’Reilly. It was, said regular guest Stephen O’Byrnes, a kind of a tragic story. Michael Smurfit had bemoaned the tendency in Irish society to delight in seeing Tony O’Reilly brought down. O’Byrnes disagreed with Smurfit’s analysis, only to be interrupted by an indignant Finucane. “I mean, people take glee in so-called rich people’s misfortune’’, said Marian, perhaps not sure that O’Reilly qualified as rich. Finucane is one of RTÉ’s top broadcasters. RTÉ states that her Saturday and Sunday shows are the third and fourth highest ranked programmes at the station after Morning Ireland and Liveline, claiming figures of 376,000 listeners on Saturday and 360,000 on Sunday. While more people are free to listen to the radio on Saturday and Sunday mornings than weekdays, the competition is also robust: Finucane’s show from 11am to 1pm competes with PR man Anton Savage’s ‘Savage Sunday’ on Today FM and Shane Coleman’s ‘The Sunday Show’ on Newstalk. They all follow similar formats and it’s not unknown for guests to appear first on one show and then on another on the same morning. These Sunday newspaper review shows are a staple of Irish broadcasting: less frenetic than weekday shows, and less-driven by the news cycle; the Sunday papers themselves are more reflective than daily papers, and more given to analysis and commentary. Few listeners want to hear screaming matches on Sunday mornings, but Sunday shows can easily become insufferably smug and Finucane’s show often sounds like a long expense-account lunch at the Unicorn; just a little bit sautéed Dublin Bay Prawns with White Wine, and only a hint of garlic. When community radio stations run training courses, they teach journalists to talk to “people on the ground”, recognising that the voices of ordinary people are rarely heard on the radio unless they’ve suddenly become newsworthy because they’ve been the victim of a crime. The community-radio approach is not found on national radio, as professional training teaches journalists to seek out authoritative voices, particularly people who speak for others: politicians, fellow journalists, and spokespeople for causes or movements; otherwise they favour experts in their fields such as doctors or legal professionals. It’s an almost unconscious pattern of privileging upper-middle-class voices. If voices from the street make it on to national radio, they’re normally confined to vox pops where they’re offered a few seconds to comment on a current story. Village took a look and listen back though one year of Marian Finucane’s Sunday show, focusing on the newspaper-review hour. Finucane’s panel invariably consists of five guests, and typically features two journalists, a politician, a barrister or solicitor and someone from the business or charity world. How do the panels break down by profession (and it is almost 100% ‘professionals’)? From roughly 255 guests over one year, around 90, or slightly over one third, were women. Journalists and broadcasters (74) are the most frequent guests, followed by politicians (36), PR professionals (28) and legal professionals (26) such as solicitors and barristers. Close on the heels of legal professionals are academics (25) and businesspeople (18), with smaller groups of less than ten people from the charity sector (8), security analysts (5) doctors (5), economists (4). Creative writers (5) and actors (5) make up the rest, along with a dozen guests who don’t fit into any of the above categories, for instance Philip McCabe of the Citizens Information Service and Garda whistleblower John Wilson. Several guests appear regularly, though no one appears on the show more than once every three months. With journalists making up almost one third of the guests, we’re immediately plunged into the fatuous incestuousness of a broadcast journalist inviting fellow journalists to interpret the work of other journalists. As the market leader in Irish newspapers, Independent News & Media provides the most journalists, followed by reporters from the Irish Times and then journalists from RTÉ itself. The next most popular guest category is the politician, and the newspaper panel is a nice soft gig for politicians. It’s a chance to appear on national media to pontificate on matters of current interest as an expert of sorts without having to deal with matters of policy. Yet it’s the overweening presence of PR people and lobbyists that begs the question: why are professional spinners being invited to interpret the news for us? There’s no question but that they are doing their job superbly just to be getting themselves onto the show and, short of writing the news stories themselves, they couldn’t have a better platform for their clients. The symbiotic relationship between politicians, lobbyists and journalists is normally played out away from the public gaze but in this case its oppositional aspects are allowed to play out in public. Close behind the voices of the PR experts, we have the well-upholstered and soothing tones of barristers and solicitors. Again, one wonders what particular talents belong to the legal profession that makes them such good interpreters of our weekly news. Of course PR people and lawyers spend most of their time representing the monied classes – vested interests. They rarely declare those interests, but even if they did, the question arises whether the professionally articulate agents of monied interests have a place over our breakfasts at weekends. Less well represented professions include artists and writers: doctors are prominent, but nurses are invisible. Farmers, hairdressers and housewives don’t feature. The voice of union representatives is faint; the opinions of bus drivers or shop worker on matters in the papers go unheard. The veteran broadcaster has taken pay cuts in recent years. She earned €492,000 in 2011 for four hours of programming each week but in 2012 her earnings from RTÉ were set at €295,000 per annum, paid to her independent production company, Montrose Services Ltd. She
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Whistleblower auctioneer Gabriel Dooley was manoeuvred out of €4m as Bray Council benefited from land sale. By Frank Connolly A prominent auctioneer in county Wicklow has made serious allegations against politicians and public officials over their dealings with property developers Sean Mulryan and Sean Dunne over many years. Gabriel Dooley has emerged as a whistleblower who has threatened to expose the controversial backdrop to multi-billion property deals in the county since the 1990s which helped to make Mulryan and Dunne among Ireland’s richest men before the financial, property and banking collapse of recent years. At the core of his complaints, some of which were aired at a recent meeting of Wicklow County Council – prompting a walkout by both then Cathaoirleach, Jimmy O’Shaughnessy, and the acting county manager, Brian Doyle, – is a claim that he was done out of some €4 million owed to him by Mulryan in connection with the unsuccessful development of a site in Bray town centre. The two-acre site controlled by Mulryan vehicle, Florentine Properties Ltd (FPL), was sold to Bray Town Council for €1.95 million last year after a planning permission for both to co-develop an 80,000 sq ft retail centre, 85 apartments and 500 underground car spaces, for which planning permission was granted in 2007, was not pursued. Dooley, who had a significant stake in FPL, spent some 15 years on the assembly of the lands for Mulryan’s company which eventually acquired 62% of the town-centre site, with the council owning the remainder. As the joint venture plan came to fruition in 2005, Dooley was offered €5 million for his shares in the company with a down-payment of €1 million and the balance to be paid on completion of the shopping centre or on disposal of the lands. While the property collapse put paid to the plans of Mulryan and the Council, it was the manner in which ownership of the property was subsequently transferred to Bray Town Council that has prompted a litany of complaints by Dooley. Among them is a demand for an investigation into whether a decision last year to re-zone some 30 acres controlled by Mulryan at the massive Charlesland development in Greystones from employment to residential use, inflating its value from some €80,000 per acre to €1million an acre, was connected to the Bray deal. The decision to increase the residential component to accommodate an additional 350 houses at Charlesland was made on the advice of senior officials and with the support of councillors in the area. Dooley told Village that FF leader on the council and chairman of the planning committee, Councillor Pat Vance told him the two were connected. Vance has denied this. The Charlesland scheme of 1800 houses and apartments was developed in the mid-2000s by Zapi Ltd, a joint venture between Mulryan and Dunne. Dooley has also asked whether the recent return to Mulryan of a massive (if unspecified) bond which the developer paid to Wicklow County Council on the construction of the 1800 homes at Charlesland several years ago, the biggest development in the history of Wicklow County Council, is linked to the Florentine transaction. He also claims that when his own property business ran into difficulties, following the collapse, in late 2011 he met his bankers, Anglo Irish Bank, who wanted to know when he was going to get the €4 million he was owed by Mulryan. By this time, the distressed assets of Mulryan’s main property vehicle, Ballymore Properties, were in the National Assets Management Agency (NAMA) which was seeking to get the best value for the Irish exchequer from their disposal. Dooley told the bank’s executives in 2012 that he was going to chase Mulryan for the money through legal action if necessary. According to information obtained by Dooley under Data Protection legislation the detail of the conversation with his banker found its way from Anglo via NAMA to then senior Ballymore executive, Barry Hickey. According to the email discovered by Dooley the bank told Hickey that “GD (Gabriel Dooley) is under water” and “GD is going to sue you”. Following his receipt of the emails from NAMA, Hickey arranged to meet with Dooley. “We’ve always classed you as a friend of Ballymore”, Dooley recalls being told by Hickey who had been somewhat shocked to hear through his NAMA contact about the threat of legal action. It was clear that NAMA was concerned that as the holder of Ballymore’s assets and guarantees it could have been liable for any adverse court decision on the €4 million debt. “I went to see Hickey at their head office in Lucan two weeks later and he said he wanted to tell me two things. The first was that he wanted to make me an offer…. of €100,000. Then he said; ‘I’m leaving in two weeks’. I refused the offer”, Dooley told Village. In May 2012, he met Mulryan and Ballymore executive Brian Clarke in the Berkeley Court Hotel where once again he was offered a settlement, this time of an even smaller €75,000. “I told them that I had spent 18 years of my life helping them with the Charlesland and Florentine developments and that I’d rather starve than accept what I considered was an insult. They later came back with an offer of €500,000 which I also rejected”, Dooley said. By this time half a million euro would go nowhere near solving his own property debts. At the Berkeley Court meeting, Mulryan first indicated that Dooley would get nothing if a receiver was put into Florentine Properties Ltd. Dooley is concerned at the extent to which Mulryan seemed to be influencing NAMA’s approach to him and the receivership as it turned out that the shareholding contract Dooley had signed in 2005, at the height of the boom, included a clause that receivership would make his shares worthless. “He said if you don’t take the money I will put a receiver in and you will get nothing. I replied that if you
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Heaney:going through the poetic motions Ireland’s timeless bard of farmyard, bogs and prehistory by Kevin Kiely After his death last year the Independent newspaper described Séamus Heaney as “probably the best-known poet in the world”. According to the BBC, at one time Heaney’s books made up two-thirds of the sales of living poets in the UK. Séamus Heaney won a Nobel prize and every bauble imaginable but was it as much for his affable and erudite PERSONA as for his poetry or his insight? Heaney immersed himself in a world of mythology and archaeology, finding his contemporary if anachronistic focus down on the farm, close by the sights and sounds of the bog. The poetic method isn’t great. For example in his totally famous poem, ‘Digging’, Heaney claims that his grandfather could cut more turf in a day “than any other man”. This is his trademark: anecdotes chopped into lines of verse. But is it poetry? In the same poem he views himself as unfit for farm work or turf cutting having only his pen, and concludes implausibly: ‘I’ll dig with it”. The image does not work. Though great poets must be particularly alive to the spirit of their times, Heaney’s inspiration is not modern. In the introduction to his translation of the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf he admits his passion for “a nostalgia I didn’t know I suffered until I experienced its fulfilment”. This fulfilment saturates his final collection, The Human Chain set – characteristically – in the old familiar farmyard and prefaced with a workaday title poem about lifting grain on to a trailer “with a grip on two sack corners”. Timeless perhaps, but searingly relevant to a traumatised post-industrial world, to an adolescent Ireland of abuse, corruption, pillage, Trouble – hardly. It was not untypical that when Heaney finally decided to address the issue of the road proposed to dissect the ancient site of Tara, it was in the letters pages of the Irish Times. And too late, since a decision had already been taken. He never commented publicly on the destruction of the environment in the country he called home, which reached an uncosy, corrupted crescendo during his prime. Heaney’s poetry rarely leaves the farmstead for its subject matter. A Heaney poem entitled “Thatcher” will not be about politics. All of his pastoral work is nostalgic and anecdotal: “Churning Day” ; “The Forge”; “Gifts of Rain”; “Blackberry-Picking”; “Turkeys Observed”; “The Harrow-Pin” ; “Conkers” ; “The Seed Cutters” ; “Nostalgia in the Afternoon” ; “A Basket of Chestnuts”; “The Pitchfork”; “The Settle Bed”; “The Sandpit”; “Bog Oak”; “The Hill Farm”; “The Water Carrier”; “At A Potato Digging”; “The Gravel Walks”; “The Skylight”; “The Baler”; “Fireside” and “At the Wellhead”. Heaney’s obsession with the farm is about as broadening as a visit to an agricultural folklore museum. The preoccupation with bogs was all-enveloping as he turned to bog corpses, skeletons and bones – all safely distancing him from the sectarian Troubles whose heinous burials of course find no resonance in Heaney. At base, Heaney is a poet of nostalgia for home, hearth, turf fire, hen-house and bicycle. His accessibility to readers equals that of Maeve Binchy whose chick-lit is if anything slightly more modern in content. The broadcasting equivalent is Miriam O’Callaghan (completely modern). He became everybody’s favourite, famous Séamus. Everyséamus. Approachability is Heaney’s be-all. Last August, in a New York Times article, ‘Another Kind of Music’on the day of Heaney’s death, songwriter Paul Simon – the thoughtful half of Simon and Garfunkel (“Lie la lie, lie la lie la lie la, lie”) – noted his “verbal virtuosity, his wit and Irish charm. Recovering from a stroke in the hospital, he greeted his friend and fellow poet Paul Muldoon with, “Hello, different strokes for different folks”. One wonders how Simon or Muldoon would have coped with the verbal virtuosity, wit and Irish charm of an unwell Joyce or Beckett. Heaney’s lack of engagement with the Northern conflict was on display early on, in ‘Summer 1969’. “While the Constabulary covered the mob/Firing into the Falls, I was suffering/Only the bullying sun of Madrid”. The poem concludes with his retreating for the “cool of the Prado” to look at Goya’s painting ‘Shootings of the Third of May’. His empathy was that of the tourist. His procrustean admirers explain that he was actually always obliquely engaging with the North. Heaney’s best-known poem “Digging” ludicrously compares a pen to a gun to a shovel! It begins: ‘Between my finger and my thumb/The squat pen rests; snug as a gun’. It’s inaccurate, of course, in that a gun is not usually held between finger and thumb like a pen: a hand-gun has to be held using all fingers. However – after he had indeed toasted the queen – Heaney’s most trenchant utterance came in 2013 and was surprisingly non-Nationalist for someone of his background: “There’s never going to be a united Ireland. So why don’t you let them [Loyalists] fly the flag?”. Bill Clinton serially, and nearly every cliché-unaware tout with a speech to make about the North and a message of political blandness, can be relied upon to marshal Heaney’s phrase from Sophocles in translation that occasionally “hope and history rhyme”. The poetry has became jingle before it acquired resonance, or even meaning. Heaney did world leaders and celebrities and was quite at home, for example in the Unicorn at a table of Clinton, Bono and twenty others, with Denis O’Brien picking up the tab, and – one imagines – private jets waiting at the airport for when the post-prandial brandies and payoff recitation had finally been discharged. Séamus Deane, a direct peer of Heaney, wrote of him in the New Yorker in 2000 as having been from the beginning ‘“well in” with those in power – teachers, professors, and the like [but a]t the same time, he was conspiratorially against them, holding them at arm’s length by his humour, his gift for parody […] it was Heaney’s way of dealing with
