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Ireland's political and cultural magazine
March/April 2022 55
“Fact Check!”. He proceeded to rollick through
two minutes of almost entirely accurate fact
checks while pointing at an ill-at-ease but
plushly-suited Michael O’Flynn and a very not-
ill-at-ease Jennifer Carroll MacNeill. Claire
Byrne let herself down at one stage by
interrupting him to confirm that his name was
Tony. She would not have asked that of Jennifer,
even when no-one knew who Jennifer was.
There was a bit of flak for Sinn Féin’s Matt
Carthy, but none of it stuck as much as it could
have it had been better-directed and a few
punters who seemed open minded were
allowed to ventilate without correction. But it
was too late. Groves had won the evening; and
RTÉ had lost the day.
If RTÉ wants to treat Sinn Féin dierently
from everyone else, it had better say why. The
Broadcasting Act commits RTÉ to fairness and
impartiality: Current affairs broadcasts,
including matters of public controversy or
debate, must be treated in a manner which is
fair to all interests concerned.
This show was not impartial, it was clumsily
biased. Having embarrassed themselves with
this exercise RTÉ needs to do the same for
every other party, certainly every other big
party. Let’s hear a folksy evocation of what Fine
Gael, as neoliberals, does to people with two
cows.
To achieve that special RTÉ balance, RTÉ will
need to find equivalents to Eddie Hobbs,
Jennifer Carroll MacNeill and Michael O’ Flynn.
Has anyone in there still got the numbers for
Dessie O’Hare, Joan Burton and Tom McFeely?
It was ludicrous, crude, nasty and
inappropriate but most of all it was ineective.
After that, you would almost vote for them.
and 30 Things to do with your SSIA.
Let me stop things there: before entering
politics he ran a series of shows about how to
make money and avoid rip-os. So it’s sub-
optimal that before entering politics his main
legacy was the auto-erotically-named Brendan
Investments which pissed away €13m, 90%,
of its investments, on the world’s worst
properties, mostly the savings of little old
ladies from Cork. That was before he entered
politics. Politics was Renua, the world’s least
successful party – with no (0) elected
representatives and a platform culled from the
rural 1970s. And before he became an
anti-vaxer.
As an antidote, Jennifer Carroll McNeil came
on with very unwild eyes and the world’s most
expensive shoes to say that capitalism works
for everybody, though nobody could stop
thinking that it had worked so well for her that
there probably wasn’t much left for everyone
else. Moneybags ex-Nama and FF builder
Michael O’Flynn’s eyes wandered when he was
under pressure but like the other two there was
never a flicker that his view could ever be
changed.
After consummate performances from this
not terribly-likeable trio, it was time for
someone called Tony Groves. Fans of left-wing
twitter will know Groves as the man who says
he is Ireland’s leading left-wing tweeter (he’s
not) and takes his shirt o a lot. He also
co-fronts the ‘Tortoise Shack’ podcasts,
probably the most popular socialist
programmes broadcast from Ireland. Groves
has clearly never been invited anywhere
outside his shack before so he’d prepared,
with his shirt on and the killer opening line
Y
ou know it was important television
because the Irish Times didn’t
review it and it wasn’t mentioned
again on RTÉ after it had been
narrowcast. It was of course Claire
Byrne putting the boot into Sinn Féin.
I’m all for the exercise, and think SF deserve
a hard time because of all that killing they
defended, a dubious commitment to
democratic accountability and because they’re
not actually going to deliver a radical left-wing
agenda, and are anti-green.
I wish they were radicals but we can tell from
their performance in the North, from what they
do at local government and from their policies
and manifestos that they’re not really going to
be the antidote to a hundred years of FF and FG.
I’ve said before I’d like to see them commit to
increasing equality by 1% annually, stringently
measured by say the Gini Coecient. And if
they’re not achieving it they should leave
whatever miserable coalition is in their way.
They won’t though because they want, and
have scented, power and because they will go
into coalition with whoever will take them,
including right-wing parties, if they feel they
can pursue a mandate to push an unhurriable
United Ireland.
Having said that, they’re competent
politicians, SF/IRA have ended a longstanding
war, making them peace-makers, and they
seem to oer the best opportunity of some left-
wing policies, if – which is unlikely – they can
get a critical mass of (other) left-wing parties
in with them in coalition.
Whatever about that, RTÉ had lined up Eddie
Hobbs (property man), Michael O’Flynn
(property man) and Killiney-based Jennifer
Carroll MacNeill (Fine Gael) as antagonists to
Sinn Féin, on a programme that was mostly
about property.
It launched with a wild-eyed Eddie Hobbs’s
anecdote of how socialism gives one of your
two cows to losers. According to Wikipedia
before entering politics Hobbs was known for
presenting RTÉ shows such as Give or Take
Club, Rip-O Republic, Show Me the Money
Byrne
should
burn
Biased. Michael Smith reviews Claire Byrne
Live: The Rise of Sinn Féin (14 February, RTÉ 1)
MEDIA
