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    BBC Blackout on 50th Anniversary of the McGurk’s Bar Massacre?

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      By Ciaran MacAirt. Family campaigners on legacy cases in the north of Ireland learn not to be precious about media coverage, especially when the British state is involved in the murders and subsequent cover-ups. On any other occasion, there are many reasons why a media outlet will not cover a story. In the fast-moving environment of the media, they may run out of time to report it or may miss it altogether. The outlet may not even consider it news, or it could be bumped by another article. If an article does not appear, it may even just be down to human error or misjudgement; on our part, it could be poor timing or media management. We all make mistakes. Last week, for example, our families were busy media-managing new evidence, a protest against police withholding evidence, and the build-up to the 50th anniversary of the McGurk’s Bar Massacre. 15 civilians including 2 children were murdered in the no-warning Loyalist bomb attack on 4th December 1971. Our families’ grief was compounded because the British state and its media blamed our loved ones for the bombing, so before we buried our loved ones, the British state buried the truth. Our Campaign for Truth began the moment the bomb exploded as first we had to prove the innocence of the victims. Since then, mostly through our own legacy archive research, we proved that the British armed forces knew that McGurk’s Bar was attacked, but instead colluded to blame the victims to suit the British state’s own narrow, sectarian, political agenda. In general, the British media followed suit and published the lies. Our Campaign for Truth began the moment the bomb exploded as first we had to prove the innocence of the victims. Since then, mostly through our own legacy archive research, we proved that the British armed forces knew that McGurk’s Bar was attacked, but instead colluded to blame the victims to suit the British state’s own narrow, sectarian, political agenda. In general, the British media followed suit and published the lies. Fast forward nearly half a century and the week before the 50th anniversary. We had a lot to tell the public in the run-up to Saturday 4th December and we launched our new website especially. We used a mix of web content, social media and press release. PR to the media specifically included: A complaint to the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman in London against the Cabinet Office and its failure to investigate new evidence we found – the first complaint of its kind in a legacy case we believe [link] New archival evidence recorded by the British armed forces within minutes which was completely at odds with the lies told to the press by the British armed forces about McGurk’s Bar [link] A protest two days before the anniversary at the Policing Board against the Police Service Northern Ireland’s deliberate withholding of evidence relating to police collusion with the British Army in creating the McGurk’s Bar lies and blaming our loved ones. We even named a key architect of this secret agreement as we have archival proof – it is the infamous General Sir Frank Kitson, former Commander-in-Chief, UK Land Forces and Aide-de-Camp of the British Queen [link] The subsequent snub by the Chief Constable at the Policing Board of our families two days before the 50th anniversary of the atrocity [link]   Now, we were conscious that this was a lot of information for the press and public to manage but the families wanted me to press ahead and release. Each press release staggered throughout the week highlighted the fact that the week led to the 50th anniversary of the McGurk’s Bar Massacre. All of our other key local media outlets, including UTV, Belfast Telegraph/Sunday Life, Irish News and North Belfast News picked up on these press releases during the week, as did the Morning Star and The Canary in Britain and the Irish Times and Village Magazine in the capital. All of our other key local media outlets, including UTV, Belfast Telegraph/Sunday Life, Irish News and North Belfast News picked up on these press releases during the week, as did the Morning Star and The Canary in Britain and the Irish Times and Village Magazine in the capital. I spent most of Friday – the eve of the 50th anniversary – engaging with these outlets in time for the following day. I did not submit another press release on the day as we did not want to snowstorm the outlets and we had already drawn attention to the anniversary throughout the week. Nevertheless, nowhere on BBC NI News was the 50th anniversary marked in the week before, on the day or thereafter. I believe one of the religious ministers marked it during his Thought for the Day on Radio 4 which was very welcome, but to the best of my knowledge, nowhere on BBC Northern Ireland TV, Radio or Web was the 50th anniversary of the murder of 15 civilians marked in any way. I believe that we are diminished by the death of every victim and our loved ones are no more special than another family’s loved one, but the McGurk’s Bar Massacre is notable [unfortunately] if only for its ferocity and the death toll in a single bombing – 15 souls including 2 children. Another 16 could have perished but survived. The McGurk’s Bar Massacre remains the greatest loss of civilian life in any single murderous attack in Belfast since the Nazi Blitz in 1941. The McGurk’s Bar Massacre remains the greatest loss of civilian life in any single murderous attack in Belfast since the Nazi Blitz in 1941. The families’ Campaign for Truth is very much live and driven in the most part by the our own intensive legacy archive research which has been missed or buried by historical police investigators, academics, lawyers, and journalists over the last half century. So, history, death toll, human interest, notable anniversary could make for interesting

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    Rolling back the Eighth Amendment: the Church's power grab for the new national maternity hospital­­ — backed by government. By Marie O'Connor.

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    The big day. The sun shone, marquees fluttered, caterers bustled. Everybody who was anybody was there, ‘old boys’, former nurses, family friends. The No 1 Army band heralded the arrival of the Archbishop of Dublin; His G33race was followed five minutes later by the Tánaiste and Mrs Childers. The Archbishop said Mass for some 1200 people after leading a procession to bless ‘the new Vincent’s’, also known as the Mary Aikenhead School of Nursing. After the speeches came a two-tier lunch, turkey in the cafeteria for staff, cold meats, salads, wines and coffee for distinguished guests. Acquisitions The following year, the Religious Sisters of Charity acquired St Michael’s Hospital, Dun Laoghaire, from the Sisters of Mercy. Thirty years later, in 2001, they established St Vincent’s Healthcare Group to own and manage their hospitals. In 2010, the RSC expanded their portfolio again, mortgaging a publicly-funded asset, St Vincent’s University Hospital, to fund the building of their new private hospital at Elm Park. A decade later, the congregation is poised to acquire a new multi-million maternity facility — set to be one of the biggest in Europe — built and maintained from the public purse. Succession The key RSC objective today is to guarantee that their ethos will continue to determine care in their facilities. The congregation is dying out, so succession problems arise, as they do for religious worldwide, the dwindling owners of hospitals, schools and other non-profit enterprises. The order, which comprises some 250 members in all, mainly in their 70s and 80s, is headquartered in Dublin. Controversially, the congregation refused to pay its agreed €3 million share for victims of institutional child abuse in 2012, following the publication of the Ryan Report into industrial and reform schools. The order subsequently declined to compensate the Magdalene women, having netted €45 million in 2001 from the sale of its land at Donnybrook, Dublin, site of a laundry it ran for over 150 years. The flouting of public-pay policy by the Vincent’s Group was also widely censured.  Vincent’s and Holles Street Vincent’s has always had a special relationship with the National Maternity Hospital, Holles Street, a privately owned-corporation under the aegis of the Catholic Archdioceses. For decades, the NMH led the way in symphysiotomy, an operation that unhinged a woman’s pelvis, performed in lieu of Caesarean section by doctors who disapproved of birth control.  Today a much more liberal regime prevails. As Tony Farmar’s centenary history of Holles Street shows, medical consultants practised privately in both hospitals from the 1890s. Archbishop John Charles McQuaid was the National Maternity Hospital’s (NMH) all powerful chairman when he performed the opening ceremony at Elm Park in 1970. Today, around 40 per cent of NMH consultants work in the RSC’s hospitals despite the religious restrictions imposed on their practices. A power grab In 2013, Minister for Health James Reilly announced the building of ‘the new NMH’ — then set to cost €150 million — at Elm Park. KPMG had recommended that Dublin’s three private maternity hospitals be co-located with acute general hospitals in 2008. Co-located single-speciality hospitals offer ready access to wider specialist care: hospitals retain their independence while sharing ancillary services. Initial agreement between Vincent’s and the NMH on co-location broke down. In or around September 2014, under a new chairman, James Menton, a former KPMG partner, the nun’s company made a takeover bid for the NMH, reportedly delaying the planning process until Holles Street caved in. The Mulvey report Incoming Minister for Health Simon Harris appointed Kieran Mulvey to broker an agreement between the two warring private entities in May 2016. Four months later, the then deputy chair of the NMH, Nicholas Kearns, and the hospital’s then Master, Dr Rhona Mahony, now a director of the Group, reportedly informed Mulvey that they were willing to dissolve the NMH charter to become a wholly-owned subsidiary of the nuns’ company. This offer was made without consulting either the NMH board or the governors, according to former master and former board member Peter Boylan, a strong opponent of the takeover by the nuns’ company. St Vincent’s Healthcare Group, the company founded by the order in 2001, was now set to own and control the new maternity hospital company, which is to be a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Group. Mulvey had no public-interest mandate. The report set out detailed proposals for the takeover: it did not question it, nor did it consider who should own the land underneath the new hospital. Simon Harris welcomed the publication of the Mulvey report in April 2017, in a U-turn from the government’s previous support for NMH independence from Vincent’s, expressed by his predecessor Leo Varadkar in May 2016. It was a watershed for the congregation’s plans. Pushback Public opposition grew. A mass demonstration took place at Leinster House, one of many, and over 100,000 signed a petition against the government’s proposal to gift the new facility to the RSC. Peter Boylan publicly expressed his concern that certain procedures would not be available in the new hospital because of its Catholic ethos. Responding on 25 April 2017, the chair of the Group, James Menton asserted that “in line with current policies and procedures at SVHG [the nuns’ company], any medical procedure which is in accordance with the laws of the Republic of Ireland will be carried out at the new hospital”. This is a remarkable claim— later repeated — that gives the impression that abortion and other procedures banned by the Catholic Church were, and would continue to be, provided at Vincent’s hospitals. The Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference healthcare code The Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference issued its ‘Code of Ethical Standards in Healthcare’ in 2018. Abortion is permitted only as a lifesaving  procedure.  Under all other circumstances, such as rape, the threat of suicide or the diagnosis of a fatal foetal abnormality, abortion is prohibited. Referral for abortion is also banned, because it  constitutes “formal co-operation with wrongdoing”, which is “never morally permissible”. Other prohibited practices include artificial contraception, IVF, surrogacy and

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    A loathsome dirty trick. 4 December was the 50th anniversary of the infamous bombing of McGurk's Bar. The families have made a complaint to Parliamentary Ombudsman Against the Cabinet Office. By David Burke.

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    Saturday the 4th of December was the 50th anniversary of the infamous bombing of McGurk’s bar in Belfast by the UVF.  15 people were killed in the massacre. The bomb reduced the building to rubble. The attack was the most devastating atrocity suffered by Belfast since the bombing of the city during the Second World War. Brigadier Frank Kitson, the counterinsurgency specialist in charge of Belfast, knew that the bar had been attacked by Loyalist paramilitaries, yet participated in a black propaganda operation to blame the atrocity on the occupants of the premises. He and others  portrayed the explosion as an IRA own goal, i.e. that McGurk’s was an IRA pub and the bomb had been left there for collection by Republican terrorists, but had gone off prematurely. This was a lie. Kitson is alive. He has never been asked why he covered up for the actions of the Loyalist murder gang. Kitson is alive. He has never been asked why he covered up for the actions of the Loyalist murder gang. Kitson’s lies were used by Tory politicians to mislead the House of Commons. The record has never been corrected. The British government is refusing to investigate what really happened. The most likely explanation for the deception is that it was designed to avoid calls for the internment of Loyalist terror groups. At the time Ted Heath and NI PM Brian Faulkner had decided not to intern the UDA, UVF and Red Hand Commando. Furthermore, Brigadier Kitson had entered into a conspiracy with Tommy Herron of the UDA’s Inner Council. It amounted to nothing less than an agreement for mass murder. Herron ran the UDA’s assassination squads in Belfast. They killed Catholics whether they were connected to the IRA or not. Herron was aided by Kitson’s allies in the RUC. Some of these RUC men were stationed at Mountpottinger RUC station in Belfast. They supplied murder weapons to Herron’s killers. This was how British State collusion with Loyalist murder gangs began in Northern Ireland. Herron maintained contact with Kitson through a Captain Bundy. Bundy later ran the notorious UDA killer and sadist, Albert ‘Ginger’ Baker’. His codename was ‘Broccoli’. Herron, Baker and others participated in the ghastly ‘Romper Room’ kidnap, torture and murder programme of Catholics they abducted on the streets of Belfast. If the truth about the UVF’s responsibility for the McGurk bombing had surfaced, Kitson’s strategy of collusion with the UDA would have been severely jeopardised while still in its infancy. Members of both organisations might have been rendered subject to internment. Instead, Kitson chose to vilify the innocent victims of the bombing as patrons of an IRA meeting place. Ciarán MacAirt is the grandson of two of the McGurk’s Bar victims. His grandmother, Kathleen Irvine was one of the fifteen civilians killed; his grandfather, John Irvine, was badly injured but survived. He has written a book which exposes the scandal in forensic detail. He has also produced an addendum which can be read here: The McGurk’s Bar Bombing Post-Script: https://mcgurksbar.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/McGurks-Bar-Post-Script-Final-Redux.pdf See also, the McGurk’s Bar Bombing and the Plot to Deceive Two Parliaments https://mcgurksbar.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/The-McGurks-Bar-Bombing-and-the-Plot-to-Deceive-Two-Parliaments-Report-Redux.pdf The scandal ranks among the most repellent dirty tricks of the Troubles and is part of a pattern of criminal wrongdoing perpetrated by Kitson that can be discerned in the Ballymurphy and Bloody Sunday massacre outrages. The scandal ranks among the most repellent dirty tricks of the Troubles and is part of a pattern of criminal wrongdoing perpetrated by Kitson that can be discerned in the Ballymurphy and Bloody Sunday massacre outrages. Yesterday, the Chief Constable of the PSNI refused to talk to a delegation representing the relatives of the families who mounted a dignified protest outside his office. The families of those killed and injured are still trying to find out the full truth about what happened to their relatives. Last month they made a complaint to the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO) in London against the British Cabinet Office. As far as the families are aware, this is the first complaint of its kind to the PHSO regarding a conflict legacy case and the Cabinet Office. The complaint concerns: The Cabinet Office’s decision not to investigate a serious complaint regarding a high-level, coordinated and sustained plot by senior members of the Civil Service, British Army and RUC to deceive both Stormont and Westminster governments about the true circumstances of the McGurk’s Bar Massacre; The Cabinet Office’s handling of the original complaint which was first raised in December 2020. The original complaint to the Cabinet Office on 11th December 2020 also included a request to the Cabinet Secretary, Simon Case, for an investigation following the publication of a report by Ciarán MacAirt. See pages 24-25 of The McGurk’s Bar Bombing and the Plot to Deceive Two Parliaments. The report also includes new evidence from secret British military and governmental archives proving that there was a high-level, coordinated and sustained plot to deceive both Parliaments at Stormont and Westminster. The plot and disinformation involved both Prime Ministers, Brian Faulkner and Edward Heath; the General Officer Commanding Lt. General Sir Harry Tuzo; Brigadier Frank Kitson; RUC Chief Constable Graham Shillington and his head of Special Branch; and leading Civil Servants across a number of government departments. The disinformation included blaming the victims of the McGurk’s Bar Massacre for the bombing following a secret agreement between the British Army and RUC hours after the explosion, and before all victims had even been identified; and burying evidence which proved that the British Army and RUC knew that the victims were innocent, and the bar had been attacked. Colum Eastwood MP, leader of the SDLP, counter-signed and submitted the complaint to the PHSO on behalf of the families on Wednesday 4 November 2021. Ciarán MacAirt has said: After undue delay, the Cabinet Office denied us access to an investigation despite new evidence of a high-level, coordinated and sustained plot by public servants and Government Departments to mislead Stormont and Westminster about the McGurk’s Bar Massacre,

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    Frank Kitson, Collusion and the McGurk’s Bar Cover-Up. By Ciarán MacAirt.

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    Saturday 4 December is the 50th anniversary of the McGurk’s Bar Massacre which, in 1971, was the greatest loss of civilian life in any single murderous attack in Ireland since the Nazi Blitz in 1941. 15 civilians including two children perished in the atrocity when Loyalist extremists planted a no-warning bomb in the hallway of McGurk’s Bar, a family-run pub in north Belfast. The McGurk family lived above their bar. In a split second, Patrick McGurk lost his wife, his only daughter, his brother-in-law, his livelihood and his home. He and his sons thankfully escaped, albeit injured. I am a grandson of two of the McGurk’s Bar Massacre victims. My grandmother, Kathleen Irvine, was one of the 15 civilians murdered. My grandfather, John, was badly injured but survived. Like the other survivors, he shouldered the physical and mental scars of that night every day until he died 22 years later. He had night terrors and his frightened family sometimes found him pushing the rubble away from himself as he slept or clawing at his mouth as if it had filled with pulverised mortar once again. An eight-year-old paperboy called Joseph McClory saw the bomber plant the bomb in the hallway and light its fuse. The man ran to a waiting car which then drove off, leaving the young boy behind. Joseph saw a local man about to turn the corner and go into the pub, but he shouted to him, “Mister, don’t go into that bar. There’s a bomb there.” The eight-year-old saved the man’s life and gave the Royal Ulster Constabulary a detailed statement regarding the attack on the bar and the escape of the bombers. The local man told the police that Joseph had indeed warned him and the bar exploded in seconds after that. Nevertheless, before we buried our loved ones, the British state buried the truth. Nevertheless, before we buried our loved ones, the British state buried the truth. Within hours and before all of the victims had been identified, police, the British Army and government officials briefed the press that the explosion was the result of an Irish Republican Army “own-goal”, to use their heinous language. Instead of trying to bring the pro-state mass murderers to justice, the British state instead blamed the bombing on the innocent civilians in the bar. Their only crime? The victims and survivors were Irish Catholics, and they were living and dying in a rotten, sectarian Orange state. Proof that the ‘Irish Question’ could not be solved by military and legal means alone came early in the conflict but was not heeded for another generation. Far from quelling what the British portrayed as localised unrest, the introduction of internment on the 9th August 1971 plunged the north of Ireland into an all-enveloping spiral of violence, destruction and death. The story of its failure is told in the death toll in the months prior to and following its introduction. Ten people (four British soldiers, four civilians and two Republican Volunteers) died in the four months leading up to internment. One hundred and twenty eight died in its four-month aftermath (sixty nine civilians and fifty nine combatants – thirteen Republican Volunteers and forty six British army, RUC, UDR and Loyalist personnel). Before Internment was introduced in August 1971, the British authorities had urged the Northern Ireland Prime Minister Brian Faulkner to include alleged Protestant extremists in the initial lifts. It could then be argued that the Special Powers were not designed to be directed solely against the Catholic community. Faulkner refused as he knew that he would not have the support of his party or the RUC. Instead, the British authorities formalized an “Arrest Policy for Protestants” (discovered by Pat Finucane Centre) which meant that no Protestants were interned until 1973 even though they had murdered well over a hundred civilians by then. Therefore, if it was admitted to the public that pro-state Loyalists had perpetrated the McGurk’s Bar Massacre on the 4th December 1971, the Northern Ireland government’s assertion to Whitehall that they were “no serious threat” would be completely untenable. As it was, internment without trial remained directed against the Irish Catholic community alone for another 14 months over the bloodiest year of the conflict. Even after that, alleged Protestant extremists only made up 5% of internees even though the Protestant community was around twice the size of the Irish Catholic community in the statelet. As Village Magazine examined (https://villagemagazine.ie/a-pact-sworn-by-devils-how-a-british-prime-minister-sold-his-soul-to-acquire-votes-to-enable-the-uk-to-join-the-european-economic-community-the-forerunner-of-the-eu/), Edward Heath and the Northern Ireland Prime Minister are in the frame for a sordid Faustian pact which bartered the maintenance of the highly discriminatory internment policy, Unionist votes in favour of the European Economic Community, and the cover-up of the McGurk’s Bar Massacre. So devastating and all-enveloping was this cover-up, that the victims and survivors of the McGurk’s Bar Massacre were blamed for the attack and their families are still fighting for scraps of truth and justice from the British table half a century later. The Loyalists who murdered them murdered many, many more civilians in the years afterwards although only one served any time whatsoever for the murders. The police had detailed information on them all from a covert human intelligence source relating to the bombing. The British state had much to bury, though. The British state had much to bury, though. We know from secret documents that it undermined Joseph McClory who saw the bomb being planted and the bombers escape. The McClory family received death threats afterwards. The British authorities ignored the witness testimony of the man he saved and all of the civilians who survived the bombing although they buried corroborating information from a witness at the bomb site the following day. The British state even ignored a public claim by Loyalists that its members blew up McGurk’s Bar. We now know too that the police and British Army had information relating to a suspect car within a minute of the explosion. It found and finger-printed what secret police records called the “car used in

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    The deep Irish background to the Ghislaine Maxwell trial. By Joseph de Burca

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    Ghislaine Maxwell goes on trial in NY tomorrow. She was a key figure in a paedophile network that serviced Royalty, most notably Prince Andrew. She was the right hand of Jeffrey Epstein who was the key player in the modern iteration of a well-established vice ring which overlapped with other similar groups and rippled across the Atlantic to Europe. Roy Cohn helped run the network before Epstein. Cohn was one of Donald Trump’s most influential mentors. Epstein and Cohn supplied children to influential figures including Royalty and senior politicians. The purpose was to gather ‘kompromat’ for blackmail purposes. Epstein was an operative of an as yet unnamed intelligence service in the sphere of the US. There is a shocking and sickening Irish connection to the Cohn-Epstein paedophile scandal. Village exposed it in July 2020. An in-depth account can be read here: Trump’s mentor: another sociopathic paedophile child-trafficker in the mix; from Roy Cohn to Epstein and Maxwell. See also: Trump’s child abusing attack dog. The only lawyer Trump professes to admire these days was a well-known paedophile, child trafficker and blackmailer who was disbarred from practice.  

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    Homeless woman outmanoeuvred by Leitrim County Council.

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      ‘M’ is not the only person living rough in Carrick. She is the one who has had courage enough to take on the bureaucrats, media silence and the onset of savage weather. By Councillor Des Guckian I’m a (very) Independent Councillor for the Carrick-on-Shannon Electoral area. I have refused to join the large coalition that exists on the Council which controls appointment, zonings and land disposals, as well as across a range of necessary services, the day-to-day dispensing of justice.I do not close my eyes to injustices. In mid-September, I was told by a very concerned person that a woman (I’ll call her M) was sleeping rough on the streets of Carrick-on-Shannon. The next information I got was that she had presented as homeless to Leitrim Housing on 17 September. She was not well received and was, bluntly, told to go back to Dublin. This was despite evidence that she carried stating that she had properly signed out of a place in Finglas. A similar dismissal occurred a few days later. What convinced me that this was a great injustice was the knowledge that M had grown up in Carrick and had attended school there. Therefore she is a native of County Leitrim. She is a member of the Traveller community. According to Focus Ireland, the second quarter of 2020 was the first quarter in which the number of people exiting homelessness is higher than the number becoming homeless since this data began being published in 2014. Most councils were anxious to get the homeless off the streets during COVID, but not Leitrim. After the Council’s refusal to provide her with any form of emergency accommodation, M was forced into sleeping rough on the town’s streets. This is fraught with dangers. I wrote numerous emails to the Council’s Housing Department stating that M could be attacked, could die of hypothermia, and risked severe mental strain. I also pointed out that there were sad precedents, in Carrick, where homeless people had died while sleeping rough. All this was generally ignored by media, by Council officials and by the general population. I had queried Housing officials about homelessness in our County. The stock answer was that anyone presenting as homeless was looked after. I argued that M was a clear case giving the lie to such assertions. At the full Council meeting in September, two other Councillors asked questions about thehomelessness problem. The answers given by Housing officials were on the lines “We do a good job”. In further emails, I was told that National Department of Housing funding was available to help a Council defray most of the expenses incurred. It turned out that, for years now, Leitrim has had no emergency hostels and we have been offloading our homeless onto Sligo City. It is a logical assumption that Sligo benefited from funding provided for our homeless and for theirs. It took a long time to get Leitrim Housing to admit that they were avoiding the hard work and some expenses. On 22 September, M was accompanied by a Simon worker when she, again, presented at the Housing office. Again, she was refused. M made it clear that she was not going to be forced to leave Carrick and she resumed sleeping rough. I wrote to Housing Minister Darragh O’Brien, to the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission and to Pavee Point. Nothing positive emerged, though Pavee told me they wrote twice to Leitrim Housing, but got nowhere. I put a motion, on M’s plight, before the Carrick Municipal meeting of 18 October. The Council officials just circled the wagons and my fellow Councillors were struck dumb. I thought something had been achieved, when, that very evening, the Council’s Traveller Liaison Officer visited M and promised to help her. It was a false dawn and she spent more nights on the streets. At the start of November, the Council obtained emergency accommodation for M in a flat, in Carrick, for four nights a week only, but she had scandalously to move out at the weekend to allow the owner to cater for the hen and stag parties that have become ubiquitous in Leitrim. At the Council’s Budget Meeting I put forward a motion that money should be set asideto provide a hostel, in Carrick, to provide emergency shelter for our homeless. Council officials managed to crush this motion with the aid of the coalition and it was not mentioned in media reports of the meeting. Embarrassingly, the budget itself was to provide an estimated €142,113 for “Homeless Service”, but a grand total of €444,611 for “Veterinary Service”. The latter, I was told, included a dog shelter. I commented that we could provide a shelter for dogs, but not for homeless people. I told the officials that if M died on the streets, they would be held responsible. That evening, the Council officials told M that they would provide B&B accommodation for her in far off Ballinamore, but if she stayed on the streets in Carrick, it would be her own responsibility. M remains on the streets of Carrick. Council officials just washed their hands of her. She is not the only person living rough in Carrick. She is the one who has had courage enough to take on the bureaucrats, media silence and the onset of savage weather to highlight her needs and her civil rights. Leitrim County Council commented: “It is the policy of Leitrim not to comment on individual cases. However, where a person presents as homeless, they are assessed and where appropriate an offer of temporary emergency accommodation is made through the provision of B&B accommodation. It is matter for the individual to accept or refuse this offer of temporary emergency accommodation”. Personally, I’m shocked that Council officials would behave in such a callous manner towards a fellow human being. A month before Christmas in modern Ireland, there is still no room at the inn.  

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