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    Villager – November 2017

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    Nominative Determinism An English Tory with the damning name of Chris Pincher has been accused of making unwanted advances including by way of an unwanted neck massage, to an athlete, while wearing a bathrobe. The victim, a former Olympic rower, who divulged the disputed details is appropriately called Alex Story. Similarly rapacious, the former British pensions secretary, Stephen Crabb, was referred to the Conservatives’ unpleasant sounding ‘disciplinary panel’ after admitting he sent suggestive text messages to a teenager.   If you Vote for Monkeys… When the Independent Alliance was forming, it should have worked out its policy on comprising delegations to tin-pot dictators.   Stellar Fair play to Paddy McKillen jr for his voluptuous rejuvenation of the art deco Stella Cinema in Rathmines. Through his company, Press-up, he has also restored and reopened the former Dollard Printing Works, next to the Clarence Hotel on Dublin’s Wellington Quay, as high-ceilinged restaurants and bars. It’s not so long since his Dad – collaborating with Bono and the Edge – got permission to demolish the whole lot, including the Clarence Hotel and Dollard building (except for the front wall), for a new spaceship-style hotel.   Oh no, Bono For some reason Bono seems to spend all day trying to pay less and less tax. He is the poster boy for raw global capitalism, though be leavens his image by his passion for charity (not to be confused with justice). The increasingly bigassed rock-constellation bought a shopping centre, not in Paradise but in Lithuania, which has paid no tax despite having made profits. The company was later transferred to zero-company-tax Guernsey. In a statement, the U2 frontman said he would be “extremely distressed if even as a passive minority investor…anything less than exemplary was done with my name anywhere near it”. Some years he outlined his approach to these things “It’s just some smart people we have working for us trying to be sensible about the way we’re taxed.” Meanwhile Lithuania’s tax authorities have said they are preparing to examine the details of the business over concerns that it avoided profit tax. They commenced “an inspection on taxpayers based on the evaluation of risk of tax breaches. Taxpayers having offshore transactions more often score higher points of risk”, they said. Bono did not apparently contrive artificial structures to avoid paying tax as did, for example, some of the stars of the execrable ‘Mrs Brown’s Boys’. However, experts in Lithuania have suggested the underlying company incorporated for the purchase of the property may have broken local rules to reduce its tax bill. More fundamentally Bono’s adventurous, and greedy, tax roving serves to boost ultra-low tax jurisdictions and elaborate structures for cheating tax. And it is these things which are so harmful, not only to ordinary people in developed countries but also to the developing world. When plutocrats like Bono “shop around” different countries for the best tax deal they fan the flames of tax competition, putting ever more pressure on countries around the world to cut their tax rates.   Avoiding Tax, Responsibility and Villager’s Attention One of the ‘Mrs Brown’s Boys’ chaps caught up in the offshore shiftiness painted a picture of himself so inept that he had to google what tax avoidance was. Topping that, Villager had to google what ‘Mrs Brown’s Boys’ was.   If You’re Looking for Murderous Cover-Up Look No Further Northern Ireland High Court Judge Seamus Treacy has said he will compel the PSNI’s Chief Constable to complete an investigation into the activities of the one-time so-called Glenanne Gang, based at a County Armagh farm, which has been linked to up to 120 murders almost all of whom were “upwardly mobile” Catholic civilians with no links to Irish republican paramilitaries, including those of 33 people in the 1974 Dublin and Monaghan bombings and of Miami Showband in 1975. The gang included members of the UVF, RUC and UDR. A report into its alleged activities by the Historical Enquiries Team (HET) is 80% complete but unpublished. Earlier this year, a judge ruled that the PSNI had breached the human rights of the victims’ families and it had frustrated “any possibility of an effective investigation”.   Doing Dunnes Dunnes Stores cashier Mary Manning knew little about apartheid when, at the age of twenty-one, she refused to register the sale of two Outspan South African grapefruits under a directive from her union. In her memoir, ‘Striking Back – The Untold Story of an Anti-Apartheid Striker (Collins Press), Manning recounts how, on 19 July 1984, she was suspended and nine of her co-workers walked out in support. She said, “We all assumed we would shortly return to work but instead we were on that picket line for 2 years and 9 months”. The searing account of the strikers’ struggle against apartheid and the Irish Establishment will be launched on Friday 24 November at 6.30pm in the Gutter Bookshop, Temple Bar, as part of the inaugural Festival of Politics, by Joe Higgins, Socialist Party activist and former TD and MEP.   Villagrrr Newsbrands journalism awards are a misnomer, as well as a smugfest. For a start, they’re not for news brands or journalists but for newspaper journalists. At a recent drawnout gala event in the Mansion House that a bitter Villager avoided, they judged seven Irish Times journalists awardworthy. No-one else got more than three. The newspaper of reference’s dominance reflects the mutual loathings of newspaper rivals, manifest in nihilistic voting strategies, more than any particular respect for the mediocre Irish Times. Encapsulating the second-rate standards, the Best Headline of the Year went to the Irish Daily Star for the banner, ‘Quarter Pounder with Sleaze’, for a cover about a 44-year-old man who exposed himself to a teenager working in McDonald’s. Village’s best ever headline, over a story about distortions of the reality of fish farming, was ‘Lice, damned lies, and statistics’. Not that Newsbrands noticed. The editor says Village isn’t even a brand. The event was sponsored by the larcenous National Lottery

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    Social History Isn’t History With Politics Left Out

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    2016 was inevitably an outstanding year for the history industry as publishers, writers, and those elements of the intelligentsia that love a good commemoration got to work on the Easter Rebellion’s hundredth anniversary. The Irish people have an interesting relationship with their own history. It is, like their relationship to Catholicism, frequently the subject of fervent debate, at certain period followed slavishly as orthodoxy, and on other occasions the subject of shame. In the more modern Ireland that began to emerge from the 1960s a new revisionism took hold about the history itself. Revisionism itself became a pejorative term as scepticism about our history joined forces with those who would be sceptical about the benefit of Catholic Ireland. In the 1970s liberalism, secularism and scepticism about nationalism ascended. The first historical-revisionist tract was produced by a Jesuit priest named Fr Francis Shaw. His scepticism about 1916 was so overt that it was thought best to delay publication for six years as the country was, in 1966, fervidly commemorating Easter Rising anniversaries. Fr Shaw’s revisionism seems mild by the yardstick of today – he blamed 1916 for the division of Ireland, the Civil War and the fact that little or no commemoration was possible of those who gave their lives in World War I. Eunan O’Halpin and Guy Beiner take us through the various commemorations in Irish life in their essay ‘Remembering and Forgetting’ as a final input to the exhaustive and very stimulating ‘Cambridge Social History of Modern Ireland’. What this book reminds you of is the timely and regular nature through which historians not only review earlier conclusions but also attempt to put a new narrative account on what has previously been thought of as undisputed territory. it is noteworthy that one of the best-selling books on the 1916 centenary celebrations was a book about how children were treated though the week-long rebellion. The editors of the Cambridge Social History, Mary Daly, Professor Emeritus of Modern History at UCD, and Eugenio Biagini, Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at the University of Cambridge, are quick to point out that social history is not just history with the ‘politics’ left out. That said, they are robustly critical of an over-emphasis on political, constitutional, and institutional histories of Ireland. “Our emphasis is on economic and social change, our focus on people and cultures, instead of institutions and political ideologies”, they assert in their introduction. The book suggests a purposeful placing of Irish history in the context of wider European and global events. This is challenging stuff but with 40 distinct contributors cover ground of interest to both academic and general readers. The wide-ranging topics include previously taboo subject matter like sex and class in Ireland. Thankfully, as historian Joe Lee acknowledged in his Irish Times review, this is not a textbook. More than half the contributors are based outside of Ireland, which again shows a purposeful focus on diversity of thought by the editors. Lee has said of this book that the historian’s delight is a reviewer’s nightmare. The book is not a rainy-day read. One of the great tragedies of recent Irish scholarship is the number of posts in economic and social history that have either fallen vacant or simply just not been continued. It is to be hoped that Irish universities and corporate philanthropy will re-discover the benefits of social and economic history and invest in it. My own view is that local history, as well as social and economic history, deserves investment to counterbalance the overarching political narrative. Amongst the essays included here is one by Terence Dooley, Professor of Modern History at Maynooth University, on the fate of the Big House, the preserve of the ascendancy class and a symbol of an Ireland that is now essentially gone. Dooley deals both with the social destruction of that class but also the physical destruction of its physical heritage. This still makes for sad reading, in particular, when one looks at the Department of Finance’s memorandum in 1929, declining to take Russborough House in Wicklow, one of Ireland’s greatest houses, into state ownership because it was only of interest to “connoisseurs of architecture” and had never been associated “with any outstanding events or personalities in Irish history”. Despite the obvious neurosis that afflicted the early state with regard to the Big House there should surely be now an argument for a much more comprehensive policy to preserve heritage properties of every description, if only to assuage tourism’s endless search for new venues and more enchanted and more promotable ways. Henry Patterson, Emeritus Professor of Irish Politics at Ulster University, takes up the challenge of Irish working class experience and why, despite the best efforts, this did not translate into support for the Irish Labour party. He quotes UCD economist Cormac O’Gráda as acknowledging that by 1939 Fianna Fáil had become the party of the working class. Even the 1970s were never socialist. Moreover, unsurprisingly the recent displacement of the Labour party has been at the hands of a resurgent Sinn Féin which is reaping an electoral harvest and an indelible presence in working-class areas, from peace in our time. Patterson (‘The Irish Working Class and the Role of the State, 1850-2016) acknowledges why working-class politics made so small an impression on Irish life, pointing to the obvious conservatism and anti-communism of the Catholic Church and the fact that James Connolly threw in his lot with nationalism as a progressive force in Irish life. The other reason that class consciousness never took hold in Ireland is probably the existence of the Big House and the ascendancy class. The fact that the ruling class in Irish society were not drawn from the majority Catholic population meant that for several hundred years radicals had no class enemy to tilt at but the ascendancy. Jennifer Todd, Professor of Politics at UCD, and Joseph Ruane, Emeritus Professor of Sociology at UCC, make a timely point (‘Elite Formation, the Professions, Industry and the Middle

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    Think [and consider the data]

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    A CLEARER PICTURE is emerging of the state of the housing sector. A number of reports and newly-compiled statistics point to a heavily strained system, struggling to provide even modest levels of supply and affordability. Most households cannot afford a new home within reasonable commuting distance of Dublin, without first stumping up a significant deposit. Policies aimed at reducing building costs by either increasing building heights, or reducing standards, are ineffective and don’t facilitate the common good. And only ten local authority homes were built in Dublin the first half of this year. What does this crisis look like? Here are some figures that help point the way. 1. HOUSING SUPPLY Due to inaccurate official housing statistics, Goodbody has instigated an independent audit of house-building output. Its ‘BER House-building Tracker’ is based on new Building Energy Ratings, certification of which have been a legal requirement for all dwellings since 2013. By this measure, 6,447 new homes have been completed in the year to date, less than half the official Department of Housing figure, which is based on ESB connections. The pace of building is increasing, rising 86% year-on-year in September, though it remains well below official estimates. In total, fewer than 8,000 new homes will be built this year. 80% of these new dwellings are houses, and fewer than 1000 apartments have been completed this year. Seven out of ten new dwellings, and most apartments, are located in the Greater Dublin Area, the ‘recovery’ evidently being restricted to the capital. 2. HOUSE PRICES The Central Statistics Office’s Residential Property Price Indicator Index is an accurate record of house prices. It confirms that government policy has facilitated a remarkable recovery in new home prices. In 2010, the average new home was 25% cheaper than the average second-hand house price. By 2016, the average new home was 15% more expensive, at €450,274. The price of second-hand homes in Dublin has increased at a much slower rate – an average of 11% per year, to €389,879 by 2016. By last year, Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown had seen new home prices double in six years to €618,026, almost 14 times the average full-time wage. 3. APARTMENT PRICES & AFFORDABILITY A report in October by the Society of Chartered Surveyors Ireland (SCSI), ‘The Real Costs of New Apartment Delivery’, confirmed what the industry has known for years – new apartments are severely unaffordable. A combined household salary of €87,000 is required to afford the cheapest low-density two-bed apartments in suburban Dublin. The average sale price across the city is €435,500, almost ten times the average full-time wage. Prospective owners must be in the top 20% household-earnings bracket. The report raised a number of interesting facts. Increasing height – an official preoccupation, actually drives prices up. Reduced standards like smaller floor areas and reduced lift cores – an industry preoccupation, do little to reduce the ‘affordability gap’. Site values are the biggest cost, and a significant driver of price inflation. Land values and developers’ profits comprise 35% of sales prices. 4. SOCIAL HOUSING Rebuilding Ireland’s ‘Social Housing Completions Report 2017’ catalogues an expanding ‘pipeline’ of almost 700 projects, with the capacity to provide more than 11,000 potential social homes. However, actual output is far less impressive than official inputs. Local authorities built 75 social housing units nationwide in the first six months of this year. In addition, 380 social homes were completed nationwide by ‘approved housing bodies’ (AHBs) and voluntary co-ops, organisations that heavily rely on voluntary efforts and fund-raising, in addition to state funding. Of the 120,598 people on housing waiting lists nationwide, 40,207 are in the four Dublin council areas. Ten local authority homes were built in Dublin the first half of 2017. Dublin city council has the largest population, and the highest number of homeless families, but it built no social housing. Cork city council, Kildare county council and Galway city council did not build a single local authority home between them, despite having housing waiting lists of 6,005, 6,869, and 4,095 respectively. 21 local authorities built no social housing in the first six months of 2017. CONCLUSIONS There are 240 new households availing of state rent assistance every week. Approximately €730m will be spent on state rent assistance, for 96,000 households, this year. By 2018 this will increase to €900m for 110,000 families. Rising levels of homelessness have been well documented, and are truly alarming. There are only 1000 rental properties available in Dublin, and 3,200 nationwide. The lack of supply continues to pressurise the rental sector, and lower-to-middle income households and tenants in arrears are especially vulnerable. Local authorities own enough residential- zoned land to build 37,000 dwellings, yet at current rates just 300 local authority homes will be completed this year. Considering the continued reliance on the private sector, low levels of new house-building, the lack of an affordable housing scheme, and low permanent social-housing provision, the situation for families on more modest incomes will remain perilously difficult for the foreseeable future.   Mailíosa (Mel) Reynolds is a Registered Architect and Certified Passive House Designer

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    Boiling Over

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    This March marked the 40th anniversary of Mary Boyle’s disappearance. Ever since she vanished on St. Patrick’s weekend in 1977, a veil of secrecy has shrouded the case of the Donegal schoolgirl who is Ireland’s longest and youngest missing person. There are few scandals that embarrass the establishment more, not least because of the sinister role played by senior political, Garda and media figures in suppressing the truth about what happened to the six-year-old. Yet despite a virtual blackout by the mainstream media on all of the astonishing new revelations in the case, the lid is slowly being lifted on this sad and sordid story, and the public is hungry for justice. My 2016 documentary ‘Mary Boyle: The Untold Story’ has been viewed almost 600,000 times on YouTube. A recent petition to the Donegal coroner’s office requesting an inquest was signed by thousands in a matter of hours. There is growing frustration and fury that justice has not been done and little doubt that the case involves a cover-up of enormous magnitude. Few believe the story as it was spun in 1977 when Mary went missing during a visit to her grandparents’ home in Cashelard, Ballyshannon. It is implausible that a little girl, who was born in Birmingham, could simply vanish without trace on an isolated farm while in the company of at least 10 members of her family. A ‘Cold Case’ review, set up in the days immediately after the documentary’s release, has resulted in nothing almost a year and a half on, and there is no conclusion in sight. It appears now that this review – one of several that have led to nothing – was established to placate public outrage over allegations contained in the film, especially those made by retired gardaí who claim that Fianna Fáil politician Sean McEniff tried to stop their investigation in its tracks. Expert legal opinion suggests the Gardaí have ample evidence to make charges, yet nobody has been arrested. The last person known to have seen Mary, her uncle and local Fianna Fáil stalwart Gerry Gallagher, has given several unconvincing and inconsistent accounts of what happened the day she went missing. His claim that his niece simply vanished into thin air after accompanying him along a laneway on his farm holds no credibility. Gallagher’s failure to admit when initially asked that Mary had been with him is suspicious at the very least. Statements given to gardaí at the time by him and certain other family members are laden with contradictions. Some officers who were first on the scene that day say they are in no doubt Gerry Gallagher was responsible for Mary’s disappearance. Retired sergeant Martin Collins describes one encounter with Gallagher, where Collins put it to him that he was responsible for his niece’s disappearance. Gallagher, he says, sat in silence and made no attempt to rebuke it. Collins, who was initially refused entry to the cottage by the family, also claims he was told numerous times by Ann Boyle – Mary’s mother and Gerry Gallagher’s sister – that she believed Gallagher was responsible. Mary’s twin sister Ann Doherty and country singer Margo O’Donnell, a distant cousin, say Mrs Boyle told them the same story. Mrs Boyle appears to have now retracted this belief, and says the matter should be addressed privately not publicly. She has been scathing about the justice campaign for her daughter, and has told Donegal coroner Dr Denis McCauley she does not want an inquest into her death, an astonishing position but one that the coroner supports, depriving Mary, her twin sister and the public of a key mechanism for justice and closure in the case. Sergeant Collins also alleges that another close relation of Mary came to him in tears at Ballyshannon station in the days after her disappearance, repeating the claim that he believed Gallagher was responsible. Retired detective Aidan Murray, one of the lead Gardaí in the original ‘investigation’ supports Collins’ theories. He claims that during an interview with Gallagher, he was on the brink of getting a confession when he got a ‘nudge’ under the table from his superior officer who ordered Murray to leave the room and get water for the suspect. More disturbingly, both officers say they are in no doubt Mary was sexually assaulted before her death. Ann Doherty makes the same claim and says Mary was going to blow the whistle on the alleged abuse and had to be silenced. The retired Gardaí also allege that Fianna Fáil’s longest-serving councillor, the late Sean McEniff, made a phone call to Ballyshannon Garda station ordering that none of the Gallagher family were to be made suspects in the case. Shortly before his death earlier this year, McEniff denied their claim yet Aidan Murray, the former head of Special Branch in the area, has stated on camera: “I know that as a result of that phone call, certain people were not allowed to be interviewed. It was all hands off them and we were to look somewhere else”. Given the power McEniff wielded in almost every aspect of Donegal life, there is little doubt his intervention could have derailed the investigation. His legacy of corruption is notorious and was well documented in a recent obituary of him in Village magazine, not least because of his close relationships with Gardaí whom he seems to have been able to order around with impunity, especially where his illegal gaming operation in Bundoran was concerned. A 1985 RTÉ documentary ‘Law and Order in Donegal’, reveals the control McEniff had over local superintendent Dom Murray, who was in charge of the Mary Boyle investigation and who told a number of lies about the case in media interviews through the years. It offers a damning insight into the incestuous relationship between Fianna Fáil and the Gardaí, which has been used to protect the party from scandal on numerous occasions, not least in the aftermath of the Fr Niall Molloy murder in Offaly in 1985. Gerry Gallagher

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    Some rugger-buggers hooked on group sex

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     The George Hook affair – in which he scandalously suggested that a woman might hold a degree of responsibility for being raped – touched on many things, but one overlooked aspect is a connection to a worrying trend in the world of rugby, where he made his name as a trainer and commentator. Irish society is accustomed to cover-ups and prevarication within corporate organisations, especially where there are allegations of sexual abuse. So, does the Irish Rugby Football Union (IRFU) need to address the advent of a dangerous culture of sexism among its professionals? Four current or former Irish rugby players are set for trial in Belfast this year for rape. The precise details are not open for discussion, but Ulster and Ireland players Paddy Jackson (25) and Stuart Olding (24) are accused on two counts each of raping the same woman on June 28, 2016. Both deny the charges. Former Ulster player Blane McIlroy has been charged with exposing himself to cause “alarm or distress” on the same date, and former UCD player Rory Harrison (25) has been charged with perverting the course of justice by allegedly making a false witness statement to police. He is also accused of withholding evidence. Needless to say, anyone accused of a crime is innocent until proven guilty, but we need to consider the autonomous issue of whether rugby has a cultural problem with sexism and alcohol abuse. Superficial similarities Until recently rape was considered a property crime of man against man: women. Women were not their own agents. In a different and ancient way we still see this attitude in Bunreacht na hÉireann. Victims were commonly accused of incitement, and even subject to punishment. In India and Pakistan, unfortunately, that is still sometimes the case. In Ireland, rape within marriage was only recognised as an offence in 1990. Ireland, like most countries, has long had a problem with under-reporting of this heinous crime. The Rape Crisis Centre reported in 2016 that 65% of survivors using their services had not previously reported to any formal authority. The conduct of many Irish men clearly remains hugely problematic. George Hook courted controversy, and lost his job, for offensive comments he made on his Newstalk show regarding a case with superficial similarities to the Ulster players’ case now playing out in Britain. Hook was reacting to details of a court case involving a young woman who returned to the hotel bedroom of British Olympic swimmer Ieuan Lloyd and had consensual sex with him, where upon, she alleges, she was “passed on” to his friend Otto Putland who, she claims, raped her. Hook said: “Why does a girl who just meets a fella in a bar go back to a hotel room?”. “Should she be raped? Of course she shouldn’t. Isn’t she entitled to say no? Of course she is. Is the guy who came in a scumbag? Certainly. Should he go to jail? Of course. All those things”. And then the clanger – “But is there no blame now to the person who puts themselves in danger?”. The answer, to be clear, is that there is none. A woman always has a right to choose with whom, and when, she has sexual relations. Provocateurs George Hook is a proud rugby man, whose hulking six-foot-three frame equipped him for the playing fields of Presentation Cork. He would find elusive success as a rugby coach, with Connacht and London Irish, and also the United States in the first Rugby World Cup in 1987. But it was as a pundit on RTÉ sports television, beginning in 1997, that he really shot to prominence; copying the role Eamon Dunphy plays in soccer commentary – as a provocateur who stands up for the values of his game. Having found fame in his twilight, he embarked on a successful media career as conservative columnist for the Sunday Independent, and then as Ireland’s first ‘shock jock’ on Newstalk. Along the way he has championed “beleaguered” motorists against girlie-men cyclists, infuriated feminists, and proclaimed himself an unashamed Blueshirt, reaching out to those who eat their dinner in the middle of the day. When TV3’s Colette Fitzpatrick suggested he was “controversial” he lost his temper, saying it was an “outrageous accusation” which was the same as calling him a “liar” and a “fake”, that it was a stereotype that he battles every single day. George Hook may not represent mainstream views on rape in the rugby community, but his success on the airwaves attests to a constituency of angry, middle-age men among them who inveigh against a rapidly changing world. To that mindset perhaps, the scantily-clad, inebriated girl – the tart – who returns to a hotel room with a group of men should not expect to halt proceedings once she puts herself in that position. Worryingly, the Ulstermen are not the only Irish professional rugby players to have been accused of rape this year. In March Denis Coulson (23), then playing in France for Grenoble, was detained along with two non-Irish team-mates in Bordeaux after a 21-year-old woman alleged she was drugged, taken to a hotel room and raped. He strenuously denies a charge that did not prevent the IRFU re-integrating him into the Irish game as a member of the Connacht squad. It might appear that group participation in sex is a form of currency among elite rugby players. In 2013 another incident of group sex involving two other prominent Irish rugby players, being filmed by a third, was widely reported in the media, especially the Irish Independent which lapped up the sordid details. A video went viral via social media, and soon afterwards the woman involved felt compelled to leave the country. There is no suggestion that consent was absent or withdrawn, or any sexual assault committed, but there was nonetheless a serious violation of privacy. The players faced no public sanction, and the IRFU did not deem it necessary to investigate whether a culture of sexism operates among rugby players in

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    Classholes

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    Last month the early departure of another Garda Commissioner drew much media attention – probably more than it deserved, given that the wheels keep turning, the Gardaí still show up for work, and the ship of state creaks on. The change, if any, will be largely cosmetic. But the week before the Commissioner “retired”, a man was shot by a garda in Dublin city. The garda was off-duty. The man was unarmed. This came in the wake of revelations that have seriously damaged the credibility of An Garda Síochána, from the conspiracy to smear whistleblower Maurice McCabe, to the penalty-points fiasco, to doctored drink-driving stats. But there were no signs of concern in our media about the shooting of an unarmed man. Our journalists, instead of querying the chain of events that led to an unarmed man being shot by an off- duty garda, swallowed and regurgitated the Garda line without question. The victim of this shooting was smeared as “known to gardaí” before any inquiry, let alone court case. Due process, but not for the working-classes m’lud. The Sun asserted the victim was a “close associate of well known gangster”. Of course no source was cited for this information. Crime reporting still operates to a standard of citation that would not be acceptable in an undergraduate essay. One can only assume this information came from the Garda, but are they to be trusted? Forgetting the recent scandals that led to the “resignation” of the previous Commissioner, and calls for the current Commissioner to step down also, there are other serious questions about credibility. The Judge in the Jobstown trial, for instance, had to instruct the jury to disregard all Garda evidence . This is all well-known and on the public record, and should counsel caution when it comes to trusting versions of events put forward by our police force. In the case of a shooting, it is folly to accept without question an account that comes solely from the person doing the shooting. This is elementary, self-evident. There is far too much motivation to paint a picture that exonerates them. And unsurprisingly that is the picture that has been painted. Worse, this is the second time in just over a year this has happened. Last summer an unarmed man was shot in the face. This was similarly reported as an “accident”, before any inquiry, and without the remotest semblance of investigative reporting, or even critical thinking on behalf of our journalists. That very day, RTÉ News reported the victim of that shooting was a suspect in a spate of burglaries. This is not some tabloid, this is the national broadcaster. Similar stories were published in a other media. How did they know this to be true? Why do they feel justified in applying uniquely low probative standards? They didn’t say but one can assume they heard it from the Garda, the same organisation whose member carried out the shooting. So, before any inquiry the shooter was exonerated (it was “accidental”) and before any court case the victim was implicated (“known to gardaí”). Despite the fact An Garda Síochána are supposedly being subjected to an ever increasing level of scrutiny by politicians and media both, precisely the same events had played out again. The message this sends is that gardaí can shoot young men without any criticism from our press. Our media remain beholden to the Garda in a sort of dysfunctional symbiotic relationship. Gardaí continue to give them stories at individual discretion, which risks leaving journalists in thrall to a police force that has, we know, been compromised by scandal after scandal, many relating to honesty and veracity. The feudal bestowing of stories on favoured journalists makes a mockery of the concept of independent journalism. It is disgraceful that this situation persists given the ongoing revelations about An Garda Síochaná. No better is the near-silence of the liberal commentariat on this issue. Those who paid easy and empty lip service to the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement couldn’t seem to care less when the poor people getting shot are from closer to home. Class remains one of the biggest predictors of life outcomes in this country. More people die of economic inferiority in this country every year than died in 30 years of the Troubles. Even when our police force are shooting unarmed men, Irish liberals side with the establishment, in untypical silence. This “must have deserved it” mentality is a mirror image of the prejudice which allows innocent black men to be killed in their droves in America. In Ireland, those who shout loudest for equality for races, genders and sexualities are hypocritically squeamish about…class. Frankie Gaffney

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    Labour starts to rebuild

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    Is the Irish Labour party finished, is a question that’s been asked for nearly as long as the party has existed. In the last year or so however, or more accurately since a couple of years into the Fine Gael-led coalition, the party’s tail-spinning poll numbers have started to feel symptomatic of a terminal decline. The old question has a new urgency. The regular Irish Times’ poll with Ipsos/MRBI hasn’t placed Labour over 10% since February 2013. The same poll has yet to rise above the benchmark set in February last year, when the party’s support bottomed out at 6.6% in the general election. On some level, the party recognises that the negative association with the last government isn’t going away in a hurry. Asked whether Labour’s problems might stem from increased competition on the left, Councillor Martina Genockey, recently selected as the party’s candidate in Dublin South-West, is quick to retort that no, “our biggest problem is that we were in government for five years”. Abatement of hostility? “People are still seeing things through that lens”, she says. A year on from the nadir of Labour’s worst general election result, policy proposals are still met on the doorstep with shouts of “you didn’t do this when you were in government, you didn’t do that”. That isn’t to say that canvassing is as rough as it once was. The increased amiability on doorsteps is a recurring line in conversations with the new array of candidates. “I wouldn’t say there’s a swing to Labour”, says Andrew Montague, selected to run in Dublin North-West, “but the anger against Labour has dissipated”. Ged Nash, elected to the Seanad and selected in April to run for his old Dáil seat in Louth, says that “there’s been an abatement of the hostility experienced on the doors”. That the polls have, if anything, gone in the wrong direction since the election, misses the point, says Kevin Humphreys, also a Senator. “Don’t necessarily expect movement in the polls”. Labour, he says, are focussing on 15-20 winnable constituencies, such that national opinion polls may not reflect the party’s strength. How credible is this? According to a spokesperson for the parliamentary party, plans are well underway for the next election, whenever it comes. The plan is to contest a minimum of 30 out of 39 constituencies. All selection conventions are intended to be completed by Christmas, with conventions already on the cards to select Brendan Howlin, Alan Kelly, Seán Sherlock, Brendan Ryan and in Meath West, newcomer Tracy McElhenny. A draft manifesto has been prepared, a fundraising drive is underway, while a membership recruitment drive is ongoing, said the spokesperson. The stated aim of party leader Howlin has been to double the party’s Dáil representation at the next election. Achieving that, bringing Labour to around 14 seats, would see it back around its historical average. That’s when the real rebuild could begin, you might think. Labour’s problem lies partially in its vote distribution, says Adrian Kavanagh, a lecturer in political geography at Maynooth University. Until not that long ago, Labour’s real base was in rural Leinster and Munster, and not necessarily in Dublin. That changed after the amalgamation with Democratic Left in 1999. “The change in the last number of years is in the loss of traditional working-class areas”, says Kavanagh. The party’s result last year saw it shrink back to a core of largely personal votes in rural Leinster and Munster – with the likes of Howlin in Wexford, Willie Penrose in Longford- Westmeath, and Alan Kelly in Tipperary clinging on. This leaves the party in a precarious position as regards vote share. Its vote is more thinly spread than that of Solidarity-People Before Profit, who won only one less seat on a lower vote total. If Labour falls a few percentage points below the 6.6% from last year, “they’ll struggle to win any seats” says Kavanagh – his analysis of the most recent Sunday Business Post poll has Labour winning only one, with Brendan Howlin in Wexford perhaps the sole survivor. Such is the geographical distribution of Labour’s vote, this could come about even as Solidarity- People Before Profit leapfrog them to 7 seats, still on a lower vote share. On the other hand, if Labour go up a few percentage points, “then it’d be possible to get back up to the mid-teens in terms of seats, which is quite a respectable result”. Separate, and socialist? Fairly or not, the primary accusation that’s been levelled at Labour in the years since it entered government has been that it turned away from its working-class base, with the consequences being felt at the ballot box. Joan Burton, the then-leader, lost more than 3,000 votes at the 2016 election. Party figures are reluctant to give credence to this viewpoint – Labour stepped up in the national interest, they still say. According to Nash, Labour’s “unique selling point is that we’re prepared to put our money where our mouth is”, minus a harmful obsession with being “philosophically pure”. Humphreys rejects the idea that Labour’s social democratic roots were abandoned, and emphasises the traditional idea that the party has a record of delivery. “Protest, not People: is all those on the hard left are good for”. Labour are in many ways dealing with an old problem, says DCU academic Eoin O’Malley. “They’re not radical enough for lots of people, while at the same time, they’re a bit too radical for a lot of people in centrist Ireland”. Furthermore, says O’Malley, “as pragmatic as the Labour Party is, it damaged them as a brand to go into government”. Better in 2011, would have been to lean on Fianna Fáil to prop up a Fine Gael government, sailing into 2016 as the uncontested leader of the opposition for the first time in its history. Counter-factuals are fine but what should the party be doing? The party has taken the implications of its diminished representation seriously – rewriting the party constitution, re-energising ordinary supporters and, says

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