April/May VILLAGE
Grumpy old men. And Frank Connolly.
Villager went to the launch of ‘Tom Gilmartin’,
by Frank Connolly, not to ‘A Life Worth Living’
by Michael Smurfit the same night, partly
because – unlike Michael Lowry – he wasn’t
invited. Though Smurfit unusually actually
gave his paean-to-self away to invitees it was
not much value as it had been covered jack-
et-crease to jacket-crease by the newspapers
already from a position just north of the paper
man’s duodenum. Meanwhile across the city,
Thomas Gilmartin – Luton-reared son of Tom,
the set-upon developer who gave evidence at the
Mahon Tribunal that he gave Pee Flynn a cheque
for £, for Fianna Fáil but which the party
never received – was revealing the trauma that
giving evidence had visited on the family, and
overall regretted his advice to his father to settle
the record. Surprisingly few mainstream media
worthies pitched up, but Eamon Dunphy, Tim
Pat Coogan, Vincent Browne and Damien Kiberd
gave compensatory ballast, in a manly, been-
around sort of way. Connolly revealed that his
feisty octogenarian mother Madeleine had that
week, after years of pointed wondering, stopped
asking him when his book was out.
Incompetent law reporting
Village had a satisfactory outing in the Circuit
Court, settling its action with Green Party
Councillor Mark Dearey without conceding that
the false statement – that Dearey had voted for a
particular zoning – was defamatory, or paying
any of the Councillor’s legal costs. Ray Managh
again misreported the matter for the Examiner
and Irish Times, failing to note that the only
controversy in the action was whether the state-
ment was defamatory.
Managh’s report on the matter in October
contained seven errors, including implying that
the statement was defamatory. The latest report
implied Village was apologising for defamation.
The Irish Times has corrected three of the first
report’s errors, but it is all the object of a Press
Ombudsman complaint. As, apparently, will be
Managh’s latest round of weird ineptitude.
The Councillor and Village’s editor vouched
for each other’s good faith in court, shook hands
and went home for a quiet cry.
She really Kers
Village was ‘in receipt of legal correspondence’
from PAC-bound Rehab resignee, Angela Kerins,
some years ago over a