Juicy Scandals Help Irish Weather a Fierce Winter

By Bill O’Donnell
Three Penny Opera, Irish Style -- For some in Ireland the New England type of fierce winter weather in recent weeks has been the topic of fireside conversation from Sligo to Kildare. Yet nothing beats a good old-fashioned scandal and the Green Isle currently has three beauts that have dominated --overwhelmed would be more accurate – the national news cycle.
The Robinsons-- In the North there is the ongoing saga of the Robinsons, Iris Robinson, member of the British Parliament, the Northern Ireland Assembly, thrice mayor of Castlereigh, and married to Peter Robinson, the First Minister of the devolved Stormont government and leader of the retired Ian Paisley’s powerful Democratic Unionist Party. Peter was minding his business, ruling in tandem with Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness, while stonewalling Sinn Fein on the transfer of policing and justice from London to Stormont, when Iris, 60, reportedly attempted suicide in the aftermath of her soon-to-be-disclosed affair with a 19-year-old boy toy and erstwhile restaurateur, Kirk McCambley.
Unfortunately for the troubled Robinsons (Peter is sticking with Iris), there is some difficulty beyond the affair and, as so often is the case, it involves money. Mrs. Robinson was charged in a BBC-TV Spotlight program with obtaining over $80,000 from two developers to pass on to her paramour, young Kirk, to open a Laganside Restaurant in Belfast. There is the added question of Mrs. Robinson’s vote in the local council in favor of the McCambley enterprise without disclosing her interest, and a mysterious $8,000 in cash of the developers’ money that allegedly went to Iris.
Iris has resigned from both the parliament and her Assembly seat and has not been seen in public for several weeks. Peter’s problem, aside from his wife’s affair, is that he is cited in the BBC program as being aware of Iris’s financial improprieties but failing to report them. He said he was “appalled” at the “insinuations” and had done nothing wrong, and then he suspended himself as First Minister for six weeks. The leading unionist paper, the Belfast Telegram, had him on the short end of its poll with 77 percent saying Robinson should stand down.
The First Minister on Leave was seen in late January leading the DUP into a meeting with Sinn Fein that again came up empty on the question of transferring policing and justice to the North.
The Adams Family- The past months for Gerry Adams have not been a rerun of Happy Days. They have included defections by once loyal Sinn Fein local office holders, the violent activism of a breakaway or dissident republican element seeking unity now/Brits out and willing to kill for it, and a rebuff in the last election as Sinn Fein attempted without success to expand its franchise southward.
But that was politics and Gerry can usually handle that. However, recent revelations about charges of years of sexual abuse within the Adams family itself —about the late Gerry Adams, Senior, and Gerry’s brother Liam, and what Adams knew and when he knew it – have dramatically changed the political and personal landscape of Gerry Adams’s world. Liam, as this is written, is a wanted man in Northern Ireland, charged with abuse of his daughter Aine when she was a child. Liam remains in the Republic where no extradition order has force of law, although a European warrant is being sought by the PSNI. Brother Gerry has called on Liam to turn himself in to police in the North. It has also been recently revealed by Gerry himself that his father had “emotionally, physically, and sexually abused members of the Adams family” over many years. A messy, god-awful business to say the least.
While Gerry Adams has never been a suspect in any of the abuse allegations, there has been some questions about what Adams knew and when he knew it relating to Liam’s activities and membership in Sinn Fein. Several newspapers, largely British publications like the Daily Mail as well as the Dublin-based Sunday Tribune, have leveled charges against the Sinn Fein Party president of covering up for his brother. The Mail, in a Christmas Eve column by Andrew Malone and Vanessa Allen, wrote, “The truth is that Gerry Adams has spent the past two decades protecting his brother by covering up for his unspeakable crimes...” The Sinn Fein Party and the public have yet to render a verdict on Gerry and for now he continues as Sinn Fein president and (abstaining) member of the British Parliament from West Belfast. It’s a bad time for him, but absent conclusive evidence that he has done anything wrong, it seems a good moment to keep one’s peace.
Murphy Report On Clerical Abuse- The third investigational report on clerical abuse of children targeted a number of priests in the Dublin archdiocese with particular focus on Irish bishops who aided the cover-up of abuse and helped shield offending priests from removal or prosecution. This most recent report has prompted four bishops to resign. During the tumultuous days eight years ago in Boston, no one resigned, in sharp contrast to the Irish situation. The Vatican is gravely concerned about the newest abuse findings and Pope Benedict XVI has summoned some two dozen Irish bishops to Rome for two days of meetings next month at which the Vatican will surely involve the bishops’ views on what the pope’s pastoral letter to Ireland’s Catholics should say. Let’s hope it turns out to be a harsh nostrum for the proven Irish clerical abusers.
Ireland Stands Tall In Haiti – Ireland has once again answered the call for help, this time from a ravaged Haiti. Irish aid agencies like Goal and Concern have been shipping lifesaving supplies and personnel into that island of nine million. The Irish government and other EU countries have donated some $350 million and quickly airlifted over 85 tons of food, medicine, and other essential aid. Irish Doctors and nurses have been volunteering to aid the sick and wounded while others have been deployed in a recovery mission unearthing bodies in the rubble that was once Port-au-Prince. One Galway senior on his own collected donations of $8,500 for the stricken country. This has been repeated elsewhere in Ireland ,North & South. Around the island of Ireland many individuals and NGOs have been working around the clock to help Haiti and additional flights have been leaving from Dublin for the Dominican Republic’s La Romana Airport to avoid aftershocks and congestion at the Haitian capital’s airport. Aer Lingus has donated aircraft and paid flight crews to ferry tons of medical and food supplies to the beleaguered island nation while Dublin Airport fees have been waived to facilitate the mercy airlifts.
Republican Prisoners Waterboarded By British Army – In a news article during Christmas week that was nearly overlooked during the holiday rush, The Guardian newspaper in Britain reported (and the Irish Independent picked it up) that British Army officers subjected nationalist prisoners in the North to “waterboarding” interrogation techniques during the earlier days of the Troubles in the 1970s.Prisoners have said that the technique, considered torture by the United States and Human Rights courts, was used both as punishment and in extracting confessions from suspects. A former Royal Marines officers told the Guardian that he and his fellow officers and their men were all waterboarded during intensive escape and evasion training in Devon, England, in the late 60s and 70s. The British Ministry of Defence was unable to confirm if waterboarding was used during training of British military personnel, and a spokesman declined to answers further questions “for reasons of operational security.”
Used Crystal Ball For Sale – I had a boatload of company in brushing off the Scott Brown candidacy and ceding him zero chance to win, but it doesn’t make re-reading my November predictions in this space on how the Martha Coakley-Brown race would go any more palatable. My comments back then on Senator-Elect Brown’s chances:
“Republican state senator Scott Brown is this year’s sacrificial lamb and his party won’t forget it. His sole resonance is to provide a statistical base line of the Republican vote in the January final election for those who care about such numbers.” A tad off, I’d say. A minor saving grace: I did, at least, correctly predict that unknown and under-financed Alan Khazei would end up third in the Democratic primary ahead of multi-millionaire Celtics owner Steve Pagliuca.
Ireland Checks In On History & Tradition -- Since I first visited Ireland over 40 years ago I have been fascinated by its history and tradition —the cultural icons — of the country. There is an endless supply of locations, artifacts, buildings, and memorabilia associated with historic events or the men and women who played a role in Ireland’s unique history. The array of places and things to see and touch and experience invariably reminds me of the events and personalities of decades past and centuries ago.
I cherish the memory of climbing the stairs of Nora Barnacle’s tiny childhood home on Bowling Green in Galway, or the Brazen Head pub in Dublin, Paddy Kavanagh’s family home in Iniskeen,Co. Monaghan, the Giant Causeway, Muckross House in Killarney, the newer Writers Museum in Dublin near the Rotunda Hospital, Kilmainham Jail, Glasnevin Cemetery, the memory lane of stone and stile, Lough Erne, the Forty Steps and the tower Museum from Joyce’s Ulysses, St. Stephens Green, Belfast’s Botanic Gardens, Innismore anchoring the Arans, the Maam Cross in Connemara, Glen Colmcille in Donegal, Cobh, where dreams began amidst the tears,Wexford and Dunganstown and the Kennedy rootings, majestic Rock of Cashel, the Derry walls, Collins Barracks, Dublin, Antrim’s Coast Road from Carrickfergus to Cushendall and Ballycastle, Arbor Hill, Merrion Square and the doors, Bridgit’s Grave and Monastiboyce and John Boyle O’Reilly’s home in Meath and Renvyle on the Atlantic and Yeats’s Thoor Ballylee, near Gort and Bantry and Ballyheigue Bays, and the Gate Theatre, the eternal Liffey, and on and on.
The above is a brief and incomplete scattering of places that help bring Ireland’s history and its players alive and I am delighted to learn that 21st-century Ireland – Dublin, Galway, Cork, Belfast, which have become too Europeanized, too cosmopolitan, too much alike– is giving way to a more traditional Ireland, North & South. The country will, the Irish Tourist Board in its latest incarnation avers, be more traditional and step away perhaps from briskly modern Ireland. There will be more emphasis on history, culture, and some things you can actually touch, and walk through and find a sense of yesterday. Departing tourists say that they can get “modern and glitzy” anywhere in Europe or at home but they come, increasingly, to Ireland to step back in time and to enjoy the ties with the past in surroundings that are not all atriums and glass towers.
Some veteran cynics may say that it’s merely another spin in the tourist marketing cycle, but I would like to believe that it represents a recognition of the riches of Ireland -- the writers, the personalities, the towers, the touchstones of the past, and the links with a heritage that no other land or location can replicate. I think they’re onto something. Now if we can only get the cost of a pint and the hotels down a bit, why therein lies Paradise.
Is Ireland Imitating the U.S.? – It seems that Ireland is about to pull the plug on rural bus service, initially cutting many less-traveled rural routes in answer to a 10 percent decline in passenger numbers. A spokesman for Bus Eireann wouldn’t say how many of the 330 service routes around the country will be eliminated but the routes impacted would focus on the frequency and efficiency of the route. Of course.
Some readers out there may recall that America’s Greyhound Bus Lines had a lot of trouble in the ‘80s and ‘90s and later with a series of ownership changes and strikes. One of the major charges against the bus company back then was that it tried to keep the cream, dump the low passenger routes, especially in rural areas. All bottom-line oriented. One must ask if Ireland’s national bus company is trying to implement the “Greyhounding” of Ireland. There have been parallel moves afoot to close a number of rural post offices, which will disproportionately punish small Irish towns where the local post office is the focal point of the community, and it’s right to ask if Bus Eireann is traveling a similar route. Bypasses for those in a hurry? Yes. Shutting down small towns and hamlets? No!
More Mush From The Wimp – I am stealing a story-line description that mistakenly morphed into an editorial headline in the Globe some years back with the subject being Jimmy Carter. But reading the latest pap from retired CNN news hour host and immigration fear-monger Lou Dobbs, it seems aptly fitting. Lou, who (hint, hint) thinks he would make a great president, seems to have seen the political light and is now soft-pedaling his tiresome “the Latinos are coming” routine to burnish his image for a possible political entry. Herewith Lou Dobbs and the new PR pitch:
“Lou has always been supportive of legal immigration so long as the federal government is enacting public policy that includes programs to assimilate immigrants into American society. Lou is working hard on solutions that will help illegal immigrants in the country meet necessary conditions for a path to legalization... Expect him to reach into the Hispanic community...to find answers and solutions to not only illegal immigration but also larger economic and public policy issues...”
Lou, we hardly knew ye, but what we’ve seen is enough.
Raytheon Finally Throws In The Towel – The Waltham-based missile maker and major player in the defense industry has decided after several years of contentious and noisy local opposition to close down its small operation in Derry. The plant, which officials at Raytheon say did not deal in missiles or weapons, just software development, never approached the 300 employees that it originally said would be employed there. Activist and newspaper columnist Eamonn McCann of the Derry Anti War Coalition, who was involved in several confrontations, said that he was “proud of the part which we played” in closing “the weapon company.” Some in Derry were not enthusiastic about Raytheon leaving and the loss of jobs, warning “that if we go down this route we are opening up a Pandora’s box.” Company officials contended that the closing was unrelated to the demonstrations and was purely a business move.
Warnings on Dissident Republican Violence – Back in November, Norman Baxter, a veteran police officer who led the investigation into the 1998 Omagh bombing testified before a British parliamentary committee looking into intelligence surrounding the 1998 atrocity. Baxter told the committee that another Omagh bomb could happen because a blind eye is being turned to dissident (breakaway) republicans. Baxter called the security policy at the time a failure
Flash ahead to the New Year and updated intelligence report that senior security officials say shows that they are tracking more “threat to life” terrorists plots from dissident republicans in Northern Ireland than from Islamic extremists in mainland Britain. They say there are currently more serious plots being prepared in the North than since before the Good Friday agreement of 1998.
So far, security officials note that most of the violence from the IRA splinter groups has been confined to Northern Ireland, but they warn that some dissidents have ambitions to mount an attack on the British mainland. One PSNI officer was killed last year, along with two British soldiers and there have been at least a dozen attempts to kill PSNI members. Military personnel in the North have received new security warnings and have been ordered not to travel outside in uniform, and scores of pubs, night clubs, and taxi companies have been designated “out of bounds” for the military.
TAKE HEART – Spring training reporting date in Fort Myers for pitchers and catchers is Feb. 19. Position players report Feb.23.