Poor old Si thought this would be like the same sex marriage campaign where everyone loved him.
Fair play. You came out from under the bed.
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Great to see Si on the backfoot
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MLMD has most to gain from Tuesday’s debate, Harris has most to lose.
Martin needs to basically avoid setting the lectern on fire.
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I’d be amazed if Malcolm Noonan got back in. In Irish elections there is a much bigger personal vote thing at play than in UK elections, but there’s also a clear trend dynamic at play that sweeps away people.
I’m surprised the perceived “top” SF candidate is at 7/4 only to take a seat. SF seem to be holding steady at around 18-20% of the first preference vote nationally. That could increase with a three way debate to come and Simon Harris flailing badly now.
SF national vote in 2020 was 24.5%. In 2016 it was 13.8%.
In 2016, 12.7% of the first preference vote was enough for Kathleen Funchion to get a seat.
Funchion then pulled 17.5k votes in 2020 (quota was 12k odd) which was 23.8% which was again slightly below the national SF average.
Even if that goes down to say, 18% this time, and even with two SF candidates as opposed to one last time, that’s still surely a Sinn Fein seat.
MLMD needs to draw the 2 lads onto her in their most tetchy
Through the letterbox there today. You know they’re gone sheepish when they don’t even knock on the door
It has been a terrible campaign from Harris so far. Insulting teachers, the McGahon thing, denying he signed the contract for the children’s hospital, being an arsehole to that carer.
Hopefully FG are going to get a kicking on Friday. I won’t be voting for her party but Mary Lou comes across as the most genuine and decent of the three main leaders.
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The Micheal Martin landslide is coming. I need to bump a thread
What’s this?
Listowel is one place Conor McGregor can be assured of a warm welcome.
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You dodged a twix up the hole him not actually calling to the house
Olivia O’Leary: There’s an air of autocracy about some of Sinn Féin’s recent pronouncements
Sinn Féin manifesto’s bizarre plans for an investigation into RTÉ’s coverage of the conflict in Gaza are part of a worrying pattern
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‘If Mary Lou McDonald wants people to forget about what the Provisional IRA did, and to stop linking it to present day Sinn Féin, then why does she attend so pointedly the funerals of IRA figures?’ Photograph: Brian Lawless/PA Wire
Olivia O’Leary
Sat Nov 23 2024 - 07:05
Gerry Adams, in his funeral oration in 2019 for former chief of staff of the IRA Kevin McKenna, said: “We will not let the past be written in a way which demonises patriots.” That declaration is chilling, coming from the former head of an organisation that has never said that republican violence was wrong. Equally chilling was the declaration by his successor, Mary Lou McDonald, that it was not rational or fair to raise Provisional IRA actions with party members who were children or not alive when the actions took place. In a recent interview on the Joe Brolly podcast, she said the “Free State establishment” needs to move on from holding her party accountable for the actions of the Provisional IRA during the Troubles.
Last time I checked, the official name of this State was “Ireland”. As for moving on, that is difficult to do when a political party has not apologised for the republican movement’s part in the terrible death toll of the Troubles. Of the 3,720 who died, 1,768 were killed by the IRA. Seven of those were either gardaí or Irish soldiers. These are the figures given by the acclaimed Lost Lives book, edited by David McKittrick, Seamus Kelters, Brian Feeney, Chris Thornton and David McVea. It’s a volume that feels heavier every time I open it.
“I have no issues as the leader of Sinn Féin and as a republican expressing deep sorrow and apology for pain that was suffered, none at all,” McDonald said two years ago. But she never said the IRA’s campaign of violence was wrong. She pointed to an apology issued by the IRA in 2002 on the 30th anniversary of Bloody Friday, July 21st, 1972, when the IRA planted more than 20 bombs around Belfast. Twenty of them exploded, killing nine people and injuring more than 100 others. The IRA apologised for the deaths of non-combatants on this and other occasions and sent condolences to their families. It’s not clear whether these non-combatants included Jean McConville, Columba McVeigh (whose body has still not been recovered) or the gardaí and Irish soldiers who died.
If McDonald wants people to forget about what the Provisional IRA did, and to stop linking it to present-day Sinn Féin, why does she attend so pointedly the funerals of IRA figures? She was at the funeral of Kevin McKenna. With thousands of other republicans, she attended the funeral in 2020 of Bobby Storey during the Covid pandemic when many others were observing caution. Storey was the man thought to be the IRA’s head of intelligence. When Adams was arrested and questioned about the McConville abduction, and before he was released without charge, Storey addressed a protest meeting in west Belfast and echoed a phrase of Adams the year after the IRA ceasefire: “we ain’t gone away, you know.”
Obviously, McDonald thinks it is important by her presence to associate herself and her party publicly with these leading figures of the armed struggle. So why does she think nobody else should make that association? If paying her respects to these figures is the price she has to pay for being leader of Sinn Féin, is it not important we should know that?
The bizarre inclusion in the Sinn Féin manifesto of plans for an investigation into RTE’s coverage of the conflict in Gaza “and other international conflicts” may be simply that: bizarre. I don’t see why an investigation should worry RTÉ. But, if an investigation is needed, shouldn’t that be a matter for Coimisiún na Meán? Republicans will point to the fact that censorship operated for decades in RTÉ, in the shape of Section 31 of the Broadcasting Act which banned specific organisations, including Provisional Sinn Féin, from the airwaves. This persisted until lifted by then-minister Michael D Higgins in the 1990s and my union, the National Union of Journalists, always objected to it.
But collectively, all these developments – the suggestion that Sinn Féin shouldn’t have to answer any questions about the Provisional IRA’s campaign of violence; that republicans will control the historical narrative about the Troubles; that, suddenly out of the blue, RTÉ should be investigated for its foreign coverage; together with Sinn Féin’s readiness to take legal actions that bear the hallmark of strategic lawsuits against public participation (Slapps), against newspapers and individual journalists – all of this has an air of autocracy about it.
We have seen in the United States what happens when statements aren’t challenged, when falsehood is stated as fact, when the sort of media organisations who check out their news are dismissed and even cowed.
If you don’t have a healthy media that is able to ask questions and point out what’s not true, then you can have no shared reality and your democracy is in danger.
Shutting down debate also makes it more difficult to confront the past and learn from it. In a perceptive essay that was one of the prize winners in the Hubert Butler Essay competition this year, Maurice Fitzpatrick picked up on Adams’s statement that republicans would “not let the past be written in a way which demonises patriots”. Fitzpatrick went on to say: “The degree to which this narrative paralyses its adherents from as much as assessing the organisation’s past acts – still less taking responsibility for them – cannot be overstated. The refusal to do so augments the pain inflicted and makes reconciliation much more difficult. Paranoia about the free use of language to describe the Troubles reflects a constraint about confronting the past.” Yet, he said, unless the past was acknowledged and confronted, the possibility of a genuinely shared future is greatly undermined.
I agree.
Olivia O’Leary is a journalist, writer and current affairs presenter
I heard he’s been coming around to the back door and running in and shoving a twix up peoples holes when they bend down to pick up the flyer at the front door.
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Thats a pile of bollox in fairness. Journalists love writing these mealy mouthed columns about their ‘value’ to the nation. Kevin Myers used to do it a fair bit. It works both ways though. They need to get off their holes and investigate shit occasionally rather than cosying up to politicians in the hope of a handy number at some stage.
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OK but you don’t say why.
I think it makes very pertinent points.
Kevin Myers has nothing at all to do with this so I’ve no idea why you mentioned him.
I mentioned him because he’d write a very very similar column, brimming with self importance, regularly. Because many journalists like to consider themselves as some sort of vital service to the nation rather than pissheads who love a bit of gossip. As a lad who regularly throws stories about some lad on your green when you were a kid into your posts i don’t see why you’d have an issue with it.
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But Kevin Myers didn’t write the column. He has nothing to do with this. He has as much to do with this as the 1987/88 Scottish Premier Division season does.
And you still haven’t addressed anything in the column. You’ve made lots of “leaps” though and written lots of angry hot air.
There’s usually a reason why somebody does that. It’s because they can’t argue with what has been written.
I think there is a problem withhow the media reports on israel and gaza. I think it’s dishonest and bias towards Israel. I think SF, who i dont support, are calling that out. She doesnt address that issue at all. She just does a bit of whataboutery. And a bit of ‘aren’t we great’.
It’s a hit job on SF the week of an election invoking the bogeyman vibes. I am more concerned with the deep links ffg have with mainstream media rather than the ‘danger’ of SF.
Feel free to fuck off now.
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Hear hear…