Goodbye Mr Chips

 For many of us, we can’t see the back of 2020 fast enough. For many it has been a year of illness, personal loss and worry. Through in the economic and political instability, is it any wonder that already Christmas trees are going up a month early. We all want something positive to make us feel better. What’s not to like about an early Christmas?

What’s more, surely 2021 can be better? Well the omens are good if our luck holds out. Firstly, the dreaded second wave of Covid 19 has not brought the level of destruction that many feared. Level 5 is as deep as it gets. We’re approaching the back half of lockdown and the economy is functioning to an extent. Deaths and hospitalisation are a fraction of what was the norm at Easter, but we’re only as good as our last day. There are reasons to be optimistic if we hold our heads.

Covid 19 also was the final straw in the US to send Donald Trump back to the golf course ushering in a new era. However, Biden did not perform as well as expected, he scraped home. It wasn’t the predicted landslide. But there wasn’t civil unrest either. Without Covid, Trump may well have clung on to office for another term. 

But beyond the tense excitment of a Biden victory, his party did not fare as well in the senate or congress elections. Far right politics is still a potent force driving populism  among independent candidates at home and abroad. Biden will have to compromise if he is to make progress. That may not be a bad thing as it can offer to Republicans other than Trump a platform to deliver and outflank the political tumour that is the Donald.

A number of weeks ago, Taoiseach Michéal Martin accepted an invite to the White House for St Patricks Day. You can put your money on the event being a celebration like no other. Biden is rightly proud of his Irish roots. He quotes Séamus Heaney’s poems. We Irish are lucky to have such regard in the US. We can thank the late John Hume for that. He had the vision to build on relations with the EU and USA during bleak times in the 1980’s. Hume’s vision has paid a dividend to the island he loved so well.

 An invite for a state visit to Biden cannot be too far away. When he arrives you can bet your bottom dollar that he will be brought to his ancestral home at Carlingford in Co Louth. There will be no more potent symbol than Biden gazing across its deep lough at Co Down a mile away. During the troubles the Royal Navy had a gunboat on permanent patrol around the lough which the UK claims right up to the high water mark on the southern shore to this day. In another life I spent 2 years working for a cross border body in the area.

While Trump encouraged Johnson’s Brexit delusions, the prospect of President Biden must be striking fear into the hearts of Brexiteers.  Weeks away from concluding a torturous trade deal with the EU, Farage and his mates must be rueing the squandered opportunities to cut a deal in the last 4 years. There is a spring in the EU step that the final deal with Britain will see little economic damage to Ireland and our borders are secured.

Covid 19 saw a lot of money being spent in houses but also savings increase. If 2021 is the turning of the corner we may well see an improvement in the economy as confidence encourages people to spend more.  There are strong grounds for optimism, in the economy, within families, the wider society and for our own personal health. all we have to do is hope.

As Noddy Holder says; “look to the future, it’s only just begun”.

That bit of halibut was good enough for Jehovah!

You’d almost forget it was happening. However running alongside our presidential election we have a referendum on the subject of blasphemy. Why in the name of God with Brexit on the horizon are we talking about blasphemy?

It goes back to 1937. When the constitution was enacted a provision was made to ban blasphemy. Blasphemy is the deliberate act of causing outrage by insulting God. In Saudi Arabia it is punishable by death, as are most other offences in Saudi Arabia. For over 70 years the provision was not backed up by legislation until Dermot Ahern as Minister for Justice thought with the economy about to tank, banning blasphemy legally for the first time in Ireland was the way to go. Ireland had the dubious record of being cited by some countries with shocking human rights records in their defence of their laws on blasphemy as a result. 

Before I go any further let me say I’ll vote to remove the reference to blasphemy from the constitution.  I say that as a churchgoer that any faith which feels it needs the legal protection of the state to its view of its God is built on quicksand. After 2,000 years of Christianity and 1500 years of Islam, why is there the need to protect a view of God or to enforce that true civil law? If a comedian or a writer can cause enough outrage that thousands of years of faith are undermined, then sooner or later that faith will wither anyway.  And I don’t believe any faith is about to disappear.  The original blasphemer was executed on Good Friday 2,000 years ago because of the outrage he caused to the High Priests and Pharisees at the time.

To be fair, the Christian churches were well and truly shattered by the time,years of parody by Monty Python and the Life of Brian.  What religious fundamentalists could have gone with blasphemy if the section in the constitutional provision is retained , well your guess is as good as mine. Blasphemy legislation is a deliberate come on for anyone seeking notoriety. Should the state by its laws facilitate someone bent on seeking publicity? I don’t think so.

but not because of  Dermot Ahearn arrived on the scene with this legislation. When a law is implemented, it’d be nice to know where it leads. Religious fundamentalism cannot be legislated for either.

I doubt if Dev ever considered that in the 21^st century his constitution might have provided the grounds for fundamentalists to seek protection in Irish law for someone who questions Islam on facebook which operates out of Ireland, perhaps in Arabic? Because that is what our current law can allow. Dev might likely have raised an eyebrow if he could visualise as happened in Indonesia that a muslim running for election who called on people of other faiths to vote for him was prosecuted under blasphemy law for that speech.

Blasphemy is a Pandora’s box. I do not want to see faiths from Kinnegad to Trinidad turn our judicial system into a debating chamber where competing arguments try to out outrage one another. Once it is opened who knows where it may lead. Best to use the ballot box to keep Pandora’s box shut

Things are getting curious and curiouser.

Lewis Carroll would be proud of Dr Leo Varadkar.  The best way to understand this country is to use a looking glass.  When this week Brendan Howlin stepped into the debate about when the new president would be inaugurated, I thought it strange.  We have a presidential commission, we can inaugurate a president on the day or as close as possible to November 11^th. That could have allowed our president to attend centenary events to mark the end of WW1 as acting President and come home to be inaugurated on November 12^th.

But November 12^th was already in the diary for Donald Trump. So we’ll get the president inaugurated in the wee small hours of November 11^th rushed off to Flanders Fields and home to tug at the forelock of one of the world’s great misogynists, bigots and liars.

Exactly a week ago, social media was wall to wall with FG supporters clapping Dr Varadkar on the back as to how well he’d done by putting the pope in his box over historic child abuse cases in Ireland. The Donald well be a much bigger fish to fry.

The real measure of Leo’s thoroughly modern Ireland will be if he has the political guts to tell Trump as he once promised what’s what in an international context. But nobody is holding their breathe on this one.

Because at the back of it we all know that Dr Varadkar is the luckiest of our Taoisigh ever. He has the EU negotiating for him, he has a divided opposition and thinks he is popular. How anyone could get to be Taoiseach without serving in an economic ministry is unusual. Sure what could possibly go wrong?

His problem might be that when luck runs out as it eventually must, it runs out like a light and is gone before you know it. There will be demonstrations and it will negatively impact on Varadkar’s popularity. And all the blarney and ballyhoo won’t hide it this time.

It never does, not even in wonderland.

Yesford!

In the beginning there was the 8^th and the 8^th became law and dwelt amongst us. In the end it was dispatched in Wexford by almost 50,000 voters.  It’s a turning point for Ireland. I got the feeling at the start of this week that as the week progressed the more the gap between yes and no widened. Last night I predicted to some on our Together for Yes campaign that the gap will be significantly wider than we might dare think.

In the end it was over 23,000 votes. The count started at 9AM in St Joseph’s Community Centre in Wexford. When the council officials advised that they would open 25 ballot boxes each time it was clear to both Yes and No camps that we didn’t have enough to tally.

Former Senator Jim Walsh approached me and proposed to jointly tally. We shook hands and agreed to share figures. I’ll say one thing about Jim Walsh, personally he’s as decent as the day is long. I’d agree with him on some issues and on social issues we’d diverge. He told me he is bitterly disappointed with the result. I told him I know how it feels to lose in an election.  I also pointed out that

into the future that another Dáil decided to change the law to be more restrictive, that is the right of that generation.

And so it was to the tally, By and large it was a small group although one person from the No side told me I was a hypocrite for going to church as I was an abortionist. My colleague Cllr George Lawlor was rounded on for singing at church ceremonies while the luckless Minister Paul Kehoe was rounded on by a prominent No campaigner as he left the count with his young daughter and was verbally abused for legislating for murder.

By lunchtime it was all over. 190 boxes opened and tallied. A small crowd awaited the declaration and the result was Repeal 49,935 and to retain 23,069.

So where do we go from here? On reflection it is the end of a liberalising journey for Ireland since the 1990’s when homosexuality was decriminalised, divorce introduced and contraception regularised among other issues.   But the Iona Institute won’t be going away. They will be lobbying for the laws to be softened and no group will do that more expertly than Iona. Indeed lobbying a small group such as Oireachtas members might be more efficient and effective for Iona and its supporters than the wider public in a social media age.

The signs were there that no wasn’t doing well. Yesterday all the trending on twitter was hashtags that supported repeal. How could the No campaign that had targeted social media to spend its money have let that happen? The row between different no groups as to who’d represent them in a tv debate and the ban by google on advertising all undermined the credibility of the No side. However it was the behaviour of some of their canvassers on doorsteps and tearing down Yes posters which upset people who were genuinely in the middle.

If this means that despite all the spending on social media and voter manipulation voters are rejecting the politics of spin and negativity we may have many reasons into the future to thank the electorate for their decision today.

There’s a lot of people who worked hard on the campaign. I’ll mention a few, Shane McAnally, and Doris Murphy who energised us all. Aislinn Wallace played a blinder. I know when you start to name drop that in a diverse campaign like this one, you don’t mention someone and you leave someone out. There would have been no campaign without them. In Wexford a lot of independent minded people turned out to canvas, many for the first time. Labour, Sinn Fein and People Before Profit all fought the good fight with one FG member and that was that.

50,000 reasons to be glad that we live in a democracy. That is the alpha and omega of politics.

Repeal with zeal!

So with less than a week left to polling day in the repeal referendum, where stands Wexford? I’ll out myself at the start as a committed Yes voter.  While that’ll give a complexion to where I’m coming from, I’d like to think it only colours my thinking but not what I’ll write.

The last week has really seen the campaign emerge into the media on a daily basis. About 2 weeks ago I feared that it might become conflated with the cervical cancer scandal and that it might become the catalyst around which the electorate might turn on an incompetent Department of Health and the track record of previous ministers there.  From canvassing in Wexford it’s clear that people are distinguishing between the two, the issue of cervical cancer hasn’t emerged on the doorstep.

Last week’s decision by Facebook and Google in relation to advertising hasn’t impacted either on the thinking of the electorate. Am I the only one who ignores ads on Youtube and skips to the programme? Possibly not!

What has struck a cord especially with young first time voters is that they may well come out in large numbers to vote. My own experience is that many young voters want to vote Yes and men, especially of my own age, need to have the matter explained and might be reluctant to vote on the day. Women have made their minds up long ago on the matter and I don’t think I’ve met any woman who is a don’t know.

Beyond that there is a curious geography about the canvas. People who live in houses that were built in the last 20 years tend to be Yes. The No message would be stronger in areas of Wexford that were built in the 1960’s. And surprisingly older established areas in Wexford built in the 50’s or earlier seem to be strongly Yes.  Irish of Eastern European origin may well oppose repeal in large numbers.

It’s clear that the urban area of Wexford will vote Yes. Rural areas may not be so clear cut. The No campaign only seems visible on Saturday afternoon in the Bull Ring. Aside from that, little has been seen of it so far around the town.

Has it been respectful? Canvassers on the Yes side are keen to talk to someone if they don’t know. If the person on the doorstep has made up their mind either way, then there’s no point in going further. They may tell you if they are a Yes. If they’ve made  their minds up it’s a case of move on to another doorstep to search out the elusive undecided voter.

Personally I’d say that the level of abuse is on a par with what I got in 1983 when I knocked doors in my own home area.  One notable incident in the last week happened while dropping my Labour leaflets in Castlebridge. A man with a strong Munster accent confronted me on the path in the estate and called me a murderer as he handed back my leaflet. The Labour party, according to him, was finished at the next election and he wouldn’t vote for me. I replied that I don’t want his vote as I won’t represent him and that he won’t call me that on a public street.

I haven’t been canvassed by the no side but the other night I met a woman with a Save the 8^th badge who asked me why I supported repeal. We engaged and she seemed more genuinely curious as to why I think the way so I explained to her my opposition since 1983. We said our pieces mutually with interest and both sides listened. And that was that, wished her well and we both moved off.

At the back of it all I can understand the Save the 8^th and Love Both position. It is clear, whether you like it or not. They are straight up with where they are coming from.  What I have a problem with is the increasing political view that you can say nothing and ignore the electorate as they consider a really important issue  That suggests lack of interest and courage.

There’s still a few days to go.  Attention deserves to shift to our 3 TD’s who’ve yet to make up their minds as to how they’ll vote. Ministers Michael D’arcy, Paul Kehoe and James Browne have yet to reveal how they intend to vote, presumably for fear of having to show leadership on the issue and to explain what they think to their supporters and voters. Cabinet ministers have access to significantly more information and position papers when legislation is being drafted and discussed in cabinet. The cabinet agreed to the legislation and the referendum. And yet there is a stony silence from the Government deputies. If the referendum is lost in Wexford, someone will have to take responsibility.

It is the least the electorate deserve.

All over the place when it comes to a Trump visit

Let’s start with a quote from 2017 after Donald Trump was inaugurated as president of the USA. Who said “I will have no truck with that. I have a track record on all of those matters and we will stand firmly by that, that’s our position.” Well the answer is the same person who today said the following when Dr Varadkar repeated an invite to the Donald to visit Ireland; “On the issue of the President of the United States coming to Ireland that in the first instance is a call for the Taoiseach and for the diplomatic services but again where America can bring something positive to bear and make a positive contribution to our process I think we should always be open to that,”

Give up? Wait for it, the answer is Mary Lou McDonald! Seems the Donald is now the man to shoe horn Mary Lou back into power in Stormont. So the end justifies the means when it comes to Sinn Fein. This will come at a cost. You can’t criticise a world leader in one breadth and in another tug his forelock to solve a local difficulty in Stormont.

SF have made strongly the point that they can’t agree a power sharing executive with the DUP as Arlene Foster will not support marriage equality in the north. However Donald Trump’s record on LGBT issues make the DUP sound like raving liberals by comparison, He has banned gays from serving in the US military, fails to accept LGBT month while 9 months ago 6 members of his own advisory committee on HIV/AIDS walked citing harm that Trumps policy was causing.

Another question, Which minister said to RTE 13 months ago;  ‘I wouldn’t [invite Trump]. I’m not sure what purpose it would serve.” ? Probably the same guy who turned up in Washington today congratulating Trump for adopting Ireland’s tax strategy and waffling on about auld decency of good manners to return an invite to visit one’s home.

That’s an easy one. It’s Dr Varadkar our Taoiseach. Dr Varadkar is a very considered person. He leaves nothing to chance so he can’t hide behind the fools pardon that SF supporters will no doubt excuse Mary Lou McDonald’s new found interest in the Donald.

There is a certain element in SF that are attracted to Trump in the same way as they respect Putin and the hard populism of other nationalists.  But Dr Varadkar hoping on to his coat tails? This will come unstuck, The prospect of a Trump visit will see protests on the street that will make the reception for Ronald Reagan look like a Bord Failte ad.

Two years ago there was a dry run when Michael Noonan greeted Trump in Shannon, it raised eyebrows.  Last year Enda Kenny’s skilful speech that subtly deconstructed Trump’s attitude to immigrants rightly received worldwide praise and went viral.  Who exactly is Dr Varadkar trying to impress with this invite?

Trump’s fellow populist travellers have contempt for Varadkar over Brexit and his support for the EU.  Like with Mary Lou, Varadkar’s invite to his BFF will come at a cost too.

Question is, who will pay for it?

Could sugar beet be on its way back?

There’s many’s a long road without a turn. And so it is that this week the focus came back to sugar beet.  Almost 13 years after the lost crop was harvested, it might well be that we may soon see the crop return and a viable sugar industry re-established.

A meeting last week in Bunclody brought together farmers and the promoters of a project close to Castlefermot to see if there was an interest in the county in growing beet to supply the new plant.  The ending of national sugar quotas in the EU means that if a farmer wishes to grow a crop, then it’s a matter for them. There’s no intervention, no quota and no safety net now for many in agriculture.  Food security, which the EU was originally planned to ensure, is a thing of the past.

If there was a moment when that became clear to me, it was about 3 weeks before I became Mayor in 2010. I was sitting in an office in Brussels with an official from the EU Transport Commission and we were discussing funding for railways. Our local railway in South Wexford had withered because of the collapse of the beet industry.  While we discussed the economics of sugar production, the official, a personable German turned to me and asked me; “Why should the EU support the production of a spice?” I responded by telling him that it was not up to me to continue to make an argument which the beet industry and FF government had stopped making years ago. Instead the EU had a responsibility to shift freight in an environmentally sustainable way.

And what I said then matters even more today.  The world price of sugar is now much lower than it was 13 years ago. Any farmer hoping to grow beet will need to grow large volumes of it to make it worthwhile.  The average size of an Irish farm may not make for too many farmers taking up the offer as would have done so under the greencore regime.

South Wexford has unique soil which lends itself to tillage.  If sugar is to return, South Wexford may well see a renewed interest in beet growing.  One other advantage that South Wexford has is a railway line that took the crop each Autumn to be processed in Mallow. 

The sites at Mallow and Carlow remain the property of Greencore who want to see them develop for housing.  The proposed site at Castledermot is a distance from the rail network. The consumer price for sugar never dropped despite the production cost reductions since 2005. Sugar is enormously profitable as a result. The cheapest own brand of sugar here sells for €1/20 per Kg. In Britain or the north you can bulk buy 5Kg sacks for a little more than £3. That’s some mark up.  We import almost €550M worth of sugar a year. So there’s a good margin to be made for any operator but sugar will have to be sustainably harvested and transported to reduce CO2 emissions. Agriculture and transport are 2 of the worst offenders in Ireland when it comes to greenhouse gases.

Many may recall the frustration of being caught behind tractors pulling trailers of beet, beet falling off the back of trailers and mud and dirt on the road. So that’s why there is a need for the Department of Transport to engage with the operators to ensure that beet from Wexford is taken by rail to Carlow. It’d be useful if planning required either the laying of a spur line to the plant  or at least the building of a processing rail depot in Carlow from where beet can be hauled to the factory.

It’s not sustainable to haul beet by the truck load long distances, especially given the low price that farmers will get.  So just maybe it is a case of down but not beaten when it comes to our railway in South Wexford.  There may be just another twist in store for that line.

Turkeys won't be voting for Christmas

Believe me. If we had politicians who understood what they are doing we wouldn’t be looking down the barrel of a General Election on Christmas Week. We may be. As some may know I’ve skin in the game on both sides. I’m a proud Labour member but I’m also related to the Tánaiste. She’s a decent person who’s made her contribution as the state’s first Minister for Children. She drove the Children’s referendum and has made this state a better place for children to grow up in. I know here and I’ve met her.

To summarise where we are; Sargent Maurice McCabe is a man who is above reproach in my view. Garda legal advice to a tribunal indicated a strategy to undermine him with a trumped up charge while at the same time he was being hailed as a whistle blower who Leo Varadkar called distinguished. The strategy was advised to the Department of Justice and was referred to the Minister with an advice to her that the matter was not for her to determine. This advice was re-inforced by the AG.

But we live in a world where what happens in the media shapes our evaluation of a person.Many will point to how this week’s controversy of the email emerging from the ether after 2 years and will ask, just how does that happen? Some more of us might ask, who sent the email to her and indeed point to the fortuitous stroke of luck that the Department of Justice’s Secretary General announced his retirement a week before the whole controversy re-ignited. 

Aine Lawlor’s dogged determination during a radio interview that over ran the ad break spelt trouble as questions piled up.  The spiralling crisis sees a supposedly united Fine Gael behind her. I suspect that’s not the case. I seriously doubt that there are many  FG TD’s happy to lose their seats over this.

So out of the blue we’re supposed to be heading for an election over a Tánaiste who doesn’t remember something that happened a while back? Doesn’t that ring a bell?

Out of the blue in 1990, Charlie Haughey sacked Tánaiste Brian Lenihan in the face of a threat by the PD’s to walk out of government.  Within 15 months, Haughey was gone from office. Within another 9 months the first FF coalition was hammered at an election as the party was paralysed in office by a tribunal into the beef industry. History may well be repeating itself. 

Whatever the outcome, big stakes are being played for.  It’s like playing pass the parcel with a time bomb. Nobody wants to be seen holding the parcel when the bomb of an election goes off.

That’s why I think this matter should not lead to an election. It will be diffused. There’s more reasons to hang together than to hang separately. Brexit negotiations about the border, Repealing the eight although collapsing that may appeal to some in FF and FG and of course the ongoing housing crisis.

Otherwise the 2 main parties deserve to lose votes and seats in an election. Christmas is all about Santa Claus, but I don’t see FF or FG gifting seats back to where they won them less than 2 years ago.

And at the back of it all is Sargent McCabe and his family.  They deserve the justice of the tribunal and answers as to why he was vicitimised. We the electorate deserve to be able to trust the Garda again. Will an election deliver either by Christmas? No I don’t think so either.

Someone is going to blink. Either FF will pull back or Frances Fitzgerald will resign on mature reflection of  the consequences for the country of an election. But that only buys time, the trust that the government was based on is gone.

But here’s another question. Who’d enter a supply and confidence arrangement with FF after the General Election? Nobody would. That’s  why a FF/SF government is now a step nearer. 

Reeling in the years!

So there I was last week watching “Reeling in the years”. Reflecting on how Ireland used to be. Out of the corner of my eye I could see day glow vests of people fanning out around the doors in my estate. I wondered who they were. It didn’t take long to find out as within a minute the doorbell rang. I opened it to see a man and a woman on my doorstep dressed in day glow vests on a bright summer’s evening. “Good evening”, they said “We’re here from the pro life movement to talk to you about the 8^th Amendment”. The years were well and truly reeled in as I remembered back to 1983.

So my opening line to my visitors was that I believed the people had made a mistake in 1983 and that it was time for the 8^th amendment to be repealed.  When they asked me why I explained that it was the original intention of the 8^th Amendment to interfere with medicine and stop contraceptives like the IUD and test tube techniques for treating infertility. I pointed out that in 1983 Ireland’s population was smaller than it is now however the numbers of women accessing termination in the UK had dropped in real terms by 25% since 1983 pointing out that it was education and not legislation that really worked.

Why I opposed the 1983 amendment back in the day was because that it was not proposed to introduce abortion back then. Rather it was a defensive move because pro life supporters felt that the 1861 Act which outlawed abortion would be found unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.

The net effect of the amendment was to freeze the law and medical practice. It is heartless to oblige a woman who is pregnant with a foetus diagnosed with a fatal fetal abnormality to continue that pregnancy against her own wishes. It is wrong to oblige a women who is seriously ill to continue a pregnancy or as we had a few years ago, a woman kept on life support simply because she was pregnant. Doctors with their patients or next of kin are entitled to take decisions in the interest of the patient. As medical technology advances more of these situations will arise into the future. The 1983 amendment was designed to freeze for ever more what a doctor can or can’t do for his patient. It was also a cynical political stick which Charlie Haughey used to batter Garett Fitzgerald over the head with.  My recollection of the count day was Ray Burke TD sitting god like reading out tallies in a referendum that his party was officially neutral.

I pointed out to the 2 man and woman on the doorstep that I feared the referendum would be nasty and abusive and personalised.  The lady told me that she had a friend who had an abortion after 6 months and that she was affected by it.  I’ve no reason to think that’s not the case. However nobody is proposing a time limit of 6 months in Ireland. We cannot influence what other countries abortion laws are.

One of my visitors looked to the other and eventually told me that people won’t kill their own child but will ask someone else to do it.  He asked me if I had any children, I told him I’ve 5 and none of them would ask someone to kill children either. That part of the exchange speaks volumes about the ignorance that will be hawked from doorstep to doorstep around this town.  We haven’t seen the proposed wording which the constitutional citizen’s assembly asked for yet and already a group is on the march asking that we oppose something that has not been proposed.

If the exchange on my doorstep taught me anything it is that little has changed in the last 35 years on this topic. The same people that opposed divorce, marriage equality, access to contraception and gay rights are now back to the future to where it all started in 1983.

Next year we’re promised a referendum. Let’s wait and see the wording but there’s a strong chance I’ll be knocking doors again. Maybe at the end of the decade the referendum might feature in Reeling in the Years?

Hook, lying and sinker

It’s as if a rotting fish has been dropped on you.  There’s a stink coming from somewhere but you don’t quite know where it is or what to do about it.  It seems that all around the coast Irish fishing ports including Kilmore Quay have trawlers that are crewed by workers who are according to today’s Guardian working as slaves.

They are spirited across the border by exploiting a loophole in British law that allows ships crews enter and pass through the UK for 48 hours without a visa provided their onward destination is international waters.

These workers are from the Philippines, Ghana, India and Egypt. They are not allowed on shore, they are sleeping on craft that are not designed for permanent living, they work long hours for about half the Irish minimum wage, they are deprived of sleep with all the implications that will have for health and safety in the workplace.  Workers passports being held by craft owners and no holiday or overtime payments. This seems to be a significant issue in fishing which skippers and crews that are legitimate have to compete with.

According to the Guardian one skipper in Wexford’s Kilmore Quay, who only employs Irish crew, waved at a West African worker on a neighbouring vessel and told one of our undercover reporters: “You can get one of them for €700 a month. Would you work for that?” Kilmore Quay lands a lot of prawn and whitefish.

Nobody can deny that things for the fishing industry have been tight.  Stocks and quotas are dropping due to more intense fishing effort mean that even with a reduced number of craft in the national fishing fleet, some vessels are still marginally viable.  In the UK the collapse in the fishing industry has been greater than in Ireland. Ports like Hull or Grimsby which were built on the North Sea fishery have seen landing slump.  Irish ports have as many trawlers registered operating trawlers as Lowestoft or Great Yarmouth.  But the notion of a trawler landing in its homeport only is one of the past.  Trawlers will land catch at a convenient port and return to the fishing grounds especially if the fishing is good.

However Irish landings are generally in species in demand on the continent.  The well known brand Donegal Catch uses mostly imported Norwegian whitefish having closed its Roscommon processing facility about 10 years ago.  The cod, whiting, plaice that are so popular on the Irish plate are mostly

imported from other countries already packaged while the prawns caught in Kilmore Quay are frozen for sale to the continental consumer. So landed fish are constantly moving from landed port to market, where ever that market is.  This is not an excuse for what some trawler owners are up to.  It is the environment within which their greed thrives.

In the middle of all this movement, are workers swimming against a tide in a country they know little about.  It’s not the first time exploitation has been revealed in the Irish food industry.  Recently in Donegal a man was charged with trafficking immigrants to work in slave conditions in businesses in the county.  Earlier this year 16 trafficked immigrants were discovered working on a farm in Armagh by the PSNI.

So when the Department of Agriculture says that inspections will take place in ports, there is a small problem in that during the era when Mary Harney ran the Department of Enterprise and Employment, she ran down NERA and its ability to inspect work places and those at work.  With the crew members not recorded on the log there may be little proof if a worker ever was on board a trawler.  Few crewmen are likely to have read the Guardian.  As I write one of the craft at the heart of the investigation is fishing due south of Cork Harbour.  Unless the navy are despatched with inspectors to craft at sea, there may be little chance of apprehending crew before they are dumped by their gang master. 

Fishing is often an industry where there are hidden holds and sharp practice.  Dealing with the abuse given the diminished state apparatus may not be as easy as it seems.  Few are coming up smelling of roses on this one.

IABA leads with the chin

We don’t have too many living freemen of Wexford.  In the past some of those selected as freemen have been paper tigers when it came to their abilities.  In my time on Wexford Borough Council, we only selected one.  I think we picked well.  He’s Billy Walsh.

Billy represented Ireland in an Olympics in Korea.  His intense rivalry with Michael Carruth brought out the best in both men.  When Carruth won gold at the Barcelona Olympics he said that the toughest fight he’d had in the previous year was in the National Championship against Billy Walsh. The winner of that bout automatically became Ireland’s Olympic entrant at middleweight.

When he finished with boxing he built up a business in Wexford delivering milk.  He was our milkman when we moved to our house. While Billy never won gold, his personable and trusting nature built up relationships with boxers down through the years.  This made him a constant feature in the corner at many an international competition.  Walsh heads up the Irish Amateur Boxing Association High Performance Unit.  When Carruth won gold he had his father in his corner.  Walsh has been like a father to many of his team members.  He’s actually the Uncle of one Irish European bronze medallist, Dean Walsh.  You can’t hide in a boxing ring but if you have Billy Walsh in your corner you will go forward with confidence at what is thrown at you.

Billy is extremely loyal to his town.  He loves the county and in particular GAA.  He’s not driven by money but with someone who knows what it takes to achieve he expects his athletes give their best and in return he’ll do his best for them.

That’s the bit that the blazers who run amateur boxing out of the National Stadium on South Circular Road don’t quite get.   Clearly in the background he has been courted by other nations that admire what he has achieved with his boxers.  Boxing has delivered more Olympic medals for Ireland than any other sporting discipline since 1924.

Perhaps it may well be the case that somewhere in the IABA someone has made a calculation that Walsh was threatening to take some of their power and decisions away from the committee men resplendent in their green blazers with crested breast pockets.  So when he was negotiating a contract which was going to be underpinned by the state through the Irish Sports Council, the breaking point was not money (despite the reality that they haven’t provided for the 51 year old’s pension) but the right to take decisions about team membership.

In most other sports managers are entitled to pick their team members and manage them in the interest of the team.  Not so with boxing.  The Blazers don’t pay for Walsh but want to decide who he puts into the ring.  What about meritocracy?  Why shouldn’t the best box in a team and shouldn’t the manager decide who he will work with? If Walsh doesn’t pick the best would not any committee then be entitled to decide if he manages the team at all? That is what happens in every other sport. 

The IABA must have someone quite extraordinary lined up to take Walsh’s job forward to Rio. There is a whole lot riding on this for Irish sport as the Olympics is less than a year away.  If Billy Walsh, Freeman of Wexford can’t knock sense into the IABA, who can?

What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander

If anything has been used as symbol of the slump it is the food bank.  It conveys an image of the great depression, of charities feeding those abandoned by the system.    It is perceived as symbol of failure and implies the 21^st century version of the poor house.  The growing number will without doubt be thrown in political debate as an example of how society has failed to provide often by those on the left to suggest lack of concern that charities are providing for people’s needs. 

Dublin MEP Nessa Childers (who was on 2 occasions of this parish) sees food banks as a product of austerity.  It’s often hard to resist the lure of a good line so let’s park the spin and let’s look at not just why a food bank is a good idea now, but necessary into the future. 

What determines the price of food?  Well it’s the cost of raw material, production its distribution and the profit margin.  If the price is less than the value that the customer expects to pay then sales follow.

But that makes a huge number of assumptions. One is that all the raw material ends up as a product on the shelf.  It presumes there is a consistent market led demand for the product and it also ignores the CO2 emissions and the cost of disposing or rendering of food that is processed but doesn’t sell.  All of that adds to the cost of production. 

During the week I caught up with a former college colleague who is involved with the Bia Food Bank.  He is full of praise for the support from Joan Burton that his venture has got.   He instances one meat producer who gives a ton of pork free every month to Bia Food Bank. They send the food on to charities that use the food to prepare meals on wheels around the country.  The gain for the company is that they do not have to pay for either rendering or incineration of the food or handling of the food once they donate it.  This in turn reduces costs to the meat processors.  The plus for the charities is that volunteers prepare free food that is distributed to elderly, homeless, and those in poverty. 

That is a good use of surplus food. Whereas just 1% of produced food on the supermarket shelf is banked because of the best before date, 15% of food in the production process never reaches any market.

During the slump consumption can be reduced and surpluses less however in a consumption led boom, food surpluses increase.  The cost that a consumer pays for an item includes the cost incurred dealing with the surplus food.  Any company that deals with this food surplus effectively reduces a cost and this impacts on the bottom line. 

However when consumption increases in a boom, so too does the volume of food unused in the production which is often disposed of.  Banking is an ethical way of dealing with produced food.  Is it moral at a time when CO2 emissions from agriculture are increasing that we should allow food to go unconsumed?  Is there not an obligation, especially when it comes to meat, that as much of the slaughtered animal be processed and that less animals should be farmed or slaughtered? Is it not possible by eliminating costs of dealing with surplus production that the cost of food be reduced for all consumers?

It is questions like these that don’t fit into an anti-austerity analysis.  Into the future these questions challenge those of us on the left to come up with an economically and environmentally sustainable   future proofing analysis.

Wexford decides. It's Yes!

The word history is often over used.  However there is something different and special about today’s count on the Marriage Equality Referendum in St Joseph’s Centre Wexford.  It’s an old hall that was built by a local priest as a community hall at about the time of the visit of John F Kennedy to Wexford.

When Kennedy ran for election as US President he was anxious to dispel the notion that as a catholic he couldn’t be president for all the people.  In US politics there is the separation of state from church on all levels.  At the same time in Ireland the Catholic church used its influence when it needed to. 

Kennedy said “believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute--where no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote--where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference”

While this might have proved attractive in the US, for any Irish politician to have repeated the same sentiments this side of the Atlantic at that time would have spelt the end of their career.

Kennedy’s ancestors came from a small village called Dunganstown. As I tallied boxes on the marriage referendum today from townlands within a stones throw of the old homestead, my mind couldn’t help but ask what would JFK think today of his descendants?

It was good to see former pupils from many years ago at the count, it can only be positive for local politics.  Few of the faces tallying were there a year ago at the local elections.  Indeed how ironic it is that Eamon Gilmore, who as Labour leader pinpointed this issue 3 years ago resigned exactly a year ago on this weekend following the reversal of the local elections of which I was one of the casualties.  There is the sense today of Wexford moving on from the last lost decade.

Many of Wexford’s villages and towns have voted strongly Yes.  There are interesting trends with a stronger No vote in the south of the county from Rosslare over to Kilmore Quay where the outcome is more balanced.  Riverchapel which is the stomping ground of Labour’s Robbie Ireton was 80 : 20 Yes. Elsewhere especially in Wexford Town where boxes from Scoil Mhuire tallied at about 60:40 in favour of the Yes while Kennedy Park, named after the late president was 70% Yes.  The official result won’t be available until later today but it’s clear from Wexford that people will separate their moral views on religion from their public tolerance of difference.  That can only be positive.  For those of us that canvased against the 8^th Amendment in 1983, Thank God we’ve lived to see this day!