The wheels are moving

It may be the lull before the storm.  Last week Fine Gael confirmed that Julie Hogan will be their candidate in Wexford District.  She is from Saltmills in the Hook but lives and works in Wexford.  Some Fine Gael members are of 2 minds about running a 3^rd candidate. 

Roll back about 6 months and Alan Corcoran on South East Radio interviewed Liam Twomey about the forthcoming election. Twomey sounded every inch a candidate on air.  There was no hint that he was about to change his mind so dramatically.  Since his announcement Dr Twomey has accelerated his wind down.  His office in Anne Street is closed a few months and there is little mention of him in the local media.  Why has it taken so long for Fine Gael to produce a candidate who hopes to take over from him?

It is an impossible job to canvas the substantial Fine Gael vote that elected Twomey 5 years ago in the short time that remains to polling day.  Fine Gael has already experienced problems elsewhere with candidate selection.  To be fair to all involved in Wexford, the question really has to be asked once more within the organisation; what was head office doing?  How does any new candidate go about building up a profile in such a short time?  For Julie Hogan, the only way is up.

Also hoping to target votes south of the Duncannon line are Ger Carthy and Aoife Byrne.  Mayor Carthy has a large rural area all to himself from Rosslare to Duncormick where there is no other resident candidate. Aoife Byrne based in Wexford will get the Fianna Fail vote out in the district.  It may not be of the order that Tony Dempsey harvested in 2002 when he defeated her father, but make no mistake about it, there still is a core FF vote there which will come out on polling day in numbers that may yet surprise some observers.  Aoife has the personal touch which counts with a lot of people.  Her support will grow as you go west towards Hook.

FF HQ may have been a lot shrewder than FG’s when it comes to picking their Wexford candidates.  Malcolm Byrne will have the entire Gorey District for his head to head battle with Michael D’arcy. Aside from the Green candidate who is a Ross native but lives in Gorey, no other candidate lives in the district.  The picture there is clearer to see.

But with candidates like Carthy, Byrne and Hogan they may appeal to New Ross voters which will see Wexford District candidates pull votes out of New Ross.  In 2011, Mick Wallace did the opposite, he pulled votes from other districts into New Ross.  While the name Carthy has strong appeal in some parts, a General Election is very different to a local election.  Being effective at getting potholes filled does not make a public representative expert on Brexit or budget surpluses.

However the key question is what will turn out be?  The record turn out in 2011 is unlikely to be bettered.  In this scenario, who votes and whether there is a variation in the turn out across the county will impact on the outcome.

Game on!

So here we are, it’s election year.  Sometime in the next 5 weeks Enda Kenny will call to Arás an Uachtarán and get ask the President to dissolve the Dáil.  Polling day will be named for the minimum of 3 weeks later.  And so, one of the longest election campaigns will climax.  Over the next few weeks, I’ll blog the campaign, the twists, the turns and the issues that influence where Wexford people will put their tick on February 26^th.  Oops! Have I just let polling day slip? Perhaps with a little bit of humour too! 

All governments have their own dynamic that underpins how they function.  For Albert Reynolds it was the peace process.  For Bertie Ahern it was running counter cyclic policies so that he could be re-elected.  For this government it has been dealing with the impact of Ahearn’s chaos and the collapse in expectations arising from that. I often wonder which is the greater political offence, Ahearn and Cowen destroying the expectations or the wider realisation in the last 5 years that those days may not be coming back?  This recovery is tentative and depends on a wide range of external factors. The government can rightly claim credit for getting state spending in order.  But oil prices, the slow pace of recovery in the EU and low interest rates or the euro sterling exchange rate were not part of the Troika deal.  What the government most certainly can claim is that competent economic management provides confidence for the private sector to invest here and take advantage of those outside factors.  

The destruction of the economy did impact psychologically on people in the same way as a destructive war. During World War 2 the British government had nothing to lose so it set out how the country would be different after the war. Ideas like the NHS, free 3^rd level education, abolition of the 11 plus, new towns, all stem from this era. But we have had little of an alternative vision for Ireland apart from free GP care for under 6’s, Same Sex Marriage and legislating for the X Case.  Locally we’ve seen a new Emergency Department for the hospital, a new Garda Station, new schools being built and new access to the county.  In 2011 the key local issue in Wexford that ranked alongside the economy was the survival of the local hospital.  Once Brendan Howlin entered government the success of that campaign was a given but there was no political pay back to Howlin.   

There has been growing anger in the last 5 years.  Harnessing this anger politically substituted for vision when it came to the opposition.   As a result for some the General Election has been on for the last 5 years.  

Wexford will elect 5 TD’s.  3 outgoing TD’s will contest along with each party except Renua Ireland. A plethora of independents will run too. Interestingly just 1 unsuccessful candidate from 5 years will run again.  That means just 4 of the 14 candidates from 2011 are back this year. What does that tell you about the turnover in personalities and the demands of political life? This time round there are 16 candidates.

Elections are about geography. 3 candidates are from Enniscorthy, 3 from Gorey, 4 from New Ross but a staggering 6 are from Wexford. Elections are about history; Wexford and Enniscorthy Districts have elected TD’s to each Dáil since the foundation of the state.  Whereas General Elections nationally used to be about a 2 and a half party system, Wexford has always seen a 3 way split which in the last 15 years has at times become a 4 way split sharing to all main national parties and beyond to independents.

Personalities often emerge in a campaign and they dominate and create their own momentum.  Twomey and Wallace did that in previous elections.  While Wallace has done his best to keep the rollercoaster going he will do so mostly at the expense of small independents.  In 2011 he took about  85% of the votes cast for independent candidates.  Can he continue to hover up this support and if so what will that mean for other independent candidates? How do they mark themselves out as different?   Just 1 post office has closed in the county in the last 5 years yet we have a candidate opposing post office closures. 

Then there’s the smaller parties.  5 years ago People Before Profit secured almost 800 votes.  Add the progress that the party has made since then and expectations of a sizeable vote of several thousand are realistic. SF won’t like being called small but 2011 saw its vote plummet in Wexford.  Can SF break the 5,000 votes won by John Dwyer in previous elections?  A lot of pressure, not just on outgoing TD’s, but on hopefuls too.  With 2 vacancies there’ll never be another chance for candidates like the one presented in 2016.  Social Democrats are running also.  There are more than a few dark horses who might depending on how the campaign progresses spot a gap and win votes.

But it all depends in turnout, who votes and where they live.  A differential turn out may see one candidate from New Ross or Gorey win. 8 of the 16 candidates are seen as genuine contenders.  Depending on the turnout and how districts vote, we may see someone who might in other circumstance not be in with a shout challenge. 

So the teams are coming out of the dressing room, the band is lining up for the parade.  It won’t be long till the ball is in. Game on!

For one night only.

When Vincent Browne rolled into town for his TV3 constituency People’s Debate it was always only going to be about one person, Mick Wallace.  The early arrival of Wallace’s family, friends and supporters packed out the meeting giving a distinct feel that there was a twelfth man to proceedings.  Candidates entered separately and quietly took their seats before Mick was allowed to make his grand entrance to a standing ovation from his own supporters. Wallace was allowed to sit apart from the other candidates directly across from where Vincent Browne would sit and in his direct eye line ensuring first response to any issue he could get.

Vincent Browne had the unfortunate task of following that onto the set before we were ready for the off.  Curiously Browne asked the audience what topics they wished to debate.   Issues such as TTIPS, Austerity, Tax, Social Welfare, Housing, Repealing the 8th amendment,  Education and Homelessness were suggested.  After a polite cough a man suggested Agriculture while another said Rosslare Harbour and I suggested the University of the South East.

So off we went and the cameras rolled with an introduction to the constituency and the 2011 outcome.  Browne warmed to Wallaces supporters by complaining that Brendan Howlin was not prepared to come before 600 of his constituents while Paul Kehoe led the production team on a merry dance about his participation until recently.  Both were absent however given the complexion of the audience and the treatment of Michael D’arcy from Fine Gael, it is unlikely that anything they could have said would have been listened to by the crowd.  After an analysis of Wexford by Saoirse McArrigle of the Wexford Echo during which she confirmed that Ger Carthy will announce his candidacy and that Aoife Byrne of Fianna Fail will have her name added to the ticket, the evening got going. 

The first notable contribution was when Fianna Fail’s Malcolm Byrne attacked Mick Wallace regarding his failure to pay VAT collected on his buildings or his employee’s pension contributions.  Byrne was shouted down by the audience to such an extent that Browne had to intervene to tell members they’d be asked to leave if it continued. Wallace denied Byrnes evaluation of his debts and his financial position and threatened Byrne with a solicitor’s letter in an attempt to gag his remarks in the event of them being broadcast.  Browne said that now this threat guaranteed these remarks would be broadcast.  A possible legal spat between the pair will now ensure Malcom Byrne now has at least one thing in common with Peter Robinson!

Wallace defended his tax arrangement and said that if he was re-elected he’d pay all his salary in tax.  Later he ironically railed against those neo-liberalism and the market economy which had made him considerably wealthy enough to offer to serve the people for free.  He detailed how many houses he’d sold attempting to clear the debt. Once more he raised his annoyance at others who criticise what he wears.  For the record it doesn’t bother me too much how he dresses but I’m beginning to wonder why he brings it up so often. Is it a deliberate diversion on Wallace’s part to change the subject?

Vincent Browne put it to him that he (Wallace) thought he understood NAMA a lot better than the PAC and that if he had evidence of wrong doing he should give it to them in open session.  Wallace prevaricated and complained that others who were in NAMA were getting better treatment from the state than he received as his debts were to foreign banks.  Browne pursued him on when exactly he made a clean breast of his companies financial position to the Revenue Commissioners and to my mind it was clear that while Walalce wasn’t waiting for the letter to arrive to officially advise of an audit. He waited until the very last before he held his hands up.  

Senator Michael D’arcy was similarly subject to abuse from the audience as he pursued Wallace further before the issue fizzled out.  So on we went as some of the candidates gave a 1 minute presentation as to why they should be elected.  Clearly it was not about Wexford.  The debate could have been held anywhere in the country about the same old issues that The People’s Debate has discussed ad nauseum at 27 constituencies.  There was very little discussion of Wexford.

Several very sad cases of deaths arising from poor mental health services were instanced to support the case to re-open the Victorian Mental Hospital at St.Senans in Enniscorthy.  No candidate pointed out the reality that the location for such services is proposed for the grounds of Wexford General Hospital nor indeed referred to the reality that Wexford General Hospital only survived because of Brendan Howlin securing money to fund construction of A&E.  But Brendan Howlin was in the sin bin for ignoring the debate.  Some candidates came to ignore the debate in person and made little contributions as the night wore on.

There is a case for a 24 hour access to emergency treatment for mental health.  As someone who once visited a patient in St Senans, I wonder how re-opening a remote austere building would improve anyone’s mental health.

On we went and the only discussion of agriculture was in the context of Wexford farms contributing 10% of our agricultural output and that processed food was causing obesity and was unhealthy.  No discussion on milk prices or farm incomes.  Along with the fishing industry which is the subject of concerns regarding crewing and Rosslare Europort’s future, issues like the University of the South East and its ability to transform the region played second fiddle on the night to a largely partisan audience.  When it came to rural crime Councillor Bobby Ireton made the valid point that burglaries in North Wexford were on the increase and that old people felt vulnerable. Malcolm Byrne complained about garda numbers in Gorey. There was one moment of hilarity when one contributor in this section mentioned job losses and the closer of the sugar factory and was interrupted by Vincent Browne. “What has this got to do with rural crime?” “Oh” came the response, “I thought we were talking about rural Carlow”!

One of those who cheered the arrival of Wallace said how he opposed the granting of refugee status to Syrian migrants and wanted them cleared by Garda vetting. They were economic migrants, we were told by the man who said he was not aligned to any political party, a euphemism on the night for many of Mick Wallace’s supporters. 

Another campaigner against austerity related how poor his wife’s experience on the medical card was in Wexford Hospital compared to what she received recently in Florida.  His colleague attacked the government over medical cards availability but it was when a question from the floor to Michael D’arcy regarding employment opportunities for those with disabilities with university degrees morphed into a defence of Oireachtas  members expenses that you really had to hand it to Wallace.  A good manager lets his team do the work.

So we heard about social welfare cuts, SNA cuts which had in fact been reversed, but hey why should we stick to the facts here, there’s a show to put on!

Former councillor Jackser Owens raised the issue of jobs in Enniscorthy complaining about how many jobs had been lost since Mary Harney took Coca Cola to Mayo 15 years ago.  He’d forgotten that recently Clearstream had announced 70 new jobs in 2011 and 200 more last year.

Wallace left many of the other opposition candidates in his wake as they grasped at his coat tails.  Interestingly while Deirdre Wadding made approving references to Wallace, there was no reciprocation.  Local People Before Profit Members valiantly trotted out the party line but the darling of the middle class audience that descended on Wexford last night was without a doubt Wallace. They complained that the €4M allocated for social housing hadn’t been spent and argued for the purchase of 30 houses in Riverchapel from NAMA by Wexford County Council.  It was never explained that if such a purchase would consume most of the housing purchase budget for most of the county leaving those on housing lists in other districts waiting longer.  D’arcy did point out that the council felt best value was ensured by repairing and returning council houses to the public housing stock.  Wallace didn’t interact with any other candidate than Byrne and D’arcy.

The only issue that Wallace didn't dominate was the matter of the Repeal of the 8th Amendment which was fought between the religious right and the 3 female candidates.  I expected more of the audience would take part in this part of the debate but already there seems a reluctance on the part of large audiences to publicly engage on this. 

Closing at the end we were treated to a criticism of neo liberalism and market economics from the one man in the room who benefitted most from it!  Market economics is by no stretch of the imagination a panacea for our ills.  A social economic model may be a more plausible, sustainable and positive alternative if Wallace was prepared to put the case.  But last night wasn’t that sort of night.  No to everything is a better and easier message to deliver especially when the host describes you as one of the best deputies in the house and the local minister as being self important.  To be fair Vincent knows quite a bit about self importance.  Not so much a case of Up for the match but Up for the shouting match!

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.

Closed due to a private function

My walk home from work each day takes me past Bride St church.  I pass it 4 times each day.  I’ve never seen as sad a sight as I did this afternoon.  Standing outside the church were hundreds of ordinary Wexford men and women watching as the funeral cortege of the 5 members of the Connors Family passed on its way to Crosstown cemetery. The Connors family were killed almost 2 weeks ago in a fire in Dublin halting site. 

Quietly we all stood as a lone piper played Paddy’s Green Shamrock Shore as he led the cortege on its journey towards the graveyard and away from the Church of the Assumption, Bride St.  Rarely has there been such a funeral in town during all my years here. Watching 2 horse drawn hearses one white another black with horses decked out with white feathers and the 3 other hearses carry the caskets to the graveyard is a sobering sight.  It’s one thing to see this on TV, it’s another thing entirely to look at it close up.

A large number of travellers attended the ceremony from around the country.  Traveller families are few of the last strong holds of a religious faith in the country.  Women in particular play a strong role in setting mores and values on religion.

Sometimes traveller funerals can be sources of tension within the travelling community as families gather from afar.  Settled people sometimes respond by closing their business premises fearful of the outcome.  A significant number of public houses and restaurants in Wexford have closed for 36 hour period while the funerals are held.  Hotels employed bouncers to suss out those entering the premises.  In the case of one pub I passed last night a sign said that it was closed due to a private function.

Publicans will point to their legal responsibility to ensure that their premises is run in an orderly fashion.  Nobody disputes that.  There is a requirement to make a judgement call. Instead many made an assumption.  From what I saw today, those that shut their premises made the wrong call.  There was no trouble last night in the pubs that stayed open.  The burials took place in a dignified and fitting way as they should. 

Honouring the lives of the dead is at the heart of mourning.  Let people bury their dead. Let’s not just sympathise with the deceased but also apologise for how some local businesses have behaved.

Cleaning Up!

It’s about a year since filming for “Clean Break” commenced in Wexford.  So it was with enormous interest that viewers sat down to watch the show as it went out on Sundays at peak viewing time. Once more Billy Roche has panned a nugget from the mud of Wexford Harbour. Watching it last night reminded me so much of Billy’s style. The small talk, the loser characters that inhabit every small town, the idiosyncratic moneyman who takes the till at the boxing ring and admires his stamp collection while his wife and child are kidnapped.  Billy’s love of boxing is once more a feature to his story line. There are common threads to Billy’s work, those little sparks in life that come a blaze when he puts pen to paper. All human life is there, not in some far off distant land but all around us. The main characters are introduced to us in the middle of Wexford Park.  All that's missing is a prelate to throw in the ball.

Welcome to 21^st century Wexford, a long way from the Kennedy visit and opera.  But the ball is in and the game is on.  We live in a world where fiction often becomes fact.  So setting a fictional drama in an actual location draws in the imagination. 

Game of Thrones has been a godsend for tourism up north.  Just as 20 years ago Ballykissangel and Glenroe brought plenty of day trippers to Wicklow, will a wider interest in County Wexford result and if so can this have some tangible impact on the perception of the county and its economy? 

20 years ago the late Tommy Carr headed up the Co Wexford Film Commission.  The commission’s job was to compile an inventory of sets, locations, props and actors that might facilitate those interested in using Wexford for filming.  “Saving Private Ryan” was the result as were some other minor productions.  Nothing stays the same. Nobody better than Tommy to say that it’s time to look again at the potential for the county in developing drama. So perhaps it’s time to revive the Commission?  In a few weeks time, the premiere of Colm Tobín’s “Broklyn” will be shown in Enniscorthy. It’s strong on narrative set in small town Ireland with plenty of on location work.  Add that to “The Sea” by John Banville which was filmed in Rosslare and Ballygarret.  Wexford punches above its weight when it comes to film work.

Clean Break is produced by the same company that filmed Love/Hate.  Clean Break occupies the same time slot as Love/Hate.  Love/Hate is not in production this year simply to rest the story line and allow chronological acclimatisation of the plot so Clean Break gets a run this year. The gangland battle of succession to the late King Nidge will come back to our screens in 12 months.  In the meantime  I hope that Clean Break is successful and that it gets another run in the future.  It would be a good balance between gritty urban gangsters in Dublin and gritty urban gangsters in Wexford!

 

Enjoy!

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?