An open letter to a West of Ireland Senator

Irish Current Affairs Blog of the Year 2018 

An Irish flag flying in occupied Palestine

Dear Senator O'Mahony,

I would consider you to be one of my sporting heroes. The wonderful, dignified way you went about delivering two All-Ireland football titles to Galway in 1998 and 2001 left a lasting impression with me and were among the highlights of my 22 year career in provincial journalism.

I am writing to say how saddened I was to see you and members of your party, Fine Gael, sit in the Seanad this week to oppose a bill which will give huge hope to people living under an appalling occupation. I come from a "Fine Gael family" and I am truly appalled by the party's stance on Senator Frances Black's Occupied Territories Bill.

How would Michael Collins have voted on Wednesday night?

You are something of a hero in the GAA (especially West of Ireland GAA), an organisation which knows more than a thing or two about oppression, colonisation, and the brutality of an occupying army.

When the British Army murdered 14 people and injured 60 during a football game in Croke Park in 1920, the GAA and the people of Ireland really could have done with international solidarity and support.

I remember a famous photo which went viral all over the world when your Galway team were All-Ireland champions. It showed your team, the champions, playing Armagh next to a British Army base, where helicopters were taking off and landing, in a National Football League game in South Armagh.

The GAA has a long and noble history of standing up to oppression.

I am astounded that your party, Fine Gael, sees no merit in a former colony leading the way for the rest of the world by banning goods from 'settlements' which have been built on land which was colonised illegally in 1967.

The people of the West Bank have lived under a brutal occupation for 51 years, which is more than all of my lifetime, and they are in desperate need of hope. Ireland can give them some hope.

Members of the Al-Helal football team in Kinvara in 2016,
Photo: John Kelly, The Clare Champion.

I have travelled extensively in the Middle East and I believe a monstrous injustice has been caused to the people of Palestine. I'm also aware that they look up to Ireland and the Irish, due to our own struggle against colonisation.

It seems clear to me now that the people of Palestine will not get any solidarity from Irish politicians who are more concerned about cozying up to our European and American 'masters' than standing up for human rights.

We seem to have forgotten where we came from.

Your party's line about the European Union leading the way on foreign policy doesn't wash. The West Bank settlements are illegal according to international law. Buying goods from them, on land which has been stolen from the people of Palestine, should be a 'no brainer' in a former colony like Ireland.

This bill is not a full boycott of Israel and Israeli goods. It's merely calling on the Irish Government to uphold international law. I believe that Fine Gael is now on the wrong side of history, just as those who opposed the Dunnes Stores strikers in 1981 were proved to be wrong after their actions helped lead to the collapse of the appalling Apartheid regime.

The Seanad voted 30-13 in favour of the bill on Wednesday,
despite opposition from the Fine Gael party

Nelson Mandela sought out and thanked those women years later when he came to Dublin. I can't see a future Nelson Mandela of Palestine wanting to have anything to do with Simon Coveney and the members of Fine Gael if he or she comes to visit Ireland.

Yes, my interest in this is personal. This summer, I helped to raise €4,350 during a night out in Galway to bring a Gaza football team to Ireland. Those little underage boys, crying out for hope, were not even allowed out of Gaza, due to the appalling siege imposed on them by the Governments of Israel and Egypt.

I was so inspired by the joy on the young boys’ faces when they came to Galway in 2016 and 2017.

It felt so embarrassing to have to tell the people of Galway, who gave their money so generously, that we could not do anything for the young footballers of the Al-Helal Academy for another year.

Those kids so badly need the kind of experiences they get from playing in places like Kinvara and escaping the stifling atmosphere of Gaza for even a few days.

I know journalists who have been shot at by Israeli soldiers just for filming their actions. I know a wonderful human rights lawyer who has been branded a terrorist for chronicling the crimes which have been committed against the people of his village.

I know people who have had raw sewage thrown down on their villages by 'settlers' who should not even be living beyond the 1967 borders.

In the refugee camps of Jordan, years ago, I met people who still have the keys for their homes – even though they haven’t been able to go home in decades.

And I'm sickened when Simon Coveney, who I believe to be a good man, tells me and other Irish people that we cannot lead the way on this by taking a principled stand.

Asking Senators to support the Occupied Territories Bill in Galway

Last Saturday, a small group of us organised a stall in Shop Street in Galway. Over the course of five hours, almost 600 people signed postcards calling on Senators in our region to support the Occupied Territories Bill. Every one of them thanked us, warmly, for standing in solidarity with the Palestinians on a cold November Saturday.

Two weeks earlier, more than a hundred people turned up in a Galway hotel to support Senator Black and her bill.

It was amazing to see how many Galway people related so much to this issue, perhaps due to our own island's troubled history. it's not as though Palestine is as directly relevant to them as issues such as homelessness and the housing crisis.

I believe the people who thanked us in Galway city centre last Saturday showed how out of touch Fine Gael are with ordinary people when it comes to human rights.

Here in the West of Ireland, people really do understand.

But it seems that the Fine Gael party members in this part of Ireland have forgotten their roots. They see no parallels at all between Oliver Cromwell and ‘To Hell Or To Connacht’ and the mass forced migration of Palestinians into the tiny strip of land called Gaza.

And I believe that Senator Frances Black has shown great courage in the face of hostile international pressure by moving this bill.

It’s not always easy to stand up for what you believe is right, especially when the might and the power are on the other side.

Collecting signatures to support the Occupied Territories Bill in Galway

So I guess I'm just writing this to express how disappointed I am by both you and your party, due to your decision to oppose a bill which would actually give huge hope to a people who are crying out for hope.

If only others had given some hope to the Irish throughout the 19th century. It's so easy to dismiss gestures such as Senator Black's and to forget that the Irish have a huge place in the world.

We inspire Palestinians precisely because we were once a colonised people ourselves.

After 51 years of being occupied and having their land stolen, the people of Palestine need more meaningful gestures than our Government deflecting the issue to the European Union.

What was the point of our own noble and often fruitless struggle for independence if we don't have the courage to take our true place in the world?

Are we so willing to sell our souls because it’s more “convenient” than standing up for human rights?

Thank you for reading.

* Ciaran Tierney won the Irish Current Affairs and Politics Blog of the Year award at the Tramline, Dublin, last month. Find him on Facebook  or Twitter here. Visit his website here - CiaranTierney.com.

A letter to Donnie O'Trump

Dear Donald,

(Or Donnie ... as we might call ya out here in the wild wesht of Ireland).

Just a quick note to say I’d only be too delighted to join you at the White House, or the Teach Ban if you’d like to learn a bit of Irish, on St Patrick’s Day.              

With President Obama in the good ole' days

Meself and Fionnuala have the bowl of shamrock ready since November and we’re really thrilled by the chance to meet yourself and Melania on March 16.                        

To be honest with ya, I could do with the break. I’ve had a rough few weeks since a feckin’ do-gooder Garda, a policeman to yourself Donnie, almost brought down the entire Government over a few feckin’ penalty points and nearly cost me my job.

It means even more to me to visit this year than it used to when the O’Bamas were in the White House, because there’s a lot of feckers tryin’ their best to retire me at the moment.

But I won’t give up without a fight. I didn’t become the longest serving TD in Ireland, or make Ireland great again, by pure chance.

It’ll be great to have an oul’ chat, maybe pop up to Trump Tower in the Big Apple, or fly down to Florida for a round of golf.

We’ve a good deal to talk about.

Like the feckin’ fake news media. I’m sick to the teeth of them and I can see they’re giving you a hard time across the water too.

They once accused me of being a racist here in Ireland, because I used the feckin’ ‘n-----‘ word at a private function a few years back.

Imagine, you can’t even tell a joke these days with all the political correctness flying about.

Ireland is like America, it’s gone far too feckin’ PC for my liking. So I have to say I admire your straight talkin’.

They’re always accusing me of making up stuff here in Ireland too, especially when I meet this fella with two pints who always tells me just what I want to hear at functions.

They’re like rats, some of them meejia types. Try  as I might, I could never convince them that I often met this fella with two pints on nights out in Dublin or Castlebar.

I see you are planning to build a big wall, and now they’re even sayin’ you are a racist for trying to keep the oul’ Mexicans and Muslims out.

For putting your own people first?

Well, they’ve been accusing my people, the Blueshirts, of being racists ever since we sided with poor oul’ Franco down in Spain in the 1930s.

You can never do anything right to please these people.  
           

President Trump's ban on refugees has led to calls
for Enda Kenny to boycott the White House this year

We can’t build a wall here around Ireland, although I believe those feckin’ Europeans stopped you from building one around your golf course down in Co Clare.

Feckin’ eejits.

I know you were like a vulture fund when you bought Doonbeg and Ireland was in crisis at the time. But we rolled out the red carpet for you when you visited, remember.

Like you, I only back winners and I knew you’d be a winner even then. I'd like to invite you to Ireland for an official visit as long as all the oul' whingers won't kick up a fuss like they are now in Britian.

We could invent an oul' Irish great-grandfather for ya. I'll tell the world from the Oval Office that there were plenty of O'Trumps about the place when I was growing up in Islandeeeeeedy, outside Castlebar. I'm sure your connections in Russia Today and Fox News would be delighted to spread the mighty story of your hidden Irish roots!

Wouldn't it be a great legacy for me to be remembered as the Taoiseach who brought you - the man who's making America great - to Ireland? Sure, I'd nearly die happy, although I've too good a pension set up to be going anywhere too soon!

Anyway, I might have a few tips for ya for dealing with those troublesome Muslims. We have a mighty system here called Direct Provision.

We can’t keep them out, but we can put them up in oul’ cheap hotels owned by our friends for ten to 15 years. We pay these refugees €19.10 a week to stay out of trouble and the beauty of it is we can then provide plenty of money for our buddies to put them up for years on end. Saves us from actually having to build houses for the buggers!

If you can’t ban the Muslims, maybe you could come up with a Direct Provision system of your own. Mind you, I think you have one for the black lads, at any rate, because most of them seem to be in jail.

We could talk about our rogue police officers, too. Maybe you could give me a few tips about those lads who shoot black lads over in the Shtates.

We have troublesome Gardai here in Ireland too, some of them are never satisfied unless they have somethin’ to complain about.

One or two bad apples and they want to discredit the whole force.

Our lads tend not to shoot people, but they cause a fair amount of damage when they go around accusing their own feckin’ colleagues of being corrupt.

We haven’t found the best way of dealing with them yet, although spreading rumours that they might be child abusers seemed to work for a while. It kept them quiet, until it caused all the bother last month.

I’d love to talk to ya about the oul’ health service as well. I see you are getting rid of that Obamacare and I’d like to know how you are getting on.

Our solution here in Ireland is to make the waiting lists so long that patients generally die before we have to treat them. We tend to save a fortune that way, you know, as most of them don’t need treatment by the time they get to the top of the queues!

And, sure, anyone with a bit of money or a bit of sense can avoid the oul' overcrowded public hospitals. My friends with health problems tend to like flying over to Americay, to places like the Mayo Clinic. 'Tis great for you and great for us!

We’ve a bit of a housing problem at the moment here, too. Mind you, it’s not a problem really, because many of us are landlords, so rising rents go down very well with our core voters.

Homelessness doesn’t really bother Fine Gael voters unless a fella has the temerity to die right outside the Dail, but I love the way you attack the media and I’d like to learn more about spreading the word about “fake news”.

I love the way you keep discrediting the news media so much that nobody believes them any more.

Mind you, I wouldn’t mind an oul’ Fox News or Breitbart to spread the Fine Gael gospel here in Ireland. Especially with that hound Micheal Martin breathing down my back.

Then there’s the oul’ corporation tax and your wonderful multinationals. I was pure disgusted when the European dictators (sorry, authorities) told us Apple owed us €13 billion in unpaid taxes last year.

I can assure you we will fight this to the highest level, to ensure Apple will never have to pay a cent in corporation tax to the Irish authorities.

I want to assure you, Donnie, that the Americans will always be welcome here. You are welcome to pay as little tax as you want for as long as you want.

Your soldiers are welcome to stop off here to buy leprechauns and whiskey on their way to and from the bombing missions in Iraq and Syria.

There's mighty hospitality for the US
troops at 'neutral' Shannon Airport

Never mind the ‘loonie lefties’. They say Ireland is a neutral country, but we know who our true friends are here in Ireland.

And I have to say we are honoured to be the only European country to have US pre-clearance on our soil.

Your immigration people are always welcome and I hear they are becoming so friendly that they are now even helping passengers to remember their passwords and open their Facebook and email accounts before they board the planes these days.

Damn right, you shouldn't let anyone into America if you find out they've ever 'friended' a Muslim or a Mexican on that oul' Facebook.

People say you hate immigrants, like the Irish, but sure how could ya? Didn’t you marry an immigrant yourself!

People say you are surrounded by white supremacists, but there’s nothing wrong with a bit of supremacy. In Mayo, we’ve been trying to be the best footballers in Ireland since 1951. What we’d give for a bit of supremacy in 2017!

So, like I said, we’ll be delighted to make the trip to Washington on St Patrick’s Day. Fionnuala has the green dress ready and all.

I promise I won’t give you a lecture about your own tax returns or raise any tricky questions about the 50,000 ‘undocumented’ Paddies living in the US.                  

Should Irish people boycott the White House
on St Patrick's Day this year?

We say that one man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter here in Ireland. Well, I'm sure that one man's undocumented migrant is another's illegal immigrant.

And Paddy's Day is not the day for tough questions.

Irish Taoisigh have been bringing the bowl of shamrock to the White House for over 20 years and I’m not going to let a bit of racism, human rights concerns, Muslims, or cranky Irish Americans spoil a good party.

You’re making America great again, just like I’ve made Ireland the best little country in the world to do business in over the past six years.

See you on the 16th,

Love and best wishes,

Kim Jong Kenny,
Taoiseach of the Republic.

(Please note that this blog actually admits to being Fake News)


Ciaran Tierney is a journalist, blogger, and digital storyteller, based in Galway, Ireland. Check out his Facebook page here

More information at http://ciarantierney.com

Find Ciaran on Twitter, @ciarantierney

Perhaps this time, change really is in the air

During last May’s local election count, I interviewed Fianna Fail TD Eamon O Cuiv for the Connacht Tribune. In the midst of a discussion about how the count was going, he told me that there was “no such thing as right and left” in Irish politics.

It struck me as a very odd comment.

In virtually any other country in the world, there is a clear distinction between right wing parties (who favour big business and an open market economy) and those on the left (who feel that the poor should never be penalised for the wrong-doings of the rich).

Maggie Thatcher, for instance, was right wing. She sold off council houses, privatised as much as she could, and closed down the mines. She attacked the working class. Whereas the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, where I volunteered for three months, were idealistic left-wingers (at least in their early days) after overthrowing a right-wing dictatorship.

O Cuiv, of course, is steeped in Irish political history. His grandfather, Eamon De Valera, was Taoiseach three times and President of Ireland. Fianna Fail is in his blood.

People like him don’t like to be reminded that Ireland has effectively been run by centre-right parties since its foundation. If you took the Civil War out of the equation, can anyone really distinguish between Fianna Fail and Fine Gael?

If they were in Britain, both parties would be labelled as “Conservative”. It has never been a radical move by voters to replace one with the other. Instead, it has always boiled down to family loyalties and friendships. The parish pump has been the real driving force in Irish politics.

The danger is that a certain perception of the Irish political landscape can then somehow be deemed the one and only “reality”. If all the major parties support the ‘bailout’, you can be labelled a lunatic if you question whether there is another way.

The dominant narrative allows people to ridicule those who believe it is absolutely appalling that the low paid should have to bail out unsecured bondholders.

It allows an RTE newsreader to label idealistic protesters as “idiots” live on air.

It allows elements of the media to completely ignore the anger that is so prevalent across the country in the wake of seven years of austerity.

Images of Gardai confronting Irish Water protesters don't make the national airwaves, but those who do protest are labelled as the "sinister fringe".

An academic even claimed recently that people were only protesting over the Irish Water charges because things were getting better. He called it a “revolution of rising expectations”.

When the Troika came to Dublin in 2010, I was working as a volunteer in Central America. Canadians and Germans sympathised with me. Some wondered why there was not a greater spirit of rebellion among the Irish. I could not tell them why people back home were so down, so accepting of the imposition of austerity on ordinary people who had nothing to do with the “crisis” which followed the property crash.

People who never bought a second house or SUV were suddenly lumped with the Universal Social Charge, pay cuts, and the Local Property Tax, for no other reason than to bail out a tiny elite who had been consumed by greed during the Celtic Tiger era.

In 2011, support for the Fianna Fail-led Government imploded, but voters only replaced them with another centre-right coalition. Can anyone really claim that Government policies have changed since the night of the infamous bank guarantee in 2008?

It has been a horrible few years for the Irish, but now there are huge hints of change in the air.

In last year’s European Elections the people of the West, Midlands, and North West voted for two Independents, one Sinn Fein MEP, and one Fine Gael. The most conservative constituency in the country, supposedly, returned three protest (or left wing) candidates out of four – and only one from the ‘traditional’ parties (FF, FG, and Labour).

A protest against Irish Water drew 100,000 people onto the streets of Dublin a few months ago. That would have been unthinkable half a decade ago. These were ordinary people, fed up with austerity, fed up with quangos, and the ‘bonus culture’ and sense of entitlement of those who rise to the top of these kinds of organisations.

For many people, the obscene bonuses and the sight of water meters being installed in their estates came as a final straw. 

All around Europe this week, there were stark warnings from right wing politicians and mainstream media that the Eurozone was about to be plunged into turmoil if the left-wing party, Syriza, won the Greek general election.

Fair play to the people of Greece. They have had enough of austerity, unemployment, and job cuts. They are tired of paying a price for the sins of others. And they were not afraid to defy the stark warnings in Sunday’s elections.

Syriza have pledged to renegotiate the country’s €240 billion bailouts, just as businesses regularly restructure their debts. Greece’s debt is equivalent to 175% of its GDP and the Greeks, like the Irish, need some hope after years of cuts.

Of course, Syriza’s victory has sent “shockwaves” through the markets, with speculation that Greece will default and have to leave the Eurozone.

But, amid all the stark warnings, the Greek people still went out and voted for the hard left.

While our hospitals remain overcrowded, while homelessness continues to be a huge problem, and the jobless rate is disguised through JobBridge and community employment schemes, the rise of Syriza should provide a stark lesson to Enda Kenny and company in the Irish Government.

In the second half of last year, the Irish Water demonstrations all over the country showed that people here are prepared to get out and protest – in one of the least radical countries in Europe. 

It will be interesting to see what happens in Greece now and whether the stark predictions of a Eurozone exit will materialise. 

By choosing to vote for Syriza, Greek voters have dared to question the perceived “reality” in which it is perfectly acceptable for ordinary people to bail out bankers and bondholders. 

The people have spoken. All across Europe, in Spain, Ireland, and Portugal, change is in the air.

And perhaps people here are beginning to realise that replacing FF with FG, or vice-versa, is not the only answer come election time.

Nobody wants to see a host of Independents bring instability to the Dail. But, equally, voters want to express their anger at the establishment parties after putting up with austerity for so long.

The next year or two could be very exciting indeed in Irish politics as a “wind of change” brings an end, finally, to the politics of the Civil War. It has only taken us just under a century to fall in line with the rest of the world!

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