The Trib

by David Kenny

  Except it’s not really about losing weight or learning a musical instrument, is it? It’s the one time in the year when we feel we can start anew, when we can reinvent ourselves, feel free to pursue a dream; when it’s okay to think big.

  But new year’s resolutions, like rock dreams, rarely last. Statistics show that only around 40 per cent of people maintain their resolutions past January.

  McCormick’s story just goes to prove that you should never give up. Because even if the new film flops, McCormick is now a successful author as well as something of an official biographer to Bono and the lads. In a peculiar way, his rock dream has come true.

  Each of the wannabe rockers from the 1978 poster turned away from music to carve out different careers for themselves. But I bet that, deep down, most of us would jump at the chance to become a rock star. However unrealistic they may seem, dreams give you something to aim for. And dreams can come true, but just not in the way you expect.

  HELEN ROGERS

  Expenses scandal discredits the entire Dáil

  October 11, 2009

  Ceann Comhairle John O’Donoghue leaves office on Tuesday, but he remains light years away from the transformed politician the electorate would like to see. He is not a man humbled by a moment of epiphany that allowed him to understand the ethical error of his ways. Far from it.

  He is seething, resentful at having had to suffer the pain of public humiliation and, above all, angry that he was not allowed to have his say, to ‘explain’ just how he racked up a travel bill of over €100,000 in two years as Ceann Comhairle on top of his generous unvouched expenses, or just why, in this apolitical office, he needed to treble the size of his personal staff. (Never mind the fact this newspaper asked, asked and asked again for him to give his side of the story, only to meet with the worst sort of evasion, that of hiding behind the ‘constitutional’ bar on his making any sort of political statement. Mind you, he did send us a solicitor’s letter claiming our coverage was ‘inaccurate, misleading, exaggerated and disingenuous’ and threatening to take further steps against us.)

  Equally angry are, to their great discredit, his Fianna Fáil ministerial colleagues. To Willie O’Dea, Micheál Martin, Conor Lenihan and Brian Lenihan – to the Taoiseach – the Bull is a scapegoat, a lightning rod for anger, a fall guy for public fury that these days seems beyond persuasion by reasonable argument. He has been felled by grave-dancers who wouldn’t wait for due process and whose only motive was to enhance their own standing in the eyes of a media-hyped public ravening for a scalp.

  Of course, they are astute and pragmatic enough to realise the political momentum was against their former cabinet colleague and they knew O’Donoghue had to go. But why? Unfortunately for democracy in this country, they still don’t get it.

  Their gut instinct has been to deflect blame away from what is wrong with the way the Dáil is run and to try to discredit Eamon Gilmore for doing what the electorate and every scared FF backbencher wanted: looking John O’Donoghue straight in the eye and telling him that his position was untenable and that he had to go.

  The consequence has been a week of sour self-justification and bitterness between parties that disgusts the electorate as much as the lavish lifestyle enjoyed by O’Donoghue. The Ceann Comhairle was, as we all knew well, not alone in the level of indulgence he enjoyed. As we reveal today, the depressingly long line-up of cabinet colleagues for whom taxpayer-funded luxury was regarded as an entitlement is reinforcement of just how highly our ministers thought of themselves and how low their ethical standards had fallen. No wonder they felt uncomfortable about telling John O’Donoghue the jig was up.

  But the inability of the Fianna Fáil leadership to look out, to lift its head above petty point-scoring and admit culpability, pledging a massive reform plan that will wipe out what have become known elsewhere in the public sector as ‘legacy issues’ adds to a destructive cynicism towards politics. And it comes at a time when we need hope in its ability to lift this country back to prosperity.

  The truth about John O’Donoghue is simple. He was a greedy man who used the various high offices in which he was privileged to serve to finance a lifestyle for himself and his wife Kate Ann that he could never have afforded himself.

  And the truth about the Dáil is simple. It too is a very greedy place.

  The red-faced indignation of TDs and senators who insist they work hard for every cent they make and can verify the need for every cent of expenditure they stump up to selflessly serve their constituents is genuinely felt. But it is a display of self-delusion by the body politic that is so deep-seated it is reaching the point of corruption.

  We use that word carefully and advisedly. TDs have for the past dozen years enjoyed a regime of self-written rules and regulations which, in any other sphere, would be regarded as a blueprint for white-collar crime.

  What workplace in what universe, for example, allows an employee to travel to work by train and then passes a law to make it perfectly legal to claim, tax free, for every mile never driven? What employee would be paid for phone calls never made? For mobile phones never bought? What employer would dream up accommodation allowances so generous it would be hard to find a hotel that charges enough to justify the payment?

  The list goes on and on and the public is rightly angry about the level of unvouched expenses that have become a second salary to many – though not all – TDs and senators.

  But, as much as the minister for finance tries to spin the truth by pretending he has been fighting a rearguard action to introduce expenses reform, it should be remembered that John O’Donoghue’s political demise has not been caused by the unvouched allowances set by the Houses of the Oireachtas Commission.

  It was his verifiable, vouched expenses that have got him into trouble because of their excess. Every flight taken, every suite luxuriated in, every meal digested, every drink savoured, every limousine he comfortably relaxed in was receipted, even down to the £1 donation to Unicef.

  Today we publish the expenses of Mary Harney, Tom Parlon, Noel Dempsey, Bertie Ahern and even John Gormley, for God’s sake. It makes for very uncomfortable reading. They have all, in some way, enjoyed a luxurious lifestyle at the taxpayer’s expense – all of it signed off by the finance office of each minister’s department and ultimately by the minister for finance.

  John O’Donoghue is a fall guy all right, but only in the sense that so many of his colleagues, if they had an ounce of integrity, should resign along with him. As they brazen it out, they make him the lone scapegoat, not a public that wants root-and-branch transformation of the sleazy modus operandi of the Dáil.

  The newly negotiated programme for government puts parliamentary reform at the top of the agenda. It is interesting that it proved one of the stickiest areas to negotiate. No doubt its terms will leave most TDs pale at the extent of the transformation proposed.

  The fiasco of stonewalling the Freedom of Information Act at every turn must end. All expenses, whether they are vouched or unvouched, must be published regularly so taxpayers can see where their money is going and decide whether or not it is well spent. New regulations covering overly lavish accommodation, travel and dining arrangements must also be issued. And while there is an argument for some unvouched allowances, these should be kept to a minimum.

  Nobody in this saga emerges with much glory. But it is to be hoped that, at last, a poisonous boil has been lanced.

  It would have been better, however, if the lead could have been taken by the Taoiseach, who not once in this debacle has put it on record that the lessons have been learned and that our public representatives must clean up their own houses before asking everyone else to take a €4 billion hit for Team Ireland.

  OLIVIA DOYLE

  I felt no ill effects from the nurses’ work-to-rule

  8 April 2007

  At about 11 p.m. last Sunday, a nurse bearing bad news entered the reception area of St James’s A&E. To gauge when we might see a doctor, the thirty of
us waiting should take our time of arrival and add at least ten hours.

  The tourists who were accompanying their ill friend had already been waiting thirteen hours and the late-night casualties were getting rowdier, so we decided to cut our losses. As we left, the flushed nurse apologised to all present for ‘this system’ before comforting an elderly woman sitting in the chaotic environment. Nine hours to go before the work-to-rule by nurses would begin.

  After a ring-around, my resourceful buddy drove me to Tallaght Hospital, hoping it might be less busy – and it was. By 1.30 a.m., I’d been through triage, had bloods taken and was on a trolley in a curtained cubicle on an IV drip. An ordinary sore throat had turned into a severe tonsillitis that had left me drooling, aching and unable to speak or swallow.

  I’ve been in A&E units several times before, all but once, thank God, as a working journalist. Previously, I had seen a nurse not even flinch as she tended a stabbed teenager who drew his own blade out of his boot to ‘show’ her before spitting in her face. I had seen a nurse gently persuade a repeat attendee to acknowledge that she had not again ‘walked into a door’. And I had seen nurses perform any number of clean-up jobs on drunks who thanked them with a stream of expletives and, once, an aggressive grope.

  This time, I was the patient, and the nurses were as ever the ones making things bearable. One seemed to be with me for much of the ten hours I was on the trolley, her kindness as much of a balm as the drugs she was giving me.

  And it was a nurse whose hand my fingernails were sunk into while a doctor stuck a very, very long needle down my throat to prod around.

  By the time I was moved further in the A&E ward to a bed, the work-to-rule was well underway but I personally felt no ill effect from it.

  What I did see was a nurse coax out of a badly-suffering patient that their pain was probably being exacerbated by their sudden withdrawal from an undisclosed alcohol dependency.

  I saw a nurse embracing a young woman who was crying at the latest diagnosis a doctor had left her with. And I saw several visitors who seemed to interpret ‘visiting hours’ as the only period when you couldn’t visit and ‘two at a time’ as the number of visitors who should stay outside, making it considerably harder for nurses to treat patients.

  I was discharged last Wednesday and, on the way out, I saw about a dozen people on trolleys in the corridor and another two dozen waiting outside in ‘chairs’. Any A&E I’ve ever experienced was invariably very busy and patients were invariably on trolleys, industrial action or not.

  The Patient Focus Group has this past week reminded nurses that their main duty of care is to their patient rather than their union. I didn’t meet any nurse who needed reminding of that fact. But I did meet the humane face of Ireland’s ailing health service, doing on a routine basis for complete strangers the kind of messy, smelly, unpleasant tasks that most of us would have to steel ourselves to do for our loved ones.

  KEVIN RAFTER

  Integrity and involvement, hand in hand

  In matters of war and peace, refusing to sit on the fence is not a denial of political impartiality.

  27 July 2008

  In November 1995, I travelled with Tommie Gorman from Dublin to the Fanad peninsula in Co. Donegal. We were attending the funeral of Neil T Blaney, the former Fianna Fáil minister and longtime Republican independent politician.

  I had written a short biography of Blaney a couple of years previously. But at the time, I was still learning my trade as a journalist in the RTÉ newsroom. Gorman had established a reputation as a hardworking correspondent in the northwest region, and by 1995, he was RTÉ’s Europe editor. Some years later, he would swap Brussels for Belfast to become the national broadcaster’s Northern editor.

  I was reminded of that day in November 1995 as I read Ed Moloney’s comments on speculation that Gorman played a role of sorts in the Northern Ireland peace process. There has been persistent talk that Gorman facilitated contacts between the DUP and Sinn Féin prior to the establishment of power-sharing at Stormont in May 2007. Gorman has previously denied a role. But both Bertie Ahern and Jonathan Powell, a long-time senior advisor to Tony Blair, had referred to the involvement of the RTÉ journalist.

  Moloney contends – if it is true – that Gorman crossed an ethical line, and that the implications for Irish journalism are far-reaching. I am not so sure.

  There was a huge turnout on the bitter winter’s day when Blaney was laid to rest at the small graveyard at St Columba’s Church. In a graveside oration, another former Fianna Fáil minister, Kevin Boland, spoke of betrayal: ‘Blaney is gone. There is no Nationalist, no Republican voice in the parliament of the twenty-six-county State. And there is no principle in it, either.’ Given all that has happened in Northern Ireland over the past decade, Boland’s words are from another world now.

  Martin McGuinness was among the funeral congregation. The IRA ceasefire of August 1994 was in place, but the British had not responded with the same speed as their counterparts in Dublin. Demands for decommissioning and the attachment of the word ‘permanent’ to the ceasefire were, in peace-process language, creating an impasse to the invitation of Republicans to the talks table. Unknown to the wider world, there was a dynamic underway within the Republican movement, and one which played out so dramatically with the Canary Wharf bombing some months later in February 2006.

  Gorman had a relationship with McGuinness. As I understand it, respect for Gorman had been formed some years previously when both men, for different reasons, were in attendance at a local court hearing. As cases waited to be heard, a traveller woman was before the court on some minor charge. She was a mother of several children and it wasn’t her first appearance in court. ‘Is there someone here to go bail for this woman?’ the judge asked. There was silence in the body of the court. Then, rather than see the woman go to jail with the inevitable consequences for her young family, Gorman stood and said he would go bail.

  After the Blaney funeral on the road to Derry, we stopped at a café. McGuinness and his driver had already ordered tea. I had not met McGuinness before. He eyed me warily. He was a man under pressure. ‘What do you need?’ Gorman asked. ‘Talks, Tommie. We need talks,’ McGuinness replied. And after a pause, he bluntly added: ‘I could get a bullet in the head if this thing doesn’t start delivering.’

  McGuinness may have relayed the same information at meetings with Irish government politicians and officials. I don’t know if Gorman passed on the conversation the next time he met a senior politician or minister. At that time, I wasn’t in a position to have such access. But if I had met an Irish government figure involved in the peace process, would I have passed on my observations? Yes.

  I have interviewed Ed Moloney on many occasions. He is a journalist whose work I respect greatly. I agree with his contention that journalists must not take part in politics nor do anything that raises questions about their professional integrity. I would not, however, be so confident as to state that these principles are widely applied. Conflicts of interest are not always declared. And it is regrettable that the purity which Moloney seeks does not universally prevail. The idea of a register of interests for media professionals is certainly worthy of consideration.

  But a more pertinent matter concerns the belief that the nonintervention of journalists in political matters is an all-embracing principle. I do not accept that political purity is so easily applicable – or always justifiable – in an area of conflict-resolution.

  Is it really unethical for a journalist to make his home and counsel available to rival parties in a political conflict so they can secretly meet to resolve their differences? I would say the answer is no. And it is certainly not unethical if the consequences of non-intervention are that the two sides fail to reach agreement and a return of conflict is a possible outcome.

  I like Gorman. Like most television reporters, he demands attention and is driven by a desire to get his story on screen. But he is also motivated by tremendous compassion. And if he
did play some small role in the latter stages of the peace process – describe it as being a player, if you like – then it was probably because moral responsibility overruled any ethical principle of the journalism profession.

  LIAM HAYES

  Me And The Big C

  On 9 September GAA columnist Liam Hayes got a call that changed everything. Here, he writes about his diagnosis with cancer and his determination to overcome the biggest challenge of his life ...

  17 October 2010

  Isit into the large blue armchair, which is deep and comfortable, and a welcoming single piece of furniture. There are twelve such pieces in this large, well-lit spacious room. It is just after 2.30 p.m. I will be sitting down in this relaxing blue armchair for about four hours. It could indeed be very comfortable, because it can also offer me leg support if I wish to stretch out. I don’t feel like stretching out. Sitting in my blue armchair, in fact, makes me feel quite like I am sitting in an advanced, quite luxurious electric chair or, more precisely, a chair which might accommodate the death of a very bad man by the quieter, slightly more humane, manner of lethal injection. Beside me, my wife is sitting on a tiny, wooden stool.

  It is Monday 27 September, 2010.

  To begin with, my over-riding thought, which charges an impulse to move and extract myself from this deep seat, is that they’ve got the wrong man, and more the wrong man rather than the condemned man necessarily. My long hours in this chair are not designed to kill me, I know that, even though I have also been informed that my time in this chair might transform me from a strong, fit, healthy, trim-enough forty-eight-year-old man into someone who is definitely going to look the worse for wear, and might also believe that he is actually quite seriously ill.