WHO’S WHO Election candidates from across the political divide were at Ballycroy Community Centre recently.
Grianghraf: Cormac Ó Cionnaith The election battleground? John Healy WITH only about eight weeks to go to the general election, there is still no certainty about what key issue will emerge – if any – to define the real battleground between the main contenders.
But there is a fair chance that Enda Kenny’s much quoted comment that we as a nation are Celtic and Christian might yet be the test. The Taoiseach has himself gone some way to retrieve the moral ground by opening up dialogue with the various faith groupings and warning of the danger of creeping materialism.
It may well be across that broad sweep of moral and ethical issues that the battle lines will be drawn, given that there is so little to separate the contending parties in terms of economic or social politics. The rumblings of discontent which have greeted the proposal to alter the constitution as it refers to the rights of children is an ominous warning to politicians in general. Unease is growing on the wording of the amendments to the constitution, with some experts claiming that by enhancing children’s rights under the constitution, the primacy of the family unit may be undermined.
Some hold the view that this is already happening and that the once inalienable rights of parents under the Constitution are being chipped away for reasons that do not bode well for the future of society. There seems to be a steady drift towards transferring family rights away from and to the state, a trend in which state and semi-state bodies seem only too eager to be involved.
Two years ago, four autistic children were taken from their parents by the Eastern Health Board on the grounds that the parents were unable to cope. But what precipitated this action was the highlighting of the parents, out of sheer frustration, of the failure of the Health Board to live up to its responsibility to provide proper educational services appropriate to the children’s needs. In that instance, it took a judge and a psychologist to ensure that the children were returned to their dedicated, caring and maligned parents.
This writer recalls observing a state-funded so-called Children’s Rights Day in Castlebar some years ago where children attended from all over the province. The first item to be dealt with was the ordering of all parents to leave the premises for the duration of the day until the seminars on child rights had been completed.
The fact that this exercise was conducted in the absence of parents, and that children were being inculcated with an attitude which came perilously close to being confrontational in the home, by complete strangers, was bizarre in the extreme.
Professor William Binchy of Trinity College says that the wording of the proposed change would allow the state to infringe on the rights of parents to a much greater degree than is currently possible under the constitution. To allow the state to take over the care of children because the parents are adjudged to have failed in that duty could, he says, be open to all sorts of misinterpretation as to how and when such failure occurs.
Arguably, he says, a single parent who leaves her child in care for a full day could, under the terms of the proposed changes, be accused of failing in her primary duty to the child. This would then mean the state stepping in and supplanting the parent as the primary figure in the life of the child.
Upholding the rights of parents and the integrity of the family unit as it comes under threat of legislative change could yet become a crucial issue in the election. Allied with a raft of creeping legislation which, step by step, is giving the state a greater say in family affairs, the election could well be fought on a far different set of values than the politicians might have thought.
Traditional, conservative, middle Ireland may cause a shock or two.
ROTARY SOUNDS THE ALARM THE men and women of Castlebar Rotary Club showed how adept they are at the DIY when the club undertook a very novel but useful community project recently.
Residents of a local housing estate had established, through their residents’ committee, that out of over 100 houses in the area, 33 were in need of smoke detectors. And so eight teams of Rotarians, crack squads with ladders and tool-kits, arrived on one March evening at the estate, suitably togged out in high visibility vests.
In no time, Operation Smoke Alarm was in full swing, much to the appreciation of the local community, and two alarms supplied by the Mayo Fire Service were installed in each house.
This was Rotary’s first fire safety and awareness project in the locality and, under the leadership of Club President Dolores Burke, is unlikely to be the last. Generously aided by Chief Fire Officer Seamus Murphy and Mayo County Council, this was community development of a most practical kind and was, for Rotary, a signal departure from its traditional range of community projects.
Castlebar Rotary Club will be in existence for 30 years next year, and has the distinction of numbering founding President John Kilkelly as one of its most active members. Rotary itself is a worldwide voluntary organisation which provides service to the local community over a wide range of activities.
Mayo boasts of two long established clubs – one in Ballina, one in Castlebar – with the latter breaking the mould two years ago with the election of a lady President, Vivienne Kyne, for the first time. She was followed by Dolores Burke, who continued to prove that the once-controversial decision to admit women to membership proved, in the end, to be the right one.
THE MEDIA TAKES THE FLAK THE need for some form of regulatory media standards framework was highlighted again with the harrowing and insensitive coverage of the death of Tania Corcoran and her new born son.
The Independent group of newspapers has learned nothing, it seems, from its grotesque and inaccurate coverage of the death of Liam Lawlor last year. The public condemnation of that coverage and the tardy apology which eventually found its way on to the front pages was of short-lived effect, however. The rise in circulation figures for the Sunday Independent must have sent home the message that public outrage is soon forgotten, and that the more prurient and invasive the story, the better the public likes it, protests to the contrary notwithstanding.
So went the logic behind the coverage of that tragic death of a young mother who also happened to be a Garda officer. Insensitive as the headlines read, the Sunday Independent trawled new depths in referring to the role played by the bereaved husband, Det Sgt Aidan McCabe, in the Abbeylara siege. By no stretch of the imagination could anything have justified the attempt to add another sensational twist to what, in essence, was a tragic story of the death of a young wife and mother.
Noel Conroy, Garda Commissioner, was uncompromising in his condemnation, and his sentiments were warmly welcomed not just within the ranks but among the wider public.
The acid test, however, will be whether sales of the offending papers will be damaged by such unwarranted, callous coverage of what should have been treated as a private tragedy. And much as we might like to think otherwise, all of the signals point to a situation where public anger is quickly dissipated and where the publishers of the Independent newspapers know more about what the readers want than we do ourselves.
THE DIY BREATHALYSER A GOOD idea, but will it catch on? The Swedish car maker Saab has come up with the ‘alcokey’, a device which allows drivers to breathalyse themselves before getting behind the wheel.
The size of a mobile phone, the device is linked by radio signal to the car’s anti-theft immobiliser. If the driver fails the test, the car won’t start.
Would it work here? Could it be made mandatory? And would hungover drivers find ways of circumventing its effect? Yes, yes, and yes.
THE CHINA EXPERIENCE THE drive and imagination of a Castlebar teacher finally came up trumps when the trip of a lifetime became a reality for his students this month.
Time was when a school tour to Paris or Brussels was the height of adventure, but for Seán Kerins, who teaches at St Gerald’s College in Castlebar, the ambition went much further than that.
And so 44 senior students, together with six teachers, took themselves off in the long but exciting trip across the globe to visit China and the country’s capital, Beijing.
The months – or, in this case, years – of planning finally paid off for the young students who lived an experience that most can only dream about, and will assume even more significance when the eyes of the world focus on the Olympic Games in China next year.
St Gerald’s have certainly scored a major educational breakthrough in its Chinese venture. It has raised the bar as far as school tours are concerned. The question now has to be – where next?
BRING BACK THE SAFE CROSS CODE THE years were rolled back for thousands of radio listeners when Brendan Grace came on the Derek Mooney Show on RTÉ Radio to sing out ‘The Safe Cross Code’, so much part of the road safety campaigns of nearly thirty years ago.
The affable Brendan had called the programme to offer his support to the pupils of Derrywash National School, who were in Dublin to present the results of their acclaimed road safety project ‘Stopping the Carnage’ to the Government.
School Principal, Sharon Dunleavy, had been explaining to Derek Mooney that, while the catchy tune and lyrics of The Safe Cross Code had been part of every child’s education back in the 1970s, there were now two generations of Irish children who had never heard of the jingle.
It was this part of the discussion which prompted Brendan Grace to phone in to the show, agree with everything that was said, offer his services to the Derrywash pupils, and then proceed to deliver an impromptu duet of the piece with Sharon Dunleavy.
If a re-recording of the Safe Cross Code does come to pass, it will represent another notch in the campaign by the Derrywash school to have six major recommendations adopted at national level in the interests of greater road safety.
Judging by the warm response given to the report by Minister of State Seán Haughey, the support given by Bendan Grace is set to be replicated at the highest level.
GETTING US READING AGAIN THE decline in public library membership is to be tackled by Mayo County Council, which fears that major investment in buildings and stock is not being reciprocated by way of usage by the public.
Twenty thousand of Mayo’s population of 120,000 now hold library membership, a statistic which library chiefs find disappointing in view of the continuing high worldwide sale of books.
However, there is more heartening news of Mayo’s traditional reputation as a book-reading county. Killeen National School, Louisburgh, Gortjordan National School in Kilmaine, and Katie Hughes of Balla National School, have all been awarded coveted prizes in the MS Readathon National awards ceremony. International rugby star Gordon Darcy (himself of strong Mayo connections) and best-selling author Cecelia Ahern did the honours in a project where 30,000 children raised over €1 million for MS, by reading 500,000 books between them.
Just to show that not only do we read books, we also write them, the Mayo Writers’ Block launch an anthology of their work in Claremorris on Saturday next. Compiled and edited by Terry McDonagh, a native of Kiltimagh, the launch will be performed by author and poet, Michael D Higgins, TD.
