Bringing Bev back

Bringing Bev back

County View
John Healy

Strange indeed are the ways of political life. Bertie Ahern announces he is to step down as Taoiseach, and within 24 hours he opens the door to welcome Beverley Flynn back in to Fianna Fáil. Bertie delivering on the election day promise, one half of which was that the Mayo deputy be back to her ‘natural home’. Bertie clearing the way for a smooth return in advance of Brian Cowen taking the reins.
But also the same Bertie who four years ago drummed her out of Fianna Fáil with untypical decisiveness and with a hastiness that still mystifies close observers of the political scene. Beverley was banished to the outer wilderness in a move that even to those within Fianna Fáil seemed unusually extreme, but for which there has never been a credible explanation.
Now that she is back – and apparently happily so – the pieces in the jigsaw move again. In the last Dáil, Beverley was the one who forensically exposed the scandalous underspend of funding specifically allocated to this region. She hammered the government repeatedly for what turned out to be a €3 billion deficit in funding promised to the BMW region. She argued powerfully in the Dáil –securing a full-scale debate to do so – that money unspent under the National Development Plan was money lost to the west forever.
It’s not without irony that in each of those head-to-head clashes, her opponent was the formidable then Minister for Finance, Brian Cowen. As Beverley argued the nuts and bolts of where the shortfall was exposed, Minister Cowen responded with a version of events to show that things were not as painfully black and white as Beverley claimed them to be. From last Tuesday, she now finds herself back in the Fianna Fáil fold, where she will be expected to defend government policy, regardless of how adversely that may impact on local interests.
Beverley Flynn’s return to Fianna Fáil will not be completely unconditional. One of her first challenges, together with her new colleague Dara Calleary, will be to put the party back in shape for next year’s local elections. She will be expected to dent Fine Geal’s supremacy in Mayo by winning back the seats lost five years ago, even if complete control of Mayo County Council might be setting the bar too high.
Herself and Calleary now preside over two electoral areas where Fianna Fáil council representation is down to two seats out of six. By party standards, that is simply not acceptable. Much more will be expected from Flynn and Calleary come next June, the outcome my well decide whether a Cabinet post will finally find its way to Mayo.
Beverley Flynn’s short-term and immediate goal will be the restoration of harmony and common purpose to a Fianna Fáil that is in a bad state of disarray in Mayo. The reaction within the party to her return has ranged from euphoria to hesitancy to resistance, but the overwhelming response is one of relief that maybe now the divisions of the past four years can be put in the past. Fianna Fáil supporters are pragmatic enough to know that there is little to gain from continuing the internecine struggles that have brought the party to its knees in Mayo.
Beverley’s skills as a politician, a vote getter, an advocate for her constituents and an effective worker have been sorely tested over the past few years. They have not been found wanting. But the skills she will most need now are those of peacemaking, rebuilding, leading and persuading others to join her again under the Fianna Fáil banner.
There is, it would seem, enough goodwill there for that to happen. And if it does, then a Beverly Flynn with a strong and effective voice in government can only be good for Mayo and the west.

The Vatican pimpernel
He was one of the most colourful Irish churchmen of his time. His exploits read like something out of a James Bond novel. He saved thousands of allied escapees from certain death at the hands of the Nazis. And he caused endless trauma for po-faced Irish diplomats whose constant priority was to distance themselves from the maverick priest.
He was Kerry-born Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty. He worked in Rome during the war and used his contacts and influence in the Vatican to spirit away to safety the allied prisoners of war, the Jews and the hunted who were escaping Nazi torture.
Now his life story has been told in a new book ‘The Vatican Pimpernel’, by Brian Fleming. The book puts into print the courage and ingenuity of the priest – a story that has already been told in the film, ‘The Scarlet and the Black’, in which Gregory Peck played the part of Monsignor O’Flaherty.
A senior official in the Vatican Curia, Monsignor O’Flaherty was devoted to the cause of freedom from the Nazi regime that was destroying Europe. He showed great personal bravery in harbouring and then organising the escape of thousands whose fate at the hands of the Nazis would have been certain death. O’Flaherty set up a network of safe houses and refuges in monasteries and convents, sometimes organised with the connivance of the British diplomatic services, saving many from the clutches of the Nazis.
Ironically, O’Flaherty’s exploits were a permanent source of potential embarrassment to the Irish government. The country’s official policy was one of neutrality, and the government had no wish to be part of the derring-do of the flamboyant monsignor. As a result, his courage and valour have never been recognised at home, even though the British gave him a CBE for ‘Services to our forces in Italy’,  the Americans gave him a US Medal of Freedom and the Italians gave him a silver medal for valour.
Particularly amusing, however, are the reports of near-apoplexy induced in senior Irish diplomatic circles in Rome by the flamboyant O’Flaherty. Michael McWhite, accredited Irish representative to Italy, was obliged to complain on many occasions to the Department of External Affairs in Dublin about O’Flaherty’s decidedly non-neutral behaviour.
“It will not surprise me if O’Flaherty finds himself in a concentration camp one of these days,” he wrote. “A period there might develop in him a sense of proportion and responsibility.”
What annoyed McWhite particularly was that the other Irish Ambassador in Rome – Dr TJ Kiernan, who was accredited to the Vatican – seemed happy to bend the rules as far as he could in order to accommodate the monsignor. But, as the book reminds us, there was a very good reason for that as well.
Dr Kiernan’s wife, the Mayo born ballad singer Delia Murphy, was O’Flaherty’s right-hand woman. She took repeated risks, quite inappropriate to her status as an ambassador’s spouse, to help O’Flaherty – risks that would certainly have cost her husband his job if they were discovered. However, Delia Murphy was as persuasive as she was feisty, and Dr Kiernan found himself drawn into many a subterfuge that ran counter to his own natural caution as a diplomat.
McWhite, meanwhile, continued to be driven to near-distraction by the antics of the Kerry priest.
“This man has a mania for publicity,” he complained, “and the newspapers here are full of stories about an Irish monsignor who is making a fool of the Nazis…The implications are that he is the agent of the British Minister to the Holy See, if not one of his spies. It will hardly get him much sympathy in the Holy Office.”
Unperturbed, and aided by the rebellious Delia, O’Flaherty continued to utilise his network of contacts and friendships to save countless lives, all the while never getting the recognition at home that he so richly earned.