Make up your mind time

Yes, no and maybe

County View
John Healy

When Micheál Martin flew off to Brussels two days after we had given the red card to the Lisbon Treaty, he was half-expecting to see the door locked in his face and his belongings in a suitcase out on the footpath. Or so many of us thought.
But that’s not the way things are done in the world of diplomacy and top level shoulder-rubbing between Europe’s top people. No, indeed, and to Minister Martin’s relief – he being the first to have to face the music – it was all gestures of understanding,  murmurings of sympathy, supportive nods of reassurance, as his European counterparts showed that politeness is all-important, even when the pill is bitter.
Not so, however, among the rank and file. Irish staff members of the EU in Brussels were given an earful by their colleagues whose indignation at seeing seven years’ work on Lisbon go down the tubes was palpable. The Irish had ‘let the side down’, and the Irish political establishment was roundly criticised for not doing enough, early enough, to counter the ‘No’ campaign.
A string of website comments gave a flavour of what the average, tax-paying Europeans were thinking of the Irish rejection. “Pay back the money and leave the EU,” was the terse message of one Dutch citizen. “How ironic; Ireland, the biggest net receiver of EU money, votes against the EU…Bunch of ungrateful dogs,” said another. And an obviously upset Dane berated us: “Irresponsible, narrow-sighted, ignorant people. Perhaps you should go back to the bad old days when you didn’t even have enough potatoes to eat. We, the previously rich countries of the EU, have fed you for 30 years, and what do we get for that? A NO to the outside world. Start co-operating and stop destroying the lives of hundreds and millions of hardworking Europeans.”
And a fellow Dane wrote: “Like a spoilt child, Ireland refuses to pay back what she got from Europe. We should have left you poor back in the ‘80s.”
But not all comments were as hostile or as negative. From Austria to Spain, France to Germany came messages of support from citizens who felt disenfranchised, and who looked to Ireland to bring the Eurocracy down to earth.But what message does Ireland bring back to the EU on foot of the referendum result? Or is it a case of not one simple message, but a whole plethora of messages, depending on who you talk to? And why were the main political parties, working as one, unable to turn out the Yes vote they had advocated?
Some commentators, even locally, have begun to cast doubts on Enda Kenny’s leadership because he was unable to turn his huge general election support into support for theTtreaty. Such speculation is well wide of the mark. Fine Gael people in Mayo voted No to Lisbon not to make life difficult for the party leader, but to make it uncomfortable for Taoiseach Cowen. As one prominent Fine Gael figure in Castlebar, a former elected representative, was heard to say two weeks before polling: “Why would a Fine Gael supporter want to go out and make things easy for Brian Cowen?”The other great unpredictable was the farming vote, and the back-firing of the Taoiseach’s last-minute capitulation on the veto in the hope of bringing the farmers around. The farmers outwitted Brian Cowen, they pushed him into publicly conceding to their demands, and then they promptly turned round and gave Fianna Fáil a hefty kick in the rear end.
Whether the Taoiseach will have the stomach to run the race all over again, and to risk a second humiliation at the hands of an unpredictable electorate, is another day’s work.

LOW STANDARDS AT RTÉ
I have been trying to decide, these past few days, whether it is that we have lost all sense of moral outrage, or just that nobody listens to RTÉ Radio One on a Sunday night.
For the sake of standards of decency, I hope it is the latter.
On Sunday evening last, on a long drive home, I happened to catch the last five minutes of Sunday Playhouse. And five minutes of that night’s offering – a play called The Shepherd – was five minutes too many.
The theme of the play was degenerate, and the language was coarse, crude, vulgar and offensive beyond belief.
It may have been a case of RTÉ pushing out the boundaries as far as they can go, or simply a case of the station bosses not being bothered to check in advance whether a programme might breach common decency. And maybe it wasn’t a new low at all in RTÉ broadcasting standards – maybe it’s the norm, and I haven’t been listening in often enough.
There are programmes so bereft of any real merit that their only function is to shock.
The Shepherd was one such. But it’s one offering that the national broadcaster cannot feel proud of.

CHANGING THE BOUNDARIES
The proposed shake-up of the electoral areas for next year’s Mayo County Council  election will see Ballinrobe, as predicted, lose its status and be assimilated back into the Claremorris area.
Not good news for the current Ballinrobe trio of Damian Ryan, Patsy O’Brien and Harry Walsh, who will have an uphill battle to hold their seats.
At present count the combined Claremorris/Ballinrobe representation is seven (four plus three).
That now is being reduced to six, meaning at the very least that one outgoing councillor is due to walk the plank.
Castlebar, on the other hand, goes from six to seven, a piece of news to be welcomed particularly by Michael Kilcoyne who, running as an independent, came to within an inch of taking a seat last time out.
The present representation is three Fine Gael (Henry Kenny, Cyril Burke and Paddy McGuinness); two Fianna Fáil (Sean Bourke and Al McDonnell), and the Labour seat held by Johnny Mee.
All six have good reason to breathe a little easier, especially Al McDonnell who sees a good wedge of electoral support coming back from Ballinrobe into the Castlebar area.
But if Kilcoyne had designs on what will be the seventh Castlebar seat, he won’t have it all his own way. Fianna Fáil, still smarting from losing its Mayo County Council majority in 2004, will be hoping to even matters with Fine Gael by increasing its Castlebar representation by one. And with Blackie Gavin serving due notice of his intentions to win a County Council seat, this prospect looks a distinct probability. Gavin has already proved his status as a huge vote-getter at Town Council level.
It won’t take too much for him to expand his base a little and hit the target for the County Council seat.
Elsewhere, the most telling changes will be the transfer of a portion of Newport to the Belmullet Electoral Area, leaving Frank Chambers with an unenviable choice.
Will he continue to run in the Westport area, albeit losing a valuable wedge of votes to Belmullet, or will he follow the votes and opt to run this time in Belmullet, or, indeed, will he put his name forward in both electoral areas?Ballina with six seats, and Westport and Swinford with four each, remain the same, although with some boundary adjustments in order to keep within the requirements of representation.
The total of County Council seats remain at 31, but the big question will be how the chairs will be filled when the dust settles after June 2009.