23^rd January 2012 at 6pm

Oireachtas colleagues, Ambassadors, Ladies and Gentlemen

Allied soldiers arrived at the gates of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp sixty seven years ago this week, that is, on the 27^th January 1945.  It had become the largest graveyard of the Jewish people in history.  An estimated 1.1 to 1.3 million people were exterminated there,  90% of them Jewish men, women and children. Others exterminated included Roma families, people with disabilities, homosexuals, prisoners of conscience and religious faith.

Nothing could prepare the camp’s liberators for what they witnessed in Auschwitz. The remnants of the gas chambers and the crematoria; the mounds of bodies; the stench of death; the piles of clothes; of teeth; of childrens’ shoes and barely living skeletal survivors; the speaking bones who greeted their arrival.  By the war’s end, it was estimated that 6 million Jews had been exterminated by the Nazi killing machine in pursuit of the objective of a Judenfrei world.  If Hitler had achieved his objectives no Jewish community in Europe would have been exempt from the Nazi slaughter, not even those  resident in neutral Ireland.  In Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, a map of Europe prepared by Adolf Eichmann, one of the main architects of the extermination policy, includes the estimated 4,000 members of the then Irish Jewish community targeted for extermination.  Clearly, had Germany succeeded in invading Britain, our proclaimed war time neutrality would have provided no protection for the small Irish Jewish community nor presented any real barrier to a German invasion.  

It is of vital importance that we and future generations remember and learn from the horrors of the past to ensure they are not repeated in the future.  In his book “The Drowned and the Saved”  Primo Levi writes “human memory is a marvellous but fallacious instrument. This is a threadbare truth, known not only to psychologists but also to anyone who has paid attention to the behaviour of those who surround him or even to his own behaviour.  The memories which lie within us are not carved in stone;  not only do they tend to become erased as the years go by, but often they change or even increase by incorporating extraneous features.”

Despite everything witnessed, the accounts of survivors and the voluminous records maintained by Germany itself of the Nazi killing machine and the many Holocaust Memorials and museums worldwide, there are now too many in Europe who know very little of the horrors perpetrated in the second quarter of the last century and far too many in the State of Israel’s neighbours in the volatile Middle East engaged in Holocaust denial.  Again in the words of Primo Levi “the further events fade into the past, the more the construction of convenient truth grows and is perfected.”  

As the years pass by and the remaining survivors of the Nazi horror who can tell the story firsthand reduce in number, it becomes more important than ever that we keep alive the shocking memory of the Holocaust. It is crucial that we never forget what happened or diminish the scale of the horror that was perpetrated by the Nazi regime.  This important exhibition, which will continue for the next three weeks and which I am privileged to open this evening, is an important contribution to raising awareness of the Holocaust.  The Holocaust Education Trust Ireland has worked with Mémorial de la Shoah in Paris and the French Embassy in Ireland to bring this exhibition to Dublin and I am particularly pleased to host the exhibition in the Department of Justice and Equality.  I would like to extend a very warm welcome to Luc Levy who works with the Mémorial de la Shoah, the producers of this exhibition and to the French Ambassador, Madame Emmanuelle D’Achon. I would also like to extend a warm welcome to Boaz Modai, the Israeli Ambassador, who represents a State which provided refuge and a home for tens of thousands of Jewish people following the horrors of the Second World War.  

The timing of this exhibition has been arranged to coincide with Ireland’s 10^th National Holocaust Memorial Day commemoration which will take place this coming Sunday, the 29th January. This commemoration event, which is now firmly established in the Irish national calendar, has been supported by my Department since 2003 and I am very pleased to be in a position to continue that support.  Exhibitions such as this; Holocaust Memorial Day Commemorations and the work of the Holocaust Education Trust in Ireland are all excellent examples of what can be done to raise awareness of the Holocaust.  

I am also pleased that Ireland became a full member of the International Task Force on Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research in December 2011.  This Task Force is a voice of moral authority on the international stage in raising awareness about the Holocaust and can help address the dynamics that we know precede mass killings and genocide.

The importance of this exhibition is that it provides a global view of the Holocaust in Europe, starting with the growth of the Nazi movement, through the different stages of the persecution, inhumane treatment and extermination of millions of Jews, up to the Nuremburg Trials.  It also gives a picture of both the political and military reactions of a number of States to this tragedy which included disinterest of some nations toward the fate of the Jews and looks at reactions at an individual level including Jewish resistance and the Righteous among Nations.

It is difficult to comprehend how a society could have allowed such unimaginable atrocities to occur.  We must remember that the Holocaust did not occur in a vacuum.  These acts of evil emerged in one of the more modern and sophisticated societies of the era.  

Tools and advances made toward human progress were used for human destruction.  Scientific and medical advances designed to heal and save lives were used to kill.  Education which should enlighten was used to justify grotesquely immoral actions.  People made choices. Some chose to be involved in some way in the destruction, others chose to do and say nothing, while some chose to resist the evil and do the right thing to support, protect and save the persecuted.

An inconvenient truth is that those who chose to do and say nothing during this unprecedented period in European history include this State.  In the period following Hitler coming to power and preceding the Second World War, the doors of this State were kept firmly closed to German Jewish families trying to flee from persecution and death.  The advice of the anti-Semitic then Irish Ambassador in Berlin, Charles Bewley, that Ireland should be protected from the contamination that would result from granting residential visas to Jewish refugees resulted in practically all visa requests being refused.   This position was maintained from 1939 to 1945 and we should no longer be in denial that, in the context of the Holocaust, Irish neutrality was a principle of moral bankruptcy.  This moral bankruptcy was compounded by the then Irish Government who, after the war, only allowed an indefensibly small number who survived the concentration camps to settle permanently in Ireland whilst refusing entry and permanent residence to many more and also by the visit of President De Valera to then German Ambassador Eduard Hempel in 1945 to express his condolences on the death of Hitler. At a time when neutrality should have ceased to be an issue the Government of this State utterly lost its moral compass.  

So, in understanding the Holocaust and maintaining its memory, in ensuring that the conditions which allow such evil to flourish to such devastating consequences can never again prevail, we should not forget or ignore the failures of this State and this State’s responsibility for such failures.  John Bruton, as Taoiseach, in the Spring of 1995, acknowledged our State’s failures and honoured the memory of those millions of European Jews who died in the Holocaust.  When doing so, he acknowledged that the Holocaust “was not the product of an alien culture. It happened in Europe in living memory. It was a product of intolerance, bigotry and a distorted concept of nationalism.”  In the midst of the ongoing fiscal and banking crisis that currently impacts on the nations of Europe, including our State, we should never lose sight of the extraordinary contribution of the European Union in providing the political architecture for peace and stability in Europe.  As Europeans we must all ensure that in addressing vital issues of immediate concern that affect the lives of tens of millions, it is the European ideals of peace, cooperation and solidarity and not extreme nationalism nor narrow domestic political concerns which motivate our actions.

It is appropriate that we revisit the morality of the conduct of our State during the 1930s and 40s, whilst of course being conscious of the fact that only a short time earlier, we had regained our independence from Britain and there was an understandable concern by Government to ensure, insofar as possible, political stability on this island at a time of global conflict.  However, there were questionable things both done and not done and we should not be in denial nor should we ignore that the conduct of our State, at that time, in the eyes of some, delimits Ireland’s moral authority and credibility when today we seek to lecture later generations of those whose families survived the Holocaust on the conduct of their affairs in Israel, without regard to the extent to which they believe themselves under existential threat.

When viewing this exhibition no one should assume that what happened in the past cannot be repeated in the future. The truth is we should pay greater attention to the dead. We must never forget the lessons of the past when we make, or urge others to make, decisions which impact on the future.   We should never ignore the extent to which their past impacts on their perception of the present and fuels their fears of the future or causes them to question the judgement of others.  

For well over a decade, we have commemorated and paid tribute to the estimated 10,000 Irish people who died in British uniforms during the Second World War. Many who fought in British uniforms during that War returned to Ireland. For too many years, their contribution in preserving European and Irish democracy was ignored. Some of those include members of our Defence Forces who left this island during that time to fight for freedom and who were subsequently dishonourably discharged from the Defence Forces.  I believe it is also appropriate that we revisit the manner in which they were treated whilst also remembering that those who served in our Defence Forces throughout that time performed a crucial national duty.  It is untenable that we commemorate those who died whilst continuing to ignore the manner in which our State treated the living, in the period immediately after World War II, who returned to our State having fought for freedom and democracy. This is an issue to which I hope to return in my role as Minister for Defence later this year.

In conclusion, I would like to take this opportunity to thank Lynn Jackson and her colleagues in the Holocaust Education Trust Ireland for their continued important work.

I would particularly like to commend the Crocus Project, which encourages national school children to plant yellow crocus bulbs in memory of the 1.5 million  Jewish  children  and  thousands of other children who died in the Holocaust.  This Irish initiative has now been extended to the UK, Croatia, Poland, Malta, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic.   I am delighted that my Department actively supported the Holocaust Education Trust Ireland in initiatives such as the Crocus Project, the production of the Holocaust Timeline and Teachers Handbook as well as the development of other educational, research and raising awareness materials.

I would also like to express our sincere gratitude to ‘our survivors’, who give so generously of their time to recount their personal stories to our children in schools around the country.  

I know that there are teachers here this evening as well and I would like to acknowledge their contribution to teaching our children about the Holocaust, about the dangers of racism and the importance of respect, equality and integration.

Congratulations to all those involved in organising this excellent and informative exhibition and I wish it every success.

Anyway, Minister of State Cannon was on RTE’s “Frontline” last night. He was on his own (where was the Cabinet?)  There was nobody else who shared his perspective. The audience was mainly composed of public sector workers, most of whom lambasted him and his government over the effects of the early retirement scheme.

No doubt these effects are serious enough. No one would wish to underplay them. There is a counter-argument that, to coin a phrase, “we are where we are” and the public finances urgently need to be put in order.

Cannon got it hot and heavy from the most of those who spoke in the audience. It was like watching a kid in the schoolyard with a crowd ganging-up on him.

Then Sinn Fein’s Mary Lou McDonald had a go from the panel. Mary Lou has come on a lot and is now one of the more effective opposion speakers in the Dail. Sinn Fein are having a ball with the cuts and the austerity. Now and then, someone in government timidly and in a quavering voice points to similar exercises being carried out in the North where SF are in government, but by and large the ”Shinners” have free rein and they are making the most of  it. Shades of the current government parties when they were in opposition!

At any rate, it eventually came to Cannon’s time to speak on the programme. Where others would have been seriously rattled, he kept his cool. He answered in clinical, logical terms. Then there was another round of lambasting. As individuals, the speakers were rational and composed, for the most part: it was the cumulative effect that was disturbing. But the junior minister still didn’t get rattled under all the Cannonfire.

Can’t say I share Cannon’s perspective or outlook and I don’t really see the need for so many junior ministers, but you have to hand it to the guy. He was a Christian among the lions (maybe that should be the other way around) and he kept his version of the  faith.

Taoiseach Enda Kennyis due to arrive here at about 1pm local time for the latest attempt by the EU’s alchemists to magic away the eurozone crisis.

On a practical level, the fiscal compact, if its text is agreed later this evening, will not make a huge amount of difference to Ireland, in the short run. Sure, the debt brake of 0.5 per cent of GDP will necessitate a futher round of awful austerity measures.  It’s like a struggling runner in the marathon coming up the 20-mile wall and being told: oh, by the way, you will be required to run another marathon, and possibly two, the moment after you finish this one!

What do we get in return? A decade of austerity. Very likely. A decade where we will to do no more than gouge at the margins of our unemployment problem? Probably? And the tragedy is that there will be intergenerational cleavage – parents well before retirement age being the bed-blockers preventing their own kids from gaining employment. There is a cogent argument that too much austerity stick and not enough stimulus carrot will actually exacerbate – and not reduce – the debt. The argument is that if you prune the tree too much, it withers rather than regrows. And that is the case that Spain is making at the moment – that with an unemployment level in the 20s, it cannot sustain any more cuts because that will lead to greater depression and a  kind of vortex effect.

There’s a lot of stuff (and guff) spoken about growth and jobs’ strategies. But very few of them seem anything more graspable than vague words and platitudes. All the stuff we hear about training and upskilling and reorientation is all very well but the programmes are so modest (and so poorly financed) that they will make a difference for (at most) a few thousand people (and that’s out of 400,000 on the dole queues).

My own opinion for some time is that most people are focusing on the bank bonds and the 2008 guarantee as if they were the cause of all our problems. They were part of the problems but were also the symptoms – like a botched operation on a serious ailment.

Enda Kenny was loose and foolish with his comments in Davos last week when he more or less said everybody went mad with borrowing. He was correct in so far as some (and more than we care to admit) people went mad and overextended themselves. My colleague Colm Keena had an excellent piece on Saturday showing how credit card debt exploded in the decade after 1996. I remember getting my first credit card around that time. It had a strict £500 spending limit on it. Five or six years later, I was getting letters from banks and finance companies, offering credit limits of €20,000, with a minimum of vetting.

People got duped by the whole property thing. And some duped themselves. When you removed property from the equation, Ireland had moved up the ladder since the 1980s but at a far more modest pace that any of us would admit. And the readjustment to that level will be very painful.

Morally, it’s unconscionable that we have to shoulder the debts of the banks and of the speculators. But we are also on the hook collectively for the debts (though to a much smaller extent admittedly) to debts of people who got carried away and overextended themselves.

But we dont’ have a choice. The ECB said no and that was that. Successive governments have been too timorous when it came to facing down Frankfurt. Indeed, Morgan Kelly had the best line on it when he said all Ireland was doing was rolling around on our back so that our European paymasters could tickle us in the tummy for being so obedient and following every command.

The problem with the alternative scenario is that nobody knows where it will bring us. Would it be a credit event that would pass almost unnoticed or would it start flipping over all the other precarious dominos that hold the whole of the European banking system together? Nobody has been able to give an authoritative answer to that and that’s why it has not been tried.

And our great prize? Well Kenny and Michael Noonan have been telling us (in a few different ways) that they are banging on doors to get concessions on the infamous Anglo Irsh Bank promissory note. The loan is for €30bn but the interest rates were hammered out before we went into the bailout programme so they are exorbitant (almsot €17bn).

This has been the focus of the Government’s efforts since last September. When the troika came to town earlier this month, Noonan signalled some kind of a breakthrough (a joint paper being prepared by the Troika). Does it mean we will get some slack? For guidance, refer to the New Testament and its notes on the Second Coming. It may happen, but it’s not going to happen anytime soon. The only way can be through some leeway that will come via a wider EU deal.

In any instance, as snow falls outside , the fiscal compact will be agreed later this evening. What it will amount to is a survival guide for traveling through the tundra we have become stranded in.

If they ever make a film about Enda Kenny, who would play the leading role? There must be an actor who can bring our Taoiseach to life on screen, as Meryl Streep is doing with Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady.

For those who haven’t yet seen the movie, the former British prime minister is shown mainly in dementia-ridden old age, holding imaginary conversations with her late husband, Denis.

It’s odd to feel sorry for such a ruthless politician, but the device is a cruel one, especially since the subject is still living. Presumably it is intended to give a new twist to Thatcher’s life story, since her biographical details are so widely known.

The market for a film about the life of a contemporary Irish politician would be limited, but it could be an arthouse success.

Although Colm Meaney backed Martin McGuinness for the presidency, he would do a good job as Kenny, but he would need to apply a bottle of peroxide to his hair. Likewise, Brendan Gleeson shows in The Guard that, despite his Dublin background, he has a talent for west of Ireland roles.

One is told that, in some British cinemas, cheering breaks out when Thatcher orders the sinking of the Belgrano , with the loss of 323 lives, during the Falklands war with Argentina. Charlie Haughey’s rejection of that harsh action was one of the few times he had a national consensus behind him.

There isn’t a lot to cheer about just yet in the narrative of Enda Kenny’s term as head of government. He has the misfortune to be in power at a time when, as Financial Times journalist Philip Stephens put it this week, “presidents and prime ministers more closely resemble victims than masters”.

Kenny has some major difficulties to overcome, especially on the European stage. In his time, Éamon de Valera negotiated a neutral path between Britain and Germany, and there are some parallels with the course Enda Kenny is pursuing nowadays, although the Germans, thankfully, have a different form of government nowadays.

The Taoiseach has to keep London and David Cameron sweet while at the same time be seen to dance vigorously to the tune of our EU paymasters. It is no easy task.

The normally ebullient Kenny was unusually subdued at the recent British-Irish Council summit in Dublin Castle and a study in low-key neutrality at the press conference afterwards.

Small wonder he was minding his Ps and Qs. He had UK deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, sitting on his right and Scotland’s first minister, Alex Salmond, to his left. Only a few hours earlier on Morning Ireland , Salmond had accused the Cameron-Clegg government of “bullying” over the referendum on devolution and Scottish independence.

Questioned as to whether he believed Scotland should take its place among the nations of the Earth, Kenny was masterful in his hands-off, nothing-to-do-with-me-guv disengagement. It was reminiscent of a Mayo supporter watching a Gaelic football match between Dublin and Meath.

Yet Scottish independence would have huge implications for this island. Stormont First Minister Peter Robinson spelled out in detail the concern felt among the unionist population in the North at the prospect of their Caledonian cousins cutting loose from the mother ship.

With the population trend north of the Border moving in favour of the nationalists, Robinson’s concern is understandable. A smaller United Kingdom without the Scottish dimension would be, to adapt David Trimble’s famous phrase, a cold house for Northern Ireland unionists.

Perhaps Scotland will not opt for full independence but it is certainly moving to a different place politically.

Alex Salmond quoted our own Charles Stewart Parnell: “No man has the right to fix the boundary to the march of a nation.”

There is a bust of Parnell in the “Garden Room” of Leinster House. Now there was a man whose career was full of high drama, but a biopic starring Clark Gable proved a flop.

Parnell would have understood the political context in which Alex Salmond is operating (as well as smiling perhaps at being quoted in Dublin Castle), but what would he have made of the circumstances in which Enda Kenny finds himself? The entire fabric of the State has been put in jeopardy by the banking crisis and the property bubble, and our hard-won sovereignty lies in the balance. And to think Scotland used to regard us as a role model.

As the prospect of a restrictive fiscal compact looms at European level, Kenny must decide, with the advice of the Attorney General, whether or not to have a referendum on Irish participation in the new set-up.

The late Kader Asmal, the Trinity College Dublin lecturer who applied the lessons of Irish history to ending the apartheid regime in South Africa, liked to say that “law is nothing more than congealed politics”. Referendums are a fascinating crossroads between the legal and political.

Judging from an RTÉ report during the week, Brussels is getting impatient to know the Government’s intentions on the fiscal treaty: will it be put to popular vote in Ireland?

There is a school of thought that a referendum should be held, even if it is not deemed necessary in legal terms. The purpose would be to ensure popular consent for the proposals. Given the caution in our political culture, that seems an unlikely decision.

Alex Salmond, on the other hand, is gung-ho for a referendum in Scotland. If the Taoiseach chose to consult the voters, regardless of the legal advice, it would make for great drama and would certainly feature in the script for Enda: The Movie .

There is something of a mood-change going on at the moment. The message that austerity isn’t working is beginning to gain traction.

Meanwhile, the Coalition is looking more and more like its predecessor every day. A European referendum could be just the opportunity people are seeking to send a shot across the bows of the Government.

One of  the hazards of political journalism is the never-ending torrent of emails that find their way to your inbox. Some are more interesting than others and you learn to be grateful at times for the “delete” option.

However, a message that arrived in recent weeks stood out from the rest. The heading was a clarion-call: “Democracy now in danger – who runs our country?”

The substance of it was that elected governments have been shunted aside in Greece and Italy at the behest of “European monopoly big-business interests” and even the Irish budget documents were made available to the Bundestag ahead of the Dáil.

So who were these eloquent advocates of parliamentary democracy? None other than the Communist Party of Ireland, long-time stout defenders of one-party regimes in the former Soviet Union and its satellites.

Still, as the saying goes, “the Devil can quote scripture”. If the party has been converted to the views of the Polish-German radical Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919), who vainly sought to persuade Lenin of the need for free elections in Bolshevik Russia, then so much the better.

The democratic system is often taken for granted. It is not generally realised that little Ireland is one of the oldest democracies in the world. Nor is it widely appreciated that, at a time when some of our current European partners such as Germany, Italy and Spain were fascist dictatorships, the flag of democracy still fluttered in the breeze over this small state.

The late Conor Cruise O’Brien once wrote that, for all its flaws, Ireland was “a fairly decent little democracy”. More pride should be taken in that heritage and it should be guarded jealously when it comes under threat. A lot of people, most of them young and idealistic, died in the process of creating the sovereign democracy now enjoyed, at least on paper.

Sadly, much of our economic sovereignty has been lost in the current crisis. The prevailing view is that this is a necessary sacrifice to get through hard times. There is another perspective: “burn the bondholders” and make our own way in the world. Whatever side one takes in this argument, there are other aspects of the situation that need to be addressed. If the democratic framework is to avoid serious damage in the current difficulties, certain issues have to be tackled.

One of them is inequality. Nationalists and republicans in the North have long advocated “parity of esteem” but on this side of the Border “parity of pain” is needed. Virtually the entire population has made sacrifices to ensure the ship of state stays afloat. Yet there is still a sense of entitlement in some quarters, among those who appear impervious to the feelings of the wider community.

The upper reaches of the financial sector are a case in point. You would have thought that having contributed so much to the present woes, top bankers and financiers would have acquired a certain humility but still one reads of colossal salaries being paid out. Just who do these people think they are?

The idea of a maximum wage or salary for individuals may be crude but it does indicate the general approach that needs to be taken. The figure does not need to be all that low – let’s say € 120,000 per annum – indexed to inflation of course. That should be adequate for anyone’s needs. As the great American writer Jack London observed, “You can only eat one porterhouse steak a day”. And wasn’t it Éamon de Valera who said in the 1930s that nobody was worth more than a thousand pounds a year?

The Occupy Dame Street protesters have pitched their tents on the plaza outside the Central Bank where a sign proclaimed it Ireland’s “Tahrir Square” in honour of the Egyptian demonstrators seeking to bring democracy to their country. Who knows, we may yet see an “Irish Spring” to match its Arab counterpart? There is a business maxim that goes “never waste a crisis”, and the same motto should be applied to the political system.

It has been rightly said that the test of any society is the way it treats its older members. In that respect, the debacle-cum-farce of the pensioners’ taxation controversy does not reflect well on anybody. The Revenue Commissioners at least have apologised for a lack of sensitivity. One can only imagine the anguish inflicted on senior citizens upon receiving a letter out of the blue from the taxation authorities, with all the dire scenarios conjured up.

The Government has taken an arm’s length approach. Nothing to do with us, we can’t interfere with the Revenue – perish the thought. This administration is far more adept at staying out of trouble than its predecessor but in this instance it has been too clever by half. Instead of preparing pensioners for the impending unpleasantness, our elected rulers left it to the tax-collectors to break the news. Age should not be a shield against paying one’s fair share of tax but at least our elders ought to have been given the courtesy of proper advance warning.

Meanwhile, only 10 out of an estimated 440 very wealthy Irish “tax exiles” paid anything towards the €200,000 levy imposed upon them by the late Brian Lenihan. These are rich Irish citizens who are domiciled in the State but declare themselves non-resident for tax purposes. The average payment was only €147,000 each – the reduction came from exemptions and write-offs.

Michael Noonan said after the budget that alternative approaches were being considered because there are “different ways of skinning a cat”. The same subtleties will not be applied to older people who are resident for tax purposes – some of whom will simply find themselves “skint”.

It is one of the strengths of this society that, despite all the cutbacks and impositions in recent times, social solidarity has held more or less firm, but a perception of unfairness puts that precious commodity in jeopardy. Let’s not lose our democracy along with our purses and wallets.

As expected there is a mountain of documentation on the Maze/Long Kesh hunger-strike. I have already filed a post on this issue but it is worth taking a second bite at the cherry.

The first thing that should be said is this: Hunger-striking is a deadly and fearsome act. You damage yourself and bring pain to all your loved ones. It is not something to be embarked upon lightly. It is generally accepted that even the IRA leadership did not want their associates in the H-Blocks to set out on that fateful fast. Hunger-striking is an action that is very hard to justify under most circumstances.

The Long Kesh hunger-strike was somewhat different from other such fasts one has read about. The prisoners were not being oppressed in the normal sense, as conditions appear to have been good for conforming inmates. The problem here was the denial/withdrawal of political status, exemplified primarily in the right to wear one’s own clothes at all times.

There was a document in the Irish archive about a senior Vatican diplomat expressing wonderment to a British representative that Her Majesty’s Government would not allow the prisoners to wear what they liked. What was the big deal?

Perhaps it was a reflection of the obsession with status in British society which was then mirrored by a counter-obsession on the part of  the prisoners.

There has been controversy over the visit by Father John Magee, the Pope’s Secretary, to Bobby Sands, shortly before the IRA prisoner died.  An internal British document – the claim is also reported in the Irish archive – tells us Fr Magee informed the British Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Humphrey Atkins, that Sands was prepared to suspend his fast for five days to allow direct negotiations.

The reaction of republicans has been shock and denial. They insist their friend Bobby would never have offered a concession like that. But what’s the big deal?

Sands was insisting on fellow-prisoners being present (IRA commanders in the Maze), the document states. So that bit of what one might call republican protocol was being preserved. He would have had direct negotiations with the British – a major propaganda coup. Even if the talks fell through, he would still have emerged a winner and might even have come through the whole thing alive. As an aside, one can say that a person of his determination and strong will could have made a significant contribution to the peace process and subsequent political developments.

Fr Magee gave what amounted to an order from the Pope of Rome that Sands should give up his fast. That has to have made a strong impression on a young Belfast Catholic, unversed in the ways of the world and in a very weak state physically. It is amazing that he did not obey.

But it may have been as a concession to the head of his church – a personage regarded as infallible in matters of faith and morals – that he offered to suspend his fast in return for direct talks.

Atkins turned down the offer. HMG could not be seen to be in direct public talks with an IRA man. Status again.

Yet we know that the British were in direct contact with senior republicans through the later-to-be-famous Michael Oatley. We know that even Margaret Thatcher was not as hardline in private as she proclaimed herself in public.

There was a serious lack of trust, arising from the previous hunger-strike of 1980 where the prisoners thought they had won the right to wear their own clothes but, in fact, were offered “civilian-type” clothing. The republicans were all over the place and pretty confused, judging from the documents. Securing Red Cross or European Commission of Human Rights intervention would have been an international propaganda victory; haggling over any issue other than clothing was essentially irrelevant.

There is controversy, too, over last-minute contacts between the British and the republicans shortly before Joe McDonnell died in early July. A row has been going on for years now as to whether or not the republican leadership turned down an offer that was acceptable to the prisoners, so that Sinn Fein’s Owen Carron would retain the Westminster seat won by Bobby Sands. This argument will probably never  be settled, as there are differing political perspectives as well as contrasting versions of events involved.

Now we have the Boston College imbroglio. Republican and loyalist activists gave interviews about their past deeds on the basis that these would not be published in their lifetimes. This promise now appears to have proven unsustainable, at least in the case of one interviewee.

The past may be another country but we keep making involuntary visits there.

THOSE WHO do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it. In that spirit, hopefully, our leaders and their advisers will find time to peruse the reports of the 1981 State Papers, released to public view today under the 30-year rule.

It was, of course, the year when a hunger strike at the Maze Prison, Long Kesh, brought turmoil north and south of the Border. For anyone alive at the time, it will be painful to relive the experience; for those who did not have to endure those stark days and months, it will be an eye-opener to read about them.

As bad as our political situation may appear now, it was far worse then. Not alone were there serious economic problems, but violence and killing were occurring constantly in the Northern part of the island.

The award-winning 2008 film Hunger, starring Kerry actor Michael Fassbender, conveys to a new generation the drama and squalor of that prison fast to the death by 10 men whose average age was 25. They were in their teens when the North erupted in 1969.

In addition to these self-inflicted deaths, there were many other fatalities arising from the Troubles that year: republicans were responsible for 74 of these; loyalists killed 14 and the security forces, 17. One of the most shocking, because of its almost casual nature, was the killing of part-time census-taker Joanne Mathers (25), a Protestant mother of one. She was shot in the head by a gunman in Derry as she helped a householder fill in the census form.

There was nothing casual about the hunger strike, which was a carefully planned and prepared act of war. On Day Three of his fast, Bobby Sands told Irish Times journalist Brendan Ó Cathaoir that he expected to die for the principle of political status.

Rejecting the Catholic Church’s moral strictures against hunger striking, he said: “If I die, God will understand.” He added that it was a personal decision to go on the fast. The archives indicate that he rejected an order from Pope John Paul II to call off the protest.

A week before the hunger striker died – according to an internal British memo passed on to the government in Dublin – the pope’s secretary, Fr John Magee (more recently and controversially bishop of Cloyne) delivered a personal message from the pontiff “telling Mr Sands that it was his duty to stop”.

Although then British prime minister Margaret Thatcher took a very hard line publicly against granting the hunger strikers’ demands, the British government appeared to adopt a more conciliatory approach in private.

Charles Haughey was in power for the first six months of 1981 before being ousted in a general election by Garret FitzGerald at the head of a Fine Gael-Labour coalition. As taoiseach, Haughey persuaded Marcella Sands, a sister of the hunger striker, to make an application to the European Commission of Human Rights to intervene in the crisis.

The following day, British ambassador Leonard Figg personally delivered a message from his government to the Department of the Taoiseach welcoming such an intervention. In the event, Bobby Sands refused through his lawyer, the late Pat Finucane, to see commission representatives unless republican leaders were in attendance. This was not acceptable and the initiative collapsed.

When FitzGerald became taoiseach on June 30th, he also got involved in efforts to avert the deaths of further prisoners.

He backed a sustained attempt to achieve a settlement by the Catholic hierarchy’s Commission for Justice and Peace. But this was stymied by a curious British decision to enter parallel behind-the-scenes negotiations with republican leaders.

The two channels fell foul of one another, but the FitzGerald government continued its efforts. On July 21st, with six prisoners dead, government press secretary Liam Hourican argued internally for a sharp public critique of the British government for its failure to heed advice on a resolution.

But this was three days after ariot outside the British embassy in Ballsbridge. Government secretary and the State’s top civil servant Dermot Nally warned that the coalition’s stance on the strike was becoming indistinguishable from that of the IRA.

Nally was concerned that the prison protest would spread to this jurisdiction: “What do we do if Portlaoise erupts?” He cautioned that a major public row on this issue between Dublin and London could endanger the long-term interests of both.

The preoccupation with the hunger strike distracted the Haughey and FitzGerald governments. Nevertheless, there are strong echoes of current concerns at European level in the minutes of a private meeting in Bonn on March 31st between Haughey, who was still taoiseach at the time, and German chancellor Helmut Schmidt.

A public split had emerged between Schmidt and Thatcher in the previous week at a European summit in Maastricht when the German chancellor accused the British prime minister of betraying a promise to agree a common fisheries policy.

Foreshadowing the current divergence between British and German policies at EU level, Schmidt complained to Haughey about Thatcher’s attitude at the summit and her overall approach to European issues.

The Germans were concerned, even at that stage, about how much the community was costing them. And Schmidt bemoaned the fact that tax increases were being imposed on his people to pay for a budget refund to Britain.

He said his French counterpart, Giscard d’Estaing, took a similar view. He told Haughey that the European community was “not a nice club just now” and “the mood had become quite ugly”.

Back home, abortion made its way on to the political agenda in 1981. Campaigners were concerned that the existing statutory criminal law would not be sufficient to prevent abortions being carried out in Ireland. They demanded that a specific ban be inserted in the Constitution.

Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael agreed to this but, after the general election, the coalition’s attorney general, Peter Sutherland, quickly made his objections known to FitzGerald.

A letter outlining Sutherland’s objections to an anti-abortion amendment is contained in files which have been released to the National Archives.

“It is my opinion that the right to life has been clearly enunciated by the courts and that, in the circumstances, the constitutional amendment is unnecessary,” Sutherland wrote to the taoiseach on August 28th, less than two months after the coalition had taken office.

A constitutional ban was approved by referendum in September 1983 although Sutherland opposed the formulation as flawed and the subsequent Supreme Court ruling in the X case of 1992 appeared to vindicate this.

Thirty years on, our political leaders can at least draw satisfaction from the success of the Northern Ireland peace process, despite some continuing dissident violence. Although important then, European issues are completely dominant now but the Schmidt-Haughey exchanges show that Britain’s semi-detached approach is nothing new. Abortion continues to rumble on as an issue but with nothing like the potency it had in the early 1980s.

What lessons can be learned? The contrast in the Northern Ireland situation then and now shows that problems can be resolved or at least placed on the road to resolution if politicians have sufficient courage and persistence. If the same qualities are applied to our economic difficulties we may yet succeed in overcoming them.

 P.S. There’s more on the State Papers at www.irishtimes.com

It’s not the first summit for which apocalyptic language has been used. But there is a sense that the billing of this summit as the “make or break” one for the euro is for real this time – that leaders cannot emerge with a waterry compromise or a fudge or some diluted half measure.

About half an hour ago, Enda Kenny arrived from Marseilles for the dinner of the 27 leaders.

He was the last to arrive because on the Government’s continued need to impress us with the optics of spartan spirit, he flew by budget airline from the French port city.

As he entered the Justius Lipsus building he made brief – and very general – comments to the effect that a decisive decison was critical to ensure the stability of the euro.

As I’m writing he is addressing fellow European leaders setting out Ireland’s position on the need foir the EFSF to have a big firewall (no surprise there) and, according to sources, “starting a conversation” about making Ireland’s debt more sustainable.

That’s not actually reducing it but.looking at new mechanisms that weren’t available in the run-up to, and during, the bailout last year. It appears they don’t have to do with reducing interest rates or lowering the size of the debt; rather it is extending the time that Ireland is given to pay back the debts. It sounds very similar to the gambit being pursued on the puntiive rates being charged on the promissory note for some €30bn of Anglo Irish Bank debts. Some passages of the Taoiseach’s letter to Herman Von Rompuy this week in advance of the Summit apparently focused on this issue.

Government sources have insisted that this is not being advanced as a quid pro quo for Ireland accepting treaty change, or as a sweetener in exchange for some of the less palatable options that the Government may have to face late tomorrow or on Saturday.

The Government hasn’t exactly spelled out why any of our EU neighbours would go for it. The carrot the Government seems to over is if there is some relaxing and sustainability, it could more or less allow Ireland lead by example, become the best pupil in class, and be the first to exit a programme. That would see the State being a standard bearer for renewal of confidence.

Looked at from this vantage point, it hardly loks as being overwhelmingly persuasive or a clincher for other EU states. To me, there is very little prospect that anything can be secured for Ireland without a price being extracted. In fairness, the Government is not looking for an outcome over the next two days, just to kick start the process.

But I just don’t sense that the experience of the next two days is going to be a pain-free one for Ireland.

Nor for Britain. David Cameron is in a very difficult space, having to deal with extremes of eurosceptics (Northern secretary Owen Patterson prominent amongst them) and Europhiles (Nick Clegg and the Lib Dems). Patterson has called for a referendum if there is treaty change, which in effect would be Britain voting to stay in or out of Europe. Britain is also trying to make the City of London into a little protectorate, save from the reach of Brussels and of a Tobin tax.

Into the fray has stopped Boris Johnson, more ambitious and focus than his shambolic and bustling image suggests (he’s eying the leadership of the Tory Party should Cameron slip… no less!).

Boris is so talented with words. He delivered the quote of the day earlier, saying that the EU’s move to protect the euro might “save the cancer rather than the patient”.

Brilliant stuff

Patrick Nulty cited it as one of the reasons he voted against the Budget. But it was only one of a myriad of reasons. It was very clear from his long statement last night that the tipping point had been reached for him as soon as he was elected. Many of his relatively newly-elected colleagues in Labour were very unhappy with him last night, contending he had not bee upfront to them as to his true intentions when elected.

The cuts to disability allowance essentially removed the allowance from 16 and 17 year-olds. However, it was for the cohort between 18 and 24 that the real damage was done. The intention behind the change was to put them on the same footing as the unemployed of the same age, with reductions to encourage ‘labour activation’ – essentially less money to compel people to do job training or find employment.

That’s all very well for disabled people who can find work (and of course it will always be harder for them to find it). But there are many who can never hope to work. A Fine Gael backbench TD cited those with cerebral palsy, severe Down’s Syndrome and with more serious forms of autism. What the disabled allowance did was allow them to have an independent income, reduced their own familial dependency.

Cuts of €100 per week for 18 to 21 year olds and of €88 per week for 21 to 24 year olds were punitive. This time it was not just by the opposition which railed against it (it was a major theme for Fianna Fail) but also members of both Government parties. A multiplicity of TDS from Fine Gael and Labour spoke against the measures at meetings yesterday – with Fine Gael backbenchers feeling so exercised that a delegation of four TDs sought a meeting with Joan Burton last night.

Like a slowly incubating virus, sometimes the nasty shocks of a Budget take a little while to break the surface. With a slash and burn exercise, it is inevitable and unavoidable that there will be public and political recoil.

Here is a list of the potential banana skins identified so far. Some will be avoided, others may turn out to cause only minor ripples, while one or two may have lasting repercussions.

1. Cuts in disability allowance

2. VHI hikes as a result of charging for private beds

3. Cutting the fuel allowance season

4. Cuts in back to school allowance

5. Cuts in child benefit (but not as impactful)

6. Cuts in one parent payments

7. Abandonment of pward only rent reviews (politically embarrassing)

8. Retention of property taxes (another potential political embarrassment, given both parties insistence in opposition they would abolish them fortwith).

And there are probably more that will show their heads over the next few days.

Michael Noonan started his Budget speech shortly after 3.45 pm. There was little enough in it for the Opposition to get their teeth into. The increase of two per cent in the higher rate of Value-Added Tax had already been well-flagged.

There were numerous measures to restore the property market from the doldrums. Farmers will be pleased at the measures taken on their behalf – Fine Gael always made sure to look after the agricultural vote.

Broadly speaking, the commitment to keep income taxes and basic social welfare rates at their current levels seem to have been kept. The approach set out by Brendan Howlin yesterday was aptly summarised in the phrase, “Death by a thousand cuts”.

It will take a while for the impact of these stealth measures to become apparent and there will no doubt be weeping and gnashing of teeth down the road.

Already a cut in disability rates for young people is causing a stir. Hardening up the requirements for a widow’s pension is another controversial move.

Every year there is a plethora of scare-stories in advance of the Budget. In the end, the actual measures announced tend to appear mild. It’s the oldest trick in the political playbook.

When Michael Noonan finished speaking today, there was silence from the Labour benches and muted applause on the part of Fine Gael colleagues. Given the parlous state of the public finances, nobody was ever going to mistake Noonan for Santa Claus.

The two speeches today and yesterday were quite a cunning and clever mixture and showed a certain amount of political skill in a very difficult situation. Despite the departure of Tommy Broughan and now Nulty (who needs to cover his left flank from left-winger Joe Higgins), the outlook for this government looks positive for the immediate future. But the situation in the Eurozone is deeply worrying and that, in the end, will probably determine the fate of the Coalition and indeed the rest of us.

Nulty statement issued at 5.06pm today:

“There are four main reasons that I am voting today against the budget. These are:
·        It is unjust – it hits people on low and average incomes disproportionately
·        It damages our prospects of economic recovery
·        Instead of creating jobs it will lead to higher levels of unemployment
·        It attacks the marginalised, the sick, the elderly and young people with disabilities

“I remain 100% committed to the values and principles of the Irish Labour Party. I put forward a number of constructive proposals in advance of the budget that outlined how the Government could increase revenues to narrow the budget deficit as required. I am not prepared to support measures which damage our economic recovery while attacking the weak, the sick, the marginalised and the vulnerable.”