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Pssst!
Anyone buyin’ or sellin’ tickets?
Anyone buyin’ or sellin’ tickets?
The excitement is building. The countdown is on.
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Only a day to go until Micheál Martin’s Consultative Forum on International Security Policy live tour kicks off in Cork for what promises to be a four-day brainstorming blowout.
It’s Glastonbury for security and foreign policy wonks and it’s coming to a place near you.
Four days of chewing the fat (except for Micheál, who might chance a banana), three cities, 18 panel discussions, 80 performers, 22 professors, an army of top brass, assorted hacks on moderating nixers, a Taoiseach, a Green called Eamon, and one Tánaiste and very happy Minister for Foreign Affairs.
It’s a total sell-out.
That could have been, but it is not a line from Richard Boyd Barrett or Paul Murphy or even the talkative little elephant escorted down from the Phoenix Park at the weekend who is now brazenly sitting in the Government’s corner being studiously ignored by everyone.
They call him Michael D Who-ggins?
Bless his bockety trunk. He’s going nowhere.
So, are you festival ready?
Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said on Tuesday that the three gigs in Cork, Galway and Dublin are already oversubscribed and the Government will have to examine if openings can be created for more punters before the gates open for the first performance in University College Cork on Thursday.
All set to get triple-locked with your fellow stakeholders?
Going by what the little elephant in the corner told the Business Post, President Higgins clearly isn’t.
[ Forum on security policy criticised as ‘fool’s mission’ by neutrality campaigners ]
Boyd Barrett of People Before Profit wants none of it either because, as he told the Dáil on Tuesday, it will be a self-indulgent orgy of Tesco and Tayto where people will be “stacked to the rafters” and “dripping”.
He may have said Pesco and Nato.
As he sees it, Tánaiste Micheál Martin’s pet project is part of a “campaign by Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil and, tragically, the Greens, to soften up public opinion against neutrality and towards closer alignment with EU militarisation and Nato”.
Micheál is blue in the face saying this is not the case but many Opposition politicians remain deeply suspicious of the Government’s motives for holding this conference.
During Leaders’ Questions, the Taoiseach backed his Tánaiste and moved to reassure the doubters.
“I just want to confirm again that Ireland is going to remain militarily neutral. We are not going to apply for Nato membership nor membership of any military alliance, nor will we sign up to any mutual defence pact or mutual defence clause.”
[ Did President Michael D Higgins cross a line with his neutrality remarks? You bet he did ]
He said the Minister for Foreign Affairs put this event together because changing times have seen changing security threats for this country and the situation requires careful consideration and examination.
But RBB, worried about the promulgation of anti-neutrality propaganda, is very glad Michael D “rang the alarm bells” about “the dangerous drift in Ireland’s foreign policy away from neutrality” while raising concerns about the composition of the forum’s line-up.
“The President has to be somewhat constrained and diplomatic in what he says,” added the TD for Dún Laoghaire, although some might say he never got that particular memo as he flaps his ears and wiggles his trunk at the Cabinet.
Leo never mentioned the President in his replies.
Neither did Ivana Bacik, leader of the Labour Party, who welcomed the Taoiseach’s reiteration of our neutrality while asking if “a more balanced” running order of participants might be considered in light of “the debate in recent days”.
Started, of course, by Labour’s beloved Michael D.
Cian O’Callaghan of the Social Democrats echoed her call for a full Dáil discussion on the forum’s eventual report.
Speaking on behalf of the Roaring Independents, Mattie McGrath questioned the need for an event which will cost a fortune and is “just literally a talking shop to get the answer ye want: to ready the people for a change in neutrality”.
The Dáil should be debating this question instead of having “a great party and great carry-on”, railed Mattie. “I think it’s shockin’.”
But the gigs are going ahead.
Thursday in Cork, Friday in Galway and on to Dublin Castle for the two-day finale next Monday and Tuesday.
Micheál is doing the opening remarks on Thursday and on Friday he will be “in conversation” with the chair of the forum, Prof Louise Richardson, where there will be “reflections” on the previous day’s headline acts.
The Taoiseach will deliver a speech when the tour moves on to Dublin Castle. One of the participants on Monday includes a policy adviser on arms and conflict called Mr Butcher.
Green Party leader Eamon Ryan, the third speaker representing the two-meat-and-one-veg Coalition, performs after lunch on Tuesday and the Tánaiste will do an encore at the end of the festival.
This did not impress Sinn Féin’s Matt Carthy. “Government will have no less than five opportunities, where people will be indulged with lengthy, uninterrupted speeches from the Taoiseach, the Tánaiste and the Green Party leader, yet all the while, Opposition voices are expected to sit on their hands, while Government speaks from their taxpayer-funded pulpit.”
[ President issues unprecedented apology over ‘throwaway remarks’ about neutrality chairwoman ]
Back in the Dáil, Leo Varadkar pointed out that only two of the sessions will be on neutrality and just one will be about Nato.
That didn’t matter to Boyd Barrett, waving about a copy of the programme and decrying an event “dripping and packed to the rafters with Nato employees, people who have worked with Nato, people associated with the military-industrial complex, generals, brigadiers, lieutenant commanders of the military, and academics who have published records of being pro-Nato, pro-EU militia”.
Be that as it may, “900 people have already registered to attend at the three sites and we’ve received 300 written submissions, so that’s quite a lot of people”, said the Taoiseach, following a request from Sinn Féin’s Réada Cronin for more tickets to be made available.
“I know Dublin is full and it may well now be the case that Cork and Galway are full as well. Not sure if it’s possible to create more space, but if it is, we will.”
The TD for Kildare North was contacted “by some doves, as opposed to hawks” who heard about the forum at the weekend and told her they would love to attend it.
“Up until the welcome intervention from our Uachtaráin, this was very much a conference for the select few by the selected few,” Réada declared, in a big shout-out to the feisty little Phoenix Park elephant in the room. “I’d like to thank the President formally for his intervention on behalf of all the people but also…”
Catherine Connolly, the Leas-Cheann Comhairle, sprang into action, belting lumps out of the ceremonial bell.
“Deputy, let me just stop you, please! We’ll just leave the President out of this. Under the Constitution he is not answerable to the House.”
The Taoiseach didn’t react.
Sure, he couldn’t see him anyway.
President Who-ggins?
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