It often happens that demonstrators end up inside the very place and drinking with the very people they have just been railing against, and the gardai were no exception this week. They had little trouble getting into Leinster House after their demonstration on Tuesday, since the GRA president is John Healy, son of Jackie Healy Rae TD, and Senator Dan Kiely, despite a minor run-in with the law in Listowel two years ago, was among the march leaders - he is indeed a GRA Seanad nominee.
But why isn't the GRA president called John Healy Rae? Because, say sources close to father and son, Rae is merely a parochial nickname distinguishing one branch of the Healys from another. It translates as a narrow or swampy piece of land. But once you join the Garda, you have to stick with what's on the birth cert, so Rae got dropped. Jackie says Kilgarvan is full of Healys, that his family have been known as Healy Rae, after their farm, for as long as anyone can remember "and John will never be able to lose the tag."
Tuesday's march attracted thousands and there was much denunciation of Jackie's great Kerry rival, the Minister for Justice, John O'Donoghue. Although many deputies called into the visitors bar in Leinster House to greet their local Garda delegations, Quidnunc was assured there was no after-hours drinking and the Minister did not have to wield his zero tolerance baton. What he might not have noticed, however, and an eagle-eyed Leinster House employee reported, was that the gardai on picket duty all week were so friendly with their uniformed colleagues that one morning they were seen removing their placards from the Garda security hut. What other group, the concerned citizen asked, could expect Garda co-operation to extend to storing their protest equipment?