The darkness of an Irish morning

March 17, 2013

John Patrick Shanley’s superb column in the New York Times about meeting his Irish relations (see below) reminded me of my grandfather, Bill Martin. A tradesman painter at Moera’s railway workshops, Bill was the son of a piano-playing Irishman from Co Tipperary, and an Irishwoman from Co Armagh.

He practised his storytelling skills in Lower Hutt’s Bellevue Hotel, a handy bike ride from the workshops. Today the pub is a smart establishment but back in the 1930s and 40s, its public bar had a sawdust floor and Bill would spin his yarns to the men standing about with their beer perched on wooden barrels.

Today is March 17 and people of Irish descent all over the world are celebrating their heritage. Shanley brilliantly captures a sense of that heritage and why we remember stories about our grandparents.

The Darkness of an Irish Morning

By JOHN PATRICK SHANLEY

MY father came from Ireland and he had the gift of the gab. Part of the reason the Irish developed the gift of the gab was simple. They lived on an island. They had to get along. Not that they did get along. But they had to try. So a style of speaking developed that allowed them to say awful things. With charm. Read more >

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Dave Gallaher: an outstanding Irishman and a great Kiwi

January 24, 2013

Dave Gallaher the-original-all-blacks-captainBook Review

by Emmett Devlin 

Dave Gallaher: The Original All Black Captain. Matt Elliott. HarperCollins 2012. 259pp.

Any Kiwi with an interest in rugby and connections with Ireland will enjoy this biography of one of New Zealand’s most famous sportsmen and one of the great – if not the all-time greatest – All Blacks.

The book begins with Gallaher’s birth in 1873 into a shop-owning middle class family in a tiny seaside village in Donegal called Ramelton. His father James was 62 and his mother Anna Maria Hardy McCloskie, James’ second wife, was just 29. Dave was James and Anna Maria’s seventh child, born seven years after they married. Three of their children had died in infancy. Three more were born in Ramelton after Dave.

James sold the business and cast the family fortunes in with a Tyrone-born entrepreneur named William Stewart Vessey who had bought 10,000 acres in Katikati and attracted others to join him in establishing a little piece of Ulster on the other side of the world.

Ramelton, Co Donegal - Gallaher's home town

Ramelton, Co Donegal – Gallaher’s home town

Two weeks after the birth of James and Anna Maria’s youngest child, the family set off on what must have been an at-times daunting journey. The newborn son was a sickly infant and so was left behind with friends. As it was, he died about two years later. The family travelled by sea, train and ferry to Belfast and set sail from there on the 17 May 1878 on the 4000-ton clipper Lady Jocelyn.

86 days to Auckland

The family of two adults and six young children arrived in Auckland 86 days later. From there they travelled by boat to Tauranga and again by boat to Katikati where they expected to receive the warm welcome promised by William Steward Vessey. The reality was very different. They found themselves on a small block of very rough, bracken-infested land which James, with no previous farming experience, proceeded to break in and plant with crops that failed to provide the family with a living. A stroke of fortune came their way when Anna Maria was appointed teacher at the local school. Her two pounds-per-week income enabled the growing family to survive.

Four more children, including twins Henry and Charles were born in Katikati. At this time Anna Maria became ill, the family relying more and more on the the oldest boys Joseph and Thomas. As soon as he was old enough Dave left school and took a job with a local stock and station agent. He spent much of his time riding through the district and gave what money he could to his parents. When Anna Maria’s condition worsened she was moved to Auckland Hospital, where she died of cancer on 31 August 1888.

Joseph meanwhile had moved to Auckland. The rest of the family soon followed and when Joseph married Nell Burchell in 1894, James and the rest of the family moved to Freemans Bay.

A typical story

The story of the emigration of the Gallahers (the ‘g’ in the Irish form of the name Gallagher was lost on the way) was not untypical of many of the families who braved the hardships of the lengthy sea voyage to New Zealand. Many readers of this review could share similar stories of their families.

Dave Gallaher

Dave Gallaher


The book is scant on any further details of Dave Gallaher’s early life apart from the death of their father James in November 1894, aged 82. Like so many other migrant families, by dint of hard work, taking opportunities and amazing grit and courage, they survived. Dave went on to take up jobs in the Northern Roller Mills and later the Auckland Farmers’ Freezing Company which he held throughout his working life and combined with his increasing involvement in the newly emerging game of rugby.

Elliott covers in some detail the development of the local game in Ponsonby, the provincial level in Auckland and finally the All Blacks’ emergence on the international stage when the ‘Originals’ toured England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales in 1905 and won every match apart from a highly disputed loss to Wales. A diversion to France was added at the last minute so the team played a French test at the Parc de Princes. Dave Gallaher’s reputation grew as a player of skill and an all round sportsman and athlete. He represented his province in cricket and athletics as well as rugby.

Controversial selection

His selection as captain of the 1905 touring team was the cause of some discontent due to the fact that the team had selected the captain of previous national sides. Gallaher was appointed by the NZRFU, seemingly with the influence of Premier Seddon who recognised Gallaher’s leadership skills and talents that would make him a worthy ambassador for New Zealand while touring ‘the Motherland’. Seddon’s judgement was based in part on Gallaher’s successful involvement with the New Zealand contingent that fought with distinction in the Boer War.

A significant portion of the book is devoted to a detailed description of the 1905 tour. It is of interest to rugby players for a number of reasons, such as the highly fluid nature of the game – the positions of players in both forwards and backs, the number of players in the scrum and the role of referees and linesmen were not defined; and the points awarded for tries, conversions and drop goals differed markedly from the present day. It was also a gentleman’s game played in a leisurely way by men who were observed smoking a pipe or cigarette as they went onto the field of play. Shin guards were worn by players, the referee wore suit and tie, and boaters were standard head gear for the team off the field.

The book describes how the name ‘All Black’ was confirmed by this tour – how they began each match with a haka and were called on to perform the haka on social occasions as well. The team’s composition reflects the social make-up of the new colonial society. It is acknowledged that vice-captain Billy Stead was part Maori. Apart from him, the names of the rest of the team would indicate they were all from the settler population (a ‘Native’ team toured the British Isles in 1908).

On the team’s return, Dave Gallaher returned to his job at the freezing works on the foreshore, walking there each day from his Ponsonby home. He met and married Nellie Francis on 10 October 1906 in All Souls Anglican Church on Ponsonby Road. They were blessed with a daughter whom they called Nora.

Dave Gallaher initially played for Ponsonby and Auckland province. As rugby emerged into a dominant role in the life of the young colony and province, he took more responsible positions in administration. For many years, he was a selector for the national team as well as coach and manager of provincial, club and even schoolboy teams.

Brothers fought at Gallipoli

All this was to change with the outbreak of the World War in 1914. Two of his brothers, Charles and Douglas, had migrated to Australia and joined the Australian expeditionary forces. Both fought at Gallipoli. Charles was sent back to Australia with injuries and Douglas died in the battle of the Somme in 1916. Their deaths did not stop Dave from volunteering, in spite of the rules preventing heads of families from enrolling. He sailed with the New Zealand contingent from Wellington on 15 February 1917. Because of his record in the Boer War he was promoted to the rank of Sergeant Major.

While leading a troop of men who were totally dedicated to him because of the esteem in which they held him as a sportsman, national hero and leader, he was fatally injured at the battle of Ypres on 4 October 1917. Before he could be transported to a field hospital he died of his wounds. The proud son of Ireland and New Zealand, father, husband, unflappable captain and soldier lay dead on a foreign field.

Letterkenny ground christened

When the 2005 All Black team captained by Tana Umanga visited Ireland they were hosted in Ramelton where they visited the Letterkenny Rugby Football Club and christened the club’s grounds ‘The Dave Gallaher Memorial Park’. The club founded 100 years after his birth, sports the Gallaher name and the silver fern in its crest.

When you are over this way you may care to visit Ramelton and Letterkenny, thereby paying a tribute to an outstanding Irishman, an outstanding emigrant, a survivor, a leader and a great Kiwi. If you don’t make it this far then perhaps you could find time to do visit his statue in Windsor Road (of 1981 fame) outside Eden Park. As I write this on holiday in Malta, I am resolved to visit his grave in France before the centenary of his heroic death.

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Gathering of the clans

November 21, 2012

Throughout 2013, Ireland will call home hundreds of thousands of friends and family from all over the world to gatherings in villages, towns and cities.

Anyone with an Irish connection is being urged to visit and rediscover their history. ‘There will be clan gatherings, festivals, special sporting events, music and concerts taking place all across the country, all year long,’ says the official Gathering Ireland website.

Over 70 million people worldwide claim Irish ancestry and, for anyone who went to a Catholic school in New Zealand, reading through the list of Irish clans who are planning reunions (below) is like looking through the names on old school photos.

Some gatherings may be little more than a Guinness or two down at the local pub near where a few family members happen to live. Others seem more grand. The O’Neills, O’Dohertys, O’Donnells, Murphys and Gallaghers appear to be planning full-scale reunions involving hundreds, if not thousands. The Fitzgeralds will have a seven-day tour of Ireland to explore the clan’s ‘glorious past’.

Then there’s the Conroys, Lonergans and Egans, who are not having one-off events but hosting year-long celebrations. Some, like the McMenamins, have sketched a little history to make it easier for the diaspora to see if there might be a family connection:

In 1883, brothers John and Daniel McMenamin, two of the 12 children of James and Nancy (Scanlan) from Letterkenny, Co Donegal, set sail for New Zealand to start a new life like so many young Irish of the time were forced to do.

There’s plenty of advice on tracing your roots, and an invitation to use the services of Ireland’s Association of Professional Genealogists.

The country’s in such a grim economic state  a cynic might say the whole exercise is a desperate attempt to get tourists, particularly the 37 million Americans who claim Irish ancestry, to come and part with their dollars.

On the other hand, the pull to Ireland resonates down generations regardless of whether the country’s in trouble. Sometimes it strikes with surprising force. I’ve just read A Simpler Time, the memoir of Aussie writer, story teller and former Wallaby Peter Fitzsimons.

It’s a good read, largely about his childhood. One day he is amazed to hear an uncle say he could barely understand Peter Fitzsimon’s grandfather because his Irish accent was so thick. Fitzsimons writes:

To this point I have never focused on the fact that on one side I was only two generations removed from someone who had lived just under half his life in another country – that I was a latter twentieth-century Australian who had a grandfather who was born in Ireland as long ago as 1863!

To discover where those grandparents came from and to walk the streets and fields they walked just two or three generations ago is a remarkable experience. You couldn’t pick a better time to find out than 2013.

When in 2013 Clan Where in Ireland
All year Conroy Aglish, Co Tipperary
All year Longergan/Egan/Gibbons Cashel, Co Tipperary
February Collins Tipperary town, Co Tipperary
May Maguire Enniskillen, Co Fermanagh
May Kelly Cashel, Co Tipperary
May O’Neill Dungannon Armagh, Co Tyrone
June Burke Kilmaine, Co Mayo
June Gould Cork city, Co Cork
June Kane Drumlish, Co Longford
June Fitzgerald Adare, Co Limerick
June Acton Castlebar, Co Mayo
June Murphy Tubbercurry, Co Sligo
July McMenamin Letterkenny, Co Donegal
July/Sept O’Leary Inchigeelagh Macroom, Co Cork
July Curtin Macroom, Co Cork
July Slattery Tuam, Co Galway
July McGrath Ennis, Co Clare
August Fuller Tralee, Co Kerry
August Colleran Athlone, Co Roscommon
August Coughlan Ballydehob, Co Cork
August Gavin Swinford, Co Mayo
August O’Donnell Donegal, Co Donegal
August McCarthy Kinnity, Co Offaly
August Fitzgerald (south Tipperary) Aherlow, Co Tipperary
August McArdle Courtbane, Co Louth
September Crowley Kinsale, Co Cork
September Gallagher Gortahork, Co Donegal
September Goulding Tramore, Co Wexford
October Moriarty Dingle, Co Kerry
October Cronin Milltown, Co Kerry

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In search of a living wage

September 24, 2012

Record levels of inequality in New Zealand would shock Irish immigrants who came to this country to make a better life.

‘This is a good country for working men as some men have from ten to twelve shillings per day,’ wrote Manawatu farmer’s wife Catherine Sullivan in 1905. ‘It is not like home. The worst men here won’t come to work for less than 7/- per day, and only work from 8 to 5pm.’

Catherine, an Irish immigrant, was writing to her brother-in-law in Ballingarry, Co Limerick, describing what he might find should he decide to follow her(1).

Many Irish, Scots and English came here to create a better life and to escape the poverty of their homelands. In recent decades, Pacific migrants have been doing the same.

One of the earliest settlers was English carpenter Samuel Duncan Parnell. In 1840 shipping agent George Hunter asked him to build a store in Petone. Parnell agreed but only on condition he work an eight-hour day.

Hunter thought that outrageous. ‘You know Mr Parnell, that in London the bell rang at six o’clock, and if a man was not there ready to turn to, he lost a quarter of a day.’

‘We’re not in London’, replied Parnell(2).

The sense of being architects of a new world drove early Kiwis to create one of the world’s most egalitarian – and prosperous – societies. But in recent decades we’ve recreated the class-ridden societies they escaped. According to a recent Herald article, the gap between rich and poor in this country widened so much in 2011 that inequality is at its highest level ever.

‘Middle and lower class workers saw their business incomes fall sharply, while the rich saw their earnings increase,’ says the Household Incomes Report released by the Ministry of Social Development. ‘It is the first time the average household income has dropped since it hit a low point in the early 90s.’

The OECD ranks us 23rd out of 30 developed countries for income inequality. The debate raging over national standards in education has starkly highlighted that, from the day a five-year-old first steps into a classroom, their family’s socio-economic background has a huge impact on their learning and achievement.

After more than a century of inching towards a better, fairer New Zealand, it seems we are destroying the egalitarian society early migrants risked travelling half the world to create.

How have we let it come to this? And what are we doing about it? The Closing the Gap Income Inequality Project aims to ‘raise public awareness of the benefits of a more equal society to such a level that our leaders take notice and act’. Unions, community groups and churches have launched a Living Wage Campaign ‘as a necessary step in reducing inequality and poverty in our society’. TV3, the Herald and other media have launched public debates.

Good luck to them all. Their Irish ancestors would be proud of them.

(1) Te Ara NZ Dictionary of Biography

(2) ‘A Good Idea of Colonial Life’. Personal Letters and Irish Migration to New Zealand, Angela McCarthy. NZ Journal of History, 35, 1 (2001)

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Ireland at the film festival

August 12, 2012

Three Irish movies at the film festival throw light on an Irish heritage. All are worth seeing.

Bernadette: keeping the faith

Whatever happened to Bernadette Devlin? In the early 1970s she was every Catholic rebel’s darling, a mini-skirted Northern Irish protest leader constantly in the news.

The young Bernadette Devlin

‘Bernadette: Notes on a Political Journey’ reminds us what a firebrand she was. In 1972 she was a 25-year-old MP when Home Secretary Reginald Maudling claimed that British soldiers who killed 13 unarmed Catholics on Bloody Sunday had fired in self defence. Devlin stormed across the House of Commons and slapped him on the face. When a reporter later asked if she regretted using violence, she exploded: ‘Thirteen people are dead and you’re asking me about using violence!’ When the reporter persisted, Devlin replied that her only regret was she hadn’t grabbed Maudling by the throat.

This is a powerful documentary. The extensive footage of Northern Ireland’s Troubles in the 1970s is grim. Footage of the 1980s’ hunger strikes and internment protests is a reminder of how it became even more savage.

Forty years of relentlessly hardline politics has taken a toll on an older, wiser, still committed Devlin. In a 1981 assassination attempt, witnessed by her children, she was hit by eight bullets. Devlin seems resigned to the Peace Process and the fact that former IRA men Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness now sit alongside Ian Paisley and other Unionists. The North is still part of Britain, she says, even if the rulers now include a few republicans. She can’t bring herself to be part of it.

Older, wiser and still a radical socialist

Today she co-ordinates STEP, the South Tyrone Empowerment Project, a cross-community grassroots organisation. Aged 65, she still proclaims herself a radical socialist.

According to the film blurb, Devlin agreed to make the documentary on condition it said nothing about her personal life – hence the film title. She does talk about her female upbringing as one of five girls raised by her mother who was widowed early, her two grannies and her aunties. Devlin only mentions in passing that she had a child while in the thick of politics in 1971. The one time her voice quavers is when she describes how her opponents have attacked her children as a way of attacking her, particularly the arrest of her eldest daughter in the 1990s for IRA activities.

But there’s something lacking. At the end you’re still not quite sure what makes her tick. Her interviews are often statements of position – there’s little personal in her politics.  You won’t leave knowing that much more about Bernadette Devlin the person, but you’ll find she’s kept the faith.

Ireland through the eyes of  a New Zealand painter

For a different portrayal of Ireland, see ‘Village by the Sea’. New Zealand director Michael Heath goes to the tiny coastal village of Bunmahon, Co Waterford, on the trail of Wanganui-born painter Edith Collier who lived there from 1914-15. He delves into the collective memory of villagers who remember stories about her and examines her art in light of what exists there now.

Edith Collier’s early 1900s portrait of Jim Cullinan’s mother as a child.

Retired Bunmahon school teacher Jim Cullinan recalls his mother talking about the Collier portrait she had sat for as a young girl. Others in the village have stories about life, family and poverty then, their memories stirred by Collier’s paintings of people and landscapes.

When asked what he thought on seeing those landscapes for the first time, Heath said:

My childhood and teens were spent in Eastern Southland in a small rural farming town, Wyndham (my father’s side of the family originally came from County Mayo in Ireland). So there was a lot of sky, and space, and fields, and softly-flowing rivers, the singing of John McCormack songs around the piano, and cemeteries and old Catholic churches, and funerals on hilltops, and winding muddy roads in the rain, and skies full of birds, and wintry trees and herds of shitty cows wandering down the road, and old timers sitting in dimly-lit rooms in front of crackling log fires… and this happened many times when we were shooting in Ireland… and it was like I had come back home full-circle to my childhood again… and we were welcomed with such hospitality and friendship. It was like meeting old friends again (Ireland is greener too, by the way).

But this film though is a lot more than Irish nostalgia with a New Zealand twist. Collier’s story is fascinating. And what paintings! The soundtrack of traditional Irish music captures the atmosphere perfectly. The film is a little gem.

Thank God they sailed away

Just when you might start thinking Ireland’s a gentle, pleasant land, along comes the thriller ‘Shadow Dancer’.  Collette McVeigh is caught after leaving an unexploded bomb on the London Underground in 1993. An M15 agent gives her an option: spend the rest of her life in jail or, for the sake of her young boy, go back to her IRA family in Belfast and act as informant.

Collette McVeigh (Andrea Riseborough), forced to act as an informant in an IRA family.

So begins an excellent film that, while a little lean on dialogue, contains several startling twists. Some critics panned the film as anti-IRA and pro-British. I didn’t see it like that. Certainly, the IRA were ruthless with informants, but for good historical reasons. The film simply captures the brutality and deceit that went with Britain’s rule in Northern Ireland, and the IRA’s campaign to get rid of them.

You come out wondering how people could live like that, and thanking God your forebears had the sense to sail away and leave that bitterness and hatred behind.

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A flutter at the Galway Races

July 19, 2012

New Zealand and Ireland both know how to grow green grass and produce top-class racehorses, says Dunedin writer Tony Eyre. A visit to Ireland took him to the Galway Races.

At the end of July, all roads lead to Galway, an Irish county synonymous with horse-racing. The Galway Races were firmly on our agenda.

The fashion stakes at the Galway Races

This world-famous festival, dating back to 1869, is held at Galway’s Ballybrit racecourse and attracts more than 170,000 spectators over the week. The biggest crowds converge on Ladies’ Day, where glamour and fashion compete with top-class racing.

This was our day of choice to experience, for the first time, horse racing in Ireland. I was surprised to find that four of the eight races on the card were steeplechase and hurdle events, here a summer attraction compared to its more common winter setting in New Zealand.

My biggest hurdle for the day was behind the wheel as I negotiated my way to the track along with 44,500 other visitors keen to experience top-quality Irish racing.

Stiletto heels were a challenge in the soft conditions underfoot for the thousands of fashion-conscious women delicately extricating themselves from the carpark paddocks as they headed for the more supportive asphalt at the turnstile gates. And complimentary blister packs greeted female patrons in anticipation of the sore feet that would trouble many at the end of a long day in high heels.

The big prizes on offer for the Best Dressed and Best Hat competitions bring glamorous hopefuls from around the world to model the latest fashion. Not to miss an opportunity, bookmakers Boylesports release betting odds on the big fashion event.

The shortest odds in each category suggest that an under-30 brunette from Dublin in a cream dress will win the coveted Best Dressed title. I’m intrigued with the odds being offered on the winner’s hair colour and being a gambling man, I plumb for a long-shot – 50/1 for a blue rinse to get the judge’s nod.

Later the streets of Galway are packed.

But let’s not forget the horses. The feature race was the €250,000 ($NZ440,605) Guinness Galway Hurdle Handicap over two miles (3200m), the richest hurdle race in Ireland.

This was a race from a standing start rather than starting gates. Like a shoal of fish, the field of 20 tightly packed runners circled at the start, their riders ‘jockeying for position’ to get the best possible advantage at the fall of the tape. This was Irish jumps racing at its finest.

But it was not to be an Irish victory on the day – the British raider Overturn led all the way to win by five and a-half lengths.

If you want to see Ireland at play, the Galway Races in July is the place to be. It certainly showed me how the Irish love their horse-racing, particularly over the jumps.

And even if you are not a race fan, the glamour and fashion, the bookies’ umbrellas with their panoply of colour, the fun and camaraderie and the flow of Guinness all make this a social occasion not to be missed if you are planning a trip to Ireland.

My time for ‘following the horses’ in Ireland had come to an end as we headed off to the Mary of Dungloe Festival in Donegal.

I wonder if they have a racetrack there?

(Tony also went to the Irish National Stud in Co Kildare and to Templemore, Co Tipperary. For the full account, see his story in the Otago Daily Times).

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O’Kiwi News

June 25, 2012

Plenty about Ireland has come our way lately – the O’Kiwi lads have been following the Irish rugby team again; a Dunedin writer on days spent in Dublin; an Irish comedy and the sad state of our free-to-air television; a Kiwi girl on current Irish literature; and a book that analyses corruption in Irish politics. 

O’Kiwi lads back on tour

The O’Kiwi lads were back on the road for the All Blacks v Irish test in Auckland, on a tour that probably enjoyed more success than the Irish rugby team.

Later, in the aftermath of the 60-0 hiding dished out by the All Blacks in the third test, Irish fans were calling for the head of coach Declan Kidney. ‘A kidney transplant is required,’ said one fan. ‘A full organ transplant is required,’ responded another.

O’Kiwi On Tour: Jack relaxes in the campervan – it’s a hard life on the road.

Many wondered how a team full of players from Leinster and Ulster, the two provinces that recently contested the European rugby championship in the Heineken Cup final, could fail so completely when playing for Ireland. A similar criticism has for years been levelled at the English soccer team – their outstanding club competition fails to translate into a winning national side.

Ironically, the modest and softly-spoken Kidney, a former mathematics teacher and career guidance counsellor, was celebrated for his shrewd psychology when he first took over the Irish team and melded the Munster hard men and the Leinster toffs into a team that won the Six Nations.

The full Ulster fry – breakfast barbie in a Remuera motorcamp.

So, who would want to be coach of Ireland? And who organised the calendar that has seen that country’s top rugby players take the field in 51 of the past 52 weeks?

Deep questions like those were chewed over by the O’Kiwi lads on their jaunt, along with sausages and bacon from the Pokeno butchers, as these Facebook photos show…

On the edge in Dublin

Thanks to Dunedin writer Tony Eyre who sent O’Kiwi this piece about his time in Dublin. It was first published in the Otago Daily Times after his visit there in 2010:

‘My earliest awareness of Dublin was as a 7-year-old boy growing up in Auckland. Tommy Maher, an Irishman and father of one of my school friends, once put the palms of his hands on either side of my head and lifted me up to the window.

‘Can you see Dublin?’ he asked. Read more >>

Irish comedy won’t revive our free-to-air television

After looking forward to Friday night’s new Irish comedy on TV1, Mrs Brown’s Boys, I switched channels after 20 minutes. What rubbish. Father Ted, it ain’t.

Free-to-air television in New Zealand is a wasteland and will become even more so when TVNZ7 shuts down at the end of June.

Then, according to the Save TVNZ7 Campaign, for the first time in this country since television began, we will be without a public service television channel. ‘We will join Mexico as the only developed countries in the world with totally commercial television chasing ratings above all else.’

It’s certainly a sad day if anyone in TV1 believes that Mrs Brown’s Boys will boost its ratings.

Emma Gallagher swears by contemporary Irish literature

Emma Gallagher, who works for the NZ Book Council, wrote this piece for the recent Auckland Writers and Readers Festival which hosted such well-known Irish writers as Roddy Doyle:

‘For such a wee, damp island, Ireland has produced more than its fair share of literary greats: Swift, Wilde, Yeats, Shaw, Bowen, Joyce, O’Connor (a couple of them), Beckett, Heaney, O’Brien (a couple of them), Murdoch, Trevor, McGahern, Binchy, Doyle, Banville, Toibin, Barry, Enright, McCabe, and Keyes.

‘Even so, many critics want today’s Irish writers to say goodbye to the past – feck all the potatoes and the donkeys and the priests over the nearest dry stone wall – and deal to the new Ireland… Read more >>

Seeds of the Irish crisis were sown long ago

Irish politics has a level of corruption that would shock most innocent little Kiwis. For instance, a public inquiry revealed that the late Charles Haughey, Taioseach (Prime Minister) of Ireland at various times between 1979 and 1992, raked in an income 200 times his own salary.

More latterly, an unholy alliance between  politicians, bankers and developers is credited for the country’s current economic woes. Recently in the Financial Times, a book called Political Corruption in Ireland, 1922-2010: A Crooked Harp? by Elaine A. Byrne, was reviewed by David Gardiner. He wrote:

‘Corruption in Ireland predates independence. Yet cronyism and clientelism have been tolerated, even admired, throughout much of the republic’s history. That may be coming to an end, as its citizens learn how the tawdry entwinements of Irish politics and business brought the ‘Celtic Tiger’ to its knees in 2010. Read more >>

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