John Healy remembers Donogh O'Malley John Reason

Gabriel Byrne Larry Goodman and the Right Stuff

1.05 (incl. VATin Republic of Ireland) 95p Sterling Area MARCH 1988

IRElAND'S CURRENT AFFAIRS

"Since the Gardai

go ever~where
we go,
we can offer an
armed garda
escort for the
movement of
large amounts
of cash."
Volume 11, No.6. March 19~8

DEP ARTMENTS COVER STORY FEATURES

DIARY 4
MEDIA: Maurice Manning begins
a new Magill media watch column
with a look at the shortcomings in
the modern day press coverage of
the Oireachtas 5

UPDATE, including:
A day at the dogfights 6
NO TIME FOR LOVE
New Film Centre for Dublin 8 By Conor Foley
The progress of the Shatter Paul Hillgot married last month,
Bill 9 in a British prison. He is one of the
The Irish contraceptives Guildford Four, never to be
industry 10 released except as an act of mercy
THE WORLD ACCORDING TO on account of great age or
Shoplifting as industry 12 MARTIN CAHILL infirmity 24
An exclusive interview with the
BUSINESS man they call The General. THOMAS MARTIN vs. THE
Tommy Gorman on Larry Good- By Michael O'Higgins STATE
man, the Beef Man from Ardee,
By Colm Keena
and the Bailieboro takeover ... 34
Thomas Martin recently sued the
state for alleged garda brutality -
EDDIE COLLINS - APOLOGY and won 27
IN the September 1986 issue of Magill we
published an investigation into the business
affairs of the the Irish Lamb Exporters
Group of Companies.
The cover of the magazine for that issue
contained a photograph of Mr Collins and
the headline: "the minister, the public's
money and misleading the Dail". In
addition the following words appeared on
the cover: "the Dail was seriously misled
in relation to the involvement of Minister
of State for Industry and Commerce, Eddie
Collins, in a company which got nearly half
a million pounds of state money in the last
five years .... " THE WILD ONE
lt has been pointed out to us that the FADE IN, FADE OUT By John Healy
impression left by this heading and the
accompanying words suggested that Mr Actor Gabriel Byrne writes what Donogh O'Malley is one of the
Collins abused his position as Minister for will henceforth be a regular great legends of Irish politics.
State and that public funds had been
misappropriated.
column in Magill 38 Twenty years after his death, his
We wish to state that no such insinuation friend John Healy writes of his
was intended by us and there was absolutely SPORT colourful life and times 40
no suggestion intended by us that Mr.
Collins in any way abused his position as John Reason on the fate of the
Minister for State or that there had been Irish rugby team 54 THE MIRACLE OF
any abuse of public monies in the case, IRELAND'S OWN
either by Mr. Collins or by anybody else.
We are happy to make this correction VISUAL By Paddy Kehoe
and we are happy to accept that Mr Collins Fintan O'Toole writes about the Tony O'Reilly has described
behaved with integrity and propriety at all
times while holding public office.
reasons for the decline in the Ireland's Own as "the publishing
We therefore wish to apologise unres- standard of Irish political miracle of the century". He says
ervedly for any upset and embarrassment cartoons 56 he wouldn't know how to change
suffered by Mr Collins or his family, arising
out of the publication of the words referred his most unusual publication, even
to above. WIGMORE 60 if he wanted to 51

Editor John Waters; General Manager Eileen Pearson; Advertising Executive Gerry earthy; Layout Pat Pidgeon,
Aidan Dunne; London Representative Garry Hill (London 3530186)
Magill is published by Magill Publications Ltd., 14 Merrion Row, Dublin 2. Tel: 606055. Printed by Richview Browne &
Nolan. Typesetting by Sunday Tribune and Keystrokes. Distributed by Newspread (Ireland), Periodicals in Particular
(London). Magill accepts no responsibility for unsolicited manuscripts.
ISSN 0332-1754
 DIARY John Waters

THE LAUNCH OF THE NEW IRISH
Star at the Powerscourt Townhouse
Centre in Dublin on the Sunday before
the first issue hit the shops made for a
very interesting antropological study.
The attendance was decidedly
upmarket - loads of Beautiful People in
designer clothes and so on - which is
rather surprising when you consider that
the newspaper, as far as one can see, is
being aimed at the Great Unwashed. The
publishers don't put it like this, of course
- what they say is that they are
"targetting at that fifty per cent of the
population who do not purchase a daily
paper.'" Much more polite.
The guests at the launch party were
mostly of the A and B variety, the kind
of people you see folding the Sunday
World inside the Sunday Tribune before
leaving the paper shop. There was
scarcely a C3 to be seen, never mind any
of the large numbers of Ds and Es who
will be required if the paper is to be a
success. In fact, the only downmarket
thing at the launch was the food, which
consisted of a big fry-up which looked too
greasy even for me.
One thing the new paper does not seem
to be short of is bosses. There were a lot
of men in suits on the platform while Gay
Byrne was doing his Paul Daniels bit
unveiling the paper, all of whom had
complicated titles which I am unable to
remember. The Star's policy with regard
to things topless obviously does not
extend to its management department,
where it is considerably well endowed.
One of the men on the platform, who
I am informed was Gerry McGuinness,
was smoking a cigar which was at least
a foot long - without as much as a
smidgin of the sense of irony which is
required to do this successfully.
Of Stars and Sin he would sell his papers. I have
nightmares about coming home one night
This was obviously due to pressure of and having to curl up in the hallway
space, as the launch had been only because the unread newspapers will
coming down with representatives of both finally have taken over the entire place.
of these newspapers on the previous day. The British quality Sundays are the
Curiously, the Independent, now a sister worst in this respect. Some of them now
paper to the Star, managed to fit in a have as many as seven sections, each of
story about Kevin Sharkey's open letter which is the equivalent of a newspaper in
to his real mother, published on the front itself. You buy them every Sunday with
page of that morning's Star. the best of intentions and realise by
I also note that the Indo omitted to Thursday that there is absolutely no
credit the source of the story - not very chance of getting through them before the
sisterly of them. Can it be that next invasion arrives. The thing about
Independent House journalists have been these newspapers is that one feels that one
instructed not to mention the Star? should read them, in order to better
Perhaps the title of the new newspaper oneself, so if one throws them out
has been written into the Independent without reading them one feels a bit of
Newspapers' House Style Book, a philistine.
alongside words like "whilst" and "gay", Surely the Minister for the
which are forbidden. "In Independent Environment should be saying something
House, 'gay' means happy", the booklet about the rape of the young forests of the
cautions. Indo journalists it urges, should world involved in producing these mon-
use the word "homosexual" - "when strosities?
this is what they mean." (It has been said,
in fact - though not, you understand,
ASA MATTER OF FACT, RECENTLY
by me - that the Independent House when attempting to safeguard my right of
Style Book makes for far better reading way to my cot by sorting out the
than do their newspapers). mountain of printed matter in my
bedroom, I came across a magazine
entitled America, from 1948, in which
there was an article, 'The Vanishing
Irish', about the incipient dangers to Irish
faith and morals represented by the
increasing emigration of that time. The
article, written from a Catholic
perspective, and extensively quoting
Monsignor Lucey of Maynooth College,
warned that I reland was then" facing the
danger of becoming an extinct nation".
The article urged: "The Catholic world
should focus its attention on that
magnificent bulwark of Catholicism,
Ireland, re-examine its conscience, take
heed and plunge into the task of assisting
the Irish economically', so that they may
regain their demographic strength to the
I hear that the editor of the Irish greater glory of God and the cause of
Independent, Vincent Doyle, received a Mother Church."
telegram from the staff of the new paper, This throws into rather sharp relief the
thanking him for his interest in their recent comments by Dr Dermot Clifford,
stories and admiring his good taste. Archbishop Coadjutor of Cashel and
"Imitation is the sincerest form of Emly, who has suggested that we should'
flattery", it said. "Glad to see you begin "ease the passage" of our young
as you mean to go on". emigrants by giving them four weeks'
WHAT BOTHERS ME ABOUT ALL
unemployment assistance when they
emigrate. This view, it seems to me, is not
this is that there is now yet another a million miles removed from that
newspaper which I will feel obliged to expressed by Mr Joe Foyle on the Late
read every day, and which will confront Late a short time ago when he suggested
me accusingly at every turn until I do so. that we give each emigrant I ,000 on
Already my house is half filled with condition that they not return for five

ON THE
MONDAY MORNING
when the first issue of the Star hit the
streets, there was surprisingly little
mention of it in any of the other national
papers. The Irish Times gave a few staid
paragraphs to the launch but neither the
Irish Press nor the Irish Independenr
succeeded in mentioning it at all.
papers which I have not yet gotten around
to reading. One day, I fear, I will end up
like the newsagent, now dead, who used
to transact business up the street from us
at home in Castlerea. Even from the first
time I became aware of him his house had
filled up with old newspapers and he was
barely able to open his front door enough
to accomodate a small table from which
years.
It's interesting that both the hierarchy
and conservative Catholics like Joe Foyle
are now of the view that emigration is
now, if not A Good Thing, then certainly
an unavoidable reality.
When I was in school, despair was one
of the four sins which Cried Out To
Heaven For Vengeance.

4 MAGILL MARCH 1988

 MEDIA
AS FAR BACK AS THE LATE 1880s IT
was common practice in village after
village in Ireland, that at the end of a hard
day's work the local working men would
gather in some central place, where the
schoolmaster would read them detailed
verbatim reports of the previous day's
happenings in Westminster from
Freeman's Journal. As a result that
generation of Irishmen, many of them
unschooled in any formal way, had a
grasp of the detail of legislation, the
major issues and the personalities of the
age probably unrivalled since.
This detailed knowledge of politics and
personalities in a pre-telecommunications
age was made possible because the news-
papers of that time thought it proper to
devote pages each day to the business of
parliament. It is surely ironic that a
century later, with sixty years of our own
parliamentary tradition well established
the coverage of parliament in our national
papers is now infinitely less. It is, of
course, true that coverage of politics in
the broad sense is greater today, but
coverage of the actual workings of the
Oireachtas has been declining very much
in recent years.
Of the four national papers only the
Irish Times and the Cork Examiner are
consistent in the way in which they cover
parliamentary proceedings. What this
means is that each day they give a regular
consistent Oireachtas report of the
previous day's proceedings whether the
issues were trivial, boring or important.
The Irish Independent and the Press have
long since given up this practice and
increasingly are treating parliamentary
coverage on the merits of the individual
story rather than on the basis that because
it happened in the Oireachtas it should be
reported. In addition the Press has
virtually ceased to cover activities in the
Senate - something for which it has been
roundly and repeatedly attacked by the
Fianna Fail Leader in that House Senator
Michael Lanigan.
It is not just in the volume of coverage
that changes are taking place but also in
the quality. The parliamentary "sketch"
has now greatly declined in prominence
and in usage, and this is certainly a great
pity. What makes the sketch different to
normal reportage is that it attempts to
transcend the detail and give a picture of
the mood, character and personality of
a given day in the Dail or Senate. It is a
tradition as old and robust as the history
of newspaper coverage of parliament
itself. In the early days of the State right
through the Civil War debate, Paddy
Quinn of the Irish Independent provided
graphic day by day accounts of the debate
with pen pictures of the speakers, noting
the shifts in mood, the growing hatreds,
the confusion and the passion of that
period.
The man who revived the sketch in
recent times and made it a major feature
Maurice Manning
Reporting
the Oireachtas
of Irish journalism is John Healy of the
Irish Times. For almost a decade Healy's
daily sketch appeared on the front page
of that newspaper. It was at times funny,
angry, bitchy, infuriating and, above all,
perceptive. It could sum up in a phrase
the vanities, the political ploys, the
deviousness or the genuine concern of a
politician or party. It could catch the
changing moods of Leinster House, the
barbs, the banalities and the genuine
warmth and camaraderie of the House.
Healy's nick-names usually hit home with
devastating accuracy and became part of
political folklore. Healy knew his people
and he knew the parliamentary games.
Opinionated, prejudiced, wrong-headed
and sentimental as he often was, he was
never boring and more than any single
journalist he brought the life of the Dail
close to his readers.
There have been other good sketch
writers since then. Bruce Arnold in the
Irish Independent wrote magisterially but
with understanding and feeling for his
subject. Olivia O'Leary probably came
closest to Healy in her capacity to convey
the colour and the sense of the House and
its personalities and could convey her own
sense of mischief and fun - a sense which
was in no way inhibited by any charitable
concern for the feelings of those she wrote
about.
Maev Kennedy of the Irish Times was
developing very well with her own
whimsical style when she left the Times
for London. Since then nobody has really
had a clear run at the sketch and it rarely
if ever now makes the front page.
The decline in the quantity of
Oireachtas coverage is now a fact of life
and the trend towards even less coverage
is likely to continue. The reasons are not
just economic but relate to news values
also. The cost of keeping a team of
reporters in Leinster House is increasingly
heavy, especially since days on end can
fail to produce a real story.
The fact is that much of the work of
the Dail is of a routine and set-piece
nature; the real news is usually funnelled
through the lobby system while the major
theatrical or dramatic stories can be
anticipated. By comparison, say, with the
House of Commons, Irish politics is
notoriously non-confrontational and the
number of dramatic moments in the
annual life of the Dail can be few enough.
Nor do we have the type of investigative
committees which could provide the sort
of sharp exchanges between politicans
and outside groups which make for good
copy.
From the public point of view there is
much that is worrying about this decline
in detailed parliamentary coverage. It is
ironic in an age of the "global village"
that the flow of information from
parliament and public knowledge of what
goes on there is becoming more restricted.
Newspapers no longer feel the need or res-
ponsibility to fulfill this function or to
bear the brunt of responsibility for it. The
nature of newspapers is changing and few
are prepared to take on the role of the
Irish Times in being the so-called
"newspaper of record" .While politicans
have no right to demand extensive
coverage from newspapers many are
increasingly angry about the way in which
their utterances are being ignored or
relegated to a short paragraph.
The answer to the question of
parliamentary coverage, as with so many
other questions lies of course with the
politicians themselves. The most simple
solution is to extend radio coverage at
once so that there is live coverage of all
Dail and Senate activities and if necessary
have this facility extended to the work of
Committees also. The right of the citizen
to information of the most basic kind -
what its elected representatives are saying
and doing in the national parliament is
so obvious that it is almost impossible to
understand why it is not freely available
especially since all the technological pre-
requisites are in place. Nor should
extensive televising be far away.
Arguments as to how politicians would
behave, whether they would clown, play-
act, attempt to steal the lime-light are all
irrelevant. Parliament is meant to be full-
blooded and robust; it is meant to be the
place where people fight to get across
their point of view. It is not a meeting of
the Chamber of Commerce or the
Womens' Institute. If the possibility of
broadcasting stimulates politicians to
behave in a more robust way, then that
is entirely in accordance with what
parliament should be and would merely
be the reviving of an older tradition which
would be all to the good. The present
mendacious view that because some
politicians may behave in a ridiculous way
then the public should not see or hear
them, hardly stands up to scrutiny.
One further consequence of direct
broadcasting and greater TV coverage
could allow newspapers more space to be
become involved in analysis and in
providing a background to the issues .
MAGILL MARCH 1988 5
Every Sunday morning
in Ballyfermot, a group
of dog breeders meet to
pit their animals aqainst
one another in what can
often be fights to the
death.
JOHN O'CONNOR
spent a day at the
dogfights.
E
LEVEN O'CLOCK ON A FINE
Sunday morning, the normally
quiet Neilstown Road is a hive of
activity. In the space of about three
minutes, eight different vehicles stop near
Finch's public house. Three of these are
landrovers, two are coal delivery trucks,
the others are various forms of
commercial vans. There are two men in
each vehicle.
A dog, instantly recognisable as an
American Pit Bull Terrier, is taken from
one vehicle and transferred to the back
of a large white Mercedes van. The dog
is encaged in a wooden box, with wire
grills on either side. Movement for the
dog is totally restricted. A second dog of
the same breed is lifted from one of the
land rovers and also placed in the van. The
van immediately speeds off. A third dog,
a Rothweiler, is revealed when another
van is opened, the dog is chained inside.
Into this van the rest of the men get and
it too drives away. Both vehicles drive
towards Ballyfermot, leaving the rest of
the vans and trucks parked near the
public house.
At the very top of Ballyfermot, there's
a place known as the 'back lands' . These
are a number of fields which join together
to cover an area of approximately thirty-
five acres. The, as yet unoccupied
Wheatfield prison complex is at the rear
of the fields, it takes up almost thirteen
acres. The two vans drive as close to this
site as possible and then come to a halt.
For a time nothing happens.
After a few minutes, a couple of men
get out and walk around the fields, they
then signal to the others to follow them.
h MAl.1LL MARCH 1988
The men slowly leave the vans in ones and
twos. The last men to leave have the dogs
on leashes, and would quite easily pass
as legitimate dog walkers. That is, until
you see them all walk to the same spot
at the perimeter fence of the prison.
There are already a number of people
gathered at this stage, some of whom
have also brought dogs. As the gang who
have travelled from Neilstown approach,
those already gathered form a close-knit
group hiding their dogs.
This is an organised dog fight between
two rival groups of owners. One group
hails from Clondalkin - one of their dog
owners is from Carlow - and the other
group are from Ballyfermot.
For the next few hours, these people
will force their dogs to fight each other,
possibly to the death. This is what they
call "a bit of Sunday sport." It involves
vast amounts of gambling, sometimes
running into thousands of pounds. The
"sport" is illegal but is becoming
widespread throughout the country at
ferocious speed.
T
WO PEOPLE FROM EACH
gang approach each other, while
the others keep watch for gardai
or unwanted spectators. The two arrange
which dogs will fight one another. All the
people present are also dog owners but,
due to the seriousness of the injuries often
received by the dogs - if they are not
killed outright, that is - they only fight
a small number of dogs each week,
generally six.
It's a bit like joining a religious cult -
once embroiled it's almost impossible to
get away from it. When an owner, or
"breeder" as they prefer to be known,
wants a piece of the action they can only
do so if they agree to put their best dog
into the ring that week. Then you are free
to watch and gamble on everyone else's
dogs until your turn comes around again.
Today there is an argument developing
between the two groups. The travelling
gang had brought a Rothweiler for a
battle in that section, but the Ballyfermot
gang couldn't produce one. Eventually
they agree to go ahead and stage just two
fights. These are between the American
Pit Bull Terriers, specially-bred fighting
dogs, which have been bred by the mixing
of breeds and bloodlines interbreeding in
America over a great number of years.
They are an extremely vicious breed of
dog and must not be confused with the
ordinary passive bulldogs and terriers.
They are fed on plenty of raw lean red
meat and sometimes live kittens, to
strengthen their jaws. They can weigh
anything up to fourteen stones. Because
of their inbreeding etc, they are not
recognised as pedigree dogs by the
American or Irish Kennel clubs. They are
probably the only non-pedigree dog
which can sell for 600 for a single male
pup in Ireland.
T HE COMMENCEMENT
the fight, which takes place
OF
between two walls in an area about
twenty feet square, is signalled by four
men setting up observation posts at the
best vantage points, to keep a look out.
Once the fight starts and the dogs get to
grips with one another, it is next to
impossible to separate them quickly, so
the look-out men will keep unwanted
visitors away at whatever cost.
People around the area are aware of
the activity. They warn: "these guys are
not to be messed around. There's no way
anyone in their right mind would go to
the gardai or try to get a look at the fights.
There's too much money at stake."
crushing blows to the dog's head. This is
the only way the other dog will release a
hold. There is a penalty for doing this:
the owner must then allow the owner of
the victorious dog to keep the injured
animal and nurse it back to health for
breeding purposes.
At the end of the day's event, which
takes approximately two hours, many
thousands of pounds will have changed
guys are deadly, they are far more
dangerous than all the drug pushers and
shotgun merchants around here.
Everyone knows who they are but fear
grips the community. The money these
guys gamble each week is enormous and
anyone who tries to stop them is simply
asking for trouble."

From as close as one hundred yards to
the action, all that is visi ble is the two
different groupings on each side of the
fight area. The shouts and cheers of the
spectators is, however, clearly audible.
The dogs themselves cannot be heard.
Almost forty minutes later, the first
fight ends. The men on the observation
posts are relieved by four others. One
man carries something, presumably
dog, under a blanket to a van; he remains
with the van. The cheers go up once
again, the second battle of the day has
begun. This one is to continue for nearly
ninety minutes. During this time the
vigilance of the gangs remains intent. An
attempt to get slightly closer results in one
of them, armed with an iron bar making
swift downward motions into his hand,
giving enough warning for one not to
want to get any further.
There is another reason for the carrying
of the iron bars. I f one dog is being
severely ripped apart, the owner has the
option of saving its life by knocking it
unconscious. Even this takes a number of
T
HE DUBLIN SOCIETY FOR
hands. The ring which operates in this the Prevention of Cruelty to
area is reputed to be one of the biggest Animals are fully aware of the
in Dublin and is believed to be organised illegal dog fighting rings operating
by a number of well known criminals. throughout the country. They believe
Cautiously, the dogs, lifeless - whether Limerick to be the "Croke Park of this
from injuries, death or sheer exhaustion barbaric sport." As yet the society have
- are carried back to the vehicles. Some had little luck, however, in attaining any
of the dogs will never fight again and are substantial evidence on which they could
simply used for breeding; others will be act.
a soon back in the pit, engaged in battle Therese Cunningham, spokesperson
again. Some dogs will simply be taken for the society said: "you can walk along
away and shot, for the sake of putting Smithfield Market on a Sunday morning
them out of their misery. and these American Pit Bull Terriers are
Most owners of these breeds of dog in being shown off and sold. There's no
the country will admit to knowing that shortage of buyers either and I'm sure
this activity takes place. In Dublin, many they're paying big money. There's
will have been approached about the nothing illegal in the selling of these
prospect of entering their animal. One animals, but you can be certain that some
man from Ballyfermot told how he'd of them are ending up in fighting rings.
recently been asked to enter his dogs. We recognise a countrywide problem,
When he refused and said he would report which we think originated along the
these guys, he was advised quite forcibly border. We've actually had people
in the interest of the safety of himself and telephoning us offering information for
his family, not to say a word. lie kept cash. Although we'd dearly love to solve
quiet. this great problem, we're simply not in
Speaking to Magill, he said: "these a position to go about it in this way.";
 After much procrastination, hopes for an Irish national film centre may be
realised in the near future. SUSAN O'KEEFE reports.
T
HE ESTABLISHMENT OF A
national film centre is the
brainchild of the Irish Film In-
stitute (lFI). People in the industry point
out that the nation already benefits from
a national library, national art gallery,
national theatre and national museum.
Indeed they believe that a film centre
would be neither an innovation nor a
luxury, but rather an integral and
necessary part of the arts in Ireland.
Already the notion of such a centre has
received recognition and support from
people like the Chairman of the Arts
Council, Mairtin McCullough, and the
Chairman of the now defunct Film
Board, Muiris MacConghail.
Support of a verbal nature, however,
is never difficult to find. Those who work
in the arts in Ireland know how hard it
is to translate words into money and this
is particularly true of Government
funding. While the Department of the
Taoiseach and the Department of
Education, among others, have made
direct contributions to the development
of the arts, it is the Arts Council which
is the main source of funding for the arts.
In fact, cinema was not considered in the
"list of arts" until the 1973 Arts Act. In
1985 the Arts Council budget was 5.9
million, of which 105,000 (or 1.8070)was
paid out to film-related activities. The
abolition of the Film Board last year was
seen by many as further evidence of the
Government's disregard for the role of
film in the arts.
As a result of this shortage of funding,
many projects rely on locating private
sponsorship. "Begging" letters now form
a large part of the post received by
marketing managers of banks, large
public companies and successful private
concerns. Such expenditure is treated as
part of the advertising budget but such
is the plethora of deserving concerns that
many requests inevitably end up in the
dustbin.
It is against this background that the
lFI seeks to develop its proposal to
establish a "national institution for the
art of the cinema." The film centre will
house two cinemas, a national archive,
educational facilities, a book library,
bookshop, video facility and restaurant.
The centre will be housed in the former
8 MAGILL MARCH 1988
Quakers' Meeting Hall in Eustace Street
in Dublin which will be converted and
partially rebuilt to include all the above
facilities. The new design for the building
recently earned the architect Sheila
O'Donnell the Downes Memorial Award
from the Architectural Association of
Ireland.
Actual conversion work has yet to start
as the problem of funding the
development has not been resolved.
Indeed the funding for the purchase of
the Quakers' premises provided more
than enough headaches for the IF!. The
sum paid for the buildings in 1986 is
estimated at 0.25m and IFI director
Dave Kavanagh explains that this led to
severe financial difficulties. "We raised
money from the Arts Council, the Film
Board and the sale of our own former
premises in Harcourt Street. That sale was
extremely difficult and we got less than
we anticipated. We had been given eight
months by the Quakers to raise the money
and close the deal." As a result of the
Arts Council's intervention, the premises
is actually held by a separate company,
the Irish Film Centre Building Ltd.
Kavanagh explains that this company lets
the building to the IFI for free, provided
that it is renovated to provide a film
centre.
Film officer at the Arts Council, John
Hunt, points out that "the Arts Council
is not in the business of holding property,
but every rule is made to be broken and
there is an exception to every pattern. It
was the Council's decision to have a role
in the ownership of the building and
therefore to assist in the purchase. It is
fair to say that the IFI would not have
got it without us. Also we wanted to
safeguard it. I f the IFI plans do not work
out, we have the building and that
safeguards the public's interest. Of course
it could be turned to cash if needed and,
technically, we could turn the building to
another use if the IFI's plans were not
adhered to. We are hopeful that they will
get the centre up and running."
The Council will not get involved in the
renovation costs. Kavanagh says that they
have given nothing towards the
renovation and he doubts if they will.
"They feel that a substantial grant was
already given towards the purchase of
Eustace Street. They will continue with
our recurrent grant." This recurrent grant
has stood at 41,500 since 1986 and is the
Institute's main form of revenue. Its
existing activities, which are mainly in the
hiring and selling of educational films and
videos, are not moneyspinners and this
resulted in serious debt problems for the
Institute in the middle of last year.
Kavanagh explains that the Institute
has substantial debts. "We had an
accumulated deficit on our activities since
1982 and these almost dou bled with our
involvement in Eustace Street." He
stresses that most of these
difficulties have now been resolved and
that a long term agreement has been
reached with the Revenue Commission to
cover outstanding PA YE and PRSI
payments.
The IFI must now raise almost 0.5m
to turn Eustace Street into a film centre.
The renovation will be on a phased basis,
with the main cinema and restaurant due
to be completed first. This schedule has
already missed its original target date.
The IFI's promotional brochure,
produced in 1986, promised that phased
renovation work would begin in early
1987: "opening the main cinema and the
restaurant in autumn 1987 and the other
facilities in early 1988." The I FI is
currently negotiating with builders and
with the Department of Labour with a
view to some of the renovation work
being done through the TEAMWORK
scheme. However the Department often
insists that if a project is approved for
TEAMWORK, then all the work must be
completed by them with no other builders
on site. Since the TEAMWORK scheme
is primarily designed to provide on-the-
job training, any work it undertakes,
while cheaper, takes much longer to
complete.
A LL THOSE INVOLVED WITH
the film centre agree on two
things: that is a precious oppor-
tunity and one which must be taken up,
and that it is "a substantial risk." What
remains for the implementation of the
plans is the negotiation of some kind of
sponsorship. There are several options
open to the IF!. The most obvious is
private sponsorship and Dave Kavanagh
has expressed the desire to see a single
sponsor. Some major companies have
already turned down the opportunity but
Kavanagh says that finding this kind of
finance is still a priority.
The National Lottery is another option
which the Institute is considering. Their
first application was unsuccessful but
Kavanagh is hopeful that an application
this year will yield 200,000. Another
possible source of money is the EEC, as
1988 has been designated European Year
of Film and Television. Ironically, the
Government White Paper on Cultural
Policy entitled Access and Opportunity
(1987) states that the "Government will
seek to establish under the aegis of Bord
Scannan na hEireann an Irish National
Committee to organise a programme of
activities and projects to celebrate the
European Year of Film and Television in
1988."
Kavanagh has one other idea up his
sleeve. He promises that a trust will be
established in the near future but refuses
to disclose details until the trustees have
been confirmed. He promises "f'amous
names" and says that this will help to
raise finance because the "trustees will be
responsible for all the expenditure of
money raised through the trust."
In its forty year history the
establishment of such a centre is easily the
most controversial and most difficult task
ever undertaken by the Irish Film
Institute. Problems have dogged its
progress; planning permission has yet to
be confirmed and the staff of six has more
than enough work to keep it busy.
Keep buying the lottery tickets.
KATHLEEN O'MEARA reports on the progress
through the Oireachtas of Alan Shatter's Bill
dealing with marriage breakdown. If passed,
the Bill will provide for "everythinq short of
divorce and the right to remarry".
, 'REALPOLITIK" RATHER
than "glasnost" was how
Labour's Mervyn Taylor des-
cribed the rationale behind Fianna Fail's
decision to lend support to Fine Gael's
Private Members Bill, the Judicial
Separation and Family Law Reform Bill,
which passed Second Stage in the Dail on
February 10th last without even a vote.
The Bill is a fairly substantial piece of
work with 34 sections in all and it
proposes to fundamentally amend the law
relating to marital separation. It reflects
very closely the recommendations of the
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Marriage
Breakdown. I f passed, it would allow the
court to grant a decree of separation on
grounds of irretrievable breakdown and,
in doing so, to make a number of orders
regarding property, custody of children,
maintenance and inheritance.
If passed, it would bring this area of
family law into the twentieth century. It
would be everything short of divorce and
the right to remarry. But it remains,
despite Fianna Fail's declaration of
support in principle, a Private Members
Bill. And it is thirty years since a Private
Members Bill passed all stages and into
law.
This Bill, sponsored by Alan Shatter,
still faces its biggest hurdles, when it goes
into committee and attempts are made to
amend it, attempts which will reveal all
the fundamental differences of attitude to
marriage breakdown, some of which
surfaced during the Second Stage debate,
but most of which have already been
fought and refought by the members of
the Joint Oireachtas Committee on
Marriage Breakdown - most notably
during the bitter and divisive weeks
leading up to the referendum vote on
divorce in June 1986.
Mary Harney of the PDs hopes that
Fianna Fail are serious about amending
family law, and is anxious to see the Bill
pursued into committee and passed. She
agrees that Fianna Fail support for the Bill
was a "trade-off" in return for Fine Gael
support, or at least absence of opposition,
on other matters. "The sheer political
reality of Fianna Fail's position in the Dail
is the reason behind their support for this
Bill", she says.
Labour Whip Brendan Howlin who
with the Progressive Democrats and the
Workers Party Whips finds himself
fighting what is very often a losing battle
for more Dail time against the combined
force of Fianna Fail and Fine Gael, is
more blunt about Fianna Fail motives.
"Supporting a Fine Gael Bill has given
them latitude to attract a category of voter
which they alienated in large numbers
during the divorce referendum", he says.
"Secondly, and much more importantly,
it tied up Private Members Time for two
consecutive weeks, at a time when Private
Members Time is becoming more and
more dangerous for the government - and
indeed for Fine Gael".
Alan Shatter is less cynical about
Fianna Fail motives and declares himself
hopeful that the Bill will be back in the
Dail by the end of April, and on the
statute books by the summer recess. "I
believe that if Fianna Fail called a vote at
the end of Second Stage, they would have
lost it. Nor do I expect them to be
obstructive at Committee stage. I don't
think they would gain politically by doing
so, nor would we, or I think the other
opposition parties, allow them".
There are however, signs of future
trouble in the opening speech delivered by
the Minister for Social Welfare, Dr
Michael Woods in the absence of Justice
Minister Gerry Collins who was attending
a meeting of the Anglo-Irish Conference
that day. "I have reservations concerning
irretrievable breakdown being the sole
ground on which a decree of judicial
separation should be granted, despite the
fact that a similiar recommendation was
made by the Joint Committee on
Marriage Breakdown", said Dr Woods in
the Dail. (Dr Woods was a member of the
same Committee, which reported
unanimously. Mr Gerry Collins was not.)
"My first objection is a conceptual one.
Judicial separation does not put an end
to the marriage ... Irretrievable
breakdown, if the phrase means anything,
does not therefore appear to be an
appropriate concept to use in the context
of judicial separation", he said.
"If proof of irretrievable breakdown
were to be insisted on as well (as existing
facts i.e. adultery or cruelty) the result
MAGILL MARCH 1988 9
would be that decrees might not be
avoidable in circumstances where they
could be under the present law. Of course,
it could be argued against this point that
once one of the other facts were proved,
acceptance by the court that the marriage
was, in fact, irretrievably broken down
would, in practice, become a formality -
as it has become in England, in relation
to divorce, where there is a smaller
requirement to prove breakdown in
addition to one or more facts, such as
adultery or separation", he said.
He went on: "I am inclined to the view
that it might be preferable to follow more
closely the recommendations of the Law
Reform Commission in this matter:'
The Joint Committee on Marriage
Breakdown, which heard many public
submissions, agreed that the Law Reform
Commission Report which preceded it did
not go far enough. The Whips of the
opposition parties and a spokesman for
the Workers Party said that the position
adopted by the minister was not one
which they could agree with. However, it
is consistent with the position adopted by
members of Fianna Fail in opposing the
introduction of divorce based on
irretrievable breakdown.
Other areas of contention include the
minister's argument that desertion by one
spouse would constitute an absolute bar
on maintenance and inheritance. The
opposition parties point to the situation
where a spouse, for instance a woman who
is being assaulted, is forced to leave.
The procedure for the establishment of
the Committee of the Dail, which will sit
outside the Chamber, is a complex one.
Under the rules, in the present
circumstances, in a committee of
seventeen, Fianna Fail would have eight
members; in a committee of fifteen,
Fianna Fail would have seven. It is
expected that the order to establish the
committee will be moved soon, and a date
set for its first meeting after each party
has nominated its members. This is
normally done by the party leader. The
Chairperson is then elected by the
members. The speed of the work and
ultimately the return of the Bill to the Dail
for final stages and approval will depend
on the motivation of the members of the
committee and the level of consensus
reached.
If the view expressed by Michael Woods
in the Dail on behalf of Gerry Collins and
the Department of Justice is brought into
the Committee as the position of the
Fianna Fail group, consensus will not be
reached quickly, and the tortuous debates
which went on during the final
deliberations of the Committee on
Marriage Breakdown will be re-enacted.
And while not all the Fianna Fail speakers
on the Bill during its Second Stage shared
the views expressed by the minister, the
reality, as any government backbencher
knows, is that the minister, with his
departmental officials, is the one who
wields power at the end of the day.
10 MAGILL MARCH 1988
The Minister
for Health has
provided for the use
by the Irish people
of 100 condoms
every minute, though
it is too early yet
to say if we live up
to his expectations.
JOHN O'CONNOR
reports on the
usage of contraception
in Ireland.
I
FTHE MINISTER FOR HEALTH
has got his sums right between now
and when you have finished reading
this article in about fifteen minutes time
the Irish public will have used up 1,500
condoms.
In 1987, the Minister for Health Dr.
Rory O'Hanlon, granted licences for the
importation of over fifty three million
condoms, which works out at over a
million per week. Broken down still
further the total possible availability of
condoms in a year looks like this: I year
- 53,503,264, I month - 5,586,053, I day
- 146,584, I hour - 6,107, and in 15
minutes 1,527. The fact that these figures
are importation allowances and not actual
sales figures means this amount is still an
estimation of needs. It is too early to say
if it is realistic. Veronica O'Leary, the
only woman importing condoms into
Ireland says that she doubts if the number
of actual sales is anywhere near this
figure.
There are three brands of condoms
now on general sale in this country:
Veronica 0' Leary's "Red Stripe",
Richard Branson's "Mates", which are
being sold at Virgin record store outlets,
and the old reliable, Durex.
Actual sales of condoms in the past year
cannot be guaged exactly because each of
the importers yearly licences run over
di r 11 periods T' nev 0' -rand
Mates, for example, only have their
. licence for a couple of months, so they
are unable to estimate what percentage of
their allowance they will sell. So far,
however, they have sold over half a
million. Durex sales are known to have
topped the 5.5 million mark, while the
Red Stripe brand boast over three million
sales to-date. Each of the importers admit
they are happy with sales figures and see
the demand improving greatly as the year
goes on.
Veronica O'Leary points out, however,
that as the minister stressed a specific
importation figure, then each of the
importers would try to meet that amount.
Failure to do this would mean that when
the figure is reviewed, the next allowance
would be reduced to the previous year's
average intake.
T
HE MOST POPULAR
methods of contraception in
Ireland are; the Pill, the condom,
the diaphragm and the IUD - in that
order.
The Pill has remained the most popular
form of contraception in Ireland for quite
some time, despite the ever increasing
onslaught by the condom. It is greatly
favoured by women under the age of
thirty-five and is the second safest form
of contraception, after sterilisation. It's
failure rate is as low as two per cent. The

Irish Family Planning Association,
company two years ago, when its previous Staunton's, Main Street, Athboy
owner, Pat Moylett, moved on to other While Staunton's sell contraceptives, they
interests. Veronica imports her condoms do not display them. "Customers have to
from Germany, unwrapped or boxed in ask for them to be got out of the back
bulk. They are then clinically tested and room. This is a very small town and
packaged and boxed in Ireland. She says people could be easily offended by a
"business is brisk, despite competition display. Besides, we get a lot of children
from the two other importers of coming in here with their mothers and it's
condoms, who hold the Mates and Durex not the sort of thing you display along
licences" with glucose sticks, now is it?"
Although the giant Durex company can
afford to keep undercutting her prices, CahiIIs, Main St, Gorey:
she still makes quite a comfortable living Mrs Una Cahill will only supply
out of the business. Veronica has seen contraceptives, including condoms to
great growth in the industry over the past people with a doctor's prescription.
three years. She puts this down to "the "Although I know they've been
change in law, which allowed for regulated, I remain very conservative
condoms to be sold and displayed in about these matters. It is the right of the
chemists and also the growing number of individual chemists to supply
AIDS-related cases which we constantly contraceptives by whatever means they
hear of. People are turning to the condom choose." Doesn't she think that this is
as an alternative method, or an very unfair to people to the area when
accompanying method during sex. I can there are record shops in Dublin which
safely say that I'll make a tidy sum of even sell condoms over the counter? "I've
money out of this game in the space of had no complaints, and besides there's
a couple of years." nothing stopping them from going to
Although Veronica understands people Dublin." The demand in Gorey is very
who can't accept the open sale of small.
condoms on moral grounds, she herself
feels glad to be able to help in the fight O'Donohoues, Main Street, Killarney
against AIDS and in assisting family This shop will provide contraceptives but
planning. She employs six people in nothing is displayed. A shop assistant
various capacities and has all her boxes explained: "We have a lot of people from
printed in Coolock, in Dublin. She feels the religious orders using this chemist and
bitter about the fact that Durex, who they would certaintiy be offended by a
simply bring the finished product into the display of this sort. Out demand is quite
country, are allowed to have a strangle- big. "
hold over the sales end of things.
in John Harnett's, Abbeyfeale

T
researching their own largest Dublin HERE ARE, HOWEVER, Mr Harnett refused to discuss the subject;
clinics, discovered that thirty-six per cent some areas of the country where "I've better things to be doing than
of all their clients chose this method. contraceptives can still not be discussing this sort of thing with you."
Condoms are the second most popular openly purchased from chemist shops. In
.method. Referred to affectinately in a random survey of chemists A spokesperson for chemists in the
Ireland as the "rubber johnnie", countrywide, this is what we found. Wicklow/Bray/ Arklow area said that "in
"frenchie" or "rubber", usage of this Wicklow town, two out of four chemists,
method increases as the incidence of CootehiII Pharmacy, Market Square, stock and display condoms. The other
STD rises. Approximately fifteen per cent CootehiII. two don't sell them at all. In Bray, seven
of all contraception users choose this "We certainly sell contraceptives of the eight chemists sell condoms, most
method. The condom has an average although not in any great quantity. We of whom also display them. In Arklow,
failure rate of almost ten per cent. only sell to those whom we know are over only one out of four chemists sell any
The Diaphragm or Cap is the third most eighteen years and we only stock one form of non-medical, contraception."
popular method. It captures almost brand, which is Durex." This spokesperson said, in relation to
twelve per cent of the market. The failure stocking contraceptives in his own shop,
rate of this method can be fifteen per "I see it as my own personal choice. If
cent. Dolan's Pharmacy, Glaslough St, people want to have sex safely then they
IUDs are the next most popular form Monaghan. have that right also. !t never really
with a market share of nine per cent. When we phoned this shop we were told; mattered what the church or politicians
Vasectomy is favoured by males over "!t's my day off, so I don't wish to said - people still did and continue to do
the age of thirty-five, who generally have comment on anything like that." their own thing. !t is my experience that
a family already. most of the sales of condoms in my shop
Although there are no official Fair Green Pharmacy, H Williams are to married couples and not unmarried
nationwide statistics for usuage of Shopping Centre, MuIIingar. youngsters. The reason I provide an open
contraceptives, these figures represent This chemist is owned by the O'Farrell display is that I see it as being the only
good averages, being taken from the pharmacy chain. Mr 0' Farrell way around the stigma attached to buying
country's two largest clinics. commented; "We have non-medical contraceptives in this country that you are
contraceptives on sale in all of our shops. actually doing something wrong. All the

V
ERONICA O'LEARY RUNS the They are openly displayed because we feel fumbling about under the counter and
Frederick Trading Company in this saves a lot of embarrassment on the producing the product away from the
Ireland, who are the sole im- customer's side." Surprisingly the public eye, safely enclosed in a brown
porters of "Red Stripe" condoms into the demand in Mullingar is far greater than paper bag, implies that there is something
country. She gained control of the that in any of his Dublin shops. almost sordid going on."

MAGILL MARCH 1988 11

 Dublin city centre stores spent an estimated 19 million on security last
year but shoplifters still managed to relieve them of 13 million worth of
I
goods during the same period. TOM KELLY reports.
"T HERE ARE SOME DAYS
when I'd go into town
and I'd get nothing at all - if
I was out for the whole week, I might get
300 worth of stuff which I could sell for
100." Sarah (not her real name) is one
of the estimated 150 full-time shoplifters
in Dublin. She is just sixteen, comes from
the North inner city, and has been making
a living from shoplifting since she was
expelled from school five years ago for, in
her own words, "answering back and
hitting teachers".
She used to make 100 a day when she
started but she says her average earnings
are now down to 100 a week. In recent
years, the increased use by city-centre
shops of plain-clothes store detectives
and uniformed security guards, all
equipped with two-way radios, has meant
that the odds are now firmly stacked
against the shoplifters. All the full-time
operators are known to the security staff
of the various stores who are in constant
radio contact with one another. The
shops' main line of defence is to spot the
professionals at the store entrance and
stop them getting in.
The new order of things has meant that
there are no longer any easy pickings for
Sarah. "Everything has changed - with
the walkie-talkies they really get you. If
you're seen walking down one end of the
street, the other end knows what you're
wearing and all and what colour hair
you have - I usually wear a wig and
glasses and lots of make-up. It's gone this
way now that if I went into Mirror Mirror
the fella from the record shop opposite
would come over and throw me out -
they're all butt in' in for each other now.
Years ago it wasn't like that - if you went
into Arnotts and took something, the
fella across the road wouldn't regard it as
his business.
"THE SECURITY AREN'T
always on the doors,
sometimes they walk around
the store - you just sneak in behind them
and try to get what you can and get back
out. I mainly take ladies' coats, blouses,
dresses and skirts - I could take seven
skirts in one lift. I take them off the
hangers and put them under my arms or
---- 1" MA.r.n.L MA.Rr.H 1988
Above ana oPPoSlte-page: the security
monitoring system at Switzer's of Grafton
Street, Dublin.
into my bra or down the sleeves of my
coat. You can also take off your jacket
and put it in a bag and then tryon a size
ten coat and put on a size twelve over it
and just walk out. I usually go out all the
back ways and jump into a taxi to get
home.
"It's exciting when you get something
- you walk back up the street and you
just start laughing."
Sarah sells the clothes she steals to
people living in her own locality and
reckons that for a 100 coat she would get
50. She prefers to operate in the bigger
department stores in Grafton Street
because they have several entrances and
exits, not all of which are covered
by security sta ff. She reckons she has been
caught about forty times since she started
shoplifting - mainly by plain-clothes
gardai who came upon her on the street
and searched her for stolen property. She
says she has amassed 600 in fines and
adds, "the fines man never comes near my
door".
She says she has avoided prison so far
because she is still a juvenile but expects
that her charmed life will come to an end
when she reaches seventeen. "I"Il be
taken in on a warrant and sent away -
the judges are all just dying to do me
because they know 1 have been getting
away with it for so long."
HERE ARE NO STATISTICS
available regarding city
T centre stores' annual losses
through shoplifting. Estimates by
Switzers' Group Security Manager,
Shane O'Leary, however, indicate that
Sarah's weekly take of goods worth 300
may not be typical of other professional
shoplifters, who can slip through the
security net more easily because they are
not so well known. O'Leary reckons that
city centre stores are losing 13m every
year through shoplifting. He arrives at
this figure by assuming conservatively
there are 100 professional shoplifters in
the city, each of whom steals 2,500
worth of goods every week. "The
shoplifters now, if they do a good lift they
could steal anything between 600 and
2.000 worth of goods in one go. If they
are lucky and do four or five lifts a week
they are making big money." He
estimates that ninety percent of the
shoplifters are professionals and says that
thc majority are female in the fifteen to
t weruy-Iivc age group. Women's clothing
are the most frequently stolen items.
I ndividual stores a re reluctant to reveal
their losses but t he manager of one large
Henry Street store, who would not agree
to being named, revealed that his store
was losing goods with a retail value of
8.000 every week through theft - most
of this was accounted for by shoplifting.
with the rest relating to internal theft.
Store security managers contacted by
Magill maintained that practically all
shoplifters who are caught in the act are
prosecuted. In some cases, such as ones
involving obvious senility, or where there
is evidence of severe emotional distress
before the offence was committed, the
case is not pursued.
Padraic Cafferty, managing director of
Securiforce. one oft he leading companies
in the area. explains the techniques his
staff are instructed to use with shoplifters:
"We instruct our people not to confront
them until they are outside the store. The
security officer must be one hundred
percent certain that the person has
something they have not paid for. He asks
the person to come back inside - he has
to use his best communicative skills to get
them back in. If they refuse, he has to
physically bring them back and if they try
to get away he tries to restrain them."
The general practice is that. once inside,
the person is detained until the gardai
arrive and take over the matter.
Detective Superintendent Pat Jordan
who is attached to Store Street
Garda station in the North inner city,
confirms that security staff are entitled to
detain shoplifters. "They have a power of
arrest - it's a citizen's arrest. They
cannot arrest for attempted larceny so the
person must be caught in the act. It is
preferable that they are outside the door
and at that stage a garda is called and
they are handed over."
The annual crime report issued by the
Garda Siochana makes no distinction
between larcenies from shops and other
larcenies, thus there are no official
statistics on the annual incidence of
shoplifting. Figures cited by
Superintendent Jordan, however, which
relate to the Garda 'C' district, covering
the area between Capel Street and Sean
MacDermott Street, give some idea of the
scale of the problem. In 1986 there were
1287 reported larcenies from shops in this
district resulting in 1214 people being
charged. In 1987 the figure rose to 1418
reported incidents with 1375 people being
charged. Practically all the reported
cases related to people who were caught
red-handed leaving a shop with stolen
goods and most resulted in convictions.
Jordan points out that there is some
evidence this year that the upward trend
is being reversed - some fifty-four
people were charged in January 1988
compared to 110 for the same month in
1987.
The penalties for shoplifting are not
severe. The Probation Act is generally
applied to first-time offenders and
subsequent offences generally result in
fines of between 10 and 20. Persistent
shoplifters with previous convictions are
dealt with more harshly - if caught they
can expect a prison sentence of between
six months and twelve months,
depending on the amount of property
involved.
Jordan has his own ideas about what
happens to the stolen goods. "It's sold
door to door along the balconies of the
various complexes of flats around here.
On a Saturday morning there is an open
market in Cumberland Street and you
can buy anything at it, including TV sets
and bicycles. A lot of it is marketed
there." He points out that the plain-
clothes gardai attached to the Crime
Prevention Unit, whose job is to deal with
shoplifters, pickpockets and car thieves
on the streets, have an excellent
relationship with the stores' security staff.
T HERE IS NOSPECIFIC LEGAL
statute dealing with shoplifting.
Prosecutions for theft from shops
have to be pursued under the terms of the
1916 Larceny Act which store managers
say is inadequate to deal with today's
shoplifters. They claim that the Act,
framed as it was over seventy years ago, is
incapable of addressing the problem of
theft in modern department stores and
results in the situation where security
staff have to confront shoplifters outside
the store on the pavement. According to
the Act, "A person steals who, without
the consent of the owner, fraudulently
and without a claim of right made in good
faith, takes and carries away anything
capable of being stolen with intent, at the
time of taking, permanently to deprive
the owner thereof."
The interpretation of the phrase
"permanently to deprive" is a ca use of
confusion to security staff, especially to
those in department stores who are
unsure whether or not they are entitled to
detain a person who, for example, takes
goods from the record department and is
subsequently found in the shoe
department with the unpaid for goods.
Some stores have a policy of detaining
people in these circumstances and have
secured convictions when the person in
question had not left the precincts of the
store at all. The usual practice, however,
is that the shoplifter is only confronted at
the store exit, having passed all the cash
registers, or outside on the pavement.
The phrase "without the consent of the
owner" in the 1916 Act has also given rise
to controversy in that in modern stores
the customer is invited, with the consent
of the owner, to take into his possesesion
for inspection an item from a rack or
display stand, thus it has been argued that
in these circumstances larcen y cannot
occur. In a submission to the Director of
Public Prosecutions in 1978, Eoghan
Fitzsimons SC, wrote: " ... my view is
that a person ... who takes goods and
tries to leave without paying, has not been
guilty of the offence of larceny as defined
by Section I of the Larceny Act, 1916. I
consider that, in fact, such a person has
committed no offence known to our law.
Clearly, a most serious defect exists here
which can only be remedied by an Act of
the Oireachtas."
Tom Coffey of the Dublin City Centre
Businesses Association is in no doubt that
new legislation is needed to combat
shoplifting. "The 1916 Act must be
amended to enable stores to deal with
organised criminals who are shoplifters."
Coffey maintains that there is a new spirit
of cooperation between the security
managers of city centre stores, who now
meet once a month to collate information
about security issues. "These meetings
have improved the level of intelligence the
business community has about criminals
- our profile of the criminal is becoming
clearer."
MAGILL MARCH 1988 13
The following article is based on a
series of four interviews with Martin
Cahill, otherwise known as "The
General", conducted throughout the
final week of February. Much of it
consists of a paraphrased version of
what was related by Martin Cahill.
Quotes directly attributed to Cahill are
the result of extensive notes written
directly afterwards on the basis of brief
notes taken while the interviews were in
progress using key words and phrases.
Where the narrative is based on sources
other than Cahill, this is indicated in
the text.
_ ARTINCAHILL TELLS
HIS OWN STORY. HE WAS STROLLING THROUGH
Rathmines on the way back to his house in Cowper Downs.
He had just reached Rathmines Road Upper, coming out of
the village. He stopped and started to rummage in a litter bin
attached to a bus stop. A unmarked garda car which was
following him at a snail's pace stopped also. One of the detectivs
in the car rolled down the window and shouted: "Dirt bird" .
Martin Cahill ignored him and continued rummaging in the
14 MAGILL MARCH 1988
litter. The detective threw a penny at Cahill. Cahill picked the
penny up and put it in his pocket.
He continued walking up the road. At the next bus stop there
was another litter bin and a queue waiting. Cahill looked into
the litter bin and began rooting inside. Another coin was thrown
by the detective. Cahill picked that one up as well and put it
in his pocket. He was now only a couple of hundred yards from
the house in Cowper Downs. He figured putting the money
which the gardai had thrown at him into his pocket must be
annoying them.
Cahill turned off the Rathmines Road Upper onto Cowper
Road. Another coin dropped on the pavement. This one landed
behind him. He ignored it. To have picked it up would have
meant turning around and looking in the direction of the
detectives following him. Martin Cahill has developed a
psychology for dealing with the gardai. You must never, ever
look at them. Their presence must never be acknowledged.
Cahill is "fastidious" on this point, he says. He has even gone
to the trouble of removing the wing mirrors from his car.
Otherwise the gardai would assume he was watching them
through the mirrors: "The gardai must never be allowed to see
they are getting a reaction", he says.
Another part of his psychology is to always behave in exactly
the opposite way to that which the gardai expect. When the
Misuse of Drugs Act was introduced, the gardai used to stop
him on the street, he says, take him to the police station and
strip-search him. Cahill is adamant that he has never been
involved in drugs. The gardai, he says, were taking him to the
station as a tactic to humiliate and degrade him. On four
occasions - three in Rathmines, one in St Stephens Green -
when the gardai stopped him, he peeled off his clothes there
and then. While a crowd gathered he complained loudly that
the gardai were harassing him. He felt there was a marked
decline in attempts by the gardai to stop and question him under
the powers of the Act.
Martin Cahill was rooting in the rubbish bins that day because
he knew it was the last thing the gardai expected him to do.
Half an hour earlier he had been driving along in his car when
he braked and the gardai had crashed into him. It was the second
time in as many months that this had occurred. A photographer
from the Evening Herald was on hand to witness the ensuing
verbal confrontation between Cahill and detectives after the
crash. The picture appeared on the front page of the Evening
Herald later that day under a large banner headline: "No hiding
place". Cahill was described as Ireland's most wanted man. As
usual, you couldn't see very much of him, his hand was covering
his face. It was Thursday February 4 and the intense garda
surveillance which had started in earnest in the first week of
the New Year had become national news.
Just outside the house in Cowper Downs the detectives who
were following him threw another coin - this time a twopence
piece - which landed on the road. As Cahill went to pick it
up the car rolled gently forward with the intention of covering
the coin with its wheel. It missed. Cahill bent down to pick it
up. A detective wearing runners got out of the car. His foot
covered the coin a second before Cahill could get his hand to
it. Martin Cahill straightened up, making sure not to look at
the detectives, and walked into the house.
" Round the clock surveillance began in the first week of the
HE MOST IMPORTANT
THING TO REMEMBER ABOUT THE SURVEILLANCE",
according to Martin Cahill, "is that it's all a game". He uses
the word "game" in this connection again and again, with
emphasis.
Up to now, at least, Martin Cahill has refused to take the
"game" seriously. He tells us he has formed a new company,
McGill securities. The inspiration for the company arises from
the present intense surveillance which the gardai have placed
on him. He proposes to go into the security business: "Since
everwhere we go the gardai go, McGill securities can offer an
armed garda escort for the movement of large amounts of
cash". A circular has already been printed to target potential
customers. These include any busines firms who pay wages in
cash or anyone else who transfers valuables that would normally
require an armed escort. Martin Cahill and a number of others
who are associates of his propose to drop the circular into a
number of firms who they know are in need of such a service.
The first place they will drop a circular off, says Cahill, is
Rathmines garda station:"We wouldn't like to be arrested and
accused of "casing" any factory or business".
Martin Cahill is well used to garda surveillance. He claims
it first started in December of 1974, a couple of weeks after
90,000 (worth 250,000 in today's terms) was taken in a
robbery at a Quinnsworth branch in Rosemount Shopping
centre in Rathfarnham. Cahill denies any involvement. Except
for periods when he was in jailor in garda custody the police
have monitored his movements without remit ever since. The
only difference now is that the surveillance is more intense, more
prolonged. He had an inkling something was going to happen
after a senior detective stopped a close associate of his on the
street just before Christmas. The detective told the man that
the stolen paintings worth over 30 million belonging to the Beit
collection taken from Russborogh House, and 145 legal files
removed from the offices of the Director of Public Prosecutions
(DPP), were to be returned forthwith. The stolen property was
to be dumped at a location where the gardai could pick it up.
Martin Cahill's associate was left with the distinct impression
16 MAGILL MARCH 1988
that if this didn't happen the gardai had an alternative course
of action prepared. Martin Cahill refuses to admit that he was
involved in either of these robberies. He denies any involvement
in any crimes other than those of which he has been convicted.
"I will admit to nothing under the alias of the General, Mickey
Mouse or anybody else. If the gardai have evidence to connect
me with robberies they should charge me" he says.
Two weeks before the associate of Martin Cahill was stopped
on the street the new garda Commissioner Eamon Doherty had
set up a new surveillance squad comprising of sixty young
detectives. During Eamon Doherty's days as a detective he
favoured an up-and-at-them approach, confronting criminals
on their own terms. Part of his training included secondment
to the FBI. The brief of the new surveillance squad was to break
the supremacy enjoyed by a small number of well organised
criminal gangs working in Dublin. The sixty detectives were
chosen not for their experience but for the fact they were hard-
nosed and ambitious. Martin Cahill is the prime target of their
operation.
New Year. Martin Cahill noticed an intensification
Christmas itself. On Christmas night he was driving from the
over
80,000 house in Cowper Downs which is in his wife's name
to a corporation house in Swan Grove where, he says, he lives.
His wife and children were in the car with him. As they drove
down Palmerstown Road an unmarked police car with two
detectives followed. The police car drew up alongside on a
couple of occasions, Cahill says. The gardai were in a festive
humour. They were laughing and pointing at him. Cahill says
they were leering and shouting abuse. "Normally", he says,
"nothing affects me. But today was Christmas. I was with my
wife and family. 1 thought I was entitled to a day off". He was
peeved. At that moment he saw - or thought he saw, it was
dark and he couldn't be sure - a cat crossing the road. He
jammed on the brakes without warning. The garda car behind
crashed into him.
Cahill insisted an ambulance be called. He wanted to be
admitted to hospital. He says that he suspected he was suffering
from whiplash. The ambulance took him to St. Vincent's
Hospital, from where he was later discharged. Meanwhile the
gardai confiscated his car which they took to Terenure garda
station. His wife and children walked the remaining couple of
yards to Swan Grove. Subsequently Martin Cahill made a
formal complaint to the newly established Garda Complaints
Commission alleging harassment and complaining that gardai
had taken away his car without permission. When the car was
returned the tail-light indicator was broken, he claims.
Subsequently he was convicted in the District Court on a careless
driving charge for making a turn without giving a hand signal.
He has since appealed the conviction to the Circuit Court. The
twenty-four hour surveillance on the houses on Cowper Downs
and Swan Grove, insofar as it has attempted to curtail the
movements of Martin Cahill, appears to be a failure. Between
February Sunday 21 and the following Friday, Martin Cahill
made himself available for interview to Magill at an agreed
location, every other afternoon. On each occasion he arrived
he claimed he had not been followed by the gardai. Martin
Cahill and several of his associates have been wearing hooded
anoraks and putting their hands to their faces for years as he
explains, there are advantages to this: if a car draws up to the
door of Martin Cahill's house and three men shuttle quickly
in, it is difficult if not impossible for the gardai to tell if it is
the same three men who come back out and drive off.
 On the occasion of the first interview with Magill, however,
Martin Cahill had dispensed with the hooded anorak. Instead
he wore a black suit and coller and tie. He also wore black
leather gloves. He doesn't look much like a general. In
appearence he bears a close resemblace to the part played by
Bob Hoskins in "The long Good Friday" or to the character
of Del Boy in "Only Fools and Horses". When he laughs -
which he frequently does, at the expense of the gardai - he
throws his head back in an almost exaggerated way, chuckling
softly. He speaks with a pronounced Dublin accent. He is very
demonstrative with his hands. When talking about putting an
incident or an event in his past behind him, he spreads both
his arms out, pushing them backwards to illustrate his point.
He explains himself patiently, tapping out points with the back
of one hand against the other. In the course of our conversation
he never raised his voice but often lowered it almost to a whisper
when concluding a story, invariably with his face set in a smile.
He likes to articulate his views by a series of rhetorical questions
- often getting the interviewer to answer the questions, other
times answering them himself - in the way a teacher would
explain a complicated situation to a pupil. When asked specific
questions, such as whether he has been responsible for
threatening the lives of gardai or to respond to the charge that
his reputation is based on fear an intimidation, his face quickly
contorts into an expression of innocent denial and pained
surprise. If he feels that you don't believe the answer to a
question he looks at you gravely and says "Seriously".
During the course of the first interview Martin Cahill stressed
that he was "quite comfortable" with the way in which the
police surveillance was going: "The gardai have come down to
my level. They are now breaking the law".
___ HAT WEEKEND HAD BEEN
HECTIC. ON FRIDAY MORNING FEBRUARY 19,
a close associate of Martin Cahill was being
followed by three unmarked garda cars. According to Cahill,
he says that there was one in front, one behind and one
abreast when the car in front jammed on the brakes. He ran
into the back of the car. He was taken to James Street
Hospital where he had a surgical coller fitted to his neck. A
large number of gardai gathered at the hospital. According to
Martin Cahill, a number of the gardai taunted him. A fracas
developed.
There was more trouble for Martin Cahill's friends on the
next day, Saturday. Cars belonging to two of his associates had
their tyres slashed. It was not the first occasion that this occurred
says Cahill.
One of these men drank regularly in the Rathmines Inn. He
has frequently been breathalysed on leaving the premises. One
night over the Christmas period he was leaving the pub and
noticed gardai parked nearby. He took a taxi home. The
following morning he returned for his car. The tyres had been
slashed. Martin Cahill believes that the gardai were the culprits.
Now, on Saturday, February 20 the car tyres were slashed a
second time.
That Saturday night the tyres of twenty-three cars parked in
the Garda Golf Club at Stackstown were slashed. Eight of the
eighteen golfing greens were dug up. The damage ran into tens
of thousands of pounds. The matter did not end there.
Subsequently, in the small hours of Sunday night and Monday
Morning, the tyres of Martin Cahill's car were also slashed and
the windows broken. The same thing happened to one of his
friends, whose wife heard the sound of breaking glass and went
to the window. She saw a car drive off. Within a minute she
saw a patrol car drive up to the car, pause and drive off again.
She noted the number of the patrol car and rang Terenure garda
station. She complained to the gardai that her husband's car
had been attacked by the gardai in full view of a patrol car.
Minutes later the patrol car returned. They gave her the
registration number of the car that had driven away. Martin
Cahill says the car registration is the same number as one of
the unmarked police cars that have been sitting outside his
house. This retaliatory attack was cohesive and well organised,
according to Cahill.
The attack on Martin Cahill's car and the attack on garda
cars and golfing greens were carried consecutively on the main
1.30 news bulletin on RTE the following day, Monday February
22. The bulletin made no attempt to establish a connection
between the two events. Shortly afterwards Martin Cahill made
himself available for interview to Magill once again. He had
not heard any news bulletin that day, nor had he been home,
so he was unaware of the attacks on his own car or on any of
his friends. On hearing of the damage caused to his car, far
from being annoyed, he reacted as though he found it hilarious.
Martin Cahill is not easily fazed. Referring back to the
conversation the previous evening, he asked: "Do you see what
I mean about the gardai breaking the law?" Several times in
the course of the interview, which lasted over three hours, he
smiled and said: "I can't get over them smashing up my car".
Martin Cahill might well laugh off the damage caused to his
car. But someone was keeping the score. On Saturday, according
to Cahill, two of the cars of his friends had been damaged. On
Saturday night over twenty cars belonging to gardai had been
slashed. The following night (Sunday) his own car, as well as
those of three of his friends, had been wrecked. On Friday night
the tyres of 197cars, mostly in the Dublin six area, were slashed.
Ninety of the cars were in Cowper Downs itself.
At eleven o'clock on Saturday morning, February 27 Martin
Cahill was arrested at the flat of a relative. He was arrested
under Section 30 of the Offences Against the State Act, under
suspicion of being in possession of a firearm on the Naas Road
two days previously when two of his associates were arrested.
In a fourth interview with Magill, after his release, Martin
Cahill gave the following account 'of his weekend.
He was taken to the Bridewell for questioning. Before the
questioning started he was examined by a doctor. His request
for a solicitor was immediately granted. He was questioned by
detectives working in relays until midnight. There were short
breaks for meals. Questioning continued all day Sunday, but
Martin Cahill wasn't answering. He kept chanting "I have
nothing to say to you men - BOOMl" over and over again.
According to Cahill the gardai joined in the chanting on a
number of occasions. He has no complaints about the way he
was treated.
He found sleep difficult. The gardai on night duty called him
every half hour to see that he was alright. He intended to
complain about this until it was explained to him that gardai
were obliged to follow this procedure because of the large
number of people committing suicide in custody in the
Bridewell.
MAGILL MARCH 1988 17
 During questioning the detectives questioned him about the
stolen Beit paintings and the files from the DPP's office which,
he says, they insisted must be returned. They also questioned
him about the damage done to 197 cars on the previous night.
His clothes were confiscated for forensic examination, he
claims. New clothes were provided in their place. As he was
leaving the station, the gardai opened the door for him to leave.
Outside were numerous photographers and a TV crew waiting
for him "like I was going out on stage". But the waiting
entourage was to be disappointed. Martin Cahill had torn the
sleeve of the new jumper bought for him by the gardai and mad~
it into a mask.
On his release he returned to Cowper Downs. His own car
remains with the windscreen smashed and the tyres deflated.
Several other cars on the estate were in a similar condition. The
cement block which was used to smash his car - was in his
kitchen. Cahill denied to Magill that he had played any part
on the attack on his neighbours.
ARTIN CAHILL WAS
BORN IN CRUMLIN IN 1949. HIS MOTHER WAS
pregnant eighteen times in all. On six occasions she miscarried
or the child was stillborn. He attended the local national school
in Kimmage. At first he enjoyed school immensely. One day
after school he was messing around at the dump where used
jotters and equipment were thrown out. A nun came along and
demanded to know what he was doing. He gave her cheek and
told her it was none of her business as he wasn't even a pupil
of hers. A couple of days after the nun came into Cahill's class.
Her own class was too small and she was going to take a few
boys from his class. Cahill just knew he was going to be one
of them. She walked around the class, but past him -
deliberately, he says. On her way back she picked him as one
of the boys to join her class. It took half an hour, and lots of
roaring and crying, before he was prised from the classroom.
He hated his new class. . He refers to an incident involving his elder brother Eddie who
"The new teacher had it in for me", he says. He started
mitching. He was up before the juvenille courts dozens of times
under the School Attendance Acts. When he was in class and
the School Inspectors arrived around he was always picked out
to read a passage from the book in front of the rest of the classs.
Rather than make an effort at it and risk being wrong he would
18 MAGILL MARCH 1988
say he didn't know. The teacher would then turn to the class
and warn them that they too would turn out like Martin Cahill
if they didn't come to school. Martin Cahill decided that he
would learn nothing, to spite them all. There was a large GAA
football pitch behind his house. In the summertime the grass
would be cut and gathered into haystacks. Then it would be
baled. Martin Cahill and a few of his friends cut a couple of
bales up and remade it into a haystack. They reassembled it
up under a wall and were jumping from the wall onto the
haystack. The gardai arrived. They were all arrested and
charged. On conviction Cahill was fined five shillings. It was
a fortune. He was aged about nine years of age. When he was
eleven he was convicted for housebreaking. He got the
Probation Act.
Martin Cahill was into petty crime. The meagre income his
father earned as a lighthouse keeper often didn't even extend
to putting food on the table. Martin and his brothers robbed
to supplement the family income. There was no sense of guilt
attaching to what they did.
At that time, a number of custodial centres were in operation
based on the workhouse system. The Children's Act 1908
provided for reformatory and industrial schools - "schools
for youthful offenders in which they are lodged, clothed and
fed as well as taught". Originally there were ten industrial
schools designed to cater for those convicted of petty offences.
They were also used as a dumping ground for orphans and
illigitimate children. There were just two reformatory schools:
St Joseph's in Limerick, run by Sisters of Good Shepherd, took
young girl offenders, and St Conleths, in Daingean, County
Offa1y was used to incarcerate boys from the age of twelve
upwards, convicted of housebreaking, assaults and the more
serious larceny offences.
In 1965 Martin Cahill was sentenced to two years in St
Conleths, Daingean, for housebreaking. Two years was the
minimum sentence. The regime at Daingean was harsh and
draconian but Cahill himself found it quite bearable. He already
had his own system worked out for when he was locked up.
He recognized that those who where responsible for keeping
him locked up were only doing a job and it was in the interests
of everybody to ensure they did their work with as little hassle
as possible.
was in St. Patrick's institution at the same time as Martin was
in Daingean. Cahill's says that his brother Eddie was dissatisfied
with the food and confronted the Governor to complain. He
pointed out that the meat was too tough to eat. The Governor
disagreed and told Cahill he had sampled the meat himself. At
this Eddie Cahill threw his dinner over the Governor. He spent
the next month in a strait jacket. Martin Cahill sees such
behaviour as "negative". Eddie is the sort of person, he says,
that if a warden asked him to pick up a bit of paper he would
tell him to pick it up himself. This would inevitabley lead to
confrontation. Martin, on the other hand, would premept either
confrontation or the humiliation of being told what to do by
picking up the bit of paper before being told anything.
Corporal punishment was rife. Punishments were usually
meted out just before lights out. Boys were taken in their nighties
to the marble steps leading up to the dormitory. There they
would be told to bend over and they would be hit on the bottom
with a strap about two feet long. A special strap, known as the
impurity strap, was used on those suspected of being involved
in homsexual acts. Martin Cahill claims he never received either
strap. He fell foul of the authorities on only one occasion. Then,
as now, he says he had a policy of never making eye contact
with any of the brothers or priests attached to the order. One
day he was walking down the corridor when a brother passed
by. As usual he made sure not to look at him. The reason he
did this was that if you didn't look at them you didn't say hello.
That way you made sure never to form any relationship with
your captors. The brother burst his jaw and beat him down the
corridor. He claimed Cahill had been sniggering at him.
In 1967 the late Donagh O'Malley, who was then Minister
for Education with responsibilty for the running of reformatory
and industrial schools, set up a Dail comnittee of inquiry chaired
by the late District Justice Eileen Kennedy. The Kennedy report
was completed two years later. The report was scathing. The
system of custodial care it noted had evolved in "a bapazard
and amateurish way and has not altered radically down through
the years". There was no professional training. The schools were
inadequately staffed. Some of the children had so little contact
with the outside world they were unaware that food had to be
paid for, or letters stamped.
A survey carried out by the Department of Psychology in
UCD showed those at Daingean to be educationally sub-normal.
The education offered at Daingean was up to national school
level. The report was careful to exonerate the Oblate fathers
who ran the school. Many had given their lives to the running
of the establishment and got nothing in return. The Order was
obliged to cover all the running costs, including maintenance
of the building, accomodation, footwear, food and general
medical and dental care for the children. For this they received
4.32 a week from the State for each child in their care. Martin
Cahill was discharged from Daingean in the same year as the
report was commissioned. He could barely read or write.
_ HILEMARTINCAHILL
HAD BEEN IN DAINGEAN HIS PARENTS HAD BEEN
evicted from their home in Crumlin for failing to pay the rent.
They were rehoused in Hollyfield Buildings in Rathmines.
Hollyfield Buildings was used by Dublin Corporation as a
dumping ground for tenents who couldn't or wouldn't pay their
rent, or who were otherwise troublesome. It was a closed, tight
community. The gardai were distrusted, though not all families
were involved in crime, Martin Cahill stresses. The Cahills, with
their surviving twelve children lived in numbers nine and ten
Hollyfield buildings.
Martin Cahill married Francis Lawless, who also lived in
Hollyfield, within a year of his release from Daingean. They
took a flat in number fifteen, a few doors away from his parents.
He got a job in a Smurfit's factory in Walkinstown, making
cardboard boxes. The job didn't last long. He got another job
in the same line of work in Goodbody's making sacks, but that
didn't last long either. His wife was pregnant. The job at
Goodbodys in 1969 is the last time he was ever employed.
People in Hollyfield didn't have much money. A friend asked
Martin for the loan of 10. He asked what he would give him
for it. The friend gave him a suit. The friend returned a second
time looking for a fiver. This time he gave him a bracelet. The
suit went into the wardrobe and was forgotten about. The
bracelet was unworn. Martin Cahill had no interest in either.
A couple of young lads told him about a warehouse up the road
where there were hundreds of thousands of cigarettes stored.
Martin Cahill wasn't interested. He had been wathcing the
warehouse. He had seen the police watching him while he was
doing his own watching, he says. The young lads were insistent.
He told them to go down and bang the doors of the warehouse
and see did anybody come out. They banged. Nobody did. He
was still unconvinced. They returned a third time with cigarettes
that they had stolen from the warehouse. Cahill was finally
convinced. He told his wife he would be back in a few minutes.
His calculation was optimistic: he wouldn't be coming back for
four years. No sooner was he in the warehouse than the gardai
appeared. In a follow-up search of his flat the gardai confiscated
the forgotten suit and the unworn bracelet. These items, too,.
were stolen property.
He was convicted of receiving the suit, bracelet and stolen
cigarettes. The trial judge asked how long he had been out of
Daingean. On being told two years he decided to give Cahill
two years for every charge before the court. Two of the sentences
ran concurrently. The total sentence to be served amounted to
four years.
_ ARTIN CAHILL HAD
o DIFFICULTY ADJUSTING TO MOUNTJOY. He
reckons his time in Daingean left him partly institutionalised.
When you go into jail, he says, it is essential to leave everything
on the outside world behind. One way or the other you have
to do your time. You can fight it in your head or you can use
it to do something positive. He learned to read. It was in prison,
he says, that he got his only real education. He took Dale
Carnegie courses in self confidence and read his book, 'How
to win friends and Influence People'. He enjoyed the solitariness
of his cell. It gave him an opportunity to think.
He got on exceptionally well with the wardens, he says. He
was considered an exemplary prisoner. In prison the smallest
of pleasures take on a new significance. His closest friend was
Noel Lynch. Lynch was the private investigator featured on the
recent "Today Tonight" programme who told the Beit
Foundation he might be able to secure the return of the stolen
paintings in return for a percentage of their value.
Cahill thought Lynch was the brightest prisoner he ever met.
He tells the story of how Lynch pioneered a device for making
"coffee in your cell. One end of a live wire was connected to
the light socket. The other was connected to a spoon. The spoon
went through a stick with a hole in it. The stick was then placed
across a beaker, partly immersing the spoon in water. When
the light switch was turned on, the electric current heated the
spoon, which boiled the water.
It was also Noel Lynch who applied to the Department of
Justice for permission to have transistor radios in the cell. Lynch
and Cahill were the first two prisoners to be allowed the
privilege.
Martin Cahill got a job in the prison as a painter. Little by
little he was allowed greater freedom. Freedoms were based on
conduct. It was, he says, a form of corrective training. Towards
the end of his sentence he was even allowed out each day to
paint the houses belonging to the warden situated beside the
prison. During the last three months of his sentence he and a
warden left the prison each day so that he could look for a job.
MAGILL MARCH 1988 19
Despite several interviews, nobody employed him. He was
released in 1973.
HIS RECENT
INTERVIEW WITH 'TODAY Tonight' outside Werburgh
Street Labour Exchange Martin Cahill told the reporter that
he thought the police were very clever. It sounded like a smartass
remark. In the course of interviewing Cahill, however, it
emerged again and again that he meant the remark in all
sincerity. "Never underestimate the cleverness of the gardai",
Cahill says.
And there is one member of the force he regards as more
clever than anyone else. That man is Ned Ryan. Ryan is
presently a detective superintendent. He is the officer mentioned,
though not named, in the 'Today Tonight' programme, who
is currently receiving a twenty four hour armed guard.
According to the 'Today Tonight' programme garda intelligence
heard Martin Cahill had hired hitmen to assasinate Ryan. Cahill
dismisses the allegation as unfounded.
Ned Ryan joined the garda in 1955 aged twenty four. He made
a steady progress through the ranks. In April 1963 he was
promoted to the rank of sergeant and was made detective
sergeant within eight months. When he was promoted to the
rank of detective inspector in 1973, he was transferred to
Rathmines. Two years later, in 1975, he was transferred to the
Central Detective Unit, then working out of Dublin Castle. He
continued to play a significant role in the investigation
of serious crime in Rathmines and other parts of Dublin. In
1980 Ned Ryan was promoted to the rank of detective
superintendent and stationed in Sundrive police station. Martin
Cahill was on hand to welcome Ryan. He was to the fore on
a prisoners Rights Organisation picket which was placed on the
station over the treatment suspects were getting in garda custody.
Ryan was a familiar figure in the witness box in the Special
Criminal Court and Circuit Criminal giving evidence in cases
of alleged confessions taken in garda custody. In a report on
the Sallins train robbery trial Hibernia magazine described him
thus: "Ryan was nothing less than superb in the box; he looks
and sounds like a slightly lisping but lugubrious Edward G.
Robinson: pudgy, balding, heavy lidded and jug-eared."
Martin Cahill first met Ned Ryan in 1973 when he was
released from Mountjoy prison. There is a deep and abiding
animosity between the two. They met when Cahill was in garda
custody in Rathmines police station. Ryan was doing the talking.
recalls Cahill. He was questioning Martin Cahill about his
alleged involvement in a robbery that had taken in Jack Reston's
sign-making factory in Rathgar. Martin Cahill was listening.
Ryan was telling him that the gardai were going to put the
squeeze on petty criminals like himself. According to Cahill,
Ryan told him that he would "be reduced to robbing grannies'
handbags".
But Ned Ryan's and the gardai's estimation of Cahill as a
petty criminal was shortly afterwards to be revised. On
November 18, 1974 there was a hold-up at Quinnsworth in
Rathfarnham Shopping Centre. A security guard was coshed
on the head. The gang got away with 90,000 in cash. Martin
and Eddie Cahill and their brother-in-law, Hugh Delaney, were
taken by the gardai into custody for questioning.
There is one thing that Martin Cahill is adamant about and
that is the danger of making a statement - any kind of
statement - in custody. Frequently, he says, the gardai will
engage suspects in informal conversations about their family,
the weather or other general matters. He believes these are then
incorporated into statements which include other incriminating
statements allegedly made by an accused while in custody. In
20 MAGILL MARCH 1988
court it then, in his view, becomes an additional burden to
contest the damaging admisions if the statement contains other
innocuous but detailed references to an accused's family or
background which the gardai would not know without the
accused telling them. He refused to answer any questions about
the Quinnsworth robbery or anything else. This was the era of
the 'Heavy Gang', says Cahill, "when it was normal to get
'battered' by the police." What's more, it didn't even occur
to you to lodge a complaint. It wasn't until the publicity
surrounding the treatment of IRA and INLA members in
custody broke that it occurred to him that there was anything
wrong with his being treated this way.
While he was waiting to be questioned Cahill claims he could
hear his brother-in-law being beaten up in the room above.
Delaney was alleged to have made verbal admissions about being
involved in the robbery. Martin Cahill said nothing. He claims
he refused at the end of the day's questioning to go into a cell
unless he was charged with the robbery. Instead he sat in a chair
for two days. At the end of the two days the gardai did charge
him. When he was being led to the cell it was night time. His
story is that he knew the gardai would turn off the lights in
an attempt to disorient him. As he was going into the cell, he
told the guard to turn off the light. The guard shouted at him
and left the light on. A few minutes later the guard returned.
He had realised why Cahill had told him to turn off the light.
He was taken to another cell with no light and which also housed
a dirty stray dog which was there awaiting a transfer to the Cats
and Dogs Home. Cahill curled up cheerfully beside the dog.
Even in 1974 he had decided that it was important never to show
gardai a reaction.
The three men appeared the next day in Rathfarnham District
Court where they were charged with stealing the 90,000 in the
robbery. All three covered their faces in court.
The charges against Cahill and his brother were later dropped
for lack of evidence. 'Hugh Delaney's arrest was ruled illegal
at his trial. The verbal admission was ruled inadmissible. The
jury was directed to acquit.
Within weeks of the Quinnsworth robbery, says Cahill, he
found himself the subject of twenty four hour police
surveillance. The gardai now classed him as a major criminal.
He was aged twenty four.
N MAY OF 1977 THERE WAS A
ROBBERY AT THE'SEMPERIT TYRE FACTORY IN
Ballyfermot. Five men wearing hoods took over a house behind
the factory on the night before the robbery. When they arrived
the woman in the house started screaming. She was told that
she would be alright if she stayed quiet. The husband and wife
and their five children were tied up. Just before eleven o'clock
four members of the gang left the house and headed for the
factory. They took the payroll which amounted to 53,000 in
cash. They returned to the house in a quarter of an hour to
pick up the remaining gang member. A security man who had
pursued the gang was shot in the shoulder. The gang disappeared
without trace.
The gardai suspected Martin Cahill of the robbery. They
believed that the money from the robbery was buried some-
where. They were following Martin Cahill everywhere he went.
Cahill says he decided to take the gardai out for a drive to
Killiney. When he reached Killiney Hill he parked his car and
decided to stretch his legs. He walked up to the top of the hill
and surveyed the view. The gardai were following up the hill
on foot. Suddenly he said to himself: "How could I have been
so stupid?". One of the detectives approaching him was
brandishing a stick, he claims. One of them approached him
and said: "Now Martin, we are not going from here until you
tell us where the money from Semperit is, and everything else
that you know". According to Cahill's account he was then
beaten up by the police. They then threatened to dangle him
over the cliff. In the course of the struggle he managed to break
free and set off running down the hill, barely touching the
ground. He hid down by the railway line for several hours,
literally licking his wounds. His jacket was gone, his shirt was
torn.
He had a fractured shoulder. When he came out of hiding
he rang for his solicitor. He was afraid to go back to his car
in case the police were waiting. His solicitor came out and
collected him and drove to hospital. Before dropping Cahill off
he lent him five pounds. Subsequently, through his solicitor,
he made an official complaint to the Garda Commissioner
against named gardai, who attacked him on Killiney Hill. The
Commissioner replied that his complaint had been thoroughly
investigated and found to be "without substance".
Later in the year there was a robbery going down. He wasn't
involved in the robbery but as a favour he agreed to supply a
car. The car was stolen and kept in a lock-up garage. It had
been put there late the previous night. An alert neighbour
noticed the fresh tracks of the car leading into the garage. She
called the gardai. When Martin Cahill arrived at the garage and
got into the car he was arrested. He was charged with receiving
a stolen car. He got four years.
The first thing he did when he went back to prison was to
tell authorities that he wanted to get a driving licence that would
qualify him to drive articulated lorries. He told them that he
would then be able to work as a long distance lorry driver. He
was giving plenty of notice, so that when his sentence was
nearing completion, and he was eligible for training, they would
take his request seriously.
Once again, he says, he was a model prisoner. When the
Department of Justice introduced a pilot scheme under which
selected prisoners were granted temporary release for Christmas,
Martin Cahill was one of a small group chosen. He was called
in beforehand to see the Governor. The Governor told him that
they had very bad reports from people outside. He emphasised
to Cahill that if he did not return the whole scheme would be
placed in jeopardy. His release was unexpected, and he says
it was "the best Christmas ever." He returned to the prison
half an hour early.
N LATE 1980 GARDA! WERE
SEARCHING GARDENS ON PALMERSTOWN ROAD IN
Rathmines. A bank official had been murdered during a
burglarly of one of the flats on the road and the gardai were
now looking for the murder weapon. As it happened the prime
suspect was Martin Cahill's brother Anthony, who was already
in custody. Cahill and a co-accused admitted the burglary, but
both opted for separate trials. They were acquitted as there was
no evidence to show which man had done the stabbing.
Subsequently Anthony Cahill was convicted of taking part in
an armed robbery and was sent to the Curragh military camp
which was then being used for "difficult" prisoners. In prison,
Cahill repeatedly alleged that he was regularly beaten up. He
died in his cell from a drugs overdose.
Meanwhile, Cahill recalls, the gardai searching the gardens
were interrupted when a BMW pulled up and the driver started
waving at them and honking the horn. It was Martin Cahill,
and the gardai were perplexed, as he was supposed to be in :
Mountjoy jail. Once Cahill succeeded in securing their attention
he quickly drove off.
Checks with the prison revealed that Martin Cahill was on
day release to take lessons as an articulated lorry driver. Half
of the cost was being met by the Department of Justice, the
balance was paid for by Cahill himself from money he had
earned from prison work. He duly passed the test. During one
of his visits to the Irish School of Motoring learning centre he
found a wallet which he gave to the porter. The wallet belonged
to a journalist in the Evening Herald who subsequently
published a snippet in the paper thanking the prisoner, who he
did not know, for his honesty. The irony is not lost on martin
Cahill, who points out that it is the Evening Herald which is
now calling most loudly for his head on a platter.
When Martin Cahill was released from jail he returned to
Hollyfield buildings. The corporation now wanted to demolish
the scheme. Martin Cahill says he had other ideas. He refused
to budge. The corporation offered alternative accommodation
to all affected families. But the house they were offering Martin
Cahill - directly across the road from Kevin Street police
station - he said, was "unsuitable". The Corporation served
eviction orders on all the remaining families in the block. The
evictions were enforced by a large number of gardai. Cahill
claims they wrecked his flat. He still refused to move. For three
weeks the three families all remained in Cahill's flat. Eventually
his wife accepted the offer of the house in Kevin Street.
Stubborn to the last, Martin Cahill remained on until the flat
was burnt out in a mysterious fire. Relucantly he joined his wife
in Kevin Street. From there they arranged a swop with a family
in Swan Grove, Rathmines, where he now lives.
HE O'CONNOR'S JEWELLERY RAID
WAS CARRIED OUT EARLY ON THE MORNING OF
July 27, 1983. The raid had been meticulously planned.
Normally a hundred staff would have been on duty. But because
of holidays there were only twenty-five. The raiders had taken
up a vantage point the previous night in a boilerhouse. As staff
reported for duty they were stopped by the gang and herded
into the toilet. There were nine raiders in all. When one of the
staff was being locked into the toilet some money dropped from
his pocket. One of the gang members picked it up and handed
it back to him. There was one awkward moment when one
female member refused to be locked up in the men's toilet. It
took half an hour to load the waiting van with the contents of
the strongroom. The value of the haul was estimated to be
between 1.3 million and 2 million.
Within minutes of the robbery, the gardai named Martin Cahill
as the prime suspect.
But the gardai weren't the only people taking an interest in
Martin Cahill. The Provisional IRA decided they wanted the
proceeds of the robbery for themselves. On March 1I 1984 the
IRA kidnapped Tommy Gaffney as he left the Park Inn pub
in Harold's Cross. At the time the Concerned Parents were
active against suspected drugs pushers. Sinn Fein had a high
profile in the movement. Gaffney had already clashed with
MAGILL MARCH 1988 21
-
members of the Concerned Parents. He resented their
suggestions that he was involved in drug dealing. The
kidnapping of Gaffney at the time was wrongly assumed to be
connected with the ongoing war against drugs.
Tommy Gaffney was held by the IRA for eleven days in all.
During the initial stages of his capture he was beaten up.
Gaffney and Cahill knew each other from their childhood. It
was for this reason he was kidnapped, there is no evidence to
suggest he was involved in the robbery.They were both in
Daingean reformatory school together. Though he had remained
in close contact with Martin Cahill over the years, it became
clear-to the I RA that he could not supply the kind of detailed
information about Martin Cahill that they needed.They turned
their attention to Martin Foley another friend of Cahill's.
Likewise, there is no evidence to suggest any involvement on
his part in the robbery. He was kidnapped early on the morning
of March 22. Immediately after his abduction, his wife rang
the police. As luck would have it there was a patrol car in the
area at the time. They tailed the kidnappers' van until
reinforcements arrived. Martin Foley was released after a shoot-
out in the Phoenix Park. The four IRA men who abducted him
were arrested. (Subsequently they received sentences of between
five and nine years on conviction in the Special Criminal Court).
The IRA decided to cut their losses. Tommy Gaffney was
released later the same day. Before he was released, according
to Cahill, the IRA told him they would not bother kidnapping
Martin Cahill: Instead, they "would stiff him on the street."
As it happened over 100,000 worth of jewellery was stolen
from the gang who pulled off the robbery at O'Connors. The
perpetrators of the crime against the criminals were not
pararnilitaries , or rivals, but solid young middle class citizens,
whose parents work in professional occupations. The operation
was an elaborate sting which went wrong and resulted in one
individual being nailed to the floor in retribution. 50,000 worth
of jewellery in a sock was dug up in the back garden of a house
in Terenure by an inquisitive dog. According to one garda source
the contents of the sock were part of a larger amount which
was stolen from the gang who had robbed O'Connors in the
first place. The gardai suspect Cahill of having been behind the
robbery. Cahill denies this.
According to the same garda source, a fringe member of the
gang was asked to arrange for a car to smuggle 100,000 worth
of the jewellery over to England. The man in question then
asked an acquaintance if he would drive to England to collect
a parcel. The man comes from a middle class background and
has no criminal record. The parcel he was to collect in England
contained nothing illegal. A couple of days before he was due
to go to England the man who commissioned him to make the
journey borrowed his car. He filled the cavaties in the car with
over 100,000 worth of gold and returned the car. The driver
of the car was to know nothing. This meant that when he went
through the customs he would be perfectly relaxed.
Everything seemed to go according to plan. The young man
took the ferry to England as instructed. Waiting there was the
man who had put the gold in the car, and a senior member of
the gang. The only problem was that when they opened up the
panels of the door the gold was gone.
A row ensued. The senior gang member returned to Dublin
to report to other gang members. The man who had put the
gold into the door panels swore he hadn't told anybody the gold
was there. When he remained behind in England for two weeks
the suspicions of the gang intensified. He returned home when
he was flat broke. He was then taken by gang members and
interrogated for several hours. He was beaten up, had his fingers
broken and was nailed to the floor. Still he refused to admit
he had robbed the jewellery for himself.
Notwithstanding the lengths to which the gang went to extract
information from the man whom they suspected, it is not
surprising he told them nothing. He had not been involved in
robbing the robbers. The driver of the car in the meantime had
volunteered the information that his car had been stolen just
22 MAGILL MARCH 1988
prior to the trip to England. It had been recovered by the gardai
a couple of hours later outside an intinerant camp. There had
been no damage to the car except for the fact that the door
panels had been removed and were thrown on the back seat.
However, it was the driver of the car who had removed the
gold from the car. When the car had been returned to him by
the man who had asked him to drive to England he noticed the
doors were heavier than usual. After he took the gold out he
arranged for his car to be dumped outside the itinerant camp.
His plan was that the itinerants would take the car and strip
it down for parts. In that way blame for the stealing of the
jewellery would point towards the itinerants in the camp.
To date the gardai have failed to link Martin Cahill with
major crime. The last occasion when Cahill was before the
courts was on an armed robbery charge. On that occasion the
Offices of the District Court were broken into and papers
relating to the case were stolen. There was also a fire at the
office.
Cahill was also accused of an armed robbery in a factory at
Clondalkin. Cahill denies involvement. The trial against
Cahill opened in June 1984 under Judge Frank Martin in the
Circuit Criminal Court. At one point, during the trial two men
in the public gallery got up and started shouting abuse at Cahill.
Judge Martin summarily committed them to Mountjoy for
contempt of court and told the jury to ignore the outburst.
Cahill denied to Magill that he engineered the move because
things weren't going his way.
The prosecution took a week to present the evidence. After
they had closed their case, defence counsel rose and applied that
the judge direct the jury to acquit. He outlined the facts of the
case, how the two men had entered the office in the factory,
riped the phones out of the wall and forced the only occupant
- a woman - to hand over the contents of the safe. The charge
was armed robbery, not theft, he went on. It was necessary to
prove the woman who was robbed was in fear of violence being
used. When the woman was in the box she had not been asked
whether she was in fear. The application succeeded. The judge
directed the jury to acquit. Outside the court Cahill shouted
over at detectives who were gathered in a group. When they
turned around, he gave them two fingers and shouted "Get up
- see you again", and walked out.
ARTIN CAHILL
REMAINS AN ENIGMA. HE HAS A TOTALLY
unostentatious style of living. He doesn't smoke or drink. He
has never had a holiday in his life. He was never been out of
Ireland, nor does he have any desire to leave the country. He
doesn't even have a passport. One of the reasons is that he
doesn't trust foreigners.
When it comes down to what he likes to do with his time he
is vague. He enjoys being with people, loves pubs, even though
he drinks only Club Orange. He has half a dozen motorbikes
and says he is an enthusiast. One of the bikes is a I200cc Harley
Davidson. He doesn't however admit to actually owning them.
If he did, the Social Welfare might tell him to sell them to
support himself. .
The house in Cowper Downs valued at 80,000, is in his wife's
name and paid for in full by bank draft in 1985. The purchase
of the house, however, is not a concession to middle class
respectability. He is unconcerned what his neighbours might
think of the twenty-four hour police presence outside his door: .
"It would be different if I were respectable" he says. He doesn't
give a damn what they think. He and his neighbours have
nothing in common with each other. All his friends are people
he met in jail. He knows people who aren't involved in
crime will find it difficult to understand
the people who are his friends are the
most genuine people he has ever met.
Martin Cahill thinks it is important not
to forget where you came from. He cites
the Dunne family. When they acquired
new wealth they started to live above
themselves. The people they had known
all through the early years felt shunned.
People they had in the past relied upon
turned against them.
The Dunnes, at their peak, used to
fantasise about building a village in the
mountains and calling it Dunnesville.
Martin Cahill is currently under
investigation by the Department of Social
Welfare. He couldn't admit to being
involved in anything that involves the
investment of capital, but in conversation
the sort of things he admits to aspiring
to are setting up people in business selling
hamburgers from a van or giving
unemployed youths money for a horse
and cart to get a coal round going.
He says he is nothing like as wealthy
as the newspapers make him out to be,
though he wishes he was. He was greatly
amused he says, by a recent report that
he had been interested in buying the
Ormond Hotel for 450,000.
He pointedly refuses to answer
questions on the rights and wrongs of
armed robbery in the first person. He
thinks it is wrong to go out on armed
robbery and be prepared as a matter of
course to kill people for money. But if in
the heat of the moment robbers have
weapons they should use them: "the
robber can get shot too, remember".
He claims to be unaffected by all the
media coverage in recent weaks. During
the Fianna Fail Ard Fheis, Taoiseach
Charlie Haughey in his presidential
address reaffirmed the party's
commitment to law and order. In a direct
reference to Martin Cahill he mentioned
the new steps being taken by the gardai
against "ruthless criminals". Martin
Cahill refers to that as "bullshit".
Despite his chequered career, Martin
Cahill claims that if any of his children
ever turned to crime he would be
"shocked". He doesn't believe they have
been adversely affected by the attention
he has received from the gardai and in the
media. "They are used to it" , he believes.
He would be very surprised if they follow
in their father's footsteps.
For the moment, the "game", as
Martin Cahill insists on calling the
surveillance, continues. He believes that
because the gardai have not got evidence
against him that they will try to entrap
him.
Martin Cahill remains defiant, "I am
afraid of nobody", he says. "You get
nervous but that does not stop you doing
anything. The gardai want to get me.
They want to 'give' me a robbery so that
they can be there waiting for me. There,
they will shoot me dead."

Last Month, Paul Hill married Marion Serravalli in
a British prison. There was no alcohol or music at
the wedding. Paul Hill is one of the Guildford
Four, sentenced to spend the rst of his life behind
bars. eONOR F"OLEY, a guest at the wedding, writes.
I TWAS A SHORT WEDDING SER-
vice. In his sermon, the priest spoke
of the God-centred nature of
marriage. He hoped that in years to come
the bride and groom would look on each
other as true friends. Only his reference to
their "slightly unusual circumstances"
reminded us where we were.
The wedding took place in Long Lartin
Prison on Friday 12 February, 1988. It
was held in maximum security
conditions. The groom, thirty-one year
old Paul Hill, is one of the four people
convicted of the Guilford pub bombings
which took place in 1974. All four still
maintain their innocence, a claim
supported by a growing body of people
and evidence.
His bride, Marion Serravalli, is a
thirty-one year old American of Italian
extraction. Their first contact took place
three years ago, when she wrote to inform
him of the death of one of his friends.
24 MAGILL MARCH 1988
Marion had flown over from the l ~:\
three weeks beforehand to est.i hlish her
residency requirements. Then. <1I1 the day
that the guest list had been aureed with
the prison a ut lu u it ic-; Paul \\.1, abruptly
moved to Long Lartin. Marion had only
been given a limited time off work. It was
too late to alter the arrangements and she
had to fly home disappointed.
That was the forty-sixth prison shift
that Hill had been through. His refusal to
meekly serve a sentence for a crime that
he did not commit has led to a constant
battle of wills with the authorities. He has
spent almost one and a half thousand
days in solitary confinement. The terms
They began to correspond regularly. She
have ranged up to nine months in
visited him in prison and they fell in love.
duration.
The wedding is the result of a three year
The toll it is taking on him shows. His
relationship.
pale and thin body looks slightly
The only hitch in the service came
incongruous in a wedding suit. There are
during the exchanging of rings. The
worries about his health if the ordeal
couple fumbled nervously. Marion had a
continues much longer. But the laughter
fit of giggles which interrupted her
in his eyes shows his spirit at least is still
wedding vows. Paul nudged her in the
strong.
ribs as she recovered her composure.
H
We all smiled in sympathy. It was a EHAS BEEN IN PRISON FOR
small congregation. Our numbers were over thirteen years now. He was
reduced by the inaccessibility of the arrested in 1974, at the height of
prison. Most of the guests had travelled the IRA bombing campaign in Britain.
across from Ireland or up from London The Prevention of Terrorism Act had just
to attend. All had required security been rushed through Parliament, in the
clearance from the Home Office. wake of the Birmingham pub bombings.
Members of the Special Branch mingled Paul was the first person to be detained
amongst the warders who lined the back under the Act.
of the church. Hill was put on trial along with Patrick
The wedding had originally been Armstrong, Gerard Conlon and Carole
scheduled to take place last November in Richardson. They were charged with the
London's Wormwood Scrubs prison. bombing of public houses in Guildford,
the previous October. These had resulted
in the deaths of five people and the
injuring of fifty more.
All four had been arrested under the
Prevention of Terrorism Act. The powers
that the PTA give to the police were such
that the Home Secretary at the time, Roy
Jenkins, described them as "unprece-
dented in peacetime". He assured the
House of Commons that it would only be
a temporary piece of legislation.
Under Section Twelve of the Act
people can be detained on "reasonable
suspicion" for up to seven days before
they need to be charged. The rights of
detainees in custody are extremely limited
and quite loosely defined. The National
Council for Civil Liberties has brought a
test case against the British government
in the European Court. It will probably
show that this section of the Act is a
further breach by Britain of the European
Convention on Human Rights.
After several days of gruelling
interrogation, solitary confinement and
beatings, all four confessed to carrying
out the bombings. They had been denied
access to a solicitor and were
disorientated by the deprivation of food
and sleep. Their confessions, which
contained numerous inconsistencies,
were all retracted in court. This was the
only evidence presented against them by
the prosecution. None of the four were
picked out in identity parades. Two of
them were able to produce witnesses to
prove that they were elsewhere at the time
of the bombings.
Carole Richardson's defence makes
her conviction appear totally grotesque.
She had attended a rock concert with a
demonstrated the use of a clever counter- Avon and Somerset police force. It was
interrogation technique developed by the ordered by the Home Secretary, Douglas
IRA. Hurd, in response to a top-level
At the end of the trial, the four received delegation last July. This consisted of
some of the longest sentences in legal Cardinal Hume, Lord Devlin and Lord
history. Carole Richardson is being Scarman, and two former Home
detained at Her Majesty's pleasure; Gerry Secretaries, Merlyn Rees and Roy
Conlon is serving life, not less than thirty Jenkins. Hurd is insisting that he needs
years; Patrick Armstrong is serving life, new evidence before he re-opens the case.'
not less than thirty-five years; Paul Hill is However, the Criminal Justice Act
serving natural life. He is never to be specifies tha t new evidence is not required
released except as an act of mercy on and the case can be re-opened entirely at
account of great age or infirmity. Home Secretary's discretion.
The IRA bombing campaign was not Nevertheless, new evidence has been
affected by these arrests and convictions. produced confirming Paul Hill's and
It did, however, stop abruptly in Carole Richardson's alibis. This has been
December 1975 when four members of forwarded to the police investigation.
the IRA were arrested following the Hurd is waiting for the result of this
before deciding whether or not to refer
the case to the Court of Appeal.
Last November, an all Party delegation
from Ireland, headed by Peter Barry,
lobbied Hurd about the case. Concern
about it was one of the factors making the
Irish government reluctant to ratify the
extradition treaty. This was assured that
the investigation would be finished by
Christmas. The earliest date now given
for its completion is April. A similar
police investigation into the Birmingham
Six case took two years to complete. An
appeal hearing would probably take a
further year and, if a retrial was ordered it
would probably not take place until well
into the 1990s.
T HE CAMPAIGN

friend on the evening in question. This
was confirmed by officers at the concert
hall and members of the group playing
that night. She had another witness,
Frank Johnson, who made a statement to
the police verifying that she could not
have been in Guildford when the
bombings were carried out. His statement
led to him being detained himself under
the PTA. After three days of threats and
beatings from the police he agreed to alter
the time that he claimed to have met her.
He has since stated that by then he would
have even agreed to confessing he had
carried out the bombings himself if the
police had asked him.
The case against Richardson
rested on the claim that she had
participated in the bombings in
Guildford and then driven back to central
London in forty-five minutes. The police
proved this was just about possible in a
squad car driven at break-neck speed.
The prosecuting counsel, Michael
Havens, warned the jury that Carole had
lied in her statement. He said that she had
claimed to have carried out two
"Balcorne Street siege". Three of these
immediately confessed to the detective
superintendent who arrested them, Peter
Imbert, that they had carried out the
Guildford bombings. They were able to
provide detailed, accurate and
independent statements describing how
they had carried them out. A police
forensic expert uncovered evidence to
show that the bombings fitted the same
pattern as other operations carried out by
this IRA unit. He was told to drop in the
matter.
On the basis of this new evidence, the
Guildford Four applied for a retrial.
Their case was referred instead to the
Court of Appeal where three judges
upheld the original convictions. The
reluctance by judges in the Court of
Appeal to believe that the police might
ever overstep the law in order to obtain
convictions is notorious. It was
demonstrated again in their recent
judgement in the case of the Birmingham
Six. Thisjudgement hung ominously over
Paul Hill's wedding celebrations.
however,
Campaigners
gaining
FOR THE RE-
lease of the Guildford Four is,
momentum.
have despaired of the
ability of the British legal and judicial
system to own up to its own miscarriages
of justice - the police investigating the
Birmingham Six case seemed more
interested in discrediting witnesses for the
appellants than assessing their evidence.
Representatives of the campaign have
toured the USA, met the influential
Friends of Ireland group and lobbied the
European Parliament. There is currently
a motion tabled in Strasbourg, by John
Hume MEP, urging the British
government to re-open the case.
Amongst the guests at Hill's wedding
was the British Labour MP Jeremy
Corbyn. He doubled as the photographer
for a while, leading to a few suggestions
that he might be training for a new job in
case he lost his seat. He is staking his
political credibility on Paul's innocence.
Hill's new wife, Marion, also has a lot
to lose. She had to return to the United
States a week after the wedding. She will
not be able to visit her husband again
until the autumn. After the service and
the wedding photos, the couple cut the
cake. There was very little time for small
talk as Paul had to be back in his cell by

T
bombings when in fact she had only HERE IS CURRENTLY AN 11.45am. As the time approached, the
carried out one. This contradiction in the investigation into the ease of the warders shuffled uncomfortably. Up
statement that formcd the only evidence Guildford Four being undertaken until then they had kept discreetly in the
presented against her. he explained. by the Deputy Chief Constable of the background. Eventually. they had to

MAGILL MARCH 1988 2S

 interrupt the proceedings to lead Hill
awa~. It had cost the family an extra
00.00 to pay for this escort.
The wedding guests and Marion Hill
were escorted out in the other direction.
We passed through the series of double
doors and locks which lead to the
reception area. Outside the prison, the
photographers of the tabloid press
gathered.
The hysteria induced by the media
around the Guildford Four's original
trial played a large part in ensuring their
convictions. The Sun greeted the news of
Paul's wedding with the ftont page
headline: "IRA PIG TO MARRY". The
sa me ncwspa per had earlier commented
on the failure of the Birmingham Six
appeal "if we had our way we would have
strung 'em up years ago".
When we walked out the prison gate,
the cameras homed in on us. Marion
draped a scarf over her head. Hill's
mother, his uncle and aunt and the rest of
his family tried to remain .calrn as
questions were shouted at them and
microphones shoved in their faces. One
unidentified journalist sidled over to a
member of the family to solicit a
comment. He claimed to represent the
Guardian, a paper which, so far, has given
the case sympathetic coverage. On being
informed that there was already a story in
that day's issue, he blanched and
retreated.
We drove to a hotel in the nearest town,
Evesham, to wait until 1.30pm when Hill
would be allowed out of his cell again to
resume the reception. There was no
alcohol or music allowed. But dozens of
cards from other prisoners had already
arrived. During the wedding speeches
there were impassioned pleas for Paul's
release. Some of the .warders nodded
sympathetically. The Branchmen looked
at their shoes.
At 4pm the guests, including Marion
Hill, had to say their good byes and leave.
Hill. returned to his cell for his wedding
n~t.
T HOMAS and Bridie Martin live in a modern bungalow
up a narrow pot-holed road off the main Kingscourt-
Shercock road, in County Cavan. Beside the bungalow
is a large iron shed which dwarfs the family home, and it is here
that Thomas, a mechanic, fixes tractors and large farm
machinery, earning the money to supports his family. The couple
have two children, a girl almost sixteen, and a boy of thirteen
years. The children are now afraid to live in the Kingscourt area,
and instead live on the other side of the country. They are afraid
of the local gardai.
On February 12, a High Court jury awarded Thomas Martin
24,360 in damages. The case arose out of allegations by Martin
that he had been subjected to and threatened with physical
violence by the gardai.
The following narrative account of the incidents which gave
rise to the action is based on the Martins' evidence to the court.
By Calm Keena
O N A COLD MORNING
Monday, December 6th 1982, a
0
garda car called to the Martin
home at around 9am. Bridie Martin
answered the door to the gardai, who told
her they wanted to speak with her
husband. Sergeant Finnegan, from Navan
garda station, took Thomas Martin
outside, and said he was arresting him
under Section 30 of the Offences Against
the State Act and was bringing him to
Kingscourt garda station. Thomas Martin
got into the back of the garda car and it
was driven off toward, Kingscourt.
"There's a lot of holes on your road,
Tom", said one of the gardai.
The car stopped briefly in Kingscourt,
and then drove off again to Navan. The
arrested man was taken into Navan garda
station, and was put standing in the hall,
between two detectives. After five to ten
minutes, he \I as taken by the detective,
to the interview room, a room with a table
and chairs, an opaque window, book-
shelves and an electric clock. The clock
was put lying on its face. The detectives
MAGILL MARCH 1988 27
were strangers and, as yet, Thomas
Martin did not know why he had been
arrested.
Detective Garda Jordan came
into the room, carrying a briefcase. He
took the suspect's fingerprints and left.
Two men, detective Garda Niall Leinster
and detective Garda Mark Kerrigan, both
from the investigation section of the
Garda Technical Bureau, Dublin, began
to ask questions. The two gardai, and the
suspect, were seated around the table. It
was around lOam.
The gardai began to ask Martin about
a number of bank robberies, a post office
robbery, and the theft of a quantity of
firearms and ammunition from an arms
dealer in Oldcastle, Co Meath. Martin
alleged in court that after only a short
period they grew angry and got up from
their chairs and approached Martin. They
were shouting. They grabbed him up
from his seat and began pushing him by
his shoulders, back and forth from garda
to garda. Big men, they pushed him hard
and fast. He grew dizzy but was unable
to stop the gardai pushing him back and
forth, back and forth.
Martin was saying nothing. He wanted
to see a solicitor. Detective Garda
Leinster, grabbed Martin by the hair on
the sides of his temples. Applying
pressure to each side of his skull, he drew
Martin up until he was a number of inches
off the floor.
Leinster was in a rage. According to
Martin's evidence, he took a blood
donor's pin from Martin's jacket, and
asked did he give blood. When Martin
said he did, the detective shouted he
would not like to be "the cunt given your
blood". The detective was in a rage, and
Martin felt that Leinster was going to beat
him to a pulp. He had no chance of
escaping from the small room. All the
time, the detective was roaring at Martin,
asking him about two bank robberies and
a post office raid in OIdcastle, a bank
robbery in Virginia and the raid on the
gun dealers. He took out the contents of
Martin's jacket pockets, which included
a rosary beads, and threw them in the
firegrate. He grabbed Martin's ears and
pulled him close to his own face, roaring
at him to admit to the robberies, or he
would kill him. Calling Martin a bastard,
he grabbed his left arm, and twisted it and
knocked Martin to the floor. He stood
over him, twisting his arm, and shouting
down at him. They pushed him from one
to the other, lifted him by his temples,
punched him in the stomach, twisted him
by the arm and knocked him to the floor.
All the while they shouted at him to admit
to the robberies. by the time they left the
room.
T
HE TWO DETECTIVES WERE
replaced by two sergeants: the
arresting sergeant, Michael
Finnegan, and sergeant William O'Neill,
28 MAGILL MARCH 1988
both from Navan. In evidence Martin
said that they sat at the table in the room,
and asked him about the same robberies.
Martin was given a meal. He ignored their
questions and asked for a doctor, a
solicitor, and that he could make a phone
call to his wife. They continued to ask
questions, and he continued to ignore
them. On occasion Sgt Finnegan banged
the table roughly with his fist, and moved
close to Martin, but there was no abuse,
and no violence. Martin said nothing of
his treatment earlier by the two detectives.
At roughly 5.lOpm, the interview with the
two sergeants ended, and they left the
room. Sergeant O'Neill looked back in,
and told Martin that there had been
contact with his wife.
After sergeants Finnegan and O'Neill
left the interview room they were replaced
by another two detectives, Tadgh Foley,
from the investigation section, Garda
Technical Bureau, Dublin, and Gerard
Murray, from Trim garda station.
Martin's evidence in court of this
episode is as follows:
Martin was given some tea and salad.
Then one of the detectives ordered him
up off the chair and began to shake him
by the shoulders. He was again accused
of the robberies. The detectives said that
they were fresh, and that if he thought he
had had a hard day, he was wrong - he
was starting into one. Detective Murray
said he was going to throw Martin
through the window. He pushed him
towards it, Martin tripped, fell, and
banged his head off a radiator. However,
he still ignored their accusations and
asked for a doctor and a solicitor.
Martin claimed in court that the two
detectives were pushing him around the
room, and occasionally administering
punches to his shoulders and sides.
Detective Murray twisted his left arm a
number of times and knocked him to the
ground. They shouted at Martin that he
knew where the stolen arms were hidden,
and that they would make him take them
to the dump. At one stage detective
Murray asked Martin if he knew the
rhyme about the mongrel dog. The
detective took a bullet from his pocket.
Martin was made turn around towards
the window and the detective pushed the
bullet into the back of his neck. The
detective said if he was not shown where
the arms dump was, he had a gun and he
would use it.
The gardai were asking Martin to agree
with a particular role in the robbery at the
Oldcastle gun dealer's. They said he had
acted as a scout for the raiders, and that
he had promised to lead them over a
mountain, through back roads, and help
them escape the scene of the crime. All
the time Martin denied that what they
were saying was true. Detectives Murray
and Foley were continually asking him
was it not true that he had acted as a scout
for the raiders. They said his car had been
seen in the area, and that he had had to
get it pushed to get it started. Martin
denied it all. Then, after a time, he said
that he had, in fact, been in the area that
night. He had gone to a bar in Bally-
jamesduff and had a drink of orange.
There were some women in the bar, and
one, who drinking Pims Number One,
was a little drunk. He bought her a drink
or two and later they left the bar and went
. to a restaurant in the town, where he
bought her chicken and chips. They then
drove off in his car, stopped by a woods,
and had sex. Later he drove her to near
her home, and dropped her off. He did
not know her name or who she was. She
was a stranger. He then drove along the
OldcastIe road, but pulled into a side road
to urinate. After urinating, he found that
his car would not start, and he had to wail
until two men came along who gave his
car a push to get it started.
The gardai took note of his statement,
bUI said they did not believe it was true.
B
RIDIE MARTIN GAVE EVI-
dence in court that when her
husband had not returned by
lunchtime, she decided to make a
telephone call to Kingscourt garda
station. However, the gardai there did not
know of her husband's arrest and said he
was not in their station. She began to ring
other garda stations in the area, in
Bailieboro, Carrickmacross, Dundalk,
Monaghan, Cavan, Kells. No one knew
of her husband's arrest, or where he was.
Frantic, she decided to ring a local
politician, Dr Rory O'HanIon, who was
then a minister of state. He was at a
meeting in Coolshanaghan, Co.
Monaghan, and she contacted him there.
He said he would make a few enquiries
and call her back. At about 5pm, he
telephoned and told her that her husband
was in Navan garda station.
She telephoned a solicitor in Bailie-
boro, Mel Kilrane. Kilrane could not
travel to Navan, but he arranged for a
solicitor there, Andrew Donnelly, to act
on his behalf. She made her way to
Navan, along with her sister and her
brother-in-law. They arrived at the station
and there met up with solicitor Andrew
Donnelly. They were brought in to see
Thomas Martin. It was a little after
8.I5pm.
Bridie was shocked by the look of her
husband. His face was red and flushed
and he looked and felt hot despite the
coldness. There was a lump on the side
of his head, over his left ear. He looked
distressed. His hair was tossed and there
was a cut on top of his head. His dark
trousers were white and dusty. She had
brought a packet of Anadin with her and
some tea in a flask, and she gave him
these. He took four of the tablets and
washed them down with tea. After
twenty-five minutes, she was asked to
leave. The solicitor agreed with her that
it would be a good idea to get a doctor
to go in and have a look at her husband,
so she went to a friend's house on the
Nobber road to use the telephone there.
The attempt to get a doctor to go to the
station failed. The first three attempts met
with a failure to even contact the GPs
concerned. A fourth had left a message
saying he would return at 1O.30pm, but
when they rang him at that time he said
he did not want to get involved. A doctor
contacted after that refusal said she did
not want to travel to Navan. It was
approaching 11.30pm and Mrs. Martin
decided to return to Navan garda station,
to tell her husband of their efforts.
Bridie Martin travelled back to Navan,
but did not get to see her husband. She
returned to her home in Corlea and
telephoned Dr Rory 0 Hanlon. It was
after twelve midnight. Dr O'Hanlon
advised her to ring his practice in Car-
rickmacross the next morning, and ask
one of the doctors there to go to Navan
to examine her husband.
At 7am the next morning, she rang
Navan garda station, and was told that
her husband was still there and was doing
fine. Later she rang Dr O'Hanlon's prac-
tice but none of the doctors there would
travel to the garda station in Navan. Dr
McMahon, from Kingscourt, said he
would travel to see her husband in Navan
at 1.30, when his clinic ended. She called
a local priest, Fr Moorehead. He said he
was travelling to Navan in the afternoon
and would call to the station. At around
11.00, she headed off once more for
Navan garda station. At the station she
was refused permission to see her
husband.
According to her account given in
court, she had called solicitor Andrew
Donnelly and asked him to call to the
station. He arrived soon after midday,
and he too was refused permission to see
Martin. He said he would be back some-
time after 2pm, and he left. Bridie Martin
and her sister-in-law remained in the
station, occasionally asking if they could
see Thomas. At around 2pm, they were
allowed in to see him. Bridie was again
shocked by his appearance. He was very
drawn, and his eyes were sunken into
their sockets. He looked exhausted and
complained of a terrible pain in his left
arm, going down into his little finger.
They were allowed stay together for an
hour. Fr Moorehead came for a brief
visit. The solicitor came and spoke with
his client. At about 3pm they were asked
to leave, with the solicitor remaining
behind. Andrew Donnelly came down
later and they discussed their difficulty
with getting a doctor. Then a uniformed
garda came down the stairs, and told the
solicitor that his client wanted to see him
again. After some minutes Bridie Martin
went back into the station and asked what
was happening. She was told that if she
went to the Special Criminal Court, in
Dublin, she would hear what charges were
being brought against her husband. Being
told the court closed at five, she decided
she did not have time. She then went
home.
T
HE PREVIOUS EVENING,
after meeting his wife and soli-
citor, Thomas Martin was brought
back to the interview room where he was
joined by detectives Leinster and
Kerrigan. In the High Court Martin gave
the following evidence:
The detectives began again to shout at
him that he had taken part in the
robberies. They pushed him from one to
the other, punched him, and detective
Leinster began again to lift him up by his
temples. They insisted again and again
that he make a statement. At around
Ilpm detectives Foley and Murray
returned. He was told that more of what
he had experienced that day was in store
for him the next. At one stage, Murray
started to roar at him that he had shot a
schoolteacher in Newry, in front of a
classroom of schoolchildren.
The Anadin tablets Martin had taken
during his meeting with his wife had
stopped the pain in his head for a time,
but soon after detectives Murray and
Foley had returned to the room to inter-
rogate him, the pain returned. Martin
took the Anadin box from his pocket and
was putting one of the pills into his mouth
when Murray shouted at him, threw the
pills into the fire grate.
Just before he was put into the cell that
night, Detective Murray took Martin's
rosary beads from the fire grate and, after
making Martin kneel, bless himself and
hold the cruci fix in front of his face, told
him to repeat the names of all the banks
and other places robbed, and told him to
go into his cell and pray that he would
confess in the morning. Detective Murray
was roaring loudly at Martin, who saw
Detective Foley sniggering in the back-
ground.
Martin was put in the cell where he
stayed until 8.30am the next morning.
The cell smelled of stale urine and vomit
and Martin lay on the mattress on the
concrete base and tried to sleep. He had
a bad headache. Occasionally during the
night, the garda on duty came to check
him, and would shout in asking if he was
alright. He did not get any sleep.
In the morning he was brought to a
room where he could wash his face and
wash out his mouth. He had been sick
during the night. He was then brought
down to the interview room again. An
extention order providing for a further
twenty-four hours detention had been
read to him. He sat with sergeant
Finnegan in the room and the two of
them had a conversation for some time.
At one stage another garda came in and
question Martin about a man he had
MAGILL MARCH 1988 29
given a lift to, two months previously, in
the Dundalk area. Martin was asked for
his passenger's name but said he did not
know who the man was, he had just given
him a lift. Then the garda returned to the
subject of the robberies.
This man left at about 10.30, and
Martin and Sergeant Finnegan were
joined by Sergeant O'Neill. Martin was
told that they would not let the "rough
men" back in if he made a statement.
They put it to him that he had acted as
a scout for the gang which had raided
Anderson's, but he denied it. They put
the details of his alleged movements that
night. to him, but he denied that what
they were saying was true.
A T 2pm MARTIN WAS AL-
lowed out to see his solicitor and
his wife. His wife and his soli-
citor left at around 3pm and he was then
served with a charge sheet and told that
he was going to be brought to the Special
Criminal Court in Dulbin that afternoon,
to be charged with the robbery of
firearms, ammunition and cash from the
premises of the gun dealer, Kenneth
Anderson, at Oldcastle, Co. Meath, the
previous August.
Martin was rushed to Dublin, and
charged at the Special Criminal Court. He
was then taken in a van, handcuffed to
a prison warder, and with other prison
warders and prisoners, down to Port-
laoise prison. He was strip-searched,
given a change of clothing and brought
to a single cell. The next morning he was
awake at 7am, and brought back up to
Dublin, for a bail application.
At the Special Criminal Court, solicitor
Mel Kilraine asked for an adjournment
until the afternoon, to allow him arrange
for a medical examination. 'A Dublin
doctor, Kevin Gallagher, examined
Martin in the basement under the court,
30 MAGILL MARCH 1988
at Ipm that day. He found there were
injuries consistent with Martin's claims of
assault, but recommended that Martin
have a second examination if released on
bail. He said the conditions under which
the examination had been carried out had
not been ideal, and that Martin had
shown signs of being afraid of him.
Martin had feared he might be another
garda, and was afraid to let him near him.
Martin was released on I0,000 bail
that afternoon, and travelled home to
Corlea, Co. Cavan, two-and-a-half days
after the Monday morning call by the
gardai.
The next day he was again examined,
by Dr Robert Hayes, Cavan, who again
found injuries consistent with his claims.
K
ENNETH ANDERSON'S
premises had been robbed by a
number of men on motorcycles
and in a Bedford van, in August of 1982.
According to the statement which was
initialled in four places by Thomas
Martin, he had been approached and
asked to assist the raiders, one week
before the raid took place. This he agreed
to do. He was to scout the area for Gardai
during the raid and escort them through
back roads across a mountain afterwards.
On the day of the raid he drove to
Kingscourt where he met up with the
raiders and drove towards the Anderson
residence. He turned into a laneway off
the main road while the raiders continued
towards their destination. Martin was to
wait there until the raiders returned, and
was then to lead them through the back-
roads across the mountain. When he
heard them come speeding up behind him
he went to start his car, but it would not
start. The raiders sped past him and that,
according to his signed statement, was the
last he ever saw 0 f them. La ter , two men
came along and gave his car a push. It
started and he went home. In the state-
ment, Martin, a mechanic, refers to a
"Bedford or a Transit van". It was a
Bedford that was used.
Martin's brother, who lives in England,
had left a blue Ford Escort in Corlea
when he had returned to England fol-
lowing a holiday that summer, and
Martin had been asked to sell it. The night
of the raid on Anderson's, two men
returning home came across a car stopped
in the middle of a small road, blocking
the way. They helped the man start his
car and he sped off. They considered his
behaviour strange, and one of them noted
the registration number XAI 997. This is
the same registration number as the car
which Martin sold some time after his
brother's return to England, and after the
Anderson robbery. Martin denies he was
out in the Ford Escort that night. He has
his own car.
A statement from the two men who
had seen the car was taken by the gardaf
on January 7, almost a month after the
arrest of Thomas Martin. Whether the
gardaf knew what these men had seen
when they arrested Martin on December
6 is unknown. The two men gave
descriptions of the man with the blue
Ford Escort. One said he was about thirty
one!thirty three years old, with a tanned
complexion, and about 5'9". The other
said the man was about twenty seven!
thirty slim, dark haired, 5 '9", and with
a dark moustache. One noted the regis-
tration number of the car as XAI 997, the
registration number of the Martin car.
However, the other said the registration
number of the car was OAI 788 or OAI
887. Martin is smaller than 5 '9", is slim,
dark-haired, but does not, and did not
have a moustache. He is now forty seven
years old.
No attempt was made by the gardaf
preparing the prosecution of Thomas
Martin, for involvement in the robbery
of guns and ammunition, to have the two
men who allegedly saw him that night
identify him. The witnesses were not
called during the Special Criminal Court
hearing.
Included in the book of evidence
prepared for Martin's trial, were a
number of statements from gardai who
where part of the team which discovered
the- guns and ammunition stolen from
Anderson's, hidden in a stone-walled shed
at Mullantlavan, Carrickmacross. The
find was made at 12.30pm, on December
11, four days after Martin was charged
in the Special Criminal Court. In their
statements the gardaf state what they
witnessed du ring Martin's arrest and
detention and then carryon to state that
they were part of the team which went to
the Mullantlavan shed, and uncovered the
stolen guns. What the connection is
between the two events is not stated. This
issue was never raised in court, and the
Martin family are still confused as to how
the gardai intended linking Thomas
Martin's arrest, and alleged part in the
raid, with the finding of the stolen guns.
There has never been any allegation -
apart from that inherent in the matter's
inclusion in the book of evidence - that
Martin's arrest had any connection with
the subsequent arms find.
The case was heard in the Special
Criminal Court in July of 1983. Having
heard the medical evidence, the court
decided it would be dangerous to admit
the alleged statement as evidence. The
state said it had no other evidence and the
case was dismissed. (Martin said from the
witness box during the case that he had
made up the statement about the woman
in the bar in Ballyjamesduff, as he had
thought that by doing so he could stop
the gardai "beating and abusing me". It
is accepted by all involved in the case that
the Ballyjamesduff story is untrue.)
A
FTER THE CASE WAS DIS-
missed, Martin sued Ireland and
the Attorney General. On Feb-
ruary 12 last, after a lengthy trial in the
High Court, a jury found that he had
been subjected to and threatened with
violence during his interrogation in Navan
garda station. He was awarded damages
of 24,360.
After the trial, Martin said that he
would not wish such a "terrifying
experience" on anyone. His wife said that
she did not want people to think all gardai
were bad, but that there were "problems
everywhere" .
During the trial, Detectives Leinster,
Kerrigan, Foley and Murray denied
Martin's allegations and account as
previously given of mistreatment and
physical abuse. Detective Leinster said he
had not lifted Martin up in the air, and
said that he had progressive arthritis since
his twenties, and was incapable of such
acts.
All the other gardai involved in the trial
denied Martin's account of events. They
were adamant no mistreatment had taken
place and anything said by Martin in
custody was written down.
A man was arrested in Dundalk a
number of years ago for the raid at
Oldcastle. He pleaded guilty and received
a number of years imprisonment. He is
the only member of the gang to be con-
victed so far. An enquiry into the events
in Navan garda station on December 6
and 7 was carried out by a local
superintendent, but the outcome has not
been made known to the Martin family.
All of the gardai alleged to have assaulted
Thomas Martin - and the High Court
found that he was assaulted by gardai in
avan garda station - are still working
as gardai. Two of the men, Mark
Kerrigan and Tadgh Foley, have been
promoted to the rank of sergeant.
The family say that they still do not
know exactly what it was that led to the
gardai's arresting Thomas Martin. It
might be the case that the gardai were
operating on "information received".
On several occasions since the incidents
of December 1982, the Martin home in
:Corlea has been searched by gardai, with
warrants, carrying out "routine
searches". Bridie Martin keeps a journal,
in which she records the details of these
visits. On several occasions they have
been stopped while travelling in their car
and held for periods of thirty minutes or
so, questioned and had their car searched.
In October of last year, Bridie Martin, on
her way to the west of Ireland, was fol-
lowed by the Bailieboro gardai from
Killashee to Athleague, on the other side
of Roscommon. At Athleague, she was
stopped by special branch detectives from
Roscommon who said they were carrying
out routine checks.
On the night of January 26, 1984, the
gardai raided the home of Bridie Martin's
brother, which is less than a mile from her
own. It was just a routine search, the
gardai said. The occupants of the house,
including the Martins' daughter, then
eleven years old, were taken to an
outhouse and held at gunpoint while the
house was searched. Nothing was found.
The young girl and her younger brother
are now attending school far from
Corlea, as they have developed a fear of
the gardai in that area.
The Martin family believe they are
being harassed because Thomas Martin
sued the gardai for beating him up.
As we go to press, the latest garda visit
to the Martin home was on Wednesday,
February 24 last. Three gardai arrived at
9.30am, accompanied by eleven soldiers.
Some of the soldiers were carrying guns,
the others were equipped with metal
detectors. The soldiers searched the
Martin garage, and yard, as well as some
surrounding land belonging to the Martin
family and two neighbours. The gardai
searched the Martin home. According to
Bridie Martin, the soldiers drew a sketch
of the family buildings. The search party
left at 12.30pm. They had a warrant,
authorising a search "in connection with
an offence". The gardai would not tell
the Martin family what that offence was.
MAGILL MARCH 1988 31
THE OASIS ... TAKE ONE coffers weren't so flush and attitudes were
changing accordingly. The principle of

O UR BACKS ARE TO THE subsidising poorer member states in

wall . . . The rocks are order to create greater equality
perilously close ... Unless throughout the community was fast
we take the rope thrown to us by the losing the unlimited support of its
lifeboat it will go away and leave us. backers. Benevolence was being replaced
Those are the stark facts." by the instinct to look after one's own.
Joe Hannon was a worried man. It was Butter mountains and wine and milk
the night of Tuesday, March II 1986. lakes were no longer acceptable features
He was sitting at a table on the stage of of the European landscape: their growth
the Oasis Ballroom outside would have to be curtailed. For Ireland
Carrickmacross, Co Monaghan and he this meant that its farmers would no
was struggling to convince almost 1,300 longer be paid to keep expanding their
angry men and women that they really was one of the sectors which prospered. dairy herds and milk output indefinitely.
had no choice but to accept his difficult And Bailieboro, under a dynamic boss, Each co-op would be restricted on its
advice. Paddy O'Brien, began to blossom too. milk intake: a Superlevy, penalising the
Joe Hannon was Chairman of The most influential catalyst was production of surplus amounts, was
Bailieboro Co-operative. His audience Ireland's accession to the European introduced. Paddy O'Brien anticipated
were some of its confused shareholders: Economic Community in 1973: the switch in emphasis and acted.
unknown ~o them all, the Co-op had Bailicboro's throughput of milk that year Diversification, he believed, was the best
become deeply enrooted in the manure was seven million litres - ten years later road to survival and growth. He quickly
business. it had grown more than twenty times to drew up a list of new activities for the co-
Twenty years before, Bailieboro Co- 160 million litres. op: a plant to process 20 million of cheese
operative was nothing more than a By the early 1980s the EEC each year for the Middle East market; a
crossroads creamery. With the rising gravy train was slowing down. As a result mushroom growing and processing
tide of Ireland in the Sixties, agriculture of worldwide recession the community's venture at Arva, to be undertaken with

34 MAGILL MARCH 1988

Ranks, Hovis, McDougall; the purchase
of Owen's Dairies at Beaupark, Navan. as
the passport into the Dublin liquid milk
market; an Equestrian Centre, the finest
in the country ...
O'Brien's imaginative response was
widely acclaimed: in 1985 he won the
Agribusinessman of the Year Award
sponsored by the Farmers Journal and
was named Cavanman of the Year by the
Anglo-Celt newspaper.
Twelve months later the empire was
collapsing around him. The root of the
problem was that Bailieboro didn't have
the cash now to match the many
commitments brought on by
diversification. The alarm bells were first
sounded when Bailieboro tried to raise 4
million cash in a hurry by selling off a
stake in its highly-profitable subsidiary
joint venture, Rand J Emmet Ltd,
manufacturers of a cream liqueur. The
money was needed for the Dec 31
deadline of the co-op's 1985 accounts,
but the deal got fouled up. The Bailieboro
turned its sights nearer home and sought
to buy a number of marts owned by the
Brady family - cash now imperatives
were a major incentive. But again snags
arose. The first two months of 1986 were
traumatic in East Cavan as the problems
of I reland's eighth largest co-op became
common knowledge. Paddy O'Brien's
resignation was accepted by the
Bailieboro board on February 13.
Politicians, Foir Teo and the banks were
trying to cobble together a rescue
package.
At the subsequent famous cnsis
meeting in the Oasis Ballroom on
Tuesday, March II, Joe Hannon spelt
it out for shareholders. "The body is
rotten but we have a good engine." The
package put to them, like a gun to the
head, involved farmers taking a cut of2.-
head, involved farmers taking a cut of 2.5
pence for every gallon of milk supplied
and a wide range of cost cuts and stafflay-
offs in the hope that Bailieboro's debtsof
almost 20 million could be trimmed to
Paddy O'Brien. A former deputy general with the main contact, an army general.
manager and financial controller of Hannon knew that the co-op was in a
Waterford Co-op, Kelly had also nursed very weak position. He felt that one of
Irish Leather through difficult times and Bailieboro's few strong points was its
he was widely regarded as someone who processing equipment and the
could help restore some order to the problematic cheese plant with its
chaos in Cavan. Kelly and Hannon rolled undelivered potential. I n 1986 and early
up their sleeves and started shovelling. 1987, during meetings with his
I n December of that year they were counterparts from co-ops in the North
able to announce the figures for 1985. The East he occasionally mentioned the
statistics were fully accurate but made possibility of "sharing resources, like
depressing reading: milk and machinery. without loss of
*the company had debts of 15.67 identity." Killeshandra, which didn't get
million and in a 1985 loss of almost 5 involved in poaching Bailieboro's
million. suppliers, listened attentively to Hannon.
* the cheese plant had lost 2.8 million. The patient stayed alive through the
* Owen Dairies, after a I m loss, had been winter and spring of 1987 but the life-
sold off to Avonmore. support machine was beginning to
- the aborted Bradys Marts deal cost a splutter. The busy summer time, with
200,000 write off. milk throughput at its peak, is when co-
*stocks, once valued at 1.2 million, ops make money. The summer of'87 was
fetched only 500,000 when sold off. when Bailieboro was forced to recognise
The list went on and on ... the inevitability of change. One of the
Bailieboro Co-op was being cut to the banks was holding back on committing
quick in a desperate bid to survive. The its signature to important financial
cheese factory, where there was constant restructuring proposals. This, in turn,
dissatisfaction with the equipment, was was making some of the other banks
closed and the workforce dropped from windy. Foir Teo was doing its best to tie
seventy to just three, on maintenance up affairs but its clout was limited. Some
of Bailieboro's key personnel were
frustrated by the behaviour of the banks.
They muttered how, on the Continent,
the bank which was owed the largest
amount in a similar situation would "take
the lead" and make the other financial
institutions fall into line. But there was no
such action to help Bailieboro. With the
bank's package on ice, and cash now
problems looming, Bailieboro was on
course for the rocks once more. In August
of 1987, Killeshandra sought and got
permission from Bailieboro to research
its finances. This time around the men in
duties. I n the engineering subsidiary the
the lifeboat would be claiming salvers'
staff was pruned from over seventy to
fifty, with thirty of those on a week- rights.
on/week-off basis. Overall the staff fell
from 650 to 500 to 310. The 2.5 pence per
gallon cut commitment entered into by THE OASIS ... TAKE TWO
suppliers at the Oasis meeting of March

A
1986 was changed within a year. The new LOT OF EMOTIONAL
9 million by 1987. sacrifice agreed was a I p per gallon nonsense has been voiced and
Larry Goodman's suitability to written about Killeshandra's first
pledge for a five year period. Rival co-
Bailieboro's shareholders dates back to bid for Bailieboro early last December.
ops. like Lough Egish, saw that
that Tuesday night at the Oasis. Bailieboro was vulnerable and, in the It's the very best of business practice to
very best of co-op rivalry traditions, buy something for the lowest offer
"milk poaching" ensued on a grand scale. acceptable. Killeshandra was attempting
GOING ... GOING ... Bailieboro's throughput fell from fifty to take Bailieboro's bankers for the
million gallons to thirty million. shortest walk possible. Their main error

I N THOSE TRYING DAYS
during the Spring of 1986 Joe
Hannon had every reason to feel sorry
for himself. A dairy farmer from Navan
and husband of former ICA President,
Camilla Hannon, he had been elected
Chairman of Bailieboro Co-op just a few
months before. It was showing profits of
1.7 million for 1984 and the 1985
projections suggested a 2 million
surplus. But then the real truth emerged
- Hannon was installed in the middle of
a minefield. With the blessing of the
banks and Foir Teo, Michael Kelly
became acting chief executive in place of
Back at that emotional meeting in
Carrickmacross shareholders had
learned that the co-op had borrowings
from eleven different banks and that only
three of those were based in the Republic.
Subsequently Kelly and Hannon spent
much of their time negotiating, often
pleading with the different financial
institutions for time and terms to allow
them sort out their problems. There were
borrowings from the First National Bank
of Chicago, and with Barclay's, and a
bank in Paris. One of the most testing
commitments was to a Swiss bank where
there was often difficulty communicating
was their inability to nail down the deal
before Larry Goodman got involved.
From the time there were two parties in
the contest, the outcome was never in
doubt. Goodman International could
boast of an annual turnover of 600
million, 2,000 Irish employees, forty per
cent of our total beef exports, a record of
taking over eighteen Irish beef-processing
plants and ownership of five more in
England and Scotland, fifteen grain
operations and the largest producer of
malt in Ireland, and very definite plans to
get involved in pork and lamb processing.
Killeshandra Co-op has a turnoverof71

MAGILL MARCH 1988 35

million, 200 employees, no borrowings, a
track record of ninety one solid years in
business and the reputation of being a
well-run organisation.
The bitter, practical experience
Bailieboro shareholders with the co-
operative system and the strength of the
Goodman organisation meant that
Killeshandra were on a hiding to nothing.
The campaign, though, in the run-up to
the voting, was a sight to behold.
Larry Goodman, the patron saint of
eleventh hour interventions, hates to lose,
so just days after the Killeshandral
Bailieboro engagement announcement he
entered with guns blazing. Killeshandra,
whose chief executive Frank Flanagan
had seen a number of deals slip through
his fingers before, had no choice but to
call up his firepower. A co-op with big
financial problems overnight became an
attraction because two parties wanted it
- Christmas came early for the
shareholders of Bailieboro. As the Public
Relations machines were let loose, Cavan
became transformed. Goodman's media
man is Declan McPartlin, a polished
professional who once got T J Maher
elected to the European Parliament and
frequently lets you know how he once
played hurling with Dublin. (McPartlin's
other PR customers include Golden Vale
and North Connacht Farmers Co-op -
maybe they were surprised to learn how
he sat at the top table of Goodman
International public meetings, with the
tag "Declan McPartlin - Dairying
Division' displayed prominently
alongside.) Killeshandra let Pat Keating
look after their image. A native of Co
Tipperary, he trained in the intense heat
of the Joe Murray PR stable and then left
to become a partner in Foreman-Dove.
Keating strives to keep at least one leg
outside the Pale. Goodman's arrival
forced K illeshandra to improve its terms:
the offers were identical so the
importance of packaging increased.
During the week leading up to
shareholders' decision day, January 19,
daftness took over. The rival camps
hired hotels on opposite sides of
Bailieboro's main street: Bord Telecom
men rushed around installing telephone
lines: money flowed. Larry Goodman,
normally shy, was let loose on the voters.
He sometimes created the impression of a
child given the freedom of a sweets hop.
After public meetings, he'd mingle with
small farmers, chatting, listening,
participating in small talk. Frank
Flanagan ofKilleshandra was sometimes
travelling in the opposite direction. He
was in television studios, making
commercials for the first time in his life.
To stay between the ditches, he'd often be
driven by a larger than life character,
Sean Brady, his deputy at Killeshandra.
They'd rattle through the endless maze of
twisty roads together, wooing support.
Brady would be the ideal candidate for
those I DA posters of the Young
Europeans. You'd need a chainsaw to cut
36 MAGILL MARCH 1988
his Cavan accent - he is a science Flanagan won the speeches but each
graduate with a PhD in Dairy Science. man fielded twenty minutes of questions
On the night before the vote, Flanagan after his address and Goodman won that
and Goodman met for the first time. They contest, hands down. As the votes were
of were to record a short debate for counted, the rival factions stayed apart.
'Morning Ireland' on RTE Radio One. When Goodman was told that he was
Flanagan was ten minutes early, seemed winning by a two to one margin, his
nervous and wanted tea. Pat Keating and instinct was to leave. "Larry, Larry, they
another media advisor, Aidan Meade, want to hear you," he was told.
accompanied him. Goodman came ten Eventually he was led in. The crowd
minutes late along with Declan McPartlin waited for the victory speech. He had it
and Fianna Fail TD, Liam Lawlor. He over in two sentences. A quick press
declined the offer of tea. The radio conference followed.
contest showed no clear winner: the rivals I n a different corner of the Oasis,
posed for a snapshot and departed. Frank Flanagan sat, devastated.
The following afternoon they
addressed the shareholders separately.
Goodman won the toss and sent THE BEEF MAN FROM
Flanagan in to speak. He had been ARDEE
coached through the night and Meade
L
had a considerable input in what was a ARRY GOODMAN DOESN'T
well-scripted address: give interviews. During the
"In co-ops the majority does rule. run-up to the vote by Bailieboro
When the people have decided, their shareholders, he was advised by aides
decision is final. In the new amalgamated that he should address public meetings
business, no one will be in doubt about and make himself available to journal ists.
who will own the assets. All the Once victory was achieved, Larry became
shareholders will own all the assets ... a loof once more. Several journalists from
Today, please, vote for control of your national newspapers have since lodged
own future. Vote for retaining real power requests for appointments but all were
politely refused. There were overtures
when the woman from the
Economist was researching her diatribe
against Ireland, its ways and its leaders,
but then, too, the answer was no. In the
survey of the Republic of Ireland,
subsequently published by the Economist.
Goodman International was said to be on
"on its way to become one of the top ten
companies in the world's agribusiness,"
and Larry Goodman was described as
"the best meat trader in the world" and
in the farm. Vote for people being equal "one of the finest Europeans of his
in powerbethey bigfarmerorsmall. Vote generation." If that's what happens when
for the money that is earned going 100 per you shy away from journalists, who
cent back to your area. Vote for bringing needs interviews?
the best in Bailieboro out with the best in The offices of Goodman International
Killeshandra." are located between the premises of John
Goodman, it was rumoured, dispensed Kiran, Solicitor, and Liscoe's bar in
with the script provided by the Castle Street, Ardee. The waiting room is
professionals, and relied on his own on the left inside the main door, a small,
notes, mainly handwritten. The speech functional area. Callers are sometimes
had its ups and downs ... offered coffee - served in a mug. The
"I'd just like to now make a few other final layer of protection shielding Larry
points, if I may. Some of them may crop Goodman from the outside world is Mary
up in relation to question and answer his secretary, a blonde woman in her
sessions but I would, as I say, prefer to thirties. The handful who get inside his
deal with this situation vis a vis a office can be offered coffee - this time in
comparison to prove what competition a white cup, with a saucer.
will do ... " Maybe it's all coincidence, but
(Re some co-ops): "As far as we can Goodman and the lieutenants close to
see, and we have assessed it, there is him all have a trim, fit-looking
managers, there is managers' managers appearance. He runs to clear out the
and there is managers' assistant managers cobwebs - up to ten miles. three time a
. . . when it comes to talking about week. He drives a Mercedes and
efficiency and comparisons." sometimes uses a helicopter to get about.
(Timekeeper: "Larry you have one Brian, his pilot, knows that versatility is
minute to go.") important. At a meeting of Bailieboro
"One minute ... O.K. I'd like to make shareholders in the Kilmore Hotel,
it clear in our company there is no frills. Cavan, on January 13, Brian was at the
You can drive a Mini or you can drive a entrance, smiling and giving out
Merc. But there is no company cars and Goodman leaflets.
you pay for your own petrol ... " The night in Carrickmacross when his
victory was confirmed, Larry Goodman in Cavan/Monaghan at small, family Dollars, with Deutschmarks or maybe
had new locks put on the Bailieboro Co- farm level, in mushroom and chicken Yen. A ten per cent fluctuation on the
op premises in case attempts were made production schemes. He feels a cultural dollar in a deal for ten thousand tons of
to shift stock. The following morning a affinity when cuteness with money blends beef, at three and a half thousand dollars
handful of executives from Goodman with an ability to innovate. All this may a ton, can mean THREE AND A HALF
International began rummaging through fit in with Goodman International's MILLION DOLLARS. Goodman has
the books. Their work is not yet complete plans to develop into sheep and pig buried some weighty competitors by
but a number of deductions have been processing - Bailieboro's shareholders manipulating currency opt ions to his
reached. The unit cost of production is could get involved in the wintering of advantage.
excessively high and the whole operation sheep and the fattening of pigs, using low- He blames management for many of
is top-heavy with administration. Larry cost modern units on family farms, the the problems of Irish industry. If
asked for examples and got some - he company would co-ordinate procure- companies aren't able to face the more
was told that a docket for as little as fifty ment, production, processing and competitive market place of the Eighties,
pence would be issued and would go marketing. it is because when things were good, they
through four people before leaving a co- Goodman loathes middlemen. He has got fat and sloppy or gave in to union
op store. It would then go to a company policy that at least two thirds negotiators when they shouldn't have. He
headquarters and be handled by maybe of production is committed to sale in feels there are not many I rish managers
three more people and maybe by a further Europe - at present the figure is seventy- who maintain a lean and hungry
five before ultimately it could be paid. two per cent. In Middle East a nd African approach to their work and their
Not typical but certainly not acceptable. business deals, his approach is to attitudes to company expenses. Some,
Goodman wants the minimum amount of negotiate only with governments. Long- who were good at a particular stage in
administration between A and B, term credit deals are not acceptable: cash their lives have become complacent as
consistent with being able to keep control on the nail is sought: Goodman they progressed up the earnings and
of all operations. International says it has never been badly promotions ladder. He believes that if
H is policy is to get the foundations burned in a transact ion and never Ireland is to be successful it must export
right, cutting the unit cost of production caught at all in the Middle East. more. To do so it must be competitive-
and dispensing with every unnecessary He insists on being involved in all with quality, price and production right.
overhead. No major decision will be major contract negotiations and gets There's the accusation that successive
taken until that is achieved. He is far from visibly excited when describing them. Governments have attracted industry in
enthusiastic about the operation of the Timing is the most important part of any here but failed to get the basics right -
nine Bailieboro Co-op stores - top deal. It is a question of knowing who you the environment for the right people to
heavy and selling everything from nails to are up against, getting the negotiations to produce competitively must be improved.
cookers. The future of the cheese milk a particular point, and then nailing down Infrastructural weaknesses - roads,
collection is already contracted out so for the deal before anyone present has a transport, telecommunications, power
the immediate future that will remain: chance to get back to outside competitors costs. He believes a start has been made ..
marketing strategy will be reconsidered; and return with another price. There are . but rues the times when Ireland was
if the unit costs and overheads are taking normally four factors involved in any considered the poor child of the EEC
shape, the question of more milk may deal: the supply price, the sale price, EEC family, but failed to make full use of the
arise. The future of the cheese plant won't subsidies and finance. It is how you Brussels sympathy and money to improve
even be considered until Goodman says handle all four that makes or breaks you. its infrastructure.
the foundations of his acquisition are in Currency fluctuations get considerable Larry Goodman is totally caught up
order. There will be no rushing into half- attention - Goodman gets the very best in pursuit of being the world's best.
cocked schemes, throwing money at of advice on trends. He stitches in options
people. when negotiating; the timing when this Tommie Gorman is north-west
He is impressed by the proven expertise matter is broached is also crucial. correspondent for RTE.

MAGILL MARCH 1988 37

 pictures for the first time. We stood for
minutes watching the swans on the lake, but
I was impatient to be away, for the thrill of
the picture house was greater than any
swan.
We waited for the doors to open behind a
sign on the pavement which said one
shilling. Soon a man dressed in a red
uniform came out and beckoned us and the
other people to a glass box. My granny
opened her purse and carefully counted out
the coins and received a ticket with a hole in
it which she gave to another man who stood
like a soldier in front of two doors. He took
by Gabriel Byrne the tickets and tore them and gave us back
one half and kept the other and looped it
tray of sweets and we bought two
Toblerones, and granny kept one for after
and we split the other between us, for she
was a martyr to a sweet tooth, the granny.
And now the curtain of trees was going
up to the roof again, and the lights faded till
I could see only the outlines of things and
then nothing at all. And then it began - the
first picture I ever saw - 'Darby O'GiII
and the Little People'. Time has dimmed
the memory of the plot, but I remember the
fairies and Jimmy 0' Dea and the Banshee
changing white and terrifying over a hill
and somebody throwing a lantern at the
dreaded thing and, as it burst into names,
the gasps and screams of the few people

Reel onto a piece of string. From inside the

doors I could hear loud voices, but not like
the voices of real people, and I started to
who were in the audience. But above all I
remember a smiling man and a girl sitting
on the edge of a swaying haycart talking as

Memories feel afraid and she looked at me and smiled

and took my hand tightly again and said
"Whist Alana, there's nothing to be afraid
of. It's only the pictures."
the music played. Nothing more, but the
memory of those scenes have stayed with
me forever.

I
TIS AN EVENING IN SUMMER
many years ago. I am at my grand-
mother's house, sitting opposite her in a
huge winged chair, listening as she plays
the button-key accordion, introducing each
tune to me as if I was an audience of
thousands at Carnegie Hall. Her white hair
is tied into a bun, and ash falls from her
Gold Flake onto her black dress and
between the folds of the instrument. The
window is open and the lovely sound spills
out into the darkening street, making
people stop to listen and sometimes to
smile. And as she coaxes the wheezing box
to music, her eyes close in a kind of happy
dream.
And when finished she sighs and fastens
the worn straps and talks to me her
wandering talk of the old times in
Roscommon when she was a girl and makes
me read to her from books with
goosefeather markers and spell out words I
don't understand and tells me what they
mean. She loved Dickens and Robbie Burns
and Canon Sheehan and poor old Oscar,
and speaks of them as she would of old
friends.
Looking back to an evening in the half-
light of that room, filled with the smell of
lilac from her garden, among the faded
photos and framed jig-saw puzzles and
stuffed owls, I know that memory has made
all the evenings I spent there become as
one. And I know that this was my first
theatre, the beginning of my love for
All around the foyer, there were painted
photographs of men with thin black
moustaches and women with bright red
lipstick like my mother's. Then the sentry
pulled back the door and we were in
darkness with the noise of those strange
voices all around us. We edged our way
along by a wall like blind people, me
holding onto her coat for fear till suddenly
in an explosion of blinding colour I saw
before me the bluest sea I could ever
imagine, and on it a huge boat with sails,
sailing under a vast blueness of sky. I
turned my head in terror into her body and
for an eternity of moments dared not look
again. When I opened my eyes I saw a light
beam in the darkness and a voice asked for
our tickets as it came towards us, and with
her arm around me we followed the dancing
light as it lit our way along the steps, till we
found our seats and I sat down
overwhelmed by the fear and the mystery
and the magic of it all. But, as the wonder
grew the terror died, and so I came to know
the lovely dark womb of the picture house
for the first time.
ow the lights came slowly on from red
stars of glass set high above us on a blue
roof and around the walls from nickering
lamps, and a snowy curtain that folded into
silver trees as it slowly fell, covered the sea
and the boat and the white writing and the
voices.
"Was that a picture granny?"
"No, that was only an ould trailer," she

darkened rooms where words and image
and music had power to move the soul in
transports of delight, as the poet says. She
loved talking and telling stories, and books
and music, but most of all my granny loved
the pictures.
I remember so well crossing the park, my
hand in her hand as she took me to the
said.
Then she gave me a marshmallow mouse
and a Trigger bar which I broke in two over
my knee, and she said she hoped I wouldn't
be afraid of the next picture because the
Banshee was in it, but so was Jimmy O'Dea
and he was great gas. A girl in a yellow coat
came up the steps between the seats with a
W
HEN WE CAME OUT, IT
was raining and the lights from
the shops shone in the wet
pavements, but now I looked at everything
as if for the first time, for I knew that
something had been born within me and
that the world outside the picture house
would never be quite the same again.

38 MAGILL MARCH 1988

 That evening she played the accordion as
usual, but the tune she played from under
her fingers was the music from the picture.
And as she sang:
'0 for the days of the Kerry dancing
o for the call of the piper's tune' ...
I made of my winged chair a swaying
haycart and that night I slept dreaming of
lanterns and silver stars and Jimmy O'Dea
sailing the biggest of ships on the bluest of
seas.
There have been a thousand and one
magical nights and days spent in
picturehouses all over the world since that
day. On holliers on Sunday nights waiting
under the town clock in Bally tore for a man
on a bicycle bringing silver cans of film
from Athy. The cinema a galvanised dance
hall, the screen a white bedsheet stretched
between two poles, theseats were benches
and kitchen chairs and sofas (sixpence
extra). But there I saw Ford and Hawks
and Sturgis, and once an upside-down ten
minutes version of 'North by Northwest'.
I was one of these kids forced at strap-
point into hired buses by the Brothers to see
'Mise Eire' at the Regal. And as an eight
. year old altar boy was moved to tears by
'Marcelino', a dreadful Spanish film about
a young orphan adopted by the Friars who,
upon giving the crucified Christ some bread
and wine, is rewarded with the miracle of
the Saviour's hand reaching down from the
cross to accept his offering. This
experience prompted myself and another
altar boy addicted to drinking altar wine
and eating congealed candle grease to
purchase a batch loaf and, having removed
the heels, leave it overnight on the altar in
the hope of duplicating Marcelino's
wondrous feat. Alas, we were disappointed.
I have rowdied in lines of bedlam on
Saturday afternoons outside picturehouses
all over Dublin for the sixpenny rush, and
remember standing with my two jam jars,
the price of admission to the Tivoli in
Francis Street. I have reined in my horse at
the Apollo in Walkinstown, and galloped up
Bunting Road Dan-Daring at any dorgone
gunslinging critter who crossed my path.
Have watched with envy the linking lovers
pass under the streetlights on their way to
the forbidden evening shows. The cocksure
hairoiled boys in their grougers' shoes and
Elvis suits and their mots click-clacking in
slingbacks always just a step behind,
leaving the sinful smell of their perfumes on
the air for a glorious second. Sat behind
them on the balcony and watched and
listened in the dark to the sounds of their
waring, and tapped them on the shoulders
to ask them for a fag. Till I got myself a mot
of my own, a frail dark-haired convent girl
who loved Fabian, Billy Fury, Sal Mineo
and me in that order, and hung up my
gunbelt forever and my whinnying horse
was heard no more in the streets of
Walkinstown.
A
PROCESSION OF LONG
limousines with their blacked out
windows sleeked to a halt outside
the Broadway cinema for the New York
premiere of Brian de Palma's film about AI
Capone and Eliot Ness - 'The
Untouchables'. A score of spotlights lit the
sky over the tall buildings and crowds
pushed against the police barriers straining
to catch a glimpse of the stars as they
arrived. A long red carpet stretched from
the sidewalk to the foyer, and each of the
celebrities stood for a second, smiled and
waved to the cheering crowds before
disappearing into the cinema.
The star who was last to arrive, smiling,
graceful, and now many years older, was
unmistakable. The man from the swaying
haycart all those years ago in 'Darby
O'GiII and the Little People', Sean
Connery. And amongst the flashbulbs and
the screams and the honking horns of
Broadway as he walked away, I stood
among the crowds remembering a distant
day in Dublin, sitting beside my granny
with her child's eyes and her child's heart,
chewing Toblerones as she shared with me
her love of the pictures.
Most of those cinemas are gone now,
those magic factories of our childhood -
The Rialto, The Star, The Leinster, The
Tivoli. Forever silent. Last Christmas I
passed the Apollo for the first time in years.
It was closed and boarded over, the roof
torn off and its skeleton of rafters showing
in the sky.
But the memories remain forever.
Memories of happier more innocent days
before we came to know the world. They
are always with us, running parallel to the
present, shining like stars in a cup of water,
as some poet said, lighting up no path, but
never going out.
MAGILL MARCH 1988 39
 In the history of modern Irish politics, Donogh O'Malley has few
peers. In the Ireland of the 1960s he wrought a revolution which
was to alter fundamentally the destinies of future generations. He
opened the doors of secondary schools to all Irish children,
irrespective of means, and provided free transport for those with
long distances to travel to school. He was energetic, dynamic,
charismatic, tempestuous, handsome and stylish. He was a man in
a hurry, perhaps because his time was running out. Twenty years
after his death his name is still spoken with awe and affection.

I T WAS 1.30 P.M. ON SUNDAY,
March 10, 1968 when the phone rang.
My friend, Arthur Noonan asked ifI had
heard anything about Donogh O'Malley. He
sounded strangely thoughtful. I made some
offhanded comment about him being "out at
Sixmilebridge". Very carefully Arthur
stopped me: had I not heard that he had
taken bad? But he was in great form last
night: I was talking to him just after
midnight. A long pause and Noonan stressed
it was "very serious". I could only listen.
Very slowly, Arthur said: "I'm afraid he's
dead, John."
The news stunned me as it was to stun the
entire nation. It did not seem possible that
a man with O'Malley's vitality could be
snatched by a massive heart attack. A
series of them over a period, yes, but not one.
Yet that was the way Donogh O'Malley
knew it was going to be. In his Limerick
home at the weekend, when he returned
from the Dail week in Dublin, he would
sometimes ignore his daughter, Susanne or
son, Daragh, when they would call him on
Saturday morning. He would lie still in the
bed, pretending to be dead. When they
shook him and he could no longer keep up
the pretence he'd spring up and say: "Ah-ha,
ye'll come up some morning and ye won't be
able to wake me - I'll be gone."
After his death there were a number of
people who claimed they knew he was not a
well man. Gus Healy of Cork, to whom he
confided he did not feel well, advised him to
see a specialist. Two months before, Evelyn,
my wife, saw him at the top of the stairs
welcoming guests to a reception at Iveagh
House and was shocked at how he looked;
"Donogh O'Malley is a sick man" she said,
with great conviction. I, who spent a lot of
time in his company every week, could not
see it. O'Malley, living the charmed life,
seemed indestructible. True, he did joke
about not having time to grow old: he would
never comb the thin grey locks by an ageing
fire.
Today, looking back on what we mistook
at the time for an enormous vitality, one
wonders if O'Malley was making the most of
the time he felt was allotted to him. He
begrudged the time he had to spend sleeping.
Yet he had signalled to me, in a most
personal way, that his going would be swift.
On my birthday the previous year - April
22, 1967 - he gave me, as a gift, his bound
copies of the Dail debates covering his career
in Leinster House.
"You'll find some use for them" he said
gruffly that night. "The hoorin' things are no
use to me."
He did not mention that they contained all
his speeches in the Dail from Day One. The
old people who know the end is not far away,
signal it by insisting on your having some
piece of furniture or trinket which was close
to them and because you know precisely
what they are doing, you are reluctant to
take the item, promising to take it later, in a
few years time maybe ...
He signalled to the rest of his friends his
sense of time fleeing when he sat for Irene
Broe, the sculptor. "Sat" is an exaggeration:
the man couldn't sit still for three minutes on
end. If ever an artist had to snatch a head, it
was Irene Broe. She had to work on him as
he worked in his Dail office, seeing
constituents and deputations. It is no
accident that Broe caught the back of his
noble head perfectly. If the facial features are

by John Healy
MAGILL MARCH 1988 41
not as heroic the artist is not to blame. She
would drape her day's work and leave it
ready for working the following day. The
boyish O'Malley would invite his closest pals
- Charlie Haughey and Brian Lenihan -
and others in to see the progress. They'd sit
O'Malley down, whip the drape from over
the moulded clay, and then proceed to work
the eyebrows or the chin, with O'Malley
himself the biggest messer of all. Irene had to
put up with it and like it and ifthere were too
many "changes" and she was especially
mad, O'Malley could use the old charm to
disarm her anger.
I had ordered the first cast and had fixed a
price with Broe, so as to short-circuit an
O'Malley gift of it later. O'Malley used to
joke about who was to get one of the eight
copies and who would not.
Charlie Haughey took over the
commission after his death and a very
heartbroken Broe finished the head at a very
great emotional cost. None of us who were
his friends and lived close to him escaped the
same cost.
Y ET I SHOULD BE THE LAST
man in Ireland to have been
his friend. The origin of our
friendship was typical of O'Malley, the fine
human being who had no time for holding
grudges. On March 13, 1962, a garda
stopped a car at the junction of Upper
O'Connell Street and Cavendish Row. It was
driven by O'Malley who was "under the
influence". This is believed to be the incident
which gave birth to the story of O'Malley
being stopped and asked ifhe hadn't seen the
arrow direction sign to which he was said to
have replied "What arrow? - I didn't even
see the bloody indians."
What was said, or not said, did not go on
the court record on the June evening in
1962 when he appeared before one of the
famous Haughey Courts. Those were courts
which sat in the early morning, before
reporters turned up on the job, or held late in
the evening when reporters rose with the
daily sitting and were not aware that the
justice of the day would return from
chambers and, without benefit of press;
proceed to hear one more case. The drill was
always the same. The charge of driving
under the influence was never contested. The
garda gave his brief evidence, the justice
pronounced "guilty" and named the penalty
- in O'Malley's case a 25 fine and his
licence suspended for twelve months, and
that was that.
There was no publicity the following
morning. Charlie Haughey, Minister for
Justice, has outwitted the press again, as it
seemed to the newsmen. The later hostility
towards Haughey by the press in general
may well spring from this period when a
number of prominent Fianna Fail
supporters were "facilitated" by such
hearings.
I was editing the ailing Evening Mail at the
time and got the word the following
morning. If a reporter got a look at the
charge sheet and the verdict we could still
print it. It was a crisis day in the paper which
would, that same afternoon, announce it was
going to die in a month's time. On my way to
a boardroom meeting I told the Chief Sub
the story was for Page One "where people
can see it". I was still in the Board Room
when the first edition came off the press. The
case was the "splash lead" and our own
impending demise a single column. The
reverse might have been the more correct
thing. Rarely did a paper ever make a lead of
a drunken driving case and even the
circumstances of a "secret" court hearing
didn't justify the splash treatment. It
annoyed the hell out of me: it was bloody
wrong, for openers. Unprofessional and
unfair. For another thing it seemed we were
anxious to drag down a man with us in our
death throes. It was the end of the Mail and
of Charlie's secret courts.
A week or so later I was in Aras an
Uachtarain and the shadow of a tall man
came up behind me, tapped me on the
shoulder and I spun around to come face to
face with Donogh O'Malley.
"Is your name Healy?"
"That's right."
"Are you the fucker that crucified me in
the Mail?"
"That's basically right, yes."
"Will you have dinner with me tomorrow
night?"
I accepted straightaway.
The incident changed both our lives for
the next six years. He had got so much
sympathy from his colleagues over the
exposure that he vowed "no bastard in a
newspaper will ever get that chance again"
and overnight stopped drinking. A few close
friends gathered round him each night.
Desmond McGreevey, the engineer, Arthur
Gibney ("Little Arthur" as O'Malley called
him), Brian Lenihan,Noel Mulcahy and
myself. At first it was to have a late dinner in
the Martello Tower in the Intercontinental.
O'Malley was Parliamentary Secretary to
the Minister for Finance.
He had charge of the Board of Works, his
first foot on the power ladder, and from Day
One he created hell in the Board. The civil
servants could well take umbrage: they had
grown accustomed to a "Yes, Minister"
relationship with a series of politicians whc
had no administrative experience, less
ambition, and who were happy enough to lei
the civil servants write the formula letter!
and present them for the blank signature 0
the political head of the day.
O'Malley's first decision was stark am
simple: no one speaks for O'Malley. AI
letters going out from the Board of Work
would be read and signed personally by hirr
T HE CIVIL SERVICE DID NO'
like the free-wheeling of O'Malle
and we always assumed it was one (
the Knights who took the issue to Oliver
Flanagan, TO who had been in the Boa:
himself and had let the senior men sil
letters without troubling him. Flanag:
issued O'Malley with an ultimatum: eith
he restored the status quo or Flanag:
would take appropriate action. O'Mall
said he was running the Board ofW orks ar
while he was there, he'd decide on issues
Flanagan responded by flooding t
 Order Paper with constituency questions
which O'Malley had to answer in the House.
They were trivial queries about bog drains
and the like which, heretofore, had been
dealt with by a Board of Works letter from
Oliver J. Neither man would give way and
Question Time and the Flanagan monopoly
of the Order Paper disrupted the smooth
flow of business and it lasted until O'Malley
left the Board and got his first full Ministry
in Health.
Jim Ryan had been his "Boss" as Minister
for Finance and the Wexfordman, now
getting on in years, cared little for
international junkets. O'Malley, on the
other hand, loved the travel and the prestige
of representing Ireland at financial
conferences. The first of the O'Malley
legends was born in the Board of Works.
When he got the inside track in the Board he
used it. River drainage was, after grants for
piers and harbours, the great political perk
to be dispensed and O'Malley was never a
man to shortchange Limerick. The M ulcair
River shot up the priority list of thirty rivers
and O'Malley himself went down to press the
handle to set off the first charge of dynamite
to mark the start of the drainage of the
Mulcair. He was already famous in Limerick
for upsetting several of the local hostelries
and, in one, a night porter who sought to
show him the door had his ear bitten off.
He was famous in That cost O'Malley a few hundred quid. So
Limerick for did the redecoration of several bars
upsetting several of including the one he was later to buy, the
Brazen Head. It was the common knowledge
the local hostelries. of this kind of social track record which
In one, a night made the Fianna Fail party quake when
porter who had Sean Lemass reached into the back benches
sought to show him to pull out O'Malley to give him his first
the door had his political appointment, Parliamentary
Secretary to the Minister for Finance which
ear bitten off. translated as The Boss of The Board of
Works.
For the party, Lemass taking a chance on
O'Malley - gambling that responsibility
would make him pull out of the drinking
habit and settle down to hard work -
seemed far too risky. More than one said
he'd live to rue the day when, in one wild
night,"O'Malley will let him down". When
the drunken driving story broke the
wiseacres all nodded their heads sagely: they
had warned Lemass.
. But Lemass had already warmed to this
impetuous Limerickman rather as Dev had.
Lemass, as Minister for Industry and
Commerce for the major portion of his
political career, had very little to learn about
the Irish economy, being all too well aware
of the hump-back pattern of booms and
slumps. When Irish interest rates went up,
British monies flowed in and we had a small
economy, so small that the movement often
or twenty millions in Trust Funds would
have us awash in prosperity and, next
morning when France or Germany sent up
its interest rates a point above ours, the
funds evaporated and fled overnight leaving
us with a dire crisis. All building
programmes would grind to a halt and the
skilled men would head for Camden Town
and Cricklewood in booming Britain.
Britain's bomb damage had been
enormous, its stock of housing badly
depleted and the building industry, now
manned at the highest level by Irishmen who
had clambered up the business ladder from
the hard graft days of digging "footings" to
their own company boardroom, had money
to invest and valuable expertise. They had
gone into the office block development
business and it was on this facet of the
building industry Lemass would concentrate
to break the old boom-slump cycle.
O'Malley, on the dry, was beavering away
in the Board of Works. The first National
schools were by now unsanitary buildings
and O'Malley fell to work replacing them. In
the first year alone he had burst the budget.
In those days budgets were almost always a
year beh ind and to legitimise the expenditure
the Minister concerned would bring in a,
token 10 Estimate which gave Dail Eireann
the opportunity also of having a debate on
the Department's work. But as often as not,
Departmental expenditure was being
approved a year after the event. No one,
knowing O'Malley's exuberance, was
surprised at the overrun. O'Malley, the big
private spender, was now in his element:
every public penny he spent pleased
someone and, in most instances, whole
communities. He'd coach Fianna Fail
deputies, and favoured Fine Gael deputies as
well, to bring a small deputation up to him
asking for a project to be sanctioned. They'd
be told how he was very familiar with the
whole project because "Denis here told me
about the whole scheme: as a matter of fact
he has me annoyed since I came in here to
this job." And then the promise: "I'll do the
best I can for ye." A week later a letter would
issue to the favoured TO or TDs. Naturally
all TDs from the constituency would have
made representations of one sort or another
but O'Malley would give the inside track to
his favourite (who might be a FineGael man
like Henry Kenny of Mayo). In which case,
he'd type all the letters and sign them and put
them in the out tray for posting, holding
back Kenny's letter and giving it to him that
afternoon so that he could phone home and
be first with the news. Whoever had the first
news of the goodies was the man in the
constituency. There'd be murder when,
thirty-six hours later the Fianna Fail men
found Kenny had beaten them with the
news. Once the row went as far as accusing
the local postman of holding up the letters to
the two Fianna Fail men in one constituency
so that the Labour man (in that instance) got
the credit.
All of a sudden O'Malley started talking
new office blocks. The civil service was badly
housed. The government could be put down
by the Department of Health for unsanitary
and unsuitable accommodation. He was
greatly worried about this. You could see
O'Malley coming a mile away and now I was
being conditioned for some new play.
O'Malley bleeding for the civil service was
only too funny for words when you
remembered the wordage he had left on the
record of the Dail and outside it. The new
office blocks we had to build would be leased
by the Government so that the Government
would have a claw back between rent and
MAGILL MARCH 1988 43
 taxes and the good well-paid employment
would help the tax position as well.
Today we condemn the egg box
architecture of those offices and how they
despoiled the old Dub, in landscape, but
when the building boom started everyone
was delighted with the rising prosperity.
Homes in the suburban estates which had
been abandoned in the late 1950s as
thousands boarded doors and windows up
with corrugated iron and the Coalition
boasted it had solved the housing problem
for once and for alI in the capital, were to be
re-opened and re-alIocated as thousands of
plasterers, carpenters and tradesmen took
the boat back to Dublin. Now interest rates
varied but the shock waves of the movement
of large sums of money into and out of the
economy has less effect. For one thing
O'Malley had "sold the Insurance Funds"
on "the good thing in Dublin", investing in
building office blocks with guaranteed
lettings underwritten by the Irish
Government. If it wasn't money for old rope
it was great guaranteed money for new
buildings with a sure pay tenant. The boom-
slump pattern in the building trade was
ended and today and to this day, the building
trade is regarded as a "Fianna Fail lobby"
and a Fianna Fail industry. It would be
almost three decades before the galvanised
went up again but the BalIyfermot disease
would have moved to the new location of
Tallaght.
Lemass and O'Malley worked closely.
O'Malley had the stature and style - the
panache - to move in monied circles in
london and encourage investment in the
renewal of Dublin City. He met, dined and
wined, Jewish packmen who made their first
shilling in the backstreets of Dublin and
were now millionaires looking for a good
home for the investment pound.
Jim Ryan had his own admiration for
O'Malley; Ryan had had his share offoreign
travel in his earlier days so that when he was
invited to Tokyo for a meeting of the World
Bank he sent O'Malley. He grew another six
foot. A fund was to be created and it came to
pledging time.
One after another he watched as each
44 MAGILL MARCH 1988
national delegation pledged milIions to the
fund. It was a colourful meeting with Third
World delegates seated in their national
costumes. O'Malley watched the Nigerians
and North Africans stump up so that when it
came to Ireland's turn, O'MalIey sprang up
and shouted "Two millions from Ireland."
Tasked afterwards by the accompanying
civil servants for his rashness, O'Malley fired
back: "No buck nigger in a fuckin' football
jersey is going to put I reland in the shade."
(Jim Ryan, the Minister, on hearing the story
is supposed to have said "Good man,
O'MalIey" ..)
H
EALTH WAS HIS FIRST FULL
Ministry. In the days while
Sean Lemass was picking the
Cabinet, O'Malley went about hamming it
up: he hated the sight of blood, he'd assure
those of us who drank tea on the poll corrs
table in Leinster House. You didn't know
whether he was signalIing that Lemass was
giving him the Department of Health or that
he was using us to convey to Lemass he'd
prefer another posting.
In the event he became the most accessible
Minister for Health in modern times. You
could reach O'MalIey with a threepenny
stamp and many nurses did. After they
became used to his open style, individual
nurses and doctors wrote directly to him at
the department. Again he was his own boss.
He would open all letters marked
"personal" instead of leaving the job to his
officials. More than one Dublin nurse was
flabbergasted to find - two days after she
posted a letter - a strange voice on the
hospital phone asking her name, and giving
his as "I'm Donogh O'Malley, the Minister:
this letter you wrote." Nine times out often
the writers thought it was a confidence trick.
As often as not, with a real doubting
Tomasina he'd offer to meet her in Bewley's
for coffee!
Today the nurses who march in protest at
cuts in Limerick and Dublin and the rest,
like the parents, who must now pay to
educate their children, will regret again we
live in the times of puny men with puny plans
and no vision. He gave the nurses ofIreland
the first Nurses' Charter as Minister for
Health and they idolised him for it. The
handicapped found a new champion. The
number of cases where a letter brought a
hard luck story from someone physically
handicapped often resulted in O'Malley
dipping into his private pocket to provide a
vital piece of equipment. Like the student
nurses, the junior doctors were recognised
and given a decent salary.
He was prodigal in his spending and the
softest touch' in Limerick if not Ireland. He
took the best part of his Dail allowance and
changed it into silent ten-shilling notes and
one pound notes before opening his "clinic"
in Limerick of a Saturday. A constituent's
son, a seaman, died abroad and the family
hadn't the money to bring the body home:
O'Malley stepped in and picked up the tab.
He was impulsively generous and once it
landed him in trouble.
The old Russell Hotel on the corner of
Stephen's Green is now gone. It was perhaps
the most elegant dining room of its time and
O'Malley, Lenihan and Haughey ("The
Three Musketeers") used to take a corner
table there regularly. They had finished dinner
one evening when O'Malley's attention was
drawn by the music oftwo buskers playing out-
side the window. The pair, a woman harpist and
a male violinist, shared a big dog between them.
On an impulse, O'Malley invited them in to din-
ner, and before Haughey or Lenihan knew, he
was marching the startled buskers and their dog
into thediningroom tositthem down between the
Ministers, shushing the dog under the table
before calling out "Waiter". It might have
passed off as an eccentric evening if it wasn't
for the dog. It started to growl, then bark
and all eyes swung on O'Malley's table.
O'Malley was to claim afterwards that it was
Lenihan who did the damage by kicking the
dog under the table so that he bolted,
ploughed his way through the sweet buffet,
misjudging his jump so that he landed in the
middle of the lower rung of the trolley,
sending chocolate mousse and pineapples in
kirsch all over the carpet. One American in a
corner of the diningroom watched with not a
little amusement. O'Malley was asked by the
management to pay the bill and leave. A
letter followed him from the smooth
manager suggesting he forsook the pleasures
of the Russell which he did.
As always, of course, O'Malley was to fall
on his feet. The American observer who had
watched the episode was a staffer from the
prestige American magazine the New Yorker
who wrote a very, very funny piece
with O'Malley as the generous hero who gets
put down for a dog's dinner job on the fruit
trolley. The hotel manager who would have
given his eye-teeth for a three line par in the
New Yorker knew when he owed. He rushed
a letter to O'Malley saying all was forgiven,
please return, bring your friends and be my
guest.
For all the prodigality O'Malley never
paid a dinner or lunch bill without totting it.
As often as not he'd do it under the waiter's
nose. If it didn't add up he'd brandish a hand
"C'rnere: add that up, you" or "What's that
item there?"
In the half dark with a feeble candle light
on the table, there might be a flustered
moment when the "item" was one we didn't
have. The manager hurries to the rescue,
takes away the offending bill and comes
back later to explain he's very sorry about
that Mr O'Malley, there's a mix up, the bill
actually belongs on the corner table". And
O'Malley would smile and say: "Doll-die-
dee". It meant he, or you, were on the ball:
dead right! Then, after "pulling" a waiter for
a wrong tot, he'd leave a tip which could be
more than the wrong tot by a 1 or two.
Trying to keep your end up with O'Malley
was an impossible task: the only way to
ensure you got the bill was to ask the
manager on the way to the table to keep it for
you, irrespective of the bullying tactics of
O'Malley. When Brian Lenihan tried for the
bill and O'Malley had snatched it yet again
he'd say: "Watch, Lenihan there, Healy -
watch him pulling out that battered fiver
again." Lenihan had to put up with it: it was
actually a weather-beaten tenner but after a
while Lenihan would play along for the
laugh and then upstage O'Malley by letting
him check the bill he had snatched to find it
was paid by one of the two of us, whosever
turn it was.
He knew all the tricks of the trade, having
his own pub/restaurant in Limerick City.
The night he opened he was standing at the
bar with his wife, Hilda, looking at the new
decor. He turned to her and said: "Y'know,
Hilda - this is the second time I decorated
this place," the smile of remembering
breaking around the corners of his mouth.
The first time was a wild O'Malley night
when, a bit the worse the wear for drink, he
grabbed a fire extinguisher, hopped it off the
bar counter to activate it and then proceeded
to spray the bottles and end wall of the bar.
W
E SAY MOST OF THE
Limerick O'Malleys have
short fuses and are quick to take
umbrage. Donogh in his first years in the
Dail filled the bill. Whiskey was a drink he
couldn't handle: he could be lethal in
insulting everyone, friends and foe alike,
when in his cups and the next morning he'd
break your heart being so contrite.
Not that he went into one famous de
Valera dressing-down session with a contrite
heart. He worshipped Dev and what Dev
said and what Dev did.
De Valera's attitude to the big boned
Limerickman was that of a fa ther keeping an
eye on a wayward but lovable son. He could
indulge O'Malley and O'Malley exploited
that. Dev was worried about O'Malley's
drinking habits and never more worried than
the day there was a critical vote on the
greyhound coursing bill and every vote was
needed. O'Malley was in the bar when the
division bells rang. His comrades headed for
the chamber while O'Malley comforted
himself he had so many minutes before the
doors to the chamber were closed, after
which no one was admitted. He misjudged
the timing and arrived at the chamber door
nearest to the Taoiseach. He rattled the door
with a bull-like charge but it held. Everyone
knew it was O'Malley. Anothercharge: open
this fuckin' door and the House looked
apprehensively at the Taoiseach, a model of
correctness. Mr de Valera was mustering a
dry smile of sorts. The Ceann Comhairle
rang the bell and the deputies filed through
the division lobbies as the sounds subsided.
The Taoiseach carpeted him. His opening
sentence was: "They tell me you are drinking
again, Donogh." The famous "they" was his
let-out. O'Malley cut in on theTaoiseach: "I
wouldn't mind them, Taoiseach - sure
jaysus they told me you used to sleep with
Mary MacSwiney and I never believed
them."
It worked a dream. De Valera hadn't
heard that story before and, in case this
wayward favourite of his would believe it,
the Taoiseach went into one of his habitual
long dissertations on his exact relationship
with Mary MacSwiney, forgetting entirely
the purpose of the meeting which was to dress
down O'Malley for being dnlnk and
disorderly in the House. O'Malley, to
everyone's amazement, came out of the
MAGILL MARCH 1988 45
 Taoiseach's room, hjs face beaming broadly
at colleagues who expected he would have
been taken to pieces. One inquired what had
happened, he was so happy looking, and
what was it Dev said to him? O'Malley
replied impishly: "The Chief told me he
never slept with Mary MacSwiney" and
walked on, leaving his man trying to figure
out the import of it all.
Years later, while he was Minister for
Education, he had given a talk in Trinity. He
had no time for formal scripts when talking
to the young especially. He did take the'
precaution of asking if he was going to be
reported: he could not see any of the regular
media people in the room. He was assured it
would be private. After which he launched
into a eulogy of de Valera but came down
like a ton of bricks on Dev's advisors, saying
"Dev is up there in Aras an Uachtarain
surrounded by an aurora borealis of
chancers. "
The following Sunday it appeared in the
Observer. He rang me in a sweat from
Limerick: what was he going to do about it?
Four times he rang and finally he decided he
was coming to Dublin that night rather than
the usual Monday afternoon: would I meet
him in the Shelbourne? As far as I was
concerned it was a typical O'Malley flourish
and rang true. "I'll deny it" he said, pale now
in the excitementofwhat was for him a crisis.
"You will not: everyone knows that's
authentic O'Malley." "I was tolt it was a
private meeting: there was no press there. I
have to deny it - I have to."
I argued no one would give a damn, but he
was already running ahead of himself. He
could see questions in the Dail next week.
Oliver Flanagan would be worried about
this insult to the good people, y'see, who
look after, y'see, the President. Then it'll be
on 'Today in the Dail' and the news bulletins
and Dev would hear it. I offered the Chair
would disallow the question in the first place
- and there was hardly any chance that the
aurora borealis people would read Dev the
Observer paragraph in the first place, seeing
it didn't reflect well on them. For the best
part of that week he did really live in fear of
the story being reprinted or cast up to him in
the House but like a lot of other things, it
drifted like a thin cloud on a warm day and
evaporated.
That incident is small but it is important.
O'Malley was afraid that in the highest
house in the land, the home of his hero, there
would be people who, because of the remark,
would hold him in low esteem if not open
contempt. And he wanted to be loved by the
highest and the lowest in the land. It was all
he lived for, worked for and, in the end, died
for. Doll-die-dee, as he'd say himself.
I
F A T AOISEACH MADE DONOGH
O'Malley Minister for Dustbins he
would make it the most exciting ministry
in the Cabinet. For one thing he'd ensure
that everyone had a dustbin; it made him
more relevant and his department more
relevant. He would talk up dustbins so that
the national consciousness would be raised
to the point where you would feel unclean
without the most basic dustbin. In large
cities he would have a choice of carry-out (or
46 MAGILL MARCH 1988
wheel ie-out) dustbins. There would be an
international seminar on dustbins, to discuss
the social role they played in making Ireland
the tidiest country in the world. When you
were O'Malley you aimed high all the time.
So it was when Lemass gave him the
Department of Health. He was following, in
Sean MacEntee, a man who seemed to be so
long in the job as to be almost part of the
Custom House.
MacEntee was a gift to follow and
O'Malley knew it. Like all ministers who
stay in the one department too long,
MacEntee, to whom we referred as The
Velvet Thorn, was such a fixture he had, it
seemed, alienated every caring group in the
country, but especially the IMA. A cartoon
of the time in the Sunday Review, which filled
an August Weekend issue with a six-page
supplement futuristic look at Ireland 1990
had a gossip column paragraph saying the
IMA had finally made peace with the ageing
doyen of the Dail, Health Minister Sean
MacEntee, and would present him with his
favourite instrument, a silver scalpel, the
instrument with which he ran the Health
services over half a century!
Throwing the Custom House door open
to the IMA and the nurses' organisations
and re-establishing contact gave him an
immediate plus. Individually and in groups
the medical people wilted under the charm of
the O'Malley persona.
By now most of the regulars who had
supported him in the first months after he
had gone on the dry felt he was not in need of
support to the extent I found myself, more
and more, dining with him three or four
nights a week. Sometimes I would excuse
myself: I had a column to do for the
morning. I might be in. bed. The phone
would ring: it would be after one. It was
always the same: "I have the kettle on -
come on down." Then, bang - the
connection was broken and next thing you
got was the engaged tone: he made sure I
couldn't ring back, blind him and tell him I
wasn't stirring out.
You dressed and went down to the big flat
at 12 Eglinton Road which, for all of
O'Malley's size, was lonesomely big for him.
The tea would be drunk from a set of elegant
china cups and a tray immaculately set. Now
and again he would go to the drinks cabinet,
pull out a bottle of Hennessy brandy, uncork
it and sniff it. Always he made the offer of a
drink: it was always refused. He would
return the bottle and pour another cup of1
tea. We talked and talked until it was just
after three. It didn't matter how good the
arguments were or the exchanges, when it
came to five past three or so he'd end it
abruptly: "Go on home." Some way that
was the witching hour to be passed. Three in
the morning: he could sleep then.
He was up at half six and by seven or so h
was in the Shelbourne with the three city
editions of the morning papers, ripping them,
apart so that, in two minutes flat, he had
finished his first "read" of them. On a
"normal" O'Malley night, whether we ha
spent the night in the Martello Tower, the E
Greco in Dun Laoghaire or the Quo Vadi
around by Andrew Street Post Office
O'Malley couldn't go to bed without getting
the country editions of the morning papers.
The paper seller at The Green Rooster would
have the three folded and ready. Back in the
flat he'd go through them slowly, pouncing
on anything they had printed about
O'Malley. If his speech got short shrift he'd
growl: "Bollixes: they don't know noos
when they see it." Like many Limerick men
he couldn't say "news": it was "noos" -
any noos?
Some nights he'd tell me to take a route to
the flat which would take us through a few
streets where "I'll show you a few of the
brassnails on the job." "Brassnails" was his
euphemism for the generous, commercial
girls of the night and the first time he gave me
the guided tour it was like an experienced
city-wise cousin showing his larrikin relation
up from the snipe grass the secret side of the
city. One night I was very tired and when he
proposed the brass nail circuit I just
exploded. "For Christ sake O'Malley will
you grow up." He chuckled but said
"Alright: go home so."
There were times he was like a young
schoolboy. He would hear stories of other
schoolboys who had raided the Canon's
Garden for the sweet and forbidden apples
and though he would never have the courage
to actually break in and fill his pockets, he
loved the next best thing: walking the
perimeter of the forbidden garden and
looking at the ripening apples at the top of
the trees. On one famous occasion while we
were looking at a couple just about to pair
off, O'Malley was ambushed by a knock on
his window. He turned and saw, more than
heard, a mouthed invitation and he roared at
me: "Will you for Jaysus sake drive the car
and get out of this place." It was a bit too
close for comfort. Safely on Eglington Road
he could chuckle.
L EMASS
bluntness,
LOVED O'MALLEY'S
his eagerness, the
zest with which he tackled a job. It
was coming near time for The Last Lemass
Hurrah.
O'Malley was impatient now for change.
He wanted change and a General Election
was an exhilarating challenge for O'Malley.
He loved it in a fearful way, rather like
driving the brassnail circuit.
At the end of the day he would know
whether Limerick loved him more for what
he had done or whether they loved him less.
Before the election was called he was sure
he'd pull more votes out of "The Island
Field" but once the reality was upon him,
Jaysus a man doesn't know; they could
screw you, too! They could, Donogh and
they could hoist you to the top of the poll.
The smile. And then: "Doll-die-dee." Once
again you were reading it right.
O'Malley couldn't wait for Lemass to
announce an election. Like more than one in
Leinster House, no TD ever fell sick and
absented himself for a fortnight but the
Rumour Factory went to work. A straight
dose of flu became "the Big C" and a touch
of angina became a "massive heart attack".
Mick Davern went into a private ward in
Dublin for a routine check and O'Malley
would visit him every night. The first week
there was no sweat. Then one night he
wondered how would Fianna Fail hold
Mick's seat? Already he wanted the
excitement of a by-election. Was Mick that.
bad? He doesn't look at all well, he confided.
By the second week O'Malley had Mick
"looking very bad" on Monday night. On
Tuesday night the Matron had assured him
they were very concerned about Mr Davern
and such a nice man (as he was: Mick was
one of nature's gentlemen). On Wednesday
night O'Malley came out and over dinner
said "they" didn't think "poor Mick would
last to the weekend". On Thursday night
O'Malley had him annointed: he wasn't
"going to last until morning time."
Then, on Friday night, he rang me from
Limerick. He had been in to see "Davern".
Not Mick, or "poor Mick": Davern.
"How is he Donogh?"
"How is he? How is he? The hoor sat up
today and downed a bloody great T-bone
steak." That, indignantly.
It is a matter of record that Mick Davern
did "recover" and the terrible irony of his
life (and indeed of the family) was that his
son, Don Davern, who took his father's seat
at the next general election was to die
tragically and suddenly before his father.
Dan Desmond did die in Cork causing a
by-election in which his wife, Eileen
Desmond contested. This time O'Malley had
"the bible" out - the official record of
constituency polling in the last election- and
there was a fair chance of Labour holding
the seat. That cute old fox Lemass knew it
was time to move. A Desmond win would
have him call a snap election. I wrote it.
Lemass confirmed it by denying my forecast.
Eileen won and Lemass dissolved the Dail.
He would come back and so would
O'Malley and there would be eighteen
months left to Donogh to make the
revolution and change, for two decades, the
social history of the Republic. Eighteen
short, God-blessed months!
I
NMY W ALTER MITTY MOMENTS,
when someone asked me what
portfolio would I like to have, if I had
been in politics, I have never hesitated: I
wanted Education. There is the Ministry
which really shapes the nation and if you
have ambitions to be a nation shaper you
reach for the Department of Education and
go to work. Not every politician of my time
would agree. Most see Finance as The
creative Ministry and certainly Charles
Haughey in his day demonstrated what a
man with an imaginative turn of mind could
do.
One of the great legends ofLeinster House
concerns the first 1948 Coalition when the
parties met to discuss who should have
which Ministries. The Fine Gael Party
included General Dick Mulcahy and when it
was suggested he might take a certain
Ministry he is said to have observed: "I have
done enough in my time for Ireland - I'll
take Education."
O'Malley lusted after the portfolio and
with Lemass back strong and confident,
O'Malley would have his heart's wish being
MAGILL MARCH 1988 47
 one of "The Three Musketeers" on whom
Lemass had depended in his previous years
as Taoiseach.
O'Malley knew what he wanted long
before he went to Marlborough Street with
his Education brief. He had led the Dail
campaign for a university for Limerick City
and if in the end it only got a third level
institution in the NIHE, it was something.
As far back as 1960 O'Malley thought
there should be a merger of the Dublin
colleges, Trinity and UCD, and said so in a
seminar in Dublin and drew down clerical
condemnation for it.
E IGHTEEN
astonishingly,
MONTHS -
is the length
THAT,
time Donogh O'Malley was Minister
for Education. Given the ferment which he
of
created in Irish society and the social
patterns he changed, anyone looking back
today would have said he must have served
at least one full four-year period in office.
He didn't even get as long in the job as he
did in his first Ministry, Health. But unlike
his Health posting, he knew what he wanted
to do in Education and with the portfolio.
O'Malley never worried about the
paternity of any thought, any project, any
scheme: all that mattered was that, if it was
right and he had the power to make it a
reality, or use it, he was away. He had told a
young Paddy Hillery not to get mired down
and to move and act while he was still
inexperienced. Now, reading himself into his
new Department of Education he had to
come across a proposal for universal
secondary education on a means test basis. It
was one of the studies organised under
Hillery's direction. It had lain there during
the time of Hillery's successor, Mr George
Colley, whose time in the Department was
taken up with the rationalisation of one and
two-teacher schools in rural Ireland, a
campaign marked in the public recollection
by the memory of the clash between Mr
Colley and the Bishop of Galway, Michael
Browne.
O'Malley got wildly excited at the
discovery. What astonished him was that the
scheme was comparatively economic: he had
thought a project like universal secondary
education would, in today's argot, have
"cost a hand and a leg". Over the lunches
with Charlie Haughey and Brian Lenihan,
he enthused them and lined them up on his
side as allies so that when he went to the
Cabinet to have the project adopted, he
would have support.
It was a swinging scene, the mid-years of
the Swinging Sixties. Lemass had made his
visit to Northern Prime Minister, Terence
O'N eill and supped tea in the anti-christ
house of the Stormont Hill and returned
home to say, drily, that "Nothing will be the
same." Nor was it. The grassroots of the
Republican Party, which had heard and
uttered ritual denunciations of Stormont
and the Unionist Party, now cheered as if
united with long lost cousins.
The economy was booming and Lemass
was asking Irish society to stop and think of
what kind of a future Ireland should have,
what was it the nation needed and where did
48 MAGILL MARCH 1988
it wish to go? It was a reflective speech of a
man who had primed the pumps and was
witnessing not just a rising of all the boats on
the new flood-tide but was watching also the
rise of the consumer society with its "I'm-
alright-J ack" philosophy. He got no serious
debate: the living she was good and it was
drive on, McCarthy ...
Now in these hours in which we killed
nights in various eateries or in the flat with
pots of tea, jhe talk was all of education.
McGahern's book "The Dark" was
published and it struck a responsive chord
with me, as well as O'Malley. Donogh didn't
have to worry about school fees or college
fees, and the scholarships or the iniquity of
the scholarship never worried him. He was
one of the few; I was one of the many.
It was said afterwards that I was
responsible for influencing him to bring in
the new regime for free secondary education.
It is true I argued the toss with him many a
long night. He'd question me on the social
and economic consequences a scheme of
secondary education might have and the
political consequences. The fact remains, as
anyone who reads O'Malley's contribution
down the years as a deputy will know, his
concern for education and the disadvantage
at which it placed children who did not
proceed to second level was such that he
needed no prompting to move or act.
Haughey and Lenihan were supportive
and O'Malley decided to sound out The
Boss. Lemass was immediately interested:
like Haughey, Lenihan and O'Malley
himself, he had thought the scheme would
have been prohibitively costly. Lemass told
him to give him a paper on it. He did. Lemass
now knew it was more than possible.
The task now was how to get the Cabinet
behind the scheme. O'Malley, after all, was a
comparatively junior Minister with men up
ahead of him in years and Cabinet
experience. They were men who had
programmes of their own to fight for or,
more correctly, had civil servants pressing
them to carry policies to the Cabinet table
for financing and implementing.
Lemass seems to have decided against
putting the proposal to the Cabinet
formally. He fell back on an old ploy: he
would let O'Malley fly the kite by breaking
the news. The Cabinet, after all, was well
used to O'Malley flying kites. The trouble
was that, lately, the cabinet members could
not be sure whether O'Malley was flying the
kite to influence Lemass - or whether he
was flying the kite at the behest of the
Taoiseach. Everyone knew Lemass was
susceptible to media stories and the trouble
most of us writing politics at that time had
was to distinguish whether the kite-fliers -
Lenihan, O'Malley, and Haughey - were
using the device to promote their own
policies, using the media to influence
Lemass, or genuinely sounding out an idea
for Lemass. A good example of the period
was Brian Lenihan giving an interview to the
Daily Telegraph wondering aloud if it might
not be a good thing for Ireland to return to
the Commonwealth. (That positively soared
to earth, punctured by derisive laughter.)
Brian, as usual, picked himself up, dusted

down his jacket and got on with the job. No
problem. He must smile now in 1988 when
he sees Young Fine Gael solemnly discuss
and reject the same proposal.
The first week of September, O'Malley
started to live on edge. He was drafting his
speech which was no great trouble. The
Cabinet - beyond the Musketeers and
Lemass - knew nothing of the coup which
was afoot.
That wasn't O'Malley's worry. He had
gone throught the Department like a
whirlwind and, no doubt, bruised a few egos
and showed a lack of sensitivity to men
whose years of experience called for a
minimum of ministerial respect.
"Some hoor is going to leak it to Garret
FitzGerald" he'd say. Garret FitzGerald
was Shadow Minister for Everything in
thoes years, though his nominal brief was
Finance, and all it needed was one civil
servant, worried about the expenditure
involved and knowing there was no Cabinet
approval for it, to pass the news on,
encouraging Fine Gael to come out and
jump the gun and steal O'Malley's thunder.
On Wednesday, September 7 O'Malley
had finished the draft speech. He had found
his venue. He would deliver the speech to the
National Union of Journalists in Dun
Laoghaire on Saturday night. In this way he
would "catch" the mass circulating Sunday
papers and the broadcasting media on
Sunday - and the daily papers would carry
the speech and the reaction on Monday
morning. Then he could face the Cabinet
music on Tuesday ...
On Thursday afternoon he brought the
script into the Taoiseach's office. He
whipped through it at speed. On page five of
the script there was the crucial paragraph
announcing the setting up of universal
secondary education which would be subject
to a means test. Lemass took his pen and
drove it through the means test phrase,
saying to O'Malley: "This is 1966, the
anniversary of the Proclamation: it's about
time we started to treat all the children of the
Nation equally." O'Malley couldn't believe
it! He had spent many hours regretting it
would have to have a means test but "it's a
start, Toro, it's a start". He called me and
asked me to meet him in the Intercontinental
inside an hour: there had been "a major
development". He was dancing on feet when
he pulled out the script and showed me the
deletion. "The Boss Man" he said
exultantly. We drank a pot of coffee and he
headed home for Limerick, a day ahead of
schedule. He was actually afraid that Lemass
might reflect on what he had done, go
hunting O'Malley to say he had changed his
mind, and O'Malley wasn't going to be
found until Saturday night.
On the phone he was worrying again
about FitzGerald and a leakage and he
was smoking like a trooper. Saturday
morning came and there was no leak, no hint
of it in any of the political columns which
had started to flourish by then.
A SEMINAL
nature
delivered
SPEECH OF THIS
might be more correctly
before a gathering
teaching profesionals. O'Malley knew that
of
- and knew that there would be plenty of
time, once the initial speech was made, to
speak to teachers' organisations and trade
unions. For now, the idea had to be sold
quickly and massively and for that you
needed the media. Thus he picked the
gathering of the National Union of
Journalists.
O'Malley had always enjoyed good
relations with the newspapers for most of his
career'. He had had a few rows, mostly with
his local Limerick papers. He complained
loudly in Limerick that the Leader was
boycotting him and failing to print his
speeches. Another time at an important
professional meeting he apologised for being
twenty minutes late. It was due to the fact,
he said, he was waiting for the scripts of his
speech because he wanted to be sure the
reporters "put it down right". The press
corps present got huffed and walked out in
protest.
But he could use the Limerick Leader to
advantage, too. On one occasion he was
attacked by an opposition deputy in the
Dail: it got a little personal between them.
Inevitably O'Malley's Limerick forays got
an airing including the incident in which he
bit the ear of an hotel porter. Again
O'Malley got the sympathy of the House and
Fine Gael people came to apologise as well
as Labour: the deputy had gone too far and
MAGILL MARCH 1988 49
 had got too personal. The sympathy
impressed O'Malley to the point where he
got the official verbatim report of the debate,
cut out the ear-biting accusation and sent it
down to the editor with a note: "Put this on
the front page in black type." When
Limerick read the story in the Limerick
Leader the consensus was that the exchange
didn't reflect well on the city or its
representatives "an' always didn't Dunnick
pay for it after?"
It did Dunnick no damage. In the Island
Field where the barges heard a knock on the
door and challenged the caller to identify
himself, Donogh would answer: "Tis
O'Malley, ma'am."
Now since there was a solicitor O'Malley
who used to serve civil bills, there would be a
further challenge: "Is that The Wild One?"
"Tis, maam." At which the door was open
with alacrity, Dunnick was welcomed and
half a dozen requests heaped on his head.
In Limerick he was "Dunnick". The
Limerick Leader story as he suspected, did
him no harm. His majority soared and his
opponent has not seen the inside of the Dail
since.
After that momentous speech in Dun
Laoghaire that September night, I joined
him in the EI Greco as arranged. Seamus
Brady who did PR work at this stage after a
long career with the Daily Express, was with
him. "Well?" was his greeting. I had read the
speech before going to Dun Laoghaire: the
question behind the "Well?" was to evaluate
the media impact it would make.
"The Sunday Press will lead with it: the
Sunday Indo will have a split lead - you'll
50 MAGILL MARCH 1988
get half of it." Shortly afterwards the first
editions came out: the forecast was spot on.
He wasn't pleased: he thought he should
have blacked out any other news. Then I
consoled him when I forecast that all three
Dublin dailies would make the story the
lead and all would have glowing editorials
on Monday morning.
He wanted to order champagne: we settled
for a bottle of red wine and O'Malley
ordered up another pot of coffee for himself.
I drove him back to the flat later. He put the
kettle on and while he waited for it to boil,
the excitement of the night still hyping
him, he said, "You know what I did tonight,
Toro?' ,
"Yes I do: you've just finished sixteen
years of Fianna Fail rule." The big smile.
And then "Doll-die-dee".
"Unless, of course, Fianna Fail meets the
challenge of a young educated electorate."
He swung around from the boiling kettle:
"Doll-die-dee again". The speech was not
six hours old but both of us knew that a great
new Ireland was born that night. He went to
the drinks cabinet and uncorked a bottle of
brandy, sniffed it as usual, and offered me a
glass "to celebrate".
"We'll do with the tea, Dum-Dum, we'll
do with the tea."
He put the brandy back and we toasted the
night and the future with two cups of tea in
elegant delicate china teacups.
Concluded next month: how O'Malley
scuppered Charles Haughey's chances of
succeeding Lemass.
A Publishing Miracle
W ITHIN MINUTES OF
sitting down at editor
Ronan Dodd's desk the
telephone was ringing. There was a
gentleman at the other end of the line
talking about a piece he was sending in.
He is a regular contributor to Ireland's
Own on matters of historical interest.
This seems to be his first conversation
with the new twenty-eight-year-old
editor. Has Ronan not heard of his
novels? All nineteen of them published.
Has he not heard of 'The Rajah of
Tipperary', for example. "No, I'm afraid
I haven't," Ronan pleads, slightly
bemused. He wasn't hanging up there
either. Ronan patiently explains his name
and lineage. "From Shropshire," he says.
"Protestant stock, originally." A gentle
familiarity was being nudged.
This is the sort of milieu Ireland's Own
exists in, quite different and unique,
vastly distinct from the ambit of other
magazines published in Ireland. "Apart
from the fact that it's a family magazine,
it's also like a big family," says Ronan.
"Everybody who reads it wants to write
in it."
Not long ago, an old couple who had
some stories to give Ronan - hand-
written of course - appeared in his
office, desiring him to be a witness to their
will! He signed it, too, thinking 'I must
have a nice face'. And he does have
"honest, trustworthy features", though
he jokes about them himself. He suggests
that the Ireland catered for in Ireland's
O\\'n is "unreal, in one sense". For the
readers, however, it is very real.
Take Cassidy, for example. Cassidy is
by Paddy Kehoe
the character you will find in every pub in
Ireland, the pub philosopher with views
on 'everything under the sun'. Ireland's
Own (henceforth known as 1.0.) once
received a letter from a fellow saying that
his brother worked in Limerick and he
knew a guy who always wore a cloth cap
called Cassidy and would the Cassidy
who wrote in I. O. be your man's brother?
Take Miss Flanagan, also, the female
PI. A guy had been broken into a number
of times down the country; the gardai
were not able to discover who the culprit
was and the writer wanted to know would
the 1.0. send down Miss Flanagan? On
making contact with the local Parish
Priest, the then editor, John McDonnell,
(now deceased), was able to ascertain that
the letter would have been genuine.
Austin Channing is manager of 1.0. A
dapper man in white trench coat, he looks
the part of a seasoned journalist:
Orwellian moustache and looks, with
gentle manners. Hestarted in 1935, when
1.0. had a Dublin office. Like Ronan, a
Dubliner, he too has a city background,
which is most curious, given the rural
entrenchment of the weekly. Starting as a
messenger boy, he soon graduated to the
ledgers, the books and accounts, and then
began to spend a lot of time travelling the
MAGILL MARCH 1988 51
country, doing county specials, for the
1.0.
y 1901,
B
IRELAND HAD
reached a point where ninety
per cent of the people were
literate. There were, in fact, possibly even
more people reading than there are now.
Consequent to this, there was a flood of
magazines at the time, trying to avail of
this reading public. Magazines with
names like The Shamrock. The Emerald.
The Dublin Penny Journal. magazines with
a nationalist aspiration. 1. O. was just one
more of these. By the early I92 Os I. O. was
the only pebble left on the beach,
probably because it never became
political and remained, as it is today, a
magazine of general interest and
information. As Austin Channing says:
"If Ireland's Own was to drop out in the
morning, there would really be no rival to
it. There is a special market for it alone. It
has a wholesome, though not a pious
theme. It is bought mainly by women, but
not readby just women - you can't edit it
towards a woman's bias either."
I was shown a copy of the first edition,
Nov. 26 1902, price one penny. It was
amazing to see much the same format and
content as now, though one remarks on
how connotations of language change.
Being seasonal, it featured Christmas
recipes: "How to skin, stuff and mount a
bird." There were short snippets on a
"Queer betrothal ceremony", and "The
big men of New Zealand". One article
announced: "Another unparalleled
operation performed", six stitches put
into a woman's heart. Crime and
detection featured, as always: one story
called "Tracked by his own crime". There
was a news item called "Ballooning in a
thunderstorm". The crests of the four
provinces were set around the "Ireland's
Own" at the top of the page.
By the First World War, 1.0. had a
circulation of 28,000. It always appeared
as a weekly, except during war-time.
Then, due to the shortage of paper, it
appeared fortnightly. By the Thirties,
however, circulation began to dwindle.
Compulsory Irish and de Valera's
rampant nationalism turned lots of
people, particularly young city people,
against the magazine. (Nowadays, people
with an interest in the Irish language
feature heavily among readers.)
Austin Channing was as bored with
hearing about 19I 6 as anybody else. He
wryly remarks that the GPO couldn't
have held half the people who claimed
they were there on that fateful Easter
Monday. "We were too Irish for our own
good," says Austin.
At the end of the Second World War,
I. O. was selling 24,000 issues per week.
Emigration in the Fifties led to a steady
circulation in England, which currently
runs there at 10-12,000 weekly.
The January issue of 1955 features an
advert for 'Player's Navy Cut' on the
cover. The price of the magazine was now
52 MAGILL MARCH 1988
threepence. (Once, they put the price of
1.0. up a penny, and had to put itback
down again, the following issue!) The
front and back page are a complete bright
green. Interestingly, when Clondalkin
Paper Mills folded, 1.0. had to scrap the
green cover idea; Clondalkin had been
their only suppliers of green paper.
Naturally, the letters flooded in: "When
are you bringing back the green .cover?'
People will still look for the green cover,
so they always feature even a bit of green
somewhere on the cover. "A bit of red
would probably throw them off - they're
all colour blind and can only see green!"
jokes Ronan.
I nside the 1955 edition, there is also a
story by the late Maura Laverty; obscure
adverts on how to be taller by sending for
details to a London address. "Be Taller",
it urges: "Quickly! Safely! Privately!
Clients gain One to Eight Inches." There
are prize essays: "A Little Irish Mother"
and "Selected Verses" include
"Moonlight in Mayo" and "Sunrise in
County Down". The verses and ballads in
1.0. have always remained staidly
neutral, non-violent. Another ad tells
how hair can be regained at home
through Mr Christy's method, this time a
Dublin address. Another ad pushes
Slimcream, for reducing bust size! Henry
J Rivers can End the torture of Weak
Nerves.
Sales grew steadily throughout the
Fifties, though the coming of television in
1961 had a marked effect on sales along
the east coast. By 1971/72, the circulation
was about 42,000. Editors like Mike Wall,
fifteen years editor, had maintained an
excellent holding operation in the face of
these difficulties.
J OHN McDONNELL
the Louth man's
IS A NAME
dear to the heart of I. O. Under
editorship,
circulation went up to 69,000 in 1979/80,
an increase of fifty per cent since his
arrival in 1971. He had been a playwright
in Belfast, and a sub-editor for the Irish
Press. (Ronan Dodd has spent some years
in the same capacity, with the same
paper.) Unlike previous editors, and
unlike Ronan, he wrote in the magazine,
as well as editing. Ronan says of John:
"H e had something I will never have, a
rural feel, a real sense of what people
want to read."
Current circulation stands at a little
over 60.000. The breakdown is as follows:
48,500 in the Republic and the six
counties (eight thousand in the North)
and, as previously mentioned. 10 -
12,000 in England. Six or seven hundred
copies are sent to America and
subscriptions also come from Australia.
Recently, they published a special
Australian edition, price three dollars.
20,000 issues were shipped 'Down
Under'. This international dimension to
the magazine is interesting. "A nun in
Timbuctu is as likely to read it as the
granny in the corner," says Austin.
Because it is never known how many
copies are sent out casually to foreign
relatives and friends. it is hard to talk
accurately about foreign readership. Th;
magazine regularly receives letters from
the Philippines, Japan and South
America, even places as unlikely as
Finland. Austin recently read a letter
from a young I ranian boy in connection
with a penfriend. A French couple who
wanted to do some kind of exchange with
an I rish couple recently wrote also.
The 'pen friends' page' seems coyly so
called. Not quite a pen pals' page, as
usually understood, it seems closer to the
classified section of In Dublin or HOI
Press. though hardly exactly comparable,
given the type of request. (An interesting
sociological study lies in the contrast
therein.) The 'pen friends' page' is a
readers' service, and many people who
began corresponding with each other
through I.O. end up marrying each other.
There are plenty of letters testifying to
this. Austin Channing was once
challenged by a young American priest
about the use of the term "Separated
lady" in a personal advert. "I could
hardly have called her "Lonely widow
from Cork," " countered Austin,
"thereby misleading hundreds of
unsuspecting bachelors, unaware of her
marital state." The same priest then went
on to complain about the use of the sign
of the Zodiac. Did Austin not know that
Masonic rites involved the use of the sign
of the Zodiac? I. O. frequently advertise
under denominations like 'Sagittarius
male' or indeed, 'Cancer lady'. Austin,
nevertheless, did not change this,
believing that hardly one reader in 10,000
would know about that. (This is not to
suggest that many of the readers of 1.0.
are not learned and erudite. Many are
very interested in genealogy,
history, etc.) A nd again, an example of
how real I. O. can be for readers. An old
local
Donegal man once wrote to John
McDonnell saying he was travelling
down from there and would he please
have some of the pen friends there to meet
him? Another woman arrived "roaring
and screaming" - her husband had
begun writing to a penfriend and
subsequently had run off with her!
Both Austin and Ronan, being
realistic, suggest that maybe all the
marriages don't necessarily work out.
They really only hear about the good
ones. A couple arrived in the office in
1980, looking for a particular issue of
1950. The husband had faltering English,
being German. Working in a British army
canteen, he had seen I. O. and had taken it
home to brush up on his English.
Spotting one advertisement, he had
contacted the woman. They continued to
correspond, and later married. To find
that particular issue was their means of
celebrating thirty years of matrimony.
There are fifty to sixty requests a week
on the pen friends' page. An average of
600 replies come in each week to these.
Over 20,000 requests have appeared over
the last forty years. A code number
system is used to catalogue - after a
while the 'Lonely Johnnys' and the 'Hot
Toddys' and the 'Loose boots' become
repetitive.
An occasional column called' Absent
Friends' has more poignant overtones.
People write in trying to trace their true
father or mother, or a brother or sister.
People who had been fostered out as
children, to complete strangers. English
newspapers recently carried a story of
how a brother and sister met after fifty
years through 1.0. He had flown over
from America, they had met at the
airport. Sadly, three days later he was
dead. A soldier who had been stationed at
Queenstown (Cobh) during the war
married a local girl. He was posted away
at twenty-one and later taken prisoner by
the Japanese. He survived the war but,
despite contacting 1.0.. sadly never
caught up with his wife.
A PPARENTLY,
often asked
A QUESTION
concerns
appeal of the magazine north of
the border. "We might deny it, but no
matter how hard we try, the ethos of the
the
magazine would be nationalist, with a
natural tendency to lean towards the
Catholic ethos," according to Austin.
"Catholic with a lower-case 'c","
interjects Ronan, at this point, tellingly
revealing a certain difference of intent.
Until the troubles of the late Sixties, a lot
of the readers were non-Catholic. Articles
about the Dissenters and Henry Joy
McCracken went down very well. The
polarisation of the two sides which has
become so distinct now must mean that
the overriding majority of northern
readers must now be Catholic.
Nonetheless, when Armagh came to be
covered in the county specials, attention
was equally given to Lough Gall and the
founding of the Orange Order, as it was to
items of nationalist interest. Not to tread
on political toes, to remain non-partisan,
has always been 1.0.' s stance. "You
won't find 'The Bold Fenian Men' in the
ballads page," Austin assures me, though
bitterly-phrased letters sometimes
demand same.
Most musically-oriented requests,
however, are non-political. Some time
ago, Ronan received a letter from two
Newry girls who wrote: "We love
Madonna and Wet Wet Wet, but we
always buy I.O. for the ballads, and wesit
together and sing them."
"We do the classic sitting-on-the-
fence-job," says Ronan. Nevertheless,
despite their neutral stance, I. O. are no
strangers to a quirky, colourful type of
controversy. I. O. differs again from other
magazines in that, while it has eight to ten
people who are regular contributors,
many short stories are sent in by readers.
They run a yearly short story competition'
and possibly fifty good stories can be
taken from the entries.
(Incidentally, a pound was offered for
the best short story in the very first
edition back in 1902.) John McDonnell,
as editor, once twisted the ending of a
short story to give it a happy ending. It
concerned a woman who had left her
cruel husband. The writer contacted the
nation's confidante, Gaybo. His
researcher rang Austin Channing to tell
him that he would be on the air in half an
hour to explain the change. Channing
had to think fast - McDonnell was away
- and to Gay's haranguing replied that it
was supposed to have been a story of
romantic interest, and those stories by
their nature must have a happy ending.
He also apologised to the lady and said it
was the first time it had ever occurred. No
sooner than this was said when a woman
rang up from Belfast claiming the same
thing had happened to one of her stories.
The controversy continued for weeks
with Gaybo eventually offering a prize
for the best alternative ending.
Fifteen or sixteen years ago, I. O.
displayed an advert for a Honda
motorbike, featuring a young model
wearing a bikini. A lot of letters flooded
in: "Drop that or I'll drop Ireland's
Own!" Divorce and abortion are thorny
subjects, obviously, and not frequently
referred to. An anti-divorce article,
nevertheless, was printed recently, taken
from the Economist and based on a
Knights of Columbanus survey. Austin
defends: "It was not really takingsides. It
offered perhaps the only cogent reason
against divorce, based as it was on the
statistics of people who divorce again
after remarrying."
I n earlier years, writers on the Catholic
church's banned list were never pu blished
in I.O. - for example, the short stories of
Sean 0 Faolain, which they now often
reprint. William Trevor's stories are also
featured, as are stories by Ita Daly and
David Marcus. Austin became oddly
vituperative about Edna O'Brien's
stories, betraying one significant slip in
the liberal, Orwellian mien: "Sex is
hanging out of everyone of them ! You'd
get sick of them after five minutes!"
They both seem very careful not to
offend, Ronan and Austin: "Would
'fecking' be alright in a story?" I heard
Ronan ask Austin about a contribution.
T HE ADVANTAGES
rural-based
OF BEING
are fairly obvious
- I. O. remains in touch with the
nerve centre of their readership. One of
their regular new contributors, however,
is associated with the Royal Hospital and
based in Dublin. A Millennium issue is
now being planned also. Ronan is
realistic about I. 0.: "The fifteen, sixteen
age-group wouldn't be caught dead with
1.0. We will have to evolve and pay more
than lip-service to that age-group. The
present music column 'Folk-beat' is too
restrictive. "
Austin pessimistically' believes that
they haven't a hope of gaining that
particular market. "Overall, we're not
too good on the east coast," he says.
Their main appeal lies to the West of
Ireland.
Given his long experience
national newspaper, Ronan
with a
is often
tempted to deal with hard news, and has
to pull the reins on himself. "It's tempting
to cover Stalker," he says. He doesn't
miss the 'bad vibes' of the city, and
commutes every weekend to Nenagh,
where his wife works, their home base. He
likes the fact that there is no bad news
covered in I. O. - there are enough of
other magazines like Magill, to deal with
social issues. He admits a definite slant
towards the unreal in I. O. Con Houlihan
dubbed it, 'the only good newspaper', in
the sense of only publishing 'good' news.
Tony O'Reilly is indirectly the boss of
the whole operation, being head of the
Independent group, to which The People
newspapers - of which Ireland's Own is a
part - are affiliated. O'Reilly has called
Ireland's Own "the publishing miracle of
the century." He says he wouldn't try to
change it and admits he wouldn't know
how if he wanted to.
MAGILL MARCH 1988 53
 JOHN REASON on Ireland's chances of picking up the pieces.
T HE POWER OF POSITIVE
thinking may move mountains,
but it has not helped Ireland to
move the French serum very far in recent
seasons, or anybody else come to that.
The man who did the positive thinking
for the Irish front row was Syd Millar,
and he is one of the best two coaches of
the serum mage in the world. In the run-
up to the World Cup, Syd never missed
a chance to tell everybody, and especially
his front row, just how strong the Irish
props were.
It was a classic exercise in psyching-up,
but it cut no ice across the water. Mike
Burton and Fran Cotton, the two
England tight heads who did so much for
Syd Millar on the 1974 Lions tour of
South Africa, and who think so much of
him, shook their heads and grinned from
ear to ear.
"Syd can tell Des Fitzgerald he's King
Kong," said Burton, "and coming from
Syd, the lad will probably believe him, but
when he has to get down against the
French front row, he'll find out the
truth. "
Fitzgerald found out the truth two
years ago, when he had to serum mage
against England at Twickenham, and
spent most of his time in the car park. If,
subsequently, he was in any doubt about
one of life's eternal verities, he had it
dispersed when he scrummaged against
France in Paris.
Ireland were shafted in the first serum,
just as they were in Paris two years ago,
and from that moment, they never looked
forward.
France still started hesitantly, as they
had every right to. They should have lost
to England and they did lose to Scotland.
They had dropped a third of their team,
including their best scrummager, and they
had cobbled together a back row which
was all number eights and muscle and no
pace.
They clearly feared a run-around, just
as Wales did when they played England
at Twickenham, but after twenty minutes,
the French found to their most enormous
relief that Ireland did not have a scrurn
and they did not have a back row either.
Daniel Dubroca, the French captain,
54 MAGILL MARCH 1988
said afterwards that he expected more
from Ireland. So did Ireland. They were
short of legs. They were short of muscle.
They were short of spirit. They sank
without so much as a bubble. My word,
Ireland have suffered from the loss of
Nigel Carr.
Even the video saw nothing of the Irish
back row all day, and that left the French
backs in the mouth-watering situation of
playing behind a totally dominant
scrummage with nothing more to worry
about than running one on one. No cover.
No nothing. Ireland's loose forwards
never challenged the French midfield.
As if that was not appetising enough
for the French backs, Ireland had chosen
to play Trevor Ringland far too soon
after injury. Now Pare des Princes on a
fine Spring day is not exactly the place
that first springs to mind when choosing
a rugby rehabilitation centre, and
Lagisquet stripped Ringland to the bone.
He beat him on the inside. He beat him
on the outside. Two French tries. Game,
set and match.
It was foolish to expose Ringlend in
that way. Fully fit, he is good enough and
strong enough to bustle a wing like
Lagisquet and to give Ireland a badly
needed plus. Instead, that particular
confrontation left Ireland with a distinctly
avoidable minus. Minus a lot of points.
T
HERE IS NOTHING OF
Frank Whittle's jet about his
namesake. Don Whittle was
picked as a tank trap. He is a fifteen yard
player. But as soon as France saw that
they could move the ball wide and not
have to worry about their own back row,
they climbed out of their tanks and used
motor-bikes instead. Whittle was flamed
out. Hors de combat. He needed what
mobility he had to keep up with the
retreat of his serum.
Life was made even more difficult for
Ireland by the chances they gave France
to counter-attack. With the fast pitches
provided by this non-winter, more tries
have been scored from counter-attack
than from any other source. Blanco made
the most of the chances he was given.
Ireland went badly short of ball.
Lenihan and Anderson cannot dominate
so Ireland were under pressure from the
beginning, and in the end they were
annihilated and spared only by France's
poor goalkicking.
The question is: Will the re-shuffled
Irish pack be any better against Wales?
The chances are that they will, if only for
the fact that Wales have been highly
nervous about their forwards all season,
and as England and Scotland have shown,
they have every cause to.
It may be a slight exaggeration to say
that Wales are a one-man pack, and that
without Bob Norster, God help them, but
there is enough truth in that at least to
give Ireland some hope.
Certainly, the Welsh front row has
nothing like the clout, in every sense of
the word, that the French have and Willy
Anderson will have a happy time playing
alongside Phil May. Only Norster of the
Welsh tight forwards, will be in a class
of his own.
Whether Tom Clancy will be any better
at loose head remains to be seen. He is
big enough to look the part, but my
scouts tell me that his work rate about the
field is marginal, and his body strength
is such, or un-such, that after twenty
minutes in an international serum, his
work rate will become a minus quantity.
They think that Langbrook would have
been a better bet, simply because he never
stops competing.
But if the threat from the Welsh
scrummage is not nearly as great as that
from France, the Welsh lineout, with
Norster jumping and Watkins throwing
in, will give Ireland a lot of problems in
the one area where they had a small
success against France.
It was a small success, too. The lineout
ball Ireland won was not clean. It was not
developed. Paul Dean defended well, but
his use of the ball was not significant. He
kept challenging the tackle line, which left
Michael Kiernan with no option but to
kick.
France are still searching as hard for
a fly-half as they have done for the last
twenty years and they are still searching
for locks, but they were faster thinking
W HEN THE NEW DUBLIN
Opinion starts using
cartoons from the old Dublin
Opinion, under the heading 'Ring in the
old', you know that all is not well with the
state of Irish political cartooning. The
lacklustre attempt to revive the one really
successful vehicle for political cartoons in
Ireland has served only to highlight the
gaping dearth of serious practitioners of an
art that has 400 years of history behind it.
With a few obvious and honourable
exceptions - Martyn Turner in the Irish
Times, Littleman's savage caricatures in
Magill and elsewhere, Fortnight's easy-
going mockery of Northern clerical bigotry
AGILL MARCH 1988
Guardian strip If . . . or Le Canard
The decline of Enchaine.
Irish political Even of those honourable exceptions,
only Littleman at his best, as in, for
cartooning instance his famous portrait of Charles
Haughey as a dyspeptic vulture, comes
near the scabrous distortions which are the
BY essence of caricature. In an original and
idiosyncratic way, Littleman follows the
FINTAN O'TOOLE approach of the great English caricaturists
like Ralph Steadman and Gerald Scarfe
who in turn follow the advice of the 17th
in 'Dog Collars' - Irish politicians have century artistic commentator Balinducci,
had little to fear when compared to the who defined the task of the caricaturist as
ferocity of the lampooning of their British being to "disproportionately increase and
or French counterparts in, say, Steve Bell's emphasise the defects of the features that
they copy." Martyn Turner, on the other
hand, though himself English in origin,
could be placed more in an American
tradition than an English one - witty,
ironic, and given to verbal jokes and puns as
much as to purely visual effects.
Turner's caricatures of Irish politicians,
indeed, are relatively gentle, even when
compared to his own images of foreign
politicians. Like all caricaturists, he picks
on individual features of his subjects and
emphasises them: Charlie Haughey's
beaky nose, Garret FitzGerald's wavy hair
and rotund face, Alan Dukes' rubbery, fag-
bedecked lips and thick glasses, Dick
Spring's long streak-of-misery face. But
his cool draughtsmanship precludes the
violent strokes of which grotesque
caricatures are made. Only when dealing
with obvious monsters like Richard Nixon,
Idi Amin, or Joe Stalin, has he come up
with anything that might be called hideous.
Turner's work gives the impression of being
undertaken more in sorrow than in anger-
a man shaking his head at the folly of the
politicians rather than his fist in their faces.
Turner's greatest strength, indeed, lies in
his ability to turn verbal humour into a would be complete without mentioning Clockwise from top left: "If only-"
visual joke. Many of his most memorable Northern Ireland ... Hello, Northern Mother Ireland brings Collins and Dev
together (From Dublin Opinion, August
cartoons depend on words, either in the Ireland"; a fisherman reflecting on the 1922); Littleman's depiction of Charlie
captions or built in to the drawings value of Sellafield: "Real fish fingers"; Haughey as a vulture (Magill, 1981);
themselves: Enoch Powell beset by a DUP Oliver J. Flanagan, having been appointed Martyn Turner's welcome for Ronald
picketer whose placard carries the legend Minister for Defence, bearing a shield with Reagan and his response to the
"Immigrants Out"; the Queen making her the words "M ake War not Love". In this, Haughey/Thatcher teapot diplomacy.
(Turner cartoons from his books
speech to parliament: "My government as in his ironic rather than indignant 'lIIiminations' and 'Martyn Turner, The
feels that no programme of legislation posture, Turner's work is not unlike the Book'.)
best of \\ hat Dub/in Opinion in its he~ da~ stance \\ as that "We hcliev c that humour is The Bell accurately described in 19U as
\\as capable of. the safet~ valve of a nation and that a "overdone sob vtuff" - scntiment alised
nation \\ hich has its \ alurs right \\ ill al\\ays images of picturesque poverty.

T
ilE FACT TIIAT TilE be able to laugh at itself. We hal c al a~ s So stable \\as Irish vocietv and its
original Dub/in Opinion is had an unfailing belief in Ireland. all of it. concerns that \'i\ ian Mercier, \Hiting in
,till remembered wa rrnlv morethan and in the people of Ireland, all of The Bell, w av able to identify si:-. jokes
t wcntv years after its demise i, part I~ a them ... "The laughter which it intended to which, through m~ riad \ ariat ions , made up
result of the failure of anythim; else to fill provoke wav a reassurance that the nation the entire content of the magazine 0\ er the
the need for good political cartooning, had its values right. not an attack on those decades. Joke 1\ umber I \\ as the Cil il
partly a result of its own considerable e ..t ablishcd \ alucs. Accordinulv , in time' of Sen icc J okc, a \ ariation of hich \\ as the
merits. Those merits, though, were of a cri.,i." the figure of "Ireland", a willow, Cork Joke. The classic of the genre,
\ er~ part icular ki nd and \\ ere \ er~ closl'l~ v ivion .,traight from romantic nationalivt publivhcd in 192.t. and captioned "The
related to the small, parochial nature of m~tholog~. would appear in the page ..of :\ight the Trcatv Was Signed". ,ho\\' a
lr ish socictv before the l.emasv revolution. the magazine. making de \' alcra and horde of men running nat out in the middle
Then' is at least a s~ mbolic significance in ( ollins shake hands in the Civil \\ ar day-, of the night. many still in their pyjarnas on
the fact that the ruagazinc \\ as founded of Augu.,t 1922. or herself slHlking hands the road from Cork to Dublin, there.
with the new state in 1922, and closed down with de \ aler:1 who vt ands in front of a cvidcntlv. to take up civil sen icc job"
in the mid-Sixties when the simple vcr iucs radio microphone hal ing just made his Icrcier remarked that "At times one
of that state were beginning to fall apart. famous rcplv to Churchill during the would be tempted to sa~ of Dublin Opinion
Dub/in Opinion depended on a kind of Second World \\ ar. accompanied b~ the that it \\a, written of civ il sen ants. for civ il
political humour \\ hich assumed a highl~ caption "Thank you, Dcv": \\ hen things sen ants, b~ civil 'en ants". and there is a
stable society and a lack of serious were threatening, political humour \\ as sense in which this has remained true of
di\ iviuns. One earl~ joke gil ing the Traffic replaced with patriotic high-rnindcdncsv. much of I rish polit ical cartooning. its
I. ighh II istor~ of I rebind \\ as capt ioncd as In the first four years of the magazine, lampooning of politicians being more the
follows: "1. The Red goes. 2. The 0 range before the death of its founding editor indignation of the civil servant at his
gOl'S. 3. The Green comes ... and stayv". Arthur Booth. Dub/in Opinion did make incompetent political boss rather than 'the
and that banishment of rev olutionaries and strong efforts to suggest that all might not wrath of the outsider directed against the
Protestants in a Catholic state \\ as be for the best in the new Free State, with institutions of power.
reflected in the magazine's sense of hal ing many strong cartoons on unemployment Dublin Opinion's five other jokes were:
a single "in" audience to whom it could and pov crtv. \\ hen Charles Kell~. \\ ho The Where Were You In 1916 Joke (the
address its political jokes. drew many of the magazine's most famous best being the one which has a politician
Dub/in Opinion m av hal c hccn cartoons over the years. took over as addressing a crow d in a \ illage square,
irreverent. but it alw avs assumed that its editor, the social comment was diminished through \\ hich four men are \\ ading. each
humour was a support (rather than a and the sharp depict ions of pov ert~ holding one leg of a large bed. Politician:
danger) to the status quo. Its editorial replaced by the \\ ork of W.l1. Conn \\ hich What's this? Men: It', the bed you were
under in 1916; the Irish Na\'y .Ioke: The
New Ireland Joke (ceilidhes in the Kildare
Street Cluh etc): the Ourselves-As-
Others-Sec-Us .Iokc (pigs in kitchens,
Americans and leprechauns); and the
Farmer .lokc, ("The gro\\ing middle-class
of Ireland" Mercier remarked "have left
the farm behind (we hope) and can afford to
laugb at it. ").
And if all of these jokes were essentially
harmless. so too were the depictions of
politicians, There \\ as no personal attack in
either the jokes or the caricatures, which
were st raightforw ard and innocent of
grotesquer~. Dub/in Opinion 's attacks on
the Public Safety Act in the last days of the
Cosgrave gO\ernmenl were popular and
influential, and were e'en credited b~ some
w ith helping to bring dow n that
gO\ernment. But once de Valera was safely
in power, the magazine's designs on
political influence were replaced with
gentle leasing of those in PO\\ cr. The
strongest attack on de Valera is a gentle but
effect i\'c1~ mocking caricatu rc \\ hich
shows him ,1\ a female fashion model, the
accompany ing description of his outfit
sending up hi, puritanical asceticism: "A
slim and simple frock of angclskin,
matching hat with halo effect."

T
HE POINT ABOUT DUBLIN
Opinion is that it represents
the only real tradition in Irish
political cartooning, and that tradition is
one of coping \\ ith consensus and stability.
not \\ ith division and change. Charles
Kelly, the magazine's editor once did a

~n .. r-. ... ll.....

nr"LI 1000
cartoon complaining that l rish politics
were "as nat as a child's nose against a
sweet shop window' and suggesting a few
scnsatlons \1 hich might make the life of the
cartoonist easier. Among them II ere: "A
minister might openly contradict the
Taoiscach": "The Taoise ach might
suddenly adopt a nell st~ le of \Iearing
apparel": "Deputy Otivcr .I, Flanagan
might ask a question which would
embarrass even Deputy Otivcr Flanagan:'
That these 1\l'H' the high points of
imaginar~ cvcitcmcnt with which an Irish
political cartoonist could cope \Ias proved
hy Ihe fact that II hen real crises a rri\ I'd. the
cartoonists took refuge in pious and
humourless tableau- ..
Compare this to the tradition of the
political cartoon in Britain. While there
has been a great deal of complaint about
the falling off in the standards of the art.
those complaints are made in relation to
recent and vibrant exemplars of cartooning
at its best - Sir David 1.0\1 and the
incomparable Vicky II ho, driv en into nile
b~ the Nazis. \Ias enorrnouvly influential in
creating a taste for polit lcally pungent and
partisan cartoons. (Some of Vicky's jokes
still turn up: his comment on British
nuclear policy show ing the then Minister
for Defence facing the Russian bear.
holding a pistol to his ow n head and
threatening "One step. and I shoot!" w as
used by Martyn Turner during the UWC
strike in the North when he had a Unionist
pointing a gun at himself and threatening
James Callaghan - "This is a stick
up , , , ": and Nicholas Garland of the
London Independent says that he thanks
"Vicky's shades for the thousands of times
I have made usc of his powers of
observation.")
Britain produced. and continues to day. the political thought has to be glance. must be something that is already
produce. a large number of good political struggled with in order to lind the right common currency. Cartoonists may be
cartoonists because its politics have been image to convey it:' And these images have admired for their originality of expression.
defined on a left/right axis. creating and to be ones \1 hich your readers are able to . but originality in their ideas is a hindrance
allow ing for expressions of absolute recognise in an inst ant. He lists some II hich to effective communication. "The idea
opposition and vitriolic hatred. The art of he believes would be "inst antlv understood contained in a political cartoon must not
the caricature and of the lampoon is one of by' any reasonably well-educated person": only be easily understood but must even be
the fell arts \1 hich thrives on absolute Alice ill Wonderland in all its details. many already widely established before the
oppositions and violent passions: it is at its Victorian paim lngs, most of Shakespeare. cartoonist uses it. It could reasonably be
best \1 hen it i~ least fair and .rnost Gulnncss posters. children's books argued that political cartoons are merely
unbalanced. Because cartoonists like Vicky (probably English classics such as The telling people what they already know in a
reintroduced this partisan tradition. and Wind ill the Willows or Winnie the Pooh) highly simplified form:' On this criterion.
because British politics after the war and "much of Kipling", Ireland is a very tough place for the
became increasingly polarised. the superb What is significant is that not only would political cartoonist. In a political system in
savagery of a Steadman. a Scarfo. or a none of these be "instantly understood" by which ideas arc anathema and self-
Steve Bell has a place in the political an I rish audience. hut that it is impossible contradiction is the order of the day. it is
culture. In Ireland. where left and right arc to think of an equivalent list of Irish virtually impossible for a cartoonist to
moveable feasts and political passions are references \1 hich would be immediately assume that he is mer ely presenting in a
hazy and contradictory. a passionate recognisable to most I rish readers, even of simplified and visually attractive form an
assailant of politicians. like Littlcrnan, is a a paper like the Irish Times, Irish culture is idea which is already generally accepted.
marginal. uncomfortable. figure. so discontinuous. so fractured and so And so we have the wetness and
But there is another reason. too. for the lacking in coherence that no cartoonist weakness of II hat arc meant to be the
problems which the political cartoon could work on the assumption that all of his bastions of the political cartoon in Ireland:
continues to have in Ireland. Nicholas readers would grasp a reference to Joyce or the revived Dub/ill Opinion and The
Garland. in a recent article in The Yeats in two seconds. I rish cartoonists Phoenix, \1 hose attempts at the form have
Spectator, revealed the extent to which his can't draw on a common culture which been a consistent embarrassment. A
0\1 n work as a cartoonist depends on they share \1 ith their readers, tradition bred on stability and
assumptions which he can be sure that he And the same is even more st riklngly true predictability faces a society which is
shares with his audience, Some of these of political assumptions. Garland makes contradictory. unformed and unpredic-
assumptions are cultural. others political. the interesting point that the message of a table. The result. for the most part. is an
Garland pointed out that "On a difficult political cartoon. because it is read at a inadequate mess.

FINGAL FROLICS
THERE IS SUCH AN ABUN-
dance of talent among the
unemployed of Swords Co
Dublin that a recent competition
for the position of caretaker at
Fingal Community College
attracted many over-qualified
applicants. Among them was
the temporary caretaker, Bill
Barry, who had been employed
at the school in that capacity
from September 1987 until
January of this year when the
position was filled.
Mr Barry did not get the full-
time job despite a glowing
reference from the school
principal who praised his
aptitude for painting, garden-
ing, plumbing, carpentry, clean-
ing and security, all grist to the
mill of a good caretaker. His six
years in the army, ten years work
experience with juvenile delin-
quents, ten years with the New
York telephone company, Leav-
ing Cert, diploma in childcare,
and training in physical educ-
ation, building maintenance and
gardening were not enough to
secure him the position. A office. Mulvihill senior is a
married man, Mr Barry has now
returned to the dole queue while
the job at Fingal Community
College has been given to a
single man who had been
working at the local hardware
store for the past eight years.
Although not as obviously
qualified or experienced as Mr
Barry, the successful young
applicant must have greatly
impressed the interview
committee made up of
Councillors John Gilbride, FF
chairman, Cathal Boland (FG),
Owen Curley (FF) and S Lyons
(lnd FF).
John Mulvihill, who got the
much sought-after job ahead of
Mr Barry and a number of other
applicants, is known to have
passed his Inter Cert, and eight
years in a hardware shop has no
doubt equipped him with some
knowledge of implements and
building materials.
None of the interview com-
mittee were prepared to com-
ment on the reasons for the
appointment which has since
been cleared by the County
Dublin committee of the VEC
on the recommendation of the
chief executive officer Mr
Gerard Cronin who in turn
received notice of the successful
candidature from the local
committee. Everything has been
done according to procedure
and John Mulvihill can rest
happy now that the competition
is all over.
Only the begrudgers around
Swords are likely to complain
that all is not as it seems in the
area - which of course is pol-
itically dominated by the for-
midable organisation of Ray
Burke TO and Minister for
Energy and Communications.
Ray Burke:formidable organisation
John Mulvihill is the son of
Larry Mulvihill who replaced
Burke as councillor when the
latter was elevated to higher
member of the Co Dublin VEC
and a member of the board of
management of Fingal Com-
munity College, and a key figure
in Mr Burke's party machine,
while his party colleague and
interview committee chairman
John Gilbride is also on the
board of the school.
No one is arguing that the
relatives of public represent-
atives should be excluded from
public employment once the
proper procedures are adhered
to, as is the case here. Only the
usual whingers will cry about
political patronage and graft.
But, as one Labour councillor
put it, it really says something
for the quality of the
umemployed in the Swords area.
"If the successful candidate is
better than Mr Barry then all I
can say is that the VEC and the
school are very fortunate", Sean
Dunne told Wigmore.
IN LIKE FLYNN
TAKE BETS ON THE MIN-
ister for The Carve-up,
otherwise the Environment,
wrapping the two Mayos into
one five-seater for the next
General Election.
If we are right about this,
guess who it insulates perfectly?
Why none other than our
Minister for the Environment.
Here's why.
Fianna Fail take four out of
six seats in the two Mayo con-
stituencies and in West Mayo it
is Flynn and The Fisherman,
Denis Gallagher of Achill, who
are returned comfortably. In
politics there is no such thing as
a comfortable seat. But you
beat any surprise swings if you
are Padraig of the Knives and
you know that The Fisherman
Gallagher is heading for the
European contest in June 1989,
as a replacement candidate in
Connacht/Ulster for retiring
Sean Flanagan who is finally
hanging up his political football
boots after a fine innings as
deputy, minister and MEP.
The football vote gave
Flanagan the edge over Neil T
Blaney last time. Blaney was
regarded as a certainty after his
trouble-free run in 1979 when
Lynch's Fianna Fail failed to
challenge him and virtually
handed him the seat as an
Independent. Haughey stormed
the Blaney fortress right into
Letterkenny and with the GAA
vote coming out for Flanagan in
Cavan/Monaghgan, the once
Mayo All-Ireland captain
shaded Blaney, the previous
poll-topper in a sharp contest.
Former GAA opponents like
Mick Higgins of Cavan, Sean
Stockwell and Frankie Purcell,
not all of the FF persuasion,
came out for Flanagan.
With Gallagher, former
member of the GAA Central
Council and great Mayo mentor
and legislator, the GAA-FF link
should operate in Connachtl
Ulster.
Denis Gallagher's translation
to Europe means Flynn is the
veteran FF man in what was
West Mayo, which he will then
have all to himself - apart from
a token FF runner to gather the
Achill/Belmullet vote.
As Flynn himself says at
times: I like, I like it, I Like it.
KINGSTOWN
CARVE-UP?
DUN LAOGHAIRE IS AN-
other ideal constituency for a
carve up. Fianna Fail would
desperately like to have two seats
here, if for no other reason than
that David Andrews currently
holds their only seat here. Now,
two three-seaters would give
Fianna Fail more than a strong
chance of lifting one seat in
each. With the extra seat in there
the PDs would be after the same
thing but this kind of result
would need a more organised
campaign than on their last
outing. Helen Keogh for the
PDs would fancy her chances -
she had more first preference
votes last time than either of the
FF candidates, Ed McDonald
and Richard Conroy. Ambitious
Betty Coffey would be looking
for the other FF seat too. Any
of these would want to watch
Eamonn Gilmore who polled
well for the Workers Party last
time out and who by all
accounts is working very hard
out there to retain his support.
Fine Gael would be looking to
hold onto Monica Barnes and
Sean Barrett and would find it
almost impossible to add a third
seat. Of course Liam Cosgrave
might just oust one of these two.
That leaves Barry Desmond
who has been in the Dail since
1969 and is likely to hang in
there unless the middle-class
squeeze Earuonn Gilmore and
the falling support for the
Labour party combine to force
him out.
GARRET WHO?
FINE GAEL SUPPORTERS
notice that, more and more,
Alan Dukes tends to invoke the
name of Liam Cosgrave when
he is reminding the party of its
great past and promising it a
great future.
But then Charles J. Haughey
doesn't exactly bore his
followers with the greatness of
a Corkman called Jack Lynch.
EURO TRAIL
THE SEARCH FOR CANDI-
dates in the European elections
in 1989 is hotting up but no-
where more keenly than in the
Labour Party.
Dick Spring and his col-
leagues nurse painful memories
of the European contest in 1984
when the party failed to win a
single seat. Rumours that the
party is looking beyond its own
ranks were circulating last week.
Moves are being considered to
bring Mary Robinson back intc
the Labour Party fold with I
view to running her as the onl;
condidate in the Dublin con
stituency. Mrs Robinson left thl
party in 1985 over the Anglo
Irish Agreement.
Approaches are alread
understood to have been mad
to Senator Brendan Ryan. He j
thought to be a certainty for
socialist seat in the Munsts
constituency if he can be pel
suaded to run.

BIRMINGHAM
SIX
CONSPIRACY?
WHILE WITNESSES AT THE
appeal of the Birmingham Six
were not supposed to discuss
evidence with each other or any-
one else while the case was
proceeding Labour MP Chris
Mullin recently claimed in the
House of Commons that [he
two chief witnesses for the
Crown were in regular contact
with each other throughout.
Mr Mullin said that while Dr
Frank Skuse and Superinten-
dent George Reade had never
met before the night the six were
arrested they have kept in close
contact since. He told the House
the Dr Skuse had conspired over
a long period with Supt Reade
to rearrange the timing of events
in Morecambe police station to
cover up the fact that the West
Midlands detectives had access
to prisoners several hours earli-
er than has been admitted by
them and that during that time
"they commenced a ferocious
programme of violence which
led to the extraction of false
con fessions"
Mr Mullin claimed that not
only did the two men keep in
regular contact by telephone
while the appeal was proceeding
but Frank Skuse was in Supt's
Reade's home during the appeal.
"On Sunday November 29
shortly after Skuse and Reade
had completed their evidence,
but while the ease was still be-
ing heard and they were both
technically witnesses, liable to be
recalled at any time, an ITN
journalist, Chris Jameson,
called unannounced at Reade's
door. Who should open the
door? It was none other than
Frank Skuse. Frank Skuse was
there in George Reade's house
while the appeal was being
heard. Skuse and Reade are the
villains of this terrible affair",
Chris Mullin told the House.
Skuse and Reade live 80 miles
apart.
LORD DENNING
AND REALITY
LABOUR MP CHRIS MULLE
was rather bemused to find
himself sharing a taxi with the
former Master of the Rolls, Lord
Denning on the day of the
Birmingham Six judgement. The
two men were being ferried
together between the BBC studios
and RTE studio in London as
journalists awaited their various
reactions to the pronouncements
of the Appeal Judges.
The author of Error of Judge-
ment was taken aback when Lord
Denning casually remarked that
he didn't know why they wished
to speak to him as he didn't know
much about it.
Lord Denning, who said on a
recent TV interview that it was
preferable that some innocent
men remain in jail than the
integrity of the British judicial
system be impugned seemed
impressed with Mr Mullin's
knowledge of the case. "You seem
to know a lot about it. You
possibly know even more than the
Appeal Judges;' he told
him. When Mr Mullin agreed
that that was possible, Lord
Denning remarked: "if I was you
I should write a book about it".
Chris Mullin recalled at a
public meeting organised by the
anti-extradition committee in
Dublin recently that when the
television interviews were over the
former Master of the Rolls bade
him farewell, saying, "Going back
to Ireland now, Mr. Mullin?"
GARRET'S
LEGACY
IN TIME DR GARRET FITZ-
Gerald will probably leave his
State papers to his old alma
mater to rest with those of his
father for the benefit of students
exploring political dynasties.
Alan Dukes'only regret is that
Garret didn't think of sending
the Fine Gael overdraft of a cool
million to UCD as well, being an
integral part of Garret's legacy
to the party.
WATCH WILLIE
THIS WILLIE O'DEA BUSI-
ness is most interesting. When
you think about it, the whole
affair couldn't have worked out
much better for the Soldiers of
Destiny, what with Willie prom-
ising not to rock the boat any
further and all. If Fianna Fail
had dreamed up the whole thing
to upstage the PDs in Dessie's
own stomping ground, they
couldn't have managed it any
better. Willie would be a sound
bet to top the poll down in
Limerick next time out, and we
wouldn't be a bit surprised if he
had a few votes left over to help
another Fianna Fail man up
behind him.
And it's interesting that, al-
though the parliamentary party
wasted no time in giving Willie
the bum's rush out of the party
after the Barrington's vote
(twenty-four hours must be
something of a record), his local
Fianna Fail organisation were in
no hurry about demanding
Willie's party card back.
ow isn't that a funny thing?
AND ANOTHER
THING ....
IN THE WAKE OF THE
Barrington's vote, all kinds of
rumours were to-ing and fro-ing
in the nation's corridors of
power. One was that despite the
united front of the Fianna Fail
cabinet on the question of
soldiering on with the present
minority set-up (for the sake of
'the country, of course), Minis-
ters MacSharry, Reynolds,
Flynn and O'Hanlon had
behind the scenes all made
sterling efforts to persuade The
Leader to cut and run.
Fine Gael's John Bruton and
Labour's Barry Desmond have
been stirring it up by suggesting
that the reason for this is that
the leading FF ministers, despite
all their bravado and posturing
about how they have success-
fully grasped the nettle, are very
much afraid that the economic
outlook for 1989 is far from
promising.
MacSharry shrugs this inter-
pretation off: what else would
the opposition say?
But Barry Desmond is stoutly
maintaining that if the govern-
ment moves to close Barring-
ton's, or otherwise to provoke
a confrontation, his deepest
suspicions will have been con-
firmed.
PADRAIG
o b-ANNRACHAIN
RTE DIDN'T EXACTLY
cover itself in glory with its
coverage of the death and burial
of Padraig Ovh.Annrachain, the
Clare man who served five
Taoisigh from Eamon de Valera
to Charles J Haughey. He pre-
dated The National Handlers
and was himself a one-man
team. Unlike the Handlers,
Padraig was merely heard and
rarely seen: he stayed in his
office in the Government In-
formation Bureau and when a
reporter checking a wild story
was told by Padraig "That's the
daftest thing I've heard all day",
you dropped it. Charles J. gave
the graveside oration and was
more than modest when he said,
looking down at the open grave,
that a very large slice of his own
life was there with Padraig.
Modest, because there lay also
a very rich vein of modern Irish
history, stretching back to
Eamon de Valera whom he
idolised: Padraig accompanied
de Valera on many of his foreign
trips, especially to America.
He build up a unique rela-
tionship with Sean Lemass
during his reign as Taoiseach:
they treated as equals and the
professionalism of Padraig's
advice was rarely rejected.
His working relationship with
Jack Lynch, towards the end of
the Lynch era, was not quite a!
cordial. He would refer to hirr
as "Our Taoiseach" to some
journalists who did not alway'
catch the inflections: witl
buddy-buddies the usage wa
"our Jack-o".
He wasn't merely Haughey;
best advisor on whom Charli
relied heavily: he was his greatel
political friend and he coulc
and did, "chaw off' Chari)
whenever that job was necessai
- Charlie listened. The lege
that Charlie only tolerated "ye
men" round him could never I
laid while Padraig was alive. I-
was a one-man kitchen Cabin
There won't be his likes in
again in our lifetime .