EU May Force Voting For Expatriates – As it currently stands, Ireland is just one of six European Union countries that exclude their citizens abroad from voting in home elections. There has been continuing but ineffective pressure from young Irish living overseas to be allowed to vote in national elections, but that may soon be changing. Some top officials in Ireland and the EU are proposing legislation that would make all members of the Union eligible to vote in elections in their home countries, and Ireland would be ready.

European commissioner Viviane Reding and Independent MEP Marion Harkin are working on legislation to reach out to ex-pats. Harkin sees such a move as a way of establishing contact with the Irish abroad. Some 300,000 people have left Ireland during the current economic crisis. Although the goal of any new voting legislation would be to eventually allow the Irish out-of-country to vote in all national elections such as for Dáil Éireann deputies, eligibility initially to vote in Irish Seanad elections would be seen as a first step.
Baptism Of Fire for Denis McDonough – When the late Don Regan was reflecting on the time he spent in the 1980s as White House chief of staff to President Ronald Reagan, he said that the job of cleaning up after presidential messes was much like that of the chief pooper scooper following the elephants at the end of a circus parade. That job description is one that the newest chief of staff in the Obama White House, Denis McDonough, 44, likely can identify with.
McDonough’s grandparents emigrated from Galway and Cork, with his mother’s parents being O’Mahonys from Cork. McDonough’s mother and father lived in South Boston in their early married years but moved to Minnesota, where the new chief of staff was born.
A well-liked top White House staffer during Obama’s first term, McDonough, who is only a few months into his new position, has three separate crises to contend with at once: the Benghazi attack that killed four at our embassy there (and what some see as a cover-up); the IRS targeting of right wing tax-exempt groups; and the debacle and resulting outrage at the Justice Department’s fishing expedition involving the Associated Press telephone records.
It would not be stretching reality to suggest that Obama’s historic legacy may well depend on how convincingly Denis McDonough and his team defend and answer the crescendo of political attacks from Republicans as well as some unhappy Democrats looking towards re-election.
Cardinal-BC Invitation Clash disappointing – No matter which side of the controversy you stand on, the one inescapable conclusion, it seems to me, is that it’s a sadly disappointing episode that likely should never have happened, but certainly not with the attendent media explosion we have witnessed. Cardinal Sean O’Malley, Boston College, and Irish Taoiseach Enda Kenny are all well-intentioned and capable, and all three are trying to fulfill their duties responsibly. Having said that, the most egregious bone in the throat for Kenny and the Irish is the over-the-top comment in the cardinal’s widely distributed statement that described the Irish leader’s role in the abortion issue back in Ireland, to wit: “Mr. Kenny is aggressively promoting abortion legislation.”
The truth about Kenny’s role involves a pregnant woman’s ‘misadventure’ death, the virtual paralysis of the entire Irish medical profession, and a badly written 1992 Irish Supreme Court judgment that screams for clarity. Within that context, Enda Kenny is very reluctantly trying to fashion a resolution that respects the rights of a mother and her unborn child. The cardinal’s statement is hugely unfair to a decent man, a leader who is working to bring a degree of clarity and compassion to an equitable and humane resolution.
As to the taoiseach’s commencement address and degree conferral at Boston College that the cardinal boycotted, some in the press, citing unnamed Irish government sources, have suggested that there was a quiet agreement to handle Kenny’s BC appearance in a sensitive way that would have avoided a public confrontation between Kenny, BC, and the archdiocese. It would, those Irish Voice government sources say, have had the cardinal absent but avoid the public confrontation. It wouldn’t be a first.
Whether that scenario is accurate or not, the taoiseach’s scathing 2011 broadside against the Vatican over its lack of action in response to Catholic Church clerical abuse and the resultant interruption of diplomatic relations between Ireland and the Vatican famously underlined the unresolved dispute between official Ireland and the Curia, after decades of cordial relations.
Three Women – For over 40 years Maureen Dunn was the single most visible advocate for our MIA/POW military defenders who never came home from war. Her husband was a young pilot in the Vietnam War who was shot down in 1968 over the South China Sea. Maureen went to festivals, fairs, and gatherings throughout Greater Boston and New England over the years to tell her story and to remind listeners of those who were Missing In Action or Prisoners of War and their families. Maureen never gave up; she was the conscience of our lost wartime generations, faithful and persistent and a remarkable spokeswoman for those who often had no one else to speak for them. She turned her widowhood into advocacy of the highest order. She left us at 72. RIP.
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Gabby Giffords was a three-term Arizona congresswoman from Tucson who was seriously wounded by a deranged gunman in a shooting in her district in January of 2011. Her recovery has been heroic but she chose to resign in 2012 because of the effects of the attack. Last month Gabby and her retired astronaut husband, Mark Kelly, came to the JFK Library & Museum where she received the Profiles in Courage Award from Caroline Kennedy for her courage, continuing service to her country, and her advocacy in support of background checks and reasonable guidelines for gun owners. Gabby is a courageous reminder that there are many ways to serve.
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Angelina Jolie is rich and famous and known to millions for her films and her charitable work. Now she is known, too, and by her own statements, as the carrier of a faulty inherited gene, BRCA1, which dramatically increases the probability of her contracting breast and ovarian cancer. Her mother, also with the BRCA1 gene, died young and Angelina decided to change the script for her six children by becoming surgically pro-active so that she could be there for them, if possible. There is much nobility and grace in Angelina’s going public in a private matter in a New York Times opinion piece that told of her preventive double mastectomy. One woman’s courage in sharing her story could mean the difference between life and death for many thousands of women.
Good News/Bad News on Ireland’s Bridges – A new bridge being built over the Liffey in Dublin will link Marlborough Street on the north side with Hawkins Street on the south. It will be completed later this year but the buzz surrounding the new span is all about the contest to find a name for the bridge. Already some 10,000 nominations/submissions have been received.
The criteria for selecting the name are the following: If named for a person, that person must have been born in, or at least lived in, the city and have had “strong and/or enduring connections with the city”;
if named for an event, it will have to have occurred at least 20 years previously, or be of “extraordinary and long-lasting consequences to the city.”
Among the names nominated are: James Connolly; Lady Augusta Gregory; Frank Duff of the Legion of Mary; the late independent TD Tony Gregory; Oscar Wilde; WB Yeats; Jonathan Swift; the author James Plunkett; Bram Stoker; and the Abbey Theatre. I’m for Tony Gregory.
On a less encouraging note is the recent news that the Narrow Water bridge linking the north Co. Louth and south Co. Down border region is in political trouble. The bridge, downwater from Newry and across from Warrenpoint and a historic crossing point at Carlingford Lough, would spark a north-south economic regeneration and cross-border reconciliation.
The fly in the ointment is that despite some 80 percent of the bridge funding approved and in place and broad political support, there is a growing possibility that the Northern Ireland Department of Finance, under the disagreeable Minister Sammy Wilson, is slowing down the project with an eye towards delaying it to death, as one local resident in Louth suggested. It is hoped by business people on both shores that something might be done to give a push to Wilson, never an enthusiast for anything helpful to border counties in the south.
The proposed site of the bridge is the scene of one of the deadliest attacks during the Troubles: in August 1979, the IRA killed 18 British soldiers there. On a personal basis, I spent many days in the Omeath-Warrenpoint area, at Newry, Flagstaff, and the Coolee Peninsula region. It is one of the truly grand scenic areas along the border and a connecting bridge would be warmly greeted by the local residents.
Did You Know That … gay marriage is now legal in 13 countries on five continents and 12 states in the United States? Foreign countries that have approved same-sex marriages include Argentina, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Iceland, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, South Africa, Sweden, Uruguay and France, the latest country to go legal.
No Apologies For Low Corporate Tax Rate – The Irish Minister for jobs, Richard Bruton, is saying that Ireland “makes no apology” for the low- tax-rate regime that attracts multi-national corporations like Google and Apple to headquarter on the green isle. The Irish government points out that Ireland has long been a low-tax regime and it needs to create employment, and international companies employ over 150,000 people in Ireland. “We want to have a regime where taxes on profits are low, taxes on employment are low, and companies can come here to start and grow businesses, so we make no apology for that.”
While the pressure from the EU is intensifying regarding Ireland’s low 12.5 percent corporate tax rate and firms like Apple, Google and Amazon are being more closely scrutinized by sovereign countries losing tax revenue to Ireland and elsewhere, it appears that Ireland has been in a spirited defense of its low rates and will continue to meet challenges head on.
A Different Kind Of Family Reunion – During this year of The Gathering, slated to bring thousands from North America, the United Kingdom, and Europe, there will be the conventional reunions of many of the Gaelic clans and a new Irish Family History Centre in Dublin. The O’Neill and Kelly clans are coming, and a Gallagher clan gathering will attempt to break the world record by assembling 5,000 Gallaghers together in County Donegal.
One of the more intriguing family reunions of 2013 took place last month as members of the Ned Kelly clan gathered in Co. Tipperary to focus on their family memories and to hear the Kelly clan’s chief recorder, Aidan Kelly, present an analysis of the Kelly Y-DNA Study, a closer look at the genetic links of the male line of the family. There will be descendants of the celebrated outlaw and folk hero who was born in Australia in 1854 to an Irish convict father, John “Red” Kelly. His son Ned was captured and hanged in Melbourne in 1880 for his crimes
On hand last month for the Kelly clan gathering were some 200 Kelly family members from Britain, Australia, America, and Ireland, and one from Guatemala. One of the event organizers, Mary Kelly, said, “While there is no denying that Ned Kelly was a notorious criminal, to some he was considered a hero who was fighting oppression. But the purpose of our event is not to condone his reputation but to share the importance of genetics in tracing family connections and enable Kelly family members from across the world to meet and discuss their common ancestry.”
An Appalling Sense Of Entitlement – I met the Fine Gael Taoiseach John Bruton in the mid-1990s during a St. Patrick’s Day event in the White House that entrepreneur and Cullinet founder John Cullinane, a Friend of Bill (President Bill Clinton), had organized. It was the annual ‘grab & click’ photo op with Clinton and Bruton, then the prime minister. It was a dandy affair. Plenty of familiar faces, big-foot media types, good vittles, a segment of the Marine Corps Band playing in the East Room, and the chance to say a swift hello and get a photo of the leaders of Ireland and the US.
In the years since, Bruton has had several high profile positions at very good salaries. Sometimes life after politics can be beautiful. So I was a tad taken aback when I spied a story in the Irish Independent in May that had a jolting headline: “Former Taoiseach Urges Public to Tighten Their Belts.” Now belt-tightening is a constant companion, a grinding shadow of the working people of Ireland. Irish punters are paying dearly for the freewheeling and virtually unregulated rogue lending practices of Ireland’s runaway banks. More gratuitous advice from the John Brutons of this world who have” friends,” and invariably land on their feet, we can do without.
Incidentally, Mr. Bruton is doing his belt-tightening with a hefty pension from the Republic of Ireland and his income as a well- paid lobbyist for the Irish Financial Service Centre. I don’t know what the IFSC gig is paying him (six figures, part time, the Examiner says) but his pension check, courtesy of Ireland’s ratepayers, is slightly more than $15,000 each and every month (or $181,782 annually) for services rendered, one presumes. Look it up under S for shame in the OED.
RANDOM CLIPPINGS- Not so fast. It was originally reported that the peace walls would start coming down shortly. A second take by the powers at Stormont now figure it will take ten years to get them down. … The Duke of Kent grabbed a bit of history when he became the first royal to pay tribute to the men and women who fought and died in the 1916 Easter Rising. … Paul Bew, a unionist author and intellectual, says the Good Friday Agreement “is flawed and elitist” but it will not be derailed by dissidents or the 1916 centennial commemoration. … President Obama will visit Belfast before the G8 Summit opens next month; it’s called a “whistle-stop” tour. … Allied Irish Bank got bailed out by the Irish government but won’t consider letting the city of Galway use the Lynch Castle for a municipal art centre. … Integrated education is getting closer in the North but nothing flashy or too soon because it might undermine religious divisions which underpin political parties. … Trina Vargo of the US-Ireland Alliance is telling applicants to get their paper work in because no firm answers until late summer earliest. … The people of Belfast remembered Bobby Sands on the 32d anniversary of his death. … Almost half of all births in Northern Ireland last year were to unmarried parents. … The justly celebrated Linen Hall Library is marking its 225th anniversary. A wonderful, living monument to unfettered thought and opinion. … Early last month, the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) began making plans to take possession of the Boston College interview tapes. … Maureen O’Hara was having more than her share of heartache back in Glengariff, Co. Cork, so now she is in the US, at a care center in Idaho where her grandson lives. … The last time I looked there were 16 candidates to succeed Boston Mayor Tom Menino. Maybe eight at most are serious or semi-serious candidates. Tommy seems to have two favorites, Rob Consalvo and Charlotte Golar Richie. … And a special shout-out to an old friend and fellow Eire Society board member, Attorney Lenahan O’Connell. For many out there Lenahan was practicing terrific law before you were born. The great man is just turning 100, and he deserves every good year he has had and more.