By Bill O’Donnell
Fermanagh Rentals Sky High for G8 Summit – It’s not as if you’re looking to rent a home next to the course hosting golf’s Open championship, or to reserve a plush suite at a national political convention or a seaside villa in Hawaii, but the cost of a place to lay your head during the June G8 summit meeting in Northern Ireland is off the screen. Owners near, and sometimes not so near, the luxe Lough Erne Golf & Spa Resort in Fermanagh, a scenic wonderland, are signing on for living accommodations during the international summit that range from $3,000 to $18,000 a week.

For those sensing a rare opportunity to see world leaders up close and revel in the scenery and statecraft, the rental demand by the wealthy or the merely curious is fierce, and homeowners around Lough Erne, near Enniskillen, have been only to happy to satisfy every whim and wish. Entire guest houses are available and other local property owners are offering pick-up service and drivers to and from the airport. Others looking to attract renters are offering chauffeured transportation and round the clock security guards.
In addition to counting visitors from Ireland itself, the US and Britain and the five other G8 countries, the Irish papers have been reporting that there will be 800 people, official and otherwise, in President Barack Obama’s party.
There have been rumors early on that President Obama might do a quick visit south to his ancestral home in Moneygall, Co. Offaly, when the G8 event is finished. However, there has been no more on that possibility lately. The lack of news may be a question of security, or more likely an indication that the President will not be visiting Moneygall on this Irish trip.
Eire Society Honors Sister Lena Deevy – Boston’s Eire Society, which celebrated its 75th anniversary last year, has a special treat for its members and guests this year as they will honor one of Boston’s most selfless and dedicated community leaders when Sister Lena Deevy will be the special guest and honoree at the Society’s Gold Medal Dinner on Thursday evening, April 25, at the Park Plaza Hotel in Boston.
This is a perfect opportunity to thank Sister Lena in person for her near quarter century of hard work and passion in providing care and concern for immigrants and the displaced at the Irish International Immigration Center.
For tickets or information please contact Mary Ellen Mulligan at 781-963-3660.
Unsettled Irish Electorate Boosts Fianna Fail – Reports just before Saint Patrick’s Day last month reflected a stunning turn-around for the fortunes of the Soldiers of Destiny, the Fianna Fail party. Only recently the party had been pronounced near death by the pundits. Reflecting broad-based voter dissatisfaction with the ruling coalition in a Sunday Independent opinion poll, the news is surprisingly bad for coalition partner Labour. Fine Gael has lost some ground but is at 25 percent in the poll, while Labor has sunk to a shocking 9 percent. Sinn Fein is showing strength at 20 percent, twice Labour’s support and gaining on second place Fine Gael.
Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin, at 36 percent, is clearly the most popular party leader in the Republic, and Labour’s Eamon Gilmore is the least popular leader overall at a scant 17 percent.
Gilmore’s lack of strength with the Irish voters may end up in his replacement before the next election. Following Martin in popularity is a surging Gerry Adams at 28 percent, Prime Minister Enda Kenny at 26 percent, and Gilmore bringing up the rear.
The relatively swift reversal of fortune for the formerly disheartened Fianna Fail party and the rebranding of its image could be something the Republican party in the US might be keenly interested in emulating.
Magdalene Survivors To Share In State Payments – Of the original 10,000 Magdalene girls who were institutionalized and worked without pay in laundries and other state/religious homes, only 1,000 are alive today. These survivors will be compensated by the Irish State for their years of unpaid labor and harsh treatment, according to a formula arrived at during negotiations between Irish Justice Minister Alan Shatter and Junior Minister of Health Kathleen Lynch.
The proposed formula of payment for survivors would be $25,000 for each year a woman worked without wages up to a maximum payment of $250,000. The process would treat the Magdalene women all together as a class action and none of the women would need to be represented by counsel. Some Magdalene survivors have already received partial compensation and they would also be included in the updated agreement.
There is also a strong possibility that women who had worked in so-called “Mercy Homes” run by the Sisters of Mercy in Ireland would also fall under the compensation agreement.
Following delays and other problems and an incomplete payment process, the Irish government’s compensation package is close to becoming operational. Ireland has clearly done its duty and recognized the plight of the women and their years of involuntary servitude in moving ahead with this long overdue debt of national honor.
NI Police Chasing Down Flag Protestors – There have been weeks of street protests, largely by Unionists deeply resentful of new rules by the Belfast City Council reducing the number of days that the Unionist flag will fly over Belfast City Hall. Many hardline unionists, or loyalists, have been in involved in often-violent clashes that have resulted in sometimes brutal attacks on Northern Ireland Police Service members attempting to maintain public safety.
The once cordial relationship between the Protestant/Unionist community and the police has broken down with many Unionists blaming the PSNI for their role in the protests. Among those who have been critical of the police is First Minister Peter Robinson, who, following a meeting with the PSNI Chief Constable, said “There is a large section of [the Unionist] community who don’t believe the police have been impartial in dealing with these issues.” When questioned on his statement, Robinson reaffirmed his initial position critical of the police.
The First Minister’s allegations or not, the police continue to track down protestors by using images of the rioters and distributing them publicly to be identified. To date, more than 200 protestors have been arrested, and 168 have been charged, many of serious crimes. The process continues.
Irish Vatican Embassy Re-opening Urged – There’s a new pope, a new papal nuncio and the Irish people would likely support a reconciliation between their government and the Vatican curia. This is the pitch from the Fianna Fail Party following last year’s embassy closing, the excessive cost of the elegant diplomatic post in the Holy See getting the blame for the closure.
At present the only diplomatic relations between Dublin and the Vatican are links by the Irish Foreign Affairs Department Secretary General and mid-level Vatican officials. There is no Irish ambassador resident in Vatican City. In addition to Fianna Fail, a number of elected members of Dail Eireann have also been supportive of renewed, top-level representation . It appears the only question is when, not if.
Few Happy As Ireland Works To Turn Corner – It’s safe to say that the Irish working class, who have borne the overwhelming burden of righting the once galloping economy, are unhappy and, in many cases, bitter. Many feel that bankers, the politicians, the remnants of the ruling class are living life much as they did before the Tiger disappeared while they struggle with higher food and petrol costs, increased taxes, reduced benefits, shrinking job markets, and a belief that the recovery is unjustly penalizing them.
That’s the bad news, but Ireland has been a top performer in stabilizing its debt burden and honoring its loan bailout, The good news is that Ireland’s main creditor, the IMF, likes what it is seeing in Ireland. In a recent visit to Dublin, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde, said in reference to Ireland’s economy, “What has been done is huge. The determination showed in implementing the [bailout] program is extraordinary.”
In Life, Death, Maeve Binchy Reigns –She left a huge following of readers when she died at 72 last July, but Maeve Binchy remains one of the world’s best-read authors, her work a reminder that warmth, a generous spirit, and colorful characters make the Binchy name a continuing star in the world of fiction. Her final book, “A Week in Winter,” led the bestseller list in Ireland and hit the top in the New York Times Bestseller list in its first week of sales here in the US in February.
A former newspaper reporter and teacher before turning her hand to novels, Binchy sold more than 40 million books published in 37 languages during her career.
Fox’s Sean Hannity Cons Unsuspecting Viewers – After years of casually watching Fox TV News, I have come to distrust much of what is churned out daily by the so-called news channel on its cable network. And after reading the research and monitoring reports by the respected fact-gatherers at the Media Matters organization, I have come to see that nighttime TV talk show host Sean Hannity’s stock in trade is a collection of lies, misrepresentations, misquotes, deceptive examples of Democratic sins, unsupported smears, and a reliance on labeling President Obama as a Muslim and/or a non-citizen long after those specious allegations have been put to rest.
The indictment of the seemingly avuncular Hannity by the media watchdog offers as evidence numerous misstatements and outright lies, but unfortunately I only have he space for a handful:
• He used Republican (RNC)-doctored, dishonest audio of Supreme Court arguments to attack health care reform.
• He distorted Congressional Budget Office numbers to falsely charge that if Obama was re-elected taxes would go up 30 percent. Hasn’t happened!
• He falsely claimed that a White House science advisor had advocated “compulsory abortion” months after that claim was labeled a ‘pants on fire’ lie after Glenn Beck first aired it.
• He used cropped, distorted and misused quotes over and over again to indict the mainstream media of liberal bias.
• Long after it was widely disproved, Hannity ignored the facts to repeatedly claim Obama’s policies had not helped improve the economy.
Warning: If you watch Fox News exclusively it may prove to be dangerous to your credibility and judgment!
Tourism Looks To attract Visitors To Boyne Valley – The Irish Minister of Tourism has put together a package highlighting the historic and scenic wonders of the Boyne Valley in Counties Meath and Louth. The entire touring mileage of the region, some 125 miles of landscape rich in Irish history and the early days of Christianity, can be covered in half a day.
The areas of interest showcase a number of historically significant sites that would appeal to the culturally curious. Most of the Boyne Valley sites are all too often passed over when tourists are heading north to Belfast or the Causeway Coast, or south to Dublin and the sunny southeast.
The world-renowned heritage sites total 22 in all, incljuding the justly celebrated Newgrange, Monasterboice, Slane Castle, Melifont Abbey, and Trim Castle.
Some 20 years ago the late matriarch and owner of the superb Ballymascanlon House Hotel outside Dundalk, Irene Quinn took my wife Jean and me for a tour of the Boyne Valley, an area where she had spent much of her life. It was a glorious afternoon enriched along the way by her running commentary and by our later coming across the original homestead of the Irish Fenian and later Boston Pilot publisher, John Boyle O’Reilly. It is a tour well worth making.
Entry Inspections Campaign Against ‘Welfare Tourists’ – The Irish Republic, in the midst of an extreme austerity program and economic hardship, has enough problems taking care of its citizens without people from other European Union areas traveling to Ireland for the sole purpose of getting on the dole or accessing government programs.
In an effort to curb this illegal traffic, the Irish government has been cracking down on welfare tourism at ports and airports detaining, and deporting visitors from other EU states without legitimate business in Ireland. In the past ten months the Department of Social Protection has turned away 50 foreign nationals. Last year 500 welfare tourists cost the state some $6.5 million in illegal dole payments and other state payments. Close to a million dollars has been saved from payments being stopped and the continuing arrests.
Some of the problems that the government has confronted with dole-seekers from other countries has been attributed to the extension of EU common travel arrangements.
RANDOM CLIPPINGS
Unemployment in the North has doubled during the recession, up to a 15-year high of 8.5 percent. … Latest figures for Ireland’s wealthiest musicians put U2’s Bono’s net worth at $600 million. … Former Patriots QB Drew Bledsoe was around Boston recently hyping his Washington State winery. When he exited, Bledsoe paid for newspaper ads thanking Pariot fans. A class act. … Enda Kenny’s numbers are down, but his recent US & UK visits were a big success. … Sean Quinn and his family, once Ireland’s richest, gave court testimony described as “completely unbelievable.” … Update: Sinn Fein’s Francie Molloy defeated his unionist opponent in the MP special election in mid Ulster. Incidentally, Molloy and four other S/F MPs continue to skip the oath and refuse to sit in Commons.
Warren Buffett sent his top aides to Ireland last month to look into Irish State assets reportedly up for sale. … Rickshaws on the streets of Galway City are a failed experiment with the recent city council ban. … The sister-in-law of the late Loyalist leader David Ervine, is learning Irish with a community group in east Belfast. … The North’s Deputy First Minister, Martin McGuinness, is the target of death threats that are “real & active,” according to police. … The Irish justice minister is urgently looking to reform the lengthy court trial delays, many of which run as long as as five years. … The latest polling is showing a 70 percent favorable sentiment for integrated education in Ireland. … The variety of potato that was at the root of the Irish famine is now available for the first time in Ireland in 170 years.
After months of squabbling, the new golf course near Bushmills finally got the go-ahead early in March. … Sean Fitzpatrick, accused of concealing $182 million in improper loans from an Irish bank is going to trial. … GAA officials in Galway, decimated by emigration, plead for jobs. … Pope Francis I seems like the perfect compromise coming from a College of Cardinals all named by
Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI. He’s Italian, not a Curia insider, from Latin America,
the home of 40 percent of the world’s Catholics – and a conservative with a humble reputation. … Speaking of the new Pontiff, I hope the report that he had a meeting in his first days as Pope with exiled Boston Archbishop Cardinal Bernard Law are incorrect. If true, I’d call it a bad career move for the pope. … Boston officials should travel to spots like New York, Philadelphia, Arizona, and San Antonio to see up close what pushcart vendors can do for urban ambience. Keep the pushcarts. … In case you missed John Powers’s report in the Globe’s sports section, the word is out: forget the Olympics here in 2024. Tom Menino has gone to ground on that issue.
Keeping to the network’s “proud” tradition of disrespect for the truth, Fox’s Bill O’Reilly accused Obama of being responsible for a 75 percent increase in federal spending. The fact is that George W. is responsible for 66 percent of the increase on his watch; Obama for a mere 18.8 percent. Do Fox commentators read the newspapers? … Cork and Dublin will be adding at least 200 new jobs from McAfee Security and Yahoo. … It’s about time that the government got its act together in the lengthy Dingle name change dispute. The solution: Bilingual signs in English & Irish. Wow! … President Obama recently met with Jimmy Carter’s grandson and thanked him for helping release the infamous “47 percent” killer video featuring Mitt Romney. … Galway’s much honored Druid Theatre Company has done it again with its production of DruidMurphy, a stage rendering of three plays by Tom Murphy.