By Bill O’Donnell

Irish Mass Emigration a Myth – Since the onset of Ireland’s economic crisis there have been countless anecdotal accounts of departures from Ireland, a mass exodus supposedly taking the Isle’s best and brightest to Britain, Australia, and America. Not so, says the first readings of Ireland’s 2011 census. The preliminary results show a population of 4,581,269 in the Republic, an increase of just over eight percent in the five years since the last census.

Those figures are a far cry from the basket case that Ireland was thought to be in terms of people leaving. In addition to migration, two other factors play a vital role in population change: births and deaths. There were 73,724 babies born in Ireland in 2010, representing a 27 percent increase since 2001. The annual Irish birth rate per 1,000 of the population in 2010 was slightly over 15 percent, which is 50 percent higher than the European average. Meanwhile, the death rate in Ireland has consistently decreased over the past decade. Last year it was 27,000, some 46,000 fewer deaths than births.

The migration numbers, the non-natural factors in population change, are perhaps the most surprising of the 2011 census results. They show a net flow to Ireland of 119,000 in the 2006-2011 period, accounting for an average population increase of 24,000 per year for the most recent five-year period.

Early Line For Irish Presidency – The lineup of candidates for the October election of an Irish president to succeed Mary McAleese is beginning to shape up. The candidates to date (late July) are: Independent Irish Senator David Norris, Fine Gael’s Gay Mitchell, Labour’s Michael D. Higgins, Independents Mary Davis and Sean Gallagher. Fianna Fail has yet to name a candidate but Eamon O Cuiv, a descendant of Eamon deValera, has expressed a willingness to stand.

The results of a July 20 Irish Times Poll showed Norris leading at 25 percent, Mitchell at 21, and Higgins at 18, with others trailing at 11 to 13 percent. The undecided vote was 28 percent.

History Behind the BC Subpoena – It has been thought by some —myself included — that the subpoena by the British government, with the US Department of Justice acting as its agent, demanding oral history material from the “Troubles” gathered by Boston College was a new or novel agreement. Maybe that should be the case, but it is not. The 35-year background of such “treaties” between countries is instructive. Chris Bray of UCLA, writing on July 5 in the Chronicle Review, a publication of the Chronicle of Higher Education, contends that there is a long and tangled history involving mutually agreed requests between countries for assistance with criminal investigations.

In 1976, the United States signed on to something called the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT), which was designed to allow countries to exchange information quickly and directly by way of helping each other in investigations of “crimes.” This is the treaty that underpins the subpoena that BC is challenging. One caveat or exception in the use of MLAT requests is that “requests related to political offenses usually are excepted.” The BC subpoena for transcripts/tapes from interviews by two former members (one now deceased) of the Provisional IRA are related to paramilitary murders that happened during the Troubles.

As Bray points out, there are intrinsic problems with the British subpoena to Boston College. The first is that BC’s Belfast Project oral histories involve both loyalist and Irish republican militants. Yet the current British requests are for Irish republicans only. The UVF, UDA and other loyalist paramilitaries (all involved in murders during the Troubles) are seemingly and strangely exempt. As Bray asks, “Crime or politics?”

There is an additional problem with the subpoena. It is widely believed that the British request centers on the death of Jean McConville (a mother of ten who was killed by the IRA and who is mentioned prominently in the requested BC interviews. It is further believed that Gerry Adams, Sinn Fein Party leader and Louth TD, is the ultimate target of the British investigation.

Yet, as Bray’s article makes clear, none of these connections mean that the PSNI are conducting a murder investigation. It is a matter of record that the Northern Ireland police have never bothered to investigate McConville’s murder. The chief constable of the police service of Northern Ireland admitted “it was almost too late to solve and prosecute” a then 34-year-old murder, especially one that had been ignored in the first place. So then, why the subpoena to BC, and why now?

The subpoena request could be upheld in court and might eventually be bounced up to the Supreme Court. But one thing is a certainty as the past president of the Oral History Association says, “Turn scholarship into a police instrument, and scholarship shrivels into silence.”

Did You Know … where the expression “by hook or by crook” originated? This well-known phrase, meaning “in whatever way possible,” runs deep in the history of Waterford County in Ireland’s Sunny Southeast. Back in 1170, during the Norman invasion of Ireland, Strongbow vowed to take Waterford either by Hook Head or Crooke Castle. Take it he did, and the language had a new catch phrase.

Amid The Deficit Debate, the Record – CBS News has reported that during the presidency of George W. Bush the national debt grew by more than 4 trillion dollars, the biggest increase under any president in US history. That’s a 71.9 percent increase from the Clinton surplus given to Bush on entering office. During the latter’s administration the national debt ceiling was raised seven times. As CBS noted during the final Bush days, a few weeks after he took office in 2001, he spoke at a Republican congressional retreat in Virginia where he declared that his budget “pays down the national debt.” In the final years of his eight-year run, Bush almost never mentioned the national debt.

The nonpartisan Eisenhower Research Project at Brown University has concluded that America’s wars since the turn of the millennium have cost the US $4 trillion. The project study also estimates that at least 225,000 people have died in those wars, including 6,000 US uniformed military personnel. In addition to these costs, it is estimated that federal obligations to care for current and future veterans will eventually reach between 600 billion and a trillion dollars.

The Extraordinary Chuck Feeney – 80-year-old Chuck Feeney, an Irish American born in New Jersey during the Great Depression, made billions as co-founder of Duty Free Shoppers Group. He later sold his share and has devoted the intervening years exclusively to philanthropy. Feeney began his “give-away” program in 1982 when he founded The Atlantic Philanthropies. By the end of 2009 AP had made grants totaling more than $5 billion and has plans to spend the remaining $4 billion endowment by 2017. A favorite cause of the Feeney largesse has been the island of Ireland. Over the years, Feeney, a dual citizen of the US and Ireland, has made huge grants to Ireland, including a billion dollars to education there.

His range of charitable giving through Atlantic Philanthropies has included health and social projects in Australia, Bermuda, Ireland north & south, South Africa, the United States and Vietnam. In the United States alone, Feeney is the largest funder of aging research and immigration reform in the US.

But he is also working and funding efforts to ensure that honest, balanced, open non-sectarian media have the tools to operate in the still divided enclaves of Belfast and other troubled NI areas. In 2010, Atlantic Philanthropies awarded over a million dollars to The Detail, a specialist website operating in Belfast that went online in 2006. The Detail business is investigative reporting and analysis in Northern Ireland. This year it was named the CIPR specialist website of the year. Its aim is to break through government news obstruction and simplistic, under-sourced news reporting and keep alive investigative journalism during the still struggling peace process.

There is today, especially in Northern Ireland, an unacceptable level of unbalanced-to-inadequate reporting on the life and trials of the people in the North. The paper you read, the blog you scan, or the television program you watch dictate separate and varying versions of the Northern truth. A divided society, even one in remission, needs more media outlets like The Detail that use facts, investigative skills, and courage to bridge the gap. And Chuck Feeney is helping to make that happen.

Immigration, Handy Scapegoat for US economy – A quick glance across the nation reflects an appalling reality: Immigrants, legal and illegal, are all too often the convenient targets for citizen hostility and ambitious politicians in this dreadful economy. Can’t do anything to ease the economy or make headway on jobs or under-water mortgages? Then pass some new, restrictive, constitutionally questionable legislation. Follow the lead of Arizona, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, et al. Tough laws! That’s the trick. Or maybe things will get better if we make the “Wall” longer and taller, or figure out how we can collect 11 million undocumented and ship them home.

One of the more arrogant ICE programs being embraced by many states is the deeply flawed, totally unworkable as it currently exists “Secure Communities” campaign. In short, this is a bad program that has police acting as immigration agents stopping people of color or non-English speakers (or maybe an Irish accent) for minor traffic citations and the like and turning them over to ICE for deportation. The police generally dislike the program because it is a deal- breaker to cooperation in immigrant communities and actually impedes valid police activities.

Thankfully, Boston Mayor Tom Menino, a one-time program supporter, got the message and is now an avowed opponent of Secure Communities. Boston Police Commissioner Edward Davis is similarly disenchanted. Boston has a long history of support for human rights and this ICE program, as it exists, should find no support here.

Monetary Matters – The European Commission, which hasn’t always sprung to Ireland’s defense during the recent dark days, was outspoken recently, calling the Moody’s rating agency decision to downgrade Irish debt “incomprehensible.” The EU said that Ireland “has shown determination and decisiveness in its implementation of the economic adjustment program.” Right on.

Relative to the Irish economic situation, it is being reported that the EU/IMF bailout loans to Ireland could mean a $12 billion total windfall for the two lenders. The Irish finance minister told the Dail he thought that amount was excessive.

In mid-July the newly named head of the International Monetary Fund, former French finance minister Christine Lagrade, spoke of the “courageous decisions” being made by the Dublin government to meet Ireland’s austerity targets. Does that mean we’re not Greece?

Shock and surprise are words used by exchequer officials in Dublin when presented with the final bill for the visits of Queen Elizabeth and President Obama to Ireland. The total cost to the Irish for the twin visits was more than $50 million, of which 90 percent was for a “massive garda effort.” In a quick attempt to deflect the negatives of the staggering security bill, the Irish government announced the value of international media coverage of the two visits at $420 million.

Under the heading of Money Lying Around comes the news that Irish officials from the Cowen/Fianna Fail reign left some $28 million in unused funds in a two-year-old bank account. The money was distributed by several religious orders to compensate victims of clerical abuse. Education minister Ruairi Quinn has promised to get it spent properly and soon.

No Credible Sources for Dissident Story – When is a news story not a news story? When you write about dissidents from Northern Ireland seeking a “US foothold” and other grim predictions but don’t have a single named source or organization to cite in support of your charges. Irish America’s Naill O’Dowd had a scare piece headlined in his Irish Central Periscope last month that warned about dissident IRA groups “making a major push” in America. The premise is not impossible but the reporting was.

The problem is that O’Dowd, freshly returned from a flirtation with the Irish presidency, wrote a story about all sorts of dark dissident inroads into America and “getting some traction”, etc., that cited not one source nor a single organization. His attributions were such unimpeachable news assets as “reliable sources,” “a republican source,” “ another source,” and “two separate sources now confirm.”

O’Dowd, an old friend of Gerry Adams could be channeling the Sinn Fein leader or maybe another longtime O’Dowd pal, Cieran Staunton, who may be whispering in his ear. At any rate, for someone who aspires to be a press lord, O’Dowd could use his newly found downtime with no campaigning on tap to learn how to source and write a news item, not channel it.

Irish Church Again In Turmoil – Once again the Irish Catholic Church, already deeply fractured by abuse scandals and devastating official reports, is in turmoil. The locale is Cork’s largest diocese, Cloyne, and the bishop in the hot seat is retired Cloyne Bishop John Magee, a former private secretary to three popes, including John Paul II.

The crux of the Cloyne Report cites a Vatican letter in 1997 warning Irish church leaders against full cooperation with law enforcement authorities. The papal representative wrote that policies that conflicted with church law as contained in a 1996 groundwork Irish Bishops document should be considered “merely a study document.” How do you define license?

Irish political leaders are irate at the Vatican obstruction and for the first time in their long and amicable relationship they are looking at punitive measures such as downgrading the diplomatic status of the Papal Nuncio, issuing a Dail decree censuring the Vatican, or looking at the possibility of taking some legal action against the Vatican insider Magee.

Not being a diplomat and not forced to consider profound “head of the pin” metaphysical concepts of the current church-state conflict, I recommend, with the proverbial heavy heart, the following immediate remedial action: Send the Papal Nuncio home to the Vatican to consult with his boss, start indictment proceedings for conspiracy and accessory (before and after) to child abuse against Bishop Magee, extend the statute of limitations on reporting child abuse, and finally rewrite and tighten laws to protect all Irish children. Something there might get someone’s attention in St. Peter’s Square!

George Kimball (Dec. 20, 1943 - July 6, 2011)

-- He was a word craftsman who loved sports and life, probably in roughly that order. To me he was a throwback, a force of nature whether he was guarding a corner of the bar or simply explaining how something worked. We were never boon companions or fellow pub crawlers, but I was a big fan who of his and whenever, too rarely, we bumped into each other in Boston I had to resist telling him, over a drink, how much I liked his most recent column. Groupies aren’t all that interesting. George liked me, I think, because I wrote about Ireland and the Irish. He allowed me to run a column or two of his in the weekly paper I was editing back in the eighties and I was over the moon.

I never had too many bylines bigger than George’s. Once the typographers (or someone) dropped his byline on a column about sports & Ireland and I got a well-deserved ear full of spleen and disappointment from Kimball that kept me glancing over my shoulder for months to come.

But if you had to wrap up George in a word or two it was that he was Fun, and he was the consummate professional when he wrote and in what he wrote. I was never that big a fan of boxing after Ali but I loved George’s style and the odd out-of-sync word here and there that surprised and stopped you for a few seconds.

I’m sorry he’s gone and I just hope that he forgives me for calling him a throwback and a force of nature. He always hated cliches. Mea Culpa, George.

RIP, Kip Tiernan – I don’t want to close without mentioning the passing of Kip Tiernan, 85, founder of Rosie’s Place and one of those special people —givers —who make Boston, with all its warts and imperfections, a truly wondrous, generous town. A great lady.