It Occurs To Me: The death of customer services

As I write, a court has heard that telecoms company Eir employed a deliberate policy aimed at preventing customers from logging complaints.
RTÉ reports that “District Court Judge Anthony Halpin branded the company "a disgrace" and said it should apologise to its staff, who were threatened with disciplinary action if they did not adhere to the policy”.
Eir was fined €7,500 (a joke... and a paltry amount) after pleading guilty to 12 counts of breaching regulations governing how complaints should be handled by providers. The telecoms regulator ComReg told the court its investigation uncovered a training manual where staff were told not to process complaints unless customers used certain "trigger words" which indicated they were aware of their rights or aware of regulations.
Customers who did not use the words or phrases were simply left with unresolved complaints or promised a call back. I am not surprised!
A friend down the country, who cares for his elderly dependent mother, told me of his frustration when, without warning last Sunday morning, his water supply stopped. Earlier, a burst water main had flooded the street, but he and his neighbours had unsuccessfully tried to contact Uisce Eireann. Although it boasts an emergency number - even at weekends - they were redirected to the Irish Water website. There, it was the usual mantra of ‘Keep and eye on updates’ etc. On further investigation, he discovered that they had actually turned off the street’s water main in the early hours but had not informed the residents. God be with the days when they would put a leaflet through your door! Twenty-eight hours after the water was turned off, and after pleas to local councillors etc., ‘work’ vehicles descended and at the time of writing, he tells me the high vis jackets have surrounded a hole in the ground. Progress of sorts.

It Occurs To Me: The electric car debate

I use this as an example of the complete absence of proper customer services in the past decade or more. We no longer can talk to a human being to ask a simple question and hopefully get a simple answer. I haven’t a racist bone in my body but why oh why did I have to persuade somebody in the Bay of Bengal a while back that ‘Londonderry’ (their word!) was most definitely not in the Republic of Ireland! I’m sure many of you have had similar frustrating experiences when trying to sort out your phone or broadband bill, and for elderly people, it’s doubly infuriating. There is an age group that has been thrown to the wolves by state and semi-state bodies, and by God I would let the door knockers know in the upcoming elections. Customer service has become ‘Company Convenience’ and nobody in Government or opposition is talking about this scandal.

Remembering Sean Brown

Almost thirty years ago, when I co-hosted Frankly Ann-Marie on BBC Radio Ulster with Ann-Marie McAleese, we did a programme from Bellaghy Wolfe Tones GAA Club, where the Ulster Rose of Tralee was being picked. Coincidentally, Joe Brolly’s sister Áine, a wonderful harpist and singer, won the competition. Sean Brown not only looked after us that night, but locked the gates after we left. I never saw him again. In May 1997, I was devastated to hear that Sean, aged 61, was abducted and killed by loyalist paramilitaries as he locked the gates as usual. No one has ever been convicted of his murder. He was a gentle and much-loved individual, and I’ve often thought of him when I’m in the area.
I was reminded of him again recently when Mr Justice Kinney said his ability to examine Sean Brown’s death had been “compromised” by the extent of confidential State material being excluded from the proceedings on national security grounds. He said he would write to Northern Ireland Secretary Chris Heaton-Harris to call on the Government to establish a public inquiry into the loyalist murder. Last week, the Government said it was making a legal challenge. An inquest was underway into his death until last month when a coroner said it could not proceed due to the withholding of sensitive files. In a statement issued by their solicitor, the Brown family said they felt the legal action was “an attack on the truth” and accused the Government of attempting to deny victims access to justice.
“We repose a high degree of cynicism as to the timing of the announcement of these judicial review proceedings, coming as they do on the actual date that a public inquiry decision was due,” the family statement continued. “The Brown family are gravely concerned that this is a concerted attempt to tie them up in legal processes that could take years, and that they are being used as pawns in a wider attempt by the British Government to defend its indefensible approach to legacy. “Today’s announcement has a retraumatising effect on a family but most specifically an 86-year-old widow, already coming to terms with the facts that were permitted to emanate from the inquest process.”
Sean Brown did not deserve to die…his family deserves proper justice.

Alone on the Lone Moor Road

On Sunday, Joe Brolly wrote: “If anyone else were managing Donegal, I would say that we would beat them comprehensively. But it is not anyone else. It is Jimmy McGuinness. This is the most important test this Derry team has faced. Win, and we will be on our way towards a monumental All-Ireland semi-final. Lose and McGuinness will be in our heads. Not even a papal prayer can exorcise that.”
There were hundreds of delegates from the Republic of Ireland at the recent INTO conference in Derry. I did a wee tour for a few of them…the proximity of Celtic Park to the Brandywell on the Lone Moor Road intrigued them, as Derry city seemed to be devoid of GAA flags, despite Conor Glass and co’s big win in the League. I wasn’t terribly surprised…there was a mini-explosion of interest in 1993 after Derry won the All-Ireland. Now, Doire Colmcille, Sean Dolans and Doire Trasna are Junior clubs and Steelstown Brian Ogs were All Ireland Intermediate football champions in 2022. That’s it!
When my father was stationed in Carrigans in the ‘40s and ‘50s, and prior to playing for Red Hughs and Downings, he played a few games for Sean Dolans in Derry. One of his colleagues was veteran Derry republican Sean Keenan, whom he stopped many decades later at a border checkpoint! In any event, Dolan’s were playing another of the city teams and Dad recognised the legendary Cavan double All-Ireland Minor winner, Barney Cully, on the opposite side. He greeted him and Barney cautioned: "Jasus Mick!" I'm not Cully today and I hope you're not Galligan!" Dad being a guard had to be careful and as it turned out, he'd become Mick Gallagher temporarily. Barney Cully and the great Cavan forward, Charlie Gallagher were both dentists in Derry and were good friends of his.

When the suits wore the boots!

After I made my contributions to a Burns supper in 2014, a man approached me and said how much he enjoyed the anecdotes, because, he added: “I knew your father and played with him for Downings. When we won the 1957 County Junior Championship, he played at full-back and I played in front of him.” Jimmy McBride was celebrating his 80th birthday with his family and told me how he had gone to Cootehill in Cavan as a young teacher in 1954, and was long an integral part of Cootehill Celtic GAA Club. One of his colleagues and a stalwart of his club was the legendary Charlie Gallagher. Coincidentally, I had a great chat with the Anglo-Celt’s sports editor Paul Fitzpatrick on Monday. Paul is a gem when it comes to GAA history, author of 'Charlie' - the story of Charlie Gallagher, the GAA's Lost Icon'. As Paul pointed out a few years ago: “In Cavan, bans were widespread. The great Barney Cully, one of the best full-backs in the country in the 1940s, missed out on the Polo Grounds All-Ireland having been banned, supposedly, on the word of high-ranking GAA official Alf Murray, for attendance at a rugby match. And in 1960, the Cavan County Board themselves suspended the best forward in the county, Charlie Gallagher. The news of Gallagher’s involvement in a soccer game in UCD broke on the morning of November 6, 1960, when Cootehill Celtic were due to play Cross in the Junior Championship final.”

Charlie Gallagher, ‘Gaelic football's George Best’

In the Evening Herald there was a photograph of UCD after winning a soccer competition and Charlie Gallagher standing proudly in the middle of them. As evidence goes, it was damning. Eleven soccer players and one official and, in front of them, a cup. “The Dental team with the Independent Cup after they had beaten the Mater in the final of the Hospitals’ Soccer Cup at Bird Avenue yesterday,” read the caption. The County Board imposed a suspension for six months to run from November 4, the day of the match, and commending Cootehill for not playing him in the junior final. Charlie Gallagher wouldn’t kick a ball again until May by which time he was completing his finals in dentistry anyway. Gallagher’s first medal with Cavan was an Ulster Junior Championship in 1962, beating a Donegal side which included Brian McEniff. In 1964, when Cavan beat Donegal in the Ulster semi-final, Dermot Gilleece wrote:
“If Donegal had had Gallagher, the result could just as easily have gone the other way,”
As Colm Keys of the Irish Independent said of Charlie's biography: "Majestic on the pitch, mortal off it, the story of Gaelic football's George Best."