It Occurs To Me:  Almost meeting Mountbatten-Windsor and the ‘cancer’ flights controversy

On May 31, 2019, I attended a special service of thanksgiving in Belfast Cathedral for the late Sacha, Duchess of Abercorn. Sacha and I were friends, as I had worked with her Pushkin Trust for children for almost 30 years.

One of my most vivid memories that day was seeing Andrew, the then Duke of York, who was representing the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh.

He was seated upfront, but immediately the service was over, he and his police escorts leapt from their seat and skedaddled from the cathedral.

Since then, I’ve been trying to accurately describe the look in his eyes as he shifted them left and right with his head sunk in his chin. When I saw the famous photograph last Thursday as he departed the police station where he had been taken after his arrest, I knew the look immediately.

The Virginia Giuffre scandal was still big news back then, and he was literally like a rabbit caught in the headlights… and headlines. If Sacha were alive, I know how appalled she would be at the obscenity of the Epstein Files. While heads fall in the UK, Trump and Co are still skating on teflon, but for how long?

The ‘cancer’ flights controversy

Over the years in this column, I have often been critical of PR speak, which roughly translated means ‘bullshit’...and most definitely bland obfuscation.

The changes to the Donegal–Dublin flight route, which has raised cancer campaigners’ concerns that it could impact patients travelling for medical appointments, prompted this PR gem from the Dept of Transport: “This new contract demonstrates the Government's continued commitment to maintaining vital connectivity to the northwest.”

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Ah yes, ignore the actual concern and feed us more các. On the other hand, Donegal Airport got to the heart of the matter by being honest in their assessment: “It does not maximise connectivity to the region” and also expressed serious concerns over the aircraft no longer staying overnight in Donegal, “which was the case for the preceding 21 years” and had given “confidence to time-critical users of the certainty of departure on the morning flight”. As a rule of thumb, I’ve stopped giving credence to most utterances from PR spokespersons.

The SNA debacle

To say that the Coalition has made a ‘balls’ of the SNA controversy is to do a serious disservice to handballs, footballs, rugby balls, basketballs and sliothars! And what about our new minister for education, Naughty Hildegarde?

When replying to principals who were angry and concerned at the possible loss of SNA’s, she passed the buck and not only referred them to Michael Moynihan, Minister of State at the Department of Education with special responsibility for Special Education and Inclusion, but shared his e-mail! Isn’t that sweet? Maybe not so much buckpassing as firing him and his good suit under the nearest bus!

The Indo reminded us of the Government’s real priorities when it ran the headline: “Flurry of calls’ when ministers realised ‘PR disaster’ on SNA provision was about to break.”

Ah yes, PR…how it looks rather than how it is! The reality - not something that all PR heads prioritise - was well summed up by Labour education spokesperson Eoghan Kenny TD: “Children with additional needs rely every day on the support of special needs assistants to access education, participate in school life and reach their full potential. Families are already struggling to navigate a system where more than 20,000 children are waiting on an assessment of need, and where access to appropriate special classes remains limited in many parts of the country. Against that backdrop, this Government has moved to abruptly remove SNA supports from mainstream classrooms for some children based on revised criteria developed within the Department of Education. This approach is deeply damaging.

Removing SNAs from mainstream environments destabilises children who depend on that support to remain in school and to learn alongside their peers.

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While this Government points to headline increases in overall SNA numbers, those figures are meaningless to a child who may lose access to the support they rely on from one academic year to the next because they no longer meet a rigid administrative threshold.” Fair play to school principal Marie Ford, who is a Fine Gael councillor in Louth who said that despite wearing a Fine Gael hat, for her, “children come first”.

“I will always speak out when it comes to children and this strategy is wrong and is not evidence-based. It has always been a reactive strategy, constantly on the back foot. It’s about looking to place a child with special needs in a school, any placement regardless if it's in the right place for them. This is not ok, and it’s not good enough! There must be evidence based and better planning in terms of serving these vulnerable children.

“You may need one or at most two SNAs and one teacher for about 25 children in a mainstream class but in a special needs class, you need three adults for every six children, the difference in ratio is significant in terms of cost. Not to mention the price of building the classrooms. You cannot, and should not rob Peter to pay Paul. No parent should hear that their child has to be turned away from their school of choice.”

The Fianna Fáil parliamentary party meeting last Tuesday week was also dominated by the issue, with several party members angry at the way decisions on SNA reductions were communicated to schools. ‘Communication’? Any principal will tell you that trying to communicate with the Dept of Education during Covid was the surest way to spike your blood pressure. It hasn’t improved since.

Canonising The Monk

I haven’t seen nor have I any desire to see Rex Ryan playing Gerry Hutch in The Moon. As a son of someone - the late Gerry - who was front and centre when it came to self-publicity, maybe Rex needs a wee blast of the limelight or maybe he’s just plain naive.

In 1979, 16-year-old Hutch gave an interview to RTÉ Radio, saying how he “can’t give up robbing”. “I see money in a car, I'm takin’ it. I just can't leave it there. If I see a handbag on a seat I’ll smash the window and be away before anyone knows what's going on,” he says.

By 1983, Hutch, who is now 20, has 30 convictions for offences including burglary, assault, larceny, car theft, joy riding and malicious damage.

He was sentenced to two years for malicious damage in 1983. He’s hardly been out of the headlines since and for Rex Ryan to include him in his play - sitting smiling in a chair - and to try to create some kind of a working class hero from this guy, is pathetic.

Former assistant garda commissioner Pat Leahy said it was not unique for a play to deal with a figure like Hutch, but that he is concerned about the wider portrayal of The Monk as he makes a second election attempt.

“Anybody who has been touched by gangland crime is going to look at this, and you'd have to expect that you're going to be looking at this and feel like that they're being exploited, and their grief has been exploited, and that people are looking at this like at all, in a way in which they shouldn't look at it,” he said.

Acclaimed actor and playwright, Councillor Mannix Flynn, didn’t hold back: “This is a commercial venture with one individual playwright on the pig’s back with it. This is not a drama. It will add nothing to the canon of literature or theatre. What we are talking about here is a spectacle. That’s what people are turning up to see. A spectacle!”

Also, I understand that at one juncture in the performance, there are images shown of murdered journalist Veronica Guerin…that is nauseating! Please God, bar the usual suspects, the decent voters in Dublin Central will ignore him.

The Sunday Game?

Enda McGinley concentrated on the great defensive tackling from Donegal and Armagh. Fair enough. However, Donegal won this game so he might have at least acknowledged this too.

Next up, Ciaran Whelan, who spent all his analysis talking about the positives for Armagh. Not fair enough! We won this game and Whelan’s only nod to Donegal was quoting Kieran McGeeney saying they were the best team around at the moment. Dreadfully slanted Sunday Game. Puke punditry?