The Week Ahead

Monday
Daily Mail leads with headline ‘RIPD’

Louis le Broquy’s 92nd birthday – the artist unveils a simple computer programme that can reproduce his portrait style after he’s gone.



Second installment of RTE’s Bertie. Meticulously researched on wikipedia, with interviews of Drumcondra intimates for colour. The first episode took us from 1977 – 1989 and ‘revealed’ that Mr Ahern was ambitious from the get go, went with the anti-drugs semi-vigilante vibe in his constituency and cut his negotiating teeth as Minister for Labour. Music by Yann Tiersen adds depth and feeling to clips of Ireland before the boom.

Mr Ahern, who has reviewed books for the Irish Independent (on Man Utd) and the Irish Times (on Jack Lynch), and who has hosted Up for the Match, listens to supporters’ concerns that media bias may be a stumbling block to his bid for the Presidency.

Tuesday

Czech President Vaclav Klaus takes a break in his State visit to dine with Declan Ganley in the Shelbourne. John Drennan and Brendan O Connor hang around the bar, wondering what Aengus Fanning will make them write about next. The word ‘lurching’ is sure to be in there somewhere. Barry Egan drifts in.

Wednesday:
95 women are diagnosed with cervical cancer. Mary Harney reveals she never believed in the PDs.

Rupert Murdoch reveals headline of the year for 2011: ‘Shortchanged.’ It will lead a searing indictment of Barack Obama’s first two years as President.


Thursday: Articles ‘informing’ us that ‘Obama’s biggest is test yet to come’ continue to be published.

Gerald Kean is interviewed on Prime Time about comments he made in the Sunday Independent. The celebrity sollicitor feels the Government is ‘terrifyingly out of touch’ with the electorate and that the standard of hygiene in Irish hospitals is poor.

Kean also peddles Haughey nostalgia (CJH had creativity, you can’t knock that) – a bold contrast to the Ahern nostalgia (we wouln’t be in this mess if Bertie had a been here…the medical cards would never a happened for one) currently doing the rounds.

Mark Little earnestly lists the similarities and differences between Obamanomics, Cowenomics and ergonomics. The world financial crisis, according to Little, is ‘as complex as the Gordian knot.’

The Mullingar Accord launches an attempt to transfer Obama’s message of change to an Irish context.

Friday:
The indignation and solidarity that Roth, Rushdie, Coetzee, Marquez and Pamuk feel about the Kundera ‘affair’ peters out.



Sean Dunne annouces plans to build another 37-storey tower, this time in the Garden of Remembrance. Earnest debates begin – is a public park really the most appropriate place for such a development? Dunne assures locals that Remembrance Tower will bring 5,000 jobs to the north inner over the next six years. He admits to a personal wealth of € 477m, and to owing the banks €624m, but doesn’t ‘see that as a problem.’

Saturday & Sunday:



Tens more books are reviewed in all the newspapers. Topics include:

the struggle for liberty & justice at any time in human history
the messy birthplace of the modern intellectual world (place chosen by author)
the obscenification of everyday life
the fratious and febrile year of [choose year]
more ‘magisterial’ biographies
the Third Reich

We were the Leopards, the Lions

Health Minister Mary Harney told delegates in in Mullingar this morning that she ‘feels like Gorbachev in 1991. I’m basically a Minister without a party. It’s time to face facts.’

‘The PDs were born by the vexation of Dessie O Malley’s soul, to oppose wickedness and deceit-uttering tongues. We cut rivers from rocks. Our eye saw every precious thing, and refrained from taxing it. We walked with uprightness.’

Ms Harney recalled the highs and lows. The media honeymoon in early 1986. The subsequent decline in popularity and dismal opinion polls of 1988. Their policies had found no favour with the electorate – she recalled the Godless constitution fondly.

Then there was the threat of extinction in 1989, the loss of Michael McDowell and Geraldine Kennedy. The party would have petered out were it not for the intervention of an unlikely benefactor. How O Malley praised Haughey’s ‘courage and skills’ for going over the heads of his party to create the first Fianna Fail coalition. But it wasn’t until 1997 that the PDs came into their own, and for a decade brought a Reaganite sensitivity to the health service, and a Thatcherite tolerance of Berlin as well as Boston.

‘The PDs are a testament to the democratic process,’ said Ms Harney. ‘What power we wielded, what change we brought, what moulds we broke, and will such a small percentage of electoral support.’

‘We have always said that self-interest blinds some, but enlightens others... We did what we came to do, and after twenty-three years, despite I believe it is time for us to call it a day. Let us consult together with one consent. We were born amid a stubborn and tumultuous generation. We leave Ireland happier, more prosperous, more pacified, more jealous of their graven images, more stout-hearted, more glorious and excellent than it has even been.’

400 delegates are expected to attend today’s meeting and a result is expected around teatime. The party is due €250,000 a year in State funding until the next election.

Galway Races reveals PD split

Ireland’s mould breaking party was nearly torn apart by divisions in recent days. The PD National Executive was due to assemble next week - when the Galway Races would be in full swing.

But Noel Grealish (Galway West) and Ciaran Cannon (Galway East) had already booked tickets - and together they make up 50% of the party’s Oireachtas seat-holders.

The row erupted when the other half of the party – all Dublin, all female – announced their indifference to the Ballybrit event and demanded the AGM be held as scheduled.

'I thought it would look very bad if we were seen to be working around the Galway Races,' said former party leader Mary Harney. 'I know we’re genetically Fianna Fail, but rescheduling your AGM – even they wouldn’t do that.’

‘They wouldn’t do that because they’d never double book,’ retaliated current party leader Ciaran Cannon, brandishing his ticket.

Suddenly it was the male, west coast Cannon-Grealish coalition versus the all Dublin, all female other half of the party, PD heavyweights Harney and founder-offspring Fiona O Malley.

Keith Redmond, a 33-year old dentist and PD activist who (according to the PD website) ‘is set to wed his fiancée in next May’, contacted Paul Dunne, a local area representative for the PDs in Tramore, and the two mediated this epic east meets west gender war.

After gruelling talks that yielded material for futher disagreements, the AGM was held on Friday. Ciaran Cannon described the mood as ‘surprisingly buoyant for a party with an uncertain future.’

Fiona O Malley announced she will fight Dublin South’s byelection for a seat in the Dail. ‘I love being a senator,’ she said.