Celebrating Bronagh Wilson

I heard the news of Bronagh Wilson’s death last Wednesday with great sadness.

In September 2009, at the age of 22, she was diagnosed with an inoperable grade 4 glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) brain tumour – a particularly aggressive and inoperable form of the disease.

Her family and friends launched a fund raising campaign to raise money for additional treatment beyond what she was receiving through the NHS.

I met Bronagh the following year and was asked to speak at an event for her in the Hilton Hotel in April 2010.

Last week Bronagh lost her battle against her illness but her family and friends are left with the memory of a heroic, gutsy young woman who never gave up and who fought her illness every day with fortitude and determination.

I want to extend my deepest condolences to her husband Conor, their two children Conor and Daniel, her parents Gerry and Loretta Wilson and her sister Kristina and brother Conor, along with all of her other family members and friends who worked hard to raise the money for Bronagh’s additional treatment and were a constant source of support.

Ar dheis Dé go raibh a h-anam

Following the event in April 2010 I posted a blog about Bronagh.

In memory of a very brave young woman I republish it today.

April 19^th 2010

Bronagh Wilson

I met Bronagh Wilson and her family last Saturday night (April 17^th). She is an ordinary young woman from west Belfast with two small children. But she is also one of the bravest people I have had the honour to meet during my life. Her story is one of great love and compassion.

Bronagh was diagnosed with a brain tumour last year. Although she was already presenting with symptoms beforehand, and had sought medical attention, the cancerous tumour was only detected in medical check-ups during Bronagh’s 2^nd pregnancy.

After her son Daniel was born, Bronagh was diagnosed and was then subject to surgery and post-operative treatment. Her medical condition is deemed as terminal.

The Bronagh Wilson Trust was set up in September 2009 with the objective of raising funds for private medical treatment when the NHS treatment ends. That treatment stopped a few weeks ago.

So the money raised during the funding campaign will be used to provide her with further private treatment.

On Saturday night the Trust held a packed gala dinner for the Bronagh Wilson Trust in the Hilton Hotel. Bronagh was there with her fiancée Conor, her mother Loretta, her father Gerry and her wide circle of family and friends and supporters.

It was at times an emotional event, particularly when she joined her father on the stage but it was also a moment of celebration of her courage and determination and of the astonishing and successful efforts of the Trust to raise money.

In the seven months since the Trust was established its small core of friends, supported by scores of others, and through the enormous generosity of the people of west Belfast and beyond have surpassed the £50k target that was set last October.

This blog was asked to speak at the event and I was pleased to agree. Recently, President McAleese had been in touch with me about a special dinner she was hosting next weekend in Áras an Uachtaráin. She asked me to nominate some west Belfast people to attend. I nominated Bronagh and her mummy Loretta.

But I only told Bronagh that in my remarks on Saturday night so it was a nice surprise for her and I’m sure President McAleese and her husband Martin will make them very welcome.

This blog knows how difficult it is to fundraise so I took the opportunity to commend all of those who have contributed in any way to what has been an astonishing fundraising effort by the Trust. It has been a truly remarkable achievement.

The dedication and commitment of everyone involved has been outstanding.

The work of the Bronagh Wilson Trust is yet another example of people power rising quickly to a very special challenge.

But Bronagh’s story has also helped raise public consciousness and understanding about Cancer. And this is very important as so many individuals and families struggle each day to deal with the reality of this terrible illness.

In one newspaper account of her experience of cancer and of her treatments Bronagh talked about the physical impact of these and in one interview she remarked that her hair falling out had been the worst thing.

It reminded me of my close friend, Siobhan O Hanlon.

Siobhan had breast cancer. It was very aggressive and she fought it every day.

As part of an effort to raise awareness around breast cancer we organised – no she organised – a conference in the old St. Thomas’s school on the Whiterock Road.

Siobhan spoke at it and she too talked about her experience of doctors and hospitals and chemo and radiotheraphy.

She held nothing back.

But Bronagh’s comment about hair sent me back to my copy of Siobhan’s remarks that day.

She told the conference: “I had no hair, no eyebrows, no eyelashes, one breast, my nails were all broken, I was tired.  But I knew I had to get my act together.  My hair had started growing but it was very slow.  It was also terribly grey. 

Three terrible days in relation to your hair are 1. when your hair starts coming out, 2. when you put a wig on for the first time and 3. when you have to take it off again.   That was an awful day. 

I remember going into the office and this guy was going across the top of the stairs. 

He said “Ah, Siobhan”. 

“Don’t open your mouth,” I told him.  “I have more hair than you”.  And I did!  “

That was Siobhan. Hugely courageous. And that is Bronagh too – courageous and indomitable and determined

Have a great night Bronagh on Friday evening in Áras an Uachtaráin. ‘

Rory’s Law

I fist met Rory Staunton when he was a baby. He is the son of Ciaran and Orlaith Staunton.

Ciaran is from County Mayo and Orlaith from Louth. Ciaran is the co-founder of the Irish Lobby for Immigration Reform in the USA and has been active in support of the undocumented and lobbying in the US government to regularise their status. In the early 1990’s he was also a key activist in winning support within Irish America for the peace process.

When I first travelled to the USA on my 48 hour Clinton visa to New York in February 1994 Ciaran was there. Later after the IRA cessation he was intimately involved in the planning of the visits by Sinn Féin delegations to the USA.

In those first post cessation visits the media interest was enormous and Irish America wanted to hear what we had to say. I remember on one trip in which we did 14 cities coast to coast in 14 days.

Ciaran never stopped. He was constantly planning, organising meetings, transport and hotels. He exhausted us.

I got to know him very well in that time and his soon to be wife Orlaith. When they married the wedding and reception were held in County Cavan and we were all there to celebrate it with them.

Rory was their first born. Ciaran brought him along to our hotel in New York for us to meet. He was a proud, doting father and Orlaith was an attentive loving mother.

In the subsequent years I watched Rory grow and grow and grow. I met him in Ireland and the USA - the last time in Drogheda during the general election. At 12 years old Rory was five foot nine with a bright mop of red hair. He was an enthusiastic, intelligent, politically astute young person. Like me one of his heroes was Rosa Parks – who refused to sit at the back of the bus. He was enthralled by John F Kennedy’s idealism and by Barak Obama’s desire to achieve change. He was also very proud of the contribution his father and his uncle – publisher Niall O Dowd – made to the Irish peace process.

Rory also wanted to fly. He was in awe of the successful ditching by pilot Chesley B Sullenberger of his passenger airline in the Hudson River. And at 12 years of age he succeeded in persuading Ciaran and Orlaith to let him learn to fly.

And then on Wednesday March 28^th he fell playing basketball in school and cut his arm. Overnight he became feverish, vomited and developed a pain in his leg. He saw his doctor and she advised that he go to Langone Medical Center where he was diagnosed with an upset stomach and dehydration. He was given fluids and Tylenol and sent home.

However Rory’s condition grew worse.

At the same time results from blood tests that had been taken revealed that he was producing neutrophilsand bands, white blood cells, at an abnormal rate and which suggested that he had a bacterial infection. The family were not told and essential warning signs were missed by the doctors in the hospital.

Rory was taken back to the hospital where he was put into the intensive care unit. His condition deteriorated and on Sunday April 1^st four days after his school accident Rory died from septic shock.

The family was devastated. I rang Ciaran. His grief was plain. Rory was brought home to Ireland to be buried with his grandmother in Drogheda.  I attended the funeral. It was a deeply sad, tragic and moving celebration of a young life.

But Ciaran and Orlaith were not prepared to ignore the failings in the medical system. Two weeks ago I was sitting in my Dáil office and realised in the course of a meeting that the voice in the background was Ciaran. He was being interviewed on the RTE news about Rory’s loss and the family’s demand for a change to the law.

Ciaran and Orliath are campaigning for ‘Rory’s Law’ to be introduced to ensure that parents have full access to blood and lab tests done and that as soon as these are available that they will be assessed by a doctor.

They believe that had Rory’s results been acted on he would have received the antibiotics needed to save his life. They also believe that ‘Rory’s Law’ can save the lives of countless others.

Ciaran and Orliath have my support and I would urge everyone to join with them in their efforts to ensure that no other parents have to go through the trauma they have experienced.

Challenging the Money Lenders

Money lending and loan sharks are not a new phenomenon. They are probably the second oldest profession in the world.

Where there is poverty you will always find those who are prepared to exploit the vulnerable and the desperate.

The island of Ireland has long borne witness to their activities. There are few working families that haven’t availed of money lenders and loan sharks. The cheque man used to call to our house every week. Between that and the pawn shop my mother reared ten of us.

The north was recently described as a ‘personal debt hotspot’ and in its annual report for 2011 the PSNI’s Organised Crime Task Force claimed that loan sharks are targeting citizens on benefits, small business people, those buying drugs and families trying to manage their way through poverty and disadvantage.

The report said that because the recession means that it is harder for someone with a ‘less than perfect’ credit rating to secure a loan from financial institutions, more and more people are consequently turning to ‘alternative lending options such as Social Fund and Budgeting Loans, Credit Unions, pawnbrokers, door step lenders, pay day loan companies and also illegal money lenders (‘loan sharks’)’.

In the north loan sharks often hold benefits books and Post Office cards as collateral against the loan, and any delay or failure on the part of the person holding the loan to repay it often leads to threats, physical assault, seizure of goods or the debtor being coerced into carrying out an illegal task for the criminal.

One example of this emerged recently in a court in Dublin where a mother of five received a suspended sentence after it emerged that she had been forced to turn her home – in this case her children’s two bedrooms - into a cannabis grow house because she owed money to a loan shark.

But this problem of money lending is not isolated to loan sharks.

Financial companies providing loans also charge exorbitant rates of interest.

This issue took centre stage this week in the Dáil when Sinn Féin introduced a Private Members Bill to set a cap of 40% on the amount that these companies can charge.

A recent survey from the Irish League of Credit Unions revealed that over 1.8 million people in the southern state now have just €100 to spare at the end of each month. That’s €25 a week! While 17 per cent of adults – which equates to 602,000 people –have absolutely nothing left for discretionary spending once all bills are paid.

These are the citizens who are being forced to borrow short term to pay utility bills, make mortgage payments or put food on their family’s table.

The Credit Union study found that 10% of households are turning to moneylenders to pay household bills, and it is likely that the real figure is significantly higher.

And many find that once caught in the money lending trap it is almost impossible to escape. Some of these licensed money lenders are charging up to 210% APR. They are making super profits on the back of hard pressed families.

And they can only do this because the Irish government has done nothing to tackle excessive interest rates. And why do they do nothing? The Minister of State Brian Hayes revealed all when he stood up in the Dáil and told us that the government intended to oppose our Bill. Why? Because he thinks that the ‘likely impact of applying a cap rate of 40% APR is that money lending would no longer be viable, licence renewals would not be sought and it would effectively close down the industry.’

Hayes then went on to describe how ‘money lending is an inherently expensive business’ and that ‘licenced money lenders service a high risk borrower segment.’

His defence of money lenders who regularly charge over 100% APR and sometimes over twice that had this blog’s blood boiling. It was a disgraceful and outrageous defence of one of the worst examples of financial exploitation of families desperately trying to manage a shrinking budget, mostly as a consequence of the new stealth taxes and charges that Minister Hayes government is responsible for.

It is also not representative of the European experience. A 2010 European Commission study identified 13 states that operated such a cap.

In Belgium for example the cap ranges from 10% to 19.5% APR. In France the range is from 5.7% to 21.6%. In Spain the rate is 10%.

In these and other states, politicians have decided that there is a limit to the amount of interest that licensed money lenders can charge, particularly when lending to low income families struggling under the weight of household debt.

Hayes claim that a 40% cap would ‘close down the industry is not borne out by the Polish example where in 2006 a cap of 20% was introduced on licenced moneylenders. Like Ireland Provident is one of the largest lenders in that market. It continues to trade profitably in Poland even after the introduction of the cap.

The Minister is wrong.

But the problem of debt and money lenders and of austerity have other more profound human implications.

The Central Statistics Office in Dublin last week revealed that the number of suicides in this state rose to 525– an increase of 7%. 439 men and 86 women are recorded as having then their own lives in 2011.

The President of the Irish Association of Suicidology Dan Neville TD acknowledged that these figures were ‘frightening but not surprising’ given the state of the economy.

The Suicide Support and Information System in its report on Monday made a clear connection between austerity and suicide. It revealed that of the 190 deaths in Cork from suicide 38.1% of the victims were unemployed.

The excessive interest rates being charged by licensed moneylenders are pushing hard pressed families further into financial stress and poverty. There is no moral or economic justification for the absence of a cap on interest rates charged by licensed moneylenders.

The Bill Sinn Féin brought forward proposed a cap of 40% which would be fairer to customers while allowing licenced lenders to operate on a sound commercial basis.

But the government parties voted it down and chose to defend the money lenders over the rights and needs of citizens.

The Labour Party TDs on the government benches should hide with shame. If they had any shred of compassion for those caught in the poverty and debt trap or any allegiance to the politics of Connolly they would have rejected the Ministers stand.

Instead they acquiesced and defended it. There were the usual crocodile tears about the plight of low and middle income families and those caught in the poverty trap but there was no stomach for standing up to the right wing ideology of Fine Gael.

Reflections

Last Sunday I spent a short time, along with scores of other republicans, remembering and celebrating the live and courage of IRA Volunteer Joe McDonnell.

It was the anniversary of Joe’s death. He died on hunger strike on July 8th 1981 after 61 days without food. Sinn Féin had organised a white line picket along the Andersonstown Road in west Belfast. Such pickets involve protestors standing along the dividing white line on the road holding a placard or in this instance photo of Joe. It was a method of highlighting the hunger strike frequently used then and since. Big Bobby and the party executive in Belfast thought it was an appropriate way of remembering Joe.

I was standing not far from the party’s Connolly House office and close to the junction with St. Agnes’s Drive.

In the busyness of my life I don’t often get the opportunity to just reflect. To take a few minutes and allow the mind to relax and wander. To look around and recall events or people connected to wherever I am. But for about 30 minutes last Sunday, standing there on my own, with lines of republican activists stretching away on either side of me, my memory journeyed back to the day we walked from Joe’s home in Lenadoon, down the Shaw’s Road and along the Andersonstown Road to Milltown Cemetery.

It was a beautiful summers day. There were thousands of people standing along the footpaths and many more following the cortege. Joe’s coffin was set on trestles just outside Connolly House – which was then an empty building - and an IRA firing party stepped forward and gave their comrade his last salute.

They then disappeared into the crowd and slipped up through the houses toward St. Agnes’s Drive. Unbeknownst to any of us British soldiers had moved in to the street. They raided a house in a bid to capture the volunteers.

I remember hearing the shots being fired and then the British troops and RUC attacked the mourners firing plastic bullets. Men, women and children screamed and scattered, desperately trying to avoid being hit by a plastic. Mothers held their children close to them desperately trying to shield them with their own bodies. Others lay on the ground or hunkered down in shop doorways or behind cars. There was pandemonium along the Andersonstown Road.

That summer was a bleak time for many reasons but not least because of the widespread and devastating use of plastic bullets by the British Army and RUC. Seven people were killed, three of them children, and hundreds more were injured, some permanently. It was a weapon of control and intimidation and was used indiscriminately and extensively.

We were determined not to allow the Brits to hijack or obstruct the burial of our friend and with difficulty we moved on down the Andersonstown Road toward Milltown.

It was only as we approached the cemetery a short time later that I learned that my brother Paddy had just been shot and seriously wounded.

The same morning Joe died, 16 year old John Dempsey, a member of Na Fianna Éireann was shot dead just across the road from Milltown cemetery.

I attended John’s wake and his funeral to Milltown before I went to Lenadoon and Joe’s funeral.

Three years after those awful events 23 year old John Downes was shot and killed by a plastic bullet in August 1984 almost on the spot that Joe’s body had rested for that final salute. He was struck by a plastic fired an RUC man, as the RUC attacked a peaceful public demonstration and stormed the building.

Connolly House like many other Sinn Féin offices was targeted not just by the Brits and RUC but also by their Loyalist allies. Several activists were shot and wounded in one incident and an RPG rocket was fired on another.

It was also the location for many of our meetings with Irish Americans in the early days of the peace process and in 2004 we discovered a sophisticated listen device hidden in the floor of the building. MI5 apparently described this as a ‘super bug’. We brought the bug with us – or most of it – when we travelled to Leeds Castle for more talks aimed at getting the peace process back on track. Martin and I ceremoniously handed it back to Tony Blair. Although those bits that were kept were auctioned on ebay and the money raised was put to good use by the party.

Around the corner from the Sinn Féin office is a shopping area still known locally as the Busy Bee, even though the supermarket of that name is no longer there. For many years, and especially during the hunger strike period, most republican marches ended there as the car park provided an almost natural amphitheatre.

A few hundred yards in the opposite direction from where I was standing is Casement Park. Just outside its main gates in March 1988 two armed British soldiers attacked mourners attending the funeral of Caoimhín MacBradaigh, who had been killed when UDA gunman Michael Stone attacked the Gibraltar funerals. They themselves were overpowered and subsequently killed by the IRA.

So, it was a moment in space for reflection. Mostly about the hard times, the difficult times and the friends and neighbours who are no longer with us. And that’s good. We should never forget what happened or the bravery and audacity of those who created the opportunity for the republican struggle to grow.

Remembering the Springhill Massacre

Tonight - Monday - there will be a Special Mass in Memory of the 40th Anniversary of the Springhill Westrock Massacre in Corpus Christi Chapel on Monday 9th July at 6pm.

This will be followed by a presentation in the hall at the back of the chapel about the Historical Enquiries Team examinations into Royal Military Police by Dr Patricia Lundy of University of Ulster. There will also be a panel discussion.
Afterwards there will be a candle light vigil to the Westrock Garden of Remembrance.


There have been many dark days arising out of the conflict. Most families in the north have been touched by these. One such was Bloody Sunday. 14 civilians were killed by the British Paras when they attacked a civil rights march in Derry on January 30th 1972.

Two years ago, and following a lengthy public inquiry the Saville Commission, exonerated all of those killed and the British Prime Minister David Cameron apologised for what happened, describing the killing of the marchers as ‘unjustified and unjustifiable’.

Saville took 12 years to publish its report. Among its conclusions were:

• No warning was given to any civilians before the soldiers opened fire


• None of the soldiers fired in response to attacks by petrol bombers or stone throwers


• Some of those killed or injured were clearly fleeing or going to help those injured or dying


• None of the casualties was posing a threat or doing anything that would justify their shooting


• Many of the soldiers lied about their actions

Last Friday the PSNI announced that it is to hold a murder investigation into the events on Bloody Sunday.

Regrettably, Bloody Sunday was not the exception to the rule in the history of British Army’s actions in the north. Two other military operations against civilians by the Paras fit the same pattern of Bloody Sunday and one is 40 years old today.

On July 9th 1972 five citizens from the Springhill estate in west Belfast were shot and killed by British snipers from the parachute regiment hiding in Corry’s timber yard on the Springfield Road.

Among the dead was the second Catholic priest to be killed in greater Ballymurphy area; Fr Noel Fitzpatrick. He was shot in the neck while administering the Last Rites. Of the four others to die three were teenagers - Margaret Gargan was 13, David McCafferty was 14 and John Dougall was 16 - and the fourth, Paddy Butler (38), was a father of six children.

Margaret Gargan, from Westrock Drive was killed by a single bullet wound to the head. She was thirteen years old. John Dougal from Springhill Avenue died after being shot in the chest. He was sixteen years old. David McCafferty from Ballymurphy Drive was also killed when he was shot in the chest. He was fifteen years old. Patrick Butler from Westrock Drive was killed by a single shot to the head.

All were shot by British Paras operating from Corry’s, all were civilians, and according to local eye witnesses, there was no IRA activity in the area at that time.

Immediately adjacent to the Springhill estate lies Ballymurphy. 11 months earlier, following the introduction of internment in August 1971, the Parachute Regiment was sent into the Ballymurphy estate. In the subsequent 48 hours 11 were civilians were shot dead, one was the parish priest, Fr Hugh Mullan, who like Fr Fitzpatrick was giving the last rites to victims, and another was Joan Connolly, the mother of eight children.

In the same period the paras killed another two people in Belfast; Desmond Healey, aged 14, in Lenadoon and John Beattie, who was 17, was killed in the Clonard area.

On January 30th 1972 it the Paras who went into Derry and in a matter of minutes shot dead 13 men. Another 14 men and women were injured, some seriously and a 14th man died later of his wounds.

Briege Voyle, whose mother Joan was killed in the Ballymurphy Massacre believes that:

“Had the soldiers who killed my mother been investigated properly and held to account, Bloody Sunday would never have happened.”

The following March (1973) the Parachute Regiment arrived in the Ardoyne area of north Belfast for a ‘tour of duty’. Within days Eddie Sharp (28) was shot dead and in the following weeks they had killed another four people. One of these was 12-year-old Tony McDowell. Tony was in a car being driven by his uncle when paratroopers opened fire, hitting the child in the back.

Another infamous victim of the Paras’ violence was South Armagh schoolgirl Majella O’Hare (12) who was shot dead in the churchyard at Ballymoyer, near Whitecross, on 14 August 1976.

Like Bloody Sunday the British Paras involved in the Springhill and Ballymurphy Massacres gave no warning of their intent; were under no threat from their victims; many of those who died were either fleeing or going to help others who were injured; and the soldiers lied about their actions. The victims were all civilians and many of them were teenagers.

The Springhill and Ballymurphy families have campaigned for 40 years for the truth about the deaths of their loved ones. It has been a long and difficult road for them but this blog is always amazed by their tenacity and fortitude.

The Burden of History

Drew Nelson, the Grand Secretary of the Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland today paid an official visit to Seanad Éireann. Last week Martin McGuinness met Elizabeth 11. Yesterday he and Peter publicly shook hands for the first time at the opening of the new visitors centre at the Giants Causeway.

And today the first meeting of the North South Parliamentary Association took place at Parliament Buildings in Stormont. The Association was part of the Good Friday Agreement and is jointly chaired by the Ceann Comhairle of the Dáil Sean Barrett and the Speaker of the northern Assembly Willie Hay.

So all in all it’s been a busy and arguably historic period for the island of Ireland and for the reshaping of relationships between the people of this island and with our nearest neighbour in Britain.

The visit by the Orange Order to the Dáil is of particular importance coming as it does at the beginning of the most intense period of marches by the main loyal orders – the Orange Order, the Royal Black Preceptory, the Apprentice Boys of Derry and the Independent Orange Order.

This blog has often remarked that the Irish national flag is orange as well as green and that we have a responsibility to listen to and engage with our unionist neighbours who make up the various loyal orders. If we want respect for our views then we must also respect the views of those who differ from us.

Most frequently this debate takes place around the issue of contentious marches – a fact that makes dialogue more difficult and in itself detracts from the imperative of having a broader conversation around building relationships between the wider unionist and nationalist sections of our people.

Clearly the issue of these marches has to be resolved. The refusal thus far by the loyal orders to speak to host communities has made this task much more difficult. But last weeks meeting between Martin McGuinness and Queen Elizabeth 11 must make that prospect now more likely.

If their Queen is prepared to talk and meet in friendship and mutual respect with an Irish republican then it’s difficult to see how any in the loyal orders can continue to refuse to speak to Sinn Féin much less community leaders from host communities.

This is especially so when one considers the human, economic and community cost that conflict over such marches has caused in the past. The number of contentious marches involved in literally a handful. Thousands of others take place without rancour. So why can’t we have a dialogue which respects and validates the views of marchers and host communities and find a way that sees this period of our year become one which families and communities can enjoy instead of fear.

But we have to go beyond settling contentious parades. We need to build a new relationship. Irish republicans want to understand and appreciate the position of the Orange. We accept the right of the Order to parade and to promote its sense of Orangeism. But this has to be on the basis of equality and mutual respect and tolerance.

Drew Nelson’s address to the Seanad marks another page turned – a new phase – in the process of building new relationships. It is the first time that a member of the Orange Order has addressed the Oireachtas.

And while this blog and other republicans have met with members of the Portadown Orange Order and there have been other private meetings, this is also the first time that the Orange Order has publicly engaged with Sinn Féin. This is a welcome development.

His speech to the Seanad was measured and thoughtful, linking the religous elements of the orders with the political and historical and community. There are aspects of what Drew Nelson said that I would agree with and aspects I would disagree with, particularly his belief that republicans orchestrated opposition to orange marches and attacks on orange halls.

That is not true. Even a cursory examination of the fraught and often violent relationship between the loyal orders and the nationalist community going back 200 years to its foundation would produce countless examples of such actions.

And Mr. Nelson ignored the role of the Order in promoting sectarianism and building a unionist orange state in the north which treated nationalists dreadfully.

However that is his perspective and republicans have to start our dialogue with him and the orange on that basis.

Drew Nelson presented an interesting and cogent case which must be listened to. The Orange Order is an important organisation. It is a part of what we are as a nation.

The idea that somehow there can be a lasting peace on this island without a dialogue between us is daft.

So, we need to talk and we need to listen.

Drew Nelson is right when he speaks about the burden of history. It is a burden that this far we have shared separately. Perhaps it’s time we shared the burden together.

The Orange visit Seanad Éireann

96 years ago it was day two of the Somme offensive. The Battle of the Somme was to last until November 18th and was one of the biggest battles of the first world war. At the end of almost five months the battle lines had shifted by a mere six miles but the cost in lives lost and damaged was enormous.

Day one had witnessed the British Army suffer nearly 60,000 casualties – the worst day in its history. 19,240 dead; 35,493 wounded and 2152 missing.

Day one had also seen the 36th Ulster Division, largely made up of members of the Ulster Volunteer Force, attack the Schwaben Redoubt. Unlike most other elements of the British Army on that first day the Ulster Division succeeded in capturing its initial objectives. The Redoubt itself did not fall until mid October.

By the end of Day two it had lost 5500 men killed, wounded or missing. By the end of the Battle five months later there were over one million casualties on all sides.

The impact on local, mainly protestant, communities across Ulster - from Antrim to Cavan, and from Down to Donegal was profound. Tens of thousands of families were touched by the colossal losses at the Somme. Local history tells of the three Donaldson brothers from Comber in county Down who were aged between 19 and 21 and who all died together on Day one at Thiepval, and the three Hobbs brothers – David, Andrew and Robert - from Union Street in Lurgan who all died on the Somme.

The Battle of the Somme is still remembered. Each year commemorations are held in towns and villages throughout the north.

The Orange Order, many of whose members fought and died at the Somme, plays a central part in these.

Tomorrow Drew Nelson the Grand Secretary of the Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland leads a delegation from the Orange Order to address Seanad Éireann. It is a first and a historic occasion in its own right. Along with the meeting last week between Martin McGuinness and Elizabeth 11 it is a measure of how much the peace process is reshaping relationships on the island of Ireland.

It will also mark the first public occasion that a member of Sinn Féin, Senator David Cullinane, will address the Orange.

More on this tomorrow.

The great electronic voting machine scandal

There are countless irresponsible decisions from the Celtic Tiger days which expose the incompetence and corrupt practices of the political system. Fraudulent planning processes, bad policies, a failure to invest for the future in public services, and the greed of the golden circles of politicians, financiers and developers all pushed the state to the verge of bankruptcy.

One ill considered example of this was the decision by the Fianna Fail government in 2002 to spend €52 million on an electronic voting machine system.

The machines were used on a trial basis in 3 constituencies in the 2002 general election - Dublin North, Dublin West and Meath and in seven constituencies during the Nice referendum of the same year. The government planned to extend their use. However a 2002 report raised concerns about the security of the machines. The absence of a paper trail to verify conclusions also worried many.

In 2004 the government set up the Independent Commission on Electronic Voting and Counting at Elections (CEV) which produced a number of reports. In July 06 a report by CEV suggested that the machines were still usable but needed further modifications and a new software package.

However it emerged in tests that the ‘foolproof’ software wasn’t quite as foolproof as first claimed. In a tied election the machines could select the wrong candidate. There was also a suggestion that it might be possible to manipulate the vote data without detection, opening up the possibility of accusations of serious malpractice or corruption.

Sorting all of this out would have required an additional €10 million on to the original price tag. Fianna Fáil wanted to proceed but their partners in government the Progressive Democrats said no.

The then Minister for the Environment Dick Roche fell back on the much used, abused but frequently successful devise of establishing a committee, in this case a Cabinet Sub-committee, to consider the recommendations by the CEV. It pushed the decision back a few years.

In the meantime the machines were put into cold storage in 14 locations around the state where they have sat ever since gathering dust but at a huge continuing cost to the tax payer.

In 2004 the cost of storage was €658,000. In the subsequent four years it varied between €696,000, €706,000, €489,000 and €204,000. Finally in 2009 the proposal to use them in elections was scrapped.

It has taken the powers that be another three years since then to finally agree a contract with a recycling company to get rid of the machines.

This scandal has cost the Irish taxpayer somewhere in the region of €55 million. Imagine the hospital beds that could have paid for or the local schools it could have built. The great electronic voting machine scandal is an example of all that was wrong during the Celtic tiger years.