It has been a bad week for Sinn Fein. While ex-councillor Jonathan Dowdall was getting 12 years’ imprisonment for waterboarding, an erstwhile party colleague was being fined €1,500 by Virginia District Court for carrying out electrical works when not a registered contractor.
The prosecution against Michael Gallagher, a Sinn Fein councillor in Meath, was secured by the Commission for Energy Regulation. It told the court that efforts by Gallagher, a plumber but not an electrician, to rewire a dwelling house constituted a “real safety hazard” to the incoming occupants, including live wires being exposed.
Gallagher told the court that he was “only carrying out a humanitarian act for a woman whose husband had died”.
He promised the judge he had learnt his lesson and would not rewire any more houses. Further proof, though, that Sinn Fein are not quite ready for power.
Oy vey, that’s a howler
Dublin has its first non-Jewish suburb, according to the property section of the Irish Times. Commenting last Thursday on the area around the former Jurys Inn, it referred to “this gentile Dublin 4 suburb”. We think they meant “genteel”. The author later claimed: “Nothing sells like prestige.” Drug dealers might disagree.
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Speaking of typos, academic David Farrell tweeted a picture of a lake with some wildlife in UCD last weekend, captioning it “my favourite f*** pond”. Farrell later claimed he’d meant duck. Drake news?
Finally, this week’s Man Whose Name Suits His Job is a student at Dublin Fire Brigade training centre. Bravo, James Courage.
Pop babies are ready to cause a Riot at Eurovision
In 2018 it will be five years since Ireland last qualified for a Eurovision Song Contest final. Dying to Try was the title of our latest effort, which flopped at the semi-final stage. Dying to give it a go are ThisIsPopBaby, a theatre and events production company, whose hits include Alice in Funderland, staged at the Abbey in 2012, and Riot, the best production in last year’s Dublin Fringe Festival.
“We are talking to RTE about Eurovision in general, and it is our ambition that ThisIsPopBaby and RTE concoct some magic together to reignite Ireland’s stake in the finals,” confirms Jennifer Jennings, one of the company leaders.
“For now, we’re just chatting creatively and offering some opinions on how Ireland can shine again.”
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Sorry Bond, I’m really not for your eyes only
James Bond’s legendary prowess with women came unstuck in Galway in 1979, it has emerged.
Roger Moore was in town to film North Sea Hijack, and after each day’s shoot would repair to Moran’s Oyster Cottage in Kilcolgan. In the wake of Moore’s death last month, local woman Geraldine Phillips recalled on Facebook last week going into Moran’s one afternoon for a coffee. “In I go and there is nobody there but a fella sitting at the bar,” she wrote.
The stranger tried to start a conversation, observing that the weather was beautiful, to which Phillips muttered “yes”.
“I was in no mood to be chatted up by some eejit sitting in Moran’s at two o’clock,” she said, explaining why she had spoken “sharply” and turned her back. “[I] wouldn’t look at him because I thought, ‘This fella thinks he can chat me up, no way’. He left about five minutes later and the barman asked me, ‘Do you know who that was? Roger Moore’.”
In her defence, Phillips explained it was dark when she came in from the sun outside, “so I really only saw a figure at the bar”. She probably missed a raised eyebrow too.
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Ice cream story is definitely flaky
“Michael D Higgins just bought everyone in Dun Laoghaire a 99 in Teddy’s,” a bloke called Bill Gleeson tweeted last Wednesday, along with a picture of the president waving goodbye to a crowd after his act of generosity. Thinking they had a scoop, media organisations such as Joe.ie and Independent.ie descended on Gleeson’s page. “Hiya Bill, would it be all right if we use this picture, with full credit of course?” simpered the Irish Examiner. Some hacks were so concerned with getting the picture, they didn’t bother checking the story. In fact this was flake news. There were free ice creams, but they were paid for by Dun Laoghaire Harbour Company to mark the harbour’s 200th anniversary. Now if it had been a Sundae . . .
Kerry winner has prize to write home about
The Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year is a €15,000 prize for “the best novel by an Irish author” published in the previous year. So how come the award for 2017 has gone to Kit de Waal who is, as her Wikipedia page states, “an English writer”?
Her website explains that de Waal was born in Birmingham to an Irish mother, hence the qualification as “Irish”. Furthermore, it’s not as if the winning book, My Name is Leon, has anything to do with Ireland, either, being set in Birmingham. As de Waal’s website also states, it evokes “a Britain of the early Eighties”.
The other authors who made this year’s shortlist — Mike McCormack, Emma Donoghue, Neil Hegarty and Conor O’Callaghan — haven’t complained, of course, but would have every right to be less than gruntled.
Socialist Party is not dead, it’s just resting
Is socialism dead? It’s the burning political question throughout Europe. It’s certainly on its last legs in Ireland. For buried in Iris Oifigiuil we spotted an announcement that the Socialist Party is being struck off the registry of political parties.
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This is not the end, insists Councillor Michael O’Brien, a party representative. He explained: “The Socialist Party has an affiliated status within Solidarity: The Left Alternative, which itself is jointly registered with People Before Profit for the purpose of elections.”
He further explained (pay attention, we’ll be asking questions later) that there is no longer a basis for the Socialist Party to have a separate registration as it has no plans to contest future elections. It will instead register as a “third party” with the Standards in Public Office Commission.