At the Dáil today

national | miscellaneous | opinion/analysis Wednesday January 25, 2006 13:54 by Justin Morahan - Peace People (individual)

The absent posters

A reflection, as the Dáil returns, on the impossibility of protesting so many things that have gone wrong in today's Ireland

Before Christmas, when Joe Costello was addressing his third group outside the Dáil and saw me there again, he asked "Are you becoming a professional protestor?"

He nodded agreement when I answered: "Isn't it a sign of the times we live in when there are so many things to protest against".

Today I can't be at the Dáil to join my friends so it gives me time to reflect on what posters I would like to carry there - and to make the posters much longer in the process.

1. SHANNON. To the Irish Government en masse: Come clean on what is happening at Shannon airport. You have been dragged kicking and screaming by the Council of Europe to investigate the torture planes that have been passing through our airport and to reveal in the process what cover-up you have been engaged in, hiding vital information from the public and from the Oireachtas. You still have not explained why you engaged this country in a monstrous war, why you continue to allow US military aircraft to use our civilian airport, why you did not allow US torture planes to be inspected there. Why also did you make a secret agreement with the US on 31 January 2003 regarding security measures for classified military information, and why did you not tell the Oireachtas about it until Michael D Higgins uncovered it in a trawl of US Department of State documents. Why did you make a second such secret agreement on logistics in February 2004, again without informing the Oireachtas. Why do your Ministers and spokespersons denigrate those who have continually told you to inspect Shannon, why do you plead economic necessity for allowing torture planes to be serviced here. Drop all charges against anti-war activists who have engaged in civil disobedience on these issues.
Stand up to Bush, not to the speakers of truth

2 IMMIGRATION. Why have you allowed the Minister in charge of immigration to make the following statement on State Television :

"If the Irish people had even the remotest idea of the nonsense that lies behind a huge amount of these bogus claims, the patience of a lot of people would be tried very hard. I would much prefer to have a system where I could have an interview at the airport, find out the cock-and-bull stories and [put them] on the next flight, but unfortunately the UN Convention requires me to go through due process in respect of all of these claims." Michael McDowell: RTE News 18th May 2005. http://indymedia.ie/newswire.php?story_id=71085&type=feature

Why is the Government heartless in sending back immigrants who fear the female genital mutilation of their daughters. Why is the actual deportation so sinister, underhand and brutal? We Irish people have wandered the globe and found welcome and work in other countries but when they need our help we fail them.
Let them in, let them work, let them create and build with us.

3. STOP moves towards militarisation. Stop Irish trade in arms. Restore and respect Irish neutrality.

4. STOP the bullying that continues in Irish schools under your jurisdiction. Why can you not give a reason for the fact that present policies are a failure and a charade that pretend to give solutions but only paper over the cracks

5. LOOK AFTER our homeless people.

6. NEVER AGAIN lie to us or patronise or fool us as you did on the following issues that we will not forget:

Entry into NATO's Partnership for Peace without a referendum,

Forcing the Nice Treaty down our necks by holding a second referendum when the electorate rejected it

Waste of millions of euro on an electronic voting system at the very time that unexpected and suspicious Bush majorities in the US elections were being blamed on such a system ,

Waste of further millions on a tunnel that is too low for larger trucks

Cuts in Health and Education after promises of "no cutbacks, hidden or otherwise"

The serious curtailment of the Freedom of Information Act after the war in Iraq had begun

Ignoring massive wrongdoing in the Banks

Pretend cuts in income tax while increasing taxes astronomically or taxing anew almost every possible commodity in sight, barely avoiding children's shoes

Tacit support for a Shell pipeline that had been illegally erected in Rossport

Allowing galloping inflation in the cost of electricity, gas, water, refuse removal and housing.

Attempts at privatisation (after the US model) of State services and institutions

Health services allowed to fall into crisis.

Tribunals that outlive their judges, witnesses and personae-under-investigation

Maintaining the status quo on a judicial system that is often corrupt

Using tribunals for politicians, big business and Gárdaí, courts for less favoured people

Continued failure to stop the killing and maiming of people on Irish roads.


If you are at the Dáil today, maybe you could spare a thought , an ear or a word for Marie Therese O'Loughlin and her cause, likewise for Dr Owen Goodman (14 years trying ) and any other individual that must go to such extremes as these to get heard or heeded in a State that is largely deaf to individual human suffering.