Sean or Mary?

national | worker & community struggles and protests | opinion/analysis Sunday February 19, 2006 16:41 by Sean Crudden sean.crudden at iol dot ie Jenkinstown, Dundalk, Co Louth 087 9739945

Where's the Beef?

What is the Sunday Independent cribbing about in connection with recent appointment by Bertie Ahern of Mary Wallace as a Minister of State?

Let me put my cards on the table. I am a shareholder in The Sunday Independent (Independent News and Media). The only Sunday paper I read - and only on an occasional Sunday - is The Sunday Independent. The only reason I read it is that my wife - like a previous generation of her family - buys it on her way from Mass and leaves it lying around the house.

However let me say that more often than not I despise what I read in the Sindo and I feel ashamed to have anything to do with it. However it has some kind of fascinating attraction or entertainment value even though I distrust its political insights and find it totally wrong-headed culturally, socially and in the general area of "manners."

In connection with Mary Wallace’s appointment to the job of Minister of State at the Department of Agriculture there is much repetition in that paper today - and yet not a shred of credible reasoning about the merits of the appointment.

I remember fondly the time when Mary Wallace was Minister of State at the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform where she had special responsibility in the area of people with disabilities. She was a fulsome and warm minister who had a great rapport with disabled people. I was surprised when she was not re-appointed (was that in 2002?) and if she felt ill-used then I for one could see good and genuine reasons why she should.

The whole area of disability was centre stage politically in Mary Wallace’s period of office (1997 - 2002?) and it seems to me that the Department of Agriculture will be in a very prominent position in public affairs in the next year or two - I need only mention the nitrates directive, the decline of the sugar-beet industry, bio-fuels and avian flu. From a phrase or two I heard on radio I think it is undeniable that the two Marys - Mary Coughlan and Mary Wallace - will give unstinted mutual support one to the other in what may prove to be taxing and difficult days ahead for agriculture.

As regards the Disability Bills let me say that I have not much confidence in any legislation which comes out of the Department of Justice under its current stewardship. I must say that I think neither the letter nor the spirit of the present Disability Bill will raise the status or the morale of disabled people.

There may be some hope arising out of the earlier act concerning the education of people with disabilities.