Minister of State Michael Healy-Rae held a big hooley in Leinster House on Thursday for his general election team to thank them for helping him top the poll yet again in Kerry and return in triumph to the Dáil.
About 100 people headed up from the Kingdom to enjoy a lunch “hosted by Minister Michael Healy-Rae”.
There was no mention on the printed menu of his brother Danny, the second member of team Healy-Rae to retain a seat in the constituency.
There were drinks in the bar before the guests moved down the corridor to the Members’ Restaurant, where they dined on roast chicken supreme with summer pea and asparagus cream, gratin potatoes and a medley of vegetables.
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Dessert was caramelised lemon tartlet with a meringue crumb.
At the end of the meal, Michael went into the kitchens and emerged with a birthday cake for team member Tom O’Shea from Waterville, who had just turned 70. The group brought it up from Maloney’s cake shop in Castleisland and it was gorgeous.
Earlier, they toured the House and popped into the Dáil and the Seanad, where the Cathaoirleach, Kerryman Mark Daly, made sure to mention them.
“They are guests of Danny and Michael Healy-Rae. They are most welcome to Seanad Éireann. I hope they have an enjoyable day in Dublin and we’ll all be back up the weekend after next for another enjoyable day in Dublin, please God, and we’ll be bringing Sam Maguire back home.”
Danny didn’t attend the lunch.
The Healy-Rae contingent wasn’t in the chamber when Kerry-based Labour Senator Tim Kennelly told the Upper House under Seanad privilege that a man who pleaded guilty in Kenmare District Court to election fraud worked for a plant-hire company owned by the family of Danny Healy-Rae.
When contacted by The Irish Times on Thursday, Danny Healy-Rae said: “I have no comment.”
Who rubbed out Jack Lynch’s pipe?
Decades of political memory and experience, valued service to the State, grudges and begrudgery, huffs, cute-hoorism and hissy-fits all come together when the Irish Association of Former Parliamentarians meets in Leinster House.
More than 50 blasts from the recent and distant past gathered last Friday for the association’s agm, held this year in the airy confines of Fianna Fáil’s parliamentary party rooms on the fifth floor.
Guest speaker on the day was former president Mary McAleese, who gave a talk on her time in the Áras which included some fascinating detail on Queen Elizabeth’s historic State visit in 2011. There was no discussion about who might fill her successor’s shoes when his time is up in November.
The large contingent of former Fianna Fáil TDs and Senators were also fascinated by a long-standing feature of the party room: the line of framed photographs of former leaders. They recalled the black-and-white portraits from their own days at parliamentary meetings. After the 2011 election, when the party had to give way to Enda Kenny and swap its fifth-floor penthouse for Fine Gael’s dark and stuffy meeting room in the basement, the pictures came too.
“From as far back as I can remember, the leaders always started with De Valera and they ended with the most recent person,” said a former FF Oireachtas member.
“Left to right, Dev first. But now, it’s the other way around. Micheál Martin is first and Dev is kinda last. Oh, and Micheál is the only one in colour.”
But that wasn’t the real talking point.
“We were looking at the row of photos and something wasn’t quite right. Something was missing. Then somebody twigged it was Jack Lynch. Jack always had a pipe. Always,” recalled our former parliamentarian.
“This was a new picture of Jack Lynch and he no longer has the pipe. Suppose we can’t be doing with that sort of thing these days. So Jack’s trademark pipe has been airbrushed from history. Honest to God. It’s gone.”
Wonder if the other Cork Taoiseach knows about this – the current full-colour incumbent who introduced the world’s first workplace smoking ban in 2004?
Classic Micheál, if you ask us.
Soc Dems turn 10
Social policy professor turned Social Democrat TD Rory Hearne plays senior hurling on the housing crisis in the Dáil, and to unwind he has returned to junior hurling with his local club, Whitehall Colmcilles.
The Dublin North-West TD is enjoying the game so much he decided to organise an end-of-term cross-party GAA knockabout for colleagues in Leinster House. There are regular rugby and soccer matches between Oireachtas members but Gaelic games haven’t had much of a look-in.
A small but enthusiastic group assembled in the grounds of Trinity College Dublin, where their host, Provost Linda Doyle, watched the politicians thrash about in the rain in the name of sport.
They attempted a game of football as well as the hurling. Dublin legend Michael Darragh Macauley, along with Cormac Donohoe of the Dublin Masters team, tried to keep some semblance of shape on the proceedings.
“The only thing at stake was our dignity,” says Rory. “There were no results. We decided to call everything a draw.”
Among the politicians lining out were Fine Gael TDs Joe Neville (Kildare North), Frank Feighan (Sligo-Leitrim), Brian Brennan (Wicklow-Wexford), Sinn Féin’s Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth) and Darren O’Rourke (Meath-East), Labour’s Ciarán Ahern (Dublin South-West) and Marie Sherlock (Dublin-Central), Fianna Fáil’s Peter “Chap” Cleere (Carlow-Kilkenny) and Kerry Labour Senator Mike Kennelly.
Now that they’ve established themselves, the players hope more TDs and Senators will sign up for a charity match they have planned for September, hopefully in Croke Park.
Meanwhile, Hearne got back to Leinster House in time for the family photo with his fellow Soc Dems as the party marked 10 years since its foundation in 2015. Its three founding members have since left national politics. Róisín Shortall and Catherine Murphy retired at the last election and Stephen Donnelly, who defected to Fianna Fáil and was minister for health in the last government, lost his Dáil seat in November.
He didn’t join his erstwhile co-leaders at a celebratory dinner with the parliamentary party in the Members’ Restaurant on Wednesday night.
Stephen isn’t totally out of the loop – he was in Glenties on Friday as one of the guest speakers at the MacGill Summer school, Ireland’s Glastonbury for political anoraks. He was in good spirits, thanking his host for correctly identifying him as the former minister for health and not the current leader of Aontú.
“I’ve had three people over the last 24 hours kind of look at me, put out the hand and go: ‘It’s Peadar Tóibín, isn’t it!’ So for any of you here who are still wondering, no, it isn’t. Yes, we do look a little alike – he’s a good-looking chap, nobody will take that from him ... but I’m not Peadar Tóibín.”
And for good measure, he also stressed that he isn’t the economist Dan O’Brien, the other person he is frequently mistaken for.
Speaking of Donegal, we wrote last week about the Blaney family’s 100 years of unbroken service at local level. A reader has been in touch to point out that they may well have sat on Donegal County Council since 1925 but, like all the other county councils, it was founded by the local government reforms of 1899.
We, er, knew that.
Horrible histories
Congratulations to Sinn Féin’s Chief Whip and spokesperson on fisheries and the marine who had some good news to announce on Wednesday.
“I have been appointed to be the convener of the Ireland-Norway Parliamentary Friendship Group by the Ceann Comhairle,” wrote Pádraig Mac Lochlainn in an email to all Oireachtas members.
“There is so much that we can learn from the Norwegian people, particularly how they have maximised the potential of the seas alongside them to create huge wealth and prosperity for their coastal communities.
“The connections between Ireland and Norway go back as far as the ninth century,” he added, inviting all TDs and Senators to contact him if they want to join the new friendship group.
That’s nice.
Fair play to the Vikings. Not like those horrible Normans, who were descendants of Vikings and left behind a lot of historical baggage here too.
Only last May, Pádraig’s party colleague Aengus Ó Snodaigh was blasting the Government for approving plans for Ireland to participate in the Year of the Normans initiative along with other European countries.
He said the proposal to celebrate the birth 1,000 years ago of England’s first Norman King, William the Conqueror, whose successors subjugated Ireland, was “offensive”.
It was “scraping the barrel of colonialism, imperialism and English royalism for themed tourism”.
Mind you, conquest, pillage and rape was all the rage more than 1,000 years ago when the Scandinavian marauders established significant settlements around ancient Ireland and parts of Normandy.
We hope Pádraig consulted Aengus about our ninth-century “connections” with Norway before joining the friendship group.
Bastille Day bash
Liberté!
Égalité!
Fraternité!
Buckets of Rosé!
One of the last embassy garden parties of the summer diplomatic season was held at the French ambassador’s residence on Monday night.
The magnificent late 19th-century pile on Ailesbury Road has just reopened after a lengthy renovation. More than 1,200 guests joined Her Excellency Céline Place in her 1.75-acre back garden for the annual Bastille Day celebrations.
All the political parties were represented. The Shinners were there, making a beeline for the ice-cream van when they arrived. They must have been happy to get out. They don’t attend the UK embassy party and they had to boycott one of their favourite ones – the US ambassador’s Fourth of July bash because of the US’s stance on Gaza.
Labour and the Social Democrats also snubbed Uncle Sam this year, although the members of Independent Ireland were happy to attend.
They all came together to toast La République (proposed in a proud Cavan accent by Dublin Lord Mayor Ray McAdam) and Ireland (proposed by the ambassador) and to hear Minister for Health Jennifer Carroll MacNeill deliver a speech in fluent French.
It was most impressive.
There wasn’t a frog’s leg or a piece of fromage in sight but the wine flowed and waiters patrolling the lawns with magnums of Whispering Angel rosé were in great demand.
Somehow, the denizens of Leinster House managed to regroup for their end-of-term parties on Wednesday night before the Dáil and Seanad rose on Thursday for the summer recess.
They’ll be back in mid-September.
