Wigmore: The Labour Party, Austen Deasy on Garret Fitzgerald, Dick Burke, and the radio and telly aw
THE RIGHT wing element in the Labour Party is planning a major assault on the left's stronghold of power within the party through the Administration Council. At the Party conference this autumn, an attempt will be made to change the party constitution to change the membership of the AC and to limit its powers. There will also be a challenge to the chairmanship of Michael D. Higgins - Dick Spring will probably be the right's candidate. If this assault should fail, then Michael O'Leary, Dick Spring and Liam Kavanagh will have a lot of thinking to do and among their options clearly will be to resign from Labour and join Fine Gael.
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ONE OF the most curious aspects to the Dick Burke affair was the handling of the matter by Garret FitzGerald. When he was told in the Dail chamber on the Wednesday morning of Burke's acceptance of Haughey's offer he seemed quite surprised by the news and asked to have its authenticity checked. However, it has since emergged that he had been informed the night before of the matter by Michael Lillis, who had been his adviser in the Taoiseach's Department on Northern Ireland.
ONE OF the main criticisms directed at Garret FitzGerald by Austen Deasy at the Fine Gael Parliamentary Party review of the election results was that he (Deasy) and others had been humiliated by the manner in which Garret had appointed the members of his Government last June. Deasy made the point that a captain of a parish football team wouldn't drop a player without telling him beforehand. Instead Garret appointed his Governnment with no consultation and hadn't even bothered to speak to him (Deasy) in the seven months since then.
THE ACCOMPANYING letter was dispatched by Dick Burke to Fine Gael county councillors throughout the country only days before Mr. Burke discovered that the national and Euroopean interests obliged him to accept the £60,000 a year a job in Brussels. Mr. Burke's view of the crucial signifiicance of his seat in Dublin West would
seem to have got lost in the more global considerations of his overriding responsibilities.
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THERE IS much speculation about the reaction of our Taoiseach to the initial statement of our UN ambassaador, Noel DOH, on the Malvinas disspute. Fact: the reaction was very addverse and quite properly so. Whatever about the international legal niceties of the "invasion/liberation" there is absolutely no reason why Ireland should appear to side with a colonial power, especially the British, in a dispute anywhere. and if it was necesssary to point out the transgression of international law involved it should also have been possible to make generrally sympathetic noises in favour of the Argen tinian case.
REMEMBER Tomas Roseingrave, the former national director of Muintir na Tire and presenter of that excellent consumer programme on RTE,. Home Truths? He is now President of the Economic and Social Committee of
the European Communities and has been presented with the Golden Medal of the Foundation for European Merit. Previous recipients of the awards innclude Jack Lynch, the Commission President Gaston Thorn, the former French Prime Minister Jacques Delmas, Roy Jenkins and the former Belgian Prime Minister Leo Tindemas.
THE JACOBS radio and television awards are an embarrassing occasion enough in themselves. The aura of self-congratulation which attends so much of the mediocrity which emaanates from RTE is off-putting but that this nausea should be inflicted on the nation's audience, or rather that happpily tiny fraction of it who watch RTE 2, is something of a different order entirely. If this cringe-making function is to continue it should take place in secret - Ely House should have suitable accommodation - and the occasion should be confined stricttly to consenting adults.