Wigmore - Paddy Cooney, Fine Gael's John Kelly, Tom O'Dea and Paddy Lindsay of the High Court

IN OUR RECENT disclosures on the infiltration tactics of The Workers' Party we did not have space to menntion how members or close supporters of the party had managed to get themmselves into key positions in the Nationnal Union of Journalists (NUJ) in Ireeland. There are 4 WP people on the 17 person council of the NUJ for Ireland. These are Padraigh Yeates, editor of The Irish People, John Lynch from the mid-Leinster Branch of the NUJ, Nuala Ni Domhnaill of RTE and Patrick Kinnsella also of RTE, the station's finanncial correspondent - he is a former member of the party and still retains close links but is regarded as a lighttweight by the party's Industrial Secction. Members of the party are also very strong in the Periodicals and Pubblic Relations Branch of the union. Even Tomas MacGiolia has managed to beecome a member of this branch although he hardly meets the requirements for membership, including the stipulation that he earn three fifths of his income from journalism - MacGiolia is still paid by the ESB from which he took early retirement.

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WE WERE recently contacted by a gentleman who had just been released from Cork jail and who claimed to be working in Ireland for M 16. He claimmed to have joined the British army in 1962 and to have been given intelliigence training in 1964. He said he was used to spy on associates of the landdlord Rachman and of the corrupt English architect, Dan Poulson. He says that he was first ordered to Ireeland to spy on people who were beelieved to have been responsible for the death of another British spy, Lockhart. He also claimed to have been instructed by an official in the British embassy to take a job as a waiter in a well known Dublin restaurant to spy on Neil Blanney. He claims to have become disillussioned with intelligence work and anyyway. had fallen in love with an Irish girl in Sligo and decided to live here. The British authorities wanted him back in England however, he claimed, and he was forced to commit a series of indictable crimes to stay out of the clutches of the British establishhment. Hence his soujourn in Cork jail. He claimed to have had inside information on how the British were responsible for the Dublin bombings in December 1972 and on a variety of other British under-cover operaations in Ireland. We subsequently learned that the whole tale was a fabbrication and that he was simply trying to evade extradition proceedings on forgery charges. Such are the joys of journalism.

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JOHN KELLY'S predeliction for an uncontaminated Fine Gael Government may be forced on his colleagues, irresspective of their preferences. The Labbour conference in the autumn will deetermine the future course of the party and in spite of Michael O'Leary's deetermination to take on the "left" he is not likely to be able to persuade a majjority of the rank and file to follow the course that has proved so disastrous for the party since 1969. Given that, the only real hope of Fine Gael makking it on its own is that several Labour TDs defect to them. We have already suggested that Dick Spring, Liam Kavvanagh and Michael O'Leary himself may be considering such a move but Fine Gael would need more recruits from Labour to offer a realistic prosspect of forming a majority Governnment on its own.

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PADDY LINDSAY, Master of the High Court and former Fine Gael TD, reecently divulged that when the 1954-57 Coalition Government fell, miniisters returned to Aras an Uachtarain to hand in their seals of office - the pracctice has since been discontinued.
Lindsay, who was then Minister for the Gaeltacht, travelled in a car with the Taoiseach, John A. Costello, and the Minister for Agriculture, James Dillon . As they passed by a historic pub on the quays a discussion ensued about public houses. Dillon said that the only public house he had ever been in belonged to his mother in Ballaghaaderreen. Costello owned up to having been in a pub once, this was in Tereenure and somebody had tried to poison him with orange juice. Lindsay mutttered under his breath "now I know why we're travelling back to Aras an Uachtarain."

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TOM O'DEA, the TV critic of The Irish Press recently wrote a meandering treatise about Magill, Today Tonight, Eoghan Harris and The Workers' Party. In the course of the piece he quoted from a letter written privateely to him by the editor of Magill. Since the gloves are off, herewith a tittbit on a recently acquired hobby of Mr. O'Dea: it is photographing from interesting angles, young girls playing hockey at pitches near O'Dea's home in Rathfarnham.

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PADDY COONEY in the Dail, recently castigated RTE for referring to the "Falklands" as the Malvinas in its Irish language news programmes. V.B.