Politics

There were rumours of Trouble before the Fine Gael Parliamentary meeting on Sept 22. It was the first such meeting since the referendum and Tom O'Donnell was said to be preparing an assault on the FitzGerald wing. The meeting opened with Fitzgerald being conciliatory biding wounds, reminding the TDs that there was a real world out there with real problems and it was time to get down to work, to climb every mountain, ford, every stream. The dissident TDs who had walked all over FitzGerald in the Dáil vote on the referendum, sat there when FitzGerald finished.

Could you give me some idea of the ground you would like to cover in the interview before we start?

Well, just a little on the Brussels negotiations, the forthcoming Budget and the cheap livestock loans ...

 What cheap livestock loans?

The £100 million fund for livestock investment announced by Brian Lenihan in November before the election.

Well, I'm not too clear ...

Is the cheap livestock scheme going ahead, Minister?

Em ...

In April of 1967 Brian Lenihan, Minister for Justice, went to the Dail with a modest little Censorship of Publications Bill. Four months later the measure was passed. In itself the Act was a minor reform. In effect it was a major step away from what have become known as "traditional values". Five thousand books were immediately taken off the banned list.

Mark Brennock examines the role and function of Young Fine Gael and profiles its Chairman, Chris O'Malley.

An examination of over seven thousand Dail questions processed during forty sitting days this year shows that only four out of every ten questions asked could be considered legitimate. The majority of the questions are designed to increase the electoral prospects of the TDs asking them. Over a full year, with the average number of sitting days of 87, the misuse of parliamentary questions costs the tax payer almost half a million pounds and contributes to the distortion of the democratic process.

Mary Holland examines the behaviour of the Fianna Fail leader in the Forum for a New Ireland.

What is Charles J. Haughey up to at the New Ireland Forum?

It starts, sometimes, with It Says In The Papers. That early in the day. A TD is chomping the toast when he hears mention of some story from, say, page three of the Indo. The story might, perhaps, be about how some government department bought a few boxes of Belgian blotting paper. To most people it's a story of little importance, but a certain kind of TD has the imagination and sheer hard neck to work this up into an electoral asset.

The week after Dean Victor Griffin was called "Paisley" in the Dail Mary Holland was on Saturday View with Brian Lenihan. She told him that this was just the start, that this was what the Amendment campaign had unleashed, that there would be more. Michael Mills of the Irish Press has been speaking very passionately on the same programme over the past two months about the Amendment and what it is going to do to our society. Michael Mills is speaking for many people when he says that the Amendment is going to do a great deal of damage.

Kerry Dougherty talks to Michael O'Riordan about fifty years of Irish Communism.

Vote Jon Hume for a better Londonderry", say the mocking slogans in Derry's Bogside. "SDLP = the Stoop Down Low Party" reads a wall-slogan near Free Derry corner. The SDLP denounce the Provisionals as fascists and mafia, embezzlers, thugs and kneecappers. Bishop Cathal Daly of Belfast says a vote for Sinn Fein could be seen as a vote for violence. Bishop Edward Daly of Derry calls on Catholics to examine their consciences before voting for candidates associated with violence.