Politics

An investigation into the Garda fingerrprint affair reveals the following disquieting results:

• The former Minister for Justice, Patrick Cooney, seriously misled the Dail on the matter, either knowingly or unknowingly.
• Several senior Garda officers were and possibly still are involved in a systematic cover-up of the 'mistaken' fingerprint identification.
• The 'mistake' in the affair was of such seriousness as to question the reliability and integrity of the entire Garda fingerprint section.

AN irritant in Anglo Irish relations at present is the personality of the British ambassador, Walter Haydon. Jack Lynch cannot abide the man, all because of an incident at the Munich Olympics in 1972.

Garret FitzGerald has been reviled for excluding women from his shadow cabinet, but the fact is that it isn't his fault. He offered the Posts and Teleegraphs "shadow" to Joan Burke, who took 24 hours to think about it and then turned it down.

THE LABOUR Party is gearing itself for its bi-annual purge and as usual the target is what remains of the left wing. The Labour bosses, however, might just pause before completing their purge file and contemplate . the inclusion of one Brendan Halligan.

What follows is a guide to the complexities of leftwing political groupings in Ireland, and to pressure groups with no particular political affiliation which campaign on a broad spectrum of issues from civil liberties through women's rights to tax r.eform. N~ such directory can possibly hope to be comprehensive given the shifting nature of the political alliances. We've done our best and will welcome brief statements of aims, details of meetings etc from all comers to the political spectrum.

JAMES CALLAGHAN will have to learn a whole new political vocabulary if he is to come to terms with Jack Lynch. For "Lynch-speak" has become a most subtle and baffling political language and nowhere more so than in the area of Anglo-Irish relations. By Vincent Browne

STEPHEN COUGHLAN, T.D., Mayor of Limerick has in the last few months emerged as the George Wallace of Irish politics-personifying a parochialism and prejudice hitherto unknown at a national level-at least in recent times. Furthermore, he has become the focal point of unrest in the Labour Party which has been deeply divided on urban/rural lines since the General Election.

About six months ago a small group of Maoists decided to begin activities in the Shannon Industrial Estate. They came mainly from their strongest base in Trinity College. Their leader in Limerick, Arthur Allen, was formerly the Maoist Irish Student Movement's expert on the war in Vietnam. Like most Irish Maoists he comes from a wealthy background, his family owns the OdIum Company and are dis¬tinguished and wealthy Quakers. Obviously such a group were not an immediate threat to the "status quo" in Limerick. They took jobs in the Estate and gradually grew to about eight members.

Photographs show her always smiling, her eyes alive under the magnificent hats which appeared in so many pictures. The image is of warmth and easy friendliness.

Mrs. Kathleen Lemass has contributed immeasurably to her husband's happiness and peace of mind and thereby to his success in public life. Unintellectual and placid by temperament, she balances his drive and dedication.

"He was always very serious-minded," she remembers. "But I was fond of dancing and the gay life." She laughs. "But they say opposites attract, don't they? "

Sean Lemass was the dominant personality of the Sixties. In december 1969, Nusight undertook a comprehensive and in-depth profile on the man and his career.