SINN FÉIN press conferences could never be described as laugh-a-minute affairs. But yesterday's manifesto launch, overshadowed by emerging details of the Cork Airport tragedy, involving a flight that had originated in Belfast, made this a particularly solemn event, writes KATHY SHERIDAN
“I think maybe it puts all the rest of what we are all about in some context,” said Gerry Adams.
A sense of the horror unfolding in those same moments for many families took the edge off the usual gladiatorial question-and-answer session.
Lingering resentment at Sinn Féin’s repeated failure to offer a cup of coffee of a morning, still less a fluffy croissant, was suppressed. Its 40-page manifesto came with a peace offering in the form of a black, unbranded USB key. It came fully loaded – with a digital version of the manifesto.
A slew of journalists and at least three camera crews ventured into unfamiliar territory, otherwise known as Parnell Square.
The more cultured among us had no problem finding Cassidy’s, a self-described “family-run, boutique hotel”, as it’s located opposite the Gate theatre (where, um, Yasmina Reza’s God of Carnage is running).
Since the same old red-brick, three-star establishment also played host to Richard Boyd Barrett last week, one fondly imagined the proprietor to be some strikingly coiffed, philosopher envoy of the ordinary man. Developer Mick Wallace, maybe.
It turns out to be the equally remarkably coiffed, wily old capitalist FFer from Westmeath, Senator Donie.
Upstairs in the Lir Suite (a homage, no doubt, to the poor Children of Lir, who spent hundreds of years freezing their little feathers off in Westmeath), the smoking Sinn Féin backdrop that almost saw off the National Gallery extension last Sunday due to an overheating spot-lamp still carries the scar.
Yesterday, during what Mary Lou McDonald called “musical microphones” – when sound technicians had to move with lightning speed to relocate their mikes under a new speaker – one of them nearly brought Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin’s podium down.
“You’re wrecking the house,” said an alarmed Caoimhghín. Caoimhghín, we note, calls his boss “Gearóid”. It takes longer to wrap your tongue around once you enunciate it in Caoimhghín’s rotund oratorical style, and sounds altogether more impressive. Pearse Doherty, the new fair-haired boy with the fabulously free-flowing Gaeilge, just calls him Gerry.
The 33-year-old from Gweedore is settling very nicely into his new role as Gerry’s economics go-to man. The boss’s exhalation of relief is almost audible when someone asks why Sinn Féin thinks it’s fine to burn the bondholders or kill off Nama, and he can pass the baton to whip-smart, serious Pearse. So no more pretending.
Pearse is to Gerry what Noonan is to Kenny. They know which end of a balance sheet is up, thus freeing the leaders up to be leaderly, to smile and charm, to emote and fulminate, and occasionally expound on economic policy in pleasingly broad-brush fashion.
And look, all you nice, plentiful, middle-earning, middle-class voters, Sinn Féin might come over like a bunch of hard lefties who only take home the average industrial wage (which they do, in fairness, as Mary Lou points out – the rest goes to the party), but honest, there’s nothing to fear here. To be sure, Pearse has ingested the World Wealth Report, which suggests that there’s a jammy crowd of high-net-worth individuals who between them have more than “€300 billion of wealth here in this State”. But it’s income rather than assets that Pearse has his eye on, apparently, and he reckons a 1 per cent wealth tax should bring in a handy billion or so.
Sounds reasonable to us. But is there a whiff of “old-fashioned, Seventies, socialist sort of attitude towards wealth,” asks a journalist.
Good grief, no. “Not at all . . . not at all,” protest all four, with a surprised, synchronised nodding of heads.
“Okay everybody. Sásta?” asks the smiling leader, as he wraps up proceedings and steps down from the podium, pausing to shake the hand of a surprised, rather charmed young female observer before heading back to the hustings.
She’s thinking about it, she says . . .