A Green on the green walked away with the top prize in Oireachtas Golf Society’s annual Christmas hamper competition on Monday.
Francis Noel Duffy is the society’s first member from the Green Party, and our spies stalking the fairways at Powerscourt’s testing East Course tell us that the TD for Dublin South West is a very accomplished golfer.
Clearly, Deputy Duffy does not share the view held by some environmentalists that golf courses destroy the natural landscape and should be rewilded, allowing native flora and fauna to thrive in their natural habitat. And neither, one presumes, does his wife, Green Party deputy leader and Minister for Tourism and Sport, Catherine Martin.
We understand that Francis Noel is pally with Galway East independent TD and society stalwart Noel Grealish, who encouraged him to join.
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The event at the championship course in Wicklow was deemed a massive success. Secretary Donie Cassidy says it was the biggest hamper competition in the 50-year history of the society. “After the last two years, people were just glad to get out again and meet up for the annual Christmas outing,” he said.
It’s been a good end to an eventful year for the former TD for Westmeath, after a charge against him relating to the infamous Clifden Golfgate saga in 2020 was dismissed in February. He was elected vice-president of Fianna Fáil last month.
While there was no turkey or ham included in the prize, Donie says “it was a fabulous hamper. Fabulous”.
“Whiskey, brandy, biscuits, sweets, cake…you name it.”
As it was the final outing of the year, everyone won a prize because all golfers had to bring a bottle and donate it to the fund. But Donie, what if somebody won back the bottle of banana liqueur they excavated from the back of the sideboard or the paint-stripping plonkerino they bought for tuppence on the way to the competition?
“Doesn’t bother me. I’m a lifelong pioneer.”
And sure isn’t it nice to win something?
Runner-up on the day was former Independent TD for Monaghan Paudge Connolly, and third place went to political blast from the past Noel Dempsey, the former Fianna Fáil minister from Meath.
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MacSharry’s bluff and bluster called out
Marc MacSharry has made a lot of noise in the Dáil in recent years about not getting enough speaking time in the chamber. He was up to his usual tricks on Wednesday, tearing strips off the Leas-Cheann Comhairle for not giving him the same amount of speaking time she had afforded to other TDs, while accusing Catherine Connolly of discriminating against him.
The predictable upshot was a temporary suspension of the sitting and the mandatory flounce-out from the Sligo TD. Marc recently relocated to the Independent benches when he resigned from Fianna Fáil over what he claimed was unfair handling by the leadership of his proposed readmission to the parliamentary party.
There are many examples of his playacting in parliament, right back to his days in the upper house in 2013 when he called then taoiseach Enda Kenny “a clown” and accused him of “urinating on the Seanad”.
On the issue of speaking rights, MacSharry, by now in the Dáil, tormented leas cheann comhairle Pat the Cope Gallagher with his roaring about Independent deputies such as Michael Healy-Rae and Mattie McGrath hogging all the speaking time.
They were making a joke of the proceedings, he thundered, turning questions on promised legislation into “Strictly Come Dancing” and acting like the half-time performers.
“We have 44 [Fianna Fáil] deputies here but we have Kofi Annan McGrath and Ban Ki-moon Healy-Rae up every day, undermining this country’s democracy,” he bellowed.
“Outrageous! Disgrace!” he thundered, as Kofi and Ban Ki-moon howled in protest. “For Christ’s sake, control them. The business committee of this house is a joke.”
Marc said he was going to set up his own technical group with the other Sligo-Leitrim TDs (who wanted nothing to do with it). Pat the Cope threated to suspend the house if he didn’t shut up. “Suspend it if you like. The same people have the floor all the time.”
The house was duly suspended.
It’s interesting to see that MacSharry complained about the Dáil business committee, the same committee which received a formal complaint this week about his conduct in the Dáil on Wednesday.
Interesting because when this latest outburst was discussed, it turns out his grandstanding has not been ignored at a higher level. And it further transpired, to nobody’s surprise, that Marc has been roaring through his hat all along.
While discussing his conduct – Donegal’s Thomas Pringle alleged that Wednesday’s performance was offensive to Catherine Connolly – the Ceann Comhairle revealed that Oireachtas staff had looked into Deputy MacSharry’s speaking record in the Dáil and, in contrast to his noisy bellyaching, the permanently incandescent TD figured in the top 10 list for those who spoke the most.
It looks like the authorities, obviously as sick of his antics as everyone else, have called his bluff.
Meanwhile, in a packed week for the business committee, Mattie McGrath was unsuccessful in his bid to have the Oireachtas host the Living Crib in the grounds on Leinster House, on the grassy plain of Leinster Lawn. Roscommon Independent Denis Naughten asked Mattie if he could supply a few horny ewes for the living tableau.
“I can get you horny ewes, rams, hoggets, mountainy sheep. No problem.”
However, he failed to get backing from colleagues when an Oireachtas official gave the idea the thumbs down, citing health and safety issues involved in bringing members of the public through the gates.
“Nonsense,” said a disappointed Mattie afterwards, “there’s plenty of grass there and rails inside and railings outside. They could even stand behind them and pet the animals from there.”
Cian O’Callaghan of the Social Democrats said it was an issue for the Lord Mayor of Dublin and the Dáil should not interfere.
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Healy breakthrough
The Healy-Rae political empire has made a major breakthrough in the United States of America and the green and gold carpet is now officially on standby in Kilgarvan for the new governor of Massachusetts, Maura Healey.
The Democrat from Maryland is the State’s first female governor and she joins Oregan’s Tina Kotec as the first openly lesbian governors elected in America.
And in Kerry, the Healy-Raes are overjoyed. Governor Healey’s grandfather Jeremiah hailed from the village of Kilgarvan, the epicentre of the Healy-Rae political machine and home to TDs Michael and Danny.
On Friday, Michael congratulated Maura on his own behalf and on behalf of The Kingdom and invited her to visit the village of her forebears as soon as her schedule permits.
“I hope that her first overseas trip will be across to Ireland and back to her homeplace of Kerry and I will take her to see where her people are buried,” he said yesterday. “You see, all the Healys in Kilgarvan are sort-of-related anyway. We started leaving around the middle of the 1800s – different tranches of them upped and left every 50 years or so, so I’d be more than confident that the new governor is one of our own. ‘Twould be only wonderful to welcome her back.”
And imagine, he says, if she arrived for her swearing-in wearing a cap.
Maura Healey served as Massachusetts attorney general since 2015 and she played professional basketball in Austria before becoming a civil rights lawyer. She beat Republican nominee and Donald Trump’s candidate, Geoff Diehl, in this week’s election, when Trump turned out to be a loser even when he isn’t on the ballot paper.
With the Healy-Raes celebrating, it seems churlish to point out a rather distressing aspect of the new governor’s Irish lineage, but it has to be done. You see, Maura’s grandmother Margaret, married to Jeremiah from Kilgarvan, is actually a Riordan from… Cork. Macroom to be precise.
Michael Healy-Rae is saying nothing. We are not sure if he has broken the news yet to Danny. But there is bound to be friction between the two camps if a visit looks likely. The struggle to claim Governor Healey could easily turn vicious if the Cork brigade decide to assert their bragging rights. Which is a given.
Maybe she should avoid Munster entirely and head straight for the West, where an equally big welcome would be on the mat. Maura’s great-grandmother, Katherine Tracy, was a native of Ballinasloe in Galway.
Although we wouldn’t bet against the Healy-Raes in this political custody battle.
Duffy at the Dáil
There was a lovely event in the Ceann Comhairle’s private diningroom on Wednesday morning when Fr John Joe Duffy, Parish Priest of Creeslough in Donegal, celebrated the annual mass in Leinster House in memory of deceased staff and members of the Oireachtas.
The mass was organised by the Rural Independents, Mattie McGrath and Michael Collins. “A moving and beautiful occasion,” is how one attendee described the service.
Tipperary TD Mattie asked Fr Duffy to celebrate it but said that he hadn’t expected the curate, who provided so much comfort and support to his Donegal community during the recent tragedy, to accept the invitation as he had to fit it around all the month’s mind masses taking place in his parish.
The priest spoke of his roots in Burtonport in Donegal, where he grew up around boats and the sea. Boats make ripples, he told the congregation of staffers and politicians, and those ripples move outwards and cause a wider effect, in the same way that the people of Creeslough felt the ripples of love from all over Ireland and beyond.
It was a busy Dáil day, with a lot of committees in session, and Mattie said he didn’t have time to read out all the apologies from TDs and Senators. At one point, as latecomer politicians tiptoed into the seats nearest the door, the celebrant joked: “I’m worried that so many of you are aspiring to the back benches.”
There was an unexpected drama after the mass. When the candles on the altar were blown out, the holy smoke set off a detector and the fire alarm went off, leading to the evacuation of the Dáil restaurant and kitchen for a couple of hours. The politicians dining inside were unceremoniously turfed out into the open air until the clear was given.
Then it was business as usual for the staff, who put on a special menu the following day for the young participants in Seanad na nÓg. The highlight was a hot chocolate station with homemade cookies with the overgrown political children who hadn’t yet returned to their constituencies for the weekend making strenuous representations for its retention on a permanent basis.
