By Peter Makem
The first crash to have happened at the village of Cliften in County Galway was over a hundred years ago when John Alcock and Arthur Brown made the first ever crossing of the Atlantic by air on June 15, 1919 after a 16-hour long flight from Newfoundland.
They were so glad to see dry land underneath them after a very difficult and incident ridden crossing that instead of trying on for London, decided to alight on what looked to be a plush green field. But it was a bog, and they ended up in a nosedive landing with the tail in the air, unhurt and triumphant.
A century later in a small hotel in the village on the west rim of Connemara came another nosedive of a crash, this time political. Eighty-one people attended a hotel dinner hosted by the Irish Parliament’s golf society. It included government ministers and other high officials in blatant breach of coronavirus regulations which permitted a maximum of ten people — and just a day after the government had tightened restrictions on gatherings.
“But Unionists in general will commemorate their sheer survival and that they are still part of the United Kingdom.”
When news broke regarding this fiasco, everybody wondered out loud how such an invitation could be sent in the first place and how they could all agree to attend in numbers that mocked their own guidelines.
It could not have been that each thought they were among ten exclusive invitees as the buzz around Dail Eireann at the time would have stopped that excuse. So when they all met up in the hotel nobody apparently thought that there was anything seriously wrong, or if they did, they kept it to themselves. Quite amazing.
The first casualty was Agriculture Minister Dara Calleary from nearby Ballina, County Mayo who stepped down as soon as the disaster was exposed and apologized “unreservedly.” His case is filled with irony. A very popular politician, there had been a local outcry when the government was formed that he had not been made a minister of agriculture and so have a strong western man on government.
Then out of the blue four weeks ago he was appointed because the earlier Minister of Agriculture Barry Cowan had been forced to stop down over a drink-driving conviction. There was immense delight and pride all round in his constituency.
So imagine the political humiliation for Taoiseach Michael Martin, not long into office, having to demand two ministerial resignations in a row for bad conduct. Calleary is deputy leader of the Fianna Fail party, and almost overnight, the adulation on his earlier appointment turned into snarls of anger from the people at this outlandish transgression.
A Fine Gael Senator Jerry Buttimer, who also attended the golf dinner, tendered his resignation as chair of the upper house of the Irish Parliament the following day and apologised for the “serious lapse in judgement.”
Others present at the event included the former Fine Gael Minister and EU Commissioner Phil Hogan who is also under pressure to resign. Supreme Court judge Séamus Woulfe, Fine Gael Senator Jerry Buttimer and the Independent TD (MP) Noel Grealish were also there.
Mr. Buttimer, deputy chairman of the Irish senate, resigned the following morning and apologized unreservedly for attending the event, which he said was “an unintended but serious lapse of judgement.”
Gardaí are now investigating the event for possible breaches of Covid-19 regulations.
It all genuinely sounds like some air crash. Four are killed instantly. Several others are in intensive care. Many have sustained a variety of injuries. Officials are still trying to find the black box to discover the exact madness, or arrogance, or stupidity, or drunkenness, or hubris, or the simple natural jig and reel of Irish politics that lead to this disaster.