PRESIDENT Michael D. Higgins is a hard act to follow. There are so many things to admire about his 14 years in Áras an Uachtaráin, particularly his insistence on speaking up for social justice around the world. But it was his courage in continuing to say things that he wanted to say while official Ireland tutted and told him to shut up that will perhaps be the defining aspect of his tenure.
Catherine Connolly is far from a carbon copy of President Higgins, but she shares with him a passion for justice and equality – and a refusal to be cowed by those who continue to struggle with the fact that the Áras is no longer a retirement home for Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil placeholders.
And like President Higgins, Ms Connolly reflects the people of Ireland in her dogged pursuit of justice for Palestinians and an end to the genocide in Gaza. That’s one of the biggest issues facing the Irish people at present and they are in no doubt about whose side they are on when it comes to the continued Israeli terror. But it’s an issue which the Irish media has decided to employ as a divider as a moribund gathers pace.
On Monday, the West Galway TD said during a wider discussion on Radio Ulster that Hamas are “part of the fabric of the Palestinian people”. Her words drew faux shock and horror from her political opponents as well as, let it be said, some in the left coalition which is backing her, spooked by the reaction of the media and the big parties. It mattered not a jot what words Ms Connolly would have used to describe the position Hamas holds in Gaza – something would have been identified as a point of attack. In what she said, Ms Connolly was merely stating the obvious; to describe Hamas as part of the fabric of Palestine is to make no moral or political judgment, it is simply to observe the reality that they part and of the country they come from.
Similarly, to say the IRA was part of the fabric of Andersonstown is not to approve of the IRA, it is simply to reflect the reality. To say the UVF is part of the fabric of the Shankill is to make no comment on the place they hold within that society, it is simply to acknowledge that they are part of that society.
It is no coincidence that the Fianna Fáil candidate, ex-Dublin football manager Jim Gavin, put his size nine in it early on when he said that Israel had achieved its objectives in Gaza. Anything that Ms Connolly said about Gaza was inevitably going to be fallen upon by her FF opponents in politics and in the media in an attempt to mitigate the damage done by Mr Gavin on this hottest of hot-button issues.
While the Dublin media is furiously denouncing Catherine Connolly’s statement of the obvious, they’re also assailing Fine Gael candidate Heather Humphreys over her family connections to the Orange Order, not knowing – or not caring – that the rural County Monaghan Orange Order is a world removed from the vulgar and aggressive Orange Order of northern towns and cities. But it makes a good headline. And that’s what counts.
