Casey gets warm Cork welcome
It was a tale of two Caseys when Áras hopeful Peter met the people of Tipperary and Cork yesterday
ÁRAS hopeful Peter Casey got a mixed reception when he travelled to Cork and Tipperary yesterday in the wake of his disparaging remarks about Travellers.
While locals in the English Market praised him for ‘speaking the truth’, in Tipperary where the families at the centre of the row live, he was branded ‘a racist’. Meanwhile, an alliance of 28 campaign groups have called on him to quit the Áras race.
HE’S a pariah to liberal Ireland but the view of Peter Casey on the streets of Cork yesterday was distinctly warmer.
As he and his wife Helen disembarked the train in Kent Station yesterday morning, both wearing expensive Barbour jackets, a woman quickly approached to shake his hand and congratulate him for saying ‘what a lot of people haven’t got the guts’ to.
Casey’s comments, accusing Travellers of failing to pay their taxes and camping on other people’s land have outraged Establishment Ireland but as he entered the city’s famous English Market, more people approached him with well wishes.
‘I hope he wins, but everything is stacked against him; he said what everyone is afraid to,’ one woman told the gaggle of reporters following him. And it appeared another trader was almost nervous to admit she was a fan or agreed with his sentiments – but as she served him one of her hot sausages, she waived the charge.
‘You are 100% right,’ a man behind another counter shouted at Casey as he meandered by. A colleague nodded in agreement. ‘He speaks the truth’ and he’s ‘not the normal politician’. When asked his name, one of these traders nervously replied: ‘Do you want me to get burnt out of my home tonight?’
The trip to Cork was only the opener for the day’s main act, the trip to Tipp, where Casey had pledged to visit a group of houses at the centre of a dispute between the county council and the local Travelling community.
The houses, at Cabra Bridge outside Thurles, have been uninhabited for months after local Travellers who were due to move into the new homes, say the local authority built the houses with no room for horse grazing as they say was agreed.
The Travelling community say horses are a lifeline and an integral part of their culture, and they could not move into the houses without appropriate land for grazing.
Moments before Casey arrived at the site, someone from the nearby halting site – hidden high up an embankment by a ditch – shouted ‘Peter Casey is a racist’ to the media down below.
The contrast to Cork was stark as the feelgood atmosphere that greeted the candidate in Cork dissipated. Slowly, he walked up the abnormally busy country road, which had a heavy Garda presence, to quietly observe the properties with his wife. He briefly made some remarks to the media, but left without meeting the families, claiming he didn’t want to invade their privacy.
‘They know I’m here, if they wanted, they could come here. I’ll be invading their privacy by going down there,’ he said.
‘I was here to perhaps... hoping to explain. My position is that the Proclamation said we should cherish all the children of the nation equally. It doesn’t say we should cherish some children more equal than others.’
‘This is just wrong, there is no other way to describe it,’ he added.
Shortly after the relatively small Casey entourage departed, a group of peaceful protesters moved down the road to the gates of the controversial housing complex and accused him of running away.
TJ Hogan, a policy officer with the Irish Traveller Movement, told reporters the businessman was borrowing a trick from the Donald Trump playbook.
‘He is just fuelling his campaign with hatred and racism. It’s not right that he targets one community, we are only 40,000 people.
‘And he is fuelling his campaign on racism and we are in solidarity with a lot of different ethnic minorities across this State and we are in a collective approach, and that’s the way Ireland should be. And the person who represents us should represent that as well.’
Barry McCarthy, a local Traveller who is one of those involved in the row with the council, spoke softly about how the families involved felt they were almost being used as political footballs and that it has frightened their young children. ‘They are very frightened at the moment about this issue... You know what the kids are like, with these talks that he is coming out with,’ he told the Mail.
Despite leaving without meeting or talking to one other, it appears back-channel efforts were made later to arrange a meeting between Mr Casey and a representative of a local Traveller advocacy group. The attempts appear to have failed.
As he met locals in Hayes’ Hotel, home of the GAA, Casey confirmed he would be willing to buy the properties from the council, if that’s what they wanted – in what one could be forgiven for considering a bombastic Trumpesque move.
‘I did think about it, but I think it would be wrong... you know, it would be seen as opportunistic and wrong.
‘If the council asked me to, I would certainly consider that,’ he told the Mail. ‘If the council can’t come to a resolution themselves... [But] I’d be hopeful [that they] would, and I’d be hopeful that the Travelling community would see sense and accept the generosity of the council.’
‘Peter Casey is a racist’