POLITICAL NOTEBOOK

IHAVE reason to understand Mixed Martial Arts more than most of my generation, who tend to be dismissive — if not downright critical — of a sport they see as barbaric. In fact, MMA has greatly cleaned up its act in recent years, as its former archcritic, Senator John McCain, has recently acknowledged. For those who don’t know, MMA is the sport at which Conor McGregor excels. I have more than a passing interest in boxing, too, what with former world heavyweight champion Floyd Patterson a friend of the family. Patterson was latterly married to an Offaly woman, and on occasional visits home he took an active interest in the local boxing club where my late uncle and godfather was a founding figure. Indeed, Patterson supplied gloves, bags and other equipment to the club; a boxing ring, too, on one occasion as memory serves. He was also a gentleman, certainly in his elder years when I met him. These days, my youngest son packs a punch in the ring, and my eldest lad is a blue belt in Brazilian Jiu-jitsu. In our household, we are big fans of the Crumlin man. One of McGregor’s core martial arts is Capoeira, which combines elements of dance and music, believe it or not. Sit up there and pay attention. I am trying to educate you here, folks. Capoeira is said to have been created by descendants of African slaves with Brazilian native influences, probably at the start of the 16th Century. That is one of the reasons why McGregor moves around the ring so, with quick and complex moves, but with great fluidity. Win, lose or draw in the boxing ring this weekend, I will remain an admirer for several reasons, not least for his chutzpah which is greatly under-appreciated in this country. There is more than an element of class snobbery behind the distaste directed towards McGregor, as was always the case towards boxing, by those who fail or do not want to understand the core skills of McGregor’s sport, or Floyd Mayweather’s for that matter, Mayweather being the greatest exponent of the art I have ever seen. I would go so far as to say that McGregor is the greatest sportsman this country has produced this century, greater that other greats to be admired such as Rory McIlroy, Brian O’Driscoll, Henry Shefflin and Colm Cooper, but would not expect everybody to agree. So there.

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THE McGregor influence is all around, from the stylish haircuts evident on the field of play at Croke Park this weekend, to the sharp-suited young lads around your nearest town. I was trying to impress this cultural phenomenon upon our Taoiseach recently, but he did not seem to get it. Leo’s heroes remain Emmanuel Macron, who is already falling out of favour with the French — the French being the French; and Justin Trudeau of course. Two more bland individuals you are unlikely to find anywhere. In Dublin, however, at both the grittier end and in the leafier suburbs, if you were to ask any young lad between 16 and 26 to pick their hero from a line-up of Varadkar, Trudeau, Macron and McGregor you would get your answer fairly quickly. Last time I looked, McGregor had five million followers on Twitter. Many, indeed a majority (I would wager) of those followers are from the US, working-class folk of the kind that elected Donald Trump. The lesson here: politicians turn their backs on, or in the case of McGregor, their noses up at a cultural phenomenon at their peril.

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AN issue which does not seem to bother those in the leafier suburbs too much, but is, or will soon cause great angst in the grittier parts is this to-do about public services or identity cards. It is an issue to which our friends in People Before Profit are already warming to. According to PBP, contracts for producing the cards were issued by the Department of Social Protection to Biometric Card Services, which was part of the Smurfit Kappa group. The original contract to Biometric Card Services was for €18m but this was apparently increased as a result of subsequent revisions. The State has entered a new deal to guarantee the issue of three million identity cards by the end of 2017. If successful, the State is expected to recoup a discount on the costs involved. Fair enough at one level, you may think, but at another, well, as the water charges debacle showed us, people are sensitive as to what uses their PPS numbers are applied. This issue will rumble away for a while, but I can see it blowing up in the face of Social Protection Minister Regina Doherty if she does not tread wearily. At a minimum, identity cards need to be extended beyond access to Social Protection services as quickly as possible, and even at that there will still be reservations.

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WHETHER identity cards will help ease access to social services more generally is a moot point. I am minded to believe they will. That said, access to services here is quite good all things considered. European-wide surveys have shown that the public service here is average or above average. Micheal Martin recently identified access to services as a significant issue. In my experience, where there is a problem, it reaches beyond core public services to include utility and technology companies, who are faceless when it comes to interacting with their paying customers. We all know how frustrating that can be. Here, let me share a recent holiday tale of woe. We booked an apartment for a week away with one of those dot.com booking companies. When we arrived, said apartment was locked up and in darkness and we were redirected elsewhere to a hotel room we had not booked, with purple walls and carpets as florid as any Conor McGregor suit. Subsequently, we were forwarded to another apartment with no air-conditioning in temperatures in the mid30s. Three weeks later, after being redirected from Dublin to the Netherlands, to Switzerland, then Spain and eventually to the US we finally got to talk to somebody who okayed repayment of money well overdue. The lesson: go through a travel agent from now on.

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THE Irish Independent interview with the family of Clodagh Hawe made for compelling reading. The family tell of their distress that there is no specific inheritance laws in cases of murder-suicide. Clodagh’s sister, Jacqueline Connolly, has called on the Government to change the laws of succession in such cases. The family paint a terrifying picture of Alan Hawe, having murdered his wife Clodagh, and three children, Liam, Niall and Ryan, sitting at a table to transfer funds from his and his wife’s joint bank account to his own account: “And the way he could sit down at a computer and transfer money from one account to another, and remember passcodes and passwords, after killing his wife and three sons?” Jacqueline said.

The family also confirmed a view formed by many after the murder-suicide, that Alan Hawe was a controlling husband. “He looked like the ideal husband, but he was a controlling type of person,” Clodagh’s mother, Mary Coll, said. “I would ask Clodagh if she would like to go shopping in Dublin, she would have to run it by him first.” And then this, a revealing line which might be recognised by many wives in a marriage with a controlling husband: “He could be as controlling with his silence as he could be with his words.” The body politic would do well to look again at the inheritance laws in cases of murder-suicide.