ZOZIMUS

ATTENDING the launch of the book Judging Redmond &

Carson by historian Alvin Jackson in the Royal Irish Academy last Tuesday night, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar issued a health warning about what upcoming biographies of him may contain regarding his early political life.

Firstly he thought it was far too early for anybody to attempt a biography of him and his meteoric rise to power, before reflecting on the hazards of researching his political leanings while a young medical student in Trinity College. It was also the alma mater of both the nationalist leader John Redmond and his nemesis, the Unionist leader Edward Carson.

Jackson’s research proved that while attending TCD Dublin-born unionist firebrand Carson had expressed strong support for an independent Irish Parliament.

It only makes what the biographers find out about Leo’s youthful political leanings all the more intriguing.

The largely academic audience was impressed with the Taoiseach’s faultless delivery and erudition on the subject, although the more sceptical were inclined to put the latter down to his speech-writer, the historian Patrick Geoghegan.

Biographer Anthony Jordan informed Zozimus that on the 50th anniversary of Redmond’s death, Eamon De Valera was moved to say: “I am happy to play my part in doing honour to a great Wexford man to whom we are quite ready to give credit for having worked unselfishly according to his views for the welfare of this country.”

The honours at the symposium were performed by Ceann Comhairle Sean O Fearghail who battled through three hours of snow to make it to the event in the National Gallery.

ZOZIMUS can see a little conundrum coming for It Says In The Papers on RTE Radio One’s Morning Ireland. Having checked the latest ABC figures for The Times Ireland Edition, it turns out the Rupert-Murdoch-owned title is handing out 5,227 copies of its supposed 9,592 circulation for free. That means the number of actively purchased copies, as they call them — the ones which people actually go into the shop and buy — stands at just 4,365. And that is less than half the ‘actively purchased’ copies of many Irish regional titles.

So, how long before the editors of those titles start looking for the airtime being afforded to the Britishowned newspaper? Watch this space.

IT seemed slightly incongruous to be munching fancy canapes and drinking fine wines in Dublin Castle for the opening of Coming Home — the exhibition of famine paintings from the Great Hunger museum at Quinnipiac University in the United States.

The striking thing about the exhibition is that many of the paintings of the era itself are rather joyful, with peasants dancing to pipers along with children, chickens and the occasional tumbled down cabin. The more contemporary art, such as Michael Farrell’s paintings and Rowan Gillespie’s Famine Tables present a far starker and more poignant picture of the event.

The exhibition last Wednesday night attracted a great throng of artistic types, but most of the guests had cleared out of The Coach House in Dublin Castle so that President Michael D could have a private view of the exhibition, before joining us in the OPW’s headquarters across the castle yard.

During a recent visit to Australia we’re told he was given four minutes to talk at some event, and took it literally, talking for 44 minutes. He did it again with an erudite treatise on what Cecil Woodham-Smith termed ‘The Great Hunger’, and what our President calls, in the vernacular An Gorta Mor.

Despite the ‘Thomas Davis Lecture’ tone of his talk, he did touch on an important political point, that “some post-Famine communities profited from it” — meaning that the disappearance of four million people over a period meant that many of those who stayed behind benefited greatly.

He also talked about “the great silence” which meant that the Famine was not really talked about in Ireland for over a century and, a little like St Patrick’s Day and Halloween, we have now imported it back from the United States.

Socialite Norma Smurfit and artists Brian Burke and Robert Ballagh were among the throng. The exhibition is worth seeing for anyone interested in art or the torturous course of Irish history.

******* ZOZIMUS was surprised to see that the sometimes militant and certainly very vocal National Union of Journalists (NUJ) found itself on the wrong end of the gender pay gap, and not in the way it would have wished.

When the general secretary of the London-based hacks union, Michelle Stanistreet, went on maternity leave, her deputy, Dublin-based Seamus Dooley, took over the top job.

In her absence, it was then noticed that she was being paid less than Mr Dooley, even though there was meant to be a 12.5pc differential between the general secretary and her deputy.

In simpler terms, the woman in the top job was being paid considerably less than her male second-in-command.

Red faces all round we’d guess — but as the NUJ monthly magazine The Journalist has now revealed, with the very positive headline ‘NUJ leader gets 23pc pay increase’, Ms Stanistreet has now had her pay hiked from £68,017 to £83,666 to deal with the gender gap that has been exercising so many people in media organisations like the BBC and RTE. We wonder did she get back pay as well? The other intriguing thought occurred to us: if the gender pay discrepancy arose in the National Union of Journalists, what of our friends in other much bigger Irish unions? Some well-paid union bosses like to keep their pay and perks a closely guarded secret, especially from their members. Before they start singing The Red Flag again, perhaps it is time for the senior echelons of the trade union movement to come clean.