Three unwise women will not be bearing gifts for us
THREE formidable female politicians proved this week that Ireland’s future under Brexit is going to be a very hard one indeed. Scottish first minister Nicola Sturgeon – who is not a head of state as she was constantly referred to – was fêted and treated like royalty by our politicians when she made a whirlwind visit this week when she also gave a ‘historic’ address to the Seanad.
Was it really necessary for the leader of the SNP to be swept around Dublin by a fleet of Garda outriders from the hard-pressed ‘traffic corps’ escorted by armed gardaí as bemused motorists settled into another day of traffic gridlock?
Before being mobbed for senatorial selfies, Sturgeon told the members that a second Scottish independence referendum was on the cards after the UK vote to leave the EU.
This was unanimously backed by our political cadres. Indeed they are more supportive of it than the people of Scotland as revealed in a recent ‘YouGov’ poll with 56% opposed to the idea.
Aligning ourselves with Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP is a big mistake. Do people not remember the virulence two years ago of the SNP referendum campaign to leave the United Kingdom?
Despite the ‘once in a generation’ pleas for a Yes vote, the SNP was roundly defeated by 55% to 45%.
But no sooner had the vote been declared than Nicola Sturgeon was off looking for a second referendum!
The other formidable politician who nailed her anti-Irish colours to the mast this week is Northern First Minister Arlene Foster.
We all know the Democratic Unionist Party of which she is leader is well beyond its ‘stale before’ date but they are in the ascendancy in the only land border the EU shares with the UK.
Apart from gratuitously dismissing Enda Kenny’s ‘All-Ireland’ forum on Brexit, and snubbing every other leader at the British Irish Council last week, Arlene Foster went one step further this week with the outrageous suggestion that ‘the Republic’ should police the EU border for the UK.
In other words Mrs Foster – who recently accused our IDA of deliberately badmouthing Northern investment – now wants Irish ports and airports to regulate and restrict EU nationals who legally land here in case they might subsequently slip over the border into the ‘UK’! Imagine how the European Union, our only allies after Brexit and Trump, react to that lunatic idea?
Mrs Foster and the DUP have no interest in the Republic of Ireland. They have completely aligned themselves with Theresa May and the British Government whose only policy seems to be the inane slogan ‘Brexit is Brexit’!
Mrs May didn’t even bother to turn up at the British Irish Council meeting last week; her first since arriving in No.10 Downing Street. How is that for inter-island respect?
Let us be under no illusion that Sturgeon, Foster or May are our allies on the very difficult road ahead.
After the ‘have cake and eat it’ Brexit remark seen on briefing papers in the arms of a UK political aide, we are not only going to be geographically adrift from Europe we are going to be in very stormy waters. The lifeboats, if they arrive, will not be crewed by Nicola, Arlene or Theresa.
Whatever way the water charge debacle ends up, it is the Dublin worker who is going to pay the bill. This week I was told of two similar size properties, one in Cavan and one in Dublin. The Dublin home’s property tax bill is 20 times higher than its rural counterpart! Now Fianna Fáil want to lump the water charges onto the property tax – only one target there so. The other ‘left-wing’ TDs – ironically most of whom are from the capital – simply revert to the mantra that the water charge should be loaded on to income tax. Given the majority of PAYE workers are based in the greater Dublin area, there are no prizes for guessing whose take-home pay is going to be depleted further.
Taoiseach Enda Kenny went to the US this week to call into Apple CEO Tim Cook – even though he seemed to know in advance what he would be told by the boss of the world’s biggest firm. My week was dominated by the stories from cystic fibrosis sufferers benefiting from Orkambi. Fergal Keyes, 29, told me how in the year before he started taking Orkambi he spent six months in hospital. This year he hasn’t spent a single night in St Vincent’s! Could Mr Kenny not have rocked up to the HQ of Orkambi maker Vertex in Boston looking for a meeting instead of visiting Mr Cook?