One horse race to Aras sparks to life late for Apprentice dragons
WHAT a whirlwind week for Peter Casey who finally injected a bit of life into the damp squib that has been the presidential campaign, with his ill judged comments on Travellers.
Doing a Donald Trump to get votes was a surprising move which has convulsed the nation on an issue few really want to get to grips with; resiling from his threat to quit the race less so.
The creeping problems in Traveller society have begun to reveal themselves in the past year. It is widely known that suicide is impacting the Traveller community far more than anyone imagined, at six times higher than the national average. Earlier this month a Traveller family in County Wexford who lost seven members to suicide, including three children, revealed they have been ‘ begging’ for support from mental health services and the local authority, unsuccessfully. Coupled with problems relating to education, health, diet and addiction, the Traveller community clearly need to be supported and like expert marksmen shooting a duck in a barrel, all five election candidates have turned on Casey for his comments, as has the Taoiseach Leo Varadkar. Everyone knows Casey was playing to the gallery by taking aim at Travellers. Riding on public opprobrium following an article in a national newspaper which highlighted how an extended Traveller family refused homes in a six-house estate in Cabra Cross near Thurles, he opened his trap.
The quality of the houses in the €1.7m estate are the stuff of dreams for many people either struggling to pay their mortgage or to get on the property ladder and the decision of the families to refuse them has lead to a public outcry. The extended family, who have lived on an unauthorised site across the road from the estate, refused to move in because there is no grazing land for their horses. Flagging at 2 per cent in national polls, Casey seized the moment and mouthed off. The issue he has unearthed is one which needs a cool-headed response, not a knee jerk reaction which will ultimately only end up alienating members of our parishes, communities, villages and towns who interact with us on a daily basis.
Judging by the response in a poll on South East Radio he hit a nerve and will ride that wave to the polling booths, but still fall well short, as all indications are that Michael D will be luxuriating in his Aras abode for the foreseeable. At a time of international chaos, there is something comforting about an overpaid, culturally verbose, elder statesman being in charge of a country bouncing back from the jaws of recession. In Michael D we have a president who loves to live and defies anybody to stop him from enjoying life. He can be short with journalists, but this is not him being rude. Rather it is just his confidence shining through. On the matter of his age, I, too, was unsure about how he’d last seven more years, but having heard him speak in person was blown always by his energy, enthusiasm and passion, even if it was for past battles on the social, as well as on the field of battle. By now his every expense must have been tracked down for a national press baying for blood, having been charged with injecting a bit of colour into a presidential campaign which was always gong to be a foregone conclusion.