MATT COOPER: WHY WE NEED TO EASE UP ON HEALY-RAE

DANNY Healy-Rae has been the subject of a pretty intense online campaign – which some might describe as bullying – in recent days. Transport Minister Shane Ross is among those who joined in to taunt the Kerry politician about a photograph taken at Croke Park last Sunday.

If you haven’t seen it, the photo shows Healy-Rae in the Hogan Stand, at the very back of the premium level, in the row just under the windows to the area where people mingle with food and drink.

Healy-Rae seems to be taking a nap. Cue outrage, as a mob took to Twitter and Facebook to damn him. Tens of thousands of eager fans were unable to get tickets for the All-Ireland senior hurling final between Limerick and Galway, and there’s a Kerryman, apparently asleep while the drama unfolded.

Assumptions were made quickly. He’d been drinking and he was sleeping it off. He was only there because he was a freeloading politician who didn’t have to pay for his ticket. Minister Ross waded in quickly, taking to Twitter to say: ‘Is this the waste of a good ticket?’ with the offending photo attached.

Except all may not have been as it seemed.

Despite his vocal support for the (failed) campaign to allow drivers to have a pint-and-a-half in rural Ireland before getting into their cars to drive home, Healy-Rae himself does not drink alcohol. So he wasn’t drunk, nor was he sleeping off the excesses of the night before.

Animated

A couple of other things in the photograph suggested that the game might not have been in play while the photo of Healy-Rae was snapped. For one thing, a teenage girl in a Galway jersey was clearly engrossed by her phone. Nothing unusual in that, you might say, given that many people at games and concerts are forever on their phone, instead of concentrating on the action in front of them. But something about her demeanour suggested there was nothing going on in front of her to distract her. Nor did the people around Healy-Rae seem particularly animated by anything, and there were people behind the window who had not taken their seats for the game.

Then, a question came to mind about the person who took and distributed the photograph via social media. If the game was in play, then why weren’t they focused on it, instead of turning around to observe and then photograph a public figure?

It struck me that the final might not have started or that it could have been half-time. If so, who is entitled to call out Healy-Rae for having a brief nap?

As it happens, Healy-Rae is very upset by the allegations being hurled at him. He said that what happened took place at half-time in the preceding minor game between Galway and Kilkenny. (And here’s one for many of the censorious: how many of them were drinking in the bars at Croke Park at this time instead of watching the under-17s in action?)

He also insisted that he did not get his ticket from the GAA for free, and that he went to the game with friends from the hurling community, from whom he bought his ticket, as he has every year for the last 25. There is hurling in Kerry – despite its well-founded reputation for an obsession with Gaelic football – and the Healy-Rae home village of Kilgarvan is one of its strongholds. Indeed, Danny’s late father Jackie won three senior county hurling titles in his time.

Danny also recounted that he had been at a game in his native Kerry only the previous evening, in which the local Kilgarvan team – on which his son and nephews were playing – won the county intermediate final. He was its sponsor and stayed up late celebrating – without drink – before travelling to Dublin for the All Ireland final.

The explanation will be accepted readily in Kerry, and this, to Danny, is probably all that really counts, because that’s where he gets his votes. While the photographer – identity unknown so far – may say they took the shot, presumably with their mobile phone, at a different time and that there will be a digital log of that, it isn’t really important. We don’t know when it all happened, but it seems fair to give Healy-Rae the benefit of the doubt.

But the entire incident and the speed with which it was shared on social media brings up other issues. Are public people entitled to any privacy? Should others be taking photos of prominent people in apparently embarrassing – or entirely innocent – circumstances without permission and posting them? And should people be more careful about making assumptions or offering suggestions as to why people are apparently in the condition they seem to be? A photo may be worth 1,000 words, but out of context it can be very misleading.

This happens regularly now. Recently, for example, a three-minute video was circulated widely on social media – and freeze frames were published in some newspapers – of European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker seemingly struggling to stay on his feet at a public ceremony in Brussels, attended by Donald Trump and others. The footage of Juncker struggling down the stairs at the outdoor event, assisted by two European prime ministers, led some to assert that the Luxembourg politician was drunk. However, he said he has been suffering from a long-standing sciatica condition that undermines his balance and ability to walk. Should we accept that or look for further information, given the importance of the position he holds? As it happens, it has not developed as a major issue.

Sophisticated

Healy-Rae, of course, is not nearly as important or significant a figure as Juncker. But that does not mean that a lower bar should be set, that he should be subjected to ridicule or scorn if he has not done what he has been accused of doing.

He is an easy target in many respects. Care is needed here, but it is not meant as an insult to say that Healy-Rae’s appearance and accent lead to some scorn from more supposedly sophisticated types.

It ill-behoves any of us, however, to make any comment about how others look or speak.

However, there are other things about which we can take issue with Healy-Rae. His views on climate change are risible. He is entitled to his beliefs – such as God in His wisdom supposedly deciding the weather of any particular hour – but he is not entitled to his own scientific facts or to claim that heavy rain in the west of Ireland three and four centuries ago somehow proves that climate change is not real, or that it has not been exacerbated by the actions of humans.

Nor were his antics in delaying the recent introduction of Ross’s new Road Traffic Bill acceptable, even if he thought sincerely that he was doing his constituents a favour with his outdated theories about driving safety. (Ironically, he recently claimed there was more danger of a driver falling asleep at the wheel after a large meal than after drinking.)

But no matter how angry Ross was – or what people think of Healy-Rae’s politics – the incident this week is a clear example of the need to follow the old GAA mantra of ‘play the ball, not the man’.