Letter to the Taoiseach

BY BARRY McELDUFF


I am writing to you from Stormont on Monday when Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams reached an agreement.  Today deserves the description ‘historic’ in many ways.  Very unusual to see Ian sit beside a man wearing an Easter Lily.  Perhaps not a time for jest, but it really would be a significant breakthrough if Ian wore the lily.  
On a serious note, Taoiseach, you have a major role to play now and into the future.  Strand Two of the Good Friday Agreement remains underdeveloped and Leinster House is still not sufficiently welcoming as a place for ‘Northeners’.  With the exception of the Donegal people.
By the way, our MLA team was today joined by Mary Lou McDonald, Joanne Spain and Pearse Doherty.  There was a real All-Ireland feel about the Sinn Féin team and I know you welcome this wholeheartedly, yourself.
A few words about your weekend Ard Fhéis.  Trust the media.  No sooner had the RTÉ Floor Manager held up the cue-cards instructing Fianna Fáil delegates to cheer louder and wave those small green flags more enthusiastically, than the editorial writers were back at it.
If it is not Paddy ‘the Plasterer’, it is party-insider Jerry Beades of the Drumcondra Mafia. If it is not bank-loan Jerry enjoying a special relationship with a particular Irish Embassy, it is Galway Councillor ‘Stroke’ Fahy.  The judge reckons that the Stroke is “a determined, arrogant, greedy fraudster” but I appreciate what the Soldiers of Destiny have said.  Perhaps the Stroke just got a bit above himself.  I know that we all should look after our own.
Bertie, I am worried that if any more Plasterers, Insiders and Strokes are to emerge, they could undo the electoral bounce that you should otherwise enjoy following an Ard Fhéis weekend.
You’ll be glad to hear, that not everyone is taken in by the spin, preferring instead to analyse the substance.  Which is why I visited “ www.thenextsteps.ie” at your kind invitation.
I was particularly drawn to the ‘Investing in our Schools’ section which contains interesting commitments to reduce class sizes and to develop individual education plans for every child who has a special need.
This sounds great.  The way to go.
It does not, however, sit comfortably alongside last week’s ruling which denies six-year-old Sean Ó Cuanacháin the particular form of one-to-one tuition which will best meet his educational interests.
I always think that commitments to “individual education plans” are great but why do these become unstuck when they have “ resource implications”, is what I want to know.
Seriously, Bertie, when parents testify that Applied Behavioural Analysis (ABA) successfully provides their autistic child with the tools to help him or her to lead a full and independent life, why are you counting the cost and ignoring the value?
I notice that you plagiarised a bit from our own manifesto.  “They promise, we deliver,” you told delegates.  Imitation is the highest form of flattery, I suppose.  Did you ever hear the one about Patsy O’Hagan from Moortown being accused of copying O’Toole’s homework?  He denied it, of course, and asked the Miss to prove it.  She pointed out to him that at the bottom of O’Toole’s page, O’Toole had written “I cannot do these sums.”  
“And at the bottom of your page, O’Hagan, you have written ‘And neither can I’.”
On a completely separate note, Francie Molloy is asking about you and wants you to know he is still about.  

Is Mise,
Barry McElduff


NB: Bertie Ahern can be contacted on (00 353) 1 619 4020 or e-mail [email protected].  Address: Office of the Taoiseach, Government Buildings, Dublin 2.