Letter to the Taoiseach

DID I ever tell you, Enda, about the doorman at Stormont Parliament Buildings who was once a prison officer in the H-Blocks of Long Kesh? Apparently, Raymond McCartney was the O/C in H4 as I understand it and the prison officer in question turned the key to close Raymond’s cell door more often than not. How do I know? Because the former prison officer told me himself.
Wasn’t it a good one, then, that the same prison officer began instead to hold the door open for Raymond, and for Pat Sheehan, too, when both former hunger strikers took up their seats as MLAs at Stormont. Just thought I would tell you that one.
The doormen and doorwomen at Stormont recently had to hold the doors open even wider for the arrival of our TD colleagues from the rest of the country.
Sandra came up from Cork, Martin came up from Kerry and Gerry told us that he had been missing us all. Pádraig and Pearse had no call to go north because they live in and represent the north, as you know yourself. They came variously from Dublin, Meath, Monaghan, Leitrim and Laois. They certainly created a stir in the hallowed halls at Stormont and when they joined our MLA team on the steps outside we were all able to look down on the back of Carson’s statue as he looked down on the people of Belfast. I suppose every day brings something new.
By the way, another very welcome group of visitors to Stormont in the immediate past was the Coleraine Eoghan Rua camogie team who won the All-Ireland Intermediate Club Championship in 2010. Something is stirring in the Coleraine area as well, never before a bastion of Gaelic games but how things are changing in that part of the North as well. It was great to have the likes of Gráinne McGoldrick and Jane Carey in Stormont. Cathal Ó hOisín, Bernadette Archibald and other party activists from East Derry joined myself and North Antrim MLA Daithí McKay for the celebrations and we even pre-booked some of them to take part in the second annual Poc Fada which will be held in the grounds of Stormont in August of this year. For the Edward Carson Cup, of course.
Here, I’ll nip on. Time flies but we have elections to fight in the North. You never did explain to me why the Government parties in the 26 don’t bother with elections in the Six.