When TDs go wild

RADIO REVIEW:WHEN BACKBENCHERS go wild: the TD Mattie McGrath was given the old heave-ho from the Fianna Fáil parliamentary party for not voting in line on the Wildlife (Amendment) Bill 2010.

He had both a good week and a bad week. He stuck to his guns on stag hunting, but surely he could have gone out with a bigger bang. Portraying himself as a political buccaneer, McGrath appeared on Coleman at Large(Newstalk 106-108, Tuesdays and Wednesdays) to prove that revenge is a dish best served piping hot. It almost burned presenter John O'Donovan's tongue: he talks faster than a voice-over rattling off disclaimers for a financial-services ad.

McGrath said the Greens were frontloading legislation before the summer and gave Brian Cowen what-for. “I believe that the Greens at the moment are bullying the Fianna Fáil party, and by extension the Taoiseach is the leader, and he’s not dealing with it robustly.”

The former MEP Patricia McKenna, a Green turned Independent, criticised McGrath for not voting against the Government on bigger issues. McGrath defended his vote for Nama: “I tried to get the figures of what it would cost Anglo [Irish Bank] to go to the wall, and I never got them.” That’s democracy with a small “d”.

Seamus Dooley of the National Union of Journalists sided with McKenna: “I would be more impressed if the stand was taken on an issue of life and death, such as health, education or finance.” McGrath replied: “I have the freedom to do it now, thank God.” Dooley shot back: “You always had the freedom. You chose not to exercise it.”

There were matters of life and death on Sam Smyth on Sunday(Today FM). Orla Tinsley, the cystic-fibrosis campaigner, expressed her frustration at delay after delay for a national treatment centre: "This isn't some exclusive club that we're asking to be created for us. This is something that will actually save our lives." The 23-year-old has been writing in this newspaper about cystic fibrosis since she was 18. She painted a chilling picture of a Victorian health service. "It's very, very simple," she said. "People are dying in our country younger than they are dying in other countries because we do not have proper standards of care."

Smyth asked the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, Eamon Ryan, how this could happen. “It is totally unacceptable, Sam. I cannot defend it. This is promised. It has to be delivered. If this Government or any government cannot deliver on promises that it made, then it loses its credibility.” That was harsh language from a Minister about his own Government, arguably worse than McGrath’s. He used the word “unacceptable” four times. Tinsley showed no signs of campaigner fatigue: “You put my life at risk the way things are now. I could die in this hospital because of you, and that’s insane, and it’s very strong, but it’s the truth.”

“The only way I can answer the question is to say that we have to get out and build it immediately,” Ryan said, “and that I think is the only way the credibility can come back . . .” Again, they were encouraging, perhaps astonishing words from a Minister. And yet Nike’s “Just do it” came to mind.

“What the campaign is doing is absolutely right, saying that this isn’t tolerable, it can’t be allowed,” Ryan added. Was the Minister for Health, Mary Harney, listening? Or any other TDs? And how strange it is to live in a country where a Minister effectively tells an exasperated campaigner to keep up the good work.

We Irish can be proud of and thankful for our musical heritage, at least. Paula Carroll's documentary The Blue Tar Road(Lyric FM, Saturday) was an enchanting road trip presented by Michael Collins, an odyssey through pubs and parlours to discover if the tradition of Traveller singing was truly lost.

“Traveller singers,” Collins said. “Our voices are different than yours, aren’t they? You can tell a Traveller singer from a mile off.” Once upon a time there was a whole generation of nomads, street singers and ballad singers, but, as Collins said, “the song collectors haven’t come near us in years”. They are still singing.

He found the O’Leary family in Carlow who boast 11 – count ’em! – singing children. They need a Von Trapp-style documentary all of their own. A certain Kitty Cassidy hadn’t been recorded since 1967. Until now. As Collins said: “She’s still singing like a lark at 70.” And the song and laughter went on.

The Blue Tar Roadis a song of yore about Travellers: "For few men give me camping space and fewer call me friend / The hard road of the travelling man I'll travel till the end."

Those lyrics are out of the past but could be a metaphor for the fractured state of Irish life. If you read this in years to come, the year was Twenty-Ten.