Photo Minute: The ice caves of Iceland

Shocking video: Garda pepper sprays and arrests a helpless homeless person in Ireland

                                     Video by Philip Campion

Fr Peter McVerry, a homeless campaigner, has called on the gardaí to undertake an investigation into a video that he found  “absolutely shocking”

The video, filmed by Philip Campion, a student, last Friday, on March 13th.

The  DIT student said he came across the scene as he was making his way home from college and felt something “didn’t look right." He began filming the scene with his phone. He added that the Garda appeared to be trying to move the man, who was in a sleeping bag and lying down in a doorway on Henry Street.

In the video the man is handcuffed and attempts to turn around; the garda pushes him back and pepper sprays him into the face. The Garda then puts his foot on top of the man’s body. According to Mr Campion, the homeless man’s eyes were “all red and bulging and he was moaning.”

The useless and corrupt Garda then threatens the public, as a crowd of about 25 5o thirty gathered, having already called back up and a riot van. He warns them to go away for their "own safety." At this time, the student felt the heat, stopped recording and prepared to go. As he began to depart, two squad cars and a riot van did arrive. The heat was on and all their safety was now in danger.

A Garda spokesman declined to comment, and in true thick Garda style, said anyone who had concerns about the 'alleged' incident could contact the Garda Ombudsman Commission. It appears that they had no problem with it and have no intention to investigate it themselves. 

Don't you just love these guys. I just hope that homeless man sues Garda Fatso and makes sure he gets fired as well. If the cops stand by this despicable cop, then we should not. 

Barry Clifford 

A Ship Of Fools

A confidential report from 2008 into Ireland's banks shows that just 22 men owed up to €25.5bn to the banks.

                                                                Here's one of those fools

According to the Sunday Business Post, it also estimated that banks would lose €10.6bn at worst.

This was a long way off the final figure of €64bn.

After receiving the PwC report, then Taoiseach Brian Cowen claimed in the Dáil that he was right to guarantee the banks, as they had more than enough cash to survive the next three years.

Photo Minute: The beautiful lake district-second to none

This political ‘powerhouse’ has its price

                                                                                                      Dig Out Bertie

IF those walls could have talked, they would have saved us a fortune. The walls belong to a tidy, little red-brick house, St Luke’s, which has facilitated historic peace talks, visits from world leaders and globe-trotting rock stars (yep, Mr Bono), and kept from prying eyes the most curious exchanges of huge wads of cash. What more could you want from a well-proportioned des res?

St Luke’s was put on the market last week, going for a snip at €595,000. In the heart of Drumcondra, on the northside of Dublin, it was, for more than two decades, the power-base, the retreat, the refuge — at one time even the bank — for one Bartholomew Ahern.

Its walls have witnessed more intrigue than a box-set of House of Cards. Whatever about modern appliances or aspects of the Tolka River, this little baby is steeped in history.

Fianna Fáil will not look back fondly on the planning tribunal. A virus of corruption, that welled up from deep within the maw of the party, was exposed at the long-running inquiry. But there is one thing for which the party can be grateful. If it wasn’t for the tribunal, they may never have got their mitts on St Luke’s. Such was the mystery of its origins, it’s far from clear that it would have reverted to the party once Bertie had hung up his political spurs.

The house was bought in 1987, through three individuals: Des Richardson, Tim Collins and Joe Burke. These were ‘made men’ in what came to be known as the Drumcondra ‘mafia’, headed up by Bertie Ahern. Only one of them, Burke, was a member of Fianna Fáil. This was a purchase on behalf of Ahern rather than the party. If this history had not been thrashed out at the planning tribunal, it’s unclear as to who might have laid claim to the premises, or a part thereof, once Ahern had left politics.

The financing of the purchase is unclear. A meeting was called to gather parties willing to throw in a few bob. This was the first of a series of whip-rounds for Ahern, as if the poor craytur hadn’t an arse in his trousers.

The meeting took place on December 3, 1987, in the Gresham Hotel. There is no record of it. Nobody present has been identified. Many party activists in the Dublin Central constituency weren’t even aware it had taken place. Like another fabled whip-round seven years later, among displaced Irish millionaires in Manchester, this one is shrouded in mystery. One way or the other, a report decades later would refer to the gathering as the ‘St Luke’s club’.

Over the following 20 years, ‘the club’ was the centre of Ahern’s world. Rarely would a day go by, even when he was Taoiseach, that he didn’t put in an appearance. The ministerial Merc parked up on the pavement was the giveaway. Frequently, there would be a second Merc in attendance, as Bertie often summoned one of his ministers to the lair.

Then, there was the matter of upkeep. This gave rise to an annual fundraiser where the great, the good, and an army of developers, gathered to pay homage, often forking out north of £100,000 between them.

If there’s one thing the walls could sing about, it’s the bobs. Oh, man, did money flow through the place. Back in the day, when Ahern was the minister for finance and didn’t have a bank account, he cashed his cheques in a pub and stored the cash in St Luke’s.

By 1993, he had upwards of £35,000 in punts there and another £15,000 in sterling. Over the following year, the cash piled up, particularly the sterling. Where did the Irish minister for finance get all this money?

People just gave it to him — friends, acquaintances, the odd millionaire. At one point, anytime he visited Britain, he returned with a bundle of cash, to be deposited in St Luke’s.

He had a particular fondness for sterling. Back in the mid-1990s, he used to exchange punts for sterling with a Manchester-based hotelier, in bars, and cars, and whenever he got the notion that he wanted to top up. And he won even more of it backing horses.

What secrets lie buried beneath the floorboards of St Luke’s? Maybe a few betting slips could be retrieved, perhaps the odd souvenir five-pound sterling note nestles under a joist.

Then, there were the drop-offs. On one occasion, a man by the name of Michael Wall, who had driven over from Manchester, came into St Luke’s to deliver a briefcase with £30,000 in cash. Just like in the movies. The money was for something or other, but nothing dodgy.

On another occasion, Ahern was handed the proceeds of dig-outs from friends, again in cash, during the course of a get-together at the premises. There was also the time he drove his partner, Celia Larkin, to and from O’Connell Street, where she withdrew £25,000 in cash. That moolah was deposited in the St Luke’s ‘bank’.

Again, he had an explanation for this cash, but, really, the convoluted detail would make your head hurt, and the tribunal wasn’t impressed by the whole thing.

St Luke’s was also the location for Bertie’s ‘poor me’ interview with Bryan Dobson, when he gave a tearful account of how he came into all the money. It was enough to get him past the following year’s general election, but, unfortunately, a tribunal lawyer subsequently blew his tears out of the water.

Oh, those walls. What they could have told former US president Bill Clinton, the day he dropped in. Bill, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Bono was another visitor, popping in a with some whiskey on his way to play Croker, listening to Bertie explaining how he was all in favour of saving the world, just in case Bono got any notions of bad-mouthing him on stage, in his own backyard.

Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness brought the peace process tour there, delivering the whiff of cordite that was all that was missing from the historic building. If only those walls could have talked, we could have been saved millions at the planning tribunal, all those secret rendezvous and drop-offs verified independently. Now, all that history, intrigue, and those tales of ordinary madness are about to be privatised, most likely snapped up by some tech millionaire in search of a trophy property. There’s only one man who can save this jewel for the public. Jerry Beades, hero of Gorse Hill, main man of the New Land League, once-upon-a-time member of the Drumcondra ‘mafia’ himself.

Get thee down to Drumcondra, Jerry. Barricade the place. Make a few speeches. Do it for Bertie. Preserve the legend of St Luke’s, so future generations can remember that this is how we lived once upon a time.

Michael Clifford

Photo Minute: It's a family affair

Seven men acquitted on membership of an organisation that does not exist anymore

                                                                   The unbalanced scales of Irish justice

Seven Dublin men have been cleared of IRA membership by the Special Criminal Court today after the prosecution case against them collapsed following a court ruling on evidence. They decided that the evidence of the head bogger in the investigation, Detective Chief Superintendent Peter Kirwin, was just too much cabbage and not enough bacon in it. It was a non-jury trial, which by itself was all kangaroo anyway, and those that did attend fell about the place laughing at the ‘evidence.’

The ‘evidence’ was solely a belief, a fantasy really,  and one for the pub on a Saturday night. But it is a modern look at Irish justice, well, Irish style. Kirwan, the head of Security and Intelligence at Garda Headquarters, which is a stretch I know for all concerned, previously told the court that he believed, on the basis of confidential information, that all seven accused were members of the IRA.

He claimed privilege in relation to the sources of the confidential information but during cross examination he admitted that it was based on human sources and telephone intercepts. In 'intelligent' lay man terms that meant he got the info down at the pub as well with a few dodgy phone calls in between. The judge ruled it a cock and bull story otherwise known as a bunch of lies, which makes Kirwan a red faced liar.

The seven men have now been happily restored to their families though it is suspected all of them have now joined Sinn Fein as an act of protest. Their addresses where they live were printed in full in the newspaper as another act of intimidation but sure everyone knew where they lived all along, even them. 

In case there was any thick who did not know who the IRA ‘were’ the paper even filled in the blank spots with this: An illegal organisation styling itself the Irish Republican Army, otherwise Oglaigh na hEireann, otherwise the IRA.

Evidence was solely based on Garda ‘observations’ and the opinion evidence of Chief Superintendent Kirwan for their sum and total evidence of the facts. Next time either of this squad of bog-necks gives you an opinion, even on the weather, it is better to actually see is it raining outside first.

Barry Clifford