Jack Powell: 75 years a vet, always with a Jack Russell on his shoulder

                         

                                       Born: May 29th, 1913, died: February 6th, 2015

Jack Powell and his dog Trixy from the book Nenagh: This Must be the Place. Photograph: Pádraig Ó Flannabhra.

Jack (Ginger) Powell, who has died at 101, was Europe’s longest-serving vet when he retired from practice after 75 years. Set in his ways when it came to cars, for the last 62 years he drove only Volkswagens, including the first Beetle in Nenagh in 1952 and bought a new one last year to celebrate his 100th birthday.

When they look back on their childhood days, anyone who grew up on a farm around Nenagh in North Tipperary will remember him as the vet who always had an alert Jack Russell terrier, Trudy or Trixy, perched on his shoulder when he drove into the yard to treat an animal.

Known in racing circles as a skilled equine vet, he had a great memory for pedigree and a special gift for dealing with difficult horses. A foal that he had bought for £400 went on to be a winner at the RDS Horse Show. Named Royal Frolic, he sold him to a British trainer and in 1976 he won in the Cheltenham Gold Cup by five lengths at odds of 14/1.

Born on the family farm at Blean, not far from the village of Toomevara in the foothills of the Silvermine Mountains, Powell went to the local national school, followed by a year in Ballymackey Church of Ireland Diocesan School. His second-level education was at a boarding school in Sligo and in 1932 he went to veterinary college in Dublin, graduating in 1936.

An extraordinary man by any standard, having milked his first cow at the age of five, he loved his job and had a genuine vocation for working with animals.

Still practising after 75 years, he finally retired in 2011, a milestone marked by then President Mary McAleese with the presentation of a gold medal award as Europe’s longest-serving vet, a record unlikely to be broken.

On qualifying in 1936, he went to England, taking up a post with the British ministry for agriculture. Involved with the first testing of animals for TB in 1938, he was also immersed in the 1937 foot-and-mouth epidemic.

Astonishingly, he was also a pilot with the Canadian Air Force, serving as a flying instructor during the second World War. In 1943, he married his wife, Sheila, and in 1947 they returned to set up his practice in Nenagh.

Looking back on the changing face of Ireland after a life which spanned the War of Independence, the Civil War and two World Wars, he recalled that land now fetching £20,000 an acre could be bought for as little as £10 an acre.

“We had no electric light, no television, no motor car. We walked to school, regardless of weather. We walked the cattle to the fair and so, of course, the standard of living now is vastly superior to what it was 50 or 60 years ago. Everyone has 4x4s, faxes, telephones, all mod cons. Rural Ireland as I knew it has gone. I’m still part of it and I enjoy living in it, but small farmers have gone the same way small shopkeepers will disappear. One has to accept that changes are inevitable.”

Predeceased by his wife, Sheila, Powell is survived by his sons Charles, John and Richard.

Enda won his own lottery when he became Taoiseach

It’s a bit rich of Mr Kenny to launch a commission on low pay when his salary is €185,000 a year, or €3,500 a week, which is more than the leaders of the much larger Britain and France earn

                                                                                 Enda Kenny

IT WAS Enda Kenny’s Marie Antoinette moment. Reality and regality diverged as the Taoiseach showed how out of touch he is with the people he aspires to lead.

Launching a low-pay commission, Mr Kenny was asked by the Irish Examiner if there was scope to further cut the salary of the Taoiseach, or if he was worth the €3,500 a week we pay him. He replied: “Very much so.”

So, there you have it, our very own L’Oreal Taoiseach, paid more than the leaders of Britain or France — because he’s worth it.

Mr Kenny’s handlers knew he had dropped a howler, but it was too late. The comment’s arrogance will resonate to polling day.

The Taoiseach then sensed things slipping away from him, but his efforts to regain the initiative made matters worse. “Salaries are down 40% in the case of the Taoisigh — we’ve cut everything to the bone. And your question is typical,” he said.

I suspect that the people who really are on the bones of their arse think that ‘struggling by’ on just €3,500 a week is still a bit of a juicy one.

And as for the comment “your question is typical”, which he sneered at this column? ‘Typical of a free press holding an arrogant executive to power, is that what you meant, Taoiseach’?

Erm, no, that is probably not what Mr Kenny had in mind. It was more likely along the lines of: “Typical the Irish Examiner should dare question me, rather than just accept my magnificence as read.”

If you can’t ask a Taoiseach at a low-pay event about his vast salary, when he is trying to convince us he has finally woken up, after four years in power, to the reality of people scrapping by on a pittance, where can you?

The CSO has just revealed that 144,000 children are living in consistent poverty. This means their families cannot afford the basic levels of heating and clothing they need. So, is it acceptable for a Taoiseach to blithely insist that he is worth three-and-a-half grand a week?

Mr Kenny is also always banging on about wanting to make this the best ‘small country’ in which to do business.

So, should the business of our leaders not be to cut their own financial cloth in accordance with the needs of a small country?

Though well down on the obscene €310,000 that — surprise, surprise — former taoiseach Bertie Ahern paid himself, at €185,000 Mr Kenny gets a very good deal compared with other Western leaders.

Before the Greek crisis sent the euro into a temporary plunge, Mr Kenny was earning more than Britain’s PM, David Cameron, who gets €170,000 a year, as does the President of France.

Britain and France are the fifth- and sixth-largest economies in the world, are nuclear powers and wield a veto at the UN security council. Yet, the Taoiseach of Ireland — a country that has a population smaller than the 5.3million boasted by Yorkshire — gets paid more than their leaders.

Does that make sense to anyone other than Mr Kenny and his bank manager?

It is just one week since Mr Kenny, at the Fine Gael national conference, aped the British prime minister’s slogan “We are all in this together”.

And his wage comments prove that the words are just as empty in his mouth as they are in that of his fellow Tory across the Irish Sea.

It is the same with thrusting Thatcherite Leo Varadkar, who, at the height of the anti-water-charge anger, expressed bemusement that people were getting so excited at having to pay €3 a week. But then when you earn almost as much as Cameron does — €157,000 — for being an Irish Cabinet minister, then, really, what is €3 out of €3,000 a week?

One of the achievements of this Government was to restore the shameful Fianna Fáil-Green Party cut in the minimum wage, and the establishment of the low-pay commission is a belated, but very welcome step in the right direction on wage equality.

But when you have the Cabinet spouting crap about all being in this together, while they pocket three grand a week, at the same time as cutting child benefit and snatching €80 a week from lone parents as a way of forcing them to take jobs (what jobs?), the political spectacle just becomes nauseating.

Mr Kenny was also playing fast and loose with the facts with his sloppy remarks about the Taoiseach’s salary being down 40%, as some of these cuts were made in the previous Government.

When Mr Kenny assumed the top office, he was entitled to €214,000, after cuts by the collapsing Fianna Fáil administration.

Mr Kenny decided to draw €200,000, and then this was further reduced to €185,000, under the Haddington road deal, meaning it fell by 15% from what he could have had under his watch — though the ‘lower’ level is still far above what he was receiving as opposition leader.

Mr Kenny has suddenly popped-up on a few soft-question interviews in recent weeks, because his minders have seen the polling data, which shows the public regards him as aloof. They think he does not feel their pain.

The new charm offensive was supposed to restore in the public mind the image of the old, easy-going Enda.

Well, his L’Oreal comment has certainly been offensive to people getting by on a meagre €8.65 an hour, but where is the charm?

Of course, Marie Antoinette never actually said: “Let them eat cake”.

But Mr Kenny did say he is “very much” worth three and a half grand a week.

And the end result is the same — an angry, abandoned public demanding their leaders’ heads.

Shaun Connolly

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A dispute born of HSE unaccountability

                                                               PHILOMENA CANNING

PHILOMENA CANNING has been allowed to return to work. Three weeks ago, the last time this column visited the State’s attack on Ms Canning, that phrase was hardly imaginable

The Health Service Executive had tied itself in knots, giving the serious impression that it was trying to hang Ms Canning any which way it could. Form suggested it would muddle on, behind closed doors, until finally somebody would shell out a chunk of public money in lieu of accountability.

Then, last Wednesday, apparently out of the blue, the HSE’s solicitors, Arthur Cox, wrote to Ms Canning’s that she could return to work, as “the temporary suspension is no longer in the public interest”. The burning question is whether it was ever in the public interest, or whether there was an agenda against an independent-minded woman who refuses to tug the forelock to those who regard themselves as her betters.

Canning’s case is the latest example of how the State deals with dissonant voices that threaten the status quo, or that raise uncomfortable questions. Its import goes far beyond what appears to be the hounding of an innocent woman.

Quick recap. Philomena Canning is the leading home-birth midwife in the State, having practiced for more than 30 years. Her clients refer to her work in superlatives. One woman to whom I spoke alternated between outrage at the treatment of Ms Canning and wonderment at how the midwife had delivered her baby.

The admiration isn’t universal. Homebirths are frowned on by the medical establishment here, but in other jurisdictions they are a growing phenomenon. For cultural reasons — not to mention vested interests — home-births remains the choice of a small minority here.

Canning is a passionate advocate for home-births, and has never been backwards in representing women who feel ill-served by the State’s approach to the practice. As a result, she has never been well got in the mother-ship of the HSE.

She is also an advocate for a public health system, and so wanted to open birth centres in conjunction with the HSE. These centres would provide for birth in a home-like setting, and are highly popular in other countries. No thanks, came the reply.

So she set about it herself, acquiring premises and funding, intent on doing it privately under the HSE’s home-birth scheme. Then, last August, just as the project was reaching fruition, she got word that her indemnity insurance was being withdrawn, pending an inquiry.

The inquiry involved two births, delivered by Canning, in which there were routine, minor complications. In both cases, the mothers were effusive about the care they had received and have supported Canning since. Somebody in the HSE determined that the cases required investigation. Canning sought a High Court injunction to prevent her suspension, but she was unsuccessful. She appealed the ruling. That appeal was due to be heard yesterday. Then, last Wednesday, she got word that all bets were off.

What changed? In preparation for the appeal, Canning had commissioned independent reports on her case from maternity-care authorities in the UK. Two reports endorsed her position, one in a tone that barely concealed outrage at her treatment.

The HSE commissioned its own report, which, guess what, also came out in favour of Canning. How often does an ‘independent’ report prepared for court tell its client the polar opposite of what it was commissioned to find.

Quite obviously, the HSE saw the writing on the wall. There was no chance of winning in the appeal court. Instead, it was possible that one of the judges might issue a withering response to the agency’s case. That would raise further questions about the so-called inquiries into Canning.

All was not lost, however. On Tuesday, the day before the HSE caved in, Canning received a long-awaited response to her proposal of last August on the birth centres.

“My dream, for many years, was to open Ireland’s first such centres to the public, and I had two centres on the verge of opening, back in September, when I was unlawfully suspended,” Canning said yesterday in a statement.

“Stand-alone birth centres in the community, a model widely adopted in the UK, are not alone more economically advantageous over hospital births, they also provide the best outcomes in low-risk births.”

And the long-awaited response? “The answer, in short, was no. For reasons not specified, it was made clear the HSE does not acknowledge this under their (home birth) scheme,” she said.

So, at least the turbulent midwife has been put back in her box. She is allowed to resume practice, but she can forget any notions of developing home-births in line with the status they are accorded in ‘first world’ countries.

In its statement on Canning’s reinstatement, the HSE noted that its two inquiries, which precipitated the suspension, were continuing. (The Dail was told, late last year, that the second inquiry was set up to expedite the first, but, despite its raison d’etre, it was not possible to give a timeline for this second inquiry).

This is now little more than a box-ticking exercise, particularly in light of the three reports that were commissioned by Canning and the HSE. Her own legal action against the agency for suspending her, and the fallout thereof, is continuing.

Serious questions, vital to both public health and how power is exercised in a democracy, remain to be answered. A woman was put out of her job, her career jepordised, and 29 clients, who had retained her services for a major life event, were left high and dry. This was done because she allegedly presented some form of threat to public health. The evidence for such an allegation is highly suspect, to put it at its mildest.

Was the public interest the real imperative, or was some other agenda at work? As stated here previously, form would suggest that the ultimate outcome will be that the HSE will settle with Canning, including a premium to ensure confidentiality on the matter, and there it will be buried. Form also suggests that very serious pressure will be placed on Canning to accept such a settlement, if she intends to continue practicing in this country.

This is simply not acceptable in today’s world.

A woman whose contribution to this society far outweighs anything offered by mandarins in the HSE. She has had her life turned upside down.

Her personal travails are worthy of great consideration, but the implications of how she has been treated go far beyond that. The only course that could restore any confidence in the system is an inquiry into how and why the HSE initiated its inquiry into Canning. There are, unfortunately, two chances of that ever happening.

Midwife’s case is the latest example of how the State deals with dissonant voices

Michael Clifford

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