World of Politics with Harry McGee

Last month, Minister for Housing James Browne announced that he was suspending a project to build almost 500 social homes. The homes were to be built under a public private partnership agreement (PPP) in six locations – three in Dublin; one in Sligo; one in Wicklow; and one in Kildare.

Under the deal, the construction would be financed privately and then rented out to tenants for 25 years at which time they would be transferred to the council.

But what made Browne baulk was the cost of each unit. At a meeting of Dublin City Council, Fianna Fáil councillor Rachael Batten revealed that the proposed homes would cost almost €1.2 million each.

It was argued by Dublin City Council’s housing manager that that price could not be compared to the price of a house being built and sold in the here and now. The private company would have to maintain the property and do tenancy management for 25 years and then hand it back to the council in perfect condition.

Sure – if it were sold on the open market, it would work out at less but not that much less. The reality was that the only figure that would register with the public was €1 million plus per social home, and half of them were not even in Dublin.

Did Browne have any other choice?

It wasn’t exactly a new concept. This was Bundle 3, one part of an ambitious plan to build 3,000 homes using the PPP model. There were seven bundles in all.

The project was launched as far back as 2015 when Alan Kelly was Minister for Housing and Brendan Howlin was Minister for Public Expenditure.

It wanted to use the successful model that had been used to build roads and schools to build social houses. Bundle 1 and Bundle 2 went without a hitch and delivered 1,000 homes altogether, including a development of 74 homes in Ballyburke off the Western Distributor Road in Galway City.

But things have changed over the past five years, and construction costs have spiralled. When individual social homes are creeping towards the million euro mark, that’s when you begin to worry. That’s clearly unsustainable.

So it’s back to the drawing boards for the Minister. He’s going to have to figure out a less expensive way of delivering those homes over the next five or six years.

Pictured: Rough start…Minister for Housing James Browne.

Fiona Murtagh added to her medal collection at the Rowing World Cup in Lucerne at the weekend when taking silver in the Women’s Single Sculls A final, finishing just three seconds behind reigning European champion, Lauren Henry of Britian, who also pipped Murtagh to gold in that European final in Bulgaria last month.

Siobhan McCrohan also featured prominently in Switzerland, making the A final of the Lightweight Women’s Single Sculls, where she finished fifth; while University of Galway RC member, Brian Colsh, was on the Irish crew finished second in the B final of the Men’s Quadruple Sculls.

Murtagh came home behind Henry in Sunday’s medal race in a time of 7mins 18.63 seconds, holding off Denmark’s Frida Sanggaard Nielsen who finished third in a time of 7mins 20.19 seconds.

It was the same top three from that European final four weeks earlier in Bulgaria, where Henry set a new British record and European best time of 7mins 17.80 seconds, with Murtagh following her home in second in a time of 7mins 21.11 seconds

At Lucerne at the weekend, Murtagh won the first heat in a somewhat leisurely time of 7mins 38.04 seconds – Cork’s Alison Bergin finished sixth in the heat in a time of 8mins 3.22 seconds. The Moycullen woman also headed the field in the second semi-final, floating home in a time of 7mins 25.50 seconds, with Sanggaard Nielsen three seconds behind her in second place.

Henry had won the first semi-final in a time of 7mins 19.65 seconds, almost nine seconds ahead of Canada’s Katie Clarke (7mins 28.38 seconds) in second; before going on to add the World Cup gold to her European title with a time of 7mins 15.21 seconds in the final.

Meanwhile, McCrohan finished out of the medals in the Lightweight Women’s Single Sculls, finishing fifth in the A final on Saturday.

The 2023 world champion, who turned 38 the day after the final, won her heat in a time of 7 mins 58.36 seconds, the second fastest of the three heats: heat two was won by Mexico’s Kenia Lechuga Alanis in a time of 7mins 50.51; while Austria’s Lara Tiefenthaler won the third heat in a time of 8mins 2.16 seconds, and those two rowers went on to finish first and second in the final.

McCrohan was drawn in the same semi-final as Tiefenthaler, which the Austrian won in a time of 7mins 41.61 seconds, with McCrohan securing her place in the A final when crossing the line in third in a time of 7 mins 45.40 seconds, just 0.1 of a second behind Femke Van De Vilet, who finished in second place, but three seconds ahead of Uruguay’s Nicole Yarzon in fourth.

The Galway woman clocked a time of 7mins 47.16 in the final to come home with a fifth-place finish, with Alanis taking gold followed by Tiefenthaler. The Russian rower Marila Zhovner – competing as a neutral athlete – taking bronze with a time just 0.07 seconds ahead of Van de Vilet in a time of 7mins 39.82 seconds.

Sligo’s Brian Colsh, a student at University of Galway and a member of the university’s rowing cub, was part of the Irish crew that finished second in the B final of the Men’s Quadruple Sculls.

They finished fifth in their heat in a time of 5mins 51.65 seconds, just under six seconds behind the British crew that went on to win the A final; and were just pipped for gold in the B final, finishing second in a time of 5mins 50.78 seconds, just 0.33 seconds behind the Czechia crew in first.

Pictured: Fiona Murtagh celebrates with supporters after finishing second in the Women’s Single Scull Final A in Lucerne. Inset left: Siobhan McCrohan after crossing the line in the Lightweight Women’s Single Sculls A final. Inset right: Brian Colsh takes a drink after crossing the line in the Men’s Quadruple Sculls B final. Photos: Benedict Tufnell/Sportsfile.

1925

Sunday pub closures

The total closing of public houses on Sundays was the subject of discussion at the Liquor Commission sitting in Dublin this week. The Counties’ Licenced Grocers’ and Vintners’ Protection Association, which is opposed to many of the “reforms” advocated by the temperance party, declared that complete Sunday closing would mean that every motor car carrying tourists would be followed by another containing drink, and that the police would have to deal with a fleet of shebeens.

There is a good deal to be said for this view. It is an undoubted hardship on the excursionists from, say, Dublin to Galway, that he is unable as the law stands to obtain reasonable refreshment until one o’clock, after being cooped in a railway carriage on a broiling day for four or five hours.

We have seen the excursionists who have visited Galway on Sundays during the past few months and were impressed by the remarkable absence of drunkenness amongst the people entertaining for home in the evening.

The licenced vintners in Galway themselves state that excursions are of little use to them today – that the amount of drink consumed is negligible. The visitor who takes reasonable liquid refreshment, who acts on the advice of St. Paul and takes a little wine for his stomach’s sake and other infirmities, has a genuine grievance against the legislature which deprives him of a little of the creature comforts of life after a tiring rail journey.

1950

Hobby to industry

For years past playing with chemicals has been a hobby of Richard Patrick Carr, but when his interest turned to plaster work he began to see in the pastime of his leisure hours something more than a hobby; the possibility of a lucrative means of livelihood arose.

Richard Carr, a former pupil of the Monastery Schools and St. Joseph’s College, Galway, is a son of the loco foreman at Galway Railway Station and resides at the station. He is now on the look out for premises in Galway in which to open up an industry in plaster models.

Pictured: Maureen O’Hara arriving at The Claddagh Palace Cinema (formerly the Estoria Cinema) at Nile Lodge for the opening of the Galway Film Fleadh on September 20, 1989.

A WET, warm and dull June, 2025, signed off on its last day with an unmerciful downpour which unleashed close to an inch of rain over a three-hour period.

The torrential rain on Monday afternoon last – peaking between 3pm and 5pm – made for horrendous driving conditions with the M6, M17 and M18 motorways covered in sheets of water.

It was a fitting finale to a June month which was our wettest since December 2023 – the Met Éireann station in Athenry recorded a total of 165mms [6.5 inches] of rainfall during the 30 days of our sixth month.

Last Monday alone delivered 25.7mms. [just over an inch] of rainfall at the Athenry station – the wettest place in Ireland – with almost all of that falling during a three-hour downpour between 3pm and 6pm.

Despite Monday’s deluge, it wasn’t the wettest day of the month at the Athenry station – that dubious honour went to Thursday, June 5th, which produced 32.2mms [1.27 inches] of rainfall.

It was though a prodigious month for growth with the rain, and above average soil temperatures, leading to a huge surge in grass accumulations.

Oranmore dairy farmer, Henry Walsh, said that after a dry May, the mild and wet conditions of June had led to an unprecedented surge in grass growth.

“After a very dry and warm May, when at times we nearly had the threat of drought conditions, the mild and wet weather of June has made it something of an outrageous summer for growth,” said Henry Walsh.

The mean temperature for June, 2025, of 14.3°C, was 0.8°, above the long-term average for the month and 1.4° higher than the figure for our sixth month in 2024. Average soil temperatures for June at the Athenry station came in at 15.2°C  or 0.5° warmer that last year’s average.

Abbeyknockmoy weather recorder, Brendan Geraghty, had a rainfall total for June of 5.05 inches or 128mms with 1.25 inches [32mms.] of that total arriving during last Monday’s downpour.

“We really had only 11 wet days during the month but when the rain came, some of the falls were torrential. Last Monday was a typical example of that. It was the wettest June that I recorded since 2012.

“After quite a dry May, when the rains came in June, there was massive growth. A lot of silage was got by farmers and a lot of turf brought home, but like everyone else, I’m hoping that it [the rain] stops now for a while,” said Brendan Geraghty.

After a dry three days in the mid-week period, more rain – heavy in places – is predicted for Friday and Saturday, but there are some tentative indications of a drier spell of weather for most of next week.

Pictured: Brendan Geraghty: Wettest June since 2012.

Groove Tube with Cian O’Connell

There is little over a week until the start of this year’s Galway International Arts Festival, and a host of the major concerts are already sold out. This is a guide to some of the gigs that, at the time of writing, still have some tickets available. The GIAF is the highlight of many Galwegians’ calendar, and the roster of acts this year is as ambitious and wide-ranging as ever. A blend of Irish and international artists, there is so much lined up that a handful of gigs may have flown under your radar.

Mogwai at the Heineken Big Top,

Thursday, July 24

Mogwai have been around since 1995 but their last two records – surprise covid chart-topper As the Love Continues and its powerful, jagged follow-up The Bad Fire – have catapulted the Glasgow four-piece into a new era.

Hosting a band renowned for epic, textured soundscapes, Fisheries Field is likely to be blanketed in a hazy post-rock trance that grows and swells as the night goes on. By the end of their set, Mogwai’s sound is a ferocious wall, buoyed by flashing white lights and mellifluous, vocoder-heavy singing.

Biig Piig at Monroe’s Live,

Friday, July 18

Born in Cork, Jessica Smyth’s upbringing was spread across several parts of Ireland, Marbella and London – a geographical path that has fed her sound as singer and rapper Biig Piig.

Airy, bilingual vocals are the stitch tying Smyth’s club-friendly R&B tracks with pared back pop music. Collaborations with Kojaque, Metronomy and Maverick Sabre are evidence of her versatility and willingness to expand her sound. After a decade of honing the project, Smyth’s debut album as Biig Piig arrived in February – it will likely dominate her set at Monroe’s.

A Lazarus Soul at Monroe’s Live,

Friday, July 25

Brian Brannigan, the vocalist and fulcrum for A Lazarus Soul, is a masterful chronicler of people and stories in his lyrics.

The band have been around since 2001, but their star has grown in recent years since an appropriate spotlight was shone on 2019’s brilliant The D They Put Between the R & L. The music is minimalist, weaving a steady platform for Brannigan’s characters – often misfortunate figures in disadvantaged Irish communities that draw on his upbringing in the working-class Dublin suburb of Finglas.

With half the band based in France, A Lazarus Soul are relatively infrequent performers, making this appearance in Galway a significant opportunity for fans.

 Pictured: Mogwai…tickets still available for Big Top gig at the Arts Festival.

Country Living with Francis Farragher

It’s probably a clear indication of an idle mind, and possibly too the fear of a blank page and no idea as to the theme of a weekly column, but over recent weeks, I’ve found it hard not to notice that curious link that arises here and there between the name of a person and the occupation or sport that they are involved in.

For those with names like Fox, Hare, Badger, Bear, Rabbitt, Bull, Bullock or Hogg, it probable can become a little tedious and repetitive if the same little jokes are thrown at them all the time. You know the type: “John Fox has a fine clutch of chickens” or “Jane Hare can fairly move” or “Paddy Bull has great strength and talks a lot of rot.” The list probably goes on and on but offhand I can’t think of any more of them.

Back the years too, I’ve heard the tale – and I’m assured that it’s not apocryphal – of an incredulous emergency line operator, who ‘smelled a rat’ when the following scenario was outlined to here.

It concerned a Mr Rabbitt who took ill in a pub called The Hare Inn and who was treated by a medic on call with the name of Dr. Fox. After the initial response of: “Hold on a minute, this is an emergency service, and are you serious,” the operator had to accept the fact that this remarkable coincidence of names was real, and not someone trying to be funny. Thankfully all ended well!

There’s actually a word in the Collins dictionary which applies to a person whose occupation has a very obvious link with their names, called an aptronym, but alas the reverse also applies too. That opposite, called an inaptonym, can quite simply be explained by the example of a cleric called Jaime Sin, back in the 1970s, who was duly promoted to the position of Cardinal. The poor man then had the title of Cardinal Sin, but hopefully he saw the funnier side of it, at least for the early weeks of his rise in the Church hierarchy until it started to be an annoyance.

In the past, where academics have found themselves with very little to do, research papers have been produced to indicate whether or not names like Barber, Farmer, Carpenter or Porter, could somehow prompt these people into career paths connected with their names. Completely and utterly ludicrous, I agree, but this academic study was conducted under the headings of ‘implicit egotism’ or ‘nominative determinism’. Needless to say, it was contradicted by another piece of research under the title of ‘coincidence’. I think I’d ‘go’ with the latter.

Áras na nGael has been at the heart of the Irish language in Galway City since 1935. Micheál Mac Aoidh is the new Development Officer for this building that once served as the city home of Lady Gregory’s family. Having spent much of his own youth involved in Irish events there, he wants to see the Áras restored as a vibrant centre for people interested in the language and culture. He tells CIARAN TIERNEY about his vision.

Not many people find themselves going on strike within just two months of taking up a new job, but that was the position Galway City native Micheál Mac Aoidh found himself in earlier this year when he stood on a picket line in the heart of the city.

Having only taken over as the Development Officer at Áras na nGael in December, standing with a placard outside the historic premises on Dominick Street on a cold February morning was not exactly how Micheál had envisaged settling into his new role.

But that strike also gave him a renewed sense of hope.

As the only current employee at the Dominick Street centre, he was delighted to be joined by Irish language enthusiasts from a variety of backgrounds, from the city and surrounding areas, on a day when up to 40 Irish language groups went on strike to highlight a dispute over funding cutbacks on both sides of the Irish border.

People were keen to show up to lend moral and physical support to Micheál and the board of Áras na nGael, the building which has been tasked with keeping the Irish language alive and providing a suitable location for activities in our native language in Galway City, since the 1930s.

The picket highlighted a crisis in funding at Foras na Gaeilge, the body charged with promoting the language throughout the island of Ireland, while providing a clear reminder at a local level that the building in which Micheál works badly needs a revamp.

Foras na Gaeilge, set up following the Good Friday Agreement, aims to promote Irish throughout the island and the one-day strike in late February was organised after the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) was accused of blocking or delaying increases in funding for centres such as Áras na nGael.

Having spent years working to promote the Irish language in both Galway City and the Donegal Gaeltacht, Micheál says he has been involved in the Irish language community all his life. He was brought up in an Irish-speaking household in Salthill and attended both Scoil Iognáid and Coláiste Iognáid (the Jes), where he was educated in Irish.

By the time he attended the University of Galway in the late 1980s, Micheál was a regular at Áras na nGael. He would attend music sessions in the pub on the premises – which is due to reopen at the end of this month – and took part in rehearsals there with an Irish language drama group called Na Fánaithe.

Micheál always had a great love for the place and saw huge potential in the building when he applied for the role of Development Officer late last year. Indeed, his late mother, Eithne Conway McGee, was one of the trustees of Áras na nGael when he was a youngster.

“I really got to know this place during my college years, when I used to attend Club Áras. There has always been a link between the pub here and third-level Irish language students or those involved in the Irish language at the University of Galway. I was involved in a drama group who were based here (na Fánaithe), so I have a big link with this place going way back,” he says.

“The club at the time would have had a lot of sean-nós music and Gaeltacht people mixing with city people. A lot of people from the Gaeltacht who lived in the city would come here to socialise. It was a very interesting place. A lot of foreign tourists would come here. You could meet people from the Basque Country here on a Saturday night. It was very multilingual.”

Pictured: Micheál Mac Aodha, Development Officer at Áras na nGael. ‘I want this to be the centre of Irish language culture, language, the arts, and a place to socialise.’

Arts Week with Judy Murphy

Film director Ruán Magan attributes his long and fruitful relationship with Irish language broadcaster TG4 to the influence of his late grandmother, Sighle Humphreys. An Irish-language activist and republican, she passed on her passion for the language and culture to Ruán and his brother Manchán.

Sighle died when Ruán was about 25, in the mid-1990s, around the time Teilifís na Gaeilge, now TG4, was being established in Baile na hAbhann.

Out of loyalty to his grandmother, Ruán decided he should do some work for the new station.

At the time, he was a young filmmaker, climbing the industry ladder, whose credits included working as a location manager for Neil Jordan’s Michael Collins and as a line producer on Bogwoman, directed by the late Tom Collins.

So, Ruán wrote a letter to TnaG, suggesting that if they gave him a camera, he could travel to India, where Manchán was living, and they’d create something worth watching.

That was done with consulting with Manchán, he adds with a laugh. But TnaG obliged and the result was a series of travel documentaries for the station that took the Dublin brothers all over the world.

They’d been reared in Donnybrook in middle-class surroundings, but their maternal grandmother had kept the family’s traditional republican flame alive.

In the 1960s, Sighle Humphreys was part of the campaign for a State-operated Irish language radio station.

And she was a republican sympathiser all her life. She lived with Ruán’s family in her later years and escapees from the Maze Prison could find refuge in her area of the house.

“It gave my father a canary anytime he saw one,” her grandson laughs.

Ruán is one of the country’s finest directors, working mostly on documentaries, sometimes with international collaborators. He has experience in drama too, including for TG4, “who have been incredibly supportive”, he says. “They have given me a push every time I needed it and supported my career the whole way through. They developed me as an Irish-language director.”

Ruán’s latest project involving TG4 is the Irish language feature Báite, produced by Galway company Danú Media. Part-funded by the TV station, it will premiere at Galway Film Fleadh next Wednesday, July 9.

Pictured: Actors Moe Dunford (Frank), and Eleanor O’Brien (Peggy) in the film, set in a rural village in the 1970s. Life changes forever for Peggy when a woman’s body is found in a local lake.

Galway United 1

Shelbourne 1

By Mike Rafferty in Eamonn Deacy Park

The ability of Galway United to hang in there when all seemed lost was rewarded in Eamonn Deacy Park on Friday evening when a late Bobby Burns goal allowed the home side to collect a point in an always competitive League of Ireland tie.

As to be expected, it was the defending champions who enjoyed the greater amount of possession and they took an opening-half lead when slack marking allowed Mipo Odubeko have a free header. However, the arrival of the goal was followed by a combination of the visitors stepping off the gas and United stepping up a few gears.

The response was impressive but not profitable, as United hung in there. As time progressed it was Shelbourne who created the majority of the opportunities, but their finishing left a lot to be desired as a combination of poor finishing and Evan Watts kept the game in the balance.

The reward at the other end was eventually secured on 84 minutes when Burns struck for his first goal of the season to give the home side a slender reward for their effort as they maintained their seventh position in the table for the sixth week in succession.

It was a dramatic week for both teams in terms of club personnel. For a considerable amount of time the position of Galway United striker Moses Dyer was in question as the word was that the league’s leading scorer was on the move with just his destination a mystery.

While the exact facts of the case are still unproven as the club have not offered any clarity on the situation, Dyer is gone, with Cambodia apparently his destination.

For Shelbourne, the resignation of manager Damien Duff caught the Dublin club unawares, as their recent poor form bothered him so much he stepped down, with his assistant Joey O’Brien stepping into the top job.

With United having lost to Sligo earlier in the week and fielded an unchanged side for the fourth game in succession, there was always going to be at least one switch following the red card picked up by Dyer in what looks like having been his final game for the club.

In fact, management made three changers to the starting XI as, with Patrick Hickey out through injury, Stephen Walsh and new signing Malcolm Shaw started a new striking partnership; and with Vince Borden on the bench, Killian Brouder came into the back-three to join Garry Buckley and Rob Slevin.

Shelbourne also responded to having a third game in a week, as they made five changes to the selection that drew with Waterford on the Monday night and while the visitors gave every indication of the strength of their bench as the game progressed, it was the home side who went closest to an early breakthrough.

Pictured: Galway United’s David Hurley looks to break away from the challenge of Shelbourne’s Sean Boyd and JJ Lunney in Eamonn Deacy Park on Friday night. Photo: Joe O’Shaughnessy.