Letters to the Editor: Tralee's Mary O’Connell was a wonderful, courageous woman
Mary O'Connell's portrait painted by John Gubbins. Picture: OPW/Derrynane House
I recently visited the grave of Mary O’Connell, wife of Daniel O’Connell, in the beautiful cemetery on Abbey Island in Derrynane, Co Kerry.
The condition of the grave needs attention, and I wonder if there is any State body or historical group or other group which would be interested in becoming involved with remedying the situation with, of course, the permission of her descendants?
There isn’t likely to be a huge amount of work to be done.
The 250th anniversary of Daniel O’Connell’s birthday is coming up in August, a time for great celebrations of his wonderful life, legacy, and his enormous contribution to Ireland’s progress towards independence. He is buried in a recently restored mausoleum in Glasnevin Cemetery.
As I researched Mary’s relatively short life — she died in 1836 aged 58 — the portrait of a truly wonderful, courageous woman emerges.
Commencing with a difficult start in life; then a secret romance with Daniel (which had to be so, given his uncle’s demand that he marry a woman with a dowry, which Mary didn’t have); their subsequent marriage in secret; the arrival of the first of some 11 children; Daniel’s subsequent disinheritance when his uncle found out about the marriage; their early life together; stays in Dublin, England, and France; her later increasing time alone in Derrynane House — which Daniel’s uncle left him after all, after Daniel’s election to Westminster and growing political involvement and pressures in an increasingly volatile Ireland — where she ran the house, raised her large family, and became Daniel’s agent; faced some difficult financial problems and court cases, etc, and she stood by her husband through it all.
A thoroughly wonderful modern woman whose memory needs to be cherished and respected.
Fergus Finlay’s column — “Our precious neutrality is nothing but vanity … we must join the fight” (Irish Examiner, March 4) — is riddled with inaccuracies and hysterical assertions.
Only Fergus has never been in uniform and, to my knowledge, has never been under fire or in a combat environment. Yet, he seems adamant that Ireland should abandon our proud tradition of military non-alignment and our sovereign neutral status. In my view, in regard to current conflicts — most of whom the vanity projects of geriatric male “strong-men”, he should keep his feathers (presumably white ones) to himself.
In his column, Fergus Finlay tells us that “the world has changed irrevocably”. Europe is not “the world”. Even Europe, the US, and Russia together are not “the world”.
But the rest of the world might well be concerned about our behaviour in this part of the world right now, given our belligerent history.
It looks very much like we are preparing for “world war three”.
As there is a significant risk that this could turn out to be a nuclear war, the rest of the world should be worried. People in many other parts of the world are trying to cope with significant climate change as it is. Militarism and war are highly toxic to the natural environment, and they do not respect boundaries and borders.
Mr Finlay justifiably criticises US president Donald Trump because Mr Trump believes that “real power is fear” — that “you have to scare people”. But that is surely the modern definition of “defence”.
Arm yourself to the teeth with piles of massively destructive (and massively expensive) weapons, and point them at your neighbour.
Mr Finlay is rightly upset about the war in Ukraine. It is surprising then that, in his condemnation of strong-man aggression, he never once mentions Gaza.
At the end of his article, Mr Finlay expresses some regret that Ireland was not represented at “the security conference of the real leaders of democracy” in London last Sunday. In an interview on BBC, following that conference, I heard British prime minister Keir Starmer call the conference “a coalition of the willing”.
That is exactly what the parties involved called themselves when they invaded and destroyed Iraq in 2003, going against the advice of the Security Council of the United Nations. As we all know, that illegal invasion was based on a whole web of lies about weapons of mass destruction — and so many unfortunate innocent Iraqi people died.
Innocent people died in London and Madrid too because of that illegal war.
Mr Finlay describes Mr Trump and US vice president JD Vance as “two school-yard bullies”.
They certainly did (and do) behave like school-yard bullies.
I have been working in child welfare and education for more than 30 years. Never have I heard a responsible parent, guardian, or teacher tell children to “take sides” in a bullying situation and to “join the fight”. That is not the approach any of us would take. It should be no different for adults or in international relations. What we teach children in the school yard, we should model in our “grown-up” lives.
Never, in my work with children and families, have I ever met parents who would want their children to be sent off to war to kill and, maybe, be killed. Never, in all my years of work with children and young people, have I met a child or young person I would send to war.
The real courage and the real strength will be for Ireland to maintain its neutrality — and the triple lock — and to be at the ready, not with vanity but with humility and compassion, to assist warring parties to come to resolution and to come to peace.
The civil works are in progress for the critical Ringaskiddy motorway to service a large local population along with the ever expanding port traffic, and pharma industry. This road will be under huge stress in a very short period of time for obvious reasons.
Why in God’s name wasn’t light rail included in the design phase to include all preliminary civil work to prepare for a track that could be added at a future date when money was available? It is typical poor planning.
The very first act the Government passed was to increase the number of ministers of state by a further three to 23. This, along with the retention of a travel allowance that a TD previously would have lost on elevation to a junior ministry. All this was justified by reference to a supposed increased volume of government priorities.
Since 2007, the expansion in ministerial duties has stemmed from the growing complexity of policy issues, the challenges of steering vast government initiatives, and the heightened involvement with stakeholders at all levels — both nationally and internationally.
One month later, none of the 23 juniors given the brief for Traveller accommodation;
Is there a game of pass the parcel at work here, with nobody willing to take on this important duty?
Will it be retained by the housing minister, James Browne, by default? I doubt it somehow. Referring to Travellers during his last term, Taoiseach Micheál Martin said “basically, the stock approaches are not working”;
Now back as Taoiseach, Mr Martin continues the old “stock approaches” by keeping Travellers and their accommodation needs at the bottom of the government’s priority list. Plus ça change.
