Trevor Laffan

I came across a story recently and while it was hardly earth-shattering news, it still grabbed some headlines. Gordon Ramsey, a TV chef, declared in no uncertain terms that he would not eat airplane food. He didn’t put it as simply as that and he stirred a few expletives into the pot but the point was the same. He wouldn’t touch it with a forty-foot fork.

He was once involved in preparing food for an airline and he won’t eat it because he knows what it takes to prepare the meals and the length of time the food is hanging around before it is eaten. So, I assume that when Mr. Ramsey takes a flight somewhere he brings a packed lunch.

I don’t know what exactly he expects. The primary function of any airline is to get us from A to B as efficiently and as safely as possible. On long-haul flights, passengers will get hungry and at thirty thousand feet there aren’t too many options available to the cabin crew. They can let you starve or they can supply you with some pre-prepared food. Ok, so it’s not going to be mouth- watering but at least it’s edible. Presumably it is subject to some hygiene and food safety regulations so it should be safe as well.

I don’t think that anyone, apart from Gordon Ramsey that is, expects Michelin type meals when you’re flying above the clouds. Most of us want something to fill a gap and at that height you can’t be too fussy. In my own experience, I have found that airplane food has improved over the years and I have yet to be poisoned by any of it. Which is more than I can say about some of the food I’ve eaten at ground level.

There was a time when our knowledge of food was limited to a decent beef stew or a nice bit of bacon and cabbage. The most important thing was to have a flowery potato. After that, everything else fell into place. If there was a really special occasion you might venture to a restaurant and treat yourself to a steak. But there had to be a good reason for that.

Then, we started to get a bit cocky and if the steak wasn’t done to our liking, we sent it back. If the soup wasn’t warm enough, back it went. Effectively, we were telling the chef to get his act together and maybe that didn’t go down too well.

It’s probably our fault that chefs decided they needed to become aggressive in the kitchen. They got angry and learned to shout a lot. Having temper tantrums and throwing pots and pans was essential for a life in a white hat. Or maybe that was only for television.

There is an abundance of cookery programmes on the television these days like Master Chef, Jamies 15 miniute meals, Can’t Cook – Won’t Cook, The Naked Chef. There are more celebrity chefs than you can wave a blender at and they all have their own way of doing things. Some of them often lose the run of themselves.

I came across a story involving Jay Rayner, a food critic with The Observer, and he described an experience he had at Le Cinq, Four Seasons Hôtel George V, in Paris. He went for a meal with a female companion and the bill, including service and modest wine came to €600.

This place is a Michelin three-star restaurant, or the scene of the crime as Mr. Rayner described it. In terms of value for money and expectation Le Cinq supplied by far the worst restaurant experience he has endured in his 18 years as a food critic.

If you are going to fork out €600 for a bit of grub, you are entitled to be miffed if you’re not happy with it. The canapé, he said, released stale air with a tinge of ginger and his companion said it was like eating a condom that had been left lying about in a dusty greengrocer’s.

He described the main course of pigeon as being served so pink it just might fly again given a few volts and it arrived with a heap of couscous and a tiny portion of lamb for €95 and it tasted of little.

He described the dessert of frozen chocolate mousse cigars wrapped in tuile with an elastic flap of milk skin draped over it, like something that had fallen off a burns victim. He said the cheesecake tasted of grass clippings.

They each drank one glass of champagne, one glass of white and one of red, chosen by the sommelier from a wine list that included bottles priced at €15,000 each. The drinks bill was €170 and the total bill was €600. As for the overall experience, he reckons that If he works hard, one day, with luck, he may be able to forget it.

I don’t know anything about food critics but I really enjoyed Mr. Raynor’s review and it made me laugh. On the other hand, it made me wonder about how restaurants like this survive. Obviously, there are people who are prepared to pay these outlandish prices because they either enjoy the experience or they don’t know any better. A touch of the Emperors’ new clothes maybe.

I don’t have a very sophisticated pallet and I love nothing more than a nice feed of bacon and cabbage with some flowery spuds and a knob of butter. I don’t know what Mr. Raynor would make of that but for sure, restaurants would struggle to over glamourise it no matter what language they used.

It is what it is. Good food for less than €600 and you don’t need any Michelin stars to produce it.

The Leaving Cert is upon us again and it’s a stressful time for our young students. But they shouldn’t worry if they don’t get the points they want. In fact, they may even be better off if they don’t.

When I was a school kid, I never got too much encouragement from the teaching fraternity to reach for the stars. As far as I can remember, I never received any type of career guidance. In those days, there were two categories of student. Those who were academically inclined and those who weren’t. The former group got all the attention and the latter group of no-hopers were left to their own devices. This group included me.

There was a kind of unspoken understanding that the achievers merited the extra interest so they could reach their full potential. While the rest, well they would find their own level with a trade or a factory job. They’d be fine.

There were certainly some guys in every class who were completely oblivious to what was going on around them. They lived in a bubble. They had absolutely no interest in what was taking place and it was an achievement to even get these characters into a classroom. But there may have been reasons for that.

Not much was known in those days about autism, dyspraxia or dyslexia or the myriad of other inhibitors that make learning difficult for some people.  Conventional teaching methods didn’t work for everyone. The supports weren’t available for kids suffering from these ism’s so they were left to struggle on. Maybe I’m being hard on the system of the time but that’s how I remember it.

Things have progressed a lot since then and there is much more recognition and understanding of the various conditions that can have an impact on a child’s ability to learn. Teaching methods have changed and special needs assistants are a great addition.

So now, every child has a decent chance and we want them to make the most of their opportunity and to be whatever they want to be. Hopefully, they will be content with their lot and be happy in themselves and that’s as much as we want for our kids.

At the other end of the scale, as we get older, things change.  We realise that time has moved on and some of the stars are no longer within reach.

I was lying in bed the other night and I woke around 3am and my mind was racing. It dawned on me that I was never going to be an Olympian. I am too old to run anywhere and too fat to jump over anything and I have a lower back that has a mind of its own.

For those same reasons, I will never climb Mt. Everest, I will never play football for Liverpool and I will not compete against Roger Federer at Wimbledon. I will never be an explorer nor am I ever likely to discover anything unless it happens to be lurking in my garden or resting somewhere near my recliner.

I can live with that, but I can’t help wondering at how it came about so quickly. The years between my school days and grand-fatherhood have disappeared in the blink of an eye.

I remember as a young garda in Dublin getting advice from an old hand and he told me to enjoy my service because the time was going to fly by. He said that the first ten years would pass quickly. The second ten years would go ever quicker and the third ten would pass in a matter of miniutes and soon, I would be heading for retirement.

I was twenty-one at the time so I wasn’t listening because thirty years was an eternity and way off my radar. How right he was though.

When you look at the bigger picture, it’s incredible to think how little time we have on this planet. In 1979, I walked through the gates of the Garda Training College in Templemore. Then someone pushed the fast forward button and here I am writing this nearly forty years later.

I have encountered many who are obsessed with their careers, with a burning desire to achieve greatness or simply to make as much money as possible. Very often they leave casualties in their wake, including their own families. They work in stressful environments, often away from home, beavering away to get more. Never seeming to be satisfied with what they have.

But like me, one day, they too will wake up to find that the kids have grown up and have gone off to make their own lives. They will realise that time has passed them by and they are now elder lemons and are more likely to be talking about pensions, nursing homes, prostates and gout.

I know guys who hardly have time to stop for a chat because there is always something more important to be done. They can’t take a day off because, in their minds, they can’t be done without. They’re the essential cog in the wheel and without them, work will grind to a halt.

The bad news for them is that everyone is dispensable. Anyone who imagines that their services can’t be done without, is not living in the real world. There is always someone waiting to take over and the wheel will continue to turn as if they were never there.

So, maybe all those years ago, the system did us some good. Maybe the system did identify the high achievers and pushed them on because they knew what lay ahead and maybe they also realised that the rest of us would have a better life just plodding along.

If that was the case then maybe I’m not giving them enough credit.

 

 

 

On Wednesday last, I spent a few hours watching the meeting of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) on the Internet. They are trying to get to the bottom of the financial shenanigans at the Garda College in Templemore. The official title is, ‘Matters arising from Interim Report of AGS Internal Audit Unit on Financial Procedures at the Garda College Templemore.’

This probably wouldn’t be most peoples’ idea of fun but I find that kind of stuff entertaining. The whole business concerning the state of financial accounting in Templemore is a heavy subject with lots of details about dates of meetings and who was present and who said what to whom being bandied about. But it’s all good stuff.

From the garda side of the house, there were three main civilian witnesses. There was the head of Human Resources, the guy in charge of doing the audit and the guy in charge of Finance. There were others but these three were the stars of the show. It soon became obvious that there was some hostility between these people and there was a bit of finger pointing going on.

There were moments when the contents of letters and reports were read out in public. Sometimes they contained comments made by one witness about the other which was a little awkward considering that they were sitting side by side. They appeared to be uncomfortable at times and looked like they wished that they were somewhere else instead.

As I was watching it, a couple of things came to mind. Some of the committee members appeared to be behaving very aggressively towards the witnesses, occasionally, they were bordering on being rude. This committee is questioning witnesses and looking at the evidence presented to them with the intention of finding out what happened and presumably furnishing a report based on their findings.

I didn’t see the need for the amateur dramatics and grandstanding. It should be possible to carry out this function without screaming about how outraged they are and about how this is probably the worst thing they have experienced since they entered politics. A bit of civility wouldn’t go amiss and people need to calm down. As serious as it is, it’s not the Nuremberg Trials.

The Chairman of the Audit Committee, who is no longer in that position, got a hard time from Mary Lou McDonald for not being better prepared to answer questions. The guy was only asked the previous Friday to attend the meeting and he didn’t have access to records because he doesn’t hold the position anymore. He did turn up to the PAC staff the day before to have a look at the paperwork that was available to him so he could refresh his memory. He did his best.

The other irritation was the amount of time allocated to the committee members to ask their questions. They got a few miniutes each but it wasn’t enough time so they all ended up running over and rushing at the end. Sometimes without getting the answer to the last question.

Some of the politicians spent most of their allotted time making long winded statements and that didn’t help.

While the subject matter is serious, just watching the carry on can be entertaining. Sean Fleming of Fianna Fail is the chairman of the committee and he has a habit of banging a spoon or a pen off a glass when he gets a little excited or when he wants attention. Nobody apart from Sean seems to take any notice of it.

He was challenged at one point by David Cullinane of Sinn Fein on why he wouldn’t let one of the witnesses make a comment in relation to another witness and he got very animated. He looked as if he was afraid that the stewardship of this committee might be taken from him. He pointed out that he was the chairman and he was doing it his way. He was a bit excited.

Sean then got a bit stressed about the contents of a letter that compared the goings on in Templemore to the events that unfolded at Console, the charitable organisation. Sean went to great lengths to explain why this letter was bothering him so much and why it was so important.

Alan Kelly of Labour got stuck in and you can always count on him to put on a good show. He didn’t pull his punches and always seemed ready to bite someone’s head off. Catherine Connolly, Independent, on the other hand, gave the appearance of not being too sure about what was going on. She came across as being somewhat lost while Bobby Aylward, Fianna Fail, seemed very sure of himself but I had no idea what he was on about. He seemed to be asking general questions to nobody in particular.

This process has a long way to go yet. So far, it appears that whatever went on in Templemore wasn’t for the personal gain of any one individual. It seems more likely that all this bad governance and poor accounting was a result of lack of ability more than criminality. The sums of money involved were enormous and there was no expertise there to deal with it properly. Every time someone got an idea, they opened a bank account. There were 48 of them.

Many people will struggle to understand how things could get to this state. How there could be such bad governance and mismanagement in An Garda Siochana and why so many issues were left unchallenged.

I am one of those and I will be tuning in to the next meeting to find out.

 

 

 

I’m not a DIY enthusiast. In fact, it’s fair to say that I have absolutely no interest in it. My late father was in the building game and he was always there if I needed something fixed. There are others now who fix things for me and it’s a very simple arrangement. I give them money and they fix stuff.

Some people are good with tools and some can’t drive a nail, so I think it’s reasonable to let those who know what they’re doing to get on with it. It’s horses for courses.

The other thing about DIY is that you’re wasting your time if you haven’t got the proper equipment. If you try to change a tap in the kitchen and the only tool you have in the shed is a shovel, then you’re off to a bad start. You can be pretty certain in that case that you are going to run into problems. By the same token, if you want to fix the roof then you will need something other than your garden hose.

The other thing to keep in mind is that there is no such thing as a simple job. Neither is there any job that will only take five miniutes. So, when someone tells you; “Ah, sure you’ll have it done five miniutes”, that’s the time to cut and run because it’s not going to end well.

If I hammer a nail into the wall to hang a picture, there is a good chance that I’ll hit an electric cable and half the wall will have to come down to fix it. If I dig a hole in the floor, then I’m guaranteed to hit a water pipe, flood the house and upset the foundations. At that stage, I have to call in someone to fix the chaos.

Even painting can be problematic. When your wife says that she wants the hall touched up, that’s really code for “I’m going to completely redecorate the entire house.” Then she’ll decide that the colour needs to be changed so everything will have to get at least two coats. Anyway, there is no such thing as a touch up because once you start, everything else looks shabby. The best thing to do is just leave it alone.

When the weather starts to improve, my queen turns her attention to the outdoors. I have no interest in the garden or anything that grows in it. One of the reasons that I was happy to leave my last home in the country was because of the large amount of grass, hedging, trees and shrubs that needed my attention.

When I started out in that house, the garden was very manageable. The hedge was low. So low in fact that in the early days we thought that it was deceased but we eventually encouraged it back to life. It repaid us over the years by growing to enormous proportions and nearly swallowing up the house in the process.

When we planted the trees, they were about a foot high and there were lots of them. They looked lovely at first and again they were minded, watered and spoken to until they took on a life of their own. Years later, cutting them became a major operation.

The shrubs, like everything else, became fully grown adult bushes that housed many dark secrets like bugs, thorns and other stuff that attacked human flesh. Every time I went out to cut the grass I was going to war with nature. That garden, that was supposed to be a piece of Heaven, became a living, killing, evil, spiteful piece of demonic jungle. I had to escape from it.

Now, in my current home, I have very little greenery but still no peace.

Recently, I decided that as the weather was starting to improve, I would cut the grass. The garden shed has a pvc door but it was locked of course and the key was missing. So, I went on YouTube to find out how to get through a locked pvc door without a key. No problem they said, it’s just a five miniute job. That worried me straight away.

So, the guy on YouTube did his thing and hey presto, in about thirteen seconds, the lock was in bits on the floor and the door was open. It was my turn next. I gathered the necessary equipment and prepared for an assault on the lock. I did what I was told on the video but it didn’t look as if I was going to break the thirteen second mark. In fact, it was beginning to look as if the entire shed might be demolished with the door still locked.

I grabbed the lock with the vice grips but instead of snapping off as it did in the video, it hung on for dear life. It was working against me. But I got into the zone and stuck with it and eventually it popped off. Half an hour later and the rest of the lock was in pieces and I was in.

Replacing it was supposed to be another five miniute job but that involved several trips to the hardware store, some huffing and puffing, some choice language and some skinned knuckles. By the time I was ready to cut the grass it started raining so I had to abandon it.

The moral of this story is that sometimes when you need something done, it’s better to call people who know what they’re doing. No matter what anyone tells you, there is no such thing as a quick fix. So, the next time someone suggests doing a little spring cleaning, painting, grass cutting or any other job that will only take five miniutes, tell them to get lost.

 

 

 

 

 

They say that once you admit you have a problem, you are half way towards getting it fixed. Well, I’m going to make a start by declaring, here and now, that I need professional help. I need a good psychiatrist to find out what makes me tick because there is something not quite right in my head.

I don’t normally dream too much, or maybe I do but I’m just not aware of it. But lately I have been having dreams that make absolutely no sense whatsoever and they don’t seem to follow any logic.

I’ll give you an example. The other night I dreamt that I was in my local pub having a pint with my grandson. We were both having a pint of Guinness and we were engaged in a serious conversation. Now you might think that this sounds normal enough and that it’s nice that a grandfather and grandson would go for a drink together. But Cooper isn’t three years old yet.

He was sitting on a stool next to me and he was hardly able to reach the counter, drinking a pint and chatting away and my brain didn’t think that there was anything wrong with that picture.

I’ve had lots more of these, some are too silly to even remember, but they are becoming more frequent. I have had adventures with people I don’t even know, like the actor Michael Caine. I have also performed a concert with the comedian Billy Connolly. I have never met either of these guys.

I have had another little experience too that may or may not be related.

A few years back I was living in Cyprus. I had a lovely two- bedroom apartment and it was relatively new. It was built on the edge of The Buffer Zone which is a stretch of no mans’ land that runs from east to west on the island. It separates the north of the island which is occupied by Turkish Cypriots and the south of the island which is occupied by the Greek Cypriots.

From the balcony in my apartment I had an unobstructed view of the Buffer Zone and I could also see part of the ghost city of Famagusta. Part of that city remains unoccupied since the Turkish invasion in 1974 and it is monitored by the United Nations. That resort area was once the playground of the rich and famous like Liz Taylor and Richard Burton but now lies abandoned.

One night I was sleeping in the apartment and as usual I had the bedroom door open to allow the air to circulate. Something woke me and when I opened my eyes there was a man standing in the doorway. I couldn’t make out his face but I could see the rest of him. My first thought was that I had been broken into.

I reached over for the light and jumped out of bed but there was nobody there. I checked the front door and the sliding door to the balcony and they were both locked. There was nobody else in the apartment and at that stage I was kind of spooked.

There were two ladies living in the apartment next door and we had become great friends. They were two mature ladies, Ulla from Sweden and Tove from Denmark. I wasn’t living there long when I heard a loud crash coming from their apartment one evening. It sounded to me like the kitchen units were after falling off the wall. I went next door and rang the bell. The door opened and these two astonished faces looked out at me. I asked them if they were ok and they started laughing.

They couldn’t understand how anyone would care whether they lived or died and they thought it was wonderful that someone would check up on them. They invited me in for a gin and tonic and that was the start of a great friendship.

They used to give me a hard time about my work in the Buffer Zone and being part of the UN which they had no great faith in. I used to tell them that I was very busy killing people and protecting them from all kinds of marauders. They took to calling me Mr. Bond and they still do today.

One day, I was talking to my neighbours and I told them about my visitor and I expected to get a bit of slagging. But to my surprise they told me that they had felt a presence in their apartment too.

I subsequently got talking to a local farmer and he was telling me about the history of the area. He told me that it was a very violent time during the invasion and many people died. He said that there were many bodies scattered around that area of the Buffer Zone including the place where my block of apartments now stood.

He also told me that there are people missing who are presumed to be dead but whose bodies have never been recovered.

I have thought about what happened in my apartment that night and I have tried to find a plausible explanation for what I saw. I am normally a practical person and I would be sceptical about the spirit world and ghosts and goblins. But I can’t explain what I saw.

My sister, Deb, came to stay with me for a couple of weeks with her son, Ryan, and they shared the spare room. I didn’t say anything to them about my visitor because I didn’t want to spook them. But one morning we were having a chat and Deb mentioned that she thought she saw someone standing at the foot of the bed during the night.

Maybe I’m not the only one losing it.

This time last year I wrote about the demise community policing in Ireland. I was critical of senior garda management and I suggested that politics was influencing decision making in An Garda Siochana which was not good for policing. This article was published online and it received over 55,000 hits.

I’ve mentioned it here before that, following that publication, I was advised by some of my ex colleagues, that a few senior officers were suggesting that I should be careful about what I was saying or I could find myself in the High Court. Others had apparently suggested that I should be treated as a persona non- grata because I had betrayed the Force. I had broken the code of silence.

I wasn’t exactly setting the world on fire with my piece and it hardly qualified as breaking news. I didn’t reveal anything that wasn’t already known but the response from those officers is indicative of the kind of attitude that exists in An Garda Siochana. It did makme me to wonder about the treatment being meted out to the likes of Maurice McCabe, Dave Taylor and others.

If I was being slapped down for my small outburst, what were whistleblowers having to deal with? Then I began to wonder about how many more gardai have been advised to remember the omerta?

Well, the truth is we’ll probably never know because the people who want to highlight issues have no belief in the system that was designed to listen to them. Until that changes, those who would like to speak out will, instead, continue to bite their tongues.

There was a poll taken recently of middle-ranking officers and it found that almost three-quarters of them have no faith in the system for handing over confidential information. 71% said they had no confidence in the system for making protected disclosures and 91% said they either didn’t know enough about the procedures or didn’t have any faith in them.

According to Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors president, Antoinette Cunningham, her association was never consulted in relation to a protected disclosures charter in An Garda Síochána. She said it was sad that while the Government has decided to establish a high level working group, they have left out the very people that are involved in the process on ground level.

Antoinette shouldn’t be surprised by this because garda management has a poor record when it comes to consulting with the troops on the ground. But maybe she is worrying unnecessarily though because Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald has said that it will take time for gardaí to feel confident acting as whistleblowers but the Government is working on increasing trust in the force, after the alleged treatment of Sergeant Maurice McCabe.

“It’s important that there are procedures in place that whistleblowers can trust,” said Minister Fitzgerald.

She has said that an independent review of the “wider and more fundamental issues of public concern” in the gardaí will be carried out with the appointment of the independent expert, who will have a track record in bringing about reforms in police forces in other jurisdictions.

So, we will have another expert to carry out another examination to write another report and put it alongside the others from the Garda Inspectorate, the Policing Authority and GSOC.

Professor Robert Bloom of Boston College, recently completed a research fellowship at the Trinity Long Room Hub in collaboration with the School of Law, and he has spoken about the external agencies moving the Garda Síochána to change its culture and break the ‘blue wall of silence,’ the blind allegiance to each other that exists in a police force. He is particularly interested in the closed culture which leads members of the Garda Síochána and other police forces to isolate whistle-blowers and hide wrongdoing.

A law professor for over 35 years, Professor Bloom teaches criminal procedure at Boston College Law School. His study of criminal procedure has led him to focus closely on the police. “The ‘blue wall of silence’ also exists in Ireland,” says Professor Bloom.

He has commented that it has always been a truism that progression within the force was dependent on two factors: Patronage and “team spirit”. Patronage simply means having someone of higher rank within the job or pre-eminence within a political party who can vouch for a candidate when they apply for promotion.

He is right of course but how do we change it?  Those currently serving in management positions in An Garda Siochana have been trained, promoted and contaminated by this very system that is in need of change. The majority of these people are good, competent operators who are performing to the best of their ability. There are others, less capable, who have reached their positions through the culture of ‘pull’ and ‘cronyism’ that exists within the Force.

All of them have one thing in common, they are all part of the same system. This is no fault of theirs because it is the only system available to them, one that encourages a code of silence. A system that will consign you to the back benches if you are of a mind to speak up for yourself and not one to blindly follow the party line.

Nepotism is flourishing in An Garda Siochana and political affiliations are very important too. Interviews are held as a matter of course for various positions but these are often completely irrelevant as far as picking the most suitable candidate is concerned. The ‘chosen ones’ will have been selected well in advance of any interview process.

This is the way it is. Changing the entire culture of an organisation that has operated in this way since 1922 is going to take a lot more than banal utterances from the Minister for Justice.

 

 

 

 

I bumped into an ex colleague of mine recently and it was good to see him again after being out of touch for a few years. Paul Aherne is his name and he is a Clare man who has managed to put down his roots in Kanturk.

Many years ago, while we were working together, Paul told me that he needed a day off because he had to go and dig a grave in Clare. I thought that maybe he had fallen and banged his head so I offered him a seat. I reminded him that he was already gainfully employed by the Department of Justice and that he was not a grave digger. But he insisted on going anyway.

He told me that it was customary in his part of the world for the local people to get together to dig a grave when someone in their community died. Family, friends and neighbours would take it in turns to dig a piece of the grave and then after doing their bit, they would take a sip out of a bottle of whiskey that would be placed at the head of the plot.

He told me that anybody can take a turn at the digging and that on one occasion, he saw the local postman getting involved. Postman Pat was cycling by when he saw what was going on, he threw his bike against the wall and picked up a shovel. He did some digging, had his sip of whiskey and then headed off on his rounds again.

I have never forgotten that story and when I reminded him about it, he told me that he had a little follow up tale.

Not so long ago, he went to Doon in Co. Limerick to do the same thing for another relative. He told me that fourteen people had been lined up to dig the grave and when they were finished the digging, the plan was that they were going to adjourn to a local pub for soup and sandwiches.

When over forty people turned up in the graveyard, there were some frantic calls made to the pub to increase the order for the grub. They were going to need more sandwiches. But it showed that this tradition is still alive and kicking in some parts of the country.

But it’s not just a matter of turning up and scattering earth everywhere either like a demented mole. There is a structure in place and a procedure to be followed. For instance, you are not allowed to use your own shovel and the oldest member of the family must be the first person to start the dig and the grave must be dug on the same day as the removal.

I had never heard of this practice before but it seems that it is common in certain parts of Clare, West Cork and County Limerick. But a few years ago, there was an attempt made to outlaw this tradition by Cork County Council. It’s the kind of story that makes you think you are hallucinating and Sean O’Riordan reported on the events in the Irish Examiner at the time.

The county and town councils in Cork had passed bylaws, which required all gravediggers to undergo mandatory training. The plan was that once they had completed the training course they would be included in a list of approved gravediggers. A council spokesman had said that gravedigging was a dangerous activity and it should not be undertaken by unapproved persons. He said the bylaws were adopted in line with Health and Safety Authority guidelines.

The council said, “Gravediggers in small communities who dig three or less graves a year will be considered for a 50% reimbursement on the costs of mandatory training.” The qualification cost €125 for a Safe Pass course, a further €125 for a manual handling course, and gravediggers also had to complete a €210 grave-digging and risk-assessment course, including first aid training. The regulations required grave-diggers to have appropriate immunisation and equipment, including ear defenders, mobile phones and underground cable detection tools.

Now, you might think that that was a little over the top but when you take into consideration the risks that are involved in grave digging, then you might see the point in all this. Gravediggers could get some earth in their hair or maybe a blister on their hand if they weren’t used to manual labour or maybe even a hangover if they had too much of the whiskey. So, it’s a risky business.

I’m not sure how this training was going to work exactly but I have an image of a very large sod being housed in CIT or UCC and a fully approved hole digging trainer employed to give courses on proper digging. I can’t imagine it lasting too long though because after lecture one, I’m struggling to find a topic for a follow up talk.

It would be a handy number for the lecturer though. Step one; take the shovel in both hands and stick it in the ground. Step two; remove the shovel with the dirt attached and throw the dirt away. Repeat steps one and two until you end up with a large hole.

Thankfully, we were spared all that because following a plethora of complaints, the local authority held further discussions with the Health and Safety Authority and it was decided that health and safety legislation did not apply. However, the county council said that people would, in future, dig graves “at their own risk”.

Thankfully, Cork County Council finally relented after someone sprinkled them liberally with ‘common sense dust’. This is a fantastic tradition and it adds a personal touch to a sad occasion and no doubt brings some comfort to the mourners.

Long may it continue.

 

I have travelled a bit and I am lucky to have seen some wonderful places in my time. I have been to Bandon, Carrigtwohill and Killarney in County Kerry. I have been to Whitegate several times so, you can see from this, that I am well able to get around. I have no fear when it comes to broadening my horizons, not too unlike Christopher Columbus I suppose.

The main difference between myself and Christy is that I can’t find things while he was fairly good at that sort of thing. I probably wouldn’t have made a great explorer and I’ll tell you why.

 In 1492, Columbus left Spain in the Santa Maria, along with the Pinta and the Niña to do some exploring. On his way, he arrived at a little island called La Gomera, off Tenerife, and this was his last port of call on his voyage that led to the discovery of America. Columbus had intended to reach India using a new route. He also led expeditions to Africa, the Canary Islands, the Middle East, India and China. No bother to him.

La Gomera’s bay was considered the best of all the Canary Islands as well as being the safest, and Columbus was aware of this. On La Gomera he found all the supplies and drinking water he needed to supply his ships and sailors. The friendly inhabitants and the agreeable climate suited Columbus and he visited there on a few occasions.

According to tradition, Columbus was known to say a prayer at the Church of the Assumption and next to this, just up the street is the so-called house of Columbus, which he presumably used as a base when he was there.

Having found myself on that same island recently, and having a little bit of interest in Christy as a fellow traveller, I set out to find this ‘House of Columbus’. It is next to the church I was told, can’t miss it. I found the church but I couldn’t find the house. So, I called to a little tourist information centre and spoke to a lady who directed me to a white house just up the street from the church but it was closed that day. No problem, I just wanted to see it from the outside anyway.

Off I went with my little map and my new directions and I walked up and down the street but I could not find a white house, or any other house for that matter, that made any reference to Columbus. Then I noticed some other people studying their little coloured maps and they too were walking up and down so then I didn’t feel completely stupid.

As I was wandering around aimlessly in the heat, I began to wonder how much myself and Christy really had in common after all. He could circumnavigate the world and find his way back home again with very little help. On the other hand, I couldn’t find his house on a small street on a tiny island, even with my little map. So, I did what I always do when the going gets tough, I gave up and I now know that I could never be an explorer.

It must have taken a huge amount of skill and courage to be able to achieve what he did back in those times. He had no idea what he was going to encounter on those travels or what dangers lay in wait for him. When he left home for work in the morning he didn’t finish at five and head home again. He was gone for months and maybe even years. There wasn’t much point in the wife asking him to collect a pint of milk on the way home from work.

Now, travelling has become a lot easier with the introduction of Satellite Navigation. Satellite Navigation is based on a whole bunch of satellites that transmit radio signals back and forth. The basic GPS service provides users with approximately 7.8 meter accuracy, 95% of the time, anywhere on or near the surface of the earth.

It’s complicated stuff but it works and we can only imagine what Columbus could have achieved if he had had access to a Sat Nav. Or maybe not.

Because we have these systems in our cars too, you would imagine that there should be no reason for us to get lost anymore. But that’s not always the case and it’s important to use other indicators as well as the Sat Nav. Things like road markings, warning signs and information signs still have a part to play.

Two British pensioners landed in a hospital in southern Germany after their car’s global positioning system directed them to drive into a church. While driving their Renault in the evening on a back road near the Austrian border, the navigation system instructed the couple to turn right where there was no road.

They were confused and the 76-year-old driver crashed into the side of the village church, virtually writing off the car, knocking a picture off the wall inside and damaging the building’s foundations. Total damages were some 25,000 euros. The couple, who were traveling to France, spent the evening in the hospital recuperating from minor injuries

On another occasion, a woman in Massachusetts drove her car into a bunker on a golf course. Of course, it was not her fault. Her car’s malfunctioning GPS navigational system was to blame. Her GPS had told her to turn left and this brought her into a “cornfield” and once she was in the “cornfield” she kept driving, trying to get out. She was in fact on a golf course and ended up in a bunker.

Maybe Christy was better off without one of those things after all.

There has been a fair amount of criticism aimed at management in An Garda Siochana recently by the media and not without some justification. There have been allegations of nepotism, politically influenced promotions, manipulation of crime figures, incompetence and more.

It’s one thing for the media to highlight these issues. It is a different matter entirely for someone inside the organisation to speak out and we need to look no further than Maurice McCabe to see the evidence of that.

I can only speculate as to how difficult life has been for that man over the last number of years. The pressure that he has been under has been immense and it’s not over yet. I have had only a tiny taste of what can happen to someone who breaks ranks but even that little sample has been unsavoury and it tells its own tale of how deeply the code of silence is embedded in the Force.

I retired in 2015 having spent over thirty- five years in An Garda Siochana. My service was considered to have been exemplary and I have discharge papers that state that. Not long after retiring, I wrote an article about the demise of community policing and the closure of rural garda stations. I also criticised senior management for letting down the rank and file members of the Force. It was published in Journal.ie and it received 55,000 hits.

Some of my former colleagues advised me that certain senior garda officers had suggested that I could find myself in the High Court. Others had, apparently, suggested that I should be treated as a persona non grata because I had let the side down. It was nothing to cause me any loss of sleep but it was a reminder of what can happen if you violate the vow of silence or break the code of Omerta.

This is a great pity because while there are issues to be resolved within An Garda Siochana, it is basically a solid organisation with a core group of dedicated, professional men and women who just want to do their job to the best of their ability. It has a long and proud tradition of dedicated service to the community and that can only be improved upon when management face up to their inadequacies and change the way the system operates.

But that’s easier said than done. An Garda Siochana also has a long tradition of circling the wagons at the first sign of outside interference. As soon as trouble is detected on the horizon the default setting kicks in. Close ranks and stick together. It’s them against us and that mentality will be difficult to overturn.

Commissioner O’Sullivan has maintained that An Garda Siochana is going through a process of change and whistleblowing is very much encouraged in this new era of openness.

She has said that; “As Commissioner of Garda Síochána, I have consistently encouraged workers within An Garda Síochána to disclose wrongdoing. Any worker who makes such a disclosure will be fully supported. Each and every worker has the right and responsibility to raise their concerns, if necessary, in confidence, and be confident that those concerns will be listened to and addressed. An Garda Síochána is committed to promoting integrity, accountability, and good management and in that respect I encourage the reporting of wrongdoing.” 

That sounds well but the problem is that very few believe her. She has stated that fewer than ten people have come forward to make protected disclosures and that doesn’t surprise me in the least. I suspect that there are very few who have any confidence in statements that emanate from the Phoenix Park and I’ll tell you why.

A few years ago, An Garda Siochana held a National Consultation Day on Diversity in Dublin Castle. Diversity was the buzz word in the organisation at the time and this event was designed to engage with the community and to listen to their concerns in relation to diversity and to inform them about garda policy on the subject. It was attended by the public and by representatives of various organisations involved in that area.

I was involved in an EU Police Diversity Project at the time and there was a meeting of the project group held in Ireland that week so it could coincide with the consultation day. There were about 25 to 30 police officers from all over Europe involved.

The Commissioner at the time opened proceedings and made a passionate speech about the importance of diversity to An Garda Siochana and the importance of engaging with one another. He ensured everyone present that diversity was the way forward and An Garda Siochana would not be found wanting.

Later that evening the project group went to Farmleigh House for a meal. As we entered the room I went to one table and sat with a group of police officers from different jurisdictions and one of my colleagues went to another table and did the same.

Soon after, the Commissioner arrived and he sat at a table in a corner of the room and he was joined by an assistant commissioner, a chief superintendent, a superintendent, an inspector, a sergeant and a garda.  The full rank structure of An Garda Siochana was represented at one table, on an occasion when we were supposed to be demonstrating our new found love of diversity.

I sat next to a man who was the secretary of the Black Police Officers Federation in the UK. He leaned over to me and he pointed to that table and he said; “See that, nothing changes until that changes.”

He was right of course and it was embarrassing, and it was also a perfect example of how management in An Garda Siochana doesn’t always practice what it preaches.

Many years ago, the early nineteen eighties to be precise, I was a young garda stationed in Blackrock in Dublin and back then Dublin was a different place to what it is now. The equipment and even the clothing we had in those days was nothing like what is available to the guys today.

We had overcoats, greatcoats they were called, made from bulls’ wool. They weighed a ton when they were dry and could bring you to your knees when they were wet.  It felt as if you were carrying a large dead hairy animal around on your shoulders. The trousers were made from the same material and comfort was never a consideration for the manufacturers.

The rain coats we had were very flimsy and uncomfortable, and they did everything except keep out the rain. The hand- held radios we used were very basic with a little dial on the front that allowed you to switch to channel one or channel two. They were in short supply and there never seemed to be enough of them.

We always had a briefing from the sergeant at the start of a tour of duty and I remember during one of those briefings I had been detailed to carry out a foot patrol in the area of the Stillorgan Shopping Centre.

I discovered to my horror that there was no radio left for me. I explained my predicament to the sergeant expecting him to be sympathetic and to somehow use his experience and wisdom to produce a fresh radio for me. He used to smoke a pipe and he looked at me over the top of the pipe while he puffed away; “Stick close to a phone box,” he said.

For some of my time there, I performed duty in plain clothes because I carried a firearm. This was for the protection of the Turkish Ambassador who lived in the penthouse suite in a block of apartments in Mount Merrion Avenue in Blackrock. I had very little service at that stage so I was fairly green.

The gun was a Smith and Wesson 38 revolver and my job was to protect the Ambassador once he arrived home in the evening. Turkish officials were considered a high risk target in those days due to the fact that there was an aggressive campaign being raged by the Armenians. I had to make sure that the building was secure for him when he came home from work and make sure that he was not assassinated while he was in the building.

There was a table and chair on the landing at the top of the stairs outside his front door and that was where I would make camp.

The Ambassador himself was a lovely man who lived on his own. He was a friendly type of character who would regularly appear on the landing at some point during the night with a half finished crossword that he wanted a hand with. He would often bring me a plate of toast, syrup and olives. He never seemed to sleep too much and I often wondered what it was that kept him awake.

His staff lived on the floor below and consisted of a chef, two bodyguards, a cleaner, a waiter and a secretary. There were all nice people and I developed a relationship with them over the year I was performing that duty.

One of the body guards was a big guy with a square bald head, a big moustache and a body that made Arnold Scwartznegger look anorexic. His arms were like tree trunks.  The guy was huge. He didn’t have a word of English but had a big smile and could make himself understood with gestures. His party piece was lifting the chef up in the air with one hand, much to the annoyance of the chef.

One night, actually it was in the early hours of the morning, I was sitting in my perch minding my own business when, unknown to me, the big body guard was sneaking up the stairs beneath me. He had a brown paper bag which he had inflated. He crept to a spot where he was only a couple of feet away from me and then burst the bag by clapping his hands together. At that hour of the night and in a confined space, the noise was enormous. He collapsed in laughter.

I half fell and half jumped out of the chair with fright and had absolutely no idea what my next move was going to be. If I had been a Clint Eastwood character from the film ‘In the Line of Fire’ I probably would have shot him between the eyes or if I had been a highly trained secret service agent I might have kicked the bag out of his hand and disabled him with a strategic chop to the neck.

As it happened I was neither so he was perfectly safe. The reality was that by the time I would have wrestled my gun from its holster, loaded it with bullets (I generally kept it unloaded) and pointed it in the right direction, the would be assassin would have fled the scene and the victim would have been on a plane to Turkey for a state funeral.

And it was then that it dawned on me. The Ambassador knew all the time. He knew who he was dealing with. Somebody must have told him.  Or maybe he just figured it out for himself but, in any event, he knew that he was not in safe hands. That’s why he didn’t sleep. That’s why I got crosswords and toast – he was AFRAID!

To be perfectly honest if I had been protecting myself in those days I probably wouldn’t have slept much either.