[caption id="attachment_68968" align="aligncenter" width="600" caption="Comedian Tommy Tiernan will revisit “Religious Knowledge” next week."]
LIMERICK ACTIVISTS STICK CLOSE TO CAMP
A tricolor hangs in a makeshift camp on Liddy Street in the city where the Occupy Limerick protestors have made their home for the past month.
But those protesting social and economic inequality in the hope of creating a new Ireland feel that “the country that people worked and fought for is going to rack and ruin, and being sold out from under us,” the Limerick Leader reports
“The spirit of the country is just dead,” said 29-year-old Mairead Ahern, who spent Christmas Day in the camp, and rang in the New Year there too.
The industrial design graduate from Thomondgate contemplated emigrating to Canada to find work, but decided to stay in the hope that their actions here might make some difference. “It’s very tempting [to emigrate], but I thought maybe someone should stick around and sort something out,” she added.
College loans contributed her decision to stay and she recently got an internship under the Job Bridge scheme with an energy renewal company but has no plans to give up her call to the movement just yet.
While other protestors went home to spend Christmas day in the warmth, she had no qualms in taking the holiday shift.
“Not to sound harsh, but the majority of us wouldn’t believe in the whole Christmas hype anyway. We enjoy spending time with our families, but the whole commercial aspect wouldn’t appeal to me at all,” she said.
Fellow activist Terry Irwin, 47, who is originally from the Liberties in Dublin, is there because he wants to create a better future for his 11 year-old. “I want to look at my son and whatever way it goes say I tried to do something,” he said.
They are about 20 regular volunteers with the Occupy movement in Limerick, one of 3,000 camps that have been set up worldwide after the initial Occupy Wall Street movement began in September.
But their presence in Limerick isn’t always greeted with the goodwill typified by the Christmas season. Sitting on a couch donated to the movement, and with a sleeping bag wrapped around her for warmth, Ahern said the number of people who support them and are against them is “about 50/50.”
And over Christmas one volunteer’s car was robbed and later found burnt out on the northside of the city, after they turned away some young people who approached the tent with a “bag of cans”.
“We operate a no drink and no drug policy here. This is not a place you can go if you can’t get into Nancy’s [Nancy Blake’s bar]. But we have tea and coffee here for anyone who wants to come in for a chat,” he said.
CORK COLLINS COIN TO BE ISSUED IN ‘12
THE Central Bank is to issue a special coin to mark the 90th anniversary of the death of the Michael Collins, the Southern Star reports.
According to Cork South West TD, Jim Daly, the Minister for Finance, Michael Noonan, has already agreed that the special coin will be issued in time for the 90th commemoration at Béal na mBlath, were the leader died in a roadside gun battle.
The West Cork TD said it has also been confirmed that the Taoiseach Enda Kenny will give the oration at the annual commemoration ceremony this August.
Commenting on the State's acknowledgement of the service, given to this country by a fellow West Cork man, Daly said: “Michael Collins stands out as one of the greatest contributors to the formation of this State as an independent republic.
“As a former freedom fighter and a Minister for Finance,” Daly said, 'Michael Collins devoted his every waking hour to this country but he made the ultimate sacrifice, during the struggle for independence, with his untimely death.
“Although there are many other significant anniversaries to be commemorated in the run up to 2016, Daly said: “it is widely recognized that Michael Collins made a particularly unique contribution that merits a special acknowledgement from the Irish State.'
The West Cork TD also acknowledged the work of the Béal na mBlath Commemoration Committee, who requested that this gesture be made by the State in the lead-up to the 90th anniversary commemoration.
KILDARE PROGRAM CUT SPARKS FURY
Hundreds of Kildare primary school pupils in 18 schools will be deprived of learning German, Spanish and French after the Government axed the Modern Languages program in the budget. Jobs at the Kildare Education Centre in Kildare town, which co-ordinates the program, are under threat as a result, with 250 teachers and 50 staff nationwide facing the dole queue, the Leinster Leader reports.
Furious principals flooded the center with calls questioning the government decision, which came without warning last week.
“We are absolutely devastated by this. We have been in the modern languages program from the beginning, since 1998 -- in fac,t we were a pilot school,” said Deirdre Costello, principal of Scoil Bhride, Clane, Co. Kildare.
Pupils in the Irish equivalents of the U.S. 7th and 8th grades have been learning Spanish in the school since that time.
“We feel that this initiative should be rolled out for all primary schools, not abolished. At the present time, we have people leaving the country for work and it is so important to have other languages. The girls are learning not just a language, but a culture. We are members of the European Union and we feel very strongly that all children should be given this opportunity. We are going to fight this.”
Tanya Flanagan, National Coordinator, Modern Languages in Primary Schools Initiative at the Kildare Education Center, said that she is appalled that the €2 million program is to be cut with immediate effect.
“We are absolutely devastated by this announcement which comes at the end of a year when we have been congratulated at every review meeting with the DES [Department of Education and Skills] in terms of how we have continued to maintain and deliver excellent services while achieving significant efficiencies. We support modern languages in over 550 schools nationally with a core team of just six people.
“In such difficult economic times, how can this decision be justified? Over 14 years of expertise will be lost to the system and a whole generation of our children will be placed at an even greater disadvantage as they try to compete for jobs with our fellow Europeans,” she said. “This decision will result in the only children accessing modern language classes being the privileged classes who can afford to pay for them – a return to the situation of 20 years ago.”
Flanagan noted that in terms of policy, Ireland is already years behind its commitments under the Barcelona Agreement and the Lisbon Strategy to facilitate early language learning of at least two foreign languages by 2010.
She said in an age where companies like Google have to go abroad to find workers with multiple languages, the action did not make sense.
GALWAY BROTHERS PLAY IS REVIVED
“Religious Knowledge” premiered at The King’s Head in June 1994, and became a runaway success - playing to packed houses for a series of extended runs over the next two years.
Set in a school classroom in 1970, in the aftermath of Dana’s Eurovision victory, the play sent up the Christian Brothers’ educational methods and had a sensationally cathartic effect on audiences of the time, the Galway Advertiser recalls.
There had been plays and short films about the Christian Brothers before, but they were always dark and brooding, whereas playwright Eamon Kelly and the actors were out for laughs. Reviewing the play at the time for the Advertiser, Jeff O’Connell found it to be “a side-splittingly funny excursion into a Christian Brothers’ classroom back when leather was as important as the textbook in pounding knowledge into reluctant heads”.
Now the original cast – Gerry Conneely, Tommy Tiernan, Gary McSweeney, and Phillip Sweeny – and the same director, Fiona Kelly, are bringing it back to the King’s Head for performances on Jan. 9 and Jan. 10
In an interview with the Advertiser, Eamon Kelly remembered: “The response was phenomenal. People came to see the show time and again. One man, a regular, came in one day and said, almost apologetically, ‘This is my 15th time.’ Another group of regulars were Grow, the group for depression sufferers who regarded the show as the best therapy in town.”
Kelly admitted there was a measure of personal indignation behind the writing of the play.
“I remember we had a Brother who did teach us ‘All Kinds Of Everything’ [Dana’s Eurovision winner] at school and he was crazy, so I drew on that to an extent,” he said.
“Being withered by sarcasm on a daily basis in your formative years can’t be great for anyone's confidence. So I see a line from this to a general national lack of confidence to the role of alcohol in Irish society,” Kelly added.
The show’s audiences occasionally even included a Christian Brother or two, as Kelly recalled: “A Christian Brother who had kindly loaned us his soutane for the show came along one day and said ‘It was a bit close to the bone.’ But a few days later he was back with another two Brothers and they all enjoyed it thoroughly. I remember when he came the second time, he sat side-on to the stage not really watching the actors, he just wanted to see the reactions of the other two Brothers.”
