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power-at-all-costs philosophy to Pearse’s. It would condemn the cynicism of hoarding power at the expense of the democracy people died for.
    Coming from an age when people risked their lives for principles, what would he think of Beverley Flynn? Unprincipled Bev’s belief that democracy should serve her was in evidence again last week. She said she deserved a place in cabinet. She would ‘flower’. She couldn’t understand why the media picked on her. Drop around Bev, I’ll tell you why.
    What would he make of the people who keep electing her? Or Michael Lowry for that matter? Or Mary Hanafin, who along with seven other deputies still refuses to give up her teacher’s pension? Or smug Mary Harney, with no party behind her?
    Let’s be fair to politicians, though. They’re not the only self-servers living in this great Republic.
    Matthew would have led his newspaper with the Civil, Public and Services Union’s go-slow and how they are denying people their passports. He would have been livid. A passport isn’t a bargaining chip. It’s proof of the citizenship fought for by people like him and Countess Markievicz.
    Not that we care about the Countess any more. She would appear on Matthew’s ‘page 3’ (with her clothes on). He would report that she isn’t included in an MRBI poll of the greatest Irish people of all time. Neither is President McAleese. Louis Walsh is, though. What does that say about us?
    Matthew would look at what the vacuous Tiger generation allowed happen to Tara and run a story warning about the same happening to under-threat Newgrange. How many would read it?
    He would look at Seanie Fitz and wonder why we allowed a new landlord class of bankers and developers to be created.
    He would look at the whole, sorry mess our Republic is in and scratch his head.
    Over the next week, you’ll hear a lot of misty-eyed manure about reclaiming the spirit of 1916. The Republicanism that Matthew and others strove for wasn’t notional. It was based on the solid principle that your neighbour has a right to expect your help – as you do from him.
    The current mess is being made worse by a general unwillingness to take some responsibility. We know who the chief culprits were, but we all bought into the Tiger crap to some extent.
    If unity helped achieve our freedom, then it can help us maintain it. The refusal by some to take a hit is not acceptable. The new civil war of public sector against private has to end. We need to start behaving like a republic or stop calling ourselves one.
    I wonder what Matthew would have said about that GPO flag being valued at $500,000. A copy of his Irish War News fetched €26,000 in 2007.
    I’m sure he would look at that tricolour and see more than money. He would know its true value. He would know whether it was worth fighting for or not.
    He would know whether we were worth fighting for. I hope we were.

M ICHAEL C LIFFORD
In FF, all has changed and nothing has changed
    31 October 2010
    T here was a moment of déjà vu on the Nine O’Clock News last Monday evening. The cabinet was meeting in Farmleigh House to devise a budgetary plan. As the ministers were chauffeured in the gates, it brought to mind another gathering earlier this year.
    Last February, the Irish bishops met in Rome to discuss with the Pope the problem of child abuse. There was something surreal, bordering on the ridiculous, about the pictures that were relayed from the Vatican.
    The bishops, some of them togged out in cassocks, lined up to kiss the ring of Pope Benedict, resplendent in his white robes. From there, they retreated into conclave to discuss the damage wreaked by clerical sex abuse, and how best to address the issue into the future. The notion that these elderly men, their moral authority shot, could have anything to do with the protection of children in this day and age was absurd.
    Yet once upon a time, their writ ran