http://www.irishecho.com/newspaper/story.cfm?id=18963
By Ciarán Barnes
January 7, 2009 Irish Americans are being encouraged to help lobby for a united Ireland.
Later this month Sinn Féin will stage a major event at Dublin's Mansion House to commemorate the first sitting of the Dáil in 1919 and the birth of the party almost a century ago.
Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams will call on delegates to build on the current peace process by campaigning internationally, particularly in the U.S., for Irish unity.
Under the terms of the 1998 Good Friday agreement, Northern Ireland's constitutional position within Britain cannot change without the consent of a majority of voters.
Sinn Féin believes that with encouragement from the Irish community worldwide, an eventual vote in favor of a united Ireland is a definite possibility.
"All of this is part of a process. I like to judge it, because it's convenient to do so, in a 40-year span. And 40 years in a lifetime is huge, but in history it's only a blink," said Adams.
"If you consider what things were like here 40 years ago, in terms of both the Orange state, the conservative, impoverished state in the South, the fragmented and very minimalist republican development, and then you fast-forward to now - without for a moment minimizing all the tragedies and difficulties that have occurred in between - you can see how things have moved ahead," he said.
"That's what's going to happen in the upcoming period. It's an incremental process of building the republic day by day."
Adams said he accepted that with the North of Ireland at peace the attention of the international media was now rarely focused on Ireland.
However, he pointed out that Irish communities, especially in the U.S., retained a key interest in what happened in Ireland.
"We are regularly engaged with the Irish diaspora and if you move outside the diaspora and talk to anyone, they will tell you, and I defy anyone to contradict this, that most people who know anything about Ireland know the British government should have no claim or jurisdiction.
"What we have to do is galvanize that," added Adams.
As part of Sinn Féin's campaign to focus on a future united island of Ireland, the Friends of Sinn Féin fundraising group in the U.S. is planning to hold events later this year, one at least in a city on both the east and 3west coasts.
http://www.irishecho.com/newspaper/story.cfm?id=18959
By Máirtín Ó Muilleoir
January 7, 2009 A veil of mourning fell on Philadelphia over Christmas with the news that one of the city's greatest Irish Americans had passed away.
Mike Doyle, 65, a former Philly policeman and later one of the city's most noted publicans and Irish American activists, died suddenly on Christmas Eve.
Funeral services were held at St Mary Magdalen Church, in Media, PA, on Tuesday, Dec. 30. Among the 1,000 mourners was Doyle's life-long friend, former world boxing champ Joe Frazier.
Famous for rolling out the red carpet for visitors from Ireland, the native of Roscommon provided employment for legions of Irish ex-pats over the years.
Doyle's love for Ireland brought him into early contact with the civil rights movement. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, he remained a close friend and confidante of legendary Irish republican leader Joe Cahill.
Over the past 14 years, Doyle had placed his many talents and extensive network at the service of the Friends of Sinn Féin, hosting numerous visits to the City of Brotherly Love by Gerry Adams and other prominent Sinn Féin politicians.
Former Belfast Lord Mayor Alex Maskey, who traveled from Ireland to deliver a eulogy at the Requiem Mass, was Doyle's guest during an 11-city tour of the U.S. in 2003.
"Mike liked to remain in the background, but he was the guy who got things done -- as you might expect from someone who ran an astonishing 20 bars during his career," Maskey told the Irish Echo. "His contribution to the cause of Irish freedom can't be overestimated."
Bill McLaughlin, chairman of the Irish American Business Chamber in Philadelphia, said Doyle was highly-regarded by the city's Irish American organizations.
"All of the Irish American chamber members who knew Mike were saddened by his sudden death," he said.
"He was a stalwart supporter of the Irish community in the region. Our prayers go out to his family."
Doyle's daughter Kathleen, who managed the New Deck and Sláinte pubs with her father, said the family appreciated the outpouring of support from the public and from his friends and colleagues in the Irish Society of Philadelphia.
"My dad brought us up to feel that we were Irish rather than Irish American," she told the Echo. "He brought Ireland into our home and into our hearts at every opportunity. He was also someone who taught us to be confident in life and to take chances in order to be successful. And by success, he didn't mean how much money you could accumulate, but how good a person you could become."
Born in Castlerea, Co. Roscommon, Doyle returned to the village regularly, using his vacation time to visit the last of the republican prisoners being held in Castlerea prison.
Mike Doyle is survived by his wife, Bernadette, five daughters, Mary, Denise, Loretta, Kathleen and Erin, son Michael, and wide family circle.
Ar dheis láimh Dé go raibh sé.
This story appeared in the issue of January 7-13, 2009
http://www2.96fm.ie/news/detail.asp?type=news&article_id=93198&pt=n
Taoiseach Brian Cowen is among several high-profile guests invited to mark the 20th anniversary of the murder of Belfast solicitor Pat Finucane.
Mr Finucane, 39, was gunned down by loyalist paramilitaries as he ate a meal with his family at his home in February 1989.
On Wednesday, family members, including his widow Geraldine, personally invited Mr Cowen to the three-day event at Trinity College Dublin, where Mr Finucane studied.
"We intend to reflect on all that has taken place in the last 20 years in Ireland and to examine what we have learned about British Government collusion with paramilitaries in Pat`s murder and many other murders," Ms Finucane said.
"We will also be examining and discussing the momentous changes that have taken place in Ireland in the legal and political landscapes, and the contribution made by Pat to ensure that equality, justice and human rights were a reality for all both during his life and after his death."
Other invited guests include President Mary McAleese, US Secretary-of-State elect Hillary Clinton, former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, Northern Ireland First and Deputy First Minister Peter Robinson and Martin McGuinness.
The commemoration will run from February 13 to 15 and begin on the Friday evening with a gala dinner in Trinity`s Commons dining room.
Mrs Finucane added: "My family and I were anxious that Mr Cowen should be given his invitation personally in recognition and thanks for the support my family has received from the Irish Government throughout our campaign for a public inquiry into Pat`s murder."
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2009/0108/breaking21.htm
Aoife Carr
Thu, Jan 08, 2009
The Tánaiste Mary Coughlan has expressed her disappointment today at the decision by Dell to move its manufacturing facility to Poland with the loss of 1,900 jobs in Limerick.
She said the state development agencies would provide every possible assistance to the workers that are due to be made redundant.
“My immediate thoughts and concerns are for the workers and their families and those directly impacted,” she said. “In my discussions and meetings with Dell, it was always made clear to me by the company that any decisions that it would take, were in no way a reflection on the quality its workforce or the operating environment in Ireland.”
Ms Coughlan said she recognised the computer giant needed a fundamental change in its business model to enable it to continue to compete in the global market.
“A successful Dell is in our interests, as even with this level of redundancies, Dell remains a major employer in Ireland and a major contributor to the economy,” she said. "My Government and IDA Ireland will continue to engage with Dell, as we do with all companies located here, with a view to attracting other functions and investments from the company.”
Barry O'Leary CEO of the IDA said the State agency would be taking all necessary action to support impacted employees in securing future employment.
"IDA has a pipeline of projects under consideration for the Limerick region. We are pursuing these potential investments and will do everything possible to speed up the investment decisions in Limerick's favour," he said.
The American Chamber of Commerce in Ireland said the decision by Dell to cease manufacturing operations in Limerick was a significant blow to the city, the Midwest region and to the Irish economy.
In a statement today, the chamber said other such announcements could be expected in the next 12 to 18 months but that these would be “somewhat off-set by new investments from existing and new multinational companies.”
It warned, however, that Ireland could not be “complacent” and needed to put fundamentals in place such as improved infrastructure to advance economic growth and development.
“Today’s announcement is a stark reminder that we cannot be complacent. The 2007 report of the National Competitiveness Council highlighted key areas where Ireland had lost competitiveness including; productivity, labour and energy costs, increased business regulation and overall infrastructure quality,” the statement said.
Isme, the Irish Small & Medium Enterprises Association, accused the Government of doing nothing about the high cost of doing business in Ireland saying Dell’s announcement was symptomatic of the ongoing problems in the labour market.
“The announcement by Dell today, is not only a body blow for the workers concerned but has
far reaching consequences for the whole economy in terms of international reputation, highlighting how uncompetitive we have become over the last number of years,” said Isme chief executive Mark Fielding.
“What galls most is that the Government have been aware of the threats that business have been facing and still have done nothing to address the issue, including the exorbitant cost environment”.
The Mayor of Limerick John Gilligan and Limerick city manager Tom Mackey also expressed their deep disappointment at the announcement.
Mr Gilligan said his first concern was with the workers who received "devastating news" this morning.
"I really sympathise with them today, Dell employees in Raheen were exemplary and a credit to their employer and to Limerick City," he said.
Mr Gilligan said the Government needed to make the banks accountable as "they are responsible for the economic mess the country is in, they need to be asked to give the Dell employees who are losing their jobs some flexibility as they struggle in the months ahead."
He also called on the Government to set up a task force immediately to see if any of the jobs could be saved.
Limerick city manager Tom Mackey said he was very disappointed at the news. “The company has been in the Midwest since 1990 and it has acquired a very dedicated, committed and professional workforce which is highly skilled in all areas of computer manufacturing," he said.
He said he was hopeful another manufacturer or employer in the high technology area would "seize the opportunity to avail of that highly skilled workforce and keep these jobs in Limerick".
Minister for Defence Willie O’Dea said he was extremely saddened at the announcement.
“The enormity of what has been announced this morning will take days and weeks to sink in, as it will directly hurt and affect thousands,” he said.
“The focus now must be to build on the region's strengths to attract investors and new employers and for those State projects already earmarked for the region to commence.”
Local Labour TD Jan O’Sullivan said the news was an economic catastrophe for Limerick and the Midwest region and a personal tragedy for those who are now to lose their jobs.
“The fact that the job losses have been forecast for some time does not make it any easier: nor will redundancy payments be much comfort to workers who will find it extremely difficult to find alternative employment in the current economic climate,” she said.
Ms O’Sullivan said many Dell workers did not believe that all possible was done to save the jobs.
“The trip to Texas by Ministers O'Dea and Coughlan in particular appears to have been a question of "too little, too late,” she said.
“The priority now has to be on the creation of new jobs and re-training opportunities. There should be a key project group established to lead this drive."
Fine Gael TD for Limerick East Kieran O’Donnell said the Dell redundancies were a disaster for Limerick. He called for a multi-agency Government taskforce to be set up to ensure that the 1,900 workers could secure new jobs within 12 months.
“This is one of the blackest days for Limerick in recent history. The loss of 1,900 jobs at Dell and the closure of all manufacturing at the facility will have enormous consequences for the entire Midwest region,” he said.
“But this news also opens a window of opportunity. The Government must establish a taskforce involving all relevant State agencies and key business interests with the aim of finding alternative employment for all workers within 12 months of being made redundant, including the non-Dell jobs affected by the lay-offs."
Fine Gael TD for Limerick East Michael Noonan called on the Government to declare Limerick and unemployment emergency area.
“The decision had been well leaked prior to Christmas, but the impact of the announcement this morning has sent shock waves through Limerick and the surrounding counties," he said.
Dr Vincent Cunnane, chief executive of Shannon Development, described the announcement as a severe blow for the employees and their families.
He said his organisation would work with Dell, the IDA and other relevant agencies and bodies, to assist in developing alternative options for Dell and for these highly productive workers."
Sinn Féin Enterprise, Trade and Employment Spokesperson Arthur Morgan criticised the Government for its "lack lustre approach to tackling the impending job losses in the company which have been muted for some time now.”
“The government has failed to take action over Dell. For months it has been clear that Dell was reviewing its position in Ireland and yet the Government failed to come up with an alternative that could have saved these 1,900 manufacturing jobs," he said.
© 2009 irishtimes.com
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/recession/4145231/Sir-Anthony-OReilly-the-Celtic-tiger-reduced-to-pussycat.html
Wedgwood is gone, but how much more of Sir Anthony O'Reilly's business empire is on the brink of collapse, asks Andrew Pierce.
Last Updated: 1:19AM GMT 07 Jan 2009
The collapse of Waterford Wedgwood, whose clients include the Queen and Archbishop of Canterbury, has chipped away a little further at the fading reputation of Sir Anthony O'Reilly, once acclaimed by the Foreign Office as the "boy wonder" of Irish business.
What pains Sir Anthony so much is not just the £180 million that he stands to lose in the collapse of the company, whose two main products – Waterford crystal and Wedgwood china – have been favoured by Europe's elite for a combined total of more than 500 years. It is the shattering blow to his standing, and to the reputation of a civil servant's son who rose to become Ireland's most revered businessman, a powerful media tycoon, and the country's first billionaire.
As the recession hits his holdings, Sir Anthony now faces the dubious distinction of also being the first Irishman to lose that elite status. He has already fallen from first to sixth in his country's rich list.
With his silver hair and ruddy complexion, the 72-year-old businessman was the face of the Celtic Tiger economy. His companies stretch across the globe, from Australia to South Africa, and he has homes in Dublin, London and New York. At his stud farm in Kildare, he keeps a string of thoroughbred racehorses, many hand-picked by his wife, the Greek heiress Chryss Goulandris, and a Monet and a Jackson Pollock line the walls of the main house of the 600-acre estate.
The château in Deauville was built on the ruins of the castle where William the Conqueror plotted his invasion of England. But today Sir Anthony is surveying the ruins of Waterford Wedgwood, whose wares adorn the state rooms of Windsor Castle and Westminster Abbey.
Only last month, Sir Anthony was insisting that the firm, which he chaired, would survive. In 2007 he told Time magazine: "This is the biggest tabletop company in the world. We've got fantastic brands."
Today, as some 1,900 people in the UK and 800 in Ireland contemplate the dole, Sir Anthony, a tax exile who lives primarily in a gated community in Lyford Cay, near Nassau in the Bahamas, is busy attempting emergency surgery on other parts of his ailing mining and media empire.
Yet when he was born in Dublin in the 1930s, few would have presumed he would have ever risen so far. When he was 15, Sir Anthony was told by a Jesuit teacher that he had been born out of wedlock: his father was already married to someone else. Although his parents finally wed when he was 38, Sir Anthony never confronted them. However, his associates say that it was this revelation that fired his determination to prove himself.
The first instance of this, and the source of his reputation as a Boy's Own hero, came on the rugby pitch, as an astonishingly successful international for Ireland and the British Lions. Selected for the latter as a teenager, he set the record for tries scored on a tour in 1955 and then shattered it in 1959, scoring a record 38 times over the two tours. He then made his name in business, with the launch of Kerrygold butter.
Following this triumph, he joined Heinz in 1969 as a managing director in London. Not that he had entirely forgotten the old days: at the age of 35, having not played rugby for years, he was in Annabel's nightclub, when he received a phone call recalling him to the Irish squad, and turned up for training in his chauffeur-driven company car.
Soon, America came calling, as within three years of his appointment he was invited to Heinz's Pittsburgh headquarters to head its operations in North America and the Pacific. He became chairman in 1987, the first non-family member to lead the company, taking it into 17 new markets and virtually quintupling overseas sales.
In 1998, after several years during which analysts questioned the company's performance, he left the firm to set up on his own, although he retains a shareholding in it. During his time at Heinz, he had begun to acquire shareholdings in Waterford Wedgwood and to make his first significant foray into the world of newspaper publishing.
Eventually, he acquired a controlling share in the group that owns two British newspapers, the Independent and the Independent on Sunday. Ownership enabled him to fulfil his wish to be photographed alongside world leaders such as Tony Blair and Nelson Mandela, who was given a long-overdue holiday at O'Reilly's house in the Bahamas after his release from jail.
He seemed to have it all, an impression confirmed last year, when he was given a golden lion at Cannes as Media Person of the Year. But cracks would soon appear in the empire – and not just its china and glass division.
Providence Resources, a £62 million mining company in which Sir Anthony has a 40 per cent stake, and which is run by his son Tony, has seen its shares halve in the past year. Lundin Mining, a Canadian company in which he has a stake, has been closing mines as commodity prices collapse.
There are also question marks over Sir Anthony's 8 per cent stake in Landis + Gyr, an energy conservation company run by his son Cameron. Last year O'Reilly Jr was talking about a float, but the idea has receded as the share price has fallen.
Sir Anthony's undoing, however, may prove to be his 29 per cent stake in Independent News & Media (INM), the parent company of the Independent and Independent on Sunday, the Irish Independent and Sunday Independent, and the Belfast Telegraph.
The company's share price has fallen from almost €2.50 (£2.29) to 44 cents (40p). As a result, Sir Anthony's holding has fallen to £91 million from a high of £800 million. INM also needs to pay off some of its £1.1 billion debt by May.
In 2001, Sir Anthony was knighted by the Queen for advancing the cause of peace in Northern Ireland. But he has been unable to stop serious unrest in his own media boardroom. Apart from damage to his personal income, he is also facing a threat to his control of the newspaper group from rival media magnate Denis O'Brien.
Last year, the man dismissed as a "gnat" by Sir Anthony's son Gavin, the chief operating officer of INM, took advantage of the company's low share price to buy three million shares and increase his stake from 24 per cent to 26 per cent.
Then there is the parlous state of the Independent, the flagship newspaper, which is losing between £12 million and £14 million a year. The situation has been made worse by the decision to sanction a 20 per cent increase in the cover price to £1, which editor Roger Alton has admitted was a mistake. That is underlined by the year-on-year sale figures, which show that the daily paper is selling only 123,000 copies at full cover price, down 15 per cent, with the Sunday paper just above 100,000, down 18 per cent.
There had been speculation in the industry about the Independent outsourcing some of its activities, but no one expected the extraordinary decision to move the entire operation from its Docklands base to the headquarters of The Daily Mail in Kensington. The decision is all the more surprising given that the two groups are commercial rivals in Sir Anthony's Irish backyard, where the Mail has been flexing its muscles.
The 20-man INM board, which took the decision, includes no fewer than three of Sir Anthony's sons, and has been repeatedly criticised by Mr O'Brien. The executive payroll includes the former Independent editor Simon Kelner, now managing editor of both the daily and Sunday papers, who has been retained on a six-figure salary. The group's five senior directors were paid a total of £7.97 million, including bonuses and pensions last year, with Sir Anthony receiving £2.2 million – a 20 per cent rise on last year. However, the board has approved large-scale redundancies as a cost-cutting measure.
A few days ago, the Cabinet Office released papers that showed that the young Sir Anthony had been one of the public figures in Ireland that the Foreign Office decided to pay special attention to in order to gauge attitudes during the Troubles. He was described as having been "something of a boy wonder".
Today, the fear in the media group he controls is that, carried away by his successes, he has behaved like another boy wonder – Icarus, who flew too close to the sun.
If the Independent, formed in the white heat of the Thatcher trade union reforms in 1986, goes the same way as Waterford Wedgwood, and becomes another high-profile casualty of Gordon Brown's recession, Sir Anthony might be tempted to reshuffle his trophy cabinet, in order to avoid the mocking stare of that other golden lion from Cannes.
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