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http://www.4ni.co.uk/northern_ireland_news.asp?id=91906
06 April 2009
As recession-hit workers in west Belfast continue their protest sit-in for its seventh day, it has emerged that talks in New York this week could decide their fate.
The workers are occupying car plants in demand for improved redundancy payments and even held a family fun day on Sunday with speakers supporting their demands for better pay-offs.
The workers have been staging their protest at the Visteon plant since last week, when administrators KPMG announced it was shutting the car parts manufacturer.
Workers at the plant on Finaghy Road North refused to leave the premises when given notice on Tuesday.
Union leaders will now meet Visteon representatives in New York on Wednesday to demand compensation from the company's former owner, car giant Ford.
Last week workers at two plants in England were also made redundant and joined in the protests started by the Belfast staff of the car parts manufacturer.
Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams (pictured) has joined in the protests and addressed workers during the morale-boosting family fun day at the plant.
"The workers have received a gesture of solidarity today from people from right across Belfast and further afield," said the West Belfast MP.
Mr Adams said he had spoken to Ford's Europe Cheif Executive Officer John Fleming, having already raised the issue with him earlier this week.
A total of 210 workers in Belfast lost their jobs, while a further 350 redundancies were announced in Basildon, Essex, and Enfield, north London.
Visteon blamed massive losses for the decision to shut the UK operation, but workers have produced documentation which they claim shows they were promised settlements in line with those on offer by Ford.
Mr Adams said: "Workers' rights must be protected. We will stand shoulder to shoulder with the Visteon workers until they are treated properly."
Mr Adams added: "My office has kept the New York City Comptroller's office fully briefed on the situation and on developments at the Belfast plant."
(BMcC/JM)
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2009/0407/1224244146307.html
JAMIE SMYTH
Tue, Apr 07, 2009
EUROPEAN DIARY: With a second Lisbon referendum looming, funding rules should be tightened up
THE CAMPAIGN by Libertas to run candidates in every EU state in the upcoming European elections on an anti-Lisbon Treaty platform enjoyed mixed fortunes last week.
In the Czech Republic, Declan Ganley’s organisation announced that it would run a full list of 22 candidates headed by one of the two rebel Civic Platform MPs who recently helped to bring down the Czech government.
But in Germany the organisation’s local branch missed the deadline for registering for the elections and is now attempting to persuade the federal electoral commission to allow it to apply after the deadline.
The challenge of attempting to find suitable candidates in 27 EU states, meet registration deadlines and comply with the myriad of electoral laws across Europe is clearly affecting Libertas’s campaign. Its best chances of success in the elections seem to be in countries such as the Czech Republic and France, where it has teamed up with well-established politicians rather than trying to build a party from scratch.
Funding a pan-European campaign is expensive and complicated. Ganley says he needs €75 million to launch an effective campaign, although he has denied media reports that Libertas is bankrolling its Polish branch through a loan that neatly circumvents local electoral laws.
He has also denied reports that his organisation offered the Swedish Junilistan (June List) party almost €1 million to campaign under the Libertas brand in the elections in Sweden.
In Ireland last week, Libertas filed a return on its funding for last year’s referendum campaign to the Standards in Public Office Commission, although, as the body recently told the Government, the existing legislation governing third parties contains enough loopholes to make it ineffective.
But it is not just Libertas that has been able to wait almost a year before providing details on its spending on the referendum.
The European parliamentary groups, which funnelled cash through sitting MEPs for “information activities” such as posters and leaflets on the referendum, will not fully detail their spending until they publish annual accounts in June. Waiting a year to learn exactly who spent what on a referendum campaign is hardly satisfactory given the importance of its impact on the State and its Constitution.
Group funding was a hot issue during last year’s campaign, when Libertas claimed pro-Lisbon parliamentary groups were outspending the No campaign.
Figures supplied to The Irish Times by the seven main groups in the European Parliament – ahead of the publication of their accounts in June – show that together they spent €692,105 on activities related to the Lisbon campaign. Groups offering support to MEPs advocating a Yes vote outspent those backing MEPs campaigning for a No vote by about three to one.
The biggest-spending group was the European People’s Party and European Democrats, which estimates it gave €265,000 to its five Fine Gael MEPs to help them campaign. The Union for Europe of the Nations gave €100,000 to its four Fianna Fáil MEPs; the Socialists provided €100,000 for their single MEP; and the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats gave €9,108 to Independent Marian Harkin.
The two MEPs who campaigned against the treaty, Sinn Féin’s Mary Lou MacDonald and Independent Kathy Synnott, got backing of €37,997 and €180,000 respectively from their parliamentary groups, the European United Left/Nordic Green Left group and the Independence/Democracy group.
“We suspected the pro-Lisbon groups outspent the No campaigners but there was no way to prove it,” said Ganley. But pro-Lisbon campaigners could argue that the No campaign got a far higher percentage of cash from the parliament’s group system than they should have.
Eleven of the 13 Irish MEPs campaigned in favour of the treaty, so if cash was divided up in proportion to the number of Irish MEPs for and against the treaty, the split would have been €91,092 for the No campaign and €601,013 for the Yes side.
But with a second referendum looming, what is crucially important is that the funding rules on referendums are tightened up to give the public a clearer view of who is spending what on the campaign.
That responsibility lies with Minister for the Environment John Gormley, who will have to act fast to do it right.
© 2009 The Irish Times
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2009/0407/1224244145218.html
MARESE McDONAGH
Tue, Apr 07, 2009
SLIGO COUNTY Council has a strong case in its pending High Court battle with the owners of Lissadell House over rights-of-way on the estate, councillors have been told.
During a stormy discussion at the monthly meeting of the council, county manager Hubert Kearns resisted calls for the council’s legal advice to be circulated to elected members.
He insisted that disclosure could prejudice the council’s case. “The other side will not come forward and give us their legal advice,” Mr Kearns said.
At the outset of yesterday’s debate, there were claims that the matter was sub judice and should not be discussed because of the pending court case.
This view was described by Labour councillor Jim McGarry as a “disgrace”, an attempt to avoid answering questions and an attempt to stifle debate.
Mr McGarry, who raised the issue, was compared to the Gestapo by one of his colleagues after he asked the county manager whether two senior staff members were members of the Lissadell Action Group which has claimed that public rights-of-way exist on the estate.
Sinn Féin’s Seán MacManus said he would defend to his last breath the right of staff members to hold personal views and the county manager should not be asked to police their actions outside working hours.
Sligo mayor Veronica Cawley (Lab) said she was shocked that such a motion could come from a party colleague. Dissociating herself from the motion, which she said was “based on rumour and innuendo”, the mayor apologised to the staff.
In a letter to Sligo councillors yesterday, the Lissadell owners said the historic estate could soon be lost to the people of Sligo. They said they had been forced to close the house to the public in January even though they had hoped to increase visitor numbers from 40,000 to nearly 60,000 this year.
Owners Eddie Walsh and Constance Cassidy said they had to initiate a High Court case to establish that there were no public rights-of-way at Lissadell.
After the county manager was pressed on whether the council could win the High Court action,senior enforcement officer Joe Murphy told members that the legal advice was that the council had a good prima facie case.
Mr Murphy said that the manager was satisfied that no staff member with access to relevant files in this case had a personal or private interest in the issue.
Mr McGarry said there was widespread public unease about the failure to resolve the issue amicably.
© 2009 The Irish Times
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2009/0406/1224244068360.html
GERRY MORIARTY, Northern Editor
Mon, Apr 06, 2009
SINN FÉIN has rejected the latest claims that the IRA leadership prevented a deal that possibly could have saved the lives of six of the 10 republicans who died in the 1981 H-Block hunger strikes.
These claims follow on repeated allegations that the IRA and Sinn Féin leaderships in 1981 refused to countenance ending the strike in July in order to facilitate the election of hunger strike candidate Owen Carron in August 1981. The election of Mr Carron as MP for Fermanagh South Tyrone, which followed the election of Bobby Sands who died in May of that year, marked the rise of Sinn Féin as a political force.
The Sunday Times reported yesterday that it had seen documents that showed the then British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, despite publicly being opposed to the prisoners’ demands, privately was prepared to make critical concessions.
These reported concessions, including a key demand that prisoners be allowed wear their own clothes, were made in July at a time when Bobby Sands and three other prisoners had died. By the time the hunger strike began to peter out in late August, six more prisoners had died. The last of the hunger strikers to die was INLA member Michael Devine, who passed away on August 20th, the day Mr Carron was elected MP.
The allegation that the republican leadership, driven by Gerry Adams, was prepared to prolong the strike in order to see Mr Carron elected, has been raging for a number of years now.
Four years ago former IRA prisoner Richard O’Rawe, in his book Blanketmen , said the IRA army council blocked a deal that possibly could have saved the lives of six of the hunger strikers. The Sunday Times report quoting documents it received under freedom of information legislation effectively supports Mr O’Rawe’s account of events.
Mr O’Rawe said that in July 1981, when four prisoners had died, the prisoners’ leadership accepted a deal to end the strike but that this was over-ruled by the IRA army council. Mr O’Rawe wrote that a British intermediary effectively conceded most of the prisoners’ five demands. In his book, Mr O’Rawe said that he and Brendan McFarlane, the IRA commanding officer in the Maze Prison at the time, agreed the offer should be accepted.
Both Mr McFarlane and Mr Morrison have repeatedly insisted the claims by Mr O’Rawe and others are wrong.
A Sinn Féin spokesman also said yesterday that the allegations were untrue. He said they emanated from British military intelligence “and ignore completely the actual timeline of events”.
© 2009 The Irish Times
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/defence/5109688/Chinook-that-crashed-into-Mull-of-Kintyre-should-have-been-grounded.html
A Chinook helicopter crashed killing 29 servicemen on the very day that RAF safety experts requested it should be grounded because of serious mechanical flaws, new evidence has shown.
By Thomas Harding, Defence Correspondent
Last Updated: 3:00PM BST 06 Apr 2009
The loss of the aircraft, which was carrying 25 of the top MI5, Army and RUC Special Branch officers combating terrorism in Northern Ireland, has been blamed on the "gross negligence" of the pilots.
But a document obtained by The Daily Telegraph indicates that those in charge of RAF helicopter safety gave warning that the upgraded HC2 model of the Chinook was not fit for service and that flying operations should "cease immediately".
The Chinook crashed into the Mull of Kintyre on June 2 1994 after it hit a hillside in thick fog while flown by Flt Lts Jonathan Tapper and Richard Cook.
In the hitherto unseen document, coincidentally written on the same day as the crash, the commanding officer of the Rotary Wing Test Squadron (RWTS) recommended in the "strongest possible terms" that the Air Force should "cease Chinook HC2 operations" until mechanical problems over digital flight systems had been addressed.
Campaigners, who have fought for years to clear the names of the pilots following a questionable RAF board of inquiry, have now demanded that John Hutton, the Defence Secretary, should annul the inquiry findings of two senior officers.
While the report said it appreciated that delays in an overhaul would have an impact upon operations the RWTS would be "failing in its primary role of providing the front line with equipment which can not only efficiently carry out the task but to do this safely".
However, suggested improvements had been "ignored" and until there was "clear, unequivocal and realistic explanation of the faults" further Chinook HC2 flying "shall not be authorized".
The document, uncovered by the Mull of Kintyre Group, was made public at a time when the RAF has grounded its Nimrod reconnaissance fleet because of safety fears following a crash over Afghanistan that killed 14 servicemen.
Despite the new evidence the Mr Hutton has refused to either open a new inquiry or even annul the "gross negligence" findings because there are "no arguments advanced to warrant overturning" the original findings he wrote in the letter to the group.
Dr Michael Powers, QC, spokesman for the Mull of Kintyre group, said the Ministry of Defence's (MoD's) position was "unsustainable" because there was "stacks of evidence" which showed mechanical failure could not be ruled out.
"This Chinook was so unreliable that the very people charged with its safety had reached the conclusion that it was so unsafe that they would not let their test pilots fly it. That is a critical piece of evidence."
He said the families and the group would be "perfectly happy" with an annulment of the "gross negligence" findings in a move that would avoid the cost of another inquiry.
The former RAF pilot Omar Malik, representing the group, said it was astonishing that "even this damning document" was not considered as new evidence.
"The MoD is well aware that the families of the pilots have been well nigh destroyed by their fight for justice for their sons."
Mr Malik, author of The Grown-Ups' Book of Risk, added that there were "serious questions" over Air Force boards of inquiry where senior officers could "influence findings".
He said the original verdict was the "equivalent to manslaughter" and if the pilots were living "they would have the right of representation" that would have "rapidly demolished as risible" the reviewing officers' verdict.
In the original investigation evidence was remarkably scarce because 80 per cent of the aircraft was destroyed. There was no flight data recorder and no cockpit voice recorder.
The cause of the accident can never be ascertained but at least six technical failures have been identified. In the weeks before the accident the Chinook suffered three mechanical failures.
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/opinion/viewpoint/timely-words-for-disappeared-14260303.html
Monday, 6 April 2009
The Catholic primate, Cardinal Sean Brady, has made a timely and heartfelt appeal for more information on the ‘Disappeared’ people during the Troubles.
Speaking yesterday prior to a Mass of Remembrance at St Patrick’s Cathedral in Armagh, he said: “I hope that those who have even the tiniest item of information will have the courage to pass it on and so, perhaps, help to ease the pain of the families who have suffered so much for so long.”
His words were timely, in light of the tenth anniversary of the establishment, by the British and Irish governments, of the Independent Commission for the Location of Victims’ Remains.
This has been one of the grimmer aspects of the Troubles, when people were murdered by the Provisional IRA and their remains were buried in locations which, for the most part, remain unknown.
Bereavement is a huge burden for any family, but the pain must be inexpressibly worse when the victim’s body is not recovered. For many people the absence of a loved one’s remains is a major set-back and extends the suffering to a longer and deeper level.
It is not only the families of victims who face bereavement and loss, but also the entire community. This is a deep wound which people on all sides share, and the depth of that hurt was witnessed earlier this year by the furore which greeted the publication of the Eames-Bradley report of the Consultative Group on the Past.
The Provisional IRA bears a special responsibility for the creation of circumstances which added immeasurable pain to the families of the bereaved. The manner of their loved one’s deaths and also the callousness of the disposal of the remains is one of the most brutal and dimensions of the entire Troubles.
Thus far, the remains of some people have been located, and others may still be discovered.
However, as time goes on and the memory of the murders becomes more distant it may be all the more difficult to find the proper locations, especially as the perpetrators themselves find it difficult to remember details-or take such dark secrets to their own graves.
Cardinal Brady’s latest appeal has several dimensions which are particularly important. He asks those who have even the “tiniest” item of information to come forward. It is crucial in this context to emphasise that every detail and scrap of information may prove to be of the utmost importance.
The Cardinal also mentions the “courage” required by people in giving information to the authorities. Although the peace process is still on track, old habits die hard, and there is still a danger associated with giving information to the authorities. In this case, information about the Disappeared would be placed in a different and historical dimension, but courage in coming forward is still required.
The most poignant aspect of the Cardinal’s appeal is his reference to the pain of the families “who have suffered so much for so long”.
These are the people who need help most of all, and it would be an act not only a courage but also of kindness and of mercy to help them finally to locate the remains of their loved ones, and to allow them finally to rest in peace.
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/lifestyle/weekend/nesbitt-my-sadness-for-pal-liam-14257109.html
By Audrey Watson
Friday, 3 April 2009
As their new drama is set to be screened, the Northern Ireland startells Audrey Watson of his shock at the death of Liam Neeson’s wife and also reveals why he can’t turn down controversial roles
After Paul Greengrass's controversial 2002 film, Bloody Sunday, James Nesbitt could be forgiven for never acting in a Troubles movie again. Despite winning an Independent Film Award and BAFTA nomination for his portrayal of civil rights activist and MP Ivan Cooper, he endured criticism for taking the role, his parents' home was vandalised and there were reports of death threats.
But tomorrow night Nesbitt will again revisit our dark past when, alongside Liam Neeson, he stars in Five Minutes of Heaven, a BBC drama that, although mostly fictitious, centres on a real-life murder and its long-term legacy for both perpetrator and victim.
In the film, written by Guy Hibbert (Omagh) and directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel (Downfall), Nesbitt plays an adult Joe Griffin who, in 1975, aged 11, witnessed his older brother Jim being gunned down by Alistair Little, then a 17-year-old member of the UVF. Neeson plays Little who, 34 years later and after spending 12 years in prison, now works in conflict resolution.
The drama, which earlier this year scooped two awards at the Sundance Film Festival, begins with a reconstruction of the killing, but then veers into fiction as decades later a TV company attempts to set up a reconciliatory meeting between the men. In real life, the two have never met.
“When I first read the script, I just thought it was extraordinary,” says Nesbitt. “Coincidentally, I had met Liam properly for the first time at a fundraising dinner a few months earlier and at the end of the evening he said that we should try and do something together.
“He actually comes from the same street in Ballymena as my granny, so there was a connection there and we got on like a house on fire.
“The combination of Guy's fantastic script, the fact Liam was involved and Oliver Hirshbeigel was onboard, meant it was something I had to do.
“The Troubles are a very sensitive issue. Northern Ireland is littered with very sensitive issues. For me, the pros of making Bloody Sunday far outweigh the cons.
“I can understand the people who questioned my reasons for doing it, but I'm an actor and am always looking for a challenging drama or part. Plus if you are from Northern Ireland, there's an almost unconscious feeling of responsibility to tackle the Troubles in some of your roles.”
Nesbitt is full of praise for his co-star Neeson and their first working experience together.
“Liam's fantastic. We've become very good friends. He's a great man. Generous, gentle — just a down to earth big fella from Ballymena.
“It was a dark subject, but we had some light-hearted times on set. I play a Catholic in the film and Liam a Protestant. He'd call me a ‘Taig' and I'd call him a ‘Prod',” he laughs.
Like everyone, Nesbitt was stunned and bewildered by the sudden and tragic death last month of Neeson's wife Natasha Richardson after a skiing accident.
“The news of Natasha's death has been very hard to take in,” he says. “My heart goes out to Liam and his family. I feel shocked by the events and very much saddened for them all.”
Although he now lives in London with wife Sonia and their two daughters Peggy (11) and Mary (7), James returns to Northern Ireland at every opportunity and rarely a month goes by without the 44-year-old hosting an awards ceremony or a function for local charities such as Action Cancer or Wave, both of which he is patron. He is also a UK ambassador for UNICEF.
I joke that he should be on the tourist board payroll, considering how he often he plugs the province — he was instrumental in bringing the Cold Feet production to Portrush in 2000 and Cinderella in 2007.
He donated a substantial sum of cash to his beloved Coleraine Football Club when they were on the verge of bankruptcy a few years ago and when he appeared on the Chris Moyles Breakfast show, even managed a mention of his favourite restaurant — the Harbour Wine Bar.
“Yeah, they really should give me a full-time job,” he laughs.
“But it's important that people see the good side of Northern Ireland. And it's wonderful that we're no longer saddled with that dull pain that you had for the country you love so much being seen all over the world as a place of conflict.
“Northern Ireland was the world's best kept secret and I think that's changing. I'm thrilled to come from here and come back as often as I can. My daughters love it too.”
The youngest of four children (he has three older sisters), Nesbitt spent his early years living in Broughshane, Ballymena where his father was headmaster of the local primary school. When he was 11, his parents Jim and May moved the family to Coleraine and James attended Coleraine Academical Institution before beginning a French degree at the University of Ulster, intending to follow in the footsteps of his dad and sisters and become a teacher.
However, he dropped out after a year and on his father's advice, headed for the Central School of Speech and Drama (CSSD) in London.
Nesbitt Snr's encouragement isn't surprising, considering the young Jimmy's acting ability had always been apparent. At 13, his parents took him to an audition at the Riverside Theatre for the Christmas production of Oliver and he made his stage debut playing the Artful Dodger. He continued acting throughout his schooldays and when his course at Jordanstown began, already had an Equity card.
In 1987, the day after graduating from CSSD, he got a small part in BBC film Virtuoso. Then followed a UK tour of the musical On The Roof and a world tour of Hamlet, during which he met his wife, who was also working in the production.
In 1991, Nesbitt made his feature film debut as agent Fintan O'Donnell in Hear my Song. More movie (Jude, Welcome to Sarajevo), theatre and TV work followed and in 1997, he landed the part of male lead Adam Williams in TV series Cold Feet (winning a British Comedy Award) and a household name was born.
The incredibly popular series ran for five years and also during that time, Nesbitt starred on the big screen in Waking Ned, The Most Fertile Man in Ireland and Lucky Break.
Then came Bloody Sunday, Murphy's Law, Wall of Silence, Passer By, Quite Ugly One Morning, The Passion, Jekyll (for which he was nominated for a Golden Globe) and feature films Millions, Match Point and much more, including those infamous Yellow Pages adverts.
“I do get slagged off a lot for doing those,” he reveals. “But I don't think they did my career any harm and my bank manager was very, very pleased,” he laughs.
Sporting an unflattering beard (necessary for his role in Outcast, a Celtic horror film currently filming in Scotland), Nesbitt is friendly and full of banter, though he visibly winces when I bring up the subject of his past indiscretions.
It's been seven years since the red-top frenzy of kiss and tells, allegations of drug abuse and extra-marital affairs and he is understandably uneasy when the subject comes up.
But to his credit, Nesbitt neither dismisses, denies nor makes excuses. He shoulders the blame entirely and laughs when I ask how, after his treatment at the hands of the tabloids, he managed to play the role of a journalist in last year's Midnight Man with any sort of sympathy?
“Tabloids have a job to do, they do it and that's fine,” he says. “I got up to things and people wrote about them. I don't really talk about it now, but it was all my own fault. I did things I shouldn't have and it was printed in the papers.”
I ask whether success might have gone to his head at that time and he had gotten carried away with his own celebrity?
“I might have blamed something like that in the past,” he says. “But I don't think that now. There wasn't a reason or excuse, or anything or anyone but me to blame. I hurt people that I loved and I don't talk about it now because they're the ones that suffer every time it's mentioned, not me. And that's unfair.”
I also ask if he is a different person now, calmer, more mature perhaps?
“Calmer? I wouldn't say that. Mature? Absolutely not,” he jokes.
There's no doubt that after cheeky chappie Adam in Cold Feet, Nesbitt's powerful performance in Bloody Sunday opened the door to more serious roles. And he admits that prior to playing Ivan Cooper, he harboured guilt about not having a ‘real' job.
“My sisters and dad were all teachers so following that path was a natural journey,” he says of his initial career ambitions. “Though I think I always knew I didn't want to work for a living — so I became an actor,” he laughs.
“But as a Northern Irish Presbyterian, you can't help but feel that it isn't the sort of thing you are supposed to do.
“Working with Paul Greengrass was life-changing. It made me appreciate the value of acting and that it was OK to be an actor. It made me accept that this is the job I do and that it can have worth and that I should be content with that.
“I'm equally proud of Five Minutes of Heaven and the message it puts across. It reminds me of the privilege the profession affords us sometimes.
“Guy Hibbert spent three years talking to Joe and Alistair. I myself spent a lot of time with Joe and although he certainly wouldn't say that this is a movie about reconciliation — there's no happy ending — what he would say is that now, for the first time in his life, he is receiving counselling.
“That in itself is a reason to make films like this.”
Five Minutes of Heaven, Sunday BBC2, 9pm
http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/entertainment/entertainment-catch-all/2009/04/04/talking-up-the-peace-process-86908-21252407/
Apr 4 2009 Tim Oglethorpe
FIVE MINUTES OF HEAVEN SUNDAY, BBC2, 9pm
On the last day of filming the awardwinning TV drama Bloody Sunday, seven years ago, a shattered Jimmy Nesbitt made a promise to himself.
"I'd been working on a film about one of the most significant and tragic events of The Troubles and I wanted, at some point, to redress the balance," he says.
"Of course the filming of Bloody Sunday was hard and depressing - it recreated an event in which innocent people were killed but also heralded a new intensity to the conflict.
"So I wanted to hang on to something positive, I wanted to imagine making a drama that was just as significant as Bloody Sunday but which offered hope. And I think Five Minutes Of Heaven does that."
The film is part fact, part fiction. In 1975, 17-year-old Alistair Little, a member of the Ulster Volunteer Force, really did murder 19-year-old Catholic, Jim Griffin, in Lurgan, Northern Ireland. The murder - for which Little served 12 years in jail - was witnessed by Jim's 11-year-old brother Joe.
The fictional parts are those in which Little - played by Liam Neeson - has talks with Joe Griffin, played by Nesbitt, in the present day.
"It's fictional but inspired by reality," says former Cold Feet star Jimmy, 44.
"Writer Guy Hibbert spent many hours talking to each man separately and this is his interpretation of how conversations between them might go.
"And I see those conversations, when on television, as another part of the healing process in Northern Ireland.
"As a country, we were known for conflict, for far too many years. While accepting that peace can't be attained overnight, I would like to think Northern Ireland would now be looked upon as a blueprint for how to emerge from conflict - and a film like this will create the kind of debate to help us do that."
Events since filming was completed, in Northern Ireland, have not helped the peace process. The killing of three members of the security forces by Republican terrorists last month have raised fears of a return to hostilities.
And as a further, tragic distraction from the film's message of hope and conciliation, Nesbitt's co-star Neeson is having to deal with the death of his wife, actress Natasha Richardson, following a skiing accident.
Jimmy talks about filming Five Minutes Of Heaven as being part of his "obligation and responsibility to my country" and the fact this is another hard-hitting drama that he wouldn't dare show his daughters - like Murphy's Law and Bloody Sunday before it - is merely an unfortunate consequence of the project.
Jimmy, who is married to Sonia and dad to Peggy, 11, and Mary, seven, says: "Peggy got a bit freaked out by my appearance in the dark and sinister Jekyll, a couple of years ago, so I shall steer clear of exposing them to what I do on TV until they are older.
"For now, they can make do with re-runs of me in those Yellow Pages commercials and, hopefully, I will do something 'young person friendly' soon." Not that Jimmy is convinced he will be back on our TV screens any time soon. At least not on a regular basis.
He says: "It's in my nature to worry about the work drying up. Even during the busiest phases of my career I've worried about that and I know it drives Sonia mad.
"But these days, like most actors, I think I have genuine cause for concern. TV is changing and it is difficult to get dramas made, especially now the cheaper option of reality TV has proved so successful."
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/obituaries/bal-md.ob.quinn06apr06,0,6425083.story
Irish immigrant with a love of horses established a medical practice in the Lutherville-Timonium area
By Nick Madigan |
April 6, 2009
Michael Kevin Quinn loved his horses. He co-owned a racer named First Sea Light and, over the years, kept a couple for countryside rides, one named Joker and the other - in honor of the land of his birth - Irish.
When he got too old to ride, one of his sons said Sunday, he gave it up very reluctantly and always missed it.
Formerly a doctor in general practice in the Lutherville-Timonium area, Dr. Quinn died Friday at Stella Maris Hospice at Mercy Medical Center after suffering for several years from Alzheimer's disease. He was 88.
"Every once in a while he'd ride from Goucher College - that's where he stabled the horse - through the traffic all the way up to the Loch Raven trails," said the son, Kevin Barry Quinn of Mount Airy. "I remember the shock the first time I saw him do that."
Dr. Quinn was born in Belturbet, a town in County Cavan, Ireland. He graduated from the National University of Ireland - now known as University College Dublin - and joined the Royal Navy after World War II. He served as a ship's surgeon aboard the HMS Sparrow and, after leaving the navy, he served in the same post on a cruise ship, Queen of Bermuda.
"He did quite a bit of touring in the Americas with the navy," his son said. "He went halfway up the Amazon, he went through the Panama Canal. He met some of the Hollywood crowd after docking in San Diego. He went to Cuba - all this in the late '40s."
Dr. Quinn immigrated to the United States in 1952 and that same year married Carmel Fay, a woman from his hometown. After their wedding in Syosset, N.Y., the couple moved to Baltimore, where he undertook a medical residency at Mercy Hospital, now Mercy Medical Center.
Shortly afterward, Dr. Quinn established his general medical practice in the Lutherville-Timonium area. He made frequent house calls, his family says, until his retirement in 1992.
He and his family - the couple had five children - were residents of Towson for many years. More recently, Dr. Quinn and his wife lived at Mercy Ridge, a retirement community in Timonium.
Dr. Quinn was a member of the Ancient Order of Hibernians and the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick.
A funeral Mass will be offered at 10 a.m. Tuesday at the Church of the Immaculate Conception, 200 Ware Ave., Towson.
In addition to his wife and his son, survivors include another son, Michael Conor Quinn of Towson; two daughters, Deirdre Fay Quinn Schadler of Lexington, Mass., and Sinead Quinn of Washington; a sister, Sheila Quinn of Sligo, Ireland; three grandsons; and two granddaughters.
He was preceded in death by a daughter, Mary Katherine Quinn.
Updated: 10/4/2009
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