It Occurs To Me: The Donegal Town merry-go-round

On May 23 on the front page of the Donegal Democrat, the headline read “Public Meeting on Donegal Town one-way system concerns”.

The article was written by Siobhán McNamara, as a result of which (and social media), the dogs in the street knew such a meeting was forthcoming. Let’s imagine that there was a public meeting where an announcement was being made about millions of euro being allocated by Government or a public/private combination to Donegal Town. 

Let’s say that Siobhán headlined this fantastic news and let’s presume that some councillors did not get invitations to the said meeting. I wonder how many uninvited public representatives would have turned up to share that good news? Just asking?

Fast forward to Siobhán’s excellent feature on May 30 in this newspaper about 100 people turning up for the one-way system meeting. In it she wrote: “There were some very heated comments from the floor, many of which related to the absence of councillors and council representatives at the meeting.”

Some claimed not to have received invitations, some were invited to a meeting with ADoPT in Pettigo…the acronym for the Association for the Development of Pettigo & Tullyhommon. Some councillors told Donegal Live that they had only seen the invitation to Thursday’s meeting on Tuesday morning, with it having arrived by email late on Monday evening - less than 72 hours before the meeting was due to take place. And Cllr Micheál Naughton (FF), Cllr Barry Sweeny (FG) and Cllr Michael McMahon (FG) say they did not receive any invitation whatsoever.

Notwithstanding all of that, the councillors cannot ignore how local business people are feeling.

 As Seoirse O’Toole told Siobhan: “The level of frustration and anger we discovered really shook us,” he said. “People were really, really upset about some of the features of what was going on.” Last week on the Donegal County Council website, this appeared: “Donegal County Council in association with Donegal Tourism is delighted to announce a major coup for the Irish tourism industry, that County Donegal has been named this morning (Friday 31st May) in San Sebastian in Spain, as the host destination for TBEX (Travel Blog Exchange) 2025, the world’s largest conference and community of travel creators and influencers.” An obviously unimpressed Paul responded thus: “Travel creators and influencers? Is that what we need in Donegal? Carbon neutral conference? Donegal is already world-famous…councillors, so why not congratulate yourselves when you’ve improved the roads, fixed the eyesores of Killybegs and Donegal Town and started appreciating the real stars of Donegal - business owners who put up with you!” 

The controversial one-way system in Donegal Town

Judging by the comments of one angry Donegal businessman last week, the reception received by canvassers this week must have been interesting: “All my life, I’ve been… fairly conservative middle ground… like many business people here. Not any more! I’ll vote for Pauric Kennedy who chaired the meeting and some other Independent who does good local work”.  Interestingly, a few days after our chat,The Sunday Independent headline read:  “Poll shows traditional Ireland is about to declare for Independents. “ I wonder why? The definition of ‘Electile Dysfunction’ is the inability to be aroused by any of the parties standing for election!

                                      Things can only get ……?

Meanwhile across the water, Derryman and Donegal resident Peter Cunnah is having none of it! You may recall back in 1997, Peter and D:Ream’s Things Can Only Get Better was used by Tony Blair as an anthem when the Labour Party swept to power. “Most of us were behind Tony Blair in 1997, but then a few years later he took us to war in Iraq, so I wouldn’t have any of my music associated with a political party again,” Cunnah told The Sunday Times. “No one is ever going to cover the song because of its association with Labour, so in a way I shot myself in the foot by allowing them to use it.”

You may recall that poor Rishi - and him soaking wet outside Number 10 - was only minutes into his general election announcement when Things Can Only Get Better began ‘drowning’ him out nearby.  Anti-Brexit campaigner Steve Bray was the ‘DJ’, with two amplifiers as wet as Rishi. Since it was played during the prime minister’s speech calling an election for July 4, it has unbelievably torn up the iTunes music chart - hitting number 5 in under 24 hours! It’s thirty years ago since I interviewed Peter Cunnah on BBC Radio Foyle, in the aftermath of D:Ream’going to number one in the real charts for four weeks in 1994, and selling some 600,000 singles. Three years after that great success, the song was back into the Top 20, thanks to Tony Blair and Labour. 

He was born to a young Derry girl, Ann McCrea, and was sent to Nazareth House, but was fortunate to be adopted quite quickly by a very loving couple, Les and Monica Cunnah in 1966. They bought him his first guitar. Monica received a very heartfelt letter from his birth mother Anne in 1991, and read it over the telephone to Peter who was in London at the time. He always thanked the Cunnahs for their creative nurture and Anne for his musical nature as he discovered - when they met in the same year in Derry - that she was the frontwoman in The Marines showband in the ‘60s. 

He and his wife, Ruth, bought Elsonore House in Fahan for some £260,000 nearly five years ago so despite recalling what he has described as a ‘hand-to-mouth’ existence in the early 90’s, it’s fair to say that ‘Things Have Only Got Better’. 

                               Psychological, obviously?

I’m sure many of you recall two years ago in the All-Ireland semi-final, Galway’s classy forward Damien Comer scored a crucial goal by kicking into an empty net, as Derry’s keeper Odhran Lynch was at least 50 metres behind him. Did Lynch learn anything? He did in his (g)oal! Against Donegal in that recent memorable game, Marty Morrissey on RTÉ radio exclaimed in astonishment,  “ Can Mickey not see what everyone else can see?” As far as Joe Brolly was concerned, “Derry’s Donegal collapse was a predictable managerial catastrophe from Mickey Harte.” Joe’s argument was that it’s either Mickey’s way or the highway! Mind you, with this strange round-robin system, as forensically detailed by Alan Foley in Donegal Live last weekend, Derry could still stagger into the quarter-finals, despite Odhran Lynch doing his ‘wee dander’ again and again, to the great joy of Armagh. I was reminded of the great Con Houlihan’s superb Evening Press description of the Mikey Sheehy free in the 1978 All-Ireland Final between Kerry and Dublin.

“Paddy (Cullen) put on a show of righteous indignation that would get him a card from Equity, throwing his hands to heaven as the referee kept pointing towards goal. And while all that was going on, Mikey Sheehy was running up to take the kick, and suddenly Paddy dashed back towards his goal like a woman who smells a cake burning. The ball won the race and it curled inside the near post as Paddy crashed into the outside of the net and lay against it like a fireman who returned to find his own station ablaze.”

Anyway, back to Mickey Harte, about whom Sean Cavanagh said on RTÉ: “We know historically that Mickey can be a very stubborn man. That stubbornness seems to be costing him right now, because he seems to be refusing to change the openness and how easy Derry have  been to play against in the championship.” As far as Mickey is concerned though: “I’m not a psychologist, but it looks [psychological], obviously…It doesn’t make sense, unless there’s a mental problem there of… maybe it’s fatigue, maybe it’s coming off the high of winning the league…very hard to explain what has happened.” In other words, as Joe Brolly has said, Mickey will rarely, if ever, blame himself.  

                                   Reasons to be cheerful

Donegal hurlers win the Nicky Rackard Cup…Kilcar and Naomh Muire win the Gaeltacht Comortás Peile…and as regards Cork beating us by 2 points, sure it was only - to quote a Belfast friend who was due to go under a surgeon’s knife in the Royal Victoria Hospital  - “a wee aberration”. Precisely, a wee aberration. Roll on, Croker!