Today, Brian Lenihan delivers the oration at Béal na mBláth, perhaps the most iconic location in modern Irish history, where Michael Collins was killed in an ambush on this date in 1922.
Collins's death deprived Ireland of the one man who might have been able to save the country from the grip of clerics, vested interests and ignorant elected buffoons. It consigned the country to ninety years of mismanagement, abuse, theft, corruption and incompetence, thanks to the grasping cynics who grabbed control. It condemned future generations to the misery of a judgemental, puritanical and intolerant Catholic church. It laid the ground for an age of darkness when books were banned, contraception and divorce were outlawed, and innocent young girls imprisoned by nuns in the vile Magdalene laundries, while young boys were systematically raped in the industrial schools run by Catholic orders. Eventually we ended up with a constitution dictated by an evil old psychopath, Archbishop John Charles McQuaid, and we still suffer under his malign influence to this day.
As anyone with eyes and ears knows, the current government is the worst in the history of this failed State. It has systematically robbed the people to pay for the crimes of its cronies in the banks and the construction industry. It has consigned future generations of Irish people to debt so that those who profited from the Celtic Tiger might be spared discomfort.
This government has committed treason so that Fianna Fáil might prosper. It has raped and asset-stripped the country.
Therefore, when Brian Lenihan — the man behind the obscene bank guarantee — speaks in commemoration of Michael Collins, we see the final insult to the Irish people. Those who destroyed the country are now stealing the memory of the one man who might have stood up to all the filth of 20th Century Irish history.
Well written Bock. Hard to think of too many since Collins who could have inspired us to rise above the political / religious / gombeen bullshit…
Lenihan isn't fit to even say the man's name.
Just how the fuck do we deal with these corrupt politicians? I'm not sure my ballot paper will make any difference in the next election no matter who I vote for. I truly am at a loss about what to do! Emigration perhaps.
Have to hand it to the Lenihans for hard neck. How did such a collection of mediocrities occupy positions of power in this country? Pops snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in the presedential race because the truth caught up with him,aunty Mary presided over the debacle of the Eircom flotation,little brother Conor referred to exploited Turkish workers as kebabs(and subsequently ended up as Minister for Integration no less) and now this joker who will probably tell us once again WAIT(we are all in this together). That he even shows his face there today is indicative of just how shameless this prick has become.
Bock, I'm in complete agreement with your article, Ireland with a real honest future died that day in August 1922 when "The Big Fellow" was murdered not far from his home in County Cork, apart from Sean Lemass and a few others in the years since 1922 Ireland has had lesser men at the helm, is there another Michael Collins in Ireland? I doubt it, in fact we will never see his like again.
Collins may have achieved all of the above – the influence of a a few hundred thousand Prods in an agreed Ireland might have put manners of the Catholic church also but he signed it away – but he was a cold blooded murderer.
Well said. It's a disgrace that Lenihan was there today. Collins was right about them – traitors all.
Excellent article Bock. Lenihan according to polls, is the most popular politician in Ireland at the moment. The media are telling us that he is a true patriot in the way that he is managing the economy!. He is also on the way to being canonised as well. What does that say about the media we have in this country and how gullible and passive the Irish people are?
I hate to say it but "what if" type history can veer towards the simplistic. Much of what happened Church wise in this country was well in place by the time Collins came along. In fact the demise of Parnell in the late 19th Century clearly indicates this. Perhaps someone can point out the critiques Collins made of the RC Church. I would love to read them. This is not to take from Collins but reconstructing him from a present day perspective is dangerous.
Bock, A short, sharp article and one of you best. It has a lot of substance. "This government has committed treason so that Fianna Fáil might prosper. It has raped and asset-stripped the country.". Many many people would endorse that statement simply because it is true. Also " It has consigned future generations of Irish people to debt so that those who profited from the Celtic Tiger might be spared discomfort." Absolutely spot on. And yes- "A failed State".
However, I prefer to think of Lenihan as a very academically intelligent man but a naive man who has been manipulated by others. Now because of sympathy towards him because of his illness, he is being used all the more by the manipulators of Fianna Fail. These guys are now using a naive and sick Lenihan as their best and probably only mudguard as they cling to the fruits of power.
I don't have to wonder how Collins would have dealt with Seanie, Fingers, bank boards, Calelly, O'Donoghue, Bertie, the drug gangs and many others. We should all regret that a youthful Collins is not with us now.
hah you know for some reason this post reminded me of animal farm, just replace 'snowball' with Collins and Lenihan and co with 'Napoleon' and friends.
Second's. How did you come up with " cold blooded murderer " ?
Collins loss to Ireland was, of course an unmitigated disaster. However to say that Collins alone could have changed history on his own, had he lived, is stretching a point, I believe. I am mindful of the phrase "We get the government we deserve" by voting for a certain party or a certain party member. If we each of us sit and wait for "the next Fellah" to solve our problems, then shame of us. I am mindful of another quotation "Ask not what your country can do for you, but rather what you can do for your country" Can we honestly say that we have done that to the best of our ability? I know I havent, but its not too late to change that fact. Shame on anyone who says Collins betrayed Ireland. He did not; he could not. Ireland not at peace shall never be free!! Brian Lenihan's presence in Beal na mBlath today takes our Nation a little further down that welcome road
I didn't notice anyone saying Collins betrayed Ireland.
Perhaps you were thinking of the thieving corrupt treasonous Fianna Fáil party?
Cant add much to this well said Bock, beats me how any sane person would vote for any of these crooks.
Bock you have such a way with words.Sack Gene kerrigan.Give Bock a proper job!
A friend of mine actually met Brian Lenehan two weeks ago on the top of a mountain!
it was called Lugnaquilla.(Somewhere in Wicklow I think.
I understand he has lost an enormous amount of weight.He is clearly fighting his illness however as there are no roads to the top of the mountain.
.Perhaps he was doing a "Croagh Patrick", and suffering for the sins of his fellow Callelyites in the Soldiers of Destiny party..
Did you read today's irish Independent, about the rapist they are going to release soon, and put an electronic tag on him.
The self same rapist has been in a coma for two years in the Mater Hospital since he suffered a stroke undergoing heart surgery-and wait for it- he is guarded by a 24 hour team of prison officers at a cost of 1.2 million Euros per annum.
Will the Prison Officers Association staff be up in Glasnevin Cemetary next, tagging the dangerous corpses and mounting guard on their graves.?
Make this the subject of your next marvellous diatribe.!
We do really have to hand it to Brian. For solid brass neck! Invoking “the spirit of Collins” to inspire the Politicos and the Nation? I would never have taken Brian for a comedian, but I have to reconsider my view.
It’s great to see F.F. and F.G. getting it on in a “Love in” worthy of the sixties . Natural bedfellows.
@secondsout
your comment singles Collins out for the title 'cold blooded murderer', but this suggests that others, ourselves included, could never be the same. Collins was of his time, and had you or I been there we might have done the same things.
It serves no purpose to single him out, since we are surrounded by 'cold blooded murderers' in the Irish government this very day. Do you think the killers of Suzy Long who died of cancer because of HSE/governement policies are any warmer blooded than the killer with a gun?
Shellshock; Great point, I thank you.
@norma
I was surprised at the naievty of the comment. The quality of this blog is demonstrated by the equal intelligence of the posters as the blogger himself.
Why did the Mafia never come to Ireland?
Because Fianna Fail got here before them.
Shellshock. Very well put.
Collins, whether you like his methods or not, gave leadership. It is the one ingredient that is completely lacking in the current crisis. Yesterday, Lenihan outlined three essential elements to deal with this crisis.
1. Improve competitiveness.
2. Restore sustainable public finances.
3. Ensure credit available to business and households.
He is absolutely wrong. The above could have been written by a banker or an economist. The first and most essential element is not there at all.
We must foster a sense of leadership and solidarity by spreading the burden to those who can bear it. Instead of protecting those at the top, they need to be removed en masse before any sense of national solidarity will even begin to manifest itself.
In fact Lenihan's essential elements display a very disappointing lack of vision. One has to question if he is completely out of touch with the hardship being caused by this recession.
I'll probably be eaten for this, but I think Lenihan personally is a man of some decency.
I don't think he's a crook and I don't believe he means ill towards anybody. However, he is part of the the worst political movement ever to afflict this country, and he can't fail to be influenced by its ideologies.
Therefore, when it came to bailing out the crooked bankers, Lenihan's blind spot prevented him from understanding the reality of what he was about to embark upon.
He has sunk the country. He is personally responsible for ensuring a lost decade (at least), but I don't believe that he personally did what he did out of greed, malice or dishonesty.
I think Fianna Fáil is the problem, and Lenihan is part of Fianna Fáil.
Bock. That about sums it up.
I met Brian a number of years ago at a private dinner party , just a few friends. He struck me as indeed a decent sort . However this was long before his elevation to the ivory towers, Power corrupts.
Bock 23, Yes, I would take that to be true.
Gary. Power in itself cannot corrupt, Power is a driving force, It is only people who can corrupt.
Shellshock. I did'nt really want to comment on Seconds post, Because I was lucky enough not to be indoctrinated as a child by Religion and other variant inflexible ideologies, However there were two topics which I would have been somewhat " indoctrinated " with, One being Michael Collins, My late Father attended MC's funeral as a youngster with his Father, He told me it was the only time he saw his Father cry.
He brought me to Beal Na Blath when I was 16, Where we knelt and kissed the ground, He told me many stories which his Father told him.
Indoctrination or not, Michael Collins is seared into my mind as a truly great Statesman.
I'll have to be the odd man out then. The idea of Collins as a statesman is so surreal I can't even comment.
I think this is Kevin Myres from 2007
http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/to-say-michael-collins-was-a-peacemaker-is-humbug-he-was-a-coldblooded-killer-1062871.html
Seconds, Its fine to be the " Odd man out " but to make a statement such as " cold blooded killer " based on an article by Kevin Myres is just retrospection minus accuracy.
Those were very different times, Very different realities, Realitis that cannot be covered indepth by Kevin Myers timeline.
Do you reckon Myres was making those killings and names up, or that certain realities can justify murder?
Because if Collins killings can be justified by the mythical quest for the fourth green field, then the IRAs carnage of the 70s/80s/90s can also be justified. And what of all those graves in Ireland occupied by the victims of Republican violence from the 1920s up, most innocent men, women and children going about their business, the collateral damage of an irredentist claim. Will Lenihan be delivering eulogies from their gravesides?
Norma, I was not indoctrinated by anyone on Michael Collins, but he is one of the only true Irish heroes. I'm surprised that anyone can speak well of Lenihan after what he has done to his country. If I had cancer, I would have more sympathy for the poor and the weak than the rich, therefore I find Lenihan's actions deplorable. Even as he faces his own mortality, he has no qualms about destroying this country and pumping billions into Anglo. Perhaps his friends and family have loans they are unable to pay back and he feels that he can use his power to sort out his nearest and dearest and it rests easy with him. While I can understand this, I do not admire this.
This post doesn't suggest that Collins was a saint or a peacemaker or anything of the sort, and therefore the Myers article, while interesting, doesn't address the issue. Myers writes about Collins's personality while I'm simply talking about the political impact he might have made. My point is that if he had lived, Collins might have been an effective antidote to the sort of craw-thumping hypocrisy that destroyed the country.
" If I had cancer, I would have more sympathy for the poor and the weak than the rich, therefore I find Lenihan's actions deplorable. Even as he faces his own mortality, he has no qualms about destroying this country and pumping billions into Anglo. Perhaps his friends and family have loans they are unable to pay back and he feels that he can use his power to sort out his nearest and dearest and it rests easy with him. While I can understand this, I do not admire this."
Firstly, I doubt that brian Lenehan numbers many of the Fianna Fail connected property developers among his friends.
Secondly, he was thrown into the "Lions Den" as a lawyer who had a gun put to his head by a group of self criminally reckless, self serving bankers whose actions had brought the financial system to the unprecedented point of chaotic meltdown..
He had to take a one day crash course in economics by listening to every so called expert-none of whom had an easy solution to the problem.
If his health and his life, did not hang in the balance so precariously, he would by now have been elevated to Taoiseach,as the Destiny Soldiers would dearly love to have a new figure in charge who is not directly associated with the muppets who were,during the decade of madness when the love affair between the Fianna Fail government and their crony, councillor-turned developer friends,led to the total destruction of the economy.
The reasons for Brian Lenehans request to be at the ceremony may be more complex than we imagine.
He wil have great admiration for Michael Collins as a man (somewhat like himself) hurled by circumstances into a historically unique situation in which he was " damned if he did and damned if he didnt"
Perhaps he hopes to bring the political parties above petty politics and somehow gain common consensus such as a "government of national unity"?
Let us face it there are as many dodgy ans self serving councillors and politicians in Fine Gael as in the ranks of the Destiny Soldiers.
Most of the electorate now realize that the two parties are two sides of the same penny
Fine Gael is perhaps the less competent of the two when it comes down to the gutter politics of character assination.
They also give the impression of being happy to collect the same bloated salaries and expenses and sit on the fence hurling stones.In essence they are less hungry for the spoils of office-particularly now as there is no magic bullet to redeem the country.
A government of national unity could at least face down the public service unions (and the quangos and HSE monster etc.
Somebody is soon going to have to rewrite the so called "Croke Park Agreement" and when it happens we may all be facing a national strike of public servants.
If it has to happen,the government have to win it-whatever that entails.
The index linked pensions will have to be removed and the whole wasteful public sector overhauled even if that means facing reality and retiring many thousands of civil servants and hangers on, on far lower pensions than they have been expecting throughout their working careers.
There is simply not enough meat left on the bones of the half amillion unemployed or those in the private sector already struggling with negative equity ,and the inexorable,grinding down, stealth charges on electricity ,refuse, and so on to hit them again.
An unjust flat rate stealth tax such as a new "property tax" or "water charge"
would probably spark off riots and street demonstrations-and not just among the well heeled, and well drilled "David Begg Brigades".
Brian Lenehan has some hidden agenda in all this.Not sure what he is up to though.Time may tell.
@secondout
you are not the odd man out at all. In fact I agree with your analysis. Yes if we are going to revere Collins then it is right that we should also revere the new IRA as well as the good old IRA. The problem here is the usual Irish myopia, and hypocrisy that sees nothing wrong in eulogising Collins whilst condemning his erstwhile followers of today who are on the holy grail of a united Ireland that FF the republican party claims to adhere too yet has never done anything to pursue.
Kevin Myers is just another hypocrite. He supports the political violence of those men who dodder up to the cenotaph every year wearing their poppies because that violence is sanctioned by him, whilst condemning the violence of Irish republicans. He never ever directs his moral compass at the killing and murder of catholics yet bangs the tribal drum all the time over protestant murders. You could not possibly cite him as an intelligent source.
All I ask for is consistency. If you are going to call Collins a cold blooded murderer, then Lenihan et al are the same.
John McD You seem to have fallen for the Government crap that the problem is the Unions and particularly the Civil Service one’s . The “Poor little Brian” excuse is tiresome he is the Minister of Finance. He is responsible for the pouring of Billions of our future into incompetent Black hole Banks and other cretin’s institutions .The only possible future that we may have is in an organised People and workforce in my opinion. Stand alone and you shall fall. Divide and conquer is the F.F. way. Grind down the weak (they never vote anyway) support the Golden Circle they will always have enough to see the Party and the lad’s right. Collins may have made a diffrence but there again he may have become as corrupt as the rest who Knows?
@John McDermott. The hidden agenda is not so hidden. The country is destroyed. The option of a left government or a left influenced government is sending shivers down the spine of the better off. Lenihan's speech is a first shot (no pun intended on the memory of the dead) towards a new political landscape.
I couldn't fail to notice that your solutions do not include an increase in taxes. To give you a better understanding of the problem lets look at some figures. Total spending €46 billion. Interest almost €4 billion. That a total of €50 billion. Revenue €30billion. Defecit €20 billion per annum without even thinking about the banks.
The total public service payroll now approx €18 billion. In other words if you stopped paying all the public sectior-thats means no pay-then the savings would be enough to correct the defecit. I am not clear where that would leave what is left of the country. Essentially Fine Gaels argument is savings and of course they are needed. But without huge increases in taxes to Scandinavian levels we are going nowhere in trying to bridge the defecit gap.
It is time for people of both right and left to face reality and spell out the solutions.
I am no economist, but when Bart Ahern cosied up to all the big unions and made them "social partners" i.e. "take what you need and leave the rest" style wage increases (commonly referred to as ATM machine benchmarking) in order to keep them on side,he craftily bought three elections with borrowed money.
This money was borrowed-not from you or I-but from German pension funds and filtered into Public sector pockets via banks/builders/buyers/ stamp duties/ bonanza buoyancy of VAT etc. etc.
Now the Germans are lending us more money to help keep the flow of repayments alive and returning to their own institutions thereby preventing the irish,Spanish,Greek and Italian, pig boats foundering on the uncharted rocks of Eurocrash.
How long will they continue to tolerate the continued incompetency of our own nation in particular, whose only solution is to heap more taxes on the lower paid (mostly in the private sector) and compound the recession here?
At the same time , Fianna Fail continue with plans to spend three billion Euros (probably six when its finished) on a needless white elephant subway to Dublin Airport-to arrive at another 8 billion useless, needless, air terminal that no airline wants to be part of.!!
This is lunacy.Can nobody stop it.?
Meanwhile the poor die waiting for hospital appointments and our children have to pay a "contribution" of three hundred Euros yearly towards their education in dingy portacabins??
Here in Germany school teachers holidays are about half the total amount of days that Irish teachers get and their wages are far lower.
It all has to stop.
If the public sector payroll was halved in the morning (and the 700 odd quangos abolished) it would go a long long way to solving our current problems.
Problem is it would take a General Franco, or an Adolf H, with substantial armed forces to begin to enforce such change.
Clearly nothing has changed with the International Monetary Fund tacticians either.
.They were always happy that the poor-and only the poor- took the hit for countries whose politicians mismanaged economies in the past.Ditto Ireland.
Meanwhile Gormless Gormley announces he is about to start playing hide and seek with his 4X4 vehicle taxes, on vehicles that should have never been allowed register for commercial tax rates in the first place.!!
@john McDermott
your arguement is fallacious. Germany enjoys a much higher standard of living than Ireland. Your public sector bashing is an irrational refusal to face facts.
@Shellshock
I agree….. Our Public Service is totally irrational, but they do have certain similarities to the mafia.
This mafia public sector of which you speak — does it include firemen, nurses and ambulance drivers?
Tumbrel your argument is worthy of Lewis Carroll “Alice in Wonderland” what are you suggesting? Sack all the Civil Service? Do away with pensions? What is your idea of where we should go? Ask not what others think! Enlighten us with your own opinions.
You seem to think that we should support the current incompetent filth that have put this land into shit?
Brian and the Boyos need to be put out of office for all time. F.G. will also be a disaster. Vote whatever way you wish but do not expect the majority of Ireland to submit to the lash of right wing cretins . Licking the arse of the International Golden Circle. Perhaps the compliant Irish electorate shall roll over in the hope of having their belly tickled and instead have their balls kicked , but there again life is a bitch and then you die.
No Bock, not the foot soldiers. But the higher grade, incompetent but bulletproof management inner circle with their close links to Fianna Fail is all a bit too Cosa Nostra for my liking.
People don't seem to understand that if we didn't have a public sector, we'd have to pay others to provide services like education, health, emergency rescue, water treatment, sewage treatment, meteorological prediction, road maintenance, policing and all the rest of it. And what would those people be called?
They'd be the Public Sector.
Of course, if we're happy to have none of these services, well and good.
Anyway, this is not going to become yet another discussion about the public service. This is about Lenihan at Béal na mBláth, so I'd ask people to leave their pet hobby-horses in the stable for the moment, please.
yes, the nub of the issue is the Irish double speak and think that goes on when it comes to our beliefs and our actions. If Lenihan supports Collins, then he should also support Martin McGuinness. If we are going to commemorate someone who supported murder, both in the abstract and the actual, then why stop at 1922?
And are we really going to be so stupid as to forgive someone for destroying the country because they had cancer when they did it?
There's a growing belief that the war of independence produced no benefits for the Irish people.
We used to talk about self-determination, but since we now know that Ireland is run by vested interests and gangsters, that rings very hollow.
@Gary Ireland. You mus be confusing me with @John McD. I simply put down the numbers. I do believe that we will need significant tax increases. Who bears them? That is a different question. I know where I think the axe should fall.
The single component most lacking at present is leadership. Honesty is a close second. Collins certainly would haven provided the leadership. And to my knowledge he did not bequeath any newspapers to his relations or offspring.
Bock think about it. If Collins and the others had not done what they did we would still be under the rule of London. Celtic Tiger? No but there again the money is probably living there now anyway. Perhaps we the people should do something about it? Although no God forbid that would be a sin.
@gary
if we were still under the rule of London, we would have NHS, free education, we would have been spared the torture of catholic power, and home grown gombeenism. And sure we lost half our population to off all places Britain. I was in Manchester recently, and every single (white) person we spoke too came from Irish parantage.
of course the trade off would have been 'our boys' being killed in Iraq and various other imperialist ventures, but as a former believer in our aul banana republic, I have to conclude that indeed independance did nothing for us.
Dont get national pride – never did. What the fuck difference does it make which bit of the rock you happen to have been born on what you look like or whether you were born 10 metres to the left or right of some line drawn on paper. Drop the labels turn the sound off and just watch what people actually do. Make your own judgement based on your own values.
Change for the better is possible – just look around the world and pick bits of best practice that we should implement – there is plenty out there. What is missing is the political will / people with decent values and the power to make changes. Maybe we need more Ghandis rather than Collins.
@Gary. Twice in my life so far I have had to go to UK or further to put bread on the table. The Irish Republic or State didn't give a fuck if I drowned on the way out or back. Along with many other emigrants they were glad to see the back of me. That is the way Ireland managed its affairs after the death of Collins. It was managed for a group of greedy insiders who got emboldened in their greed in the last 20 years. The necessity for and acceptance of emigration seems to be the only persistant philosophy at the heart of a heartless State. Remember Brian Lenihan Senior's comment in the late 80's that the island was not big enough for all of "us". Whose "us" it should have been reserved for was not made clear.
Griffith, Collins and others would turn in their graves at the selfish, greedy, visionless modern Ireland. In fact I believe that Collins would do far more than turn in his grave if here today.
If the whole fucking country was sold to the Germans in the morning, I would not shed a tear.
Tumbrel I am not sure why you should have directed these comments to me. I agree with you! The cynical use of the name of Collins by the Lord Brian is despicable. The “us” to which his daddy referred were and are the Golden Circle the natural born rulers of Ireland. All others are merely here to serve or to leave to whoever may take them or us. I am of the opinion it is about time Ireland did something about this! Do you think Germany or anyone else would buy this current mess?
@Gary. Apologies if I misdirected my comments. Long day! We have a lot of common ground. And Germany has no interest in wishing wells nor more than the Reich had in holy ones. But I would take the cheque from the British. Although in Collins time, I would not live to spend it.
I agree with you that the situation calls for something radical. But who will bell the cat or cats!
I see many contributers comment on Linehan's perceived "high standing" – all because of his spin on the economic treason and damage to the citizens he does daily. He is a highly trained barrister whose skills are to present a case and make the guilty look innocent – this is his contribution to Irish society. He is akin to the capo at Auschwitz "sweet talking" his fellow-religionists or citizens to the gas chamber on behalf of his German bosses.
Site policy: comments are made under one name. Please respect this.
@Tumbel Cart – The whole country has already been sold to Germany. They call the shots via Brusells, they will treat it as they treated Greece and Poland etc in the forties. It is because Greece kicked their ass they now speak disparagingly of the cradle of civilisation, however I digress. Uber Alles und Gott mit uns!!!
@Fergal. Regretably the Germans were not in charge in Brussels even though they do a lot of the funding. But from my perspective its is awful pity that the Germans were not running the country for the past 13 years. Instead it was being run the "Irish". Our very own bastards, with their false cabeens and mawkish nationalism. You, your children and grand children will be paying the bill. It is now well over€10,000 per head for both Anglo and Nationwide, the two corrupt Fianna Fail banks. God Save you Mother Ireland, you bore a bastard breed!
Would it not be wonderful if the German armies marched into/invaded this misbegotten Gombeen man island in the morning and put the politicians and the prominent public sector union bosses in a work camp,and introduced order and sanity, by first outlawing all strikes and then cutting public sector wages by 40% and then making teachers work 30% longer hours,and then sacking the thousands of idle managers in the Health service, etc etc. Dream on!
I don't think the German army is allowed to march anywhere these days, unless they're under strict supervision and the rest of the continent is given a detailed route of where exactly they are marching too – and when they intend toi return home. Apparently, Europe still has issues with the German army and marching during WW1 and WW2 for some reason. Some historians reckon they did a lot of marching – with an ambigious attitude to such things as, lets say, national borders – in those days, going forward.
Seconds out..regardless of what the Germans did seventy years ago,they are still the heart of Europe.And Europe would be far poorer without them (in every sense of the term) .And I would prefer goverment from the Bundestag than from that Gombeen cesspit Dail Eireann.I really dont understand why we dont have the same respect for them that so much of the rest of the world has,even their former enemies.And we never had any beef with them!.
Lenihan Snr. had his own version of the truth. Looks like Sonny Boy has inherited the same trait.