Trinity News, Vol. 60, Issue 2

TRINITY NEWS

15th October 2013

www.trinitynews.ie

WORLD’S OLDEST SUPERMODEL DAPHNE SELFE, Inside PULITZER PRIZE WINNER JUNOT DÍAZ ARCHITECT, RUDY RICCIOTTI AND IRISH SINGER-SONGWRITER HOZIER.

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NEWSPAPER OF THE YEAR 2013

Photo: Atalanta Copeman-Papas

Two-time Man Booker Prize winner Hilary Mantel speaks to the Hist about the role of a historical novelist.

A James Prendergast

Staff Writer

Controversial Brendan Kennelly biography by former TCD lecturer banned from campus biography of Brendan Kennelly, the poet and former Professor of Modern Literature at Trinity College, Dublin (TCD), has been banned from campus, Trinity News has learned. The book, entitled Brendan Kennelly: Behind the Smile, which was published in April 2013, was withdrawn from sale in the College bookshop following legal advice obtained by College. According to evidence obtained by this paper, Kennelly, who is a Fellow Emeritus of College, had communicated reservations about the book directly to the bookshop manager before it was banned.

A talk which had been scheduled to be given in the Long Room Hub by its author, Sandrine Brisset, who has previously lectured at the School of Law, on 10th October was also cancelled. Trinity News understands that Kennelly approached the College having been made aware passages in the book relating to sensitive aspects of his daughter’s personal life. The Communications Office issued a statement to this paper on Saturday, saying that the decision to remove the book from sale was made “as a number of claims in the biography are in dispute.” It

Matthew Mulligan investigates the media blackout around the firing of investigative Gemma O’Doherty.

InDepth -p.7

added that College “did not want to potentially fuel the controversy around these disputed claims, and cause further hurt to any of the parties involved.”

A correspondence seen by Trinity News also indicates that the book was withdrawn from sale by the bookshop Hodges Figgis, following complaints made by both Kennelly and his daughter.

It said this was done as a “favour” to Kennelly, as he is a “good friend” of the owner.

The ban was described by the author of the communication, who works at the bookshop, as “exceptional in [his] experience.” A member of staff approached by this reporter over the weekend said the store was not able to comment on the situation, but remarked that the book had been withdrawn from sale “a long time ago”.

A talk that was due to be given by Brisset last Thursday was also cancelled by the Long Hub Room as a result of its controversial nature. In a letter seen by Trinity News, Professor Jürgen Barkhoff, director of the Long Room Hub, said that the institute wanted to avoid potentially fuelling the controversy around “disputed facts and claims”. However, he added

that “the College is not in a position to comment on the nature or details of disputes between third parties.” Barkhoff also took issue with the change of the name of the talk from “Bardic Poetry in Modern Ireland” to “Whatever you say, say something - Brendan Kennelly: Bard of Modern Ireland”, though a member of staff had initially approved the new title.

Responding to a query from this paper, the Communications Office clarified that, “It only became apparent recently that the actual theme of the talk was around the biography on the retired Trinity lecturer and poet, Brendan Kennelly. In keeping with College’s decision on the book, the Trinity Long Room Hub did not want to potentially fuel the controversy around these disputed claims, and cause further hurt to any of the parties involved. It subsequently decided not to hold or promote an event which might in any way aggravate this situation.” Kennelly’s daughter previously claimed on Twitter that, on hearing about the talk, “many people very, very high up in Trinity had no idea. And are very shocked and upset.”

Brisset’s talk went ahead

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“The book, entitled Brendan Kennelly: Behind the Smile, which was published in April 2013, was withdrawn from sale in the College bookshop following legal advice obtained by College.”

on the scheduled date at a location outside campus, which was only revealed to guests who arrived to the Long Room Hub at the appointed time. Speaking to a small audience, she said that Kennelly’s poetry has been a “plea for the expression of truth” and that it “denounces the process of scapegoating.” The April launch of her book was a major event in the Shelbourne Hotel, and was attended by Kennelly as well as Jimmy Deenihan, Minister for the Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, singer Mary Black, and Senator David Norris.

In his speech at the launch, Minister Deenihan had said that Dr Brisset “enjoyed daily contact” with Kennelly during her time living in Dublin, becoming “a colleague, neighbour and most of all a close friend” of the poet.

Continued on page 2.

He quoted Brendan Kennelly as saying of Brisset, “she knows more about me than I do about myself.” The publication of the book was initially supported by both Kennelly and College. However, in letters seen by Trinity News, Kennelly’s solicitors subsequently asserted that he has withdrawn all “endorsement of and support for” the biog-

raphy. Trinity News understands that Kennelly claims he would not have supported its publication had he been made aware in advance of some of its content. Speaking to this reporter on Saturday, Kennelly said he has still not read the entire book, but that his daughter was “very upset” by sensitive material in it. He expressed his desire to move on from the controversy, adding that, “as a father, I have to look after my daughter as well as I can.”

Brisset told Trinity News that she hadn’t received any “direct complaint” from Kennelly as to “what passages are deemed problematic.”

However, it is understood that Kennelly’s daughter was especially upset by passages in the book which referenced her experiences of rape and mental health difficulties, comparing her in one section to James Joyce’s daughter Lucia. Doodle Kennelly has since spoken publicly about struggling to cope since the publication of the book and the manner in which such sensitive information was published. At her talk last week, Brisset said that she stands by everything she wrote, arguing that Kennelly’s family life is “closely related to his writing”. While

acknowledging that “privacy should be expected”, she claimed that sensitive material about Kennelly’s family had already been in the public domain. In a letter sent to Brisset since the book’s launch, Kennelly’s solicitors requested that she cease describing herself as a “close friend”. The letter also called on her to “refrain from further advertising, describing or otherwise referring , or encouraging others to so refer, to your book as being authorised or endorsed [by him].”

Though College initially supported its publication, it said that to continue citing its support is “inaccurate and misleading”, given that it has since been withdrawn from sale on campus.Brisset told this reporter that she was “highly disappointed” that her talk on campus being cancelled. She said, “Freedom of expression and academic freedom are essential values that the university should protect so that the public can gain access to the truth.”

>> John Kennedy on hipsters: sapping the energy from revolt.

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Sport -p.2

Erin Jo Tiedeken details her research into the plight of the bumble bee.

Science -p.19

Comment -p.16

TRINITY NEWS

Tuesday 15th of October 2013

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What They Said

“ “ “ “ “ Damn you fire drill! Now everyone knows what I wear in bed!

Leanna Byrne, Communications Officer

Shout out to hot fresher in the back. Can’t wait to give ya wine later. #xoxo @tcdphil

Since when has the @tcddublin library been shut fully on Sundays? Hardly a policy that sits well with its aspirations to be a global leader

Owen Bennet, Former Communications Officer

Seanad voting rights to be extended to all graduates Graduates of Limerick Universities to be included in Seanad voting register.

Aonghus Ó Cochláin College Affairs Editor The Government intends to extend Seanad voting rights to all third-level graduates, Taoiseach Enda Kenny has said. Speaking at the Fine Gael national conference in Limerick on Saturday, he described the proposed move as a “small first step” in reform of the upper house.

At present, the six representatives elected by Irish university graduates are selected only by graduates of University of Dub-

lin and the National University of Ireland. Electorate expansions to include graduates of other institutions of higher education was endorsed by a 1979 referendum, but has not yet been enacted. Mr Kenny said, “I intend to discuss this with other leaders in the coming weeks and, as a small first step, I have asked that legislation be prepared to give effect to the 1979 decision of the Irish people to extend the Seanad electorate to all graduatess” The news follows comments made to Trinity News last week

by Senator Sean Barrett, who advocated the establishment of

a third university constituency to serve graduates not currently represented in the upper house.

However, Barrett, who is an associate professor in the Department of Economics, ruled out supporting comprehensive reform, and said that universal suffrage “requires reflection lest we produce a review chamber Seanad that replicates the Dáil. I see the roles of the two houses to be different.”

His comments echoed remarks made by Senator David Norris on RTE’s Marian Finucane Show on 5th October, during which he asked, ““What is wrong with an elite? That is exactly what [the

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“TCDSU is also set to campaign for its own vision of Seanad reform, having been mandated to do so on 3rd October by 1,342 of the 1,991 votes cast in its referendum on the issue.”

Seanad] is provided for.” However, Barrett claimed that, since 70% of school leavers go on to third-level education, “the case for the extra constituency is strong.” This should be enabled, he added, by reducing the number of senators elected by local government members from 43 to 40.

Kenny’s announcement has also fallen short of the scale of reform proposed by the Union of Students in Ireland (USI). The union has proposed that nominees appointed by the Taoiseach would include representatives of the traveller, migrant and LGBT communities, as well as a nominee representing people with disabilities. It also argues that Irish citizens residing abroad should be allowed to vote on a specific panel representing emigrants, and called for gender balance among Seanad nominees. According to Joe O’Connor, USI President, the union’s proposals would see the Seanad empowered to review past legislation and produce evidence-

The sheer number of people at the gym who have NO IDEA how to use a rowing machine..

Jess Bernard, LitSoc Chairperson

“

Barrett claimed that, since 70% of school leavers go on to third-level education, “the case for the extra constituency is strong.”

Mom broke a bottle of sherry in the hallway. Our house smells like an episode of skins.

George Voronov

based policy reports, to allow for a “more open and more democratic Seanad which is much more representative of Ireland’s youth.”

Trinity College Students’ Union (TCDSU) is also set to campaign for its own vision of Seanad reform, having been mandated to do so on 3rd October by 1,342 of the 1,991 votes cast in its referendum on the issue. According to Tom Lenihan, SU President, a motion will be discussed at tonight’s Council on reform of the upper house, which will propose the establishment of a working group tasked with providing recommendations. Lenihan told Trinity News that these recommendations would “form the substance of a coherent proposal that [the SU] will campaign on.” He added that the SU has acknowledged the proposals put forward

by USI, but clarified that he will seek a “clear mandate from our members to institute the kind of reform they themselves want to see.”

Rumours of secret sorority holding ball with frat brothers Rose ball held by sorority and Zeta Phi fraternity to decide whom to admit to new sorority.

Catherine Healy News Editor Trinity News has learned that a secret sorority held a white rose ball with members of Theta Omicron, the Irish, Trinity-based branch of the Zeta Phi fraternity, last Thursday night. The occasion was the second event held since the beginning of the academic year by the sorority, which is currently on probation pending their official initiation into an unknown sorority system.

According to our source, the ball was coordinated by members of the frat to select suitable candidates for sorority membership.

Trinity News understands that this selection process involved frat brothers granting white roses to the female students they favoured for inclusion. The group of hopefuls was largely comprised of Junior and Senior Freshman students, who are rumoured to have been required to wear white dresses to the sorority’s inaugural ball. It is believed that the stu-

dents who were gifted the highest number of roses were then put forward for official membership of the secret sorority.

Despite indications that the group is in some way affiliated with Zeta Psi, the fraternity corporation of which Theta Omicron is a chapter, Jack O’Connor, founder of the latter, denied any knowledge of the sorority’s activities last week.

He told Trinity News he had been approached at the end of the last academic year by a number of female students, described as “probably in second year”, about the possibility of setting up a sorority, but was unaware of whether they had made any progress.

He claims to have taken “a step back” from the frat this year because of academic commitments.

However, Mr O’Connor also denied the existence of any frat organisation in early 2012, after he had travelled to the U.S. to discuss the establishment of a Dublin chapter with American members of Zeta Psi. Theta Omicron was founded by Trinity students with a formal

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“The selection process involved frat brothers granting white roses to the female students they favoured for inclusion. “

banquet in Dublin in February 2012, though it has never been granted recognition by the Central Societies’ Committee (CSC).

Its establishment sparked outrage in College, with accusations of elitism over its selective admissions policy. The frat is still very much active on campus, and student Tobechukwu Arize recently succeeded Andrew Nagle, last year’s president, as head of Theta Omicron for the current academic year. A number of its members also attended a Zeta Psi convention in Washington D.C. in August. Trinity News understands the trip was partly financed by an American “elder brother” of the fraternity corporation.

It is believed that sorority founders have approached a select number of female students about joining their ranks since the beginning of term. However, Mr Arize responded to a request from Trinity News for comment by stating that he ‘is in no position to talk about the sorority.’

Illustration: Maria Kavanagh

TRINITY NEWS

Tuesday 15th of October2013

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EDITORIAL STAFF Editor

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Photo: Lylas Aljohmani

Nearly half of TCD medical students see no future career in Ireland

A Catherine Healy News Editor

significant number of medical students at Trinity College, Dublin see no future career for themselves in this country, according to a survey conducted by this paper last week. Out of the 213 students that were polled, 46% indicated they were not hopeful about career prospects in Ireland after graduation, a predicament attributed by 73% of this category to working conditions. A further 25% of students said they felt unsure about the future. A majority, just over 85%, also stated that they believe newly-qualified doctors and nurses are undervalued

by Irish society.

The findings come in the wake of a one-day strike by junior doctors over working conditions on 8th October. Negotiations to end the impasse between non-consultant hospital doctors (NHCDs) and the HSE were suspended last Thursday night, with talks set to resume today. The Irish Medical Organisation (IMO) has indicated that further strikes are likely this week in the event that no agree-

ment is reached. It is seeking a reduction in the working week of junior doctors to 48 hours and an end to shifts lasting over 24 hours.

Among the junior doctors who took to the picket lines outside 51 hospitals around the country last week was Lylas Aljohmani, the former Assistant Campaign Officer for Trinity College Students’ Union (TCDSU) who ran for the position of SU President last year.

Since graduating in May, she has been working in Waterford Regional Hospital, the same hospital which came under scrutiny early last week following the revelation that one of its junior doctor had collapsed after working 60 hours without a break.

In an interview with Trinity News, Ms Aljohmani discussed the exhaustion and anxiety she has experienced as a result of demands placed on newly-qualified doctors. “I felt like it was my fault at the beginning,” she said. “I went into medicine to help people, but I sometimes feel like I

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“One of our junior doctors was injured last week, so I ended up working two 36 hour shifts - one on Tuesday and Thursday - on top of my regular shift and overtime work on Wednesday.”

might put someone at risk now. I got tremors from lack of sleep as I tried to put a line into a patient at 5am one night.”

On top of the regular hours they work every week, junior doctors in Ireland are routinely required to undertake a daily average of four to six hours of overtime; hours which, in some cases, are not paid for. Their working hours also include further time spent on call, during which they must be based on wards. In regional hospitals, junior doctors are usually required to be on call once a week. However, in some instances, they can be required to cover these additional hours for other staff members.

As Ms Aljohmani recounts, “One of our junior doctors was injured last week, so I ended up working two 36 hour shifts - one on Tuesday and Thursday - on top of my regular shift and overtime work on Wednesday. When you’re on call, there might be a window between 2 a.m. and 6 a.m. to get some sleep, but it would only ever

Trinity News is partially funded by a grant from DUPublications Committee. This publication claims no special rights or privileges. Serious complaints should be addressed to: The Editor, Trinity News, 6 Trinity College, Dublin 2. Appeals may be directed to the Press Council of Ireland.

Trinity News is a member of the Press Council of Ireland and supports the Office of the Press Ombudsman. This scheme, in addition to defending the freedom of the press, offers readers a quick, fair andw free method of dealing with complaints that they may have in relation to articles that appear on our pages. To contact the Office of the Press Ombudsman go to www.pressombudsman.ie

be about two hours.” During the week in question, she worked a total of 107 hours.

Ms Aljohmani sympathises with the fears that have been expressed by current medical students about their future. As a result of her long working hours, she says she has no “quality of life”, and is in the process of applying to work in either Australia or New Zealand. She has reluctantly decided to emigrate because she “can’t handle another four of five years of this.”

The IMO campaign will be brought up at tonight’s SU Council, where TCDSU will look for a mandate to support further protest by junior doctors. With another potential strike looming this week, the vast majority of medical students in Trinity – 93% of respondents to our poll - support continued industrial action by junior doctors.

Commenting on the survey’s findings, Domhnall McGlacken-Byrne, Faculty Convenor for Health Sciences, told Trinity News that,

based on anecdotal evidence, he can say “a great deal of medical students and junior doctors are considering leaving the country, particularly for New Zealand, Australia and North America.”

He added that, “The tragedy of the whole situation arises from the mismatch between the values placed on educating students and treating them when they’re finished. Anybody who takes a stroll through the pristine dissection room and laboratories of the TBSI [Trinity Biomedical Sciences Institute] will immediately realise that Irish money is being poured into educating students who are leaving in their droves.”

Budget 2014: USI reiterates consequences of grant cuts News Editor, Catherine Healy looks at how the student contribution charge has increased over the last decade and how the USI are campaigning against any cuts to the student maintenance grant.

T Aonghus Ó Cochláin College Affairs Editor

he Union of Students in Ireland (USI) has cautioned that any cut to the student maintenance grant in today’s Budget would be “not just unfair, but also counterproductive and expensive”. Joe O’Connor, USI President, made the comment at the union’s prebudget submission on 9th October, in the wake of rumours last week that third-level funding could be cut by up to 5% in Budget 2014. He warned that any decrease in student grant funding would push many of 78,000 thirdlevel students - representing 38% of all full-time students in Ireland - who are dependant on it out of college, and stated that, according to USI figures, social welfare payments made to young people cost the State twice as much as a student on the grant.

Though Minister for Education, Ruairi Quinn, has recently remained tight-lipped about the extent of education cuts likely to be implemented, he warned over the summer period that funding for third-level education could be reduced by up to ¤100 million.

Speaking in University College Cork (UCC) in September, the minister also refused to rule out changes to grant payments or eligibility levels, and said there was “certainty” that the student registration charge will peak at ¤3,000 in two years.

Third-level student contribution fees rose in last year’s budget by ¤250, bringing the total contribution from ¤2,250 to ¤2,500. The increase was part of a government plan to incrementally increase the student contribution

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“Joe O’Connor warned that any decrease in student grant funding would push many of 78,000 third-level students are dependant on it out of college.”

to ¤3,000 by 2015. Since 2008, USI reminded government officials at last week’s pre-budget submission, higher education funding has been cut by 25%. Last year’s increase in the student contribution charge represented a tripling of the fee in the past decade. Between 2003 and 2009, the fee jumped from ¤900 to ¤1,500, before being rebranded the “student contribution” and rising to ¤2,000 in 2010.

There is uncertainty as to whether any possible cut to the student maintenance grant today will involve the implementation of a means test. Controversy surrounds one potential form of means testing, with farmers’ associations opposed to the inclusion of assets like farmland or business premises. The Irish Creamery

Milk Suppliers’ Association has instead called for public sector pensions to be considered.

In an interview with Trinity News on 10th September, Mr O’Connor acknowledged that, as the increase in the contribution charge is “very much set in stone”, USI would focus its pre-budget campaigning on preventing any cuts to the student maintenance grant.

The union is now in the process of establishing a national database, called SERD (Student Elector Registration Database), through which it intends to match student voters to their constituencies.The strategy will, according to Mr O’Connor, “directly link students from right across the country to their constituencies and their local public representatives,” meaning that “politicians that continue

to target vulnerable students and families with their decisions will be directly targeted at the ballot box.” Speaking at the union’s pre-budget rally on October 1st, he said, “There’s a preconception that students shout very loud but don’t back it up at the ballot box and we want to change that.”

According to USI figures, over 120,000 students are already registered to vote, and they aim to enrol a further 50,000 this year as part of this strategy.

TRINITY NEWS

Tuesday 15th October 2013

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Eva Short examines the circumstances surrounding the ostricising of Fr Iggy O'Donovan and speaks to the man himself.

InDepth -p.6

News In Brief

Housing crisis: SU denies planning sleepovers on campus James Wilson Staff Writer

Welfare Officer, Stephen Garry, has denied rumours that Trinity College Students’ Union (TCDSU) intended to house homeless students in Luce Hall.

As it turns out, the rumoured plans of turning a section of the hall into a hostel-style dormitory would have been made redundant by the fact that the number of students still without permanent lodging is estimated to now number in the dozens, as opposed to the hundreds that were homeless at the beginning of the academic year.

Garry maintained that the SU was “very much aware of the crisis,” which he called “the worst

in recent memory.” He said that the union has secured deals with local hostels, and organised an information session for international students about adapting to Dublin life. Garry also revealed that the SU was pressing College to build or purchase additional residential housing for students, citing the 300 rejected applicants to Trinity Halls this year as proof of a demand for such accommodation. The knock-on effect of the housing crisis, he said, meant that students have had to compromise more than in previous years; whether living further away from college than they planned, or paying higher rent than in previous years.

One student, Stepan Lavrouk, expressed his frustration at the long delay between his return to Dublin in September and the signing of his lease this week,

asserting that most of the few landlords he managed to secure viewings with were quite open about giving young professionals preferential treatment over students.

Whereas such discrimination has not helped student renters, the real cause of the crisis can be traced to the huge drop in the number properties in Dublin being put up for rent. According to USI figures, there were 4,212 properties advertised to renters in August 2012, whereas the figure was only 2,394 at the same time this year. The drop can be attributed to the rise in firsttime buyers in Dublin this year, according to Rónán Lyons, Daft. ie economist.

Unusual purchases among expenses claimed by former Waterford IT President James Wilson Staff Writer Waterford Institute of Technology (WIT) is suing its former President for the return of expenses worth up to ¤120,000, which included payment for numerous chick-lit novels. Kieran Byrne, who retired in 2011 after 10 years as head of the institution, is also alleged to have claimed official expenses on items as varied as flowers, crosscountry travel and fine art.

Before Byrne assumed office in 2000, non-pay spending in the presidential office amounted to about ¤30,000 a year. The figure increased by 2008 to over ¤600,308. According to reports

College honours outspoken Dominican nun Lia Flattery Contributor “The 1970s were exciting,” reminisced Sister Margaret MacCurtain, the prominent Irish historian, feminist and activist, in a talk last week to mark the conferring of her honorary Doctor in Letters (Litt. D.)

by Trinity College, Dublin. She was recalling her first attempt to introduce a women’s history course in University College Cork (UCC), which was eventually rejected by the university on the grounds that there would be no sources or text books for such a module. However, the Dominican nun continued undeterred and, in 1976, helped organise one of the first series of lectures in Ireland addressing various areas of women’s history. She was

granted an honorary degree by College in June, in recognition of this pioneering contribution to Irish women’s history.

Despite entering convent life as a young women, a fate she described as “not so much an enticing soup, as a menacing porridge”, MacCurtain was all the while a rebel in the making. She first became involved in women’s rights activism in the early 1950s, when she attended a demonstration in support of the Mother and Child Scheme, the healthcare programme which was proposed by Dr Noel Browne and strongly opposed by high-ranking officials within Catholic Church, before going on to take a leading role in the birth control and Right to Remarry campaigns. She was also an influential member of the Women’s Liberation Movement in the 1970s.

Though critical about

the continued sexualisation of young women by Irish media,MacCurtain stated that “all is not lost”, remaining resolute that “we will go down fighting”. She credited the origins of her feminist beliefs to her mother, affectionately described as “a free spirit all her life”, who was one of the first members of the Civil Service Widow’s Association, campaigning against the unfair treatment of public sector widows, as well as a feminist. Another source of inspiration was one of her history professors, James Hogan,who had a passion for the 16th century, a time of many female monarchs. The small proportion of female history lecturers and senior academic staff in Irish universities particularly struck a chord with her. It is an issue which she acknowledges has not yet been addressed.

in various national newspapers last week, Byrne's office spent ¤134,000 on artwork, ¤18,400 on flowers and, on one occasion, ¤4,200 on a flight for single person between Dublin and Waterford.

According to The Irish Examiner, items paid for by the IT for his use also included numerous chick-lit novels, such as I Never Fancied Him Anyway, by Claudia Carroll, which tells the story of Cassandra, a famous psychic whose talent “floats out the window” whenever a D.S.M. (Decent Single Man) approaches her.

It has received numerous positive reviews on Amazon and was described as “funny, quirky, romantic... impossible to put down once started” by My Weekly Magazine. Other works purchased were a seminal biography on Hollywood stalwart Audrey

Hepburn and Jill Mansell’s Mixed Doubles, which recounts the tale of three friends who all want different things from the men in their lives in a way that, according to one online reviewer, means “you can instantly empathise with the characters and are kept on edge by the twists in the plot, especially the ending.”

The institution is in the process of pursuing High Court action against Byrne, and current WIT President, Dr. Ruaidhrí Neavyn, has argued that his purchases could be seen to amount to “personal spending”. During a session of the Oireachtas' Public Accounts Committee, former accountant and Fine Gael TD for Limerick, Kieran O'Donnell, also stated that the expenses “look to me like books that people would purchase in airports when they are going on travels.”

TCD student fined a!er first Irish prosecution for internet hacking William Foley Comment Editor Donncha Ó Cearbhaill, a third year Medicinal Chemistry student in College, and his fellow hacker Darren Martyn, have become the first people to be prosecuted in Ireland for computer hacking. The duo, going under the pseudonyms “Raepsauce” and “Palladium”, hacked into the website www.finegael2011. ie before the 2011 general election, defacing and knocking it offline. Data on the site’s subscribers was also published on

the internet and forwarded to a journalist. Mr Ó Cearbhaill, winner of an Irish Olympiad medal in Computer Science and son of Offaly Independent councillor John Carroll, was also arrested last year for intercepting a conference call between the FBI and a Scotland Yard official.

Judge Ann Ryan fined the two hackers ¤5000 euro each, equivalent to the costs incurred in restoring the website, according to Fine Gael. The judge, noting that the two potentially have “a lot to give to society”, applied the Probation Act, allowing Ó Cearbhaill and Martyn to escape a prison sentence and a crimi-

nal record. Matthew Kenny, Ó Cearbhaill’s lawyer, also noted that his client now used his expertise to make websites hackproof, attracting attention from Ireland and the UK. Mr Ó Cearbhaill is captain of the DU Pirate Party, whose aim is to “protect and expand our civil liberties, in reaction to the surveillance state mentality that is currently growing in Ireland and abroad”. He is also involved in campaigning for internet privacy and the protection of individual net users from surveillance by state and non-state bodies.

Outrageous tales of drunken lecturers recounted in new book William Foley

Comment Editor A new book, Trinity Tales: Trinity College Dublin in the Eighties, published last week by Lilliput Press, is sure to be of interest to many students with its anecdotes about the drunken antics of a number of lecturers attached to the English department. In her contribution to the book, Rosita Boland, recounts that, in those days, it would seem that faculty

members were not in any way bound by decorum.

According to Boland, lecturers in the School of English were not exactly models of sobriety, and would frequently drink with students or deliver lectures in varying states of intoxication. In particular, she recalls assisting one inebriated lecturer back to his flat on Westland Row. He repaid her kindness by treating Boland and her friends to an impromptu reading of Martin Amis’ Dead Babies while standing on a kitchen chair.

Other encounters with drunken

teaching staff were less pleasant, with a lecturer who often arrived drunk at lectures once subjecting Boland’s class to a drunken rant. The subject of the improvised lecture was his student’s inability to match his capacity for original thinking. He invited Boland’s friend up to the top of the class and proceeded to humiliate and ridicule her, reducing her to tears in front of her classmates.

Cumann Gaelach tomfoolery: TCD and UCD gaeilgeoirí at war James Wilson

A

Staff Writer priceless hand-shaped cardboard cut-out was stolen earlier this month from Trinity’s Cumann Gaelach by their UCD equivalents, according to information obtained by this paper.

The Cumann Gaelach Hand, or Lámh, as it is known in Irish, is one of the society’s most potent and recognisable symbols and was stolen from the Cumann at the Irish-speaking pub, Club Chonradh na Gaeilge on Harcourt Street.

The move reignited a feud that began in 2009, when a similar

theft led to the organisation of an expeditionary force to UCD’s Belfield Campus, where a team of intrepid gaeilgeoirí successfully recaptured the Lámh and returned it to Trinity. After an emergency committee meeting at which it was unanimously decided that they were unwilling to negotiate with what they dubbed sceimhlitheoirí, or terrorists, a similar task force was organised

by Cumann Gaelach last week to retrieve the Lámh.

Despite the lashing rain – a pathetic fallacy for a trip to UCD if ever there was one – the group arrived safely at Belfield, after a quick stop off at Centra to purchase umbrellas. However, they had neglected to disguise them-

selves as UCD students and, bereft of GAA jerseys, tracksuits and fake tan, stood out like rosaries beads in an Orange Lodge.

To loud cries of “Tiocfaidh Ár Lámh”, the Hand was successfully recaptured – in a manner, I am assured, similar to how Neville Longbottom retrieved the Sword of Gryffindor – and is now safely detained in a top-secret location in campus.

However, with both societies due to attend Oireachtas na Samhna, the Irish cultural festival which is to be held in Killarney during Reading Week, it is not unlikely that Trinity’s possession of the Lámh will be challenged again soon.

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TRINITY NEWS

Tuesday 15th October 2013

InDepth

Cloak and dagger Eva Short enters the murky world of papal espionage. Despite the Church’s waning power in public life, the Vatican’s power over within its own ranks is as strong as ever.

I Eva Short Staff Writer

've never been a regular churchgoer - in fact whenever I attend Mass, it tends to be solely because I have to be there. When at the age of eighteen, I found myself in the Augustinian Church in Drogheda it was no exception. On this occasion, I was there to sing with my school's choir. I looked out from between the ponytailed heads of two blonde girls standing in front of me and watched Fr Iggy O'Donovan, the church's prior at the time, approach the pulpit.

I didn't pay much heed because, truthfully, I didn't intend to pay much attention to what he said. I began to disengage, glancing down at the crumpled sheet music in my hands in one last attempt to familiarise myself with the lyrics. However my head snapped up when I heard Iggy mention the 1930 film "All Quiet on the Western Front". The man had my attention.

He proceeded to refer to the iconic final scene of the film in which the protagonist, Paul, reaches out a hand to touch the frail wings of a butterfly that has settled on the edge of the barracks. In doing so, he exposes himself to the enemy lines and is quickly shot dead. I don't remember why Iggy mentioned this, or how he related it to the general point of his sermon that day, but it's not important. What's important is that I was suddenly struck by the sense of having stumbled upon something rare - a priest that was also a thinker.

Between songs, I listened to him. His oration was powerful - charming and knowledgeable, Iggy caught the imagination of every enthralled member of the congregation. While I'd always had a keen interest in theology, I'd dismissed the Catholic Church as a body that would never really engage with theological issues, or even philosophy, but that day I was proved wrong.

Leaving the church after the Mass had ended, I resolved that I'd have to return to the Augustinian to hear O'Donovan speak again. Had I known that within eighteen months, he would fall foul of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith (CDF) and, as a result, be removed from Droghe-

da and transferred to Limerick, I probably would have made attending more of a priority.

Why, though? Why would a man that could breathe new life into the old Catholic tradition and pack the pews to capacity be reprimanded like this? I made it my business to find out. My investigation led me to the conclusion that, in the eyes of the Catholic Church, the only priest that is of value is the subservient priest, the priest who will take every order from this higher body without question, without thought. They see dissent in the ranks and they stamp it out, and any sense of natural justice or democracy is not their concern.

Their reason behind the punishment is because during the baptism of a child, O’Donovan allowed the godparents to pour the water over the child's head.

Somehow, the CDF caught wind of this, deemed it doctrinally incorrect, and swiftly dealt with him. It seemed like a move disproportionate to the alleged crime. This was supported by the whispers that I heard of there being more to the situation than appeared on the surface, a more sinister motivation purposefully veiled. Searching for clarity led me to a man that Iggy O'Donovan mentioned by name in his final homily, Redemptorist priest Fr Tony Flannery.

Tony is a well-known figure in the media because he has been very open about his own troubles with the CDF that resulted in him being taken out of ministry, even writing a book on it, A Question of Conscience. An abridged version of the events reads thusly.

In January 2012, Tony Flannery received a phone call telling him that he was being summoned to Rome by his superiors, but not telling him why. Tony insisted they explain the reason, but the person at the other end of the receiver refused, only saying ominously that Tony was in deep trouble.

He was told not to tell anyone of this call to Rome, a request which Flannery ignored, understandably wanting to confide in his family and close friends about the matter. Days later, he arrived in the Vatican with his brother

“

“Who, then, are the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith? In brief, they are the modern Inquisition.

And though the name has changed since the 16th century, they don't seem to have updated their modus operandi.”

D. Joyce-Ahearne looks at the waning student movement and how it can be reignited

Frank, plagued with anxiety. Two typed-up A4 pages, with neither heading nor signature, were put in front of him - one containing extracts of his writings in a Redemptorist publication, Reality, and the other addressed to his superiors with a list of requests as to how he would be “dealt with”. He would cease writing for the magazine. He would go on a period of "theological reflection", which they requested be away from his home, and contemplate; only to return when he'd decided to "reembrace the full teaching of the Church".

At a later point, an edict was presented to Flannery that he was asked to sign, asking him to recant statements he'd made about the ordination of women and to state that he agreed with all the Church's sexual teachings and its attitude to homosexuals.

Flannery refused - it would have gone against everything he believed in. For that, he was barred from doing what he'd been called to do at the age of seventeen, that is to say Mass. The short story is that Flannery didn't agree with the Church, and so they expelled him. However, in reality, it’s far from that straightforward, as I learned when I spoke to him.

Flannery has been expressing views that differ to those of the Church for the past twenty five years. It didn't make sense then, that suddenly they'd decide to take him up on them after so much time. Why go after him now? As Flannery explained it, there was an ulterior motive to this move. The CDF weren't unhappy with his views - they were unhappy with his role in the founding of the Association of Catholic Priests (ACP). The ACP is an independent body of priests that was founded in 2010 by Flannery and seven other priests. Iggy O'Donovan was among the inaugural members, and at the time there was only one other body in all of Europe like it. The organisation exists to give priests a forum to discuss theological issues as well as an independent body to fight for the rights of priests and defend them in situations where their bishops have refused to offer them any support.

Complete with their own secular legal team, the ACP sound like something familiar - a union. And this, as Flannery explained, is exactly what the Congregation don't like - the key word being 'independent', a word that leaves a sour taste in the CDF's mouths. In the secular world, we are celebrating the 100th anniversary of the 1913 lockout, while in the Vatican they are trying to eradicate anything resembling unionisation. At the

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time of Flannery’s visit to Rome, the ACP had over 1000 members, and ten other organisations like it had sprung up.

Who, then, are the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith? In brief, they are the modern Inquisition. And though the name has changed since the 16th century, they don't seem to have updated their modus operandi. Wholly unconcerned with fairness, the CDF thrive on secrecy and on dealing with priests as indirectly as possible. They wielded incredible power during the papacy of John Paul II, and they still do.

I asked Flannery how he felt about Pope Francis's recent excommunication of Australian priest, Fr Greg Reynolds, and found myself very disturbed by the answer. The CDF commissioned the excommunication two months into Francis's papacy, "before he [Francis] could get his feet under the table". Francis may be at the helm, but the CDF can still execute these kinds of actions. In light of this, we must look at the case of Iggy O’Donovan while being acutely aware of the CDF's predilection for the clandestine.

So how exactly did this organisation find out about O’Donovan’s baptism? The answer lies with the complainant; Drogheda resident Charles Byrne. Charles Byrne has an interesting background.

In 2002, he served as the national organiser of anti-abortion lobbyist group Youth Defence. Through 2006 to 2008, he co-edited a Catholic right wing publication called The Hibernian. More recently, he found himself at a relative's baptism which was being performed

by Iggy O’Donovan.

For more insight, I contacted

“

“In the secular world, we are celebrating the 100th anniversary of the 1913 lockout, while in the Vatican they are trying to eradicate anything resembling unionisation.”

The Sunday Times journalist Justine McCarthy, who broke the story of Byrne’s involvement on the 29th September. She interviewed Byrne and he explained how the complaint came to be.

He filmed the baptism and, seeing the perceived error, contacted the Papal Nuncio Charles Brown. He also wrote three letters to Cardinal Sean Brady of the Armagh diocese but found his response "slow and unprofessional". He met with Charles Brown again at a conference after this and, ultimately persisting, sent the video directly to Rome. Byrne maintains that it was "nothing personal" to O’Donovan, and that he merely wanted to make sure the baptism was valid.

I had heard the term "papal espionage" before but had never taken it seriously. That is, until Tony Flannery told me that he knew personally of both laypeople and priests that are "waiting to report back" to relevant authorities. When I asked him specifically about O'Donovan's case, he said he didn't know, but that he "wouldn't be surprised" if this was what was happening.

I put the same question to Justine and she surmised that it was a case of "serendipity". It seems Charles Byrne didn't go to the baptism knowing what he would find, but he saw an opportunity to pull the rug out from beneath O’Donovan’s feet and he took it.

I had learned a lot by the time I finally spoke to Iggy himself. I was weary from the information I'd taken in about what is supposed to be a religious organisation. It almost seemed as if I knew more about the situation than he did. "I never saw any documentation", he told me, "and no one ever dealt with me directly, only through my superiors". He'd never known Charles Byrne before this. From his whole interview there is one thing he said that I think is more important than anything else - "You give your entire life to an institution, and they treat you like a chattel."

Iggy O’Donovan's mistake was that he used his aforementioned gift of the gab to call for change.

He'd always been outspoken, always imploring the Church to update its teachings so it could remain relevant in a modern and ever changing society, and the CDF didn't want to hear it. They plugged their ears and blocked out the undeniable truth - that people want priests like Iggy.

They want a discussion, not a lecture, to be engaged with, not talked at. My only question now is this; how long can the Church be impervious to change and still survive in today's world?

TRINITY NEWS

Tuesday 15th October 2013

Tommy Gavin profiles the Irish Feminist Network.

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The sound of silence Matthew Mulligan, Online Editor, investigates the media blackout surrounding the dismissal of Gemma O’Doherty.

A Matthew Mulligan Online Editor

Last April, Irish Independent investigative journalist, Gemma O’Doherty, reported the story that the Garda Commissioner, Martin Callinan, had had penalty points wiped out after incurring them. The Commissioner told the paper that a fixed penalty points notice had been wiped off after he had been caught breaking the speed limit by a traffic camera in 2007.

The then Deputy-Commissioner had been travelling in his own Renault car while on his way to a security meeting. Under legislation, all Gardaí are exempt from exceeding the speed limit if they are on duty, regardless of whether they are travelling in their personal or official vehicles.

The story came days after two whistle-blowers reported on the 189 complaints of quashing of penalty points after examining the Garda PULSE system. An inquiry subsequently set up by Callinan, however, found that no corruption had taken place but that some Gardaí were excessive in their use of power in wiping the points.

The ensuing furore over this story, and the recent revelations by the Garda whistle-blowers, have set the nation talking. Questions were raised in the Dáil and the Seanad and examples of politicians having their points quashed were used for point-scoring across the aisle. It brought into question the rules regarding ‘discretion’ that Gardaí have when deciding whether or not to issue penalty points. The media highlighted stories involving the Justice Minister and members of the United Left Alliance. O’Doherty’s story had helped set the stage for a national discussion.

However any spoils she could expect from breaking such a story were not met. Before her story was published, O’Doherty ventured to the home of the Garda Commissioner to double check that the person who had had their points quashed was in fact him. She knocked on the door and asked the Commissioner’s wife whether it was they who lived there. Mrs Callinan responded with a yes. For undertaking this action, O’Doherty was hauled in

by Independent News & Media senior staff who phoned her to ascertain why she had done such a thing as knocking on the door of the Commissioner’s house to check the facts. Editor of the paper, Stephen Rae, branded O’Doherty a “rogue reporter” and

“

“O’Doherty was told she was being made redundant because of a restructuring for the “digital era”. If she did not take voluntary redundancy, she would be made compulsory redundant.”

her article was not published for over a week. The story was eventually run by the Independent after TV3 heard about it. However, as The Phoenix reports, the article published was “sanitised by senior heads”.

Subsequently, O’Doherty’s position as travel editor of Saturday’s ‘Weekend’ magazine was taken away from her, and when she enquired about this airbrushing she was told that Rae had ordered it.

Some weeks later, O’Doherty was told she was being made redundant because of a restructuring for the “digital era”. If she did not take voluntary redundancy, she would be made compulsory redundant. Refusing the voluntary redundancy, O’Doherty was given notice of compulsory redundancy.

Gemma O’Doherty had been an investigative reporter at the Irish Independent for 16 years and was also senior features writer. Her reporting won both her and the paper numerous awards, and her investigating contributed greatly to the re-opening of the case surrounding the murder of Fr Niall Molloy. She was the only journalist to face redundancy over this restructuring, after having her title taken from her on the alleged orders of Stephen Rae. Rae had been editor of the Independent for around 8 months, having received the position the previous September. He had previously been the editor of Garda Review, which describes itself on its website as being the “official magazine of the Garda Representative Association (GRA)” and says that it publishes the “contemporary news and views of the Force”.

There has been a tangible silence in the Irish media about the whole affair. Neither RTÉ nor The Irish Times have reported on O’Doherty being forced out but members of the Seanad and the Dáil have. Senator John Gilroy has sought a debate on the freedom of the press, directly referring to the lack of media coverage regarding the case. Speaking to this paper, Senator Gilroy said that “whenever an investigative journalist is forced out, it is a matter of public concern”.

Other senators followed his lead, speaking in the chamber of freedom of the press and O’Doherty’s work in assisting the re-opening of the Fr Molloy case. Words followed too in the Dáil, where Deputy Clare Daly had much to say about the treatment of whistle-blowers after she

accused Alan Shatter of trying to down play one of the Garda whistle-blowers. She also made a startling judgement on why the media had been so slow to cover the story by asserting that Stephen Rae, editor at the Independent, had had his points wiped also. At the time of writing, Deputy Daly could not be reached for comment.

The London based Irish Post followed up on the story, with reporter Robert Mulhern coming across Rae’s phone number and confronting him over whether it was he who had had penalty points wiped. The incident concerned a Stephen Rae who accrued penalty points at 6.37am on 5th November 2009 at the N11 in Belfield, before the points were terminated. When Mulhern called Rae’s home number and asked whether he was the Stephen Rae whose points were terminated, Rae replied, “no comment”.

This story has also been picked up internationally, with Ray Greensdale reporting on both it and the forcing out of O’Doherty in the Guardian; asking “why is the Rae story, like the story of the firing of Gemma O'Doherty before it, being ignored by the Irish media?”

The Phoenix also reported on Mulhern’s questioning of Rae, and is the only Irish media outlet following the story.

The initial story surrounding O’Doherty’s report on the Commissioner has given way to a much larger debate on what is deemed to be in the public interest and the status of the freedom of the press in this country. We must ask ourselves why the stories reported on by The Phoenix, Irish Post and Guardian have not been touched by RTÉ, our state broadcaster, and the so-called “paper of record”, The Irish Times.

Transparency International has also reported on the forcing out of O’Doherty by calling for her “reinstatement, and for the introduction of editorial policies that protect the independence of investigative journalists”. The group has made warnings in the past about the potentially chilling effects of legal threats against Irish journalists during a meeting with the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders, who expressed concern about the threat of litigation towards Irish journalists in her report to the UN General Assembly.

Questions have been raised to Minister Shatter by Deputy Joe Higgins, quoting The Irish Post report on Rae and asking whether the minister whether he found it “out-

“

“We must ask ourselves why the stories reported on by The Phoenix, The Irish Post and Guardian have not been touched by RTÉ, our state broadcaster, and the so-called “paper of record”, The Irish Times.”

Saint anger In the wake of the announcement that John Paul II is to be made a saint, Deputy In-Depth Editor, Michael Lannigan, delves into whether or not he really was holier than thou.

O Michael Lannigan Deputy InDepth Editor

n Monday, September 30th, after eight years of speculation, impatient public cries of ‘Santo Subitio’ and criticism from both inside and outside the Catholic Church, Pope Francis officially declared April 27th as the date set for the canonisation of Karol Józef Wojtyła, better known as Pope John Paul II. In a move which will see both John Paul II and Pope John XXII honoured with sainthood, this blessing appears less focused on the individuals and rather a validation of Vatican II. The choice will be a further show of the Church’s stance on the sex scandals, by glorifying the late Wojtyła, whose pathetic investigating of the numerous abuse cases alienated large portions of the global Catholic following.

The canonisations are being conducted under compromised saintly regulations and against the backdrop of Wojtyła’s divisive papacy; the waning spirit that is rapidly overwhelming Catholicism clearly serving as a motive to forgo the basic saint-making process. The liturgical decline has been evident since the Second Vatican Council, 1962 to 1965; ironic considering the congress intended to disseminate Catholicism into wider reaches through use of the vernacular.

Though an attempt to stress the virtues of an apparently modernised Church, the reality of the decision is that it reflects a callous insensitivity in conduct. Whether a sinner is the appropriate term is subjective and of no concern personally, but to declare him a saint is indicative of where the Catholic moral monopoly directs itself.

Wojtyła may not be a criminal himself, but his actions as Pope reveal a myopic leader, blind to the clerical abuse cases posed against members within his Vatican entourage.

The first is Cardinal Bernard Law, Archbishop of Boston. Law resigned from his position in 2002 after accusations surfaced regarding his collusion with sex-

ual predators responsible for the molestation of over 500 victims, a startlingly large portion of the States’ 16,400 cases, amounting to $100m dollars in civil settlements. Law’s involvement in the scandal included reassigning perpetrators to new safe havens, before ducking a summons to account for these incidents and escaping US jurisdiction.

Wojtyła proceeded to reward Law a sinecure in the Vatican as Archpriest after his swift flight.

Now retired, Law resides in the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore, one of the Vatican’s four patriarchal basilicas, bestowed upon him in the aftermath of his resignation from the Archdiocese.

Second is Rembert Weakland, Archbishop of Milwaukee from 1977 until 2002, whose alleged sexual assault of former lover Paul Marcoux led to a $450,000 pay-off from archdiocesan funds.

This is only the tip of a festering iceberg. After mocking early victims of abuse for “squealing”, Weakland reinstated the violators in new parishes, unbeknownst to locals or police. Later in life, he defended his inability to recognise the illegality of underage rape.

The most egregious case was Wojtyła’s bond with the disgraced priest, Marcial Maciel Degollado, father of several children and founder of the Legion of Christ.

While the Legionaries’ ethos bases itself around a series of ‘Loves’, the Virgin Mary, souls, Christ, and the Papacy; Degollado took it upon himself to add extra loves, including two women, Blanca Gutierrez Lara and Norma Baños.

This barely scratches the surface of his debauched life. His children recently came forward alleging Degollado sexually abused them. In addition, several members of the Legion reported him having molested them, a series of accusations ignored by Wojtyła. One noted victim was Juan Vaca, abused at the age of 12, who later wrote that there were

another 20 victims at least, while the National Catholic Reporter has suggested this number may reach one hundred.

Degollado received much acclaim from the Vatican, obtaining access to the highest offices and accompanying the Pope upon a series of international trips for being “an efficacious guide to youth”. The lavish praise culminated in his public honouring in November 2004.

Very little criticism came from within the Vatican during Wojtyła’s lifetime, and it was only in 2004 that investigations commenced, under Joseph Ratzinger.

During this period, Degollado was exiled to a monastery, before he died in a luxurious Florida home in 2008.Wojtyła’s involvement in these scandals worsened in 2009, when La Journada reported that José Bonilla Sada, a legal representative for Marcial’s

child, Norma Hilda Baños, obtained significant evidence proving the Pope was fully aware of Norma’s existence. In Wojtyła ’s defence, the Vatican insists that the leader of the Church could not possibly have known the scale of these scandals, despite the fact that Vaca wrote to him twice.

Pleading ignorance is a frequent card played by the Church especially in relation to canonisation. Mother Theresa, one of John Paul II’s 486 canonisations, famously remained silent during the case of corrupt banker, Charles Keating, who had donated $1.25 million in illegally attained funds to her charities.

Wojtyła ’s number of canonisations exceeds that of every other Pope combined, of which there are 265. His saint factory, another act of proving the Church’s benevolence as a reaction against the rise of New Atheism, watered

down virtues so that simply being a cleric would merit sainthood.

This included General Franco’s close friend and Opus Dei founder, Jose Escriva de Balaguer, whose fanbase includes Bashar Al Assad, with whom he shares hatred of Jews. Another saintly example is the Croatian Cardinal Stephinac, a supporter of the fascist leader Ante Paveli .

The diluted canonisation will now forgo the mandatory two miracles in order to bless John Paul II and John XXII. The latter only achieved one miracle, while the former has one fulfilled and one misfire. Wojtyła’s miracles consist of a Costa Rican woman who survived an aneurysm after praying to his holiness and Sister Maria Simon-Pierre, whose Parkinson’s symptoms disappeared after a night of prayer during Wojtyła’s beatification. However, the gift was short lived as in 2011,

rageous and doesn’t it smack…of a grotesque abuse of power?” Shatter responded by saying he would not comment on the circumstances surrounding the termination of employment of anyone in Independent News & Media, as he was not aware of them.

Various questions are raised from this whole debacle, chief among them being why does the Irish media continue to ignore both the forcing-out of O’Doherty, an award-winning investigative journalist, and the allegations by The Irish Post that Stephen Rae receiving penalty points which were then wiped?

It’s being discussed in the Oireachtas and yet not a sound is heard about it outside of the international media and The Phoenix. There are questions to be asked about the media landscape of this country when it comes to power.

When the media found out that Minister Shatter had been told of Deputy Mick Wallace’s wiping of penalty points they jumped on it, and to their credit highlighted the importance of the fact that Shatter found out via the Commissioner. When issues arise like that, even if innocent, they must be questioned. Anything less is a disappointment. Gemma O’Doherty questioned, and for that she was forced-out.

it was reported that her symptoms had returned.

Despite these facts, the Church is remaining steadfast. With the Office of Devil’s Advocate no longer in existence, a position whereby a canon lawyer appointed by the Church would argue a sceptic’s position against the canonisation of a candidate, there are few clerics to challenge the decision. So it seemed appropriate to get individual opinions within the spiritual sphere. I asked several moderate Catholics and Westboro Baptist Church ‘media’ man Steve Drain, to offer their opinions.

First, I spoke with a Tridentine Rite sister, who requested anonymity. I was met with fierce anger. “He’s not a saint,” she declared, “he’s messed up the Church”. Thereafter I met with an unnamed Ossory Diocese chaplain, who celebrated Wojtyła’s piety and his “will to fulfil his mandate in spite of debilitating illness”. Further criticism came regarding Degollado and Law, but a positive reform of the Papal curia appeared on the forefront of the collective mind.

An interview with three sisters in Saint Alphonsus’ monastery spawned vague, uncritical, almost oblivious responses. They praised a Belgian excursion of Wojtyła’s, during which he listened attentively to a critical student, before answering her with an embrace.

Undoubtedly, Drain was a guaranteed critic. “He’s in Hell” was the mantra, before linking me to a site entitled Priests Rape Boys.

“Canonization is man-made”, Drain added.“God chooses His saints… JP2 ain't one.” When asked whether declaring him eternally damned was not similar to Francis declaring Wojtyła’s heavenliness, the conversation ended abruptly and a point presented itself.

In November 1969, the Irish magazine, Nusight, conducted surveys amongst UCD students regarding piety, commissioned

by Archbishop McQuaid. One of the results revealed that theology students were either uncritical of their church, or poorly acquainted with their belief system. After exploring the matter through people who proclaim utter devotion to their deity, it appears Nusight’s finding is still relevant forty-four years afterward.

Tuesday 15th October2013

TRINITY NEWS

8

InDepth

Fall forward, Spring back Liam Hunt looks at why it might be too soon to call the Arab Spring a success.

L Liam Hunt Contributor

a Terreur, the period following the events of the French Revolution during which tens of thousands of people were executed, is often considered amongst the darkest in France's history. The period resonates down the ages with recent events across the Arab world, as some estimates put the death toll of the Arab Spring at over 150,000.

Yet despite the Reign of Terror, the French Revolution stands as the genesis of Western liberal democracy. Like its revolutionary predecessor, the Arab Spring is producing a revolution in hearts, minds and political thought and this wave of emancipation is certainly a welcome one. However, the Spring represents, at its most basic, an amalgamation of political movements which have achieved next to no stable political change. Violence, instability and autocracy weigh heavy on a landscape of sectarian violence, ethnic schisms and political stagnation.

Some commentators have taken to using the term “Arab Spring” as if the movement is somehow cohesive and homogeneous, and united in its goals. In reality, we are dealing with a myriad of different revolutions, each with its own origin and objectives.

Discontent with the ineffectual rule of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt can hardly be equated to the struggle against familial autocracy in Bahrain, or indeed the deep ethnic divisions present in Syria.

The terminology is therefore deeply flawed, suggesting unity where none exists. Judging the success or failure of all these movements as a collective also poses a problem. The fractured nature of the movement, both nationally and internationally, provides us with the first reason for the failure of the Arab Spring until now. Namely, any given subset within the movement has a significantly reduced ability to fight to achieve their own particular goals because it stands alone.

Those battling regimes across the Spring spectrum do not have the same collective devotion to an easily identified “something to defend”, as do those trying to maintain the status quo. Take for example the air corp believed to have dropped the chemical weapon Sarin near Damascus on 21st August and a “napalm-like substance” on a school near Urum al

Kubra. The corp is deeply loyal to the Assad family. In the face of such devoted and single-minded brutality there may be little hope for rebel fighters, or indeed ordinary protesters.

If the Arab Spring is to be judged by the tangible and positive political change it has brought about, then our conclusion must be decidedly negative.

Not a single country which has experienced protest and unrest is on a definite path to stable, representative democracy. This is despite the two-and-a-half years of struggles since the self-immolation of Muhammad Bouazizi in December 2010, which acted as a catalyst for the Tunisian Revolution.

In Tunisia, a new constitution has yet to be issued, despite government promises of ratification by the summer of this year at the latest. The draft that was presented in the spring contained several glaring omissions, namely restrictions outlined in the articles pertaining to freedom of

“

“Even in states where there has been little violence and some political change, the narratives of progress are often false ones.

The rulers of Algeria and Jordan have been under little pressure to effect any real change.”

expression, assembly, association and movement. There was also a lack of any constitutional backing for the outlawing of discrimination based on race, ethnicity, gender or sexuality. Moreover, it controversially enshrined sharia law as a key component of the country’s legal framework. This was all despite serious political violence in the country. Tunisia has experienced two high-profile political assassinations in the last six months, with national newspaper headlines heralding a “descent into flames” and a “new wave of terror.” Chronic political discord plagues the National Constituent Assembly and polarisation between Islamists and Secularists is only deepening.

Bahrain, Iraq and Yemen have fared even worse. All have experienced political and sectarian violence, yet there has been no sign of the issuing of a new constitution in any of these three states.

The failure of the ruling family of Bahrain to crush pro-democracy protests has led to a bitter struggle between the Shiite majority and the Sunni minority, leading to scores of deaths. The use of tear gas, barbed wire fencing to trap protestors and general police brutality have become commonplace. The result of burgeoning popular support for pro-democratic protest has simply resulted in increased tyranny and vicious government repression. Even in states where there has been little violence and some political change, the narratives of progress are often false ones. The rulers of Algeria and Jordan have been under little pressure to effect any real change. In the former, memories of a recent civil war means there is little appetite for violence. The Jordanians, swamped by some 440,000 Syrian refugees at recent estimates, have little ability to protest. There is a desire for change in these nations, born out of public discontent, but there is little ability to turn that discontent into action. In countries like Bahrain, Syria and Egypt, the difficulty comes from an inability to turn the action into tangible change.

Some might point to Egypt as a final chance to produce a nugget of political success. Following elections in November 2011, the long oppressed Muslim Brotherhood came to power and cemented the gains it had made “for Islam” in a constitutional

charter. Egypt’s secular courts, a remnant of Mubarak’s regime, attempted to challenge what they considered to be the beginning of a strict Islamic agenda, but a decree issue by Mohammed Morsi promptly conferred legal immunity of his own rulings.

The subsequent military coup in Egypt has only made matters worse. With the Muslim Brotherhood now ousted, the army, the most powerful, popular and secular institution in Egypt looms over the people. This is all after an initial election that many considered to be a transparent ballot.

A plethora of theses have been presented as to the reason for such universal failure. Some argue that democracy, in the liberal form that we understand it, simply cannot be achieved when political Islam is present. However, such a view ignores the fact that many Arabs are deeply unsettled

by Islamism and, moreover, it ignores examples of political Islam functioning in somewhat democratic systems, like the recent Malaysian elections.

It is certainly more accurate to observe that the negative role played by Islam in the Arab Spring has been because of its misappropriation by radicals fighting along the 1,400 year old divide-cum-battle-line of the Sunni / Shia split. Indeed, sectarian violence has been a common trope of the Arab Spring. Assad’s regime has worked hard to turn the conflict into a religious one, drawing in Shia-ruled Iran.

The regime has created a selffulfilling sectarian prophecy. By systematically slaughtering and oppressing thousands of Sunni Muslims, Assad has radicalised them. He now condemns the radicals and is strengthening his own position amongst his followers as he purports to stand as the defender of Syria’s urban middle-class against radical jihadist groups What the Arab Spring has exposed then, is a deep-running religious divide throughout the countries now seeking more democratic forms of government.

Moreover, and more terrifyingly, it has thrown the ability of autocrats to fire the coals of sectarian conflict into startling relief. In many countries, this has shifted the focus away from political change and on to civil war.

These sectarian spheres of the conflict are unquestionably not a

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“Despite these failures, it would be wrong to say that the Arab Spring has managed to achieve nothing. The real revolution is one taking place in the minds of people across the Arab world. It is a quieter one, but one which is longer lasting.”

failure of the Arab Spring itself.

Rather, they are a set of unfortunate circumstances which the likes of Basher Al-Assad twists to his own ends, and which other autocrats will be all too eager to turn to. Sectarianism has stunted much of the progress that the Arab Spring revolutions might have made.Despite these failures, it would be wrong to say that the Arab Spring has managed to achieve nothing. The real revolution is one taking place in the minds of people across the Arab world. It is a quieter one, but one which is longer lasting.

Elections in Egypt for example, provided many Egyptian citizens the chance to feel the benefits of political enfranchisement as never before, irrespective of the outcome of the election.

The potential for the future is therefore great. The Arab spring is clearly not yet over as recent events in Syria have shown.

Moreover, discourse is being created both within and outside the Arab world. Debate and discussion on issues such as Islamism, women’s rights and corruption which did not exist before are now widespread.

These are all positives of a political movement which has forced the globe to pay attention. However, the gains that might be made as a result of this discourse are only potential positives, actualising these benefits often proves impossibly difficult.

With this in mind, we can be tentatively optimistic, but nothing more. In its current form, the Arab Spring is a negative on the political score sheet, though the paradigm shift which is occurring throughout the Arab world is one which deserves optimism. However it would be too simplistic to brand the Arab Spring a failure, even if only out of respect for the massive cost to human life and the widespread suffering it has caused. To do so would be to cede to the autocrats the ability to violently repress their people.

The political journey that the Arab world is embarking on is clearly not an easy one, though that does not mean it is unwelcome. It may yet prove to be the single most important political event of modern times and provide a successor to the uprising in 1789. In the words of one commentator: “an area that was a byword for political stagnation is witnessing a rapid transformation that has caught the attention of the world.”

TRINITY NEWS

Tuesday 15th October 2013

9

InDepth

The women are coming: A profile of the Irish Feminist Network Tommy Gavin investigates an organisation at the forefront of feminist activism. Their impressively flexible organisational model provides a lesson for other groups.

I Tommy Gavin Deputy Editor

In an Ireland characterised by at least supposed youth apathy, feminism remains one of the few things that can mobilise or polarise people. There has been a surge of feminist activism from groups in recent years, especially in the wake of the tragic death of Savita Halappanavar and issues surrounding women’s reproductive health and rights.

A recent opinion article on The University Times Online titled “Ultra-Feminism is eroding our values” asks whether ‘ultra-feminism’ has given women a mandate to act in a way that is legally and morally unacceptable. Despite the fact that the spectre of ultrafeminism is never defined or that the writer thinks that “the choice [for women] to smash the glass ceiling in their chosen field or stay at home to raise children” are mutually exclusive options; that they think that there is an ‘ultrafeminist’ faction of society is initself telling. Even if she thinks they are “hardcore bra-burning ultra-fems.”

One group to emerge from College’s so-called feminist section is the Irish Feminist Network (IFN). It may sound vaguely subversive or paramilitary; conjuring images of radical underground meetings in dingy water-stained abandoned tenements, or smuggling counterfeit identity documents whilst evading Interpol. In reality, “the aim is to be as above ground as possible,” IFN co-ordinator Colette Fahy tells me. It was founded in 2010 by students doing a masters degree in gender studies in College, by women who felt that perhaps more established feminist organisations didn’t cater to younger women, or that for whatever reason, young women weren’t getting involved in them. “Nowadays, that’s not so much the case, for example the National Women’s Council of Ireland (NWCI) have The Y Factor which kind of does what we’re trying to do. There would have been a perception before that it wasn’t as accessible though.” Accessibility is the operative word here, and the IFN doesn’t actually have any kind of formal membership or volunteer structure. Instead six co-ordinators including Colette

focus on organising around campaigns and advocacy, research and publications, and outreach events. That means organising events and marches, publishing research documents, and having an active facebook page, twitter account, website & blog.

One of the most recent events was the screening of ‘Breaking Ground’; a film about the London Irish Women’s Centre. It was an alternative cultural and political space set up in 1983 by and for Irish women in London, which gave legal and welfare advice to women, organised protests around issues like the X case and the North, and provided services like childcare. This was during a time of anti-Irish racism within the UK, and when there was otherwise less space for women in the mainstream Irish community in London. Colette organised the screening after the director, Michelle Deignan, contacted the IFN with the suggestion of putting it on. Colette explained, “she sent me a dvd of the film, I watched it, and thought it was amazing. So I went to the other co-ordinators who were like, yeah, go ahead. We had done a couple of film screenings in the Sugar Club before; we showed Miss Representation in February and March. That’s a documentary about misrepresentation of women in the media, it’s on Irish Netflix actually. Anyway, for the London Irish Women’s Centre documentary, I just thought it was such an overlooked part of history that there was huge activity of women among the Irish diaspora in London, and what they were able to achieve. They saw that there were these needs: women going over there needed advice on housing, contraception and stuff, and they just organised together themselves to address this stuff. I think that’s very inspiring and a direct example of empowerment, of what can be done when people organise together.”

The IFN also organised its first conference last year, to document the current resurgence in feminist activism in Ireland, titled “Feminist Activism in Ireland: Past, Present and Future,” which sold out 140 tickets. The panels

“

“It may sound vaguely subversive or paramilitary; conjuring images of radical underground meetings in dinghy water-stained abandoned tenements, or smuggling counterfeit identity documents whilst evading Interpol.”

were broadly organised in terms of successive feminist ‘waves’ in Ireland, and sought to be maximally inclusive by trying to have a crèche running during the conference and incorporated a sponsorship scheme to allow people who couldn’t afford a ticket to attend, due to the generosity of anonymous sponsors. They also ran training workshops in Pr, political lobbying and direct action for activists in April, which was sponsored by the Women’s Fund.

Any money made from events goes back into the Network for covering future events that may not break even. They’re currently organising a ‘Ladyfest’ for November 8th in the Mercantile that will see Irish bands with women members perform.

In addition to running events and meetings, the IFN is involved in supporting campaigns that may be organised by other groups. One such campaign, Turn Off The Red Light is about criminalising the purchase of sex but decriminalising the selling of sex, in order to combat sex trafficking and the harms of prostitution without criminalising the prostitutes themselves. Indeed that is one of the most pertinent issues for feminist activists because it is one that not everyone agrees on; some disagree that the so called Nordic model works the way it was supposed to and argue for decriminalisation and regulation, but that can make it harder to curb trafficking. The point in this instance though, is that the IFN has a position which it advocates.

Then they also have the ‘Equality Budgeting’ campaign; which seeks to put an extra stage in the budgetary process to do an equality audit of the Irish budget under the grounds of discrimination under Irish law. Colette explained that “the idea is that when the budget comes out, you can look at it and say ‘oh single parents are actually being targeted; being hit hardest,’ so it gives the public an opportunity for a bit more engagement.”

The most interesting thing about the IFN though is its flexible and fluid approach to organisation. It almost would seem to defy belief that an organisation

that functions like an NGO with no money, can be run in the spare time of six volunteers who don’t solicit membership or recruits.

Colette elaborated to me that it is very informal, but a lot of it is done online. “I know it sounds like a really nineties thing to say, it’s all thanks to the information superhighway! But the internet really is great for organising because we’re all doing different things and we’re doing it in our spare time. We do meet up as well, but we just go to the pub every few weeks and sort out whatever we’re doing. We get a lot of help from supporters as well. People write in with great ideas and are willing to help out.”

The work of each co-ordinator is quite autonomous and independent, they support each other when they can and need to, but generally they individually undertake projects themselves on behalf of the IFN, after it has been suggested to, and green lit by, the group. Colette organised the screening of Breaking Ground for example, and generally it is she who liaises with the Turn Off The Red Light Campaign. The other co-ordinators are Clara Fischer who lectures in Trinity and is concerned with policy development, Emer Delaney who founded the Edgeways Project supported by the TCD Equality fund to develop workshops for students on body image & consent, Claire O’Carroll who is interested in gender education and post primary level teaching resources, Jessica Connor who has been involved in activism and manages the website (she organised the screening of Miss Representation), and Amanda who is a Queer Nigerian woman studying Community Development and is interested in intersectionality.

“The individual workload depends if something is coming up. You’d definitely do a couple of things every month. But we divide up the admin work, and if there’s an email or message you’re not sure how to respond to, we discuss it on the facebook group” Colette told me. “Since it’s a fairly loose structure, it means we can adapt as things happen.

We try to keep the facebook re-

ally active so that if you want to know what news stories about feminism are happening, or what events are going on even if they’re not ours. We have a blog that we accept submissions for as well. It’s just a nice way of getting people’s views or expertise. They don’t have to sign up and be like ‘I’m part of the feminist network and I agree with everything they say.’

They can go on the facebook and see something they’re interested in and go along to that. We have a take action section of the website that lets people know how they can get involved. And we do get a lot of help from supporters. People write in with really good ideas and are willing to help out, like if we’d be trying to find a venue.

But you kind of learn as you go, and you get to meet interesting people that are involved; whether they’re activists or involved in academic research, and you learn so much from them and the other co-ordinators.”

I should mention for the sake of disclosure that I’ve known and been friends with Colette for a long time. So I can say that she’s not and hasn’t ever been some kind of hysterical militant manhating opportunist. If anything, she genuinely believes that the problems addressed by feminism hurt men as well as women in very real and tangible ways. In her words, “the fact is, men do suffer from gender inequality, but I think that all of that is addressed by feminism. Just because it’s called feminism doesn’t mean it’s exclusionary. Lack of paternity leave, and the fact that the family court can be problematic, those problems are to do with women being seen as care-givers. That works against women as well because they’re expected to look after children. So obviously it would be better for both sexes if that was just childcare, and caring roles were more open. But, the obvious thing for men is that they probably know some women, and they probably would want the world to be better for them and have good opportunities. That should be a good enough reason.”

Tuesday 15th October2013

TRINITY NEWS

10

InDepth

The student doth protest too little Any real change must come from the students. InDepth Editor, D. Joyce-Ahearne, looks at how that can be done.

W

D. Joyce Ahearne InDepth Editor

hat is the role of the student? How are we perceived? What do we expect of ourselves? We’re drunk and loud on Harcourt Street at three in the morning. We’re discussing Montaigne in Walter Mitty’s over coffee. We’re volunteering with VDP. We’re protesting over the latest unfair aspect of the National Shafting. We are portrayed a certain way and we act a certain way. Why? The “student” experience is defined by two factors, factors that separate it from childhood, adulthood and the life of the young worker – these are time and money. For most, the state of being “in college” is a surreal world wherein we are independent and yet not wholly accountable, free and yet sheltered, ignorant and yet knowledgeable enough to know we can change that. Some resent the student’s experience because for many, even in times of hardship, we have more free time and money than most. Whether that free time and money is warranted or not is not the subject of this piece. How we use that time and money, however, is.

Every student’s experience falls between, or more accurately swings between, two poles.

The first sees time and money spent on dissipation, what F. Scott Fitzgerald called “the making of nothing out of something”.

This is the experience that sees us drinking until 4am, then getting cheese and garlic chips and skipping college the next day to sleep off a hangover until six in the evening; by which time we feel suitably recovered to do it again. Time is spent sleeping, and money is spent drinking. I do that a lot, probably more than I should. At the time of writing this I have six cans of Harp waiting in the fridge and I intend on getting spectacularly drunk tonight.

The only reason I can think of for doing it is that “I haven’t been drunk in a while.” I’m going to spend more money tonight than I should and tomorrow is going to be half a write-off, though I know I need it to be a productive day because I’ve done fuck all college work this week. If I had to give some justification I would say that we do it because we’re young and we know that, if nothing else, pleasure is good. It’s unchecked hedonism. So that’s one side of it.

The other side of student life is beautiful, idealistic and, most importantly, redeeming to all but the most jaded of cynics. The student, when sober, reckons he or she can change the world or at least knows that he or she can do a lot of good. We have time and money to spend on thinking. We

have the means and enthusiasm to carry torches and banners, to promote causes and protests.

We have a duty, due to our peculiar situation, to be the ones who stand up for what we think is right. Now is the time for direct action, for protests, for occupations. And yet we, the demographic most able to fight back against injustice, have spent the last five years taking a gross and unjust financial pounding.

Fees are being hiked and grants are being cut. Graduate unemployment is 30% because the government, instead of investing in jobs for young workers, is trying to force us into a slavery of internship through the JobBridge scheme, the modern day famine road. Where are the students?

Where is the sense of justice and action?

On 1st October, the Union of Students in Ireland organised a protest against further cutbacks in education in this year’s budget, specifically drawing attention to effects that further cuts to the maintenance grant would have.

It would put a lot of people out of college. The USI protest consisted of about 350 people, from eight third-level institutes. The USI represents every student in the country, and just under half of those students are in receipt of some sort of state support.

The “protest” took the shape of a stage at the end of Molesworth

Street, facing the opposite direction to the Dáil. Even, if only for the novelty of it, the Minister for Education, Ruairí Quinn, had decided to look out at the dregs of a student movement, which he himself had once been a radical part of, he wouldn’t have been able to see us. The USI have copyrighted the student’s movement and reinvented it as a powerless lobby group. They have turned away from action and towards suits, TDs’ offices and Buswell’s.

They don’t want to rock the boat because they want to get into the boat. The USI, as it was for Gilmore, Rabbitte and Keaveney, is a careerist stepping stone.

Instead of channelling the discontent that exists among students into a movement that everyone can be a part of, the USI has dismantled the clout we had in 2010 when 30,000 marched in Dublin.

The parish pump, boy-band galling-ness of everyone who graced the USI stage that day was everything that is wrong with the student’s movement. They have blurred the lines between what it is to be a student and what it is to be a cynical-before-their-time careerist, by using the USI for personal advancement. Though personal attacks are not usually helpful in pointing out flaws in an organisation, by making that organisation a vehicle for personal ends, people open them-

selves to individual scrutiny. The “protest” had a faux-carnival atmosphere brought to us by the DIT Samba Soc, who we must have thanked at least 15 times. It was astoundingly disorganised, both in the build up and on the day. It seemed to be designed to fail, and to cause as little fuss as possible so as not to piss off the grown-ups. “Oggy oggy oggy” has no place at a protest where people are fighting to stay in college. The only bit of life the crowd saw was when Tom Lenihan said “fuck”. That was how toothless and tame students have become.

“Fuck” shocks them. I can’t imagine Ruairí Quinn, or anyone else for that matter, who would take anyone seriously who is shocked by the word fuck. I personally will be looking for my fucking USI contribution back.

USI’s latest non-action has been to try to register all student voters online, so as to wield some sort of influence at election time.

The student’s clout has never been our ballot. It is our idealism and our willingness to act. And in spending all our time and money in Coppers we’ve made ourselves harmless, and that’s why we find ourselves getting screwed. We’ve surrendered our sense of justice and decided to lie down and take whatever gets thrown at us, getting drunk now and then to make it easier. This week, the idle rich of Leinster House will once again

“

“This week, the idle rich of Leinster House will once again assault the people with a budget that sees us pay while they continue to feather their own nests at €92,800 a year. Until the next budget, there will not be another period of tangible and shared sense of injustice among the people.”

assault the people with a budget that sees us pay while they continue to feather their own nests at 92,800 a year. Until the next budget, there will not be another period of tangible and shared sense of injustice among the people. This is the week for students to take direct action.

USI fear direct action because they fear a public backlash, from the gombeens they crave to be.

But they underestimate that we are not the only people who’ve had enough. Yes, both the defining factors of student-hood, the hedonism and idealism, wither with age but they do not disappear. The only reason that adults might be less enthusiastic about life, both the enjoyment of it and the improvement of its quality for oneself and for others, is responsibility. If you have a child at home you can’t necessarily be in Coppers every other night nor can you skip work to protest if you need to feed a family. So, for some, the direct action must take a back seat, but the ideals don’t.

It’s the student’s duty to protest.

We are not expected to care more than other people, but we are expected to act more than others, simply because we can. And those who can’t act must support us and forget the pathetic non-excuses of “I don’t have time to care”, or worse “I can’t afford to care.”

Negative solidarity, the idea that everyone should get screwed because I’m getting screwed, has to be thrown out. People need to acknowledge the common ground that exists between us all, except for the political class that puts itself first. Students are angry and they need a medium to show it.

We need to offer an ultimatum: listen to us or we will take to the streets. Enough is enough. We will fuck up the politician’s easy ride and we will work to re-ignite the sense of injustice in every other sector.

The government didn’t see us at the USI demonstration cornered off on Molesworth Street.

They do not hear us giving out over coffee and they do not hear us drunk on Harcourt Street. Until people can see the students informed and on the street, our situation won’t improve.

The reason students have become disillusioned is because there’s nothing tangible for them to participate in. People go to Coppers because it’s there.

People will protest if there’s a protest there. The thing is, nobody is going to create a protest for you.

It’s something we have to make ourselves. Next time you pass a protest join in.

TRINITY NEWS

Tuesday 15th October 2013

11

Conor McGlynn documents the decline of Labour, a result of broken promises a forgotten mandate.

InDepth

p15

Editorial T Elaine McCahill Editor

his issue of Trinity News marks the 60th anniversary since the first edition. Since then, Ireland’s oldest student newspaper has taken on many different forms; it has been transformed from a four page weekly gazette to a twentyfour page broadsheet newspaper with a glossy cultural supplement in the form of tn2. We’ve had years of quiet and years of victory; cover stories have varied from ‘Trinity isn’t Irish enough’ in 1960 to uncovering fraud in the Hist in 2012. Those familiar with the inner workings of Trinity News and Trinity Publications will be aware of the almost constant effort and stress that is accruing enough advertising revenue that enables us to go to print. This was as much an issue in the 60s as it is today. However, while some advertisements have remained similar, many are radically different. Presently, College publications are not allowed to advertise alcoholic beverages, however, this was not an issue for the editorial board in 1958, with Guinness being one of the paper's main advertisers. Graduate recruitment adverts remain a major part of advertising revenue, with British Petroleum advertising for recent graduates throughout the 50s and 60s. Despite all the stylistic and management changes throughout the years, it is the ethos of Trinity News that has brought it forth to its current manifestation. It is the strong belief in fearless reporting, of wanting to communicate the truth but also be fair. It is the desire to comment on the mainstream and everything but; to challenge College administration and be anything but its mouthpiece; to deliver news alongside science, features and college sports. It is this drive to communicate something other than what everyone else thinks is worthy.

This is what I believe makes Trinity News unique and what has allowed it to live on and grow over the past 60 years. It is incredible

“

“I can’t imag-

ine what path Trinity News will take over the next five, let alone ten years, but that is the beauty of something with a history, as much as it changes, a part of it will always stay the same.”

how much the paper has changed over the past 10 years and I can’t imagine what path it will take over the next decade. But one of the beautiful aspects of something with such a rich history; as much as it changes, a part of it will always stay the same.

Taking heed of this point, today we will, as a nation, be experiencing something that seemingly never changes: austerity. We will once again be pummeled with cuts, while our health service continues to fail those most in need, those in the middle become squeezed tighter and some of the most needy students being hit with further cuts to their maintenance grants. Joe O'Connor,

President of the Union of students in Ireland stated to Trinity News that "if the maintenance grant is cut any further, some 78,000 students who are dependent on it to attend college will be forced to leave third level education." A frightening thought, and one can only hope that it does not hold true. It is hard to think that it will be years before substantial funds will be put poured back into education again and who knows what state our universities will be in by then. Some universities are taking it upon themselves to address these losses; College has employed a new media and communications team who plan to re-brand Trinity over the coming year. It is not yet apparent which direction they office is planning on taking, but one can imagine that enticing international students will be at the top of their agenda. While third level students in Ireland pay more than ever, our registration fees do not fund the college coffers directly.

As former Senior Dean, Cyril J. Smyth outlines in an interview with Trinity News, Ducac have received the same funding for the last nine years. This demonstrates a key issue here, whilst we have been paying over the odds, none of that extra money is contributing to better student services or more teaching hours. It’s frustrating that the primary concern for students today is money. Students have always been broke, that is not a new phenomenon, but it is on a different scale in the past few years. We should be focusing on attaining better services, a lower lecturer to pupil ratio or Christmas exams, but all of these issues are, regrettably, tied up in money.

While those at the top are suffocating us with our purse strings, not much can be done to change the issues on the ground. We are all just trying to make the best of of this bad situation, but that does not necessarily translate into the best college experience possible.

S Tommy Gavin Deputy Editor

upposedly, the arts block was originally planned to incorporate a hanging garden effect with levelled gardens growing down and around the exposed concrete.

That is, so the story goes, were it not for the fact that the wrong kind of cement was used. Since the kind used has a higher acidity than the kind planned, any attempt in realising the “hanging gardens of Trinity” would instead quickly end with a morbid “dying gardens of Trinity” and a return to the brutalist exposed concrete motif we have come to know. Assuming its true, and it doesn’t really matter if it’s not, it means that when we look at the arts block, we can imagine a possible failed future; the skeleton of a dream. If anything, the arts block is more beautiful for it. It allows us to contemplate a past future, no longer tenable, forcing us to reconcile with the present.

The so called students movement, or lack thereof is not so different. With a Students Union focused on provision of admittedly stellar services, the institutional memory of agitation and organisation is atrophying, and it is becoming increasingly clear that any genuine political developments for Irish youth will have to come from outside existing union apparatuses. The past future of a collective youth politics has to be recognised as the skeleton that it is, so that we can at least reconcile the situation we are in now, and it is hardly as if there is nothing to be organised about. On a slightly banal note, it is looking as if the smoking ban on campus will be railroaded through, to much congratulatory back-slapping. Of course it is hard to argue with the case against smoking on health terms, but let’s think for a moment about what we are losing.

Yes, it may one day kill me, but I have heard no suggested replacement for the accepted opportunity to give and share skins, filters, tobacco and lighters. It’s not

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“With a Students Union focused on provision of admittedly stellar services, the institutional memory of agitation and organisation is atrophying.”

just an issue of health, there is an undeniable social dimension to it which we would not be replacing.

It is an uncomfortable position defending smoking because it is obviously harmful and addictive.

But the reasoning by those who would do the restricting is similar to that of the recently defeated plans for Seanad abolition. The fact is, we probably don’t need the Seanad, but this government’s proposal that it in any way constituted reform, and their refusal to even debate the issue was genuinely offensive múinteoir politics at its worst. There is nothing radical or even controversial to say that what is clearly needed is Dáil reform on the most basic level.

The problem of Irish politics isn’t too many windbag senators put out to pasture, its gombeen man parish pump politics. The question is what Irish youth are going to do about it, but the answer cannot be nothing. Sooner or later, the sleeping giant of Irish youth is going to wake up, and when it does, it will be forced to imagine a new future.

TRINITY NEWS

Tuesday 15th October 2013

Comment

John Kennedy on hipsters: sapping the energy from revolt. p.14

Face-off #1: Smoking ban

Alice Kinsella and Rachel Graham duke it out over whether College should follow UCD’s lead and ban smoking on-campus.

Alice: You’re rushing to a lecture and the doorway is, as usual, shrouded with smokers, you’re inhaling their dirt and they’re making you late. What’s the solution you ask? Ban them!

Why not? Let’s be rid of them!

Then everything will be hunky dory. Makes sense right? Alas, it does not. But this is what is being proposed with the smoking ban. Many think it will work; I however, am not one of those people. For smokers are people too, and once rejected from the skulking corners of the arts block doorways, they will be redirected to the rest of the world. In hoards the smokers will migrate, like refugees they will scuttle in their tweed coats and wayfarers to the nearest available open space, ready to once more take up their instinctive habit of jauntily inhaling 2 quick rollies in between lectures. So the smokers have a new place, out of our hair, right? Oh no, the arts block and front gate seem to have been transformed into a smoggy cloud of disgruntled students. A sea of bitterness big enough to swallow up the tourists in their matching back packs and bring Nassau street bus lane to a halt. Doesn’t this seem ludicrous? Surely the security would put this in order?

What’s that smokers? The college doesn’t have security that has nothing better to do than move you all along? Then why not just smoke back on campus?

Oh, that’s what you’re going to do anyway after a week of chaos and someone almost getting hit by a bus? Right… good plan!

Anti: Alice

Rachel: What’s that? There’s going to be some pragmatic difficulties in implementing a radical health-policy change on campus?

Ah sure let’s just stay as we are so, that sounds like a bit too much effort for your average rolliesmoking, hungover arts student cradling a large coffee on their way to their first (12pm) lecture.

The popular arguments against a campus smoking ban are little more than disgruntled cries of “but we like smoking!” shrouded in smug remarks about practical challenges. The often witty, ironic tone one sees these complaints made in on social network platforms just screams of the

jaded, too-cool-for-school, and ultimately kind of lazy attitude that seems to infest college life.

Yes, people on the pro-smoking ban side of the argument know that smokers are people too. But what you’re missing, smokers, is that non-smokers are also people too. And non-smokers might not want to breathe in your cancerous fumes as they go about their college day. Sounds fair enough, surely? The surprising fact of the matter is that even in the face of overwhelming evidence of the very serious, very real health-risks associated with second-hand smoke, it remains somewhat “uncool” to actually acknowledge them, or to care about whether or not you are subjected to them. That is a silly state of affairs. Frankly, we should care more about providing college students with a smoke-free environment to spend their working days in, and giving them to ability to choose whether or not to expose themselves to the dangers of second-hand smoke, than we should about allowing people to have a handy place to grab a quick smoke between lectures.

Alice: Smokers usually spend all their time trying to tempt you to the dark side right? Em no, in case you haven’t noticed smokers don’t follow non-smokers around puffing aggressively in their faces. Smokers are usually just standing outside, minding their own business.

You don’t want to breathe in smoke? Then don’t hang out with smokers. Believe it or not smokers don’t crowd the doorway, as being stomped on by people milling in and out of the building is no fun. Smokers sit by the grass, or on benches, away from the stampede of students running to class.

If the smoking ban is brought in you will still have to walk through the cloud of smoke at the entrances to campus. And yes, it will become clouds of smoke as every smoker in college is forced into two tiny doorways.

At least on Campus, our large, outdoor campus, people are free to disperse. People are not forced to walk into them. But if the smokers migrate outside they will become even more prominent, the campus will be almost inaccessible and you will most certainly be unable to get in and out without inhaling plumes of smoke straight from the mouths of others. And as we know, that’s bad for you!

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“Ah sure let’s just stay as we are so, that sounds like a bit too much effort for your average rollie-smoking, hungover arts student cradling a large coffee on their way to their first (12pm) lecture.”

Rachel: A smoking ban is about more than the practical issue of trying to ensure as little second hand smoke goes into each non-smokers lungs as possible in the short-term. A smoking ban is about making the statement that it is not OK for people to pollute the air of others’ work / study environments. It is about trying to achieve better air quality. It is about trying to change the attitude of complacency that surrounds health-issues and the tackling of them. It is about gradually changing our society from one in which smoking is seen as so much the norm that limiting people’s ability to do it when and wherever they like to the detriment of others sparks outrage, to one in which it is seen as for what it is: incredibly physically damaging, highly addictive, and a great cost to the personal lives of smokers, to their families, and to the healthcare system. Smoking remains the biggest cause of preventable death in Ireland, as well as being something a huge percentage of people regret taking up. While I have absolutely no problem with people who smoke, or smoking in and of itself, it’s clearly not something we want to encourage in our society. Campus smoking bans obviously won’t be perfect – but they are the next step in challenging the flippant attitude towards s m o king in Ireland t h a t is the main re a s o n so many young people fall into a habit from which they will suffer avoidable health-problems and ultimately regret.

Pro: Rachel

Alice: So it’s for the greater good, the smoking ban, it may force people to behave as they don’t want to, but in the end it’s for their own good. The ban is against pollution? You know what also pollutes the air? Cars. Are we going to ban them next? Yes people like not having to walk everywhere but really do we have the right to pollute the air of the city in which other people work and live? Who cares about how our actions affect people right now, this is the future we’re talking about, peo-

ple right now may have to suffer and be forced into not acting as they’d chose themselves, but the future! It’s time to remember that these are grown adult citizens we’re talking about. They have the right to choose how they treat their own bodies. It is not the responsibility of the college to take charge of every aspect of the lives of its students. We can’t ban everything that’s bad for us. Even if we do think it’s what’s best for everyone. People can take charge of their own lives and how they prioritise what’s good or bad for them. We just have to let them.

Rachel: Yep, it’s for the greater good. Just like most decisions made in democracies, the goal is utilitarian, and not to maximize individual liberty; if the TCD smokers are raging anarchists I don’t think I can do much to challenge their views within the scope of this debate. At the end of the day, you have to look at what it is that motivates people to smoke. That, too, is just a result of the societal conditions that they’re brought up in. When you’re fourteen, standing in the back lane behind your school, being offered your first cigarette – you probably don’t take it because you have a burning desire to inhale a thousand toxic chemicals into your innocent lungs. You take it because the culture you’re surrounded by tells you it’s cool, you take it because everyone else in the lane is doing it, and you take it because if everyone does it, surely it couldn’t be as bad for you as they say, could it? By creating a society in which smoking is seen is less acceptable, that is less likely to happen – and acting now to create conditions in which that largely passive and normative passing-on of a dangerous habit happens less is a good thing. For those who really want to smoke – no one’s stopping you. You just can’t do it everywhere.

Alice: If it’s a decision that will have an effect on everyone then the greater good is a feasible option, but banning smoking on campus will only affect smokers.

The level of smoke from other smokers you actually come in contact with is no more than you get on the street. If banned on campus it will do nothing more than restricting the liberty of those adults who are old enough to make their own decisions.

If you want to ban people from smoking outside to stop it motivating young people you’re a bit

late. At 14 it is illegal to smoke but by the time you’re in college you’re an adult, and if you’re still so insecure about your own person that you smoke because it’s ‘cool’ then you should probably be taking a look at things.

You say no one is stopping you smoke, but the campus ban is the first step towards that. First it was indoors, now it’s outside, soon it will be all public spaces. This level of intervention in the private lives of others is overly controlling and condescending. Soon we’ll be banning everything that isn’t good for us. Wave goodbye to alcohol guys, and don’t get me started on saturated fats.

The information and help is available for those that want to quit, but short of employing someone to follow smokers around snapping their cigarettes there’s not really too much more to do. It’s time to back off and let people make their own decisions.

Rachel: Well, no, banning smoking on campus will affect everyone – the smokers just won’t like it. The fact that the level of second hand smoke you encounter in college is about the same level you encounter on the street, is not a reason not to go ahead with the ban – all that means is that people could potentially have to inhale that amount less of it; hurray! There is nothing “too late” about banning smoking in colleges – the effect it will have won’t be confined to the grounds of Trinity. Smoking is a societal habit and if you tackle it at any level there is a knock on effect down the line. And on the topic of people taking up smoking because they think it’s ‘cool’ - people do things largely because of example. There is absolutely no doubt that that is a huge motivator for smoking among adolescents and yes, even young adults.

That’s not a reason to decry those people for being insecure – it’s a reason to cut down on the ubiquity of the example that makes that happen. Advocating a campus smoking ban is not advocating that the state micro-manage our lives down to the level of telling us how many cream-buns we can eat; it is advocating a policy that supports cleaner, healthier study environments and tries to tackle the epidemic of smoking, which is the cause of ninety percent of lung cancer cases and kills 7000 people in Ireland every year. Come on, let’s stop moaning about our sacred right to our vices, and do something about it.

Obama cannot compromise on the rules of democracy Radical Republicans are engaged in dangerous brinksmanship on Capitol Hill. Will Johnston laments the latest impasse between the increasingly divided Republican and Democratic parties and considers the implications for the US economy, the balance of international relations and the credibility of democracy itself.

T Will Johnston Contributor

he state of affairs on Capitol Hill is not too dissimilar from a group of squabbling children at kindergarten. The only difference here is the teachers have left and there is no one to stop the war of words.

With the whole world watching, and directly affected by the outcome, when are personal political agenda’s going to be put to one side for the collective good?

On the 1st October, 2013, the House of Representatives (in which the Republicans hold a majority) and the Senate (in which the Democrats hold a Majority) failed to pass a routine Continuing Resolution to raise the US Federal debt ceiling because a faction of the Republican Party obsessed with the derailment of Barrack Obama’s Affordable Care Act blocked it. Obamacare has been passed by both the House of Representatives and the Senate, signed by the President and finally validated as constitutional by the Supreme Court. This law has passed through the democratic process and can only be amended or repealed by a fresh Bill.

The far right’s plan to attack Obamacare simply consists of shutting down the government with no clear Plan B. This belligerence is not backed up by a credible desire to engage with how the political system in Washington works and is holding the US Government hostage over what is a democratically passed Act. The absurdity of the situation is further illustrated by the fact that the day before the Governmentshutdown, a large amount of the healthcare reforms were rolled out regardless. The Tea Party’s destructive behaviour is plainly ridiculous and has been epitomised by Republican Congressman Marlin Stutzman’s worrying comment that “we have to get something out of this. And I don’t know what that even is.”

Whilst Obamacare has been controversial since its beginning with Tea Partiers, moderates and even Democrats alike there is no room for bargaining in the context of this shutdown: the rules of democracy are at stake. Obama could be more compromising on healthcare or taxes but as CNN’s Fareed Zakarie points out, we would hope that “If Democrats had threatened to shut down the government to force the repeal of the Bush tax cuts or defund the Iraq War, I would have hoped Bush would have also been uncompromising.” The point is, the Republican Party is resorting to un-democratic means as a last ditch attempt to stop the rollingout of a democratically passed law.

Looking back at the autumn shutdown of 1995 and winter shutdown of 1996 it is clear that they were both political disasters for the GOP. Orchestrated by the then Republican Speaker Newt Gingrich the present shutdown is not comparable. The Government is shutdown at the moment due to an extreme faction of the GOP not a mobilizing call from its supposed leader, John Boehner.

House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner said, in the week preceding the shutdown, that he would ensure that the debt ceiling would be raised but later crumpled before a revolt of 4080 members of the 535 person Congress. He is not leading the party but being led by a passionate, radical wing of it. One cannot help but be more concerned with the current situation in US politics than those of the previous shutdown’s during the nineties.

Congress is no longer comprised of grown-ups but of 535 political entrepreneurs, obsessed with reelection and with their own political agenda.

The vulnerability of Boehner

and the deadly self-interest demonstrated by a minority of farright Republicans is coupled on the other side with the cowering moderate wing of the Republican Party. Whilst Boehner is being strung along by the Tea Party, the supposed “grown-ups” on the

moderate side of the GOP seem unable to act with courage or conviction. Politicians have become obsessed with their own individual aspirations and even the more measured Republicans are too afraid to nail their colours to the mast. There is more than the con-

Illustration: Aoife Comey

ventional polarization between Democrats and Republicans but a schism between far-right Tea Party Congressmen and women and the swiftly diminishing moderate wing of the Republican Party. The moderate Republican faction see the Tea Party as an electoral liability but are bowing to the current strength of this farright faction.

The partial shutdown of the US Government has far reaching implications which are as yet not fully known. At the moment we know that the paychecks of 800,000 federal employees have been frozen, all of the National Parks, Federal Museums in DC and National Monuments have been closed. The Department of Defense does not have the authority to pay death gratuities to the families of four US soldiers killed in action in Afghanistan, there is an all-time low of 5 % (Associated Press – GfK Poll) Congressional job approval from the US public, a disruption to the global economy and a stunting of US recovery which Goldman Sachs estimates reduce GDP by 0.09%.

The Republican Party will face embarrassment and a severe scolding from the World Bank and the IMF on Thursday for their use of the debt limit as a political bargaining chip. US credibility is being questioned and their irresponsibility as holder of the world’s reserve currency is worrying.

However, there is more at stake.

Without diminishing the importance of the above-mentioned repercussions, the most serious implication is the precedent that this anti-democratic Gridlock sets for the rest of the world. The Tea Party’s use of the debt limit as a bargaining tool is shameful and a blight on democracy. Whilst the US has acted as a global police-

man, leader of the free world and champion of democracy for the last few decades, confidently extolling moral values to countries such as Russia, Egypt and Iraq, its credibility is now being called into question.

If Obama is to compromise on the signing of the budget than he will be buckling to distortion and recognizing that the Tea Party has extra-constitutional powers.

The precedent set by this extortion says to authoritarian regimes around the world that the democratic process is less effective at “getting stuff done” and that even in the US there are situations in which the democratic process can be overpowered by blackmail.

President Obama offered to negotiate with Republicans on Tuesday for a short-term truce, asking Congress to vote to reopen the government and a shortterm increase of the debt ceiling as long-term negotiations continue; but this was rejected. On Thursday the leaders of the Republican Party came back to the negotiation table and announced that they were willing to negotiate a short-term truce to increase the debt ceiling in wake of predictions from officials that the US was likely to default on its debt by 17 October. Despite this progress it is difficult to see where progress can be made in a political landscape as polarized as this.

The debate in Washington transcends political divisions, party politics and Obamacare and is more than just a playground spat.

House Republicans are refusing to pass a budget until reforms are delayed. This is their self-described compromise, otherwise known as extortion. The US government is in shutdown due to a minority of extremists who are attempting to stall the roll-out of democratically passed law.

TRINITY NEWS

Tuesday 15th October 2013

Comment

Devil’s Advocate: Why charity is wrong William Foley explores why charity is good in practice, but not good enough in theory.

T William Foley Comment Editor

he first thing that struck me about Dublin, having left the one-cinema town of my youth behind, was that it is a place in which a great amount of wealth is concentrated.

A gawk into the boutique department stores, luxury soap vendors and designer eateries of Grafton, Wicklow and Henry Streets underscored my impression that rare aul Dublin town is a city of extraordinary riches. Indeed, the affluence is literally set in stone: the vast excesses of power and privilege are crystallised in the alternately elegant and imposing Georgian and neo-classical architecture of the British Empire, as well as the sleek glass and chrome high rises erected during the boom.

And yet, like every city, Dublin is a place of extremes. Never before had I been confronted with such obvious poverty. It is not possible to avoid it: the woman with the pram outside Walter Mitty’s begging for money to feed her baby; the figures wrapped in sleeping bags huddled in the door of Brown Thomas; the man crouched by a phonebox on Stephen’s Green, an empty coffee cup filled with a few pennies jingling in his shaking hands.

But these ostensible signs of poverty conceal a deeper problem.

According to the CSO’s most recent Survey of Income and Living Conditions, a quarter of the population is living in “deprivation” (defined as not having “the money to afford at least two goods and services which are generally considered the norm for other people in society”). More frighteningly, without social welfare payments, half the country would be at risk of poverty. The latest austerity budget will hardly improve matters.

In this light, the most natural response from a sensitive young student is to join VDP, or volunteer with the Simon community, or to donate their time and money to any of the vast amount

of charitable organisations active in Ireland. Such a student should be praised: a charitable act is surely one of the most morally commendable actions any person can perform. Anyone who freely gives up their evenings to go on a soup run, places a few euro in a beggar’s lap or who donates items to charity shops is committing an indisputably good act. Charity, as a principle, represents everything that is best about humanity; selflessness, solidarity, altruism and good will. And yet, as a strategy for eliminating poverty, it is utterly wrong.

During the negotiation of the 1985 Anglo-Irish Treaty, Garret Fitzgerald quipped that a certain proposal “sounds great in practice but how will it work in theory?”

We must ask a similar question of the notion of institutional charity. In his essay, The Soul of Man under Socialism, Oscar Wilde attacked those who tried to defeat poverty “by keeping the poor alive; or, in the case of a very advanced school, by amusing the poor.” Wilde makes the point that, by not taking account of the structural causes of poverty, the best people among us, those overflowing with altruistic feeling and good will, are those of us who, consequentially, do the worst deeds, “just as the worst slaveowners were those who were kind to their slaves, and so prevented the horror of the system being realised by those who suffered from it”. Wilde lays the blame for poverty at the gilded feet of the capitalist system and concludes that “It is immoral to use private property in order to alleviate the horrible evils that result from the institution of private property. It is both immoral and unfair.”

The function of charity, ultimately, is to alleviate the symptoms of a monstrously diseased system.

All it does is lance the boils and patch up the weeping sores. It never questions what rotten metabolic processes, what structural

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“Charities themselves employ such dubious marketing tactics. Subscribers are regularly sent out fabulously produced glossy booklets replete with artfully composed pictures of starving Africans gratefully gobbling down packets of Plumpy’nut.”

genetic defects, what imbalanced circulatory distributions generate the sweaty pallor, the nightly shakes, and the recurrent bouts of vomiting. Charity is a vital component of bourgeois ideology. Implicitly, it propagates the notion that the underlying structures of our political and economic systems are sound; that, perhaps, with a small bit of redistribution here, a wee aid package there, we can End Poverty in Our Lifetime.

It is a message that spills from a thousand lips, be they those of self-flattering, ego-tripping clowns like Bono and Geldof, self-serious policy wonkers such as Jeffrey Sachs or genuine, wellmeaning and selfless men and women such as your local SVP or Trócaire organiser.

Let me spell this out in simple figures. In a report released earlier this year, Oxfam calculated that “The top 100 billionaires added $240 billion to their wealth in 2012 – enough to end world poverty four times over.” The report indicated that inequality had worsened significantly in the last number of decades. Indeed, the aftermath of the financial crisis saw this trend accelerate “with the top 1% further increasing their share of income”. This is not an accident, this is not some contingent lapse in an otherwise functioning system; growing inequality has been an inevitable feature of capitalism since the Satanic Mills first burst forth blightlike across Yorkshire and the rest of northern England.

The only time when this yawning gap between economic classes was pulled ever so slightly in, was in the few decades following the interwar years when the organised working class flexed its muscles in the trade union movement and when the spectre of Communism leaned menacingly over the Berlin wall. Whatever gains were made for human decency in those years were subsequently pulverised by Reagan, the dearly

departed Mrs Thatcher and neoliberal goons such as Pinochet and Suharto.

Even worse, charity not only obscures the true causes of the maladies which it attacks, it encourages people to buy into this fundamentally unequal system.

Just like the sexual revolution and Che Guevara, charity has been commodified. Slavoj Zizek, in his book First as Tragedy, Then as Farce, Zizek strips bare the “logic of charity”. Companies such as Starbucks offer to make a negligible donation, say five cents, to charity every time you buy one of their overpriced products. Thus, people can indulge their inculcated consumer drives and, at the same time, erase the “consumer guilt” that is supposed to be the price of such indulgence. The consumer literally buys into a manipulative feedback loop of material and ethical satisfaction and is duly blinded to the role that multinationals such as Starbucks really play in the global economy.

Charities themselves employ such dubious marketing tactics.

Subscribers are regularly sent out fabulously produced glossy booklets replete with artfully composed pictures of starving Africans gratefully gobbling down packets of Plumpy’nut. Charity has become a magic word whose very invocation can ward off criticism and bad press. Wealthy socialites justify their extravagant balls and feasts by holding them in support of the charitable cause du jour. Billionaire tax dodgers such as Denis O’Brien and the chivalrous Sir Anthony O’Reilly make ostentatious donations to the deserving poor. And so on.

What lies at the root of the problem with charity as an institution, is that it discourages critical thought. We are encouraged not to think about what actually causes poverty. Instead, we are urged to simply dip our hand in our pocket and shell out the cash.

At best, we participate in the mass myopia of organised charity.

This fundamentally wrongheaded approach is illustrated by an anecdote told by Irish “intellectual” John Waters. Apparently, Waters once challenged Bob Geldof on whether the kind of charity being promoted by the Boomtown Rats frontman merely encouraged dependency and fed corruption. Geldof responded brusquely: “Give me a pound. Your useless, meandering philosophizing achieves nothing.” Much as the reader might sympathise with Geldof’s impatience with the insufferably smug Waters, the singer was fundamentally wrong in his approach.

What is precisely needed when it comes to the problem of poverty is not a pound, but critical thinking. And not just general critical thinking, but critical thinking about capitalism. The philosopher Max Horkheimer once said that ‘Whoever is not prepared to talk about capitalism should also remain silent about fascism.’ Today, we should adapt that line; if you are not willing to talk about capitalism, then remain silent about poverty. We live in a world where we could eliminate poverty in an instant by appropriating a mere fraction of the wealth of the hundred richest persons. And yet we live in a system where that is impossible. I will leave the last words with Oscar Wilde: “With the abolition of private property, then, we shall have true, beautiful, healthy Individualism. Nobody will waste his life in accumulating things, and the symbols for things. One will live. To live is the rarest thing in the world.

Most people exist, that is all.”

Bale-out

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Maurice J Casey Staff Writer

A market distorted through state collusion and insufficient regulation. Callum Jenkins weighs in on the Gareth Bale transfer controversy and issues around the football transfer market in general.

On the 1st September Gareth Bale became the most the most expensive footballer in the world, with Real Madrid paying Tottenham a reported 100 million for his services. But is he worth it?

Indeed, is anyone worth it?

The question as to whether Bale is worth more than teammate and previous transfer record holder Cristiano Ronaldo is an interesting one but it is for another day. The real question is why can top footballers command such massive transfer fees? To answer such a question we will have to look at the free market principles on which modern society is built. Prices in the free market as every first year BESS student will (or should) know are established through the ‘invisible hand’ of demand and supply. If demand is high or supply is low then prices will rise to reflect this.

Gareth Bale is without a doubt a special talent but more importantly he is also a rare one. To become one of the world’s top footballers requires skill and years of practice. I, myself, unfortunately cannot just go out and become a top footballer. Therefore supply is restricted.

What about demand? Put quite simple Gareth Bale wins matches.

However, this is not the only reason that Real Madrid sought his services. This latest Galacticos is a powerful branding asset for the club. When club president Florentino Perez boasted after the signing of Ronaldo for a then-record fee of 94 million that they would make the money back in shirt sales alone, he wasn’t wrong.

The club earned over 100 million in merchandise around the player within one year.

Bale is also a valuable political asset for Perez, who won a fourth term as the club’s President in May due largely to his promise to sign Bale. From this we can see that, according to the laws of supply and demand, Bale is indeed worth 100 million; otherwise Real Madrid wouldn’t have paid so much. However, this is only the case if the principles of free market hold across the football transfer market.

Proponents of capitalism point to its ability to be efficient, and to provide products at the best possible price. This is achieved through competition in which the inefficient and wasteful go out of business. Although some may point to Rangers, who went out of business in 2012 (only to be reformed in the Scottish Third Division), this is not a genuine threat to most clubs, as we shall

see.

There has been a massive inflow of money into football over recent years. Some of this comes from legitimate profitability of the game, but it is also coming from the influx of mega-rich owners.

Another key principle of the free market is that firms should cease operations if revenue does not cover variable costs. The most obvious variable cost is wages. So if we take Manchester City as an example of decadence, for the 201011 season the clubs wages alone exceeded turnover by £19 million.

Clearly the club could not cover its variable costs. Did this force City out of business? Of course not, and they went on to win the league the next season.

Incidents like this led to UEFA President Michel Platini’s introduction of financial fair play regulations to attempt to reduce excessive spending, level the playfield amongst clubs, and create a sustainable business model.

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“Bale is also a valuable political asset for Perez, who won a fourth term as the club’s President in May due largely to his promise to sign Bale.”

Platini’s proposals were meant to ensure clubs only spent what they earned, but like many of his schemes the regulations are considered a joke.

Manchester City has been able to get around such regulations through signing massive sponsorship deals with the likes of Etihad Airways. This may seem fair, and indeed it would be were it not for the fact that Etihad, along with 3 other of their 8 main sponsors are owned by the UAE, the country of which City owner Sheikh Mansour is the deputy prime minister.

You may be asking what this has to do with Gareth Bale signing for Real Madrid. Firstly, the sale has helped inflate the transfer market in general. The more important point, however, is that Real Madrid are also guilty of spending more than they earn through legitimate means. Undoubtedly Real Madrid’s revenues are huge, but there have since the 1950s been doubts about who really

holds club’s the purse strings.

The most recent allegation is that the club has benefited from state aid. This is illegal not just under footballing regulations, but also under European Competition law.

The facts of the case are that in 1996 Real Madrid bought a piece of land from the Madrid City council for 421,000. However, in 2011 when the council decided to reacquire the land it was valued at 22.7 million. This represents a 5,400% increase. Although the price of land in Spain has more than doubled over this period, this alone does not explain the price in 2011 being 54 times greater than the price in 1996.

The Madrid Council, in lieu of paying such a fee, gave Real Madrid the land that the club had long been seeking, allowing them to expand their stadium, the Santiago Bernabeu. The deal is being investigated by the European Commission, although they have

been criticised for moving too slowly.

These are just a few examples, and from such evidence the answer is clear: the football transfer market is not a free one. It has been inflated by clubs who are able to bend financial rules to secure the best players. This has forced smaller clubs to match this spending, and has led to an unsustainable model in the world of football.

Since we cannot say that the football transfer market is a free one, the forces of demand and supply have been skewed and the market has failed. I do therefore believe that Gareth Bale’s transfer fee of 100 million is too much. Footballing authorities need to do more to ensure that the transfer market becomes a perfectly fair and competitive market for all involved.

TRINITY NEWS

Tuesday 15th October 2013

James Prendegast asks whether arts students socializing lets down their potential

Comment

Science vs. the arts

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Wolf Gang: all bark and no bite A pretentious front for big business to deal in depoliticised revolt and subversion; John Kennedy explores the failings of the hipster subculture as a scene and as a movement.

W John Kennedy Contributor

hat is hipster? Who are hipsters?

Can you be a fake hipster? Where are the real hipsters? What do they do? What makes them so terribly hip? Is hipster a term of endearment or an insult?

Well, according to urban dictionary - which is for once an appropriate source considering the underground nature of what we’re defining - a hipster is someone who values “independent thinking, counter-culture, progressive politics, an appreciation of art, indie-rock [and] creativity”. This somebody doesn’t sound that bad, to be honest. But where did they come from? Did they just leap out of thin air during the nineties or noughties, born in leopard print skinny jeans and a cheeky nyancat pullover?

No, the term dates further back, back when cats were groovy and the beat wasn’t dropped but heavily syncopated. According to Dan Fletcher of Time Magazine: “The term was coined during the jazz age, when “hip” emerged as an adjective to describe aficionados of the growing scene. Initially, hipsters were usually middle-class white youths seeking to emulate the lifestyle of the largely black jazz musicians they followed.” Simone de Beauvoir wrote of these young white aficionados, saying: “For them, jazz is as necessary as bread; it is their sole diversion from the dreary workday; it is also their only antidote to the American conformism and its boredom”.

Not much has changed. We’re living through an economic crisis that is often compared to that of the 1930s and white middle class men are still looking to African American culture to lift them out of their lives - if even for an hour – so that they can be more than a cog in the machine. Sociologist Naomi Klein has written that, “the history of cool in America is really … a history of African-American culture - from jazz and blues to rock and roll to rap”. This is what brings me to Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All, the American hip hop collective led by the enigmatic Tyler the Creator. The collective are a perfect continuation of this cultural trend. The group consists of predominantly black, male youths. Their fan base however is made up largely of white middle-class youths across the English speaking world and further beyond.

The dynamic between artist and audience has not changed since the twenties. What the artists give to the audience is a sense of escape. Odd Future’s appeal lies in their aura of subversiveness. Just as jazz music excited the twenties man’s desire to rail against the dull, conservative values of his society, Odd Future’s music rubs the age old bone of rebellion that is lodged in most young men and women. Tyler’s song Radicals, from the album Goblin, is quite explicit in placing the collective as outsiders. “Kill people, burn shit, fuck school …

I’m motherfuckin’ radical”. Although Tyler makes it clear that this line, which is obviously intended to shock, is not to be taken literally, it serves as a marker nonetheless. The bridge rings out with, ‘Fuck your traditions, fuck your positions. Fuck your religions, fuck your decisions’. Tyler appeals to the disillusionment felt among contemporary youth.

The call to individual expression and determination is comically summarised in the line ‘Stand for what the fuck you believe in, and don’t let nobody tell you you can’t do what the fuck you want. I’m a fucking unicorn and fuck anybody who say I’m not’.

This brazen absurdity and wild sense of rebellion sells like hotcakes to the kids of the suburbs who, to paraphrase Tyler, sit in front of Tumblr bored to the point of insanity. But what are the wolfpack getting back in return?

Naomi Klein has written about the fetishisation of black culture by the white youth and of white wealth by the black youth. Tyler continually celebrates his new found wealth through his music, and understandably so. The man’s friends ‘still can’t afford little pizzas from Little Caesars’ while at the same time he has made ‘a quarter million off of socks’ (i.e. a quarter of a million dollars from the sale of his franchise socks alone).

One would assume that Tyler’s success (winner of the MTV Best New Artist, Must Follow Artist

and Rookie of the Year in 2011) and wealth would endanger his anti-establishment vibe. He is well aware of this. ‘Hated the popular ones, now I’m the popular one’. Tyler’s attacks on the popular stars of the music industry were crutches he relied heavily upon during his climb to fame.

The line ‘I’ll crush that plane that that faggot nigga B.O.B is in and stab Bruno Mars in his goddamn oesophagus’ is infamous. But now with his new found wealth, Tyler might find himself (in some respects and certainly from an economic sense) to be in the same class as Bruno Mars, or B.O.B or any of the other music drones.

Some fans might begin to wonder if all Tyler was rapping was “I wanna be a millionaire” after all.

Tyler has been astute in his attempts to turn this situation on its head. Advertising Age reporter Jeff Jensen has made the claim that for today’s young people, “Selling out is not only accepted, it’s considered hip”. Tyler has always played off this fact. ‘Green paper, gold teeth and golden retrievers - all I want. Fuck money, diamonds and bitches don’t need them’. Tyler cannot, or chooses not, to reject consumer culture, instead he chooses to toy with it; this is Tyler’s ironic resistance. There is a strong parallel here with today’s hipsters. They choose not to reject consumer culture but to toy with it instead.

Instead of thoroughly rejecting the fashion industry for all its exploitation and other evils, hipsters mess with it. They’ll wear a pair of Nike hightops with their grand-uncle’s golf jacket and a wartime haircut, as if this ironic combination somehow critiques or neutralises the undeniable mainstream-ness of the hightops. Now where there might have been some merit in the origins of this movement - people buying only in second-hand shops, repairing old bicycles, doing things for themselves and generally consuming less - the sad culmination of this subculture has been its total co-option into the system, as chains such as Urban Outfitters now mass produce ‘hipster’ culture.

This brings us back to Tyler. Parallel to the near-destruction of whatever core values the hipster subculture had, Tyler’s outsider image is beginning to fall apart, as is his fanbase. He goes as far as saying that his fans are “almost extinct”. Newer Odd Future releases have not been receiving the same fanatical responses as their earlier works. So what options are left to Tyler? What options are left to the hipster subculture?

Sure, Tyler could milk the scene for all it’s worth and then skulk away. In fact the man of only twenty two years has said in interviews that he is using his money to make sure he doesn’t “have to make music ten years from now”.

Tyler could do this but I think, or I want to think, that there’s more to him than that. Both himself and his brother-like collaborator, Earl Sweatshirt, are obviously smart, socially-attuned, young men. Earl’s father was a poet and civil rights activist, his mother a law professor. His social consciousness is clearly illustrated in such lines as “Breaking news: Death’s less important when the Lakers lose”. Tyler has said before in interviews that some of his inspiration comes from being a nineties child, that Kurt Cobain and the grunge movement were a big influence on him and that he feels that what he is doing is to some extent a continuation of that.

In Seattle, the grunge movement championed the underdogs, the downtrodden, those outside of the establishment and forced the world’s attention upon them. But what became of it? Klein offers a blunt summary: “all we got were a few anti-establishment fuckyous, a handful of overdoses and Kurt Cobain’s suicide”. Nothing changed. Why? “Trapped in the headlights of irony and carrying too much pop-culture baggage, not one of its antiheroes could commit to a single, solid political position”.

The hipster subculture is all form and no substance. The wolf gang are - for the moment - all bark and no bite. The hipster scene is simply draining all the positive energies of revolt and subversiveness from the youth and presenting it to the big business to suck through a straw, spit out, package

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“The dynamic between artist and audience has not changed since the twenties. What the artists give to the audience is a sense of escape... and sell back to us all safe and shiny. The question is, are we content to pass our youth riding a shallow wave of pretentious and ultimately false resistance, popping mollies and listening to electro-swing, patting each other on the back and keeping our heads in the sand, only to eventually rear them at age twenty-five or so, tired, cynical, ready to emigrate and disintegrate slowly while sneering at the next wave of ‘radical’, ‘alt’ and ‘subversive’ youths who begin the cycle once again?

Or do we want to fundamentally change the system which keeps the poor poor and the middle class soulless? Do we want to spend our youth barking or do we want to start biting?

Illustration: Ciar Gifford

TRINITY NEWS

Tuesday 15th October 2013

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Comment

Labour in terminal decline?

A litany of broken promises, public rebellions and embarrassing cock-ups have le! the Labour Party in disarray. Conor McGlynn questions whether Labour will be able to turn around their fortunes and avert catastrophe before electoral wipeout.

I Conor McGlynn Deputy Comment Editor

n June 2010, an MRBI/Irish Times poll caused an upset in the political landscape, a landscape that was at the time no stranger to shocks. For the first time in the history of the State, Labour was the biggest party in Ireland. They had polled an impressive 32%, beating out a second place Fine Gael by a margin of 4 points.

When the general election came around in February 2011, they received a more modest yet still record breaking 19% of the popular vote. They entered government with more seats than Labour had ever had, in a government that held an overwhelming majority in the Dáil, and with as strong a mandate from the electorate as any party could hope to have.

Earlier this month, a little over three years since their high-water mark, an MRBI/Irish Times poll caused another, perhaps not so great, upset in a still turbulent political landscape. An embattled Labour Party polled at 6%, a full 16 points behind third-place Fianna Fáil. This poll represented a 26-point decrease from 2010.

What went wrong? Why has Labour felt the brunt of the backlash against the Government while Fine Gael (although they have fallen a number of points since the election) are still the most popular party in the country? The answer, I think, lies both in their actions in Government, and the promises they made prior to the election.

Let’s first look at pre-election promises. It is a fact that basically

every political party will tell lies and half-truths to ensure their own election. Where Labour fell down, however, is that they don’t seem to have been very good at this.

Almost every student will remember Ruairí Quinn, future Minister for Education, standing outside Front Arch signing a pledge not to increase fees. Parents will remember a “red line” being drawn on child-benefit. The infamous ‘It’s Frankfurt’s way or Labour’s way’ wasn’t exactly an untruth – it was indeed Frankfurt’s way.

Broken pre-election promises are not a new development in politics, and Labour is not alone in having done this. What makes Labour unique, and what has made them so detestable to the electorate, is the arrogant and brazen way they went about it. They didn’t just make promises they didn’t keep; they made promises they knew they would be unable to keep.

Reckless promising was a policy, one that they tried to justify by claims that they were saving the country from an even worse fate in the hands of Fianna Fáil.

The actions of Labour in Government have alienated not only large sections of the electorate, but also many members of the party. Patrick Nulty, elected as a TD in a by-election in October 2011, lost the party whip less than two months later for voting against a VAT increase in the budget. Colm Keaveney, TD and former Chairman of the Labour Party, lost the whip in 2012 when

he voted against a cut to the respite care allowance in the December budget.

Perhaps the most dramatic incident occurred in September 2012, when Róisín Shortall resigned the party whip. Shortall spoke out about the slow pace of health reform under James Reilly, as well as the Minister’s interfering with her shortlist of planned primary care centres. The Labour leadership decided not to support Shortall, instead siding with their coalition partners; a move that led to her eventual resignation from the party.

Labour’s unflinching acquiescence to Fine Gael, in the light of some questionable dealings, was an indictment of the leadership and clearly demonstrated the core philosophy of the party: get into power, and retain it at all costs. The public nature of these party feuds, as well as in many cases sympathy for the rebels, has soured public opinion towards the party. Far from setting a high standard of political integrity, Labour has revealed itself to be just as cynical and manipulative as any other party in the Dáil.

Labour entered government in a time of almost unprecedented economic hardship. They ran on a platform of recovery, of growth and jobs. They promised to act as a check on the excesses of Fine Gael spending cuts. The reality has been grotesquely different. Instead of acting as a bulwark against austerity, Labour has facilitated budget after

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“No political group which has ever enforced its will in the Middle East through force of arms has ever acted disinterestedly; though it has almost always claimed otherwise.”

budget targeting low and middle income households. Ironically, there have been few governments which have been as harsh on labour as this one.

Historically, Labour has been no stranger to pulling the plug on their coalition partners. No doubt, under different circumstances, Labour would now be tempted to repeat its pulling-theplug exercise on some pretence of troubled consciences with the actions of Fine Gael. The party leadership has, however, learned from the experience of the Green Party in the last Government.

The Greens got cold feet in the face of the scale of the austerity that would have to be imposed, and pulled out before their approval ratings could fall further.

They paid for their weak stomach in the election: they got less than 2% of the popular vote, and lost all six of their seats. The Labour hierarchy knows better: if they

don’t hang together then they will surely hang separately.

The Labour Ministers who are presently in government were, prior to the 2011 General Election, consistently rejected by the electorate for well over a decade.

The financial crisis of 2008, and the subsequent economic downturn, in many respects saved the party. It rescued them from their fate as a mediocre opposition and made them relevant once more.

Unfortunately, their actions in Government have shown the party to be unworthy of the offices awarded to them. If there was an election in the morning, they would most likely be obliterated.

Their only hope now is to hold on, and to pray that things get better before 2016.

“What does it matter who is speaking?”

Dr. Heiko Zimmerman’s seminar causes Ciar McCormick to question the idea of the author.

I

Ciar McCormack Contributor

stumbled upon this topic quite coincidentally as it happened, walking up the five narrow flights of stairs in the arts block. As I began to feel the burn in the back of my thighs coming towards the summit of my climb I noticed a poster on the wall. I had seen it a couple of times throughout the week; it had intrigued me, but this was the first time I drew up the confidence to stop along that busy stairwell to read the fine print.

The poster was for a Digital writing seminar by Dr. Heiko Zimmerman of the University of Trier in Germany. In fact it was not the letters in front of his name or the well-drawn up poster that drew me in, but the content. Dr. Zimmerman’s first seminar of two was on the function of the author.

The day of the first Seminar came and I walked unsurely up the steps of the Long Room Hub. For someone who is relatively new to the college I was unsure of the function of this awkwardly shaped building. The reception was decorated in some sort of modern art manner that I didn’t quite understand. I didn’t see the benefit of having a couch that was shaped like a plus sign, and was that a wall made out of coffee cups? I decided to ignore the décor of this otherworldly building and made my way up stairs to the seminar room.

As the (relatively few) attendants of the seminar took their seats,

it dawned on me that I was the youngest, and noticeably so. A man in a shirt and suit jacket sat opposite me, and a tanned man with an electric cigarette beside him. To my right was what I can only describe as a computer science-looking European fellow, as well as two women who, although it did not show in their dress, had an academic air to them. I was wearing the stereotypical teenager’s hoodie with my ear phones flowing over my super dry shirt and dangling down in front of me.

I felt like an alien, an outsider.

As for the Doctor himself, Heiko Zimmerman was tall and soft spoken with an enviable goatee and a white shirt that said “I work for Google”.

When the introductions began everyone at the table stated their many academic achievements and specialisations in their particular fields. The poster did say it was open to all, right? When I told them, with that naive ignorance typical of a young child, the truth that I was a first year undergraduate student, they were surprisingly accepting. Dr. Zimmerman turned on his Mac and began the seminar.

It was a long time ago, but I would like you to think back to when J.K. Rowling outed Dumbledore as being gay. This revelation divided public opinion received a lot of media coverage at the time, which is surprising considering Dumbledore is a fictional charac-

ter. Regardless of your opinion on the matter it raises the question: who does the character belong to? Dr. Zimmerman used this example to show the power of the author, and whether she had the right to do so.

One would immediately believe Dumbledore is Rowling’s creation and possession. On the other hand, once she releases her literature out into the world she has no control over people’s interpretations and how the book can be received. Dr. Zimmerman suggested the words “Fuck off Rowling” came to mind, for each person who has read Harry Potter has formulated their own mental character of Dumbledore which Rowling can’t tamper with after the fact. It might be acceptable if she put Dumbledore’s sexual orientation in the books, but this was not explicitly mentioned and so our idea of the character of Dumbledore has been moulded already without this piece of information.

Dr. Zimmerman went on to show what an author is, and how they influence their texts. The word author derived from the word authority, in this context authority over a text. The term was developed in the 18th and 19th century as a means of appropriating texts. Literature was not originally considered to be the property of any one person, but over time this changed as writers became accountable for the text

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“The reverent Korean Central Broadcasting Service finally has an alternative. In one year KCBS spent thirty five per cent of its on-air time praising Kim Jong Il.”

they were writing. This was especially prevalent in legal and religious cases, when a writer wanted to claim legal property over a text he wrote, or the church wanted to punish those writing blasphemy by attaching a name to the text in question.

From this origin Dr. Zimmerman put forward that Authors have created their own cult of individualism, with styles developing around particular authors. It is not uncommon to say Orwellian to describe a text, or to recognise the persona of Ernest Hemingway jumping off the page in his writings. The French literary theorist Michel Foucault suggests in his essay ‘What is an Author?’ that a reader will give a text “a certain status” if one can say “this was written by so-and-so” or “soand-so is its author.”

This idea even arises in the autobiographical work of F. Scott Fitzgerald, when he talks about the pseudo-popularity of being an author, and acknowledges that it is a meaningless title: “For a shy man it was nice to be somebody except oneself again: to be ‘the Author’ as one had been ‘the lieutenant’. Of course one wasn’t really an author any more than one had been an army officer, but nobody seemed to guess behind the false face.”

If the title of ‘Author’ is in fact a false face then the words of Samuel Beckett in his short dramatic monologue Not I ring true: “’What

does it matter who is speaking;’ someone said; ‘what does it matter who is speaking.’” This shows the indifference towards an author one should have when choosing a book. The French literary critic Roland Barthes investigates a similar theme in his essay ‘The Death of the Author’.

What needs to be understood is that “the unity of a text is not in its origin; it is in its destination”.

The origin of a text is the author; by destination Barthes means the interpretation given to that text by the reader.

With the end of the Seminar came a lasting question which I felt needed to be answered. With the pink skyline indicating approaching darkness that would descend on the courtyard, I asked: “What does it matter who is speaking?”

I conclude that it shouldn’t matter, and that good writing can be found in the work of the most unknown literary scholars; maybe even between the pages of Trinity College’s own literary magazine, Icarus.

TRINITY NEWS

Tuesday 15th October 2013

Gavin Kenny shows how prize-winning research affects our daily lives.

Comment

Nobel Prize

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Science and Arts: The Not-so-Great Divide Science and Arts: implacable foes or secret buddies? James Prendergast sorts the sense from the nonsense.

M James Prendergast Staff Writer

uch has been made over the supposed division between the arts and sciences. While the dichotomy is a real one, the two disciplines are in many ways indispensable to each other. The most basic difference lies in how theories are tested. Many theories in the physical sciences can be proven beyond reasonable doubt.

The same certainty is impossible in the social sciences, while such proof is not even sought in the humanities. However, the fundamental motivation that drives the scientist to research has the same well-spring as that of the artist.

The quest for knowledge of how the physical world ‘works’ is a highly emotional one, and science can have just as much aesthetic value as a work of art.

From the passage tombs of Newgrange and the Pyramids of Giza in Egypt to the skyscrapers that today dominate skylines of the world’s great cities; aesthetic beauty has been seamlessly combined with scientific precision for millennia. Architecture is itself a discipline that is inseparable from both art and science. And today with growing interest in urban ecosystems it is increasingly influenced by the social sciences.

The explosive growth of popular science books and the proliferation of television programmes of the same genre, has demonstrated the enormous benefits of combining the scientific and the creative.

On a more fundamental level, science and other ‘practical’ dis-

ciplines may provide us with the means to live, but it is the desire for understanding inherent in both the arts and sciences that provides us with the will to live.

All societies, from the most materially poor to the wealthiest, have rich artistic cultures. Moreover, scientists are almost always motivated by a desire to better the lives of humanity. They are moved by empathy for humanity, and this impulse cannot be explained in a cold or rational way.

Science could benefit from a strong relationship with the arts, as it would help provide a moral framework for the scientist to work in. A scientist with a background in the social sciences or who has a love of literature is less likely to put their discoveries to evil uses. They would have an insight into the human condition and an awareness of the wider world, which would ensure that they realise that the consequences of their experiments are not confined to the lab. Einstein is often quoted as saying “Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.” If ‘art’ were substituted for ‘religion’ the aphorism would have a deeper meaning.

The arts, humanities and most especially the social sciences benefit hugely from the application of scientific rigour. It prevents the social sciences from descending into an idealism that dreams only in utopias. Marx and Engels, two of the most eminent social

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“No political group which has ever enforced its will in the Middle East through force of arms has ever acted disinterestedly; though it has almost always claimed otherwise.”

scientists of all time labelled their socialism ‘scientific’ as opposed to what they saw as the ‘utopian’ socialism of their predecessors. Their analysis began with an empirical analysis of existing capitalism, in contrast to the thought of their forebears that was epitomised by Robert Owen’s model settlement at New Lanark.

However, an excessive eagerness among the social sciences to emulate the physical sciences can dehumanise them and cause them to lose their ‘social’ aspect.

This ‘physics envy’ has had particularly pernicious effects in economics. The search for mathematical certainty has led to the replacement of a social science for a pseudo-physical science.

Deductive reasoning that derives its theories from empirical analysis of the real economy has been replaced by inductive reasoning that models an ideal version of a market economy divorced from reality. While this neoclassical economics has the veneer of science with its neat mathematical theorems, it is more akin to a religion with its meaningless and irrefutable tautologies. This severing of economics from the rest of the social sciences would have been anathema to Adam Smith, the founder of economics, whom modern neo-classicists never tire of invoking.

But, it must be admitted, there appears little danger of arts students neglecting the ‘social’ side of things. While their science col-

leagues are draped in white coats modelling new chemical molecules among other unenviable tasks, the typical arts student is sipping coffee and chatting with friends on one of the many arts block couches, if they can find one. (The same problem rarely arises in the Hamilton, for obvious reasons.) While this activity may contribute greatly to the general jollity of campus, it can only have deleterious academic consequences if we make the safe assumption that the subject under discussion is not the Collected Works of Bertrand Russell.

Imagine what achievements would be made by arts students, if they only dedicated as many hours to their chosen field as their scientific colleagues. It would only be a matter of time before great works of literature and history would be written.

The only downside would be a fall in fashion standards in the arts block. When you have to rise for lectures significantly before noon it’s tempting just to slip on your Nike trackies rather than force yourself out of bed an hour earlier for the sake of keeping up appearances.

These would among the benefits of a broad university education that combines both the arts and the sciences. Students at Columbia College in Columbia University in New York study a ‘core curriculum’ in their first year that involves literature, art, philosophy, history, science and music.

This system would save many students who make the mistake of believing that the subjects they enjoyed at Leaving Cert will be the same at Third Level. Here, the introduction of the Broad Curriculum has been a very welcome step in this direction.

History has provided us with many great figures who combined both scientific and artistic pursuits. Benjamin Franklin successfully combined the skills of journalist, printer, inventor, scientist, musician, entrepreneur, diplomat and statesman. The level of knowledge required to be at the frontier of a discipline today is immeasurably larger, making such polymathy increasingly difficult to achieve. But a swing in that direction and away from academic sectarianism would be no bad thing.

Lessons in Irish republicanism from the Sinn Féin online store

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Maurice J Casey Staff Writer

Maurice John Casey explores Sinn Féin’s online store and draws conclusions about the state of contemporary republicanism. reat shirt! Already got me thrown out of a bar!” Thus begins one review of a t-shirt bearing the highly debatable slogan: ‘IRA: Undefeated Army’, available to purchase on the Sinn Féin online store. Once you see the low resolution logo of a coffee cup bearing the SF logo, with what could easily be a Tiocfaidh ár Latté, you know that you have arrived at the Sinn Féin Café and Bookstore’s online identity: sinnfeinbookshop. com. This is a baffling webstore where an anonymous reviewer of an Antrim jersey, bearing the dual image of Bobby Sands and a generic armed Republican, can open his assessment with the reverential lines: ‘Great man, Great cause, Great shirt.’

Though they will not echo through history in the manner of the words of the Irish proclamation, the ramblings and recommendations of the Sinn Féin Online Store tell a wholly different story of Irish Republicanism and where it stands today. From wooden carvings of Pádraig Pearse to baby bibs denoting a child’s professed allegiances to Fenianism,

sinnfeinbookshop.com can cater to the needs of all age groups, and most levels of sanity. Not satisfied with mere Irish separatism? The site also stocks Basque independence baseball caps and some Catalonian badges, just in case you want to coordinate your wardrobe around armed nationalist struggles. Many of the products for sale could easily be mistaken for satire, yet the online store and those that feel encouraged to post their reviews on it seem to be utterly devoid of irony. The reviews are at times as revealing as they are hilarious. They evidence a pattern that recurs right through the history of the Sinn Féin movement, from its founding right up to the present day: the constant, and frequently illinformed, funding of the movement by Irish-Americans.

There are very few people that could pull off wearing a t-shirt that simply says ‘FENIANS’ down a Dublin street; there are even fewer that could rock on down to the shop wearing a hoodie that states its bearer is an ‘Unrepentant Fenian Bastard.’ Yet in North

America these Fenian fashion faux pas seem to be a non-issue.

One American reviewer of the aforementioned ‘FENIANS’ tshirt wrote “I was walking down the road when an older gentleman with a thick Irish accent said ‘I love your shirt! Wear it proud!’ I assured him I would do just that!” It seems like this exchange could only have occurred in some strange twilight zone, where nobody fully understands the complexities and tragedies of Ireland’s sectarian division.

Some bizarro-land where your great-great grandfather’s preemigration fling with a Connemara lass up against the walls of a Quaker soup kitchen in the 19th century makes you a member of one of history’s most clingy diasporas. This is the community called Irish-America. I’m not saying that all Irish-American’s are oblivious to the true connotations of an IRA t-shirt; I’m just saying that the Irish-Americans that do know the difference between Arthur Griffith’s Sinn Féin and Gerry Adams’ Sinn Féin are not buying apparel from the latter.

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“There are very few people that could pull off wearing a t-shirt that simply says ‘FENIANS’ down a Dublin street.”

On another part of the site, a jersey that, quite contentiously, has ‘Republic of Ireland, est. 1916’ emblazoned across it is given the recommendation “The shirts are awesome informative with facts.”

“We have purchased numerous jerseys and tee shirts from your store” the review continues. ”We are a proud American family of our Irish descent we thank you for the great quality of apperal that is available to us thank you.”

Again and again the pattern repeats across the site of Irish Americans praising the quality of the t-shirt, the veracity of the political message, and their own personal pride at flaunting this intrinsically Irish piece of clothing.

In October of 2008 the incensed Yahoo Answers user Chocablock took to the forum to ask the question “Irish Americans? Did you give money to the IRA?” The question was poorly phrased and its target was wide, but it did make a larger point. From its inception under the debatable auspices of legitimacy, to its extended forays into transnational terrorism,

the Republican movement has been flying on a magic carpet of American cheques. It began with the lecturing tours undertaken by icons of Irish independence across the major US cities before the rising of 1916, and has now advanced into the modern age with the Sinn Féin online store. Even if it is beginning to look like a strange kind of self-parody, Sinn Féin’s peculiar slice of the online market still has a lot to tell us about the close financial links between Sinn Féin and a particular section of the almost 37 millionstrong Irish American community.

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Tuesday 15th October 2013

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Tuesday 15th October 2013

Science

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Science in Brief Gavin Kenny

‘Sting’ on open access publishing garners criticism A investigative report published this month in the journal, Science, claims to have lain bear the shoddy roots of hundreds of open access (OA), supposedly peer-reviewed journals. OA journals are a phenomenon on the rise which allow the general public access to research publications by charging authors for submitting their own work rather than charging institutions subscription fees as traditional publishers do. The author

of the report, John Bohannon, submitted fake research papers with glaringly obvious major scientific flaws to 304 OA journals to have it ultimately accepted for publication by 157 of these. The investigation has, however, met major criticism (such as from editor and publisher Gunther Eysenbach) for its own sweeping conclusions with no control group, non-random sampling and ethical questionability.

What has a Nobel Prize winner ever done for me?

W Gavin Kenny Science Editor

In the wake the 2013 Nobel Prize announcements last week, Gavin Kenny explores how the lauded research has affected our day-to-day lives. ith the announcement of the winners of the 2013 Nobel Prizes in Physics, Chemistry, and Physiology/Medicine last week, eight eminent scientists will soon join a truly spectacular list of 550 or so individuals who have shaped their sciences over the past century. One year before his death by a stroke in Italy in 1896, Alfred Nobel penned his will in which he set aside his entire estate to be invested in “safe securities” by his executors.

The interest gained on this colossal sum of money was then to be awarded annually to “those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind”. Some may argue that due to a stipulation in the Statutes of the Nobel Foundation prohibiting posthumous awarding of a Nobel Prize (unless a laureate dies between the announcement of the prize and the awards ceremony the following December), many great minds, who have perhaps had the “greatest benefit” to humankind, have not been rewarded for their troubles. This trend looks set to continue with Nobel Prizes typically still awarded long after the original research takes place i.e. when it becomes obvious just how influential and consequential the work was.

It is, however, difficult to criticise the products of the latest batch of Nobel laureates who have quite clearly been forerunners in their individual disciplines.

Few were surprised by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences’ decision to crown Peter W. Higgs and François Englert the newest laureates in physics. The pair of now octogenarians each independently sculpted the theoretical framework for the origin of mass of subatomic particles in 1964.

For the 48 subsequent years, the Higgs boson – a particle that originates from “an invisible field that fills up all space” and is responsible for giving other particles their mass – remained elusive. Last summer, however, the long search was rewarded as the Higgs boson was discovered at the Large Hadron Collider at Cern, Switzerland, and it was deemed timely to award Higgs and Englert for their seminal work. But what has the Higgs boson ever done for me other than give me my mass? As of yet, the technological benefits of the discovery of the Higgs boson are not clear but unlike Prof Heinrich Hertz who, in the late 19th century, thought that radio waves were simply “an interesting laboratory experiment” with no “useful purpose” whatsoever, we should be patient with scientific discoveries and allow their uses to become apparent over time.

The day after the announcement of the Nobel Prize in Physics, with the dust barely settled, and the elusive Prof Higgs still away “on holiday without a phone”, as his Edinburgh University physics colleague Alan Walker told the BBC, it was time

for the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to once again take the pulpit and announce the winners of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

It was revealed that Martin Karplus, Michael Levitt and Arieh Warshel will this December receive the prestigious Nobel Medal and evenly share the 8m Swedish kronor (SEK) (about 915,000) award for the trio’s 1970s research that paved the way for powerful programs now used to understand and predict chemical processes. This research has had huge implications in the chemical world. According to the prize awarding committee, computer simulations are now “so realistic that they predict the outcome of traditional experiments.” Surpassing traditional experimental chemistry, scientists can now let computers unveil chemical processes, “such as a catalyst’s purification of exhaust fumes or the photosynthesis in green leaves.”

Perhaps most tangible to the layperson is the work carried out by the winners of the Nobel Prize in Physiology/Medicine.

The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet, Sweden, decided to honour James E. Rothman, Randy W. Schekman and Thomas C. Südhof for unravelling just how molecules are transported within and between living cells. The researchers have revealed the “exquisitely precise” system that allows small packages known as vesicles to deliver molecules such as hormones, neurotransmitters

and enzymes around to different locations within the cell or to export them out of the cell for transport to elsewhere in the body. A number of neurological and immunological disorders, as well as diabetes, are caused by defective vesicle transport. Understanding the intricacies of this system has undoubtedly propelled our knowledge of these disorders and our ability to treat them.

For these wonderfully diverse and unquestionably paramount discoveries which have perhaps – in the wish of an ailing Alfred Nobel – “conferred the greatest benefit on mankind”, each of 2013’s Nobel Laureates in the sciences will receive their Nobel Medal, Nobel Diploma – a unique work of art, created by foremost Swedish or Norwegian artists and calligraphers – and documents confirming their monetary prize, from the king of Sweden at a ceremony in Stockholm this December. With a now complete CV, all that is left for these individuals to do is practice walking down the stairs into the banquet chamber of Stockholm City Hall, and hopefully not be the first person to trip on that daunting staircase.

E Coli: friend or foe?

L Dylan Lynch Contributor

et’s face it: we have all had our run in with the cheap all-you-can-eat buffet and paid the price for it afterwards. The infamous Escherichia coli or E coli bacteria is one of the leading food-poisoning bacteria, the little rod-shaped bacterium having caused 16% of outbreak-related hospitalisations in the US throughout 2009 and 2010. Even more worrying is the fact that for three of the four years leading up to 2009, Ireland had the highest incidence of E coli poisoning in the EU – a whopping seven times more than the EU average. However a recent discovery has been made which may clear its name.

A South Korean research team at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology has managed to produce petrol from the E coli bacteria. The team, led

by Prof Lee Sang-yup, published their findings in late September.

The genetically modified E coli bacteria were fed glucose, a base sugar unit often found in energy drinks, and the enzymes that they then produced converted free fatty acids (or FFAs) into what Lee describes as “chemically and structurally identical (compounds) found in commercial fuel”.

There are huge advantages to this new biopetrol/biogasoline.

For example, the biopetrol has a 30% higher energy content than our traditional biofuels. The process requires modified E coli and glucose, which is found in plants and other non-food crops. The real significance of this discovery is that it does not require the

catalytic cracking of crude oil: a process in which crude oil is pumped into a large column and broken up into its individual and more valuable parts, knows as “fractions”. This discovery allows us to convert glucose and waste biomass straight to petrol.

So is this the answer to the energy crisis, or a double-edged sword?

While the efficiency of this conversion is quite low at present, it brings to mind the question: are bacteria-powered cars as far away as we think? Scientists have previously been able to procure biodiesel from bacteria, but with this new breakthrough in biopetrol production, it seems we could have “renewable” fossil fuels in the near future. This could lower the price of fuel, and create huge employment in the petrochemicals industry.

However, not all response to the discovery has been positive.

Science bloggers have expressed concern that the discovery may lead to more long-term pollution, and an increased reliance on fossil fuels, when we should be moving in the direction of cleaner renewable fuels such as solar, wind and tidal power. The most prominent issue on people’s minds seems to be the risk to the environment from increased petrol and hydrocarbon (compounds which contain hydrogen and carbon, such as all fossil fuels) supplies.

Each of the last three decades has been warmer at the Earth’s surface than any preceding decade since 1850, and the rate of sea level rise since the mid-19th

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“Even more worrying is the fact that for three of the four years leading up to 2009, Ireland had the highest incidence of E coli poisoning in the EU – a whopping seven times more than the EU average.”

century has been larger than the mean rate during the previous two millennia. Over the last two decades, the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets have been losing mass, and will continue to shrink almost worldwide, especially if we maintain the greenhouse effect at its current levels.

Another main argument against this new E coli-based biopetrol is that it requires a huge amount of biomass. There are fears that this process will cause a spike in the price of food, as crops begin to be used for energy generation rather than feeding people. However, Lee rejects that argument, stating in an interview that “there is tons [sic] of biomass that is being wasted on Earth. There is a lot of biomass which we can smartly use”.

So, how soon until we have E coli fuelled vehicles?

While this technique is an outstanding discovery and could shape the future of our existence and energy crisis, we may have to wait a very long time to see it being used to fuel cars and trains.

At the moment, the process is in its infancy stage: According to the research publication, it has only produced 580mg of gasoline for every one litre of glucose fed to the bacteria. But we could soon see E coli sourced vegetable oil in our supermarkets and E colibased make-up in our pharmacies. With our ever-advancing industries and scientific knowledge, a new age of pathogen-based biofuels may just be around the corner.

Space Week at Trinity a roaring success In the cool morning light on Saturday 5th October the giant wooden doors of College’s Museum Building creaked open signalling the start of Space Week at Trinity. The week – organised as part of the “Exploring Mars, Discovering Earth”-themed World Space Week – started with a bang as over 600 visitors flooded into the Museum Building for Family Fun Day. Children and adults alike held rare chunks of meteorites as well as rocks from impact craters on Earth before producing their own craters with golf balls and trays of flour (measuring their results with scientific rigor) and even their own comets with a dash of gravel, a sprinkle of dry ice, and a splash of soy sauce and amino acid! College’s Geology and Zoological Museums were swarmed, as was the Geography Department’s Freeman Library as it hosted an astounding display of high-resolution images of the Martian surface. Talks on the day and throughout all of last week

by world-leading experts varied from the birth of our Solar System to craters and volcanoes on Mars. One of the highlights was surely the live Skype session with Trinity’s Prof Peter Gallagher at an observatory on the Canary Islands where he studies the Sun’s weather, and Trinity graduate Dr Paul Byrne who now works on Nasa missions imaging planets in our Solar System. With Leo Enright chairing, children put their questions to the Nasa scientist and one imaginative child even learnt why, equipped with his trusty bucket and spade, he would not be able to build a sandcastle of the surface of Mercury.

A professor in the Department of Geography captured it perfectly: the usual “bunch of ‘suits’ babbling and pointless functions with no relevance to a proper university” were for once replaced by “a real event, well-prepared, meaningful to the departments involved and beautifully arranged.”

Fusion milestone reached at US lab The National Ignition Facility based in California has reportedly taken a huge step towards achieving a fusion reaction that gives out more energy than it requires to get started. Fusion – the process that powers stars like our own Sun – is held as a hope for clean, potentially limitless energy. Recent experiments are

thought to have been the first time a human-induced nuclear fusion reaction in a hydrogen capsule has produced more energy than was consumed and have stimulated hope for eventually exploiting this phenomenon for growing public energy needs.

TRINITY NEWS

Tuesday 15th October 2013

Science

19

Ivaca!or: How does a government choose which medications to approve for reimbursement?

Conor O’Donovan looks at how the Irish government went about approving CF drug Ivaca!or.

F Conor O’Donovan Deputy Editor

rom a purely therapeutic standpoint, ivacaftor (Kalydeco®) is an impressive breakthrough for a traditionally life-limiting disease.

Cystic fibrosis (CF) is one of the few conditions caused entirely by a defect in a single gene (the CFTR gene), which encodes a crucial protein involved in regulating electrolytes.

Although a wide variety of CFTR mutations may cause CF, the common end result is thickened mucus secretions in the lungs and pancreas. This increases susceptibility to chronic lung infections (due to persistent bacteria in airway mucus) and malabsorption leading to low body weight (owing to an inability to transport pancreatic enzymes into the gastrointestinal tract).

Furthermore, Ireland has the highest prevalence of CF worldwide, making provision of high quality CF care a priority in this country.

Ivacaftor is a shining example of how modern drug discovery takes place in the mechanismdriven era. Following in-depth characterisation of the causative defect, an in-vitro assay was developed to test potentially useful compounds. After high-throughput screening of hundreds of thousands of chemical structures, the most promising candidates, or “leads”, were chosen for further development. By then minutely varying the chemical structures using medicinal chemistry techniques, a compound with optimised properties was selected and tested in pre-clinical trials. What was formerly known as “VX-770” became the generic “ivacaftor” and went forward into clinical trials in CF patients, championed

by Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc., of Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The process is laborious and expensive (Vertex have not released their research and development costs, but the bill can be assumed to exceed hundreds of millions of euro), but it is also methodical and carries a reasonable likelihood of success.

Ivacaftor acts for a particular

subgroup of CF patients, who harbour the “G551D” mutation in the CFTR gene, by aiding the function of the defective membrane protein. Though the G551D mutation accounts for only a small proportion of CF patients (approx.

11.6% of the Irish CF population, or 120 individuals), early clinical trial data in this group demonstrated encouraging improvements in measures of clinical outcome, when compared to placebo.

However, the clinical safety data published to date run to only 96 weeks duration of treatment, and there is as yet no reported safety data on use in young children or pregnant women - two population groups who would presumably require the treatment as well.

Because of the high need for improved medicines for the CF population, the innovative nature of the technology, and the promising early clinical data, ivacaftor was approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the US on a much shorter timescale than is conventionally required for a new medicine to pass all regulatory steps. Not long afterwards, approval was granted by the European Medicines Agency (EMA), which by default extends to Ireland.

New medicines, before they are sanctioned for reimbursement by public funds, undergo a health technology assessment (HTA), carried out on behalf of the HSE by the National Centre for Pharmacoeconomics (NCPE), which is linked to the Department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics at TCD and St. James’ Hospital. Every medicine is given a preliminary assessment within two weeks, whereas high-cost and high-tech drugs undergo a more thorough analysis of cost-effectiveness that takes place within three months. In cases where the budget impact of a particular medicine is high, it makes sense that an evidencebased judgement by expert pharmacoeconomic analysts should be sought before approval. In a system with limited resources,

Illustration: Natalie Duda not all new medicines should be paid for without consideration for the wider consequences on the healthcare system as a whole.

Pharmacoeconomic analysis is based on rigorous estimates of the clinical benefit of a new medicine and its value for money. Measurements of clinical effectiveness include the number of life-years gained (LYG) or quality-adjusted life-years (QALY) gained by using the drug in addition to, or instead of, the established standard of care. Thus, simplistically, the cost/LYG or cost/QALY ratios can give an estimate of the value for

money achieved with a particular drug for a particular price and indication. In most cases, the NCPE uses a threshold of ¤45,000/ QALY to decide whether a new medicine is worth its cost.

In the case of ivacaftor, it was estimated that the drug could extend lifespan in G551D CF patients by almost 30 years, and the initial submitted price was ¤234,804 per patient per annum.

Because the presented clinical data were relatively scant, prediction of value for money was difficult, and ranged from ¤449,035 (baseline) to ¤855,437 (conserva-

tive) per QALY gained – i.e. 10- to 20-fold in excess of the regular threshold cost-effectiveness ratio.

The NCPE, despite continued discussions with the HSE and Vertex, withheld its recommendation for exchequer reimbursement, citing several factors in its decision, including the “very high drug acquisition cost, the significant budget impact, the absence of long term clinical data and [failure of] the company... to demonstrate the cost-effectiveness of ivacaftor”.

The report did, however, suggest that after a significant reduction in asking price, or an agreement to performance-based reimbursement (where the cost is paid only when therapeutically successful), approval of ivacaftor could be recommended.

Following further closed negotiations between the HSE and Vertex, however, the Minister for Health announced on 1st February 2013 that ivacaftor would be made available to Irish patients from 1st March 2013, and that an undisclosed reduction in the manufacturer’s asking price was achieved.

The estimated cost of the drug over the next 10 years was quoted as ¤220 million. Subsequently it emerged (The Irish Times, 19.03.2013) that several senior government figures wrote to the health minister on behalf of CF patients, concerning the decision to approve the drug. One minister made a representation on behalf of Vertex, which expressed concerns over the cost-effectiveness threshold used by the NCPE. While it is impossible not to sympathise with CF patients, whose daily struggle with the disease could potentially be alleviated by this “breakthrough” treatment, the deliberate sidelining of the NCPE recommendations raises the question of how its approval came about. It seems that populist public representatives succumbed to brief, but appreciable, pressure to avoid a short-term political debacle by appearing to withhold a vital treatment from vulnerable patients. Emotive lobbying on the part of a small few heavily invested

parties seems to have trumped the rationally derived and impartial recommendations of an expert professional group. Bear in mind that this occurred entirely in the context of a health service already dealing with annual budget deficits and charged with implementing wide cuts in expenditure. The sanctioning of reimbursement for ivacaftor will likely result in further budget overspends and cuts elsewhere.

Deciding on how best to ration healthcare spending is difficult, and raises unique and fundamental questions, such as to what degree needs-based health spending can be unequal in order to be fair. However, we have useful and validated ways of rationally assessing and judging the cost-effectiveness of new developments in health technology. If we place our utmost faith in rational and evidence-based approaches to biomedical research, drug discovery and clinical medicine, why do we then abandon those same principles when faced with the discomfort of sometimes necessarily telling patients that their treatment is just too expensive? Looking to the future, unless we can introduce cost-limiting innovations into the processes of drug development, testing and manufacture, new therapeutics will continue to stretch healthcare budgets worldwide, and remain out of the reach of resource-poor nations.

The decline of the bumble bee Irish bees facing an unappetising fate: Erin Jo Tiedeken introduces us to her research into the decline of bees.

A Erin Jo Tiedeken Contributor

mong the multiple pressures currently driving decline in bee populations little attention has been given to the potentially significant role of naturally occurring toxins in plant nectar. Research being conducted in College’s Botany Department into the role of these toxins in the floral nectar of the invasive common rhododendron (Rhododendron ponticum) is shedding light on this phenomenon. Intriguingly, the work of the research team lead by Dr Jane Stout has found this toxin to be lethal to honeybees, but apparently benign to the plant’s main pollinators, bumblebees.

Differential responses by bee species to toxins and other pressures means we need to consider bee decline on a species by species basis. It is well documented that bees worldwide are in trouble. From peer reviewed scientific literature to the August 2013 issue of Time magazine, everyone is talking about declines in bee populations.

Bees are vital pollinators and contribute to the pollination of 75% of our crop species, which translates to 35% overall global crop production. The downfall of wild and

“

“Researchers in Stout’s lab are studying drivers of bee decline, and a current project is focused on common rhododendron, a plant known to contain toxins in its nectar. ”

domestic pollinators could pose serious risks for food security and ecosystem function.

Most people agree that the decline of bees cannot be attributed to one specific cause. Instead, multiple pressures such as habitat loss and exposure to new diseases and parasites are probably all contributing. One of the suspected drivers of bee decline that has received a lot of media coverage lately is exposure to synthetic pesticides, especially neonicotinoids (an insecticide similar to nicotine), which end up contaminating the nectar and pollen of bee-pollinated crops.

Surprisingly though, pesticides are not the only potentially harmful chemicals bees are exposed to in their food. They also have to cope with natural plant toxins in nectar and pollen. Plants often produce toxic secondary compounds to defend against herbivorous insects like aphids and caterpillars. We humans tend to use many of these chemicals for our own purposes, for example nicotine (found in nicotiana plants) and caffeine (in citrus and

Illustration: Natalie Duda

coffee plants). But plant nectar is generally thought to function as a reward for pollinating insects like honeybees. Why then do we find these deterrent chemicals in floral nectar? And how are they impacting honeybees and wild bees?

Researchers in Stout’s lab are studying drivers of bee decline, and a current project is focused on common rhododendron, a plant known to contain toxins in its nectar. Common rhododendron is an ecologically damaging invasive plant in Ireland and Great Britain, famous for the problems it has caused in forest ecosystems in places such as Killarney National Park. This plant grows in moist, acidic soil, and often takes over the understory and edges of forests, shading out other floral resources. The work done in College (in collaboration with Dr Phil Stevenson at Greenwich University and Dr Geraldine Wright at Newcastle University) has found that common rhododendron contains a class of toxic chemicals known as grayanotoxins (GTX) in its nectar and pollen.

These chemicals are neurotoxins, which block the sodium channels of insects and cause neurological symptoms, like paralysis. To certain insects, this toxin can be lethal.

Current research by this author towards a PhD with Dr. Jane Stout, in collaboration with undergraduate zoology students Tara English and Sharon Matthews, has been exploring how GTX from common rhododendron nectar affects Irish bees.

The group has been studying honeybees, bumblebees, and solitary bees. The bees were fed sugar solutions that are designed to mimic floral nectar, but bees in one treatment are feed solutions containing the toxin and their survival and behaviour is compared to control groups, fed solutions containing no chemicals.

Surprisingly, the consequences of ingesting GTX from common rhododendron were very different depending on which species of bee was being tested.

Bumblebees can be seen feeding on common rhododendron every May and June in Ireland and so, as you would expect, they have no apparent negative reaction to consumption of GTX. Soli-

tary bees are more rarely found feeding on common rhododendron. In the lab, no differences in survival were detected in one species of Andrena, but these bees did show behavioural changes.

Bees flipped on their backs and twitched for hours after eating solutions containing GTX. They eventually recovered, but one can imagine that this behavioural response could make them easy targets for predators like birds, and prevent them from foraging and provisioning their nests in their usual way.

Lastly, and most dramatically, were the effects on honeybees.

Honeybees showed an almost immediate neurological response to consuming solutions containing nectar-relevant concentrations of GTX: within fifteen to twenty minutes, the bees began twitching and lost antennal function.

Some unrolled their proboscis and could not role the tongue-like structure back in, while others

“

“Differential responses by bee speies to toxins and other pressures means we need to consider bee decline on a species by species basis. It is well documented that bees worldwide are in trouble. Bees are vital pollinators and contribute to the pollination of 75% of our crop species.”

regurgitated the liquid as soon as possible. Regardless of their symptoms, within three to six hours, honeybees fed the GTX solution were dead.

Even though the effect of GTX on honeybee survival is dramatic, compared to the other pressures on the industry, common rhododendron is probably not a huge problem for honeybees. Field surveys by the research team based in College show that honeybees are not found foraging on common rhododendron in Ireland, even when hives are kept in the middle of a forest invaded by the plant. Honeybees have a remarkable ability to communicate which are the best plants to collect nectar and pollen from, and it is likely that they quickly learn to avoid this toxic plant. Still, common rhododendron is likely preventing the growth of other plants that might provide forage resources for honeybees, to some extent changing the landscape in an unfavourable way for this species. But the recent work, in combination with previous studies from Stout’s group, shows honeybees do not represent the entire ecological story. A study carried out in 2006 and 2007 by Anke Dietzsch showed that the number of bumblebee colonies of two species was higher in areas invaded by common rhododendron when compared to uninvaded control sites in both years. Common rhododendron provides a huge amount of nectar and pollen early in spring that this group of bees can take full advantage of. So is common rhododendron good for bees or bad for bees? Turns out it depends what bee species you are talking about.

The species-specific response to the toxin in common rhododendron nectar is surprising, and emphasizes that not all bees are the same. It is easy to group these insects into one category, but the impacts of chemicals and other pressures are clearly very different for each individual species of bee. The new findings also emphasize the many complex and intertwined challenges faced by honeybees in our changing Irish landscape. It is now more apparent than ever that pollinators, including honeybees, need all the help we humans can provide.

TRINITY NEWS

Tuesday 15th October 2013

Sport

Angus Lloyd describes DUFC’s first match of the season against Dungannon.

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Success and Progress in the first tournament of the year for DUUFC

T Rory Macanna DUUFC PRO

he first tournament of the year Trinitea Party was a great success for Trinity Ultimate Frisbee Club.

This is the third year that College have hosted this beginner tournament with the aim to get as many people as possible introduced to the sport to encourage them to keep playing throughout the year.

In this respect the tournament was a great success for the club.

We managed to enter two women’s team’s and four open teams.

Considering the teams had only had two weeks of training together each team did exceptionally well and the skill level of all of the players increased dramatically over the two days. The amount of teams College entered meant that we had smaller squads with less subs. Although this made it hard to beat some of the teams that constantly had fresh players on the sideline it meant that all of our players were playing almost constantly all weekend and this contributed to the remarkable progress DUUFC’s newest mem-

bers made over the weekend.

However a lack of subs did not stop a dedicated group of Trinity’s ladies winning the first trophy of the year for the club.

The ladies teams had a very mixed weekend of highs and lows.

Trinity 2 won all four of their games of their games on the Saturday against DIT, UCC, Trinity 1 and UCD 2. On the other hand Trinity 1 suffered four defeats and was then forced to drop out of the tournament on the Sunday due to lack of players. However Trinity 2 were more than capable of coping with being the only Trinity Ladies team left in the tournament. They began the day with a narrow defeat to to Galway and their zone and this was followed by a close game against UCD 1 which unfortunately went to UCD. However the girls success on the Saturday meant they had managed to secure themselves a place in the final against Galway. They used the break between the matches to work on beating Galway’s zone

“

“A lack of subs did not stop a dedicated group of Trinity’s ladies winning the first trophy of the year for the club.”

which had defeated them earlier in the day and this resulted in a terrific 6–3 win for Trinity to prevent Galway winning the double and getting the first piece of silverware for Trinity Ultimate Frisbee Club this year.

On the Saturday many of the Open teams lack of experience showed and Trinity 1, 3 and, 4 lost their opening few games. Trinity 2 managed to get of to a better star and won all their games on the first day and secure themselves 4th seed going into the second day. The other teams quickly learned from their earlier games and Trinity 4 managed to win their last two games to secure a place in the top eight along with Trinity 2 after a very close cross over game against UCD2. Trinity 1 and 3 also managed to get a win a piece before the end of the day to finish the first day of the tournament seeded 9th and 11th.On the Sunday Trinity 3 and 1 managed to do very well and finish towards the higher end of

the lower bracket finishing 11th and 12th. Their final game of the day was against each other it was a very close game which shows how evenly matched the teams were. Although Trinity 2 and 4 lost all of their most of their games that day you could see a significant improvement in their overall performance as the games were much tighter affairs with Trinity 2 suffering a dramatic one point loss to a Maynooth team with a much larger squad as well as a one point loss to UCD, while Trinity 4 lost narrowly to a strong UCC side. Trinity 4 also only lost by two points to Galway who had been training since the start of September and went on to win the tournament. This was a significant improvement from when they had played Galway in their first game the day before and lost 7-3 and was a real testament to far the team had come in such a short space of time.

Such positive results from what was for most their first ever ulti-

mate tournament can only mean good things to come from this new group of players. Many of them had only been training once or twice before this tournament but that didn’t stop them playing their very best and improving rapidly with each game they played. Their enthusiasm was evident from the word go and hopefully with a bit more preparation we can improve on the results we got at the Tea Party in the other upcoming tournaments. With over forty Trinity players playing excellent Ultimate all weekend and one trophy in the bag it certainly was a positive start to DUUFC’s year.

En garde. Prêt. Allez!

David Byrne details the sport of fencing and recounts DU Fencing Club’s many successes.

A David Byrne DUFC PRO

lthough not officially one of Trinity College’s oldest clubs, the origins of DU Fencing Club can be dated back to the 1700s, when a ‘Gentleman’s Club of the Sword’ existed, primarily for dueling practice. Nearly 300 years on, DUFC can proudly claim to be Trinity’s most successful sports club, in terms of Intervarsity victories, with an impressive 37 titles won in the competition’s 60 year history. More recently, DUFC is currently enjoying one of its most successful runs of form, having last year secured its 6th consecutive Intervarsity victory. That’s the history lesson over, what about the sport itself?

There are 3 different weapons in fencing: foil, épée, and sabre.

With foil the torso, neck, and the groin are the target areas and anywhere else is off target. It is a thrusting weapon and the tip of blade scores the point. The right of way rule (priority) determines who gets the point. In épée the whole body is the target area, including the head. Shouting “Boom! Headshot!” is apparently considered bad etiquette.. Who’d have thought it? Points are scored in the same way as with foil, only without priority. Each fencer can score a hit simultaneously. In sabre, arguably the most fearsome

of all three weapons, above the waist is the target and hits are made either by cutting or thrusting actions. Priority is active, as in foil.

In recent times, there has also been a fantastic surge in people wanting to get fit and take up exercise. Fencing provides an excellent platform for people to achieve this goal. Moreover, there are both individual and team events, meaning both team players and people who prefer to go solo have something to suit them.

Whether your ability is Ninja turtle, or complete beginner, DUFC welcomes people of all levels, even if you just want to try it out and see what its like. This sport is great for improving mental focus, hand eye coordination, and general fitness with cardio and circuit training provided, in addition to the fencing sessions.

With members from the sciences, engineering, the arts and humanities, and the health sciences, there is a large amount of diversity in who joins the club.

There is virtually no expense for its members, also, as twenty three weeks of world class coaching and all equipment is provided by the club for only ¤5. Moreover, there is a great social side to DUFC.

Whether it’s nights out after training, the Christmas party, or one of the many trips around the country to competitions: Cork (Schull Novice Cup) and Galway (Team Nationals) to name a couple, and for the first time, our club will be travelling to England to fence several English universities also.

Finally, some results from the year so far. After a successful season last year, our main goal was to get off to a good start this year, to shake off any cobwebs weaved over the summer months and reestablish the team spirit and focus which proved quintessential to our success. Team Nationals in Galway, and UCD’s Intermediate’s competition provided the first two challenges for our fencers to win some silverware, as well as build confidence. Our fencers decisively rose to the challenge, on both occasions, and put in determined and resilient performances, which were rewarded with four medals from four weapons at Team Nationals, and six medals from five weapons at Intermediates.

This is a great start to what everyone will work hard to ensure is another successful year for DUFC.

Team Nationals: Men’s Épée: 2nd (Max Milner, Colm Flynn, Rory Greenan) Women’s Épée: 2nd (Emily Greenan, Camille Hindsgaul, Evie Clarke) Men’s Foil: 2nd (Max Milner, Killian Hanlon, David Byrne, Ross Byrne) Men’s Sabre: 3rd (David Barker, Luke Dowling, Fionn O’Connor)

Intermediate’s: Men’s Foil: 8th Killian Hanlon Women’s Epee: 2nd Camille Hindsgaul 3rd Olivia Flynn Women’s Sabre: 3rd Olivia Murray Men’s Epee: 3rd Niall O Brien Women’s Foil: 3rd Ciara O Connor Men’s Sabre: 3rd Max Milner

TRINITY NEWS

Tuesday 15th October 2013

Sport

22

Fantasy football: the dos and don’ts this season Sports Editor Cal Gray describes the best picks and strategies for your fantasy football team this season.

Cal Gray

F

Sports Editor

irstly, it must be expressed that we are discussing Barclays Fantasy Premier League because this is the site on which the TCD SU Fantasy League is to be found.

It’s also because the Sky Sports equivalent is s****e.(Prices are accurate as of 20:00 on the 4th of October.)

Many students take Fantasy Football very seriously. Realistically it’s the only way we can feel truly attached to the Premier League as a whole, without actually going to twenty matches every weekend.Anyone who has built a team and then watched the weekend’s subsequent matches will know the sweet joy of seeing your forward score two first half goals, the delight of witnessing one of your midfielders set up a header at the back post, and the distress of seeing your keeper concede four.

With this emotional roller coaster in mind, here’s a short guide to the current season of Fantasy Football to hopefully keep you sane over the coming weekends. To begin, your keeper is a strange pick in FF, as his performance is directly related to the performance of the defenders ahead of him in reality. For example, Michel Vorm is a great keeper, but Swansea have a habit of poor defensive organisation this

year. Vorm can do his best, but his defence letting him down will cost him heavily when it comes to points. So we all tend to jump to the likes of Hart and Cech, but for me they’re over priced (and mostly under-performing,) especially for a position that tends to reap little reward at the best of times.

So far Simon Mignolet has been this year’s highest point scoring keeper, but can we really trust the Liverpool defence to let that continue all season? Therefore I’ve gone for Asmir Begovic of Stoke; a smartly priced keeper (£5.5m) in a well structured defensive team, hence a good safe bet.

I don’t believe in defenders.

Goals are rare from them, and clean sheets aren’t common either, so you’re as well off going for smartly priced first XI players from well structured teams. Fullbacks can also be clever purchases with their position allowing them to regularly put in crosses, but many of them are over priced.

Some solid options are Séamus Coleman and Leighton Baines, the latter of which is renowned for his crosses and goals, but at £7.6m you’d be as wise spending the money elsewhere on the pitch. John Terry is a great call at only £6.2m and he is also the highest point scoring defender so

far this year. A guaranteed starter and regular goal scorer, he’s a must. Robert Huth is another reasonably priced guaranteed starter at only £5.5m and he’ll go well with the previously advised Asmir Begovic in goal. Jose Fonte is only £4.9m and he’s also the 3rd highest point scoring defender this season, seeing as Southampton (until Monday) had crept into the top 4. Luke Shaw is a good option as he marauds down the left for Southampton, and at only £4.7m he’s a bargain. If you do insist on splashing out, Bratislav Ivanovic (£6.5m) is a regular scorer of headers for Chelski.

Another wise move is to not have defenders in your team who will be facing your chosen FF strikers at any particular weekend as it is for rare both parties to score high points. This is indeed hugely difficult to organise, and with only one allowed transfer each week, it becomes pretty near impossible. But do try.

With regard to your midfielders, this is where the game can be won and lost. Having saved your money with a frugal choice of defenders, it’s time to splash out. Arsenal’s Mesut Ôzil (£10.6m) is the most expensive midfielder in the game, but he is also guaranteed to get numerous assists every week-

“

“Substitutes are a waste of time, they are only important if you don’t have faith in your first team, but filling your bench with regular match starters who are incredibly well priced is a good call.”

end, not to mention the odd goal.

Buy him, you won’t regret it.

Man City’s Jesus Navas is destined for Premier League greatness, and with his incredible ability to whip crosses into the box, he’s sure to be a steal at £8.6m.

However, he has yet to truly sparkle at the highest level of English football, so Christian Eriksen of Tottenham might be a better choice. A guaranteed scorer of points with his clinical passes, his valuation of £8.2m seems very fair. Elsewhere, Aaron Ramsey is in the form of his life, and at only £6.5m (and being the highest point scoring midfielder so far) you’d be mad not to buy him.

Newcastle’s Hatem Ben Arfa is a nice place filler, as he’s reasonably priced at £7.5m and known to figure on the score sheet from time to time.

Go for three forwards. Goals mean points, and your strikers score goals. Simple as. Splash out; don’t be afraid to spend most of your money here, but don’t get sucked into the immediate belief that price also means points. Robin Van Persie is valued at £13.9m, the most expensive player in the game, but so far he has only achieved 22 points, which is a tally less then half that of Liverpool’s Daniel Sturridge, who will

‘only’ cost £9.7m. Alvaro Negredo is a strong shout beside Sturridge, as he seems to be Manuel Pellegrini’s go-to striker; a title justified by his tally of goals so far this season. Tottenham’s Roberto Soldado is a solid option at £9.5m, but his lack of potency in front of goal so far means his North London rival, Olivier Giroud (also £9.5m) might be a better choice.

Christian Benteke started well, but injury has ruled him out until at least the 26th of October.

Substitutes are a waste of time, they are only important if you don’t have faith in your first team. That being said, filling your bench with regular match starters who are incredibly well priced is a good call, in case you get stuck on match day. Leon Britton (£4.3m) comes to mind, as does Ryan Bennet (£3.9m) and Hull’s Paul McShane is more of a collector’s item than a valuable acquisition.

At the end of the day, it all comes down to luck. All of the aforementioned players in this guide could go on to get injured inside five minutes of their respective matches this weekend, but as the old saying in football goes, you make your own luck, thus educated choices are wise choices.

DUFC lose out to Dungannon in first clash of the season Angus Lloyd describes DUFC’s tough first game of the season.

O Angus Lloyd Contributor

n Saturday last, College travelled north to Dungannon in search of their first win of the AIL campaign. After a disappointing result in their first match the previous week against corinthians, the students were looking to make amends.

But right from the off trinity were in trouble. Straight from the kick off Dungannon regathered the ball and went wide, where the students were narrow. Some great work from two Ulster a player’s, Chris Cochrane and peter nelson set up dungannon for a superb try in the corner which was duly converted.

It wasn’t long before Dungannon were back in opposition territory and after great work from their forward pack, they found a hole in the students fringe defense, which led to a well taken try. This gave home side a comfortable 14/0 lead.

The students though were resilient and dominated for long periods of the match. The pressure resulted in two penalties both of which were well taken by place kicker conor Kearns. This left the score at 14/6. With time left on the clock the students mounted many more attacks on oppositions try line but were denied a score each time by an error. Late on dungannon scored another try to put the homeside out of sight.

The final score finished Dungannon 21 trinity 6.

The students performance improved greatly from last week but too many handling errors and key moments cost them dearly.

The pack worked hard and were dominent for a lot of the game whilst the back showed glimpses of the silky handing the are capable of producing. Overall it was a disappointing result but there can be many positives taken from the game. There is a lot to be confident about heading into the next game and I think it would be unwise to write off this young trinity team so early in the season.

Dungannon

21 vs Trinity

6

Crossing the line: the introduction of hawk-eye technology in soccer Soccer is moving into the 21st Century, and James Larkin tells us how this could benefit the game for years to come.

T James Larkin Contributor

he Premier League season has just kicked off for the 22nd time.

This season marks a new beginning for the Premier League with the introduction of goal line technology. The system used by the Premier League is called HawkEye. Hawk-Eye is not as simple as one might think; fourteen extra cameras are needed in each grounds with seven for each goalmouth. Once the ball has completely crossed the line a watch on the referee’s wrist vibrates and informs him that a goal has been scored. The decision of whether the ball crossed the line or not is based on information accrued by the cameras. This advancement has been in the offing for quite a while and it has arrived amid much debate and scepticism. Now one must ask a number of questions; is goal line technology a worthwhile addition to soccer? If so, then why was it not introduced when it was first available several years ago? Finally, is there more technology out there which could improve the game of soccer?

In Thaler and Sunstein’s book Nudge, they analyse human de-

cision making and how it can be easily influenced. They suggest influencing it in order to improve humanity. One of their major examples of how easy it is to influence human decision making is the idea of inertia. Inertia is a tendency to do nothing or remain unchanged, Thaler and Sunstein use the phrase status quo bias instead of inertia and define it as the “strong tendency to go along with the status quo or default option”. A striking example of this given in the book is a study carried out by Eric Johnson and Dan Goldstein (2003) about organ donation. They found that when people had to opt in to being an organ donor only forty two percent did so meanwhile when people had to opt out of being an organ donor eighty two percent of people became organ donors.

This is striking as it shows that the default option holds a huge advantage over all other choices.

The default for soccer has been the use of no technology, this is understandable seeing as its earliest form dates back to approximately 100 B.C. but imagine if

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“It’s quite clear that goal line technology should’ve been introduced as soon as possible.

Had it been available in 1966 England might not have won the World Cup.”

once goal line technology was introduced to the world it became the default option for soccer. Fans would not have been outraged after Pedro Mendes’ disallowed goal against Roy Carroll in 2005, England fans wouldn’t have been claiming to have been cheated by the Germans in the 2010 World Cup when Frank Lampard saw his clear goal disallowed, and perhaps AC Milan would’ve gone on to win Serie A if Sulley Muntari’s header against Juventus had been allowed in 2012.

It’s quite clear that goal line technology should’ve been introduced as soon as possible. Had it been available in 1966 England might not have won the World Cup as a study carried out by the engineering department at Oxford University found that England’s third goal in the final against Germany was not actually a goal as the whole ball did not cross the line. These important decisions clearly show that goal line technology can have a very serious impact on results. It’s worth noting that hawk eye has got error bounds of +/- 3cm so there’s still a little room for dubious calls.

The above discussion about goal line technology is now rather moot seeing as it has now been introduced to soccer but it leads to further debate about what other technology soccer could benefit from. The primary candidate is video refereeing. Goal line technology is a form of video refereeing but this is not what I am referring to. What I mean when I say video refereeing is more analogous to what we see in rugby in the form of the television match official; a human reviewing video footage in order to make a decision regarding an event that was unclear to the match officials on the pitch. This type of review is not only seen in rugby but many other sports such as cricket, basketball, and baseball to name a few. There are a huge amount of possible applications of video refereeing to soccer ranging from assessing whether a player dived to checking whether or not a ball went out for a corner. Perhaps if video refereeing had been introduced several years ago Ireland might have gone on to win the 2010 World Cup rather than being eliminated from the qualifier

by a goal resulting from a dubious hand ball. Or perhaps Ireland would have lost in extra time of that game, who knows.

My argument here is not that new technology such as hawk eye and video refereeing should be immediately implemented as the default, this would clearly be farcical as it would lead to numerous Professor Pat Pending-style inventions being introduced to the game. My argument here is simply that when one of these technologies is made available to soccer that neither its introduction nor its absence be considered the default but that the two options are given equal grounding and that a forum for debate over the subject be opened until an option is chosen. If this approach is adopted by the relevant bodies it can only improve aspects of the sport rather than detract from it. At the moment the governing bodies of soccer are stuck in the “if it isn’t broken don’t fix it” mentality which will leave them with an outdated sport.

TRINITY NEWS

Tuesday 15th October 2013

23

Sport

Can The RaboDirect PRO 12 Compete?

Niall Brehon investigates how the RaboDirect PRO 12 stacks up against the Heineken Cup, and if it’s worth following the boys in red, blue, green and white this season.

T Niall Brehon Staff Writer

I have a largely apathetic relationship with rugby right now.

The sport as a visual product at this time of the year is uninspiring, particularly with the Premier League in full sway, the Champion’s League midweek striptease, and coming off the highs of the summer’s gaelic football and hurling action (not to mention the Lions Tour). With the Six Nations months away and no easy access to Heineken Cup rugby without Sky Sports – and who knows how long that tournament will exist – I pose a simple question: how can the RaboDirect PRO 12 compete?

Firstly, the name has to be changed. Sure, I get it. For the same reason we have the Aviva instead of Lansdowne Road, or in 2011 were briefly subjected to the Sports Direct Arena instead of St. James’ Park in Newcastle, or the Barclay’s Premier League or the Liga BBVA (Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria), the clunky moniker “RaboDirect” is foisted upon the “bread and butter” of Irish, Welsh, Scottish and Italian rugby. Money is important, after all; and to be associated with a pure beacon of good feelings and happiness like sport is worth a lot of money, surely. However, the Super 15, (Aviva) Premiership and Top 14 (Orange) aren’t referred to in such an unserious, offhand fashion as “the Rabo”.

The best leagues, cups and competitions are those which can send anticipatory shivers down your spine with their name: The Champion’s League, the F.A. Cup, the Majors, the Grand Slams, Sam, Liam – even the Heineken Cup works to a great extent. If you’re going to brand a tournament, make sure it feels right – as the aforementioned Heineken Cup and the competition’s previous Bulmer’s / Magner’s League incarnations attest to (although the writer here is perhaps acknowledging both nostalgia and a disturbing need for alcoholic beverages in his final year of his undergraduate degree). The point remains that it is difficult for the

largely uncommitted follower of rugby to get excited about a straight-talking savings bank. It just doesn’t quite fit.

Though becoming increasingly open to foreign talent, Irish rugby retains a local identity of its sporting heroes almost comparative with gaelic football and hurling. In the Premier League, with teams like Everton promoting Ross Barkley, something that will always get the fans cheering is the local youth who makes the grade. Though there are only the four provinces in Irish rugby union, the same situation exists to a large extent. I am proud that Devin Toner and Martin Moore (both Leinster) attended my secondary school, and Sean O’Brien’s work with Tullow RFC is wellknown.

Which is why it grates when O’Brien, Jamie Heaslip and Ireland’s other rugby stars are linked with better-paid moves abroad, following in the footsteps of Jonathan Sexton. Keeping the best players would not only improve the Rabo product; it would maintain close links between supporter and player that are so often missing in the highest levels of team sport when money is involved.

As the Heineken Cup faces an uncertain future, perhaps now is the time to embrace the changes. As it stands, ten of the twelve teams in the Rabo generally get to participate in European rugby’s premier competition. To relative outsiders like myself, it would seem that changes to the structure wherein only six teams enter the top competition would actually spur competition in the Rabo league, as stronger teams would have to be fielded in a race for sixth place, as happens in England’s Premiership. Indeed, the Top 14 is considered by some of those who compete in it a more valuable prize than the Heineken Cup. This lies in stark contrast with the Rabo, where shadow XV’s are often coughed out to do battle in substandard contests,

witnessed by only the hardiest of hardcore fans. Of course the proposed changes would be awful for rugby in Ireland, Scotland, Wales and Italy – but from a pure perspective of increasing tension and excitement, and improving the competition, change might bring some unexpected benefits.

To conclude, one is fully aware of the role money plays in this situation; how money is necessary to keep the players in Ireland, and its necessity leads to the branding of the competition as the RaboDirect PRO 12. It’s well known that the Heineken Cup is the money maker for provinces, and how, if this changes in any way, players will leave and the standard of the Rabo will decrease. I’m aware that hands are tied and, without money, most changes are largely pointless and potentially damaging. However, writing purely from the perspective of someone who used to love rugby, something needs to be done for the RaboDirect PRO 12 in its current form to compete for the hearts and minds of sports-lovers.

“

“As it stands, ten of the twelve teams in the Rabo generally get to participate in European rugby’s premier competition. “

Premier league miscellany

w Jack Hogan Staff Writer

Jack Hogan gives us the run-down on the teams and players to watch in this season’s Premier League.

As the Premier League takes a break for the final round of World Cup qualifiers, what better time to examine how the table is shaping up so far?

Sunderland sit at the foot of the table with only a point from their opening seven games. While the club’s directors made a big (and correct!) decision in sacking the notorious Paolo Di Canio, interim manager Kevin Ball has a huge task on his hands in steadying the ship and bringing this team back on the road to recovery. While the Black Cats showed some signs of improvement against Liverpool and Manchester United, it is against the teams around them in the bottom three that they will really need to perform in the coming weeks. The priority for the club must be to name a permanent manager sooner rather than later.

Also in the red zone are Crystal Palace. Manager Ian Holloway gained great respect in years gone by for the attacking prowess and open style of his teams, most notably during Blackpool’s rollercoaster Premier League campaign a few years ago. However, his new Palace team seems more reserved in their play as they return to the top flight of English football. While he has struggled with injury setbacks, Holloway must galvanize his squad, spend in the January transfer window and get more points on the board unless he wants to face a second straight relegation as a Premier League manager.

At the top, Arsenal and Liverpool continue to play leapfrog in an attempt to reach that number one spot. The Gunners have been in fine form of late, with new midfielder Mesut Ozil fitting effortlessly into the side while Aaron Ramsey has come into his own as a playmaker and goal-scorer.

They were unlucky not to snatch victory at the Hawthorns in an effort to keep Liverpool at arm’s length. However, with a busy European schedule, Arsene Wenger has the added challenge of keeping his squad fit – a problem that his closest rival Brendan Rodgers does not face.

The Reds have overcome their setback against Southampton with two convincing performances against Sunderland and Palace.

The injury to Phillipe Coutinho

“

“At the top, Arsenal and Liverpool continue to play leapfrog in an attempt to reach that number one spot.

The Gunners have been in fine form of late, with new midfielder Mesut Ozil fitting effortlessly into the side while Aaron Ramsey has come into his own as a playmaker and goal-scorer.”

against Swansea was a big blow and his absence was telling during the defeat to the Saints at Anfield. However, the return of Luis Suarez has given renewed confidence to Liverpool. With three goals in two games, the Uruguayan has also been invaluable in his link up play with Daniel Sturridge, who has also continued his excellent run of goal-scoring form. Brendan Rodgers will be praying that his strike force returns unscathed from the international break as Liverpool attempt to mount something of a title challenge in the opening weeks of the season.

Manchester City returned to winning ways by brushing past Everton following their narrow defeat at Villa Park. If ever you needed evidence of the changing tide of footballing ascendancy in Manchester, City’s 4-1 thrashing of United provided it. The Red Devils continue to struggle under David Moyes and sit in the middle of the table. However, United fans caught a glimpse of what the future holds as 18 year-old Adnan Januzaj grabbed the headlines following his excellent performance at Sunderland. Tough times are ahead for David Moyes as he continues to adjust to a new club and search for the right blend. He will no doubt be expected to achieve maximum points in United’s next three League games: at home to Southampton and Stoke and away to Fulham.

Speaking of the Cottagers, Martin Jol gained some welcome respite with a deserved win over Stoke to lift them out of the bottom three.

However, Fulham along with the Potters, Norwich and Michael Laudrup’s out-of-sorts Swansea, remain level on points precariously close to the bottom. Newcastle and West Ham earned valuable wins to ease the pressure on their managers, while Hull City continue to punch above their weight. While it’s early days yet in the league, the table is slowly beginning to take shape. As we approach the winter period, we can look forward to plenty more action, drama and goals.

TRINITY NEWS

Tuesday 15th October 2013

Sport

Rory Macanna of DUUFC recounts their first tournament of the year and their hopes for countinued sucess in the year ahead. p.21

Photo: Atalanta Copeman-Papas

Speaking from experience Jennifer McCahill meets the Chairman of Ducac, Professor Cyril J. Smyth to discuss everything from his time as a lecturer to how College compares to other universities in relation to sports.

T Jennifer McCahill Deputy Sports Editor

he office of Cyril J. Smyth, Chairman of Ducac, is a flurry of activity when I arrive as they deep in preparations for the Ducac AGM. Two minutes into our interview and someone pops their head around the door to finalise details for the meeting. It’s not hard to understand why Cyril has been elected for a second three year term as Chairman of Ducac; his resume speaks volumes.

With athletics being his main sport of interest, he became involved in sport in Trinity in 1980 going on to run his first marathon at college races that year, followed by the impressive feat of running the Dublin City Marathon in under three hours in 1981.

With the encouragement of Terry McCauley, the Facilities Officer at the time, he became involved in helping with helping with athletic events in college park and was subsequently asked to come onto the Duhac committee as VicePresident in 1985, becoming President in 1987, a position which still holds. Outside of college, as a member of Bray runners since 1983, he is involved in Athletics at a club level, county level as Treasurer of the county board and at national level as a National Officer and a National Athletics Official. After becoming a member of the Ducac executive in 1990 he acted as honorary Treasurer for ten years until 2001. In 2001 he was approached by the newly elected Provost and offered the position of Senior Dean at which point he stood down from the Ducac executive.

In 2008, after retiring as Senior Dean, he was again elected to the Ducac executive as Treasurer and then Chairman in 2009, in succession of Trevor West who epitomises absolutely everything about giving something to college as a member of staff having given forty-three years of service to Ducac and steering it through some very difficult financial times.

Unfortunately difficult financial times are something which Ducac is currently dealing with. When I enquire about Ducac’s funding

the response is a startling one.

“The Capitation grant that is divided between the Capitated bodies – if it does not increase this year it will not have increased for nine years. So Ducac and other capitated bodies are operating on the budget that we got eight years ago despite the fact that students might be paying more.”

Ducac currently works within a cap of fifty societies and the question as to why College doesn’t offer more sports is answered simply: “If there were more clubs, with the budget limitations that we have at the moment, the money would just be spread thinner and thinner and thinner until it would not be productive in terms of trying to push clubs forward to achieve”. Even still, the budget doesn’t stretch far enough and Cyril is all too aware that many sportsmen in College have to fund a substantial portion of what is required to compete for College themselves.

Despite all this, sport in College is constantly improving. Most notable is the development of GAA within College in the last five years with the return of men’s GAA to the Signerson Cup. “Trinity was regarded as a place that didn’t have any stature in terms of GAA…I think when the president of the GAA visited Trinity two years ago he was quite surprised at the developments in GAA in Trinity.” There have also been advancements in CollgeRowing, with the introduction of a new coaching structure from freshers upwards that bodes well for the future of rowing in College.

College also offers sports like fencing and the rifle club that most people don’t have access to at school, which are very successful at the moment. I’m curious to know what he thinks of the fact that the bursary Trinity Sports Scholars are offered isn’t on par with those offered in UCD and DCU and he is quick to dispel any doubts that Trinity Sports Scholarships are inferior to those offered by other universities and Institutes of Technology in the

country. “Well in truth the number of people at UCD and DCU or NUIM who have scholarships that include rooms, fees, medical bills, physiotherapy is actually very small…we believe that it’s not just a financial attraction, isn’t everything about a scholarship we try to provide other things to our sports scholars including seminars for example on nutrition, lifestyle, how to handle the press if you are a Natalia Coyle.

Our sports scholars have access to the physiological testing laboratory, the anatomy department and this year they’re also going to have cardiac screening. So I think that we do provide other tangible supporting structures which are just as important as any financial input.”

Cyril is also keen to stress that sport in College is for everyone, as are the advantages of playing sport and active participation in a sports club. “The whole idea of having sports facilities is not just for elite sportsmen or clubs it’s for all students. I think being active within a club or having a go at a sport is very important. I’m sure that there are many sportspeople present and past who look back at their time within a sports club and think of the friends that they’ve made the friends they have still the people that they are still in contact with – they love coming back to Trinity to Alumni events to meet up with the people they ran with, played soccer with, played rugby with and this brings them a link and if you actually ask them about their time in Trinity College possibly some of the things they remember most vividly are their times participating in sport rather than their time spent studying. Quite often when people talk about Trinity they talk about the extracurricular activities. They talk about the fact that not only do you get an education when you come to Trinity you get the possibility of engaging in lots of activities whether it’s sport or societies that develop you as a person so that when you leave Trinity you don’t just have

“

“Our sports scholars have access to the physiological testing laboratory, the anatomy department and this year they’re also going to have cardiac screening. So I think that we do provide other tangible supporting structures which are just as important as any financial input”.

a degree you have gained other skills.”

One of his fondest memories of sport in Trinity over the past few years was his Trinity Olympians endeavour. “It was a fantastic research project that I undertook, which involved going back as far as 1908. This was the first one we could identify and in fact it was the Hockey team – six Trinity students played on the Irish hockey team at the Olympic games in London in 1908 and we had a couple of athletes in those games as well. You had to be either a student or a graduate to qualify and it was just amazing finding these people and we had a fantastic get together on the day of the torch relay and I think that I would remember one of the successes of putting the modern generation of clubs in touch with their past.

After all students turn over every four years the memory of a backward knowledge is very very easily lost and I think it’s important that clubs keep a historical record of past successes because that gives them the will to achieve if their predecessors in a club have been successful then you say then why don’t we have a go why can’t we get our club back into the first division why can’t we win the universities championship.”

With an office in the Moyne Building having run the Microbiology Department from 1988 to 1994 Smyth had a view overlooking college park, a pivotal venue for sports in Ireland having hosted the first ever athletics meeting in Ireland and the first competitive football match between two Dublin clubs: ”It’s a fantastic historical setting for sport so once you get that into your head you think sport in Trinity is important….When I retired I could have left Trinity but I had been so involved with sport in Trinity I just felt that it was one way of giving back to an institution that, like Trevor, I love. I came to Trinity in 1980 and I’ve loved every minute of it” and as a result is eager for Trinity students to get the same enjoyment out of the sports

clubs offered to them. “I would encourage everybody to have a go at something the opportunity is there it’s not too late to engage in a sport. It doesn’t really matter whether it is fencing or judo…the clubs are there and they welcome freshers. You quite often hear freshers talking about the fact that they were actually made to feel very welcome within a club certainly club members will give them encouragement, because potentially you could have a golden nugget there someone who has never tried the sport before has the forte to be very good at it. My encouragement to any student who hasn’t been along to the sports centre would be to come along and activate your card, try something, join a sports club.” His take home message with fourth week upon us is simple “Have a go!”