Trinity News, volume 59, issue 5

TRINITY NEWS

Tuesday 20th November 2012

www.trinitynews.ie

Protesters keeping vigil for Savita Halappanavar outside Leinster House last Wednesday. Coverage inside.

Photo: Dargan Crowley-Long

CSC forbids Gender Equality Society from adopting pro-choice position Duges prohibited from “espousing corporate opinion” on political issues; CSC maintains specific objection to pro-choice and pro-life societies in College; discussions on possible Students’ Union referendum for long-term policy on abortion

T

Ian Curran and Rónán Burtenshaw

News Editor and Editor

rinity News understands that the Central Societies Committee (CSC) halted all political advocacy activity by the DU Gender Equality Society (Duges) in anticipation of a meeting between the two bodies yesterday. The instruction, made over the weekend by the CSC, led to Duges pulling plans to attend the march in memory of Savita Halppanavar on Saturday.

The move comes after a Duges representative group attended both the Wednesday night vigil for Ms Halappanavar at Leinster House and last month’s March for Choice. Attendance at these events with Duges was promoted on the society’s public Facebook group.

Duges had no comment to make on Monday about the issue, and a source has told Trinity News that the content of the meeting that took place “will remain private”.

After Wednesday night’s vigil a society member suggested on the Facebook page that a poster-making session be organised for the march on Saturday, to which the society’s chairperson, Polly Dennison, replied that the CSC was “cracking down” on the abortion issue. Further communication at the end of the week led Duges to cease all campaigning, including its engagement with the Don’t Be That Guy campaign, with which the society intended to participate in an event on Monday with Trinity College, Dublin Students’ Union.

Responding to questions posed

by Trinity News, the CSC secretary, David Doyle, said the CSC had stated “that Duges may advertise marches to its members” and that members, as individuals, “may attend such marches under the Duges banner”. He confirmed, however, that the society may not “espouse a corporate opinion” on a political issue.

The statement went on to say that “the activities that [student societies] partake in are governed by their constitutions and the stipulations upon which they were recognised”. CSC also maintain a specific objection to the foundation of pro-choice and pro-life societies on the grounds that ”there is an inability for such societies to exist beyond a limited period of time surrounding national debates on the issue”.

The CSC statement also said that, since the Students’ Union was the “only representative body for all students in Trinity College”, political advocacy “necessarily fell under their remit”. The union does not currently have a mandate advocating a position on reproductive rights, although it does have a “schedule 10” longterm policy about providing information on abortion.

Responding to the situation yesterday, the Students’ Union president, Rory Dunne, said that he “saw logic and reason” in students wanting to pass a mandate advocating a stance on the issue of abortion. He added that he was aware “there were discussions about the possibility of a referendum to institute a long-term poli-

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InDepth - p8

cy” on abortion, but did not know how advanced these discussions were.

The CSC’s position is a reaffirmation of the position stipulated in the minutes of the executive meeting at which Duges received provisional recognition as a society in 2006. These show that a specific agreement was made between the society and the CSC that the society “cannot espouse a corporate opinion” on issues.

This agreement came after what is described as a significant “degree of discussion” which had occurred “prior to the group’s constitution being presented for consideration”. Trinity News understands that the issue of abortion formed part of these discussions. It is recorded in the minutes that “College” had expressed opinions on the issue.

By last Sunday evening, society members had posted in support of the group pursuing a pro-choice mandate in the public Facebook group, with Ms Dennison indicating that she felt this would be prevented by the CSC. This follows members of the organisation attending the Savita Halappanavar protest in an individual capacity on Saturday. Trinity News has spoken to students who placed posters for the march around College at the end of the week, in contravention of College rules.

Despite this, there was no official Trinity presence on Saturday’s march. Societies from other universities were present, including the UCD Pro-Choice Society,

as well as the Union of Students in Ireland’s equality section.

The executive minutes from 2006 also mention that the society “may not act as a conduit for external groups to operate within the college”. Trinity News understands that student societies which are connected to parent organisations, like party-political societies or DU Amnesty International, are subject to different standards on political organisation.

However, several groups without parent bodies are listed along with Duges in the CSC’s “advocacy and activism” category. Three of these groups – the Animal Rights Society, Environmental Society and Pirate Party Society – have political remits.

Another society, Q-Soc, is listed under “social”, but engages in “LGBTQ equality campaigns” and has a campaigns co-ordinator who is in charge of organising “awareness and protest campaigns run by the society”. Last year this included civil marriage and trans* rights campaigns. The group has also attended Dublin’s Pride parade march with a Trinity Q-Soc banner, and organised a mock wedding in conjunction with Amnesty International in December 2011.

In addition, a number of religious organisations have been engaged in political advocacy, with the now-defunct Falun Gong Society attending anti-Chinese Communist party demonstra-

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TRINITY NEWS

Tuesday 20th November 2012

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News

What They Said Continued from p1 tions, the Jewish Society being involved in last year’s Trinity Against Fascism campaign and the Muslim Student Association bringing a banner to the 2009 protests in Dublin against Israel’s Operation Cast Lead.

An anti-abortion society had petitioned the CSC for recognition in 2008 but was declined.

A number of other universities, such as UCD, National University of Ireland (NUI) Maynooth and NUI Galway, have explicitly pro-choice societies, or societies which advocate a choice position from a feminist perspective. UCD also has a Life Society, which is anti-abortion.

Trinity News understands that the issue will be discussed by the Duges committee in the coming days, but will not be raised at the society’s term general meeting, which takes place at 7pm this Friday in room 3051 of the Arts Building. The meeting will elect a new secretary, a treasurer and two ordinary committee members.

Speaking to Trinity News, Mr Dunne stated that the Students’ Union does not currently have a mandate to campaign on the issue of abortion for the students of the college. The union currently has a “schedule 10” provision that empowers it to provide information on abortion.

In discussion with Trinity News, a former Duges chairperson who wishes to remain anonymous said that “the CSC had had concerns about Duges being active on the abortion issue”. When pressed on the reasons why the CSC would be concerned, the former chair offerred a personal opinion “that CSC just don’t want to deal with it because of their ‘dislike of hassle’”.

The former chair said that it is also because the CSC “want no excuse for a pro-life society”. The

ex-chair said that the CSC would not want pro-life groups undertaking graphic campaigns in College. However, this manner of campaigning is already restricted within College on two fronts.

The first rule is put down in the College calendar, in the “Posters and Notices” section. It states that all posters displayed on Trinity grounds have to comply with nine equality positions laid down in College regulations, and must also “comply with the College dignity and respect policy”.

It also states that posters should “not create an offensive or hostile environment for any individual or group in College”.

A second rule protecting students against graphic campaigns is provided for in the CSC’s officers’ handbook, which reads: “Posters which contain offensive or inappropriate photographs; abusive language or offensive written content; advertisements for or photographs of alcohol are not acceptable. The CSC does not operate a policy of censorship but it requires that societies show an awareness of the sensibilities of others.”

Duges had been criticised by members of the society for not being visible at Saturday’s march.

A post on the public Duges Facebook page dated Sunday 18th November said: “If there was ever a time for Duges to take a pro-choice position, it’s now.

And it will stand against us if we don’t.” There followed a discussion about why Duges had not been in attendance. Ms Dennison reiterated that the society would be “meeting with CSC to discuss this” on Monday.

“ “ “ “ I’m going to go with a horse-sized duck, because I’ve always believed in power in numbers and I think I could be thwarted by the 100 small horses.

The sound I hear when I see Christmas advertising in November is the Baby Jesus crying.

Mark Little Former Trinity News editor and Students’ Union president, and founder of Storyful (@marklittlenews)

John Logue The USI president, when asked whether he would rather fight one horse-sized duck or 100 duck-sized horses.

My pop-ups have suddenly gone from women in underwear to women who are completely naked. Does the internet have levels?

Am I winning?

The SU server has been redditted. I have been drinking. Fuck.

Conor Smith Webmaster of the Students’ Union’s web server (@conorsmith)

Kate Cunningham Former politics and philosophy student (@KateLCunningham)

Students’ Union march shelved Planned demonstration to lobby Kevin Humphreys cancelled; Students’ Union says local TD has “no constituency office as such”.

Catherine Healy Student Affairs Correspondent With just over two weeks until the announcement of the budget, plans for the Students’ Union to march on the constituency office of the Labour party TD Kevin Humphreys this week have been called off. The march would have been one in a series of nationwide demonstrations organised by the Union of Students in Ireland (USI) as part of its wider campaign to target specific government TDs based on their political ties with the minister for education and skills, Ruairi Quinn, or perceived electoral vulnerability.

Speaking to Trinity News, the Students’ Union president, Rory Dunne, said Humphreys has “no constituency office as such” and that he was reluctant to stage a march on the local community centres where the TD for the Dublin South East constituency holds his clinics. He said he was “not sure” as to whether any sort of protest would take place this week.

The news comes after Humphreys’ failure to appear at the USI’s public meeting on the cost of third-level education, last Wednesday. Despite having been invited to address students’ concerns, Humphreys tweeted his apologies earlier in the day, stating that the meeting clashed with his allocated speaking time in Dáil Éireann that evening.

Speaking at that night’s debate on a private members’ bill proposed by Fianna Fáil – which, before amendment, had called on the government to refrain from increasing third-level registration fees – the government TD stressed the scarcity of resources and said his “priority is to ensure that the maximum amount … are targeted at primary and second-level schools, which I have seen ignored for decades in my community”.

The motion had been amended to omit any reference to the student contribution charge and, under Quinn’s instruction, to stress that successive Fianna Fáil administrations had “[brought] to an end the era of free third-level education in Ireland”.

Humphreys’ statements were further echoed at that night’s public meeting by Aodhán Ó Ríordáin, the Labour TD for Dublin North Central, who told the audience that his priorities lie with the funding of primary and secondary education for the disadvantaged youth of his own constituency. Like “every other Labour politician”, responded the USI president, John Logue, he was tactically “pitting one group against another”.

It was after this meeting that students proceeded to hold a short protest in the viewing gallery of the Dáil Chamber at Leinster House. During the debate, Logue was arrested for disobeying Dáil standing orders by refusing to leave the gallery after turning his back on the chamber. A USI

spokesperson called it a “peaceful act of civil disobedience”.

The shelving of any plans for a public demonstration by Trinity students comes as a number of students made online criticisms of what they perceive as an overly-personal publicity campaign.

The Students’ Union’s posters and literature against Humphreys include a number of large displays around College featuring the TD’s image beside the slogan: “Kevin Humphreys: hiking your fees and cutting your grant.”

As part of the focus of this year’s USI pre-budget campaign on local, targeted lobbying, the organisation has supported a series of smaller regional protests against key government politicians.

The largest demonstration so far has been in Galway, where over 1,500 students from the National University of Ireland, Galway, the Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology and Athlone Institute of Technology marched last week on the office of Derek Nolan, the Labour TD for Galway West.

Along with the students’ unions of Dublin Institute of Technology and the National College of Ireland, Trinity’s union had been assigned Humphreys as the target of their combined lobbying efforts in the run-up to the budget on 7th December. According to Dunne, Humphreys has told him that he will continue to support the rise in the student contribution charge, which the government intends to increase to ¤3,000 by 2015.

The Labour party TD Kevin Humphreys.

Ifut renews threat to pull out of Croke Park agreement over Trinity dispute Catherine Healy

EDITORIAL STAFF Editor Deputy Editor Art Director Web Editor Copy Editor Deputy Copy Copy Staff News Editor Deputy News Student Affairs News In Brief InDepth Editor Deputy InDepth Comment Editor Deputy Comment Science Editor Deputy Science Sports Editor Deputy Sports Photography Editor Deputy Photography Editor-at-Large Public Editor School Co-ordinator

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Student Affairs Correspondent

The Irish Federation of University Teachers (Ifut) has threatened to withdraw its co-operation from the terms of the Croke Park agreement. This development has arisen from College’s continuing refusal to reinstate three workers who were made compulsorily redundant last year.

The move has come two months after the Department of Education and Skills ordered

that College “immediately implement” the labour court ruling that the redundant workers be reinstated.

Speaking to Trinity News, Ifut said that “serious consideration” will be given at the next meeting of its executive on 8th December as to “whether it is reasonable for Ifut members in other colleges to continue to co-operate daily with the ongoing productivity

The Ifut general secretary, Mike Jennings.

measures required by Croke Park, when the employer side is unable or unwilling to ensure compliance by their side.”

Mike Jennings, the Ifut general secretary, listed a number of possible actions that might be taken by the federation’s members if College continues to ignore the labour court ruling. He referred to the full economic costing (FEC) programme, whereby union workers work with colleges to identify the cost of activities, and the academic workload model, which requires staff to record their daily activites, as two stipulations which Ifut members might cease to co-operate with.

Both are programmes which were agreed upon under the terms of the Croke Park agreement.

Another proposal is that the federation would refuse to assist in implementing the recommendations of the Hunt report and the report on the structure of initial teacher education provision. Amongst the suggestions proposed by the latter report is that the education departments in Trinity, University College Dublin and the Marino Institute of Education would be merged into a new “super-academy” for teaching.

Jennings said: “I think the minister [for education and skills, Ruairi Quinn] is counting on our support … In ordinary circumstances we would want to co-operate with this, but we would not be doing so until the situation was resolved.”

While ruling out any industrial action on the part of the federation’s members, Jennings stressed the pressures that have been placed on college workers due to the productivity models outlined under the Croke Park agreement.

He pointed to the “enormous increases” in student admissions as staff numbers continue to decrease.

The labour court ruling in April accepted that that the compulsory redundancies of three workers in Trinity, one library worker

and two lecturers, constituted a breach of the Croke Park agreement. The case saw Ifut successfully argue that the workers’ indefinite contracts afforded them permanent employment status and, as such, should have protected them from redundancy under the agreement’s terms.

Trinity’s long-standing position is that the duration of the contracts was dependent upon continued external funding. College claims that the funding for these positions ceased to be available and that it is not in the financial position to reinstate the workers.

Its stated position in September was that it was “unable to implement the [labour court] recommendation on reinstatement due to the precedent it would set and the risk of ensuing unsustainable costs”. When asked for a comment this weekend, the college said: “TCD is still working to resolve the matter.”

This latest threat from Ifut marks one of the most significant challenges to Trinity’s position since the labour court ruling seven months ago, with College having ignored instructions from both the Department of Education and Skills and the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform on the matter.

The federation’s statement has called on “those charged with ensuring compliance with the Croke Park agreement [namely the National Implementation Body for the Public Service Agreement] to apply the same attention to TCD as has so conspicuously been applied to other parties who have been perceived as defying the Government’s national industrial relations strategy”. It concludes: “The union has been extraordinarily patient and restrained over the past six months … So far, our patience has apparently been taken for granted and our redundant members continue to be forced to suffer the loss of their employment with TCD.”

TRINITY NEWS

Tuesday 20th November 2012

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Thousands attend Savita Halappanavar march

G Ian Curran News Editor

ardaí estimate that between 10,000 and 12,000 people took part in Saturday 17th November’s march and vigil following the death of Savita Halappanavar in Galway University hospital last month. Organisers put the crowd number closer to 20,000 people.

The crowd gathered at the Garden of Remembrance in Parnell Square at 4pm, and began marching to Merrion Square at 4.20pm after a number of speeches from the organisers. Visible from O’Connell bridge as the marchers passed was a large banner reading “Legislate now” draped over the Ha’penny bridge. The crowd proceeded past College Green and up along Nassau Street. As Kildare Street was cordoned off to accomodate maintenance works by Bord Gáis outside the Shelbourne hotel and on Merrion Row, the procession continued to Merrion Square, arriving there at approximately 5.15pm, at which time the crowd was urged to light candles.

A makeshift stage was erected on a truck directly opposite Leinster Lawn next to Government Buildings, where the organisers gathered to make speeches. At 5.20pm the crowd was asked by the co-ordinator, Sinead Kennedy of the Action on X group and Irish Choice Network, to observe a minute’s silence in memory of Halappanavar.

Kennedy then called upon Sinéad Ahern, a spokesperson for Choice Ireland, a Labour party activist and former lady mayoress of Dublin, to make a speech.

Ahern told the crowd that she hoped that the number of people present would be some comfort to Savita’s “friends and family and husband”. She described the event as “just a step on a long road” to protect women’s rights and health in Ireland. She said that the government’s “failure to legislate is no longer unfortunate; it is now unacceptable.” Before

Photo: George Voronov beginning a chant of “shame on Labour”, Ahern stated that after the march, “never again will there be stigma, shame or an excuse to say that abortion is not an issue for Irish people”.

The next speaker to the podium was Ann Rossiter, a 70-yearold Irish activist with the Abortion Support Network who lives in Britain and has provided support for Irish women that travel to England for abortions. She told the crowd that she had felt “heartfelt sorrow” for Irish women in London. She described re-

Marches, meetings and an arrest with launch of USI Stand Up campaign

cent events as a “major juncture in Irish history”. Her husband, an Indian doctor also living in England, stated that up until now there was only one country that caused “protests in every major town in India, and that was Britain”; Ireland now had a claim to the same status.

Clare Daly, the TD for the Dublin North constituency who entered a bill for legislation on the X case to the Dáil earlier this year, gave a speech lauding the support that the march had received.

After praising those who had

Ruairí Casey and Ian Curran Deputy News Editor and News Editor The Students’ Union’s participation in the new Stand Up campaign co-ordinated by the Union of Students in Ireland (USI) began with a public meeting in the Alexander hotel last Wednesday, 14th November. The meeting saw a number of USI and political representatives discussing third-level funding. Kevin Humphreys, the Labour party TD who is the focus of Trinity’s component in the national Stand Up campaign, did not attend as he was due to speak in Dáil Éireann that evening.

Following the meeting, approximately 100 USI members moved to the Dáil’s viewing gallery, as TDs debated a Fianna Fáil private members’ bill regarding failures in the student grant system and other educational supports.

As the bill was defeated by the government, a number of the USI members in attendance stood and turned their backs to the chamber. The USI president, John Logue, was the last individual to refuse to obey the instructions of a Dáil steward by retaking his seat, and was subsequently arrested by gardaí.

Elsewhere in the country, the campaign is also under way. Public meetings have been held in Dundalk, Sligo, Limerick, Cork, Castlebar, Letterkenny, Galway and Maynooth; two more are scheduled in Tralee and Waterford before the end of the month.

Galway, Sligo and Cork have already seen USI-organised protests, with another due to be held in Dublin today. At the time of writing, the USI’s online petition has a total of 772 signatures.

USI estimates that between 2,500-3,000 students attended the march in Cork city. The union stated that students of Cork Institute of Technology (CIT), whose students’ union is not affilated to USI, joined the march. USI also reported that the CIT Students’ Union president, Danny O’Don-

ovan, is “very keen to get involved”. O’Donovan is quoted by USI as having said that CIT Students’ Union would “stand in solidarity” with USI and the students’ union of University College Cork.

Marchers were met by the lord mayor of Cork, Jerry Buttimer.

The Sligo march was attended by around 100 individuals. USI states that the reason for the low number was the fact that individual colleges are allowed to “pick and choose their tactics” in the campaign, and that the Institute of Technology, Sligo “didn’t buy into the protest”. However, USI has stated that IT Sligo’s students’ union “have been doing great work on campus getting students in contact with their TDs”. The march was attended mainly by students from St Angela’s College, Sligo.

At the time of going to print, three demonstrations were planned for Monday 19th November. The first was planned for 12.30pm, with students of St Angela’s College, Sligo set to march to the offices of the Fine Gael TD, John Perry. The next demonstration was set to take place at 1.30pm, when the student’s union of Dundalk Institute of Technology was scheduled to protest outside the offices of Peter Fitzpatrick, a Fine Gael TD. At 1.45pm, the students’ unions of University College Dublin and the Dún Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology were scheduled to march on Eamon Gilmore’s offices.

According to the USI, “Gilmore is being targeted because both institutions are in his constituency and because he, as leader of the Labour party, pledged to preserve access to third-level education before general election 2011.”

The USI has also continued to maintain a solid media presence, with Logue appearing recently on RTÉ’s The Frontline and TV3’s Tonight Show with Vincent Browne.

The USI received some recent public support when the president of Dundalk IT, Dennis Cummins, openly opposed any increase in third-level fees, becoming the first head of a

third-level institution to do so. A number of TDs have also come out against any increase in student contribution fees.

The USI’s new policy follows a number of years in which an annual mass protest in Dublin by student unions from across the country failed to halt fee increases and cuts in maintenance grants. Last year’s march saw a steep decline in numbers from the previous two years.

Speaking to Trinity News, the USI president, John Logue, stated that people who were previously “reluctant” to engage with the USI “have found themselves with a sense of ownership over the campaign”.

He said that he talked to a number of TDs who said that the USI is “getting [its] message across on the student assistance fund and the grant in a way that we never have before.” He mentioned that the situation with the student contribution “doesn’t seem to be as hopeful”; however, he added that the USI is “willing to push it to the last day to ensure that the TDs are getting our message.”

The Stand Up campaign is designed to exert continual pressure at a local level, specifically aiming at individual TDs. By applying pressure locally, the USI hopes to channel the power of the angry constituent voter against TDs in vulnerable seats.

“In your hometown, in your college, you are the most important factor in whether this campaign will succeed,” the campaign’s website states.

Under the “How?” section of the website, the USI provides a set of three mechanisms for students to get involved.

Firstly, it urges students to sign the Stand Up petition and to spread the message to their friends. Secondly, it provides a template email for students to send to their local TD “telling them that you won’t take it anymore”. Thirdly, it asks students to download a Stand Up toolkit which has promotional materials for social-media sites as well as stickers and t-shirt templates.

similar.

Daly’s comment was echoed by Kennedy who, after Daly’s speech, stated that if the government did not legislate, “we will bring this government down”. The demonstration ended with Kennedy asking the crowd to vow that they would attend another demonstration at 6pm outside the Dáil tomorrow, 21st November.

Several attendees placed posters inside the railings of Leinster House; an on-duty garda began removing the posters, but stopped after pressure from pro-

testers.

The march was one of several that took place in Ireland and Britain on Saturday. In Eyre Square in Galway, 1,000 people gathered for a candlelight vigil organised by Galway Pro-Choice.

Earlier in the day, Indian nationals living in Galway staged a ceremony outside Galway University hospital, placing white roses under a photo of Halappanavar.

Giorgio Agamben speaks on biopolitics Renowned philosopher, cultural theorist and State of Exception author comments on changing relationship between the artist and the work of art at Trinity conference.

Aaron Devine TN2 Editor

Public meetings in towns around Ireland to see students’ unions targetting vulnerable TDs.

sent her emails saying that they were “there in spirit”, she broke the news: “If the government does not move this week to legislate, we will reintroduce our bill as an interim measure.”

In her speech, Daly described Halappanavar’s death as “death by political cowardice” and called the taoiseach, Enda Kenny, a “political pygmy”. She said that governments had been “brought down in this country over VAT on children’s shoes”, and that the issue of women’s lives was important enough to do something

The eminent academic Giorgio Agamben visited College on 31st October as part of a conference entitled Biopolitics, Society and Performance. Organised in conjunction with Dublin City of Science 2012, this three-day symposium was co-hosted by the Arts and Technology Research Lab and the Long Room Hub. Agamben, an Italian philosopher who is a visiting professor at University of Paris 8, is regarded as one of the leading cultural theorists of his generation.

Widely known for his criticism of the “war on terror” and the US response to 9/11, he infamously refused to give a lecture in the United States as he would have been required to give up his biometric information, something he regarded as being tantamount to the tattooing that the Nazis did during the second world war.

The author of numerous books, such as Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Stanford University Press, 1998) and State of Exception (University of Chi-

cago Press, 2005), Agamben boasts an extensive CV, with the University of California, Berkeley and Northwestern University being examples of American colleges where he has held professorships. He is also a director at the International College of Philosophy, alongside other academic heavyweights such as Alain Badiou.

His attendance at the event was therefore something of a coup for organiser Prof Steve Wilmer, of the School of Drama, Film and Music: “We were delighted that Giorgio Agamben was able to visit Dublin for the first time in his life to attend our conference. His work on biopolitics has been very influential since 9/11, as a result of the arbitrary abuse of the concept of habeas corpus in the USA and the introduction of new interrogation techniques such as waterboarding.”

Outlining the thought behind putting the conference together, Wilmer adds: “It was designed to bring together people from many different disciplines to discuss current regulations and procedures that control our lives.”

Agamben’s keynote speech

did, however, address some other cultural issues. Entitled The Archaeology of the Work of Art, his hour-long lecture was delivered to an almost-full Tercentenary Hall in the new Trinity Biomedical Sciences Institute on Pearse Street.

Wilmer suggests that, for Agamben, it was exploring “new territory, namely the relation between the artist and the work of art”.

Beginning with the ancient Greeks, he argued how the relative position of the artist has changed through history. Moving into the twentieth century, Agamben suggested how artists had become more important than the work of art.

Wilmer then says that, through the example of the situationists, Agamben “pointed out how artists in the 1960s became more committed to political interventions than to the artwork by an individual artist.”

The talk, which encompassed numerous different theses, concluded with the notion that the artist rather than the artwork has become “the form of life”.

This particular thesis was then interrogated thoroughly by mem-

bers of the audience who were allowed several minutes to pose questions, although occasional communication problems presented themselves due to a slight language barrier.

Aside from Agamben’s much-anticipated address, the conference, as Wilmer states, played host to a variety of other keynote speakers: Rosi Braidotti, a leading feminist theorist; Thomas Lemke, who has written an important textbook on the discourse of biopolitics; Oron Catts, who experiments with bio-art; and the performance artist Kira O’Reilly.

The delegates were also addressed by Professor David McConnell, who made what Wilmer deemed “a lively and controversial speech, promoting the advantages of genetically modified food and suggesting the need for a national DNA database.”

Very much an international affair, the conference featured papers delivered by academics from as far afield as the University of Alberta, the University of Melbourne, the University of Pennsylvania and all over Europe.

Photo: Communications Office, College

TRINITY NEWS

Tuesday 20th November 2012

News

Comment Aonghus Ó Cochláin

News In Brief

News InBrief Editor

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Hist elects new auditor amid voting irregularities

USI blamed for low student turnout in referendum

Voting for the position left vacant by the recent resignation of the former College Historical Society auditor John Engle was held from 9am-4pm on 2nd November, amid controversy surrounding the large number of appeals lodged on the day and the expansion of the Hist’s electoral register prior to the election.

Hannah McCarthy defeated Sally Rooney by 37 votes to 18, out of a total of 55 votes. Both had previously run for the position, being beaten by Engle last year.

Two additional committee members were also elected: William Dunne and Oscar Tuohy.

An electoral subcommittee (ESC) of the Hist was established on Wednesday 31st October to oversee the byelection. Controversy arose surrounding whether attendance at the society’s inaugural meeting, held on 24th Octo-

Alan Farrell, a Fine Gael TD for Dublin North, has criticised the Union of Students in Ireland (USI) for low participation of students in the children’s rights referendum. The referendum, which was held on Saturday 10th November and passed with a Yes vote of 57.4%, only saw 33.5% of the population cast their vote.

The weekend polling, it was hoped, would better facilitate students who do not live near their constituency during the academic year. Although official statistics showing student turnout are unavailable, Farrell expressed his disappointment regarding the lack of student campaigns prior to the referendum. In criticism of the USI, Farrell commented that the body did not seem to have “done anything” to promote student in-

ber, should have been considered valid for the purpose of determining which members of the Hist have attended enough meetings to be eligible to vote; unlike regular Wednesday night events at the Hist, no attendance book was kept at for the inaugural, making it difficult to determine who was in fact at the event. A large number of society members made late appeals to be included on the amended version of the electoral register.

The chair of the ESC, Eamonn Bell, read a report at private members’ business on Wednesday 7th November (before a debate on hedonism) which discussed the concern regarding the high number of oral appeals on the day: “The ESC has had a habit of devolving the responsibility to determine eligibility to presiding officers, with them taking appeals

on the day and making on-thespot adjudications on eligibility.”

A total of 22 out of 26 viva voce appeals heard were successful.

Several recommendations were made toward establishing more concrete electoral timeframes following a resignation, a stricter emphasis on committee members signing in for meetings and debates, and for vive voce appeals to be disallowed on the day of an election.

Suggestions were also made regarding a change to the stipulation in the society’s laws that eligibility to vote be dependent on debate attendance; the possible inclusion of the inaugural meeting for electoral purposes; the defining of what constitutes attendance at a debate; and clarification of the appeals process.

Merger of educational agencies into new QQI The minister for education and skills, Ruairi Quinn, has announced the formal establishment of Quality and Qualifications Ireland (QQI).

The amalgamated qualifications and quality assurance authority is set to be a replacement of the National Qualifications Authority of Ireland (NQAI), the Further Education and Training Awards Council (Fetac), and the Higher Education Training and Awards Council (Hetac).

The body will similarly take over functions of the Irish Universities

Quality Board (IUQB).

The QQI will fulfil the roles of the former agencies such as quality control, validating educational programmes, making awards to learners and assurance of institutions involved in further and higher education and training.

Maintaining the National Framework of Qualifications is another stated goal.

A recent development includes the granting of a code of practice and an International Education Mark for institutions responsible for enrolling international stu-

volvement.

The USI, however, has maintained it organised voter registration drives and motivated local students’ unions to encourage student bodies to vote. The union’s president, John Logue, stated that the USI had taken a stance and advocated a Yes vote: “In fact, we have been promoting the referendum since July, when a representative of the Campaign for Children was invited to speak to incoming students’ unions from across the country at USI’s students’ union training event about the importance of student participation in the referendum.” He further noted that the USI worked with Spunout.ie, appeared on national and local radio stations, released a joint press release with the Campaign

for Children and participated in a photo call with the minister for children and youth affairs, Frances Fitzgerald.

Logue remarked that the low student turnout should instead be attributed to the “glaringly obvious” factor that the delay in distribution of the maintenance grant prevented students from covering their fare to return home in order to vote.

The Students’ Union president, Rory Dunne, told Trinity News that a motion supporting the amendment was passed at a council meeting last year, and that the union’s communications office kept students informed about the referendum through postering and social media campaigns.

Poll backs move to casual Fridays for Commons

dents.

Quinn commented: “The establishment of the QQI represents the fulfilment of a commitment in the Programme for Government and is part of the government’s overall programme of rationalisation of state bodies.”

Following the announcement of the merger, Quinn issued his thanks to the staff of the four agencies for their contribution to Irish qualifications and facilitating progression opportunities for learners.

Susi facing heat for grant delays A delay in the processing of third-level student grants by the centralised grant-making body, Student Universal Support Ireland (Susi), has been attributed by the body to students failing to submit necessary documentation. Out of the more than 66,000 students who have applied for a grant, only 3,010 have been paid.

The new online student-grant application system was established under the Student Support Act 2011 in an effort to reform the grant system. Susi processes all maintenance and fees grant applications, a job that was previously handled by 66 different grant bodies (local authorities and vocational education committees) across the country.

The number of students who were awarded a student grant, either for the first time or as a continuing grant, has increased on a yearly basis. Additional staff have

been hired to deal with the enormous backlog of applications.

The minister for education and skills, Ruairi Quinn, has apologised to students and their parents for any hardship caused by the grant logjam.

He remarked: “It is not acceptable for colleges to prevent students from accessing libraries, email accounts, lecture notes, or any resource because their grants have not yet been processed.”

Accepting responsibility as the government minister overseeing the area, he said it will not be time for an inquiry until the problem is solved and the stressed Susi body has been fully resourced. The Higher Education Authority has written to all higher education institutions for leniency regarding the delayed payments.

The president of the Union of Students in Ireland, John Logue, has come out in criticism of the

government’s handling of the backlog, remarking: “Even students that provided their full documentation are only going to be paid their full instalment in December.”

He further commented on problems with the low level of staff, training of staff in grant regulations and issues with communication where students and parents are unable to get sufficient advice on the application process.

Quinn stated that he hoped 33,000 grants would be processed

by Christmas. The crisis has become a source of increasing outrage and unrest among students, many of whom are reporting financial difficulty in paying rent and buying food.

20th-anniversary Pink training held by USI Pink training, Europe’s largest training event for LGBT officers, was hosted by the Union of Students in Ireland (USI) last weekend at University College Cork.

The event drew delegations of students from USI-affiliated colleges across the country. Kathleen Lynch, the minister of state for disability, equality and mental health, launched the event, with the LGBT rights advocate and Fine Gael TD Jerry Buttimer also attending.

Primarily focusing on LGBT students but also welcoming al-

lies, the weekend featured training modules focused on issues affecting lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youth.

Workshops over the course of the event included sessions entitled Coming Out, Supporting a Friend Who’s Coming Out, Looking After Your Mental Health, Sexual Health, Transgender Awareness, Running an LGBT Society, Bisexuality Awareness, Being an LGBT Ally, and Sexual Empowerment, as well as talks on lobbying and media skills.

Laura Harmon, the USI

vice-president for equality and citizenship, commented on her delight at the high amount of delegates attending from colleges across the country, as well as at seeing new colleges attending the event. With Pink training being the largest training event the USI runs and celebrating its 20th anniversary, Harmon said: “Pink Training provides a safe space for LGBT students to network and share ideas, and the level of interest in the event this year has been unprecedented.”

Graduate-tax plan could take precedence over upfront fees A radical plan presented by the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) would see student fees eliminated and the implementation of a graduate-tax scheme, with the government funding third-level education for students until it becomes repayable after graduation.

The economic thinktank has said there is need for a reform in higher-level education, with a greater contribution coming from students and graduates financially. Having graduates repay the cost of their studies once a certain earning threshold is reached is one way for the government to gain a return on education expenditure.

The proposed framework, known as an income-contingent loan (ICL) scheme, is similar to systems already in operation

in other countries such as Australia, the UK, New Zealand and Canada. Rather than what traditional graduate taxes resemble, where students pay off their debt through the course of their entire lives, the proposal will involve a levy on earnings for a specific period of time only.

Although there are no current plans to extend fees beyond the student contribution charge, that charge is set to increase from €2,250 to €3,000 by 2015. According to the ESRI, abolishing the upfront costs presented by the charge in favour of the proposed graduate-tax scheme will be particularly relevant for middle-income families who are not eligible for the maintenance grant.

Anticipating a rise in student numbers by more than 40,000 to 168,000 by the year

2020, the ESRI predicts a need for an increase of €500m a year in spending for higher education. The proposal was part of a selection of papers released by the Higher Education Authority (HEA) discussing the future of third-level education in Ireland, one of which was a proposal for the merger of various universities and institutes of technology.

In relation to the formal proposal of a merger between Trinity and University College Dublin, the minister for education and skills, Ruairi Quinn, commented: “Any divergence has the potential to significantly derail the process of reform which is already well underway.” The authority is due to deliver a final set of proposals to Quinn by April.

Gabriel Beecham Deputy Copy Editor Commons, the main meal of the College community, could be rescheduled permanently on Fridays following the results of a trial period which saw the evening meal move to lunchtime.

Between 28th September and 26th October, Friday Commons was held as a buffet lunch instead of the usual three-course dinner. In an email to scholars last June, the secretary of the Scholars’ Committee, Tony O’Connor, said that a number of fellows had proposed a trial of this new system in order to encourage more of College’s younger fellows to attend (as is the case during the long vacation in the summer, when Commons is regularly held at 1.05pm).

Scholars unable to attend at lunchtime due to lectures, placements outside of College or other reasons were able to avail of a free lunch in the Dining Hall or the Hamilton Restaurant on the Fridays in question.

An initial poll of scholars for their opinions on the change was strikingly close, with 73 opposed to the suggestion and 69 in fa-

vour. A second poll held after the trial found a majority of scholars now supporting the proposal, by 98 to 57.

Commons is currently held at 6.15pm in the Dining Hall every weekday during term (except for public holidays), and at 1.05pm during the Christmas period and the summer. The provost, fellows, scholars and sizars are entitled to have their Commons free of charge; others may attend by purchasing daily tickets from the Catering Office.

The number of fellows attending on Fridays during the trial period trailed off from an initial high of over 40 to around 20. An increase in the number of fellows attending on other days of the week – another stated aim of the trial – failed to occur. A final decision has not yet been made regarding whether to make the change permanent.

As late as the 1960s, Commons was being served every day (including Saturday and Sunday), and twice an evening on weekdays during lecture term; all students resident in College were required to dine in the hall at least five times a week. A joint proposal

by College’s treasurer and agent in 1964 to make Commons voluntary was strongly resisted by

lecturers and tutors, who felt the meal should continue to be subsidised and that non-residents, including women, should also be admitted.

A memorandum submitted to the Board in 1965, based on a research tour conducted by the treasurer and the agent on catering practices at seven British universities (including Cambridge and Oxford), highlighted several issues such as rising food costs and resentment at obligatory payment. First steps at liberalisation came with obligatory attendance being reduced to four times a week in Trinity term, and non-residents being permitted to dine all year round; compulsory Commons for residents was eventually abolished in 1972-73.

Despite the efforts of the Student Representative Council (the predecessor to today’s Students’ Union) to encourage voluntary attendance, numbers dropped sharply over the next few years until few except scholars were signing on; this is still the overall pattern today. The present move represents the first major change to Commons since 1977-78 when weekend sittings were discontinued.

Rise in demand for assistance fund Catherine Healy Student Affairs Correspondent There has been a 60% rise in Trinity students applying for the student assistance fund, according to the Students’ Union president, Rory Dunne. Speaking at a town hall meeting on third-level funding, held last Wednesday 14th November at the Alexander hotel and organised by the Union of Students in Ireland (USI) in conjunction with the students’ unions of Trinity, the Dublin Institute of Technology and the National College of Ireland, he revealed that the number of fund applicants since the start of the academic year was now over one and a half times the overall number for last year.

Similar trends have been identified at a number of other third-level colleges in recent weeks, in light of continuing delays faced by thousands of students who have applied for grants through Student Universal Support Ireland (Susi), the new cen-

tralised grant-making authority set up this year by the minister for education and skills, Ruairi Quinn. A backlog of payments through the new body has meant that over 60,000 students have still not received their first grant instalments of the year.

Financed by the European social fund with support from the Department of Education and Skills, the student assistance fund is available to all full-time students who are experiencing unexpected hardship during the course of their studies.

It provides financial assistance to those whose participation in college would otherwise be at risk, and is primarily accessed by students who have qualified for the grant but may require further aid in times of particular financial strain, a spokesperson for the senior tutor’s office told Trinity News.

Speaking at the USI’s public meeting last Wednesday, Dunne told the audience that the Student Union’s welfare officer, Aisling Ní Chonaire, now keeps a box of food under the desk in her office for students facing particu-

larly severe financial difficulties.

Ní Chonaire told Trinity News that financial strain is “the reason the vast majority of students come [to the welfare office]”.

With recent cuts to the student assistance fund, she stated further that there would be “effectively no money left at the end of the year to take over to the next”; unlike in previous years, when there would have been a surplus of about €60,000, the balance carried forward fell to €19,000 last year. She said that, in light of the delay in grant payments, her office’s interest-free €100 loan has been a much sought-after assistance.

“You come to college and think you have independence,” she said.

“You might have that part-time job for a few extra quid. Then something changes, like one of your parents losing their job, and you have to grow up quite quickly. You realise that money can’t be spent on clothes, or nights out, or lunch in KC Peaches. That’s the reality now.”

InDepth

Rónán Burtenshaw talks to the PeruvianAmerican rap artist Immortal Technique on politics and hip hop.

All in the technique

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Photo: George Voronov

Part of the union: John Logue The Union of Students in Ireland president was briefly arrested last week for defying Dáil standing orders, but he is unchastened . Rónán Burtenshaw talks to the student movement leader about the USI’s new campaign, and its future tactics.

Q. Rónán Burtenshaw Editor

How do you think the Stand Up campaign has gone so far? You spoke to Trinity News at the outset about two specific goals: to democratise the USI and make it a more grassroots organisation, and also the strategy to build pressure on local TDs rather than aim exclusively at a national level.

How have those two goals fared?

A. One thing we have learned along the way is that building up a movement is a slow process. You have to start small. I think quite a few people are jaded about the idea of protest after four or five years of the national march. But what we’ve seen is that the approach we’ve taken – where you attend a public meeting first, then talk to your class reps before engaging with a campaign – has worked. I think people who were reluctant have found themselves with a sense of ownership over the campaign.

I’ve spoken to a number of TDs and they say that we are getting our message across on the student assistance fund and the grant in a way we never did before. We’ve even had some say to us – and I do treat this with scepticism, but it’s important nonetheless – that they are willing to make it a red line issue for the budget. The situation with the student contribution doesn’t seem to be as hopeful, but we’re willing to push it to the last day to ensure that the TDs are getting our message.

Q. There is a sizeable community of students, probably larger in Trinity than anywhere else, that would like the USI to end protesting altogether and transform itself into something more like a professional lobbying union.

What is your reply to them?

A. I think it would be a seriously naive step. We only have to look at the Savita protest to see that when people come out en masse onto the streets it builds pressure on politicians and forces them to respond. If we aren’t seen to

have a big group of students behind us, if we aren’t getting media coverage, then we’re nowhere. If we hadn’t have had the protests across the country we’ve had in recent weeks, then we wouldn’t be getting the sort of media attention we’re getting at the moment – on The Frontline, Prime Time and Vincent Browne.

In order to be able to lobby effectively, you have to be showing up on the streets. I don’t think people quite grasp that in order to be good at one you have to be good at the other. In some senses that’s why the [Irish Farmers’ Association] are good, it’s because people know they can back up their lobbying with 20,000 people on the streets. They have that bow in their arsenal. So I do not think they are mutually exclusive; it’s absolutely essential that we do both.

I extend this to those who think we should just protest, too.

That would be delusional as well.

There needs to be a political operation behind the scenes as well.

But we probably need a better consistency of protesting. The idea that one march on a given day, or even around the country that one march per college is enough, I don’t think that’s going to cut it. We need a greater build up. And not necessarily just with students – we wanted to make this campaign about everybody, talking about how parents, communities and local businesses were affected by higher-education cuts as well.

One thing that I’ve taken from this campaign is that this cannot end on 5th December. We’ve got to take this up as our mantle for the year. We’ve got to convince people that protecting higher education is to the benefit of everyone in the country, regardless of whether you attend it or not. I think more protesting, if it’s getting that message out there, is something I could only encourage.

Q. Does the USI need solidarity

in the long-term with academics and staff in universities to defeat cuts to services, or are they oppositional to students because of the scarcity of funding? If it is the former, how will the USI approach the Croke Park agreement, when USI officers’ criticisms of that in the past have been widely read as an attack on workers in colleges?

A. There are a number of ways to look at that. From my personal perspective, I would love to work with the university and institute of technology staff because, having spoken to many in recent months, I believe that they have the best interests of students at heart.

There’s a perception that staff in higher education are all on obscene salaries. This isn’t true.

There are a lot of hard-working staff who get paid median-level salaries. The argument has become polarised, and this is a failing of USI as well, because much of the talk is about people like Dr Mike Murphy in UCD who’s on €232,000 per year. It leads to the presumption in debates that everybody in higher education is overpaid, which is not true.

I think, if we could tackle those issues, the best thing we could do would be to team up with staff in the higher education institutions.

It would make a strong statement that we are not going to pit one group in the sector against the other in a race to the bottom.

Q. If you were to identify one piece of waste and/or one way in which the increase to the student contribution this year could be offset, what would it be? Where could the money be found?

A. As one example, as we have shown, if you take 2% from the pay budget of higher education – while protecting its lower-paid workers – we would not have to increase the student contribution this year. The net income from this year’s student contribution increase will be around €18.5m.

Taking that 2% out of the pay budget would be €17m.

But there are also other opportunities. I think we should get serious in this country about online learning. When I say this to people, they turn their noses up at the fact that I’m trying to change education into a non-campus entity. I’m not advocating that. But there are a lot of people – and I almost always think of my dad in these cases – who never got to go to college because they were young in Ireland way before the free-fees scheme. They never got that opportunity to access thirdlevel education. They would probably dearly love the opportunity to now, with the economic downturn, to avail of the opportunity to upskill or reskill.

Online, distance and flexible learning – if we develop them in Ireland – will give people this flexibility. If you look at the model from the University of Phoenix in Arizona, they offer a basis for education for people who can’t come to campus, which saves money. It’s also the case that, if you introduce online and distance-learning technologies for students off campus, you’re increasing the quality of services available for students on campus.

Our argument this year has been almost realistic to a fault.

We say, and we know, that they are not going to give us any more money this year. We just would like to see all other potential avenues of funding exhausted before we hit students and families.

We’re just not seeing that. And it makes people like me who are student representatives more and more angry. Which leads to me, in both senses, turning my back on TDs. Q. The Phoenix recently covered Young Fine Gael’s campaign against USI, which has involved leading the charge for disaffiliation in both Trinity and University College Dublin. Do you think there’s a cynical aspect to that, given that they are the youth wing

“

We’ve got to convince people that protecting higher education is to the benefit of everyone in the country, regardless of whether you attend it or not.” of a party of government?

A. I have received a lot of stick for my past membership of Ógra Fianna Fáil, even though no-one mentions the fact that when I was deputy president of USI I protested outside more Fianna Fáil doors than most people in other parties ever did.

I do think there is a campaign

by Young Fine Gael against an organisation that is causing them hassle. But I have to commend Labour Youth for not doing this.

They have consistently stood on principle and been willing to oppose their parent party, and that’s commendable. The difference between YFG and Labour Youth on this front is stark. YFG are much more like what I remember Ógra Fianna Fáil being like when I was a member: it was all about defend-

ing the party, and I never agreed with that. It’s one of the reasons I ended up leaving. In lots of ways this has affected the kind of democracy and politics we’ve had in Ireland, but it doesn’t mean that the next generation have to fall into that as well.

YFG are one of the best-placed organisations in the country to make a difference to the lives of students and their families in this country, and I don’t see them doing it. They’re hiding behind a pie-in-the-sky graduate-tax model and throwing a lot of empty rhetoric at us.

Q. The graduate-tax model came up again this weekend on the front page of the Irish Independent, with a report by the ESRI. What was your reaction to that?

A. I’d take a bet, and I’d get money back on it, that this is Ruairi Quinn trying to deflect attention away from the increase of the student contribution. It’s trying to take our attention away from the problems with the current system, and onto a model we’re even more scared of.

Ruairi Quinn knows himself – and he has said it to me – that the graduate tax and studentloan systems won’t work in this country. He has no intention of ever bringing it in. This is political kite-flying, a manoeuvre designed to deflect us.

Any academic I’ve spoken to recently who advocated a graduate-tax model in the recent past now accepts that it is no longer a feasible system for this country.

I think it’s about time we started facing up to a contribution that is way too high, and talking about getting a funding model that is fair and equitable. We need to move away from the empty rhetoric of graduate taxes and student loans that, it’s clear, aren’t going to work here.

Read the full transcript of TN’s interview with John Logue at www.trinitynews.ie

TRINITY NEWS

Tuesday 20th November 2012

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InDepth

Sally Rooney on the fog that Irish doctors are faced with regarding abortions.

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Doctors and X

Bringing back Bacon The late artist’s studio, meticulously reconstructed at the Hugh Lane gallery on Parnell Square, leaves Irish art enthusiasts ar muin na muice, says Lara May Ó Muirithe

F Lara May Ó Muirithe Staff Writer

rancis Bacon’s reconstructed studio at Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane – the contents of which were donated by Bacon’s sole heir, John Edwards, and secured in 1998 by the gallery’s director, Barbara Dawson, and the executor of Bacon’s estate, Brian Clarke – is the most important donation that the gallery has received since Sir Hugh Lane donated his collection of modern art to Dublin in 1908. In addition, its archeological relocation is unprecedented. Opened to the public as a permanent exhibit in 2001, the database contains entries on approximately 570 books and catalogues, 1,500 photographs, 100 slashed canvases, 1,300 leaves torn from books, 2,000 items of artist’s materials and 70 drawings as well as articles from Bacon’s correspondence, magazines, newspapers and vinyl records.

In order to see the studio and the rest of the exhibition – including the “micro-studio”, which is based on the studio’s database and offers access to the work and influences of the artist – the visitor must walk through the rest of the gallery’s permanent collection. This journey through the gallery enforces the argument that Bacon was part of an artistic continuum and built upon the legacy of iconic Western painters such as Monet, Degas and Renoir, who each reinterpreted European painting. When considered as part of the whole of the collection at the Hugh Lane, the studio enhances the notion of artists in dialogue with one another, both directly and indirectly, across a trans-historical period. At the Hugh Lane, as well as elsewhere, Bacon has been claimed as a “modern master”. The exhibition addresses themes of legacy, inspiration and influence, as well as artistic process and method.

Originally, the donation was to go to the Tate Modern in London and the Hugh Lane’s acquisition was something of a surprise.

Edwards said: “A little corner of South Kensington moved to Ireland, his birthplace … I think it would have made him roar with laughter.” Until the announcement of the donation, an event which was covered by the global press, few had been aware that Bacon was born in the Dublin.

He was born at 63 Lower Baggot

Street to English parents and resided in County Kildare until the age of 16 when, following a disagreement with his father, he left Ireland permanently and went to London. He travelled extensively throughout his life; in 1961, Bacon moved to 7 Reece Mews in South Kensington, his principal home and studio for the rest of his life.

The exhibition presents the relocation of the studio as something of a homecoming, suggesting that Bacon later drew from a reservoir of images from his formative time in Ireland.

The findings of the studio, especially when cross-referenced from what was already known from other sources, seemed to offer evidence supporting the view that the type of self-image that Bacon carefully asserted throughout his career was based on reality. A famous drinker in London’s Soho (the friends he met there would inform his deeply personal form of portraiture), the empty cardboard crates of vintage Krug and Taittinger champagne testify to the reality that lay behind his image. Having said this, other items in the studio complicate what was already known about him. It is particularly difficult to ascertain the degree to which the artistic, bohemian image associated with Bacon was something that he embodied perfectly, or something that he self-consciously cultivated throughout his career. One of the more conceptual tasks for the curators at the Hugh Lane would have been negotiating this balance. In some ways, the exhibition is implicated in promoting the idea of the artist genius, and it attests to the singularity of the artist’s position within our culture. Certain curatorial decisions have perhaps served to romanticise Bacon’s “plight”; one of the quotations on the wall reads: “The cluttered, paint splattered studio with its thick layers of debris and toxic paint pigments must have exacerbated Bacon’s acute asthma.” Bacon painted in a solitary and laboured manner, but the decision to recapitulate and, moreover, emphasise the old idea of the artist suffering for his craft is hardly the richest addition to an otherwise stellar curatorial project.

In more significant ways, however, the exhibition radically

“

It is angled so that the viewer can never fully gain a total view, but can only peer in at different angles; presumably this is to shroud the studio in mystery.”

dispels Bacon’s self-mythology through the uncovering of important sources. As Margarita Cappock wrote in the Burlington magazine in 2003, the most important discovery from the studio was a considerable quantity of works on paper by Bacon. Although some of his friends knew that he would make preliminary sketches for his paintings – it has since been described by the distinguished art critic and curator, David Sylvester, as his “secret vice” – he persistently denied this in public. In 1962, Sylvester enquired: ‘‘And you never work from sketches or drawings, you never do a rehearsal for the picture?’’ Bacon replied: “I often think I should, but I don’t. It’s not very helpful in my kind of painting. As the actual texture, colour, the whole way the paint moves, are so accidental, any sketches that I did before could only give a kind of skeleton, possibly, of the way the thing might happen.” Indeed, in a 1985 documentary with Melvyn Bragg for the South Bank Show, Bacon emphatically denies this, saying that it was “so much better to immediately attack the canvas with paint”. That this is documentary is projected in the

first room of the exhibition is an important curatorial strategy, as it serves to highlight the disparity between the fiction that Bacon propagated - of himself as a painter who engages immediately and voraciously with his paint, almost in an “inspired” way – and the reality of draughtsmanship that constituted his preparatory work and was revealed by the found drawings. The discovery of the preparatory drawings adds a layer of understanding to Bacon’s process.

The most arresting visual element of the entire exhibition is the installation of the studio, which the gallerists have called the “macro-studio”. It is angled so that the viewer can never fully gain a total view, but can only peer in at different angles; presumably this is to shroud the studio in mystery. Bacon was one of the greatest colourists of the 20th century and a myriad of colours and textures dominates the space. The paint on the walls distils an impression of Bacon’s experimentation. He created strange and shocking concentrations of colour within his images as well as experimenting widely with the paint’s viscosity, and the

total effect was one of non-realist intensity, with the artificiality of his shadows creating a sense of despair on the canvas. His oeuvre of figurative painting is one of the most powerful in the history of Western painting, and the studio offers the spectator a view of technical art history behind Bacon’s mastery. As well as commercial house paints, Bacon used oil paints and powder pigments and applied these with a variety of brushes, paint rollers, combs or corrugated cardboard. The residual material found on combs in the studio helps to document his technique.

The combination of the studio installation with the archives (which have been and are continuing to be digitised) offer much more than an homage to the artist and go beyond offering a romantic way of gaining access to the “interiority” of the artist.

The sources have had a significant impact on an understanding of Bacon’s working method and process and have significantly expanded the scope of scholarship in art history, in addition to layering Bacon’s legacy. The studio has historically been an important part of the artist’s image-making and legacy. Picasso employed a photographer to create carefully controlled photographs of him in his studio, while Courbet painted a large-scale canvas of the theme in an act of self-monumentalisation. The exhibition at the Hugh Lane is, despite the wealth of material, more unassuming than such attempts; in its bric-a-brac formation, it offers a subtle and insightful look at Bacon’s working method. In its comprehensive display, it conveys the extent to which his life was bound up with artistic production. His collection of books on film, displayed at the beginning of the exhibition, convey that the nouvelle vague influenced his representation of violence and the sense in which the sequential medium informed his famous triptychs. Meanwhile, the focus on the artist’s personal library (Marcel Proust, Sigmund Freud, Greek mythology and crime books) succeeds in communicating something of the artist’s personality.

Tuesday 20th November 2012

TRINITY NEWS

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InDepth

Immortal Technique pictured in interview with TN. Photograph: George Voronov

All in the technique Ronan Burtenshaw sits down with rapper and revolutionary Immortal Technique during his visit to Dublin to talk politics, society and his life as an artist.

Rónán Burtenshaw Editor

I

met Immortal Technique backstage at his sold-out Dublin gig in the Village on 3rd November. We had been in touch with his representatives since the start of the term, when I heard he was likely to visit, arranging the interview.

As a student journalist, you are never quite sure if these things are going to come off. But, fortunately, and against the backdrop of a blistering set from DJ Static, Swave Sevah and Poison Pen, we were led to his prep room minutes before he went onstage.

Immortal Technique does not fit the stereotype of the contemporary hip-hop artist – the dick-swinging misogynist and hyper-capitalist slimmed down to fit a tightly-controlled corporate package. He has risen from the hip-hop underground, where he produced his dark and iconic Dance with the Devil, to becoming one of the most high-profile rap artists on the planet.

His political focus, allied with the breadth of his lyricism (singing about his native Latin America – “I’m from where they overthrow democratic leaders / Not for the people but for the Wall Street Journal readers”) – makes him a stand-out artist of his generation.

In September 2011 he released the autobiographical documentary The (R)evolution of Immortal Technique, which premiered at the film festival in his hometown of Harlem, New York. He tells me that the project took him seven years to complete, an archaeology of person and artist that dug deep into his past life. The film, however, was not just an introspective: “The theme of (R)evolution was artistic freedom of movement. It encouraged people to be critical, to bring up things that may be taboo in society. I think of it like this: when you’ve been cut you don’t just cover the wound up – if you do it’s going to be dirty, rotten and festering deep inside.

It hurts but you’ve got to scrape that crap the fuck out of there. In the places I’ve been to, like Afghanistan, which is under occupation, or Haiti, with its poverty, you’ve got a history of conflict and that process is painful.”

He has maintained a strong connection to the global South, having been born in Lima, Peru in 1978. A strong anti-imperialist theme runs through his lyrics, with tracks like Third World and

Peruvian Cocaine set in a part of the Earth scandalously overlooked by many African-American and Latino artists. In 2008, Immortal Technique worked with Omeid International to build a school in Afghanistan using the profits from his aptly titled Third World album.

He has strong words for the former colonial powers on his visit to Europe, too. “The legacy of the west is not proud of what it is. They’ll make up every fucking excuse why Europeans came to the New World. ‘We came here for religious freedom’, but the moment you got here you started persecuting people over religion.

‘We came to avoid slavery and

in American revolution doesn’t begin with Marxism. Marxism was a 19th century ideology that was brought to other parts of the world. Marx was honest about how he’d borrowed a lot of his ideas about collectivism from indigenous populations. But when people are not very cultured you’ve got to explain to them, ‘no, we didn’t need an old, white guy to come to the jungle of Latin America or Africa and explain to us barbarian savages the complexities of sharing’.”

“But socialism is more than that – and that’s one of the reasons it’s been demonised so much. I think there have been a lot of historical failings, and socialism isn’t the

endentured servitude’, but the moment you got here you put people in bondage, made them build a country for you and then pretended that they were threefifths of a human being. Why aren’t you proud that you came here looking for gold? Why can’t you say that? Are you ashamed of capitalism? Your principles of civilisation should be an embarassment to anyone who reads history and understands it.”

But his politics have also always been left-wing. The cover of his Revolutionary, Vol 1 album featured a hammer and sickle daubed on a wall, while his lyrics advocate nationalising industry and expropriating capitalists.

Does he consider himself a socialist?

“I think socialism is a natural part of people’s political evolution. But when people ask me, ‘Technique, are you a Marxist?’ I say that’s ridiculous. Y’know, Lat-

be-all and end-all. At least not if it means giving up too much control and power to a government.

Socialism to me is the fire department, the post office, the police department. Imagine if these things were privatised? If you look at the history of somewhere like New York City there was a time when you had to pay for these services. If you didn’t have the medallion then you didn’t get them and fuck you. Socialism is the opposite of that.”

Immortal Technique released his most recent album, The Martyr, as a free CD – geared towards agitation with class-conscious lyrics, and songs about movements like Occupy Wall Street.

His unorthodoxy in the rap world is brought home by seeing him in concert. Whether it’s thanking “the working-class of the music industry, the cleaners, barmen, security staff who do all of the work behind these gigs people

never see.” Or reminding a young crowd of their capacity to change their societies, and responsibilities to do it. Or pausing a concert, and some tracks that contain pretty hair-raising machismo and language about women, to remind the mostly-male audience that while they’re singing they should know that the revolution “will never be done unless our sisters are at our sides”.

So, is this the job of hip-hop in society? “It’s my job in hip-hop.

Other people can do what they fucking want. As long as fake-ass people stay the fuck out of my way I don’t have a problem with them. I do what I do because there is so much strife out there coupled with so much sub-par music.”

Speaking of Northern Ireland and his decision to use the phrase “Tiocfaidh ár lá” on stage in Belfast a few days earlier, a phrase he repeated in Dublin, he is strong in response to critics. “I may not understand every aspect of everyone’s culture. But I do understand the distinction between oppressor and oppressed. And I choose to side with the oppressed. I’m with the people with their backs to the wall.

“And that applies to conflict situations, too. Y’know, I’m not pro-Palestinian, for example.

I’m pro-human human rights. If it was the Palestinians with two empires behind them, stealing the land of another people and bombing them into oblivion then I would be supporting the Israelis. But, and it’s sad, that’s not the case. They have gone from being a people who were oppressed in eastern Europe throughout history to being the oppressors.

And so I make my decisions on that basis. Much like here. I don’t come here to revive negativities between people, because I don’t see those as the division. It’s not a Catholic-Protestant issue. It’s an oppressed-oppressor issue.”

As the crowd started to chant his name from behind the stage door a metre to one side of us, we come back to where it began for the rebel MC with the situation in the barrios of Latin America. He doesn’t quite buy the hype talked about some of the left-wing governments that have risen to power in the last decade. They still have major multinational corporations, and some like Venezuela are too dependent on oil, even if

“

I choose to side with the oppressed. I’m with the people with their backs to the wall.

that is what “gives them muscle and puts them at the table”.

“My only concern is that these advancements targeted at the working-class and poor, which have a lot of good, aren’t superficial. There’s a lot of imagery.

I’d like to see a re-focusing on infrastructure: physical and social. Because you’ve got to be able to make sure that these programmes achieve their ideological goals in a long-term sense, even when that main government is removed. This is key for Latin America. In the US, when you get a Democrat or Republican president there isn’t much difference.

In Latin America it’s a socialist candidate and a hard-right wing capitalist. Communities have to be able to defend themselves with change. I was born in the middle of a crazy situation in Peru where you had armed polarisation with the CIA and Maoist guerillas fighting, and a lot melted away.”

And what are the hopes and prospects, according to Immortal Technique? “People see a struggle as something negative now, as opposed to something you’ve got to go through. They say: ‘We don’t want to go back to the way it was.’ Well then, how are we going to solve and heal our problems?

We’re talking about human evolution. We need to be able to demand an open forum and discussion on serious issues. The only people who are afraid of facts are those who don’t have a leg to stand on.”

As the crowd’s chants of “technique, tech-nique, tech-nique” became deafening through the walls the door to the stage opened and the interview was over. The man born Felipe Coronel went to meet his fans, for whom he stayed on after the concert to sign T-shirts until getting kicked out of the venue. As I watched his gig and the masses queue afterwards, I reflected on the man.

Amidst the coarse, occasionally offensive and difficult lyrics, Immortal Technique is one of those people you want to stop what you are doing to listen to. His words are laced with intent. His face is a tapestry of a life lived. And you get a sense that his story is not yet written.

The (R)evolution of Immortal Technique is available to buy from Viper Records at store.viperrecords.com. You can follow Immortal Technique on Twitter at twitter.com/immortaltech. We’ve set up a special link to his free-todownload Martyr album at bit.ly/ tnimmortaltech

TRINITY NEWS

Tuesday 20th November 2012

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Ian Curran talks with a human-rights worker in Gaza about the present conflict

InDepth

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Doctors and X: legislation, guidelines, and the need for clarity Sally Rooney explores whether doctors in Ireland can, in reality, follow the X case ruling under the current legal framework. Photos: Gvheorge Voronov

S Sally Rooney Staff Writer

avita Halappanavar’s death in a Galway hospital has led to renewed calls for legislation on Ireland’s 20-year-old X case. The 1992 supreme court ruling held that a woman had a right to an abortion given a “real and substantial risk” to her life. Despite its constitutionality, this right was never enacted in legislation. Prochoice activists now claim that legislation for X would have saved Halappanavar’s life; anti-abortion groups say that existing Medical Council guidelines should have been enough for doctors to intervene, and further legislation is unnecessary.

The council’s current guide to professional conduct and ethics for registered medical practitioners do include provisions for abortion. Under section B, chapter 21, headlined Abortion, the guide states that in rare and exceptional circumstances in which “there may be little or no hope of the baby surviving, it may be necessary to intervene to terminate the pregnancy to protect the life of the mother”. Doctors who fail to comply with these recommendations can be struck off the

medical register by the council, following an investigation into the individual’s fitness to practice medicine.

The anti-abortion activist group Youth Defence has called the guide “very clear” and denies the need for further legislative clarity; but the master of the National Maternity Hospital, Dr Rhona Mahony, says legislation for the X case “really does need to happen,” stating that both pregnant women and their doctors are in need of increased legal protections. The barrister and former doctor Simon Mills has described the X ruling “the very barest of superstructures” and called for greater legislative clarity. Pending the results of an inquiry, neither side can say definitively whether legislating for the X ruling would have been enough to save Halappanavar’s life; but with the facts so far available, we can at least have an informed discussion about that possibility.

It is important to bear in mind firstly the distinction between Medical Council guidelines and state law. Robert Obara, a spokesperson for the Reproductive

Health Interest Group of Ireland and a medical student at Trinity, points out that the law governing Ireland’s abortion practices is the Offences Against the Person Act 1861, section 58 of which makes actions with “intent to procure the miscarriage of any woman” an offence punishable by life imprisonment.

With these restrictive laws in place, doctors caring for pregnant women who at risk have to choose between the possibility of disregarding the Medical Council’s advice by failing to terminate and the potential of breaking state law by carrying out a termination before it is legally permissible. While the X ruling distinguishes between a threat to the life and health of the patient, no clear legislative parameters are provided to clarify for practising doctors the distinction between risks to a pregnant woman’s life and risks to her health. Assessing such a distinction in emergency situations may well be difficult enough without the threat of legal or Medical Council action on either side, particularly when the law in question is one hundred

and fifty years behind contemporary medical practice.

Speaking to Trinity News, a practicing Irish psychiatrist emphasised the need for clearer legislation. She commented on the “lack of discussion” afforded to abortion in medical circles. A culture of silence around the practice of termination in the medical community can be dangerous for patients who are seeking or have had abortions, as she suggested women are “stigmatised” and “afraid to tell their GP” about their termination. “I know other doctors who’ve had terminations,” the psychiatrist said, “and they would never tell their GPs themselves.” Obara too emphasises the inability of doctors to care for patients properly under current legislation, citing the prohibition on referrals for abortion services abroad. When doctors are legally liable for involving themselves directly or indirectly in the provision of abortion, the resultant caution can be fatal. Meanwhile, patients wary of confiding in their doctors can compromise the quality of their own care.

By and large, anti-abortion groups and politicians here in Ireland have responded to Halappanavar’s death by re-affirming the right of a pregnant woman to an abortion if her life is in danger. This is hardly controversial.

One of the reasons no real legislative clarity exists to provide for those cases is because the X ruling makes provision for another, more divisive issue: the constitutional right to abortion when the risk to the mother’s life is a risk of suicide.

In a 1992 referendum following the supreme court ruling, the Irish people voted down an amendment that would have overturned the part of the judgement providing for suicide; 10 years later, the electorate once again endorsed the right of Irish women to seek abortion when the risk is one of “self-destruction”.

No legislation followed, and in 2010 the European court of human rights ruled that while there is no general European right to abortion, Ireland had violated the convention of human rights by failing to provide women with a way to establish whether or not they qualify for abortion under Irish law.

In short, then, although X legislation might provide greater clarity around how exactly to assess and deal with pregnant women whose lives are at risk from medical conditions like Halappanavar’s, it must also provide the right to abortion for women whose lives are at risk due to suicide. Despite the constitutionality of this right, following on its affirmation through two referendums, it remains hugely controversial. Two Fine Gael TDs – Cork East’s Tom Barry and Mayo’s John O’Mahony – pledged earlier this year to oppose any legislation which would facilitate the right to abortion in Ireland. Barry claimed in August that “legislation could be the introduction of abortion through the back door, using mental health as the criteria”.

The suicide clause has led to a debate in Irish public life about the toll of reproductive rights on women’s mental health. Campaigns like Women Hurt in Ireland have sought to highlight the regret women experience after their abortions; the most prominent poster campaign of the antiabortion group Youth Defence featured a young woman’s photograph ripped in half with the text “Abortion Tears Her Life Apart”.

If abortion is shown to be harmful, rather than helpful, to a woman’s mental health, then surely the provision in case of a risk of suicide ceases to be meaningful; or so the logic goes.

The psychiatrist speaking to Trinity News was quick to point out that, while the stigma attached to abortion can naturally

“

While the X ruling distinguishes between a threat to the life and health of the patient, no clear legislative parameters are provided to clarify for practising doctors the distinction between risks to a pregnant woman’s life and risks to her health.”

impact women’s mental wellbeing, “there is no such thing as post-abortion syndrome”. Indeed research indicates that, after an unplanned pregnancy, abortion is no more likely to cause mental health problems than any other course of action. “On the other hand,” she added, “postnatal depression is very well-described.”

Any response to abortion on the part of the pregnant woman, whether regret or relief, must be considered valid; but these responses are neither sufficiently uniform nor detrimental to be useful in informing public policy.

Nor are they constitutionally relevant.

But the refusal of successive governments to legislate for a constitutional right has raised other legal and medical concerns.

An estimated 4,000 Irish women travel outside Ireland, usually to the UK, for abortions every year.

These women pay for travel and medical expenses, often in secret, but do not necessarily receive a high quality of after-care, or indeed any at all. Furthermore, terminations that take place in the UK rarely appear in women’s medical histories when they return to Ireland, despite the medical significance of the procedure.

It also leaves a subset of women who are for various reasons unable to travel. Asylum seekers, for example, must apply – and pay – for emergency visas to enter the UK. Most asylum seekers receive an allowance of just €19.10 a week and are prohibited from working to supplement that income, while the cost of a visa to and from the UK is, depending on exchange rates, about €100. In this context, the fact that over 1,200 home abortion kits were intercepted by gardaí in 2009 and 2010 is an indicator that, without legal paths to termination, women will risk their health to avoid carrying their foetuses to term.

Obara is keen to discuss the particular problem current legislation poses for medical students. With no active abortion providers working in Ireland at the moment, students have little on-going exposure to or training in the process of termination and the medical care surrounding it. In the event that the governmental expert group recommends immediate legislation for the X ruling, Obara says there is a “real danger” of an educational deficit in the medical community as to how to care for women going through abortion procedures and thereafter. Organisations like the Reproductive Health Interest Group and the international organisation Medical Students for Choice focus on the danger of depriving students of experience and expertise, particularly while reproductive legislation may be changing.

The X ruling remains a restrictive one, which means that no matter how liberal the following legislation proves it will not a panacea for these concerns in the medical community. In emergencies like Halappanavar’s, the judgement only provides for termination when the life of the mother is at risk; and as Mills has pointed out, with the facts currently available, Halappanavar’s condition may not have been technically life-threatening until after the delivery of her miscarried foetus. If that was the case, then greater legislative clarity on X could still have left her medical team with the option not to terminate.

In that case, one thing remains to be noted before the results of the public inquiry: Savita Halappanavar requested a termination herself, just one day after being admitted, before her condition was seriously health-threatening.

Neither the X ruling nor the Medical Council’s advice to doctors provide the right to an abortion on request; but if they did, she would almost certainly be alive today.

Tuesday 20th November 2012

TRINITY NEWS

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InDepth

The Live Register: television on the frontline Rónán Burtenshaw talks to the people behind The Live Register, DCTV’s new discussion programme, about setting up a TV show and why they did it.

Moira Murphy, Mark Malone, Donal Higgins and Aubrey Robinson from The Live Register (left to right)

T Rónán Burtenshaw Editor

he crew of The Live Register have taken a step into the unknown in recent weeks. Neither Moira Murphy nor Donal Higgins, the show’s presenters, had a wealth of experience making television.

They are still learning the ropes, they tell me, as are their co-travellers in the recent addition to the Dublin media scene, Aubrey Robinson and Mark Malone.

But, after the success of Dole TV, The Live Register has had a promising start. The Dublin Community Television (DCTV) discussion show has produced two episodes of a six-part debut series that have gained over a thousand views on television and online.

Harder than attracting hits, even, is the task of approaching difficult issues – like fracking and abortion – in an accessible way but without engaging in simplification. They intend to repeat this for episodes on housing, the International Financial Services Centre, banking debt and deportation.

“We wanted to assemble a small group of people who were media-literate, but not experts, and politically aware to shape the content of the programme. Everyone involved with the show was responding to issues we had seen.

That helps a lot, particularly at the start.”

That start began, as with many ambitious plans, “outside a pub somewhere”. Donal says they were aware of a lack of media coverage on a series of issues they felt were in the public interest.

But this project, unlike most of those sketched out tentatively on a coaster, actually came into being. How do you go from having an idea to actually putting something on TV? “With DCTV the first step is to become a member. Then you get the chance to volunteer with projects or, if you have your own idea, you submit it to the planning committee. They are usually very good and give people a chance – as was the case with us.”

DCTV was established in 2008 as a community access TV station. It transmits to over 200,000 households across Dublin, Limerick, Cork, Galway and Waterford and creates its programmes in-house – with individual members, member organisations and not-forprofit TV stations all getting the opportunity to submit content.

The pool of volunteers the station has, Donal says, is helpful in facilitating the technical aspects. His degree is in media studies, which contains aspects of camerawork

and editing, and he has been working on a JobBridge scheme with the TV station since the beginning of the year. But this is not much preparation for the task of putting together a show for air.

“The space of time we have to develop a show is really a week. We won’t have much time before that to put content together,” Moira says, “the network you pick up from working on campaigns is essential to developing a show in a week – you’d struggle without it.”

How does this process begin, I ask her. Being a print journalist with only clichéd fantasies about the world in front of the camera, I posit the idea of writing a script.

“Well, first, you panic! Actually, I think the first thing we do is look for an interesting angle and a nuanced way of telling a story. A lot of it depends on what’s feasible – who is around, where and when in that time period. The script itself doesn’t come together until the end. The narrative comes out of that week building the show.”

One of the difficulties, says Donal, who interviewed Clare Daly TD for their most recent episode, is making sure not to prejudice what guests are going to say. “We can’t shape the shows too early because we don’t know what the interviewees will say. We’ve a

broad idea of what we want to do, but within that it can take on a life of its own at times.”

Balance is also a challenge, particularly when you are taking on divisive issues. The duo have a distinctive approach to attaining broad spectrum discussion on topics – which is a welcome respite from the formula of contrived equation promoted by a lot of mainstream media outlets.

“To get balance, we try to give our guests space. To outline what they think and expand on their answers in a way you might not get elsewhere. We don’t often go for groups who have had a lot of attention, which helps, too, I think.”

The group expressly focuses on giving voice to people who have not been able to find one in the mainstream media. “If you take fracking as an example – the people we were talking to there don’t get a lot of media attention, so we were conscious that we were providing a service, helping people to document their story and struggle.”

There is an interesting debate in media circles at the moment about the role of journalists and the kind of engagement they have with stories. Is their emphasis on telling a story counterposed

to the idea of the journalist who stands outside the story and looks to make independent assessment?

“Yes, I think there is a sense in which we are trying to reflect aspects of what’s going on at a community level rather than placing ourselves above it. If you look at the mainstream media the issue of private housing, for example, is covered very well but social housing rarely gets a mention. This is the kind of different angle we’re looking to take.

“This is how DCTV contributes to the television landscape as well, I think. Their impact is in how television is made. It is open to anyone to come in and make television, and you’re not going to get that opportunity with RTÉ.”

While Donal conceded that it would be very hard for a state broadcaster to do this, he did emphasise the value of democracy in the media. Moira agreed, saying that there should be some mechanism to ensure democratic input into the television and radio RTÉ make.

My own experience in community media made me question some of its effectiveness, especially given how difficult it is to attract an audience. The Live Register team, however, remained totally committed to their content –

insisting that the fact it would remain as a resource would justify its production even if viewer numbers didn’t hold up.

But they are also very clear that this is a learning experience for all involved. They are trying to produce a discussion show that is different to those in the mainstream media, but figuring it out show-by-show. “We’re not nearly there yet. It’s a process and a work in progress. Our focus is on the content and we’re learning the techniques to convey that better as we go. We’re happy with how it has gone so far, but hope to improve too.

“We don’t expect what we’re doing here to change the media in Ireland. Maybe covering the stories we do will prompt other organisations to do it, particularly if they’re done well. But more likely the impact we can have is to encourage other people who are perhaps frustrated by the media here to go out and produce something themselves rather than just criticising it. That would be a lasting positive effect.”

The Live Register airs on Tuesday nights at 21.30 on DCTV, UPC Channel 802. Their content can be found on Facebook at http:// www.facebook.com/TheLiveRegister.

And this bird can zing Megan Nolan on the role that Twitter played in helping her explore her comedic side

I Megan Nolan Staff Writer

was 19 when I met Mark, Sean, Luke and Brian, the quasi-biblical quartet who would take up residence in my room for much of the next six months. I had just moved into a glorified tenement in Smithfield, and they came to our housewarming bearing some sort of toxic booze mix in Lilt bottles. They were as much of a gang as four white malnourished boys from Swords could be, and I immediately loved their company.

They spoke to each other in a shorthand born of their incessant shared intimacy, which I didn’t quite get but found hilarious.

Funniness seemed to be their form of currency with one another and with the world. They could happily sit in the same room all day, enjoying each other’s amusing nonsense. I loved this weird, intense time, when all five of us would lounge, hungover, in my single bed, smoking skinny rollups and eating dry bread rolls with Cracker Barrel cheddar and chatting until dusk. I took such pleasure in their rapid elaborate jokes, liked to be a part of it so much, that I think it was the first time I really wanted to be funny, or thought that I could be.

Being funny was not something I had ever considered, or coveted.

As soon as I became self-aware (seemingly overnight, on the eve of my 14th birthday) I was acutely concerned with my portly artlessness. It was tremendously important to me that I never be a figure of fun, something which is cruelly invited by the rounded tummy and pink jolly cheeks of

the fat person. I was an earnest girl, and desperately wished to be serious and intellectual. To be humorous back then was to splutter out some generic eye-rolling denunciation of the falsity of the Christmas spirit to whatever pale sniffy boy from creative-writing class I had convinced to come to the cinema with me.

Mark, Sean, Luke and Brian were not only themselves funny, but had a sort of reverence towards comedy and stand-up comedians that I had only felt before toward books and films (or literature and cinema, as I surely would have insisted upon calling them). I started to pay some attention, and had a look at people like Louis CK and Stewart Lee of whom I had never heard before.

Upon Mark’s advice, I started to use Twitter, a medium which perfectly suited his style of absurd, darkly complex one-liners. I

didn’t understand Twitter at first, posting quotes almost exclusively, unsure what the format demanded. Like many people who find it hard to grasp, I viewed it with churlish disdain.

“Nobody wants to know what you're having for breakfast!” cry these people, huddling for warmth beneath the reassuring cultural capital of the tangible, visible broadsheet newspaper.

Certainly, having grown up consuming media which is produced by a very particular and small part of society, submerging yourself in the incontinent flow of Twitter can be off-putting. There is no sense of meritocracy, given that the most banal celebrity morning greeting will be retweeted thousands of times.

I didn’t know what Twitter was for. At first it seemed to be just an extension of Facebook or the other social networks I had used

before it. Quickly, though, seeing the meaningless nonsense my friends were tweeting made me treat it like that too, just as a place to write silly things which were making me laugh in that moment.

That is still what I use Twitter for, but so much of what I think about myself and humour has changed as a result of it.

As a woman, one’s appearance is made to feel like the central part of one’s identity from a very young age. The insatiable need I felt for validation as a result of that was fed by my use of MySpace and Facebook when I was a teenager. I was disgustingly vain and analysed pictures of myself for hours, trying to imagine how my life and I would appear to an outsider.

Twitter is a much less visual medium, and I have thankfully stopped being a teenager. In my experience, it is a lot less status-

“

Quickly, though, seeing the meaningless nonsense my friends were tweeting made me treat it like that too.”

seeking, less geared towards lifestyle porn, and I tended to be much more self-deprecating on Twitter. I started to make jokes about my own life, and the simple act of being able to do that has genuinely changed everything for me. Being able to laugh at the humiliating and pathetic parts of the human experience – those sticky, untheatrical little corners we tend to bear alone – is wonderful. To be able to laugh about them with others is even better.

I no longer felt I had to deny my petty rejections and weaknesses, I could willingly show them to the world and jeer at how absurd they are.

About a year later, my friend Cian, who was a comedian among many other things, asked me to start performing at his show, Voicebox. I felt like I could try it; I felt funny. No matter how badly a show went, I always came off stage thinking: “I can’t believe I did that!” Going onstage and trying to be funny was so opposed to what my idea of myself had been for my whole life. They were things to do with femininity and being unassuming; always coquettishly avoiding the eye, never demanding too much attention of people; laughing at jokes and not making them. I had a horror of people seeing just how much I wanted their approval. To express that need so basically as to go onstage and clown for them seemed, and still seems, breathtakingly mad to me. But I did it, on and off for a year or so. I have not done so in months now, and I am not sure I ever will again, but it will always be precious to know that I could, once.

Illustration: Alice Wilson

TRINITY NEWS

Tuesday 20th November 2012

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InDepth

Gaza: living on the edge of despair Ian Curran speaks with Gisela Schmidt-Martin, a human-rights volunteer who is working through the current aerial assault in Gaza

F Ian Curran Editor

or the vast majority of people reading this article, it will be hard to conceive of a warzone as being a situation in which they would want to volunteer; but, for a very small minority of readers, it is conceivable that a sense of moral obligation could overcome a desire for safety and one might feel that compulsion to go to one of the war-ravaged corners of the world.

Gisela Schmidt-Martin is such a person. She is originally from Cork, but is now based in Gaza city and is a human rights worker with the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR). Despite Israel’s latest servvies of attacks on the Gaza, she has not removed herself from the epicentre of the conflict.

At the time that this article was written, the death toll in Gaza had reached 52, which (according to Palestinian sources) included 15 children, three women and four old men. The aerial assault by the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) was underway and it had begun shelling the city from warships.

I spoke to Schmidt-Martin last Friday evening, just after news broken that 75,000 Israeli reserve troops were at the border with Gaza and were ready for a ground assault. I asked her what, in her view, was the sequence of events that lead to this show of force in Gaza: “The current attacks are a result of the ongoing violations which are carried out by the Israeli forces.”

Gisela described the attacks as “persistent”, and said that they have been “specifically targeting civilians”. She told me that there were several incidents which received particular attention from the Gazan people. In one incident, she said, during an Israeli incursion in the east of the Gaza strip, a 13-year-old boy named

Gazans examine a crater after an Israeli airstrike on a suspected Hamas militent. Photo:PressTV Hameed Abu Daqqa was seriously wounded while he was playing football in what she described as “indiscriminate fire from Israeli forces”.

The boy was brought to hospital, where he later died. Another incident involved a group of teenagers who were also playing football in the east of Gaza city when they were hit by a shell from an Israeli tank.

“Two children were instantly killed, a 16-year-old and a 17-yearold.” She said a group of civilians who rushed out of a nearby house to help the children were targeted by the IDF and were fired on by the Israeli tank. Two more people died in that incident.

While there had not as of yet been a surge by Israeli troops into the Gaza strip, I asked SchmidtMartin how this would complicate things on the ground for her and for ordinary Gazans. She corrected me, saying that while there was no ground movement of troops into Gaza, there had been “incursions” by Israeli troops over the border.

On Friday night there were

fears that a large-scale ground offensive was imminent, the impact of which she said would be “dramatic … If there is a ground incursion, there will be many more civilian deaths.” She went on to describe the Israeli attacks as “indiscriminately targeting civilians”.

The issue of safety is also evidently a concern for foreign nationals working in Gaza. SchmidtMartin told me that a few days previously there was a drone strike just two blocks from her office in the Rimal area of Gaza.

She told me she made her way to the site of the attack to see the aftermath, where she saw that an Israeli drone had bombed the street.

“It wasn’t apparent that there was any particular target,” she said. Among targets that had been hit by Israeli forces, she listed a Russian Orthodox church, a water well and the ministry of civil affairs. She said there had been “hundreds of air-strikes” as well as fire from Apache helicopters.

“There is no real guarantee of safety,” she says; “Everywhere

is subject to attack.” SchmidtMartin says that she is afforded a degree of protection because her office is in a UN building. Despite this, a complex of UN offices was fired upon during the last offensive on Gaza in 2009. She noted that there had not as of yet been any injuries to the PCHR field workers.

One very sinister development during this series of attacks has been the IDF’s live-tweeting of the attacks as they happen in Gaza. Many have contended that the flippant tone of the tweets and the connotations of using social media are an attempt to dehumanize the Gazans. One Irish Twitter user tweeted: “Probably more disturbing than the attack on Gaza is the apparent glee with which the IDF carries out its job.”

I asked Schmidt-Martin what she thought of the Israeli use of Twitter in the attacks. She noted that Israel has always engaged in a very strong propaganda campaign. At this point in the conversation, there was a lull and I could hear a humming noise over the phone, followed by what sounded

like a pop. She asked if I had just heard the airstrike that had taken place outside the building.

“I must have been talking too loudly,” she joked, and went straight back to answering my question about Israeli public relations. “Israel have a very welloiled propaganda machine. The live-tweeting is part of the propaganda campaign, because they’re ensuring that only their perspective is being put out; for example, saying that their targets are only military targets.”

She said that this claim is “very obviously false”, considering the large number of homes that they have hit. She told me that there is a “very active, young social-media movement” in Gaza and that the tweets had not gone unnoticed by the youth of Gaza.

Finally, I asked Schmidt-Martin about what she thought the end-goal for Israel is in this particular series of attacks. “We feel like we’re probably facing into something that will last at least another week, if not a few weeks,” she said.

She added that she does not

know what the exact objective of the operation is, but one of the goals is certainly “to terrorize the population of Gaza”. She reckons that the Israelis think that this will make the population of Gaza “more submissive”. On the contrary, in her view, “this is just determining the resolve of the Palestinian people”.

In the coming days and weeks there will be many predictions made about if, and when, Israel will stop this latest bout of attacks on the people of Gaza. Some will say that the international community will need to step in before the crisis comes to a real head.

Others will say, as Robert Fisk did in 2009, that the opening of the Egyptian borders to Palestinian refugees will free the Israeli government to do what they have always wanted to do; drive the Palestinians off the land for good.

The Palestinian people will say, as Gisela did: “If there’s anything that I’ve learned from being here in Gaza, it’s that you can’t know if something is going to happen until it’s already happened.”

TRINITY NEWS

Tuesday 20th November 2012

Comment Ireland’s fright of the wild Greeks

Saying “Ireland is not Greece” is an exercise in the Saussurean semantics of negative differential relations. Manus Lenihan pulls the politics out from behind the rhetorical retreat..

T Manus Lenihan Comment Editor

hursday 14th November saw a united general strike across six European countries. Predictably, RTÉ talked about riots and disruption of flights with only a throwaway line on the subject of austerity. This was a coordinated action across all of southern Europe, plus Belgium. Though a protest against austerity is due to be held in Ireland on 24th November, we saw practically no action on the 14th. Apart from the news reports, which focused on one side of several violent incidents that broke out and excluded all relevant issues, Ireland saw nothing of this historic day and certainly did not share in it.

There is a long list of government ministers across Europe in the last few years who have gone on record as insisting that their county “is not Greece”. Many of those ministers are Irish, and Greek ministers have of course returned this nationalistic insult.

These politicians were all, somewhat farcically, trying to deny contagion, but the comparison is understood in a different and more serious way by workers and radicalised young people.

In February 2010, there were workers marching in Athens chanting: “This is Greece, not Ireland, we fight back!” On the other hand, very many Irish victims of austerity have said to me, wistfully or bitterly: “The Irish aren’t like the Greeks. We’ll never stand up for ourselves.”

In fact, Ireland has seen struggle, and huge layers of people have proved that they are willing to take to the streets. February 2009 saw a public sector protest of 120,000 against cutbacks; then, in November, 250,000 workers took a one-day strike. Action fell back again until 100,000 braved the snow to march through Dublin after the bailout a year later.

Since then, we have seen the Croke Park agreement, followed by a deathly silence from the unions.

If you look through any tradeunion newspapers or press releases you will find information on how austerity is destroying the economy and what a toll it is taking on ordinary workers. A recent report from Mandate, for example, brings home the absolute misery of the low-paid. You

will find that unions representing hundreds of thousands of workers are in (verbal) opposition to government policy; but there has been no reflection of this in action for around two years.

There is a parallel in the student movement. Two enormous demonstrations in November 2010 and 2011 showed what was possible, but the leadership of the movement has allowed one fee hike after another every single year. If there was a strategy, it was not to win, but to demobilise and demoralise.

So this is the picture in Ireland: a general mass of students and workers who are enraged, but who are saddled with institutions of solidarity and struggle which are a block to action. Since the unions went into the Croke Park deal, Ireland’s Occupy movement and the non-payment campaign against the household charge appeared as vehicles of protest that were totally independent of the conservatism of the tradeunion leadership. Anger is bubbling away, and every so often it explodes, but it generally has to circumvent the unions.

Greek trade-union leaders do not, on the face of it, seem to be any more militant than their Irish counterparts. Around 2009-2010, they echoed each other in promising that their members would “pay their fair share” for a crisis they did not create. Of course, across Europe the Irish tradeunion leaders are renowned for their timidity and conservatism.

But this does not quite explain why Irish unions have signed up to rotten deals while Greek unions have organized 22 general strikes in the past three years.

Greece’s more militant union members have pushed the leadership into action. In Ireland, by contrast, 20 years of “social partnership” have bled the movement of its activist layer and experience of militancy. Greece never had a Celtic tiger, with all the accompanying complacency and lack of struggle.

Massive comparisons must be made between Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain before we can move and look at the differences. All have always had relatively low public spending, have let their richest citizens off the

Illustration: Sinead Mercier

hook for a lot of the tax burden and have spent a fair slice of the century under rightwing authoritarianism to one degree or another.

This all fed into the massive crisis faced by these countries.

The great credit bubbles of the noughties seemed to offer their ruling classes an easy way to prosperity, but have in fact landed their people in debt traps that could scupper the whole euro.

Irish history veers sharply away from the others in one very important respect. In the 19181922 period, Ireland’s labour movement looked set to play a defining role in Ireland’s history, but its leadership consciously took a back seat to nationalism, ignoring every opportunity to lead the mass struggle of those years.

Since then, Ireland’s Labour party has been a very timid and conservative movement, propping up rightwing parties in government from the late 1940s until today.

Compare this to the left tradition in Greece. In Greece, “communist” is not a bad word, being associated as it is with the civil war against the fascists and monarchists in the late 1940s. The left generally, including Greece’s Socialist party, Pasok, are associated with the Athens Polytechnic uprising in 1973 which was a defining event in bringing down the military dictatorship. Spain and Portugal can tell a similar story.

In Ireland, by contrast, the labour movement has always taken a tragic political backseat.

It is this simple fact of not having the same inherited tradition of class solidarity and revolt that means that, even though we are suffering under comparable conditions here in Ireland, we have not inherited from history the same culture or experience of fighting and winning.

Of course, Michael Noonan insists that Ireland is not Greece – that the situation is just not as bad and that it will soon be all better.

In Greece 68% of the population are now apparently living below the poverty line. Church soup kitchens feed 200,000 people every day. The entire social housing department has been shut down. We cannot safely and clearly compare Ireland to a country which appears to be on the verge of collapse.

But when an Irish minister says it, the sentence “Ireland is not Greece” means that in Ireland the situation is under control and there is no possibility of upheaval in the coming years. This is entirely wrong.

A graph published in early 2011 shows that, yes, Greek government debt is substantially bigger than its Irish equivalent. But total Irish debt is still over twice as big, because our household, corporate and financial debt are

Causes for hope and pessimism in the children’s referendum

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all many, many times bigger than their Greek equivalents, amounting to 663% of Irish gross domestic product.

This reflects exactly the crises of Greece and Ireland. In Greece, the government faked their accounts to hide the downturn and went massively into debt. In Ireland, a spectacular property bubble transformed the country, only to disappear, leaving behind a collapse in revenue and a mountain of debt.

Since then the government has not tackled one single contributing factor to this crisis, hoping for a return to profitability for business based on trampling living standards to “competitive” levels.

Nobody has explained to us how the country is supposed to fund itself and return to “sovereignty” when the condition of Troika funding is the destruction of our ability to create wealth.

Mass unemployment, mass emigration and increasing mass misery are facts on the ground in Ireland as a result. A surface-level stability created by bailout funding cannot gloss over or deal with the steady disintegration that is taking place. This year saw the largest quarterly decline in consumption since records began.

The number of jobs lost between April and June was 14,000, and this is consistent with the trend.

Two international factors will almost certainly destabilize Ireland: a Greek exit from the euro, or the sudden realisation that the European stability mechanism is not a fraction of the size it would need to be to bail out Italy and Spain. But even if the Irish situation were somehow to develop in isolation, all other factors that hold back struggle are temporary.

The illusions people have in a recovery are evaporating. At some point the unions will not be able to surrender any more, and will act. We who can afford to study will have to come to terms with the fact that there is mass unemployment and a disintegrating economy waiting for us when we leave college. The property tax boycott should dwarf the household charge campaign.

Ireland is not Greece, in that working-class and youth militancy is somewhat more damp and unenthusiastic here for historical reasons and because of the trade-union leadership. Ireland is not Greece, in the sense that our crises are of a different nature; whether they are of a different depth remains to be seen.

In any case, mass struggle is very likely to develop in Ireland.

Mass struggle, by the way, is not what RTÉ presents it as. It is not a mindless campaign of violence which, horror of horrors, delays flights, but rather a search and a fight for an alternative.

Growing and working our way out of the crisis Michael Taft, research officer for the Unite trade union, outlines alternatives to the austerity agenda for Ireland

E Michael Taft Guest Contributor

“

First step: drive investment.

Investment is not a cost. It is a down-payment on future revenue.”

ven the government has accepted that 2013 is set to be another grim year. Growth will be sluggish, there will be no increase in the numbers at work, consumer spending will fall again (and, with it, more businesses) and emigration will continue apace. We are just about to exit the great recession. The problem is that we are now entering the great stagnation: an extended period of low growth, high unemployment and high debt. We will have a statistical recovery; but the human recession will linger on.

Yet in terms of government policy, it is steady on. The 2013 budget will see even more cuts in public services and social protection than in the last budget. And the following year will be even worse again. And there will be even more cuts in 2015. To date, very few have stopped to ask: is this economically rational and socially sustainable? Fortunately, there is the beginning of a mood change, not only throughout Europe, but here in Ireland.

That is why the march on 24th November in Dublin is so important: to transform this growing mood change into actual change.

Proponents of austerity (or to be precise, “fiscal contraction”) will claim that we must cut the deficit. There is no argument there; there never has been. The issue is whether austerity is the most efficient means of doing that. After all, we have cut €24bn out of the economy (spending cuts, tax increases) since the beginning of the crisis. Yet the underlying deficit – when special

bank payments and income are stripped out – has fallen by only €3bn. €24bn and €3bn; not much value for money there. Why? It is simple: when the state cuts its spending, or cuts people’s disposable income through taxation, it reduces the economy’s ability to generate growth. Tax receipts fall, public spending rises (through unemployment and related costs), and what you think you are saving by cutting or taxing melts away. The deficit remains high, debt continues to rise.

Of course, if there is little economic logic to austerity (even the International Monetary Fund is starting to question it) there is always the political logic, and this is trumping all arguments. For instance, if you hold that the public sector should shrink; that people must be incentivised to work (that is, cut their social protection payments despite the fact there is only one job vacancy for every 30 unemployed people); that public services should be outsourced and privatised because private markets deliver better results; then austerity is an idea whose time has come. And what better time to pursue it than when austerity can hide behind the veil of “repairing our public finances”.

Of course, there are other benchmarks besides the deficit.

Over one million people suffer multiple deprivation experiences as measured by the Central Statistics Office, over 335,000 of whom are children. We have one of the highest rates of unemployment and long-term unemployment in Europe. The number of young

people who are not in employment, education or training is, again, one of the highest in Europe. Real wages after inflation are falling and will continue to fall until 2015 at least. And even the government has admitted its employment policies are failing; they project that dole queues will fall by only one percentage point over the lifetime of the current Dáil.

This is a high price to pay for a policy that is not even doing what it is supposed to do: namely, cut the deficit.

So is there an alternative? Oh, yes. There has always been an alternative to boost economic recovery and repair public finances.

But you have to first realise these two goals are two sides of the same coin. How can growth and fiscal stability go hand-in-hand?

Three steps.

First step: drive investment.

Investment is not a cost. It is a down-payment on future revenue. Investment in a next-generation broadband network, a modern water and waste system, retrofitting our 1m energy-inefficient buildings; all these put people to work today and grow the economy tomorrow. They pay for themselves in the medium-term.

But investment is not just about bricks, mortars or fibre-optic.

One of the best investments we can make is education, from early childhood all the way through third- and fourth-level and beyond to adult and life-long learning, which is why the upcoming cuts in education are one of the more irrational we can make.

Anti-Austerity march in 2010 outside the GPO on O’Connell St. Second step: drive the budget with taxation on high-income groups and unproductive activity.

The reason is self-evident. If you tax low-to-average income earners they will be forced to reduce their spending. It is tantamount to taking money out of the business tills and cash registers throughout the country. However, if you tax high-income groups – their capital and property – they are not likely to reduce their spending by much since they are savers.

This is called “growth-friendly” fiscal consolidation.

Third step: stop cutting. The Economic and Social Research Institute, the Nevin Economic Research Institute and, recently, the European commission have all shown that spending cuts are

more damaging to the domestic economy than tax increases; therefore, they are less efficient at cutting the deficit.

So stop digging a bigger hole.

Focus on creating efficiencies and then take the money saved and reinvest it back into growth; this is what successful businesses do during a downturn. If the government saves €400m through a reduced drug bill, reinvest that into rolling out affordable childcare centres. This would increase tax revenue, lower unemployment costs and provide a small stimulus to tens of thousands of households paying some of the highest childcare costs in Europe.

These three steps can be summarised as investment and smart fiscal consolidation. For the last

four years we have been cutting investment and doing some dumb things in budgets. But it is not too late to change course.

That is why everyone who is concerned about unemployment, deprivation, education and health cuts and the loss of hope in society should come out on 24th November. It will be a long campaign; transforming mood changes into actual changes take time. But the sooner we start, the sooner we can change the debate and then the policy. Then we will finally be on road to economic and social recovery.

Anti-austerity march, Dublin, 24th November, 1pm, Garden of Remembrance, Parnell Square.

TRINITY NEWS

Tuesday 20th November 2012

13

Comment

John Porter condemns Irish politicians for inaction on the X case

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No role for Hamas in securing lasting peace Michael Coen of the Ireland-Israel Friendship League puts forward the argument that it is apologists for Hamas who should be saying sorry.

A destroyed kitchen in Kiryat Malachi where the three Israeli casualtiesof the conflict were killed by a rocket fired from Gaza.

Oren Ziv/Active Stills

I Michael Coen Guest Contributor

f the first casualty of war is truth, its counterpart in any Israel-Palestinian conflict is perspective.

This is best illustrated by reference to many of the anti-Israeli statements attributed to Hamas apologists.

For example, “Gaza is the biggest open prison in the world”, failing to admit the existence of luxury shopping malls and water parks; not exactly Alcatraz or Mountjoy. Perhaps the devil is to be found in the detail, where the reality on the ground may offer a hint as to how Israel really perceives the enclave and its rulers.

In May 1967, Gaza – or the Gaza strip, as it was then – was ruled by Egypt. Jump forward a month, and it is occupied by Israel as part

of the outcome from the six-day war. This was to remain its status quo for the next 27 years. When Egypt, alongside Syria, Iraq and Jordan, attacked Israel in the Yom Kippur war of 1973, it was not to create a Palestinian state; rather, its main objective was the elimination of the Jewish one.

For 38 years, until the forceful evacuation of settlers in 2005, Israel had maintained a military and civilian presence in Gaza, providing most public services.

From 1994, the territory was ruled by the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority, which Israel had accepted as a valid partner for peace.

While acts of terror have occurred in the Gaza strip, and

others perpetuated in Israel also originated there, the territory posed no serious security threat to southern Israel until 2007 and the arrival of Hamas. If Fatah agreeing to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist, which led to the creation of the authority and Israel’s disengagement from Gaza, was a game changer, the emergence of the Islamists on the scene was a sport changer.

Hamas (an acronym from the Arabic for Islamic Resistance Movement) are effectively the Palestinian franchise of the Sunni-led Muslim Brotherhood. They are committed to the creation of an Islamic state in Palestine with full sharia law. The elimination of the state of Israel is written into

the Hamas charter, and it joins Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in denial of the Holocaust. It finds common ground with the Greek neo-Nazis of Golden Dawn in proclaiming the validity of the antisemitic hoax document The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Hamas introduced onto the stage two powerfully destructive new weapons: suicide bombers and long range missiles. By their very nature, these were designed to be weapons of psychological terror, as both posed far greater threat to the civilian population than the Israeli Defence Force (IDF). The impact of suicide bombers during the two intifada was psychologically significant in disrupting daily life in Israel, but was counterproductive in that it hardened the resolve of the average Israeli never to give in to terror.

Another great lie perpetuated

by Hamas apologists is that they have electoral legitimacy based on the outcome of the 2006 elections. True, Hamas won a majority of seats in the legislature, but it subscribes to the Maoist diktat that political power comes from the barrel of a gun. It sought control of the Palestinian military forces, a power legally vested in the president of the Palestinian Authority which is controlled by Fatah.

It took a coup d’état, namely the battle of Gaza, for Hamas to become Gaza’s pre-eminent military force. Israeli people, watching horrified at that orgy of bloodletting taking place – with Fatah supporters thrown from the rooftops or hacked to pieces, and the butchery posted on YouTube – were thinking: if they do that to fellow Palestinians, what are they likely to do to us?

Initially the Israeli policy was to exercise security through containment, closely regulating traffic into and out of Gaza. This relatively humane policy was aimed at curtailing the capacity of the bad guys to launch attacks on Israeli civilians, while supporting the majority of Palestinian civilians in their day-to-day lives.

Hamas apologists jumped at the chance to call this action a siege, when the reality was that it amounted to little more than a major traffic hold up while trucks

were searched for weapons and explosives.

And what of the rockets themselves? They fall into two categories: Qassams, with a range of about 20km, and Grads, which can travel 40km and more. The former can be produced locally using anything from water pipes to industrial piping; the latter show the fingerprints of Iranian involvement.

In the current conflict, a new model – the Fajr-5 – has a range of 75km, putting Tel Aviv within range. In 2012 alone, more than 1,000 rockets have been fired into Israel, and since Hamas took control of Gaza in 2007 the total almost reaches 5,000. The casualties from these rockets have almost exclusively been civilian, which is consistent with the targeting.

Hamas has claimed responsibility for many of these rockets while seeking to be accepted as a legitimately elected government.

It seems oblivious to the reality that governments which attack other states are effectively declaring war, thereby inviting military consequences.

Hamas is fully aware it cannot defeat Israel militarily; so why does it engage in such futile actions?

Some suggest its interests lie in coalition-building with other Muslim states, while others propose its real purpose is to become the pre-eminent power within the disputed territories. A third group even indicate that such revolts are being orchestrated by Hamas’s paymasters in Tehran as the price demanded for continued support.

Whatever the real explanation, the view from Israel is that it is destined to fail militarily and an uneasy calm will soon be restored, resulting in business as usual.

The policy of every Israeli government from 1948 to the present has been consistent in affirming that the first role of government is ensuring the security of its own citizens. In 2008, the Olmert administration took a policy decision to challenge Hamas’s ability to put southern Israel towns under siege, again following a prolonged series of rocket attacks.

Operation Cast Lead was launched with three clearly defined aims: to halt rocket attacks

into southern Israel, to destroy tunnels being used to smuggle rockets into Gaza and to neutralise the Hamas leadership. There is no doubt that Israel could have achieved all three objectives, but only at the cost of reoccupying Gaza.

The significance of the Gaza disengagement for Israelis has never been appreciated by the Hamas apologists. It was carried out by the great warmonger Ariel Sharon, who used Israeli troops to evict Israeli settlers so he could honour a deal made with his archenemy, Yasser Arafat.

When they left, Israel had established 21 settlements in Gaza, which tended to diminish Palestinian claims that settlements are obstacles to peace. The Gaza disengagement was a clear illustration of the risks Israel is prepared to take in seeking to establish a viable peace with the Palestinians.

Unfortunately, Hamas and Iran interpreted that action as a sign of weakness on the part of Israel, and in that context Operation Cast Lead should be seen as establishing the limits of tolerance.

From an Israeli perspective, the present situation is one of containment. Hamas does not pose an existential threat and all efforts are made to minimise civilian casualties by targeting military facilities in Gaza. This situation could rapidly change if a rocket lands in either Jerusalem or Tel Aviv causing civilian casualties, in which event the pressure on Israel to launch a full-scale ground invasion would increase significantly. However, as long as Hamas denies Israel’s right to exist and seeks its elimination in the name of resistance, tension will persist in the Gaza region.

It took the Palestine Liberation Organization nearly 50 years to address the fundamental question of whether Palestine is a nation or a cause. Hamas has opted for the latter. This strategy has only brought misery to their people, and Israelis expect that these same people will ultimately choose peace and security over ideological purity and permanent conflict. Hamas will then be confined to the garbage tips of history, where all despots belong.

The horrors of Gaza demand action Freda Hughes and Kevin Squires of the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign urge that attention to individual details, from neglected casualties to economic boycotts.

O Freda Hughes and Kevin Squires

Guest Contributors

n 14th November, Ahmed alJabari was extra-judicially assassinated by an Israeli rocket in Gaza. Al-Jabari was the most senior tactician of the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Hamas government.

This was the opening salvo in what Israel calls Operation Pillar of Cloud. At the time of writing, this assault on the Palestinian people has killed 67, including 14 children and seven women, while three Israelis have died.

Israeli spokespeople, via the medium of a largely uncritical media, immediately began telling the world that this illegal attack was “provoked” by rockets fired from Gaza. Israel, they said, had a duty to protect its citizens.

Israel was targeting terrorists. Israel had hit terror sites and would continue striking until terror was no more.

The “terror sites” hit in the initial onslaught included the house of Salah Jalal. His daughter, five-year-old Ranana, was killed.

Two children and two women were also injured. A simultaneous strike on the house of BBC editor Jihad Masharawi left his 11-month-old son Omar and Hiba, his pregnant sister-in-law, dead.

The photograph of a distraught Jihad clasping his shrouded son will surely become one of the iconic images of this awful aggression, and Israelis will surely sleep much sounder knowing that these three ticking timebombs have been neutralised.

While al-Jabari’s death was widely trumpeted in the media, these stories and others like them were largely absent. Indeed, whether out of ignorance or ideology, mainstream media has often played a disgraceful role in covering this conflict. Take something as basic as contextualising the current violence. The Israeli narrative of “provocation” has generally been accepted as definitive – even the tánaiste, Eamon Gilmore, has said the Israeli attack was “triggered by sustained rocket attacks on towns in Israel”.

One searches the BBC, RTÉ or the Irish Times in vain for an alternative narrative of events that led up to the beginning of Israel’s assault. Yet a cursory look at preceding events shows that between 30th October and 8th No-

vember, a single rocket was fired from Gaza, despite the killing of an unarmed mentally ill man by Israeli occupation forces. On 8th November indiscriminate Israeli gunfire killed Ahmed Abu Daqqa, a 13-year-old boy playing football with friends.

In response, two rockets were fired, and on 10th November four Israeli soldiers were injured by a missile while patrolling inside Gaza. This attack, on a military target, was met with an Israeli barrage that killed six Palestinians, including four teenage civilians, and wounded 52.

On 12th November, a ceasefire was negotiated by Egypt. It was broken two days later by the Israeli offensive. Ironically, Hamas officials – including the assassinated al-Jabari – were discussing a longer ceasefire when the attack began. A similar thing happened before the Operation Cast Lead massacre in 2008-2009. That 23-day-long attack left over 1,400 Palestinians dead and thousands injured, while it destroyed the civilian infrastructure of the tiny, densely populated area, home to over 1.7 million people.

In light of this, it should be impossible to give credibility to the official Israeli rationale. Alas, for much of the media, this is not the case and a major question is not being asked: if the Israeli government really wants to protect its citizens from rocket fire, why did they deliberately sabotage a ceasefire in a manner guaranteed to provoke a militant response?

What, then, lies behind this murderous assault on the people of Gaza? Many commentators have pointed to January’s upcoming Israeli general election. Wars can galvanise support for a sitting government within a highly militarised society like Israel.

Operation Cast Lead was also launched in advance of the previous general election in Israel. The Palestinian ambassador to Ireland has said that the current LikudYisrael Beiteinu ruling coalition is “using the blood of Palestinians to write their election manifesto”.

The assault can also be seen in the context of the international de-isolation of Hamas, which now enjoys increasing legitimacy from governments in Egypt, Tunisia, Qatar and Bahrain. The fall of Hamas has long been an Israeli

objective; Israel’s cruel, half-decade illegal siege of Gaza punishes the population for their choice of leadership.

Whatever the agenda, Israel is again committing large-scale war crimes in Gaza. Reports from the Irish Aid-funded Palestinian Centre for Human Rights make for depressing reading. Aside from the litany of deaths, they describe frequent attacks on civilian dwellings, civil institutions and societal infrastructure. Journalists have been wounded and the offices of at least two TV stations were bombed.

As the occupying power, Israel must take all necessary measures to protect the occupied civilian population. Legally, Israel must always distinguish between civilian and military targets and must adhere to the principle of proportionality; any attack expected to cause death or injury to civilians, or damage to civilian objects, which would be excessive in relation to the military advantage anticipated, is prohibited.

Gaza’s legal status is that of an occupied territory. Thus, Palestinians are a protected people, whose de facto imprisonment constitutes in itself an ongoing condition of belligerence and violence imposed by Israel, while between the end of Operation Cast Lead and the beginning of Operation Pillar of Cloud 270 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces in Gaza.

The above amounts to collective punishment, a war crime under the Geneva conventions.

Palestinians have suffered decades of ethnic cleansing, dispossession, occupation, colonisation and denial of basic human rights.

It is this situation that has given rise to militant Palestinian resistance groups; history has proven that an occupied people will resist with whatever means available to it. Hamas itself is only 25 years old, a byproduct of the 45 year occupation.

Thus the equivocation between the might of the Israeli military and the poorly armed Palestinian resistance ring hollow. Calls like that of our own government for “both sides” to “cease these attacks” suggest this is a conflict of equals. It is not. Israel is the belligerent party, and to end the current attacks, the ongoing illegal

BBC journalist Jihad Misharawi and wife mourn the death of their eleven-month-old son killed in an Israeli airstrike on Gaza. Photo: Majdi Fathi/APA Images siege of Gaza and the continual human rights abuses against the Palestinian people, concrete steps are urgently required.

The Irish government must call for Israel’s suspension from the Euro-Med agreement which grants it preferential trading status in Europe, conditional upon “respect for human rights”. It should also work to implement an arms embargo; ensure there is no Irish state-funded cultural, academic, or economic cooperation with Israel; and support the cessation of EU grants to Israel.

Palestinian civil society has called for a campaign of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel. This tactic was instrumental in ending apartheid in South Africa and, if taken up en masse by international civil society, will pressure Israel to comply fully with international law.

That Israel has faced no sanction for its illegal actions has directly resulted in this current assault. Israel can act with impunity because it occupies a position of power, with Palestinians in a position of relative weakness. BDS of-

fers a peaceful means to help level the playing field. It pressures the Israeli state, whose actions have repercussions internationally and whose flagrant and frequent disregard for international law is unacceptable.

But ordinary people must play a role in this. The IPSC calls on people to take five simple steps to help end the Israeli attack on Gaza, from emailing politicians to boycotting Israeli products.

The list may be seen at: www.ipsc. ie/5simplesteps.

TRINITY NEWS

Tuesday 20th November 2012

Comment

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Children’s referendum result: more disillusion than delusion The roots of the low turnout and high No vote on 10th November can be found in a lack of faith in the political system, writes William Dunne

T William Dunne Contributor

he cause for disappointment on the Yes side in the referendum on children’s rights is quite apparent: a dismal turnout rate of 33% has set the usual voices questioning constitutional legitimacy.

Alongside this, we saw a margin of victory of only 14 percentage points for an issue as ostensibly one-sided as children’s rights, for which there was all-party support. While activists and nonparty campaigners can walk away happy, the government, along with much of the body politic, can linger, awkward and shamefaced, over the let-down.

The most obvious disappointment is the low turnout, the third lowest on record; it is particularly disheartening given that the vote was held, in an unusually sensible move by the standards of Irish politics, on a Saturday and so would have benefited from a boost in turnout over a weekday vote, despite suggestions to the contrary by some looking to shift blame.

More probable causes can be laid at the feet of our politicians and government. Ignorance, confusion and apathy were the chief causes, with a lack of public engagement, information and debate on the issue.

Opinion polls in advance of the referendum showed that just 10% of people claimed to have a good understanding of the question, and 37% either were not going to vote or did not know how they would; most people in the country, including most of those who voted, had very little real idea of the purpose and effect of the amendment.

In some sense this is attributable to its nature: an insertion of a new article that had no obvious effect to any common eye, but would have a great many implicit legal effects. The Referendum Commission compounded this, giving information anodyne and legalistic even by its own standard; the supreme court’s decision against the government’s information literature can only

have added to voters’ uncertainty about the issue.

In many respects, unanimity of the political class undermined their aim. A lack of real opposition prevented real public debate, and stymied any opportunity for a more lively engagement with the issue.

Low turnout goes part of the way to explaining the poor performance of the Yes side: from the referendum on the Nice treaty onwards, we have known that the proportion of No voters in a

low turnout is higher than when voting levels are higher. But there are more specific reasons for the failure by the Yes side to garner greater support, reasons which illustrate the strange nature of Irish politics.

In particular, one can point to the decision to treat the referendum as a matter of social affairs, with religious groups mobilising against it instead of a class divide. The highest No vote came from that eternal rogue in referendums, Donegal (59.6% in the

Social enterprise and revolution are central to children’s rights Mark Frank Kelly argues for a renewed emphasis on change a$er the passage of the referendum on children’s rights

T Mark Frank Kelly Staff Writer

he need for a healthy balance and perspective when discussing relationships between adults and children is urgent and glaring, not least because of the acutely material, social, spiritual, moral, physical and economic inequalities that lie at the heart of such matters. How have the people of Ireland fared during the deliberations on the referendum on children’s rights?

This article will focus on the need to acknowledge how limited and inadequate our present culture of thinking about children’s rights is. I will be urging us all to embrace new and socially innovative ways of strengthening the place of children as participants in society. In so doing, I will draw particular inspiration from the UN convention on the rights of the child which Ireland ratified

in 1992.

However, my starting point is the late Elise Boulding, a sociologist, pacifist feminist and scholar.

She warned: “We may be unnecessarily sabotaging our present, and our children’s future, by being blind to the inconsistencies and irrationalities of adult-child interaction in family and community in this century. Mass-media programmes about the right to a happy and secure childhood and to a happy and secure retirement cannot substitute for the actual experience of frank and honest confrontation between generations when perceptions, needs and interests differ, in a context of mutual acceptance of responsibility for each other.”

Writing in 1979, Boulding went on to assert that, whatever the merits of special programmes

undertaken for children, they can never substitute joint community projects carried out by adults and children together, in which “the capacities of the young to contribute to the welfare of all receives full recognition”.

There is no doubt that the referendum on children’s rights has been fruitful. The discussions and debates engendered by it have, at best, served to clarify important issues; at worst, they have allowed individuals to vent their spleen, revealing in the process deeply prejudiced views and sentiments alongside much else.

In one Irish Times article entitled “Parental rights for State will undermine family”, the author claimed: “The question facing us in this referendum is not whether to give children constitutional rights, but whether to reallocate

northeast, 56% in the southwest) followed by working-class urban areas. Both opposed the referendum in higher proportions than they did the fiscal treaty.

This class and demographic divide is not one reflected by party division (while there is some alignment with Sinn Féin in urban areas, this breaks down in Donegal) or in social issues, where working-class areas consistently join with the “liberals” of Dublin South on things like Oireachtas inquiries, the death

penalty or divorce.

There will always be a purely oppositional element in Irish referendums; in 1992, 22% voted against shortening terms for local councillors. Indeed, the attitude that motivates many of these voters is one of using referendums as a stick with which to beat the government of the day.

This is not purely as petty as it might seem at first; this divide, which emerges so clearly in referendums, is reflective of a deep disenchantment from, and anger

against, the government and the political system. This is reflected in support for parties like Sinn Féin, excluded as it is from the political mainstream.

Distrust for that system, which seems in their eyes to have abandoned its regions, leads to alliances with a liberal vote. Indeed, it was probably a feeling (even if an incorrect one) on their part that it would be children of their families, or of their friends, that would be targeted by the amendment.

existing family rights so as to give the state enhanced powers to interfere in family life.” Remarkable!

Deeply cynical interpretations and attitudes have featured strongly in discussions concerning the referendum. Polarisation and aggressive beliefs, crude perceptions and unnecessary confrontations, not to mention the misleading effects of language, have all influenced the outcome.

Against this backdrop, the recent supreme court ruling that the government had “acted wrongfully” in spending public money to espouse a particular side in the campaign came as no surprise to many and probably most of us.

The profile of children has clearly been raised in recent weeks and, by effecting constitutional change, the referendum itself represents a catalyst for action that will help to ensure we remain focused on maximising the visibility, legitimacy and credibility of children and children’s rights.

Strengthening these rights in Irish society through child protection legislation, such as the National Vetting Bureau (children and vulnerable adults) bill 2012 and the Children First bill 2012, draws attention to a vital need for common sense and balance to ensure that vetting and reporting procedures for organisations do not amount to bureaucratic nightmares.

But society also needs to engage in socially innovative and impactful mechanisms that develop and implement strategic visions aimed at improving the participation of children in Irish society. A comprehensive legislative framework to support such initiatives is also required.

Why? For a start, participation is the only means by which a truly democratic foundation in society can be established. Participation in society, and not merely through the ballot box, is the fundamental right of citizenship. By voting Yes to the children’s referendum, the people of Ireland have helped to ensure that article 12 of the UN convention on the rights of the child – the right of children to be heard and have their views taken seriously in all matters affecting them – will be fully ingrained into the highest law of the land.

The UN’s committee on the rights of the child is the independent body entrusted with monitoring the convention. It publishes its interpretation of the content of human rights provisions in the form of general comments. These comments cover thematic issues such as children’s rights in juvenile justice, adolescent health, the rights of children with disabilities and protection from corporal punishment.

General comment 12 – on the right of the child to be heard,

published in 2009 – acknowledges that practical implementation of article 12 is still impeded by many longstanding practices and attitudes. Throughout the world, training for professionals on children’s rights is far from comprehensive and it is very clear that those most urgently in need of such training include teachers, social workers, health professionals, care workers, the police and judges.

Article 12 is a substantive provision, but also a general principle of the convention. It is accompanied by a cluster of participation articles that, interpreted together, provide the argument for the child’s right to participate. An underlying philosophy of the convention is therefore that children should have their views taken into account, not only because this is a fundamental right, but because it improves decision-making.

Every child possesses, like every human being, a unique voice. Children are the experts in their own lives. They are skilled communicators, entitled to participate fully in life and to make informed choices as they do so.

Participation can generally be taken to denote the process of sharing decisions that affect an individual’s life and that of the community in which he or she lives.

So, for example, every professional whose decisions influence the lives of children is, by virtue of the convention, required to listen to them. The fundamentals of childhood are clearly defined by the convention, and so too are the obligations of individuals, parents, communities and governments to meet the needs of children and fulfil their rights.

By insisting the child’s voice must be heard and given serious consideration, the convention, and now the Irish constitution, is seeking to ensure that children actively contribute to the formation of law, policy and practice regulating and influencing their everyday lives. Emphasis therefore needs, more than ever, to be placed on the role of the child as an active social agent who shapes their own social circumstances as well as being shaped by them.

So how do we ensure participation makes the leap from policy promise to an irreversible, widely understood norm in society?

Commitment, imagination and courage are essential requirements in bringing about this cultural change to ensure the views, experiences and dignities of all ages are respected.

Back in February of this year I had the good fortune to attend the Trinity Economic Forum (Tef ). I heard President Michael D Higgins speak in person for the first time and bore witness to his skills as a politician, poet and, perhaps most notably of all, a so-

ciologist. I was particularly struck by the passion of his conviction: “More than ever before, we need people … with the confidence to question the failed assumptions, the imagination to consider bold new strategies and the idealism to care deeply about the kind of Ireland that you and your children wish to live in.”

Efforts to develop and solidify youth communities in Ireland spring to mind. SpunOut (www. spunout.ie), for example, is a youth-led national charity working to empower young people between the ages of 16 and 25 to create personal and social change. Through its web-based platform, this charity provides an interactive online community for young people, giving them a space to share their views and opinions by writing articles for the site or commenting on pieces written by other young people. It is an important source of health and lifestyle information that has reached over 386,000 unique Irish users online so far this year – an example, par excellence, of the innate value of participation!

Ireland very recently won a seat at the UN human rights council which, it is very much hoped, will incentivise the development of human rights-based initiatives and models in this country.

To quote Shulamith Koenig, the 2003 recipient of the UN Human Rights Award, a real democracy is a means of delivering a system that encompasses “the holistic vision and practical mission of human rights as a way of life.”

There is nothing naive about this aspiration and for a nation such as Ireland, as I am confident our president would agree, it is a fully realisable goal.

As reported in the Irish Times on 14th November, Higgins has acknowledged from the outset of his presidency that the crisis facing Ireland is not just an economic crisis but one caused by a failure of ideas. Echoing his passionate appeal back in February at the Tef, he emphasized “the failure of policy-makers and influence formers to adequately challenge prevailing assumptions and models”, and asserted that there is “general consensus that never again should we repeat the hubristic mistakes of the Celtic tiger”.

Ireland is one of the most socially enterprising nations in the world, but perhaps it is now time for it to engage in a revolutionary process of social innovation and entrepreneurship. This would entail collaborating with, but never again placing absolute reliance upon potentially ruinous institutions. For my part, the holistic vision and practical mission of human rights, of children’s rights, as a way of life, as a value system, ought to be at the centre of this revolution.

TRINITY NEWS

Tuesday 20th November 2012

15

Comment

This is the time for action Politicians must no longer be allowed to play games, argues John Porter; ordinary people must act now to force legislation on the X case.

Photo: George Voronov

S John Porter Staff Writer

avita Halappanavar arrived at Galway University hospital on 21st October presenting with back pain, and was found to be miscarrying her baby. She was 17 weeks pregnant at the time. After being made aware of the miscarriage, Halappanavar asked the medical staff for a termination of the pregnancy; she repeated the request over the course of three days.

Eventually after the foetal heartbeat stopped, the medical staff operated in an effort to save Halappanavar’s life, but the procedure was left too late and she died on 28th October. She spent 72 hours in unbearable agony for the sake of a 17-week-old foetus that would have been unable to survive.

It was also reported that at some time during her stay in the hospital she was told the reason termination was being denied was that Ireland was “a Catholic country”.

The response to the story would not suggest that Ireland

was “a Catholic country”. The day the story broke, all social-media websites were taken up almost exclusively with the story, and each post I read displayed outrage.

Protests were held across the country, and a candlelit vigil was held in Galway where she died.

You felt the palpable sense that huge sections of the population were saying enough is enough, that we could not allow the situation to continue like this any longer.

When a story catches the public’s attention, you can be sure that politicians will not be far behind to make political capital.

The minister of state for disability, equality and mental health, Kathleen Lynch, said that the circumstances leading to Halappanavar’s death cannot be allowed to continue. Lynch said action must be taken so that people in the medical profession have the security and guidelines to know what to do in such circumstances.

Enda Kenny extended his sympathy to Halappanavar’s family,

Five pro-life arguments that are just not helping Fiachra Ó Rachallaigh, who has been on both sides of the argument, offers his advice on arguments over abortion.

T Fiachra Ó Rachallaigh Staff Writer

he question of whether medical terminations are morally justifiable is usually a very divisive one, in which emotions have a bad habit of boiling over. As such, the level of anger unleashed on Twitter following the tragic death of Savita Halappanavar was quite understandable, and many people will no doubt re-evaluate their position as a result.

Yet, if the pro-life movement finds itself losing thousands of supporters in the long term, it will be the movement’s fault, and its fault alone. There are many good arguments for being prolife, most obviously that killing an unborn child without good reason seems rather callous and a waste of human life.

Unfortunately these tend to be eclipsed by the amount of bad arguments out there. I chose to single out five because the nuvmber has a nice ring to it; as such, this list is far from exhaustive.

The overall point I would like to make is that if we pro-lifers are to maintain any kind of public support, we cannot afford to continue putting forward ridiculous, hypocritical and misleading arguments.

1. Abortion encourages “irresponsible behaviour”: “Do the crime, do the time.”

By this logic, airbags in cars and safety helmets on bicycles

should encourage reckless road behaviour. But even more damaging is the fact that it implies that children are somehow sent as a punishment for “sexual sinners”.

What was that about valuing the life of the unborn child again?

Another unfortunate aspect of this argument is that it tends to come alongside misogynistic statements in the vein of: “Keep those legs closed.” Far from encouraging safer sex, it serves to alienate people, at a time when the pro-life movement should be trying to bring people together.

2. The Catholic church holds that life begins at conception.

I apologise if I offend any religious people, but this argument can simply be ignored due to the inclusion of the word “God”. We live in a secular society, where everyone has the right to believe or not to believe in any kind of god. Therefore while the religious premise may hold true for some or even most of any given population, it might be rejected from the start by others.

This is precisely why, after leaving the Catholic church, I became pro-choice. It was only after reexamining both sides of the argument that I decided to return to the pro-life side again. Be under no illusions about the fact that I am in the minority here, so if you believe that life begins at concep-

saying it was “only appropriate” that an investigation be allowed and its findings reported to the minister for health.

The announced investigation is to be an internal one, and this has been criticised by the Fianna Fáil leader, Micheál Martin, who has argued that, given the enormity of what has happened, only an independent inquiry can hold any water.

You can see already how the death of this woman is being turned into a mere political football. If these politicians really were concerned about the lives of women like Savita, why did Lynch, Kenny, and Martin all vote against legislating for the X case on 19th April this year? Only 20 TDs voted for the proposals on Xcase legislation.

It is almost unbelievable that politicians are coming forward now to extend their sympathy when the three major parties have totally failed to provide any adequate legislation or any leadership on the issue of abortion.

I can accept that, within Irish law as it stands, action could have been taken to save Halappanavar’s life. An Oireachtas committee report on the constitution in 2000 decided that under Irish law the “unavoidable death” of the foetus resulting from the “essential treatment” of the mother was permissible.

However, there is an evident problem in the interpretation of this law, which lead to Halappanavar’s death. Clearly deciding what is unavoidable and what is avoidable is an incredibly difficult decision for any doctor to make. Termination, as it stands within Ireland, is such an ethical grey area and is so loaded with religious implications that it is almost an impossible judgement for medical staff to take in so many cases.

The Oireachtas has the responsibility to make laws, but it single-handedly failed to do so over abortion. Politicians sat back, not wanting to take any decision that may cost support in Catholic Ire-

land.

This irresponsibility is causing unnecessary deaths. It is not an exaggeration to say that Kenny, Martin and others have blood on their hands. If the 19th April proposals had been passed, there is a real possibility that Savita Halappanavar would still be alive today.

A recent international study found that Ireland was the fifth best country in the world to live in if you are a woman. We lost out only to the Scandinavian countries, who always come top in surveys like these. The gender gap is, supposedly, narrower here than almost anywhere else in the world. The news that Irish women receive 75% of what their male counterparts do in wages was warmly welcomed as a sign of the new, progressive Ireland.

This narrow, liberal approach to gender equality is the worst kind of pathetic apologia you are likely to encounter. Women should be pleased that the gender gap in employment is closing, and should ignore the fact that they

do not have basic rights to bodily integrity and medical treatment under Irish law. Not only are women not equal to men in Irish society, but the law does not value their lives as highly as an unborn foetus.

Perhaps the death of Halappanavar will be the beginning of a radical movement on abortion rights. The protest outside Dáil Éireann was a moving event, as were events across the country. Hopefully the evident anger will continue beyond immediate outrage to form a movement demanding rights for women.

Politicians always react most strongly to fear. If they fear losing their seats because of their stance over abortion, then they will be forced to change their Pilate-like indifference and introduce legislation that should have been passed decades ago.

tion, please make an argument based on either a secular brand of philosophy, science or – better still – both.

3. If the lives of a mother and child are at risk, it is wrong to intervene and terminate the pregnancy, because only God has the right to decide who lives and who dies.

As in point two, using religion to frame an argument only works in a theocracy. Yet, even then, this type of argument might potentially be used to oppose any form of medical intervention that prevents a patient from dying, which is rather absurd. It is also difficult to explain to people, as in the case of Savita Halappanavar, why two people should die when one could easily live.

4. Abortion damages women.

Anti-abortion groups frequent-

ly allege that abortion damages women, claiming that since terminations go against nature they cause some profound mental and spiritual trauma. Women, they say, will always regret it.

This might seem reasonable except for one point: there is little or no proof. It is a case of “he said, she said”. Of course, for some women the procedure is highly distressing – and bear in mind that very few women leave abortion clinics jumping for joy – while for others it is a necessary unpleasantness soon to be forgotten.

But do pro-life groups not cite studies that show a higher rate of depression among women who have abortions? Yes, in fact they do. Pro-choice groups also publish studies that show that there is no such correlation. In any case,

correlation does not imply causation.

The only abortions that have been proven to put women at risk are unregulated “backstreet” abortions, and using those in any argument against abortion would be self-defeating.

5. Abortion is never needed to save a woman’s life.

The Life Institute recently embarked on an expensive advertising campaign alleging this point.

Setting out to deny scientific fact in a country in which 75% of the population graduate from secondary school tends to be risky at the best of times. It is even worse when the media publicise the fact of the death of a woman in the middle of an advertising campaign that sets out that such things never happen.

What is striking about these

examples is that only the second and third arguments tackle the question of why abortion should be considered immoral. The use of religion is what ultimately detracts from their value. The others have little or no intellectual value and only exist to mislead a public that is becoming increasingly paranoid about being misled.

Rightly or wrongly, the pro-life campaign has an image problem. It is seen as a group of old religious nutters, who dream of returning the country to the dystopian 1950s, with the associated Magdalene laundries, mass censorship and religious indoctrination; and as a pro-life person myself, there are times when I even find myself believing it.

TRINITY NEWS

Tuesday 20th November 2012

Comment

16

Conor O’Donovan considers whether the rise in antimicrobial resistance will prove the fall of modern medicine

Science - p19

We must march against austerity Active opposition is necessary to resist cutbacks, say Michael O’Rourke and Irma Blchorishvili of Free Education for Everyone

The Union of Students in Ireland, argues Mark O’Meara, is still failing to defend those who need strong union representation; and the rot is spreading.

Michael O’Rourke and Irma Blchorishvili Fee Trinity On 24th November, the Dublin Council of Trade Unions will march on Dáil Éireann to protest against austerity measures being implemented in the upcoming budget. Their submission, entitled 30 Reasons to March, is available online at dctu.wordpress.com/blog, and ranges from social-welfare payments being too low to the fact that Ireland has one of the highest levels of wealth inequality in the EU. Marching alongside them will be members of several high profile single-issue campaigns, including Communities against Cuts, the Spectacle of Defiance, and the Campaign Against Household and Water Taxes.

The latter of these has the reputation of being the largest civil disobedience campaign in decades, with hundreds of thousands of householders still refusing to pay. Recognising our common cause in resisting austerity, Free Education for Everyone (Fee), a grassroots group of students and college staff set up to fight the reintroduction of fees while campaigning for genuinely free education for all through progressive central taxation, have called for an education bloc on the march, and invite all groups representing those in the education sector to attend. The education bloc will be assembling outside the Ambassador theatre on Parnell Square at 1pm (look for Fee or student union banners).

What, you might ask, do taxboycott campaigns and trade unions have in common with students? Besides the fact that students who graduate will then be part of the labour force, fee increases are just the uniquely student flavour of austerity, and to defeat these we must work with others who face similar

difficulties. Firstly, we should march alongside them on 24th November to make connections with others resisting cuts in the education sector, and secondly to both build a sense of solidarity between trade and student unions and to identify student struggles among the wider anti-austerity movement.

Recent years have seen massive changes in education. The changes most apparent to us are naturally those to our student contribution. Since the inception of the free-fees scheme, the registration fee has steadily increased from a meagre sum up to over €2,000, now standing at €2,250, with plans to increase it to €3,000 by 2015.

Not only that, but student grants have been cut, or even abolished in the case of postgraduates, with the last few years seeing a near-doubling of the distance required to qualify for the non-adjacent grant, leading many students to suddenly find themselves with less than half of what they previously received.

In my own case (having to pay full fees this year), dropping out of college would be a necessity without being amongst the small number of people (youth unemployment being 17.5%) who are able to get a bank loan, find a large amount of part-time work and just about manage to fit the hours around lectures, to the unquestionable detriment of studies. This could prove to foreshadow what might face every student from a lower- to middle- income family should fees be raised to a higher level.

However, it is likely that most of you reading this are keenly aware of these changes, being on the receiving end of them in most cases.

But we are not the only ones in the education sector facing a lowering in our material conditions.

Those who have just recently left

the student ranks to start their teaching careers as newly qualified teachers now find that they will be paid 30% less than their counterparts in 2010; meanwhile the allocation of special-needs assistants remains a contentious issue. Both of these issues, along with others in the education sector, now have campaign groups established, most of whom will be marching with the teachers unions on 24th November. We feel that having students as part of an education bloc alongside these other groups will allow us to make contact with and start to organise with them, allowing greater numbers to be brought to bear on campaigns than would have been possible previously.

Apart from serving as a platform to convey our opposition to austerity, marching with trade unions will give us a chance to protest against a government that has consistently revealed itself to be serving the business interests of a few at the expense of building a healthy society where the basic entitlements of equal education, healthcare, housing and employment are met. Solidarity between workers and students is of major importance if we want to achieve anything. What happened in Quebec is a great example of what can be accomplished by students and workers who stand in solidarity with each other. After going on strike for a period of six months, with the strike allowing the students to protest daily, 190,000 students and more than 300,000 of their supporters – most of whom were members of 180 local unions – managed to ruin the plans of the finance minister, Raymond Bachand, to implement an 82% increase in tuition fees. This can and should be an example for us as it proves how important it is to build links with trade unions and get the workers on our side to help us resist student cuts.

No surprises from USI

Our generation is not to be blamed for the mistakes of the past, but we most certainly are responsible for what is happening now and what the consequences of all this will be in the future.

Thus, the first step is to recognise the problems we face and then work towards solving them.

As Noam Chomsky suggests: “This world is full of suffering, distress, violence and catastrophes. Students must decide: does something concern you or not?

I say: look around, analyze the problems, ask yourself what you can do and set out on the work!”

Education should be a right for everyone, not a privilege for the few. For this to happen, we should fight against austerity measures that were imposed on us against our will. We must stress, however, that marching from A to B on 24th November alone will not stop fee increases; only by taking direct action, such as blockades, occupations and even a Quebecstyle strike, on a mass scale organized democratically by students ourselves, will we stand a chance at stopping the rise of tuition fees and the degradation of our education system.

So, despite the fact that the Students’ Union council recently rejected a motion calling for information about the anti-austerity march to be provided to students (unlike their counterparts in University College Dublin and the National University of Ireland, Maynooth), we are asking any students or staff who believe in free education to get involved and join the education bloc on 24th November, as a first step in building a cross-society movement against student-fee increases and austerity measures.

A Mark O’Meara Staff Writer

long with a new USI officer board, we now have new arrests and scandals. Who would have thought? I am sure at this stage many people think I just get a kick out of complaining about the USI; I do not. I would be far happier to not have to write this article about the latest series of screw-ups that the organisation has engaged in.

After the USI disaffiliation referendum I said I was hopeful, but not expectant, of significant reform taking place in the organisation. Although I signed up to the USI working group which will look at reforms that could be implemented, I expected the USI to continue screwing up; but I was not exactly expecting the screwups to be this spectacular.

The few students who still pay attention to the actions of their student representatives will associate Wednesday 14th November with being the day that John Logue, the Union of Students in Ireland (USI) president, got arrested for his protest in Dáil Éireann. That event itself was angerinducing for anyone who hoped that this year’s campaign would be different from last year’s; yet, before I had even heard about it, I was already angry with the USI for the gross incompetence it had shown at an event just one hour earlier.

That evening, the USI hosted a town hall meeting at the Alexander hotel which can only be described as a farce. The meeting started with speeches from the presidents of the students’ unions of Trinity, the Dublin Institute of Technology and the National College of Ireland, followed by a speech from the USI president,

blockading their cars, singling the vulnerable ones out or mounting a media campaign against them, may well feel good, the goal of the USI and Trinity’s union should be to help struggling students, and not anything else. Seeking some sort of revenge may well be counter-productive in any attempt to influence the upcoming government budget. Ignoring this reality has led to critical mistakes in this year’s campaign, and those who are struggling the most should be the angriest about it.

First of all, a harsh reality should be acknowledged. The reality is that the government is committed to making a certain amount of cuts, no matter what happens. Those who would consider themselves part of the anti-austerity movement may not want to accept this, but as we have seen in Greece you can smash up half the city and cuts are still going to happen. It is just a matter of where the cuts and tax increases happen, not if.

Secondly, and most importantly, the USI need to stop making the mistakes that all other unions seem to be making, and this mistake is glaringly obvious to many people. Simply put, the students barely able to financially survive should not just be the union’s “primary” concern: they should be the union’s only concern. Time after time, we see unions oppose cuts for every single one of their members. While public-sector unions are rightly motivated by their need to protect the lowest paid, their strategy is always to oppose pay cuts for all their members, including those who are on disproportionately high wages and would not suffer seri-

John Logue. It was then opened up to the floor for questions, with 60 seconds being allowed for each speaker.

At the back of the room, a man in a suit put up his hand and was given the microphone. It turned out that this guy was Aodhán Ó Ríordáin, a Labour party TD. He asked if he could speak for more than 60 seconds since he was an invited guest. No one said anything in response; so he talked anyway, and explained his background of working with disadvantaged and special-needs children, stating that, unfortunately for us, protecting them from cuts is higher up his list of priorities than protecting us from cuts.

Once he finished speaking, Logue took the microphone from him and proceeded into what can only be described as a five-minute verbal attack on the only TD who had even bothered to show up at the meeting. Ó Ríordáin was labelled a liar in as many ways as Logue could articulate and was incorrectly described as someone who condones huge salaries for university presidents. Logue then made the claim that the government does not have to choose between different areas to cut, implying that all savings can come from the general term “waste”, which apparently exists somewhere in the government but on which no one can ever put their finger, except for a handful of large salaries.

Once he finished, just one question was taken from the floor before it was declared that we were all going to the Dáil viewing gallery to “scare the shit out of the TDs”. As the small crowd proceeded to jump up with excitement, a councillor asked if he could speak briefly, since he had also been asked to come to the meeting. He spoke while half the room ignored him.

So, after just one comment had been taken from the floor, the meeting was over and the crowd were led to the Dáil to “scare the shit” out of politicians. It was on the train home from this meeting that I learned Logue had been arrested.

The problem with the campaign is that it is being dictated by anger. Do not get me wrong: students who are struggling financially are perfectly right to be angry. It cannot be easy to be barely getting by, knowing that it is going to be even harder next year.

But while giving politicians “what they deserve”, whether that be

ously from a slight pay cut. This seriously damages their credibility.

Likewise with the USI; while any increase in the financial burden experienced by any student is opposed, regardless of means to pay, then the union simply cannot be taken seriously. The strategy it needs to pursue is an acknowledgement that, while cuts are guaranteed to take place, they need to ensure that these cuts are directed as much as possible to those who are in the best position to absorb them.

The ultimate goal should be to ensure that higher education is accessible to all students, regardless of ability to pay. A method of paying fees after graduation, once an acceptable income threshold is reached, would get us far closer to that goal than the current system. On top of that, a long-term plan to fight graduate unemployment should be to lobby the government to create incentives for students to take up technology courses in third level, where there will be plenty of jobs awaiting upon graduation.

But after seeing the actions of the USI over the last few weeks, I am in an even greater state of despair about the future of the organisation than I was when I first got involved in the campaign for disaffiliation. Not only have they carried out a poor campaign, they have also been quick to dismiss any criticisms that may be directed at them. The idea that political affiliation is a good enough reason to ignore criticism is laughable, considering Logue, his predecessor as USI president and his opponent in the 2012 USI presidential election have all had political affiliations.

The low point was when I saw people, including our own Students’ Union’s education officer, using the hashtag #freelogue on Twitter, creating a comparison between being an idiot in the Dáil gallery and people who have actually engaged in serious protests and been persecuted politically in other countries. Another low was when I saw our Students’ Union’s president making ridiculous comments to TDs on Twitter, including the comment: “I think Intel, Google ... etc are not concerned about reading and writing”.

If last year was the year we fell out of love with the USI, then it seems this will be the year we fall out of love with the Students’ Union.

If you would like to get involved in Free Education for Everyone, please see http://free-education.info/ or contact feeireland@gmail.com.

The USI president, John Logue, pictured in front of Dáil Éireann where he was arrested last Wednesday.

Photo: George Voronov

TRINITY NEWS

Tuesday 20th November 2012

Editorial

CSC, Duges and student politics

T Rónán Burtenshaw Editor

his editorial was written before Duges met with the CSC on Monday for a discussion about restrictions placed upon their political activities. Those ultimately led to Duges shelving plans to attend a remembrance march for Savita Halappanavar, a woman who died unnecessarily because of a the state's position on abortion. It was a march which, for this reason, was the biggest pro-choice rally in Ireland since the early 1990s but which had no official presence from this university. Below, we seek to outline the concerns and questions from students arising from our lead story.

Student Politics In this paper’s view, the CSC’s problems with Duges campaigning on a pro-choice platform exist for one of two reasons: either they are derived from an understanding of the place of student politics within Trinity in general, or an aversion to student societies dealing with the politics of abortion.

Consider the former possibility; the CSC told Trinity News that “all societies have their remits examined and clarified in a meeting with the CSC executive prior to their establishment”. They continued that “this is a necessary part of the establishment of all new societies”.

This suggests that scope of activity for societies is dictated by the CSC on a case-by-case basis, and not in a standardised way.

If that is the case, it affords the organisation a lot of power over student activity in College, which it is free to exercise subjectively.

The result of this is that at the executive meeting at which Duges was founded in 2006, a genderequality society was given a remit that reduced it to a discussion forum.

Why was this done? It could be that this was an attempt to assert an opinion on the place for student politics within Trinity. A CSC statement on the Duges issue said: “TCDSU is the only representative body for all students in Trinity College, Dublin and as such political advocacy on behalf of students of Trinity College, Dublin necessarily falls under their remit.”

It continued by emphasising that societies were not “representative bodies”, and that this was the reason why they could not “espouse corporate opinions”.

This means that they cannot advocate in an organised fashion on issues. The effect of this policy – if this is what the CSC intend, and if it were to be enforced – would be the restriction of organised political activities in Trinity College to the Students’ Union.

There are several concerns with this. First of all, it leaves stu-

dent politics in Trinity highly mediated by authority. The Students’ Union is integrated into College’s hierarchy. College authorities facilitate membership to it, and its funding. But there is a quid pro quo: they get significant influence on the boundaries of student politics within the college.

Secondly, it channels student politics through a very narrow corridor. The Students’ Union has been depoliticised over recent years in Trinity, with a pervasive (though not universal) myopia about what are and are not “student issues”. It will take time to change direction on this front, particularly because one contributory factor is student disengagement and apathy.

The Students’ Union is also a bureaucratic organisation, and necessarily so. In order to act on an issue at all, it has to pass a carefully-worded mandate at a council meeting which happens at a given time and must fulfil certain criteria. To institute long-term policy, it has to have a referendum. Because it is a representative body of all students in College, it has to err on the side of communitarianism and eschew emphatic statements where possible. While these qualities may reinforce its democratic mandate and help it maintain legitimacy as a serviceproviding body, they also limit its scope for political activity. It should not be the sole arena of student politics. If it is, then the political culture will be turgid and much activity will be stifled.

A third problem with this policy is its imposition of homogeneity onto student politics. Where does this leave minority political opinion? If politics were restricted to the SU, it would condemn minority opinion to continued defeat and irrelevance. This would be corrosive to student politics, and potentially exclusionary too.

But questions must also be asked about definitions. What constitutes political activity?

Why is the fact that the Students’ Union is “the only representative body for all students” relevant?

Many – particularly in societies like Q-Soc or the Muslim Student Association, which deal with aspects of people’s identities that are tightly-held but not widelyshared – may feel more accurately represented by those groups.

Why should they not be able to engage in activity with them on important social issues?

But these questions engage the CSC’s policy as if it is consistent, when it is not. Q-Soc is an equality-oriented society based on sexual orientation, just as Duges is one based on gender. Q-Soc engages in “LGBTQ equality campaigns” and has a specific campaigns coordinator who is in charge of organising “awareness and protest campaigns”, including last year

one for civil marriage. The group has also attended Dublin’s Pride parade march under a Trinity QSoc banner.

It is clear that the CSC is not limiting the organised political activity of all societies, even on the issue of reproductive rights.

Trinity Labour introduced its party’s national motion on the Xcase at the Labour party conference earlier this year. By the time we go to print, Trinity Young Fine Gael may have endorsed Xcase legislation at its meeting on Monday. But if organised student political activity in societies is restricted to parties, what about the vast majority of Irish people who are not members of any?

But, again, even this is not the full story. Societies like Flac and Amnesty International, who have external parent organisations, are permitted to engage in political activity. None of these CSC positions offer a consistent or satisfactory reason for preventing Duges from espousing a prochoice position and attending a march on that mandate.

Either the CSC policy is scatter-gun inconsistent, or there is something else going on. TN’s discussions with senior society members this week have emphasised uneasiness with controversy in the CSC. If politics are OK as long as they are not controversial, then the CSC is trivialising student politics. Certainly there is anecdotal evidence that issues like the Israel-Palestine conflict have been difficult to organise on, and the college attempted to stop republican student organisations forming during the Troubles.

But there is another possibility, the only one which would seem to be make the pieces of this puzzle fit. The CSC is making a specific exception for abortion.

Abortion One indication of the possible centrality of abortion is the flimsy reasoning for opposing the establishment of explicitly pro- or anti-abortion societies in Trinity.

In its response to Trinity News, the CSC argued that societies taking a stance on abortion would not “provide a long-term contribution to College life”. This, their statement said, was because “there is an inability for such societies to exist beyond a limited period of time surrounding national debates on the issue”.

The debate over reproductive rights has not existed for a limited period of time; it has existed for hundreds of years. Pope Sixtus V developed the Catholic church’s position on the subject in the 16th century. The first state to institute liberal abortion laws was the Soviet Union in 1919, over 90 years before Saturday’s march over Savita Halappanavar’s death and

three years before the foundation of the Irish Free State.

Even if the issue’s lack of longevity cannot be the reason why the CSC steers clear of it, there are strong indications that it does.

In 2008, after the CSC rejected a petition by pro-life students to found an anti-abortion society, the CSC’s then-treasurer, Edward Gaffney, commented that such a society “would never happen”.

Trinity News records show that there have been a number of applications over decades, all rejected. All those associated with Duges with whom we spoke, including a former chairperson, said that it was their opinion that the CSC was particularly sensitive over the issue of abortion.

And the CSC’s current position amounts to a serious restriction on the capacity of student societies to campaign on abortion.

Student societies cannot be established to campaign on it. The only existing student society whose remit could extend to campaigning on it is not permitted to do so.

The remaining option is to engage with party political societies, which, to varying but significant degrees, will be restricted in their activities by parent parties. It is also unclear, given the apparently arbitrary nature of the CSC’s policies in this arena, to what extent these are allowed to campaign on abortion.

If it is the case that CSC has a specific aversion to societies dealing with abortion, pursuing its current course would seem sensible. Forcing students to join youth wings of political parties to campaign on the issue of reproductive rights obstructs effective organisation by placing it within the processes of larger, multi-faceted organisations. The same applies to channelling this activity into the Students’ Union. Restricting political activity on abortion to parties is, as is evidenced by the 20-year refusal of politicians in the Dáil to legislate for the X case, inefficient.

Some might say that the CSC is right to have concerns over abortion politics playing out in Trinity. After all, who would want to face the grotesque imagery that can accompany them as they walk through College? But there is no need for this to happen; preventive measures already exist. Section III 9B of the College’s general regulations state that poster images have “to comply with the College dignity and respect policy” and “not create an offensive or hostile environment for an individual or group in College, particularly in relation to any of the nine protected equality grounds”.

This is similarly covered by the CSC’s own officer handbook.

But these concerns are exactly what those in the debate who use those images are looking to elicit.

“

The CSC’s actions, if they are designed to target abortion specifically, are consistent with a history of keeping abortion out of sight in Ireland.

They want to create a climate of fear. One where TDs kick the can down the road, rather than doing their jobs as legislators; one where counsellors speak to young women in riddles for fear that, if they explicitly advocate abortion, they are one cynical fraudster with a tape recorder away from a court case; one where doctors do not feel certain that they can give women the treatment they need to save their lives.

The CSC’s actions, if they are designed to target abortion specifically, are consistent with a history of keeping abortion out of sight in Ireland; of packing women off to Britain on boats and planes, and restricting discussions to hushed tones. It creates a stigma around abortion, one that makes it harder for women facing crisis pregnancies. About one in 10 women in this country has had an abortion. Given that they are disproportionately under 30, it’s likely that a higher percentage of the female students you know in this College have had them.

It is important that students follow the developments between the CSC and Duges closely.

If the restriction has been put in place for general political reasons, it has serious consequences for student politics in Trinity. Students should reject it as unnecessary and paternalistic.

If it turns out that the CSC is maintaining an exception for societies who want to deal with the politics of abortion, they are part of the problem Ireland faces in dealing with this issue. They are restricting students’ capacity to engage in organised political action on an important issue while maintaining that more trivial activities are permissible. Students should ensure that this is an unsustainable position.

In either case, it comes back to this: tomorrow there will be another vigil outside the Dáil for Savita Halappanavar, the woman whose preventable and political death Duges was prevented from marking by the CSC on Saturday.

We should reflect on all of the small steps that could have been taken, over decades, to prevent what happened in Galway; on all of the times people who should have organised and agitated on this issue were met with restrictions and backed down. It is the aggregate of all of those small steps that makes the difference.

And, as Duges went into its meeting with the CSC yesterday evening, it is clear that there are steps that are yet to be taken in this college.

Photo; George Voronov

TRINITY NEWS

Tuesday 20th November 2012

18

Editorial Clarity, unity and the abortion debate

L Hannah Cogan Public Editor

ast Saturday, thousands of people marched through Dublin to remember Savita Halappanavar, a 31-year-old woman who died in hospital of a septicaemia infection following a refused termination. Organisers of the march estimated 20,000 individuals participated; when the front of the march reached Merrion Square, its tail end had yet to cross O’Connell bridge.

The march represented a rare moment of unity in the Irish debate on abortion. It is tragic that a young woman had to die to catalyse such political action, but the fact remains: almost everyone in Ireland, notably including the Society for the Prevention of Unborn Children and several other groups that are traditionally anti-abortion, has stood with prochoice campaigners in noting that this death was preventable and represented a clear case of a medically necessary termination.

I should make it very clear at this point that I am and always have been pro-choice. My support for the pro-choice movement is based largely on free flow of information. Terminating a pregnancy involves an irresolvable conflict of rights, and I do not think that any hard-and-fast rule can, or should, be made about whose rights are superior. In every instance, an abortion requires a difficult and traumatising decision to be made; it is impossible to make that decision without easy access to information. In a country that broadly condemns abortion, that information can never be freely available. Abortion can be and will continue to be a heated and vigorous debate; anyone who ignores that – or, worse, deliberately sabotages the discourse surrounding the issue, on either side – does women around the world a disservice, with potentially life-threatening consequences.

It is a simple truth in Ireland that an unintended pregnancy is still looked on as something of which women should be ashamed; something they are responsible for, and a punishment for being careless. That pregnancy counselling services are offered anonymously, that women’s magazines are filled with advice on how to tell your boyfriend or your family about your pregnancy and to brace yourself for their probably negative or disappointed reaction, testifies as such. For all the Irish constitution may go on about the primacy of the family, being pregnant in this country is still fundamentally a “women’s issue”, isolated from greater social currents.

I strongly suspect the greatest obstacle facing the pro-life movement is not an army of liberal feminists. I suspect it may be the thousands of otherwise conservative families who, when their daughters or sisters be-

come pregnant in unintentional circumstances, would rather push through an abortion than see someone close to them suffer an unwanted pregnancy and traumatic adoption. I suspect it may be women isolated by abuse, substance addiction, and trafficking. I suspect it may be women for whom being pregnant is so shameful and degrading that a termination, hidden from family and friends, seems their only chance for normality. In short, I suspect it may be women for whom information about birth control, maternal health and aftercare does not flow freely.

I wish this was a decision that could be reached without catchy slogans, public campaigns, and TV advertising. No woman facing a decision on terminating a pregnancy should have to deal with an attempt to muddy that decision.

There is a distinct difference, which Youth Defence in particular fails to grasp, between making information available and using it to manipulate a sensitive and personal decision-making process.

Unfortunately, legislation requires political commitment, and garnering political commitment increasingly requires action.

The solution then, is to drop the stigma around the debate. Drop the labels, drop the vitriol. The pro-life side needs to stop politicising religion, just as pro-choice need to stop casting allegations of woman-hating. Heartfelt as these notions may be, any assumption that one side of this debate can speak for members of the other side is counterproductive.

Savita Halappanavar’s death is an outrage and a tragedy, more so because her death can be directly linked to the Irish government’s failure to legislate on the X case, in obvious contravention of Irish political will. The outcome of the Irish abortion debate will have an impact on the life and health of millions of women, and will only be discussed and acted on if the same kind of political pressure can be generated.

While campaigners resort to tactics that exclude many from the debate, that discourse can never happen and that unity can never be reached. If this issue matters to you, engage with the debate, make your voice heard, but please do not play into the dynamic that has bitterly polarised this debate and rendered it irresolvable. If there is a right answer, yelling louder will not help us find it, and if there is not, a consensus will have to be reached to ensure the kind of legal and political clarity essential to women in danger.

Our primary concern should be women who are frightened and vulnerable; to help and protect them, we need to move forward, and we do that by treating this issue with the sensitivity and respect it deserves.

Dear Editor Letter in response to “The intrigue of Loyola” (Anonymous, 30th October) This week, the Loyola Institute was launched. The vision of the new Institute was summarised at the launch: “to engage in critical reflection and scholarly research on the Christian faith, hsocial justice and contemporary culture with the intellectual resources of the Catholic tradition.” It augments the two existing academic units in the Confederal School of Religions, Theology and Ecumenics, the non-denominational Department of Religions and Theology, and the Irish School of Ecumenics, dedicated to the critical hermeneutical study of religious traditions and to exploring conditions for peace in international politics.

I would like to take this opportunity to correct some of the inaccuracies contained in a recent unsigned article in Trinity News (30th October).

1. The Loyola Institute is a newly created academic unit.

Appointments to Loyola will be made on the basis of Trinity’s established academic criteria.

Contrary to the misinformation supplied in the unsigned article, it does not constitute a “merger” with the Milltown Institute, nor does it contravene the university’s equal opportunities policy. As for all Trinity departments, institutes and centres, the criteria for appointment are academic qualifications in the specified areas of teaching and research.

2. The anonymous article reported a “large degree of resistance to this measure by academic staff”. However, it should be noted that in Hilary term 2012 the undergraduate degree programme in Catholic theology had been discussed at and endorsed by the School, Undergraduate Studies

Committee, Academic Council, and Board. Loyola’s establishment in College has been backed by two provosts, negotiated by two registrars, and supported by two deans of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (AHSS). The Loyola professorship in Catholic theology was approved this autumn by the AHSS Faculty Executive and

“

Trinity’s reputation and its ability to attract the ‘best and the brightest’ will be enhanced rather than diminished by this new degree.”

by Academic Council and will be advertised shortly.

3. Trinity’s reputation and its ability to attract the “best and the brightest” will be enhanced rather than diminished by this new degree. Catholic theology in particular cannot be examined without reference to the major movements of western thinking since antiquity. The new critical mass of expertise in the school will increase opportunities for

international recruitment in line with Trinity’s global relations strategy. As announced at the launch, through its research and teaching, the Loyola Institute will equip students to analyse changes in the role of religion in the current culture and also its pluralisation; to analyse the new challenges facing societies in an age of globalisation and of great technological advances; to study the theology of a tradition that has marked Irish history and identity and has created intercultural connections; to discuss contemporary views on the role of religion in the public sphere; and to contribute to debates about the position of faith communities in pluralist democracies.

4. As divinity schools in the United States (eg Harvard, Yale, Chicago, Duke) and departments of theology in European universities from Sweden to Switzerland show, the assumed opposition between a “faith-based degree” and “the secular ethos of the university” is not shared in other places of learning. The meaning of either approach, religious or secular, is a matter of conceptual enquiry into one’s presuppositions.

Indeed, by laying open its own starting point, Loyola might help us all to inspect and debate our own assumptions and presuppositions.

Yours faithfully, Prof Shane Allwright Registrar

Photo: George Voronov

The internship dilemma Elaine McCahill Editor-at-Large In Ireland, it is a part of the transition year framework in secondary school that 15- or 16-yearolds will participate in unpaid work-experience placements to try and evaluate if certain career paths are for them, or simply to work out what industries they are interested in. If participated in properly, these placements can be of insurmountable value to teenagers who are confused about their career prospects or who want to learn more about professions they feel they might be interest in.

These placements usually take the form of two-week blocks, one before Christmas and one after.

Usually, students organise these placements for themselves and will work for a different company for each of the individual weeks; they are allowed to travel outside of their home towns or cities to discover what it is like to live and work somewhere else.

These placements are often lauded as eye-opening experiences, where those who are set on one career path realise it is not for them, while others find a passion they never realised they had.

It is a key part of the Irish teenage experience and helps with the process of choosing thirdlevel courses or future internship places.

In the current economic climate, transition year has been defamed as a waste of both money and a year of secondary school.

However, there are many who will attest that this year of projects, work experience and new responsibilities are invaluable to a developing teenager. This is what internships should be like.

They should take the form of an organised time frame with a structure whereby a young person can learn and develop new skills, make new contacts and have potential for employment or further experience placements.

However, in the current climate, internship positions are abused. Third-level students on summer breaks or recent graduates desperate for experience cover the workload of those whom some companies were forced to make redundant. While this is valuable experience, it is

also exploitation. In many cases, young people cannot afford to simply work for free, with most people taking on night or weekend jobs to facilitate this work experience.

On a personal note, I completed my transition year work experience here in Dublin with the VIP publishing group, and it was a fantastic, valuable experience where I was involved in fashion shoots, writing reviews and also carrying out routine tasks such as collecting dry cleaning. Personally, the buzz of that office and my experience there really convinced me that my desire to get into publishing was definitely what I wanted. Sitting in a classroom would never have told me that.

Traditionally, and most likely when the world economy was still functioning, unpaid internships lasted only four weeks and had a distinct structure wherein training was offered and there was a detailed plan for one’s time with a company. However, companies are now taking advantage of the high demand for the few entry level opportunities available by taking on unpaid interns for far longer than this legal four week period; in doing so, they are breaching employment law.

The majority of internships in publishing and related areas of the media are based in London, and the Arts Council of England has laid out guidelines for internships. According to these guidelines, if an intern is merely shadowing a co-worker – which is very unlikely to be the case these days – they are not deemed eligible for pay. However, if an intern is contributing to the company through active work with individual assignments and deadlines, then they are entitled to be paid.

In terms of internships while at third-level, there a relatively large number of paid summer placements available at companies like Deloitte, KPMG or Ernst and Young, but these are incredibly competitive to get into. Even if you are lucky enough to secure a place, those reporting back have not given accounts of ample responsibilities and tasks; their experience is more of the dataentry or PowerPoint-presentation variety, with Facebook open in the next tab.

The main selling-point about these internships, though, is that after the competitive interview

process one is more than likely going to be offered another internship position, if not a graduate position or entry level job, when one is finished college. The same cannot be said for internships in the arts and cultural spheres.

Very few publishing houses pay their interns, Hearst being one of the few in the UK that offers paid placements on magazines such as Elle or Re. However, these are minimum wage internships, and given the high rents and costs of living in London many have to take up a second job to supplement their income.

In the US, internships at Condé Nast are offered on the basis that they count for college credit and they are completed during term time. Here in Ireland, more often than not, internships in the publishing, arts and culture or media sector are unpaid but only last six weeks or so, and as such are not huge commitments of non-earning time.

One of the interns at the Dublin book festival this year, for example, has been working two days a week in an unpaid capacity for the organisation since last June. Naturally, she had to take on a part-time job to survive in Dublin, but the festival organisers were not overtly accommodating of the fact that she was not on constant call, even though they were not paying her. Her fellow intern travels quite a distance to get to the office and has accumulated hundreds of euros in travel expenses for which she may not be reimbursed. As such, this internship is costing her money.

The festival took place last week and involved 12-hour days and massive organisation for these women, with no guarantee of any pay or even travel expenses.

This is a prime example of the exploitative nature of certain organisations. Many companies claim they cannot afford to pay these interns, but it is irresponsible to take these young people on without any chance of further employment.

It is reasonable to expect that internships should only be offered on the basis of the prospect of future employment with the company or organisation that takes you on. Unfortunately, in today’s climate interns are being brought on to do the work that companies used to pay people to do but for which they cannot afford to pay anymore. It is the re-

sponsibility of employers to give interns the experience and space to grow, learn and develop within that particular work environment, and to have internships be seen as a stepping stone to future employment and prosperity, rather than an end in their own right.

While many interns may now end up getting more experience due to more responsibility, it may not be in the area that interests them and they may have no option to change departments. It is expected in most creative industries that one will have to pick up the slack of jobs that others do not want to do, the classic teamaking and photocopying lark until one is finally offered some semblance of responsibility; nowadays, this blurred period of paying your dues and showing your commitment goes on for far too long, and when (or if ) it does end, most interns end up undertaking work that is usually reserved for paid workers while they are still unpaid.

Ross Perlin of the New York Times has argued that, because the majority of internships are now unpaid, it means that all except those from a privileged background are barred from taking part, simply because they cannot afford to do so.

He also claims that the end effect of the “internship boom” is that there is now constricted “social and professional mobility” that will ultimately lead to an economy “whose top tier is becoming less and less diverse”.

He also reiterates the point that these exploitative positions have ruined any former idea of opportunities being won fairly: “The well intentioned, structured, paid training experience of yesteryear is increasingly given way to an unpaid labour racket that harms all of us.”

There is ultimately no need to despair, though, as there are other ways to gain the experience you need. Involvement in student societies, sports or publications can be key ways to gaining organisational, administrative, technical, computer or design skills that will give you an edge when it comes to internship or entry level positions. While doing unpaid work may give you a head start in your chosen industry, do not let yourself be taken advantage of, but at the same time garner as much experience and contacts as you can from it.

TRINITY NEWS

Tuesday 20th November 2012

Science

Science in Brief Anthea Lacchia

Game at the Science Gallery Illustration: Morgan Kennedy

Antimicrobial resistance: the fall of man?

The retribution for our profligate use of antimicrobial drugs, warns Conor O’Donovan, could send us back in time. Raising awareness of this is not a scare tactic but a strategy to safeguard what we have, while governments must increase investment to discover new drugs.

P Conor O’Donovan Contributor

athogens continue to mutate and overcome our most effective antimicrobial agents, and we are quickly running out of new drugs, as the impetus behind pharmaceutical research and development to find new ones lags far behind.

Cast your eye back to the days before antibiotics, and take a long, hard look. The average life expectancy was about 60 years. The most common causes of death in the developed world included major infectious diseases, such as tuberculosis, diphtheria, various types of pneumonia and enteritis.

The risk of life-threatening infection made surgical treatments too dangerous to undertake. People generally lived short and sickly lives.

Among other developments, the discovery and mass availability of antimicrobial drugs (antibiotics, antifungals and others) have played a pivotal role in accelerating the vast improvements in human health over the past 80 years. The availability of safe and effective treatments for infectious disease has permitted great strides in virtually every field of medicine and has shaped modern society as we know it. Without effective antimicrobial drugs, many current sophisticated medical practices that we now take for granted, such as cancer chemotherapy, modern surgical treatment, and obstetric and perinatal care would have been impossible.

However, according to Dr Margaret Chan, the director general of the World Health Organisation (Who), speaking in March 2012, these interventions could once again become “far more difficult or too dangerous to undertake … Things as common as strep throat or a child’s scratched knee could once again kill.” That is, if we do not prepare for what is arguably the most pressing healthcare challenge we face in present times: antimicrobial resistance (AMR).

The root cause behind AMR is straightforward. By the natural process of random, uncontrolled mutation, microbes like bacteria and fungi that are exposed to antimicrobial drugs – as occurs during treatment of infections – pick up traits that confer resistance to the killing effect of these drugs, such as an altered drug target, a different metabolic pathway, a drug-metabolising enzyme or a drug-efflux pump. Those microbes which are not killed by the drugs live on within patients and spread their resistant traits to newly infected individuals, in a real-time example of natural selection in action.

A phenomenon shown to oc-

cur for many micro-organisms is conjugation, or horizontal transfer of resistance traits, where one mature bacterium transfers the gene(s) it uses to survive antibiotic treatment to another mature bacterium. This occurs separately to passing on its resistance trait to its progeny, which happens directly when the bacterium grows and divides.

Resistant organisms tend to collect in hospitals, because these are the places where the use of antimicrobial drugs is most concentrated, as are the most infectious and most vulnerable patients. After it is known that the microbe causing a patient’s infection is resistant to the frontline drug of choice, second- or third-line agents may be used instead. Pathogens may then gradually acquire resistance to multiple drugs, by both mutation and conjugation, until all the effective drugs essentially become useless.

The pan-resistant microbes that result are the true “superbugs”, and pose the biggest threat to human health.

These are not merely scare tactics, but cold, sobering reality.

We are familiar with the frequent headliners MRSA (meticillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) and VRE (vancomycin-resistant Enterococci), but less so with the more recently emerged VRSA (vancomycin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) and the bacteria that produce ESBL (extended-spectrum beta-lactamase). CRE (carbapenem-resistant Enterococci) present one of our greatest forthcoming challenges. Furthermore, some current strains of Mycobacterium tuberculosis are resistant to multiple (MDR-TB) or virtually all known useful antibiotics (XDRTB).

Despite our best efforts at preventing the emergence of AMR here in Ireland, we are still not safe. According to the chair of clinical microbiology at Trinity, Professor Thomas Rogers: “With international travel being so easy, the possibility of importing resistant bugs from countries where antibiotics are not used prudently is ever present, as is the potential for new antibiotic resistance threats in Ireland.” The modern world is very much smaller than it used to be for the microbes that infect its human inhabitants.

Infections with resistant organisms are associated with increased morbidity (people are sicker), mortality (people are more likely to die) and cost. Reserve antibiotics are usually less effective than the front-line drugs, and more toxic; they may require prolonged duration or alternative methods of administra-

“

Those microbes which are not killed by the drugs live on within patients and spread their resistant traits to newly infected individuals, in a real-time example of natural selection in action.”

tion, and they may even require directly-observed therapy. Coupled with the increased clinical difficulty in treating resistant infections, the associated costs are also much greater. For example, the cost of treating one case of MDR-TB can be about 100 times the cost of treating a case that responds to standard drugs. The need for effective agents to treat these infections is huge.

Consider, on the other hand, the deterring factors towards the development of new antibiotics. It already costs hundreds of millions of euros to develop a new drug and to bring it to market; when this is a new, reserve antimicrobial agent, the use of the drug is going to be restricted to a very small, select group of gravely ill patients, namely those in whom many other antimicrobials have failed. The opportunities for pharmaceutical companies to recoup the huge costs of developing new antimicrobials are unimpressive.

Indeed, the number of new antibiotics in development has fallen considerably in recent decades. According to Rogers: “The locker is almost devoid of new antibiotics to fight the emerging infectious challenges. It has become too expensive for pharma to develop new agents alone, so government investment in drug

In its most playful exhibition yet, the Science Gallery seeks to address themes such as what the future directions of gaming in Ireland might be, where the boundary between the real world and computer games lies, and, more generally, the future of play.

Entitled Game, the show features work by game designers such as Eric Zimmerman and the architect Nathalie Pozzi.

Exhibition highlights include Angry Birds, which critically questions our interaction

with this popular game as well as games in general, and Game Arthritis, a study of video gameinduced diseases, which makes clear the damage of digital technology on fingers, arms and postures. During the show, visitors interested in becoming game developers themselves can talk to experts.

Game opened on 16th November 2012 and will run until 20th January 2013. See sciencegallery. com/game for further details.

Invisibility cloak? The end is in sight discovery is urgently needed.”

However, there is still time and great potential to curtail the spread of AMR, and limit its further development. The Who global strategy for containment of AMR, published over a decade ago, details the responsibilities that each player in healthcare must each keep: patients, prescribers, dispensers, hospitals, food-producers, national governments, drug and vaccine developers, pharmaceutical companies and international organisations.

The continued fight by trained experts and researchers against AMR must be supported by wide public awareness and understanding of the challenges it poses.

For years, with its clinical microbiologists at the forefront, Ireland has implemented antiAMR policies in line with best international practice. We have, according to Rogers, “good systems for surveillance of antibiotic resistance, both nationally through www.hpsc.ie and at local hospital levels.” The priorities for now include, among others, the prudent use of currently available antimicrobials to preserve their effectiveness for as long as possible. This is a core principle in current education for medical students and practising clinicians.

Another step in the right direction has been the employment of specialist antimicrobial pharmacists to work alongside clinicians, ensuring that antimicrobials are used in the most clinically- and cost-effective manner.

However, broader public education and awareness about AMR and an appreciation of the seriousness of this issue in political circles are required to secure the proper support and resources necessary to prevent further emergence of resistance, or a return to the time when we had no effective ways of treating infectious disease. For patients and the general public, it must be made clear when and why antibiotics are ineffective and when they must not be prescribed, such as for the common cold and the flu, both caused by viruses. A prescribed course of antibiotics should be completed as per the prescriber’s instructions. Without widespread commitment to fighting AMR, we may yet return to those dark days we lived before the golden scientific breakthrough of antibiotics.

European Antibiotic Awareness Day was held on 18th November 2012.

For the first time, scientists have succeeded in perfectly cloaking an object, rendering it invisible to microwaves.

Researchers at Duke University, North Carolina, United States, have designed a two-dimensional, diamond-shaped invisibility cloak, but it works only from one direction and with microwaves – radio waves with much longer wavelengths than can be seen by

the human eye – rather than visible light.

Metamaterials, materials whose properties are purposefully designed and defined by size, shape and structure, are behind most ideas for cloaking. Despite their best efforts, researchers have not yet been able to design a cloak that works in visible light, but this microwave cloak is one step closer.

Leggiest millipede in the world

The millipede species Illacme plenipes is closer to having the mythical 1,000 legs than any other millipede found up to now.

While females have up to 750 legs, males have up to 562.

This rare species was originally described 80 years ago in a tiny locality in California, but it has only recently been rediscovered by biologists.

Researchers have found that it shares traits with species of millipede that lived millions of years ago, such as ancient body segments and other rudimentary anatomical features.

The study was conducted at East Carolina University and the findings were published in the journal ZooKeys.

Discovery of a rogue planet

Astronomers have discovered a new rogue planet – a planet not gravitationally bound to any star – 100 light years away from our solar system. Named CFBDSIR2149-0403, it is the closest free-floating planetary mass yet discovered.

Researchers believe it formed between 50m and 120m years ago, has a temperature of 400C

(752F) and has a mass four to seven times that of Jupiter. It is still unclear how this planet formed, with several possibilities being open for discussion: it may represent the beginning of a star, or a planet ejected from the solar system.

The research has been published online in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

TRINITY NEWS

Tuesday 20th November 2012

20

Science

New branches for stem-cell research

Smart tag: you’re it, and it’s you From the shop register to the school register, Gary Lyram outlines the practical promise of technology to track our daily lives.

Asleigh Jones explores how the new paradigm of induced pluripotent stem cells could transform many areas of medicine.

Sir John B Gurdon and Shinya Yamanaka, joint recipients of the 2012 Nobel prize in physiology or medicine.

F

Illustration: Ciar Gifford-Boyle

Gary Lynam Contributor Everybody hates that weekly grind of waiting behind fellow frustrated shoppers at the end of a grocery shop; but what are we willing to do to make this become a thing of the past? A solution lies in the advent of commercialised radio frequency identification (RFID) smart-tag technology.

The catch is having a chip implanted in you, or more likely your smartphone, with a direct link to your bank account. Some people may find this uncomfortable, whether due to fear of a Big Brother-like future or simply not wanting their personal details readable by a radio frequency scanner.

So how does this technology work? The tag comprises an antenna, a closed circuit and a computer chip. To read the tag, a radio signal is sent out at a chosen resonant frequency, which is picked up by the antenna in the tag.

This signal resonates with the antenna and induces electromagnetic energy in it, which in turn sets off the closed circuit. With

the circuit active, the chip’s information can be sent back to the reader by the same antenna as a second radio wave. The reader picks up this response radio wave and interprets it as meaningful data.

In layman’s terms, you fire a radio wave at the tag and it sends you back another radio wave with the tag’s own info on it: a simple matter of call and response. A battery can be installed to increase the range of these passive tags from six metres to over 100 metres.

If we were to apply this to a grocery store, all we would need to do is place a tag on every item and install an RFID tag reader at the exit door. As a shopper departs, the scanner can read multiple tags at once – unlike a traditional barcode scanner – and would be connected to a large network with the ability to send information about the chosen products to the store management. This information would then be passed on to one’s bank.

Perhaps apps for smartphones could even be made to log the list of items you have, to keep count of how much you are spending and to track the expiry dates of purchased items. In addition, the

scan gives the store an exact figure of what items need replacing, as well as letting companies know who is buying from them.

If industry can reduce the price of these smart tags and implement them into everyday grocery items, an integrated network of tags and readers connected to the internet could be set up.

This network would extend well beyond the store; at home, a reader could be installed in your fridge, which would keep stock of your groceries and even alert you when food is expiring. The tags could continue to be tracked when they are thrown away as rubbish, allowing items to be added to the grocery list, or even ordered directly from the shops.

Based on the products you buy, the grocery store and specific companies will know your regular shopping pattern. This would result in personalised promotions and offers mailed or emailed to you by these companies. Posters could be fitted with promotional discount codes that are scanned with your smartphone, giving you that interactive feeling.

The uses for smart tags could even be extended to human tracking. Back at the start of September, a school district in Texas

began adding RFID tags to student ID cards to track their movements on campus. This could be of interest to schools that monitor student attendance. But while students normally need to be in their seat to be counted, now they only need to be within the campus. As long as the tag is within the reader’s range, it will be read, telling the system the tag’s location.

So when can you expect to see these in a store or school near you? The truth is that big US companies like Walmart already have these tags in some of their more expensive items for internal tracking purposes.

What about across-the-board tagging? The goal of researchers is to get the cost of a typical tag down to five US cents (¤0.04) per tag from the current price of seven to 20 cents (¤0.05 to ¤0.16) for passive tags and much more for battery-powered tags.

Perhaps we are closer than we think; it is unlikely barcodes will be abandoned any time soon, considering how attached businesses are to them, but we will no doubt see these tags playing a bigger role in our everyday lives in the near future.

Ashleigh Jones Contributor

Man and machine without boundaries

Interface developed by John Underkoffler. Photo: Adchariyaphoto

Jawad A Anjum Staff Writer Gesture recognition technology is here. We have seen it with multi-touch functionality on our smartphones, but it is the 3D implementation that is creating real possibilities. From the Wii to the Xbox Kinect, we have experienced the technology at first hand, but we are nowhere near reaching its full potential. That would be something more along the lines of the Steven Spielberg film Minority Report, set in 2054, which was a stunning depiction of, among other things, a spectacular array of future developments in technology.

Some have already been realised since the film’s release in 2002. The design house Oblong has been responsible for the GSpeak system, with which users

wear gloves to navigate in six degrees of freedom through multiple screens in the most intuitive fashion possible. You can rotate, zoom, spin, swipe or drag and the gestures are just as you would expect. Hand gestures are merely the tip of a very big iceberg.

Movements of the head such as nodding may also be incorporated alongside facial gestures.

Crude versions of facial-gesture recognition software are available to download free online.

I won’t even get into “affective computing”, which proposes to interpret human emotions, and is already showing positive results; this article is not nearly long enough to go into the possibilities made available by this technology.

YouTube will give you some great examples of various labs around the world developing hundreds of different applications.

Some of the more significant of these, for example, are uses

such as communicating with a device in sign language, education in classrooms in delivered through a hyper-interactive environment and medical diagnostics using real size models and all data available presented in any form desired.

All of this is made possible with hardware like stereoscopic, depth-aware cameras and wireless input devices ranging from gloves to glasses, a whole array of sensors that work hard to read you. The information thus gained goes through several million man-hours worth of code to give you a visible display. As with most futuristic technology, gesture recognition is as of yet obstructively expensive, quite glitchy and only designed for specific situations, not to mention the issues with accuracy of recognition, similar to those of the poorly developed speech-recognition software on your laptop right now. It is firmly

on the horizon, but to give an expected date, or even an expected year, would be foolish as advancements like these are quite unpredictable.

The ultimate goal is to have a “natural user interface”: a seamless interaction between humanity and technology, a conglomeration of developments with which you never have to learn how to use the technology, and instead it would learn how to read you.

Nothing you do or say would be extraneous to your normal routine, because the technology would feel like it was not even there. In other words, it would feel natural. I cannot wait.

For a quick, free and easy sample of hand gesture recognition software, try the app Flutter to control iTunes and Spotify. You can download it free of charge at www.flutterapp.com.

“

All of this is made possible with hardware like stereoscopic, depth-aware cameras and wireless input devices ranging from gloves to glasses, a whole array of sensors that work hard to read you.”

or years, the topic of human embryonic stem-cell research has been one of passionate debate.

While this research holds huge potential for the development of medical treatments for a wide range of conditions, from physical trauma to genetic diseases, it also poses valid ethical concerns. In conducting this kind of research, human embryos are inevitably destroyed and the controversy is fundamentally centred on this fact. What are the moral implications? When is a human embryo considered a “person”, and when does it have rights?

This argument is not a scientific one, but rather philosophical and theological. Science can present the facts, but ultimately it is a matter of conscience for each of us. However, the development of new, alternative methods has the potential to render this debate irrelevant and allow the controversy and moral concerns to be altogether avoided.

On 8th October 2012, two scientists were awarded the 2012 Nobel prize in physiology or medicine “for the discovery that mature cells can be reprogrammed to become pluripotent.” Sir John B Gurdon and Shinya Yamanaka have not only revolutionised our understanding of cells, but also offered hope for an alternative method of research which could help millions of afflicted patients without the use of human embryos.

Essentially, they have managed to reprogramme somatic cells from an adult organism – which were originally thought to have fixed identities, for example as a muscle or skin cell – to become pluripotent, meaning a cell has the potential to differentiate into any cell type. These cells are known as induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells).

In 1962, Gurdon, a British scientist, astonished biologists by taking the nucleus out of a frog’s specialized adult cell and using it to replace the nucleus in another frog’s egg cell. The egg went on to develop into an exact genetic replica of the original frog. Not only had he successfully cloned the original frog, but he also realised that the information needed to develop all the cells of a frog was contained in the DNA of the adult cell.

More than 40 years later, Yamanaka, a Japanese researcher, conducted a study in which he reprogrammed adult mouse cells to become immature stem cells. He managed to isolate genes which were responsible for keeping a stem cell in its immature state; by manipulating these genes, he was able to reprogramme an adult cell from a mouse to become a pluripotent stem cell. His discovery was not only a huge scientific breakthrough, but also an important ethical triumph.

The potential for iPS cells is enormous. In theory, if stem cells are generated from a patient’s own somatic cells rather than those of a foreign embryo, they can be used to replace diseasedamaged tissues of the same individual without the associated risk of rejection. This means that the chances of an immunogenic response to transplantation could be significantly reduced, though it has been shown that even genetically identical iPS cells might still be rejected, most likely as a result of the manipulation required to harness them. Even still, iPS cells may be extremely useful in terms of research by allowing the study of diseased cells in order to eventually develop other treatments, as well as providing a human model for

the testing of these treatments.

Take cystic fibrosis (CF), the most common life-threatening disease in the Caucasian population. This disorder, which occurs to a genetic mutation, affects the lungs and digestive organs in particular and has an estimated 70,000 sufferers around the world, with 500 lives claimed each year, and the highest rate of incidence being in Ireland. In the 1950s, children diagnosed with CF rarely lived to attend primary school.

Today, thanks to advances in research and medical treatments, the average life expectancy is around 37 years and is continuing to increase. Indeed, iPS cells hold massive potential for the treatment of cystic fibrosis. Earlier this year, Harvard stem-cell researchers took a critical step toward discovering a drug to manage the disease. Using iPS cells derived from the skin cells of CF patients, they created human disease-specific lung epithelium tissue. These lung tissue cells, which can be grown in unlimited quantities, are invaluable. For the first time, human patients’ cells – the very cells that are defective in the disease – could be used as the target in drug testing. This is an enabling technology that will allow, in the near future, the development of drugs that combat the main problem of the disease.

So what are the drawbacks?

While iPS cells seem to have great potential, there are of course disadvantages. Recent studies have shown that the use of iPS cells for human therapy may be more problematic than originally thought. Fiona Mansergh, a Trinity-based research fellow in genetics, explains one major issue: the efficacy of these cells in generating differentiated cells, compared to that of embryonic stem cells. In order to make iPS cells equally capable and efficient, the cells must be manipulated significantly, but unfortunately this manipulation can cause abnormalities like premature cell death or ageing, not to mention oncogenic mutations which can lead to cancer.

Ultimately, any kind of genetic modification increases the likelihood of abnormalities. Another major issue facing iPS cells is cost. Producing patient-specific therapies using these specialised cells will be tremendously expensive for the vast majority of people, especially in the early days of clinical use. Time is also a critical issue: it can take up to six months to produce, validate and differentiate iPS cells prior to hypothetical clinical use. At this stage, they simply cannot compete with batch-prepared, ready-to-use, embryonic-stem-cell based products.

So it is clear that further study of iPS cells will be necessary in order to make progress given that this technology is still very much in the early stages. Obvious unknowns and potential consequences are yet to be fully addressed. To advance further, there will need to be considerable experimentation as well as evaluation of iPS cells compared to embryonic stem cells and other available methods. CF, spinal cord injury, diabetes, heart disease, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, lung disease, arthritis, organ failure: these are just some of the conditions that could benefit from stem cell research. The new insight into cellular function and malleability is a testament to the revolutionary magnificence of science and, indeed, the triumph of ethical advancement.

TRINITY NEWS

Tuesday 20th November 2012

Interview

Sport

TN’s D Joyce Ahearne meets Olympic champion Katie Taylor.

p24

Photo: Peter Wolfe.

From Six Nations to student life James Hussey sits down with the former Scotland and Edinburgh flanker Alan MacDonald to talk about his time in professional rugby, his high hopes for DUFC and his reasons for swapping the scrum cap for the scalpel.

I James Hussey Deputy Sport Editor

t is seldom possible to pinpoint the end of an era. The great movements of human history have fluid boundaries, their conclusions interwoven with the beginning of a new age. For Irish rugby’s “golden generation”, however, there was a definitive day, a decisive moment, that confirmed their dénouement.

The plaintive sound of bagpipes rang across Croke Park on a chilly Saturday afternoon, cutting to silence as Dan Parks steadied himself to attempt a penalty kick from the Hogan Stand sideline.

Standing beside my father in Hill 16, there was an ominous air of inevitability about the enigmatic Australian’s stance.

A collective groan escaped from the crowd in our section as the ball left the kicking tee. It sailed between the posts with 78 minutes and 55 seconds on the clock. The doctor had just announced the time of death. The golden generation’s pulse stopped with a final hammer blow after an engrossing contest. Scotland the Brave peeled out again and around 80,000 fans went home saddened, but strangely euphoric, after an amazing spectacle.

This seemingly unnecessary preamble sets the background for my interview with one of DU Football Club’s newest recruits.

Alan MacDonald started on the substitutes’ bench for Scotland that day, a call-up to the Scottish Six Nations squad after outstanding form at flanker for Edinburgh Rugby. Sitting in the confines of a generic coffee shop might be half the world away from GAA headquarters in March 2010, but MacDonald’s new lifestyle is one that, after a period of acclimatisation, has proven very rewarding.

“Throughout my time at Edinburgh, I used reading as a release from the pressures of training and the intensity of professional rugby. That led to part-time study, which I found immensely enjoyable. It was something that I always had an interest in and it gave me a focus during long days of huge physical and mental exertion and effort.

“Unfortunately, however, I didn’t fit into any of the brackets for mature-entry students in the UK. Ireland was the most attractive other option and, after looking at various colleges, I decided to come to Trinity to study medicine. It’s funny, because the

Photo: Peter Wolfe. emphasis on things in my life has completely shifted. Instead of wondering have I done enough training, I’ve come to start thinking about physiology I haven’t studied. It took a while, but I’m getting to grips with my new lifestyle.”

Leaving professional rugby was a tough decision but one that, due to a number of personal reasons, was a necessary one for MacDonald. In what, from an exterior viewpoint, might look like a strange decision, the former Scottish back-rower felt “fed up with rugby”, and looked to a long-harboured ambition to provide a new impetus and challenge in his life.

“I have been in rugby since the age of seven, where I started with a youth side connected to the secondary school I went on to attend, Royal High School, Edinburgh.

After playing rugby throughout my years in Royal, I then played for a club side before training with Edinburgh Rugby. This led to a professional contract and the beginning of my senior career, so rugby has been an ever-present in my life, a continuous series of training sessions and games.

“Over the past few years, while engaging with part-time study, I felt that my life needed a new direction, one that rugby wasn’t providing. That is one of the main

reasons for my doing medicine, the intensity of professional rugby was something that I needed to remove myself from.”

Despite apparent misgivings with the life of a rugby player at an elite level, MacDonald pointed to the happiness the sport has brought him in the past, and something that, in a different way, continues to bring him a sense of satisfaction. Having represented Edinburgh in the then-Magners League and the Heineken Cup, MacDonald spoke about his experiences on the pitch for his hometown team: “A couple of months after signing a professional contract with

Edinburgh Rugby, I made my debut against the Neath-Swansea Ospreys. That initial step-up into elite competition was a strange one. At 18, you adapt to things very quickly, and take everything in your stride, even if the world feels it’s going at 100 miles per hour. You go out on the pitch, be it in training or during a match, learn your trade and improve as a player, while simultaneously fitting into a radically new environment.”

“It is great to learn off the veteran players and those more experienced than you. Playing with Edinburgh was such an up and down thing. I would love to be an O’Driscoll or a D’Arcy, with a few Heineken Cup medals rattling in my pocket, but a lot of it is down to luck and circumstance. Our problem lay in a lack of consistency but it was exciting.

“One of my fondest remembered games was against Castres in the Heineken Cup; they were highly fancied but we beat them on their home turf. Those are the days where everything is just right, and the result goes your way. I can also recall a particular game in Donnybrook where Leinster put up 50 points against us and we were stuffed. There are two sides to that coin!”

Alan’s exploits in an Edinburgh jersey eventually led to a call-up from Andy Robinson to the Scottish national side, an unforgettable experience for MacDonald, and one that provided both a deep sense of relief and humility.

“You never know if you’re going to get the chance to represent your country. Competition is so strong for places and you have to peak at the right time for selection. Looking back at it now, it was a fantastic honour to be able to represent Scotland. That sense of honour was tinged with relief for me however, as I was there or thereabouts for quite a while on the national scene, without getting over that final hurdle.

“I was humbled to play for my country and the matches where I saw action were unforgettable.

Unfortunately, we lost in my debut against Argentina but to be a part of the Six Nations’ game in Croke Park was amazing, especially with Parksy [fly-half Dan Parks] slotting that penalty in the last minute for the victory.”

MacDonald, in his current path as a medical student, has been afforded the opportunity of joining the ranks of DUFC, a new challenge for a veteran of numerous international competitions. The difference in style has been noteworthy for the Edinburgh native,

something he indicates when talk turns to the less regimented, looser play characteristic of his new club, and Irish Ulster Bank League rugby in general.

“Without being condescending to Scottish rugby, the standard of clubs in Ireland is slightly higher at the moment, something that is visible all the way to the top level players. I have really enjoyed my time so far with Trinity Rugby.

At the start, I moved here without knowing anybody so it was great to get into the club and get to know some people. Due to the nature of club rugby, it’s more like a hobby, a release for the players.

“Although the training and matches are still intense, it feels more like a group of mates, particularly in comparison to professional sides where there are rivalries, turnover of players is bigger and people feel like they are competing for their job. DUFC is a much nicer environment, it’s very tight knit and I have really enjoyed getting into the structure.

It’s great to perform in an arena that’s a little bit more off-the-cuff, where you can improvise your plays in the loose a little bit more.

“In terms of our league performance so far, we are cautiously happy. We have won all our games without putting in superb performances, something that indicates the potential of the team for the rest of the season. I suppose a source of disappointment for us as players and our coaches is the fact that we haven’t won games as convincingly as we are capable. We have conceded the odd silly score here and there, but if we can shore those mistakes up, and continue to show our fighting spirit, DUFC is in for a great year.”

Alan MacDonald is an invaluable asset for the progression of rugby in College. His experience and nous will be an essential aspect for the forward momentum of a club whose rapid movement through the upper echelons of Irish club rugby has drawn rave reviews from Ulster Bank League spectators. Any potential symbiotic relationship between MacDonald and his new team can only be positive, as DUFC will look to build with this exuberant young group of players.

For DUFC’s new golden generation, behind the likes of Paddy Lavelle, Brian du Toit and Cathal Marsh, any sign of a death knell has been postponed for many years to come. The one heralded

by MacDonald and his Scottish peers in Croke Park two winters ago is firmly out of the flanker’s head; the blossoming has only begun.

TRINITY NEWS

Tuesday 20th November 2012

Sport

22

Photo: George Voronov

Mark Pollock’s drive to compete again Sarah Burns talks to Mark Pollock following last week’s successful Run in the Dark race which took place in Dublin, Cork, Belfast, London and New York.

I Sarah Burns Sport Editor

n the past number of years the story of Mark Pollock has come to prominence both inside and outside College’s gates. Diagnosed as blind at the age of 22, Pollock, defying the odds, set out as an adventure athlete. In 2004 he completed the north pole marathon with adventurer Sir Ranulph Fiennes, while in 2009 he became the first blind man to have reached the south pole.

However, Pollock’s inspirational story took a sharp turn in 2010.

Just weeks before he was set to get married, Pollock fell from a two-story building, leaving him paralysed from the waist down.

Pollock was lucky to be alive after such a terrible accident, but he is now exploring the frontiers of spinal-cord injury recovery, hoping to once again defy the odds.

Prior to his accident in 2010, I was lucky enough to hear him as a motivational speaker in my secondary school. While Pollock spoke about coming to terms with his blindness, I remember being most struck by his sheer determination, his unwillingness to give up and his desire to carry on his love for sport.

Now talking to him years later, Pollock remembers how he initially became involved in motivational speaking: “Probably ten years ago; it was four years after I’d gone blind. I had worked in a couple of companies and then I read a book by Charles Handy called The Elephant and the Flea.

“The book contrasts working in a big company, represented by the elephant, and then being a flea, which is to kind of jump from elephant to elephant selling your skills to the big companies.

It suited me to look at what I was interested in, which was sport and meeting people and travelling and then I was able to use my adventures as a way to talk to businesses about dealing with challenges.”

Pollock, originally from County Down, still shows that same drive and determination which has led him to constantly push man’s normal boundaries, even when faced with the most adverse circumstances. In 2002 he won

bronze and silver medals in rowing for Northern Ireland at the Commonwealth Games in Manchester, while in 2003 he ran six marathons in seven days across the Gobi desert in China with a sighted partner.

“I suppose it’s been my way of dealing with both blindness and now paralysis. So my big thing was after I went blind everyone was graduating, I was in my final year. Everyone in Trinity was graduating, starting new jobs, I felt like I was being left behind.

“So my big thing through all the adventure races, going back rowing, the south pole, was to try and compete again and that meant pushing the boundaries. But for me it meant going further and further in different races. I just really wanted to compete again.”

“With all the sport I was used to pushing my own limits and with the paralysis now that means exploring the frontiers of spinal cord injury recovery, robot legs, training, medical intervention. I just have a drive to compete.”

Pollock is currently exploring various medical and recovery options in the hope of one day being able to walk again. For the past six months he has been walking in what are known as bionic trousers, a high-tech exoskeleton developed by US-based Ekso Bionics.

“I was in them yesterday,” he says. “I did 1,330 steps and I was only walking for about 30 minutes. Only maybe two months ago that took about three hours so it’s really starting to move much, much quicker.”

A former business and economics student, as well as captain of the rowing club, Pollock’s link with Trinity has never severed; he currently undergoes his rehabilitation here in the college’s sports centre.

“I always trained in Trinity before my accident. And then, since my accident, it’s been my natural place to continue to train. We’ve being doing different types of training in the gym, unusual types of training. Not least walking in robotic legs, but even in the gym I’m either on a handbike or I’m

standing at the squat rack holding onto the bar, with my trainer blocking my knees so it probably looks quite strange.”

In an attempt to fund his rehabilitation while also raising money for related charities such as the Irish Guide Dogs for the Blind and Spinal Injuries Ireland, last Wednesday the second annual Run in the Dark race took place at various locations throughout the country as well as London and New York.

Looking back on the successful evening, he notes: “Dublin was the biggest one by a mile and loads of Trinity people were at it. Dublin had 5,000 people at it, Cork had maybe 1,200, Belfast 800, London just over 600 and then New York had maybe 400 people.”

The event was organised by Pierce Whyte, a friend whom Pollock made through the Boat Club.

While a large number of Trinity students participated in the race, a significant number also helped out on the night.

“A massive amount of the volunteers came from Trinity,” he says. “And also it’s really important to acknowledge the Trinity sports centre because that’s where the bag drop and all the registration was. And it’s also where I do my training.”

Pollock’s next adventure will be the Black Ice Race which he plans to take part in, in the first week of March 2013 on a handbike. He explains: “It’s an expedition race so that means it’s point to point, race during the day and then camp at night.

“Not unlike the south pole, it’s probably about a week long and it’s on Lake Baikal in Siberia.”

This is Pollock’s first race paralysed, and his first in polar conditions since the south pole in 2009.

What is in store for Mark Pollock and the next chapter in his incredible story is unknown.

Whether he will one day defy the odds and walk again remains to be seen. What is certain, however, is that Pollock, unwilling to give up, will continue to push the boundaries and his personal own limits.

Photo: George Voronov

TRINITY NEWS

Tuesday 20th November 2012

23

Sport

Peerless Trinity destroy UCD Trinity exorcise ghosts of Colours past as Adeolukan exercises pace to leave UCD behind.

Niyi Adeolukan touching down in DUFC’s win over UCD in College Park. Photo: Peter Wolfe

James Hussey Deputy Sport Editor

DU Football Club secured an impressive bonus point victory against bitter rivals University College Dublin (UCD) in College Park on Saturday afternoon. The Trinity side entered the game with a perfect record after an exhilarating comeback win against Belfast team Malone, last weekend.

Having exchanging penalties in the opening quarter, winger Niyi Adeolukan showed some trademark flair and speed, breaking from his own half and leaving UCD defenders for dead. David Joyce followed with the conversion, Trinity’s first score an archetypal example of the free-flowing

style exhibited in the year’s previous games.

A number of rattling challenges brought DUFC back to reality from the kick-off, with some sloppy mistakes allowing their opponents back into the game. The Belfield side were crucially unable to convert their score and after another missed kick, this time

by Trinity’s Joyce, the teams went into the half-time break 10-8.

The second period started at a relentless pace, with UCD taking advantage of an infringement in the Trinity half to slot over a penalty and retake the lead, 11-10.

In inimitable DUFC style, however, the hosts were back in

front almost immediately, fly-half Joyce scoring a try, re-emphasising his talismanic status in the team. With the conversion sailing over from the boot of Trinity’s number 10, the city-centre side found themselves 17-11 in front.

Anyone in attendance at last year’s Colours match may have felt a sense of trepidation about Trinity’s situation. Only nine months later on, UCD’s potent attack on that cold February night tore apart a tiring DUFC side in the closing half hour.

The Belfield team were living off scraps in College Park, however, scoring a penalty after Pierce Dargan received a yellow

card. Trinity ensured there was to be no repeat of their Donnybrook performance, this year’s DU team being a different animal to the Division 2A winning squad.

Trinity ran in three late tries to exterminate pretensions of hope in Belfield hearts, with Adeolukan scoring a second try to secure a crucial bonus point for DUFC. Joining Ballynahinch at the top of the table on 26 points, Trinity awaits next week’s important away game in Dubarry Park against fourth-placed Buccaneers.

Bronze age for Duhac Road relay intervarsities in Maynooth see Trinity Harriers gather precious medals Atalanta Copeman-Papas Staff Writer

Fettercairn tamed as Trinity scores five Eoin Bourke Contributor DU Association Football Club, attempting to build on a great start to the season, encountered a tough league fixture in College Park last Sunday morning. After seven games, DU lay in second place with six wins and an impressive six clean sheets in the Leinster Senior League Sunday Major Division. Fettercairn Youth FC, sixth in the division, provided the opposition on a bright fresh morning with ideal weather conditions for football.

From the outset, DU pressed high and played at a very high tempo leaving Fettercairn with no time on the ball. In a determined mood, the midfield foursome of Eoin O’Driscoll, Chris Allen, Gus Shaw Stewart and the team captain, Darren Burke, quickly over-

ran a shell-shocked Fettercairn in the middle of the park playing at a pace the away side struggled to get to grips with. It was not long before the early pressure paid dividends, with Shaw Stewart skillfully beating his man before powerfully finishing at the near post in the 10th minute. DU were not willing to settle for one and immediately began searching for a second goal, with both full backs, Aaron Cameron and Conor Bobbett, looking to get forward at every opportunity.

A series of dangerous set pieces delivered from Allen and O’Driscoll almost led to a second goal, with centre backs David Battigan and the sizeable Conall O’Shaughnessy a constant aerial threat. The chances kept coming for DU, with Burke playing Brian O’Reilly through on goal on the left-hand side, only for the Fettercairn keeper to save at the feet

of the DU striker. It was not long before the second goal did come.

Niall Barnwell stole the ball from an opposing player and surged down the right flank before cleverly picking out O’Reilly on the six-yard line to slot home.

DU did not have it all their own way, however, and Fettercairn came back into the game.

Several attacking set-pieces applied pressure to the DU defence, which held firm with some good headed clearances from Burke, O’Shaughnessy and Battigan. After 30 minutes, Fettercairn had their best opportunity. A corner from the right-hand side was insufficiently cleared by DU, and some hesitant defending led to the ball striking the crossbar and falling at the feet of a Fettercairn striker; a brave last-ditch block from O’Shaughnessy spared DU’s blushes.

Having narrowly escaped con-

ceding, DU immediately affirmed their dominance by scoring a third goal. Good play down the right from Cameron and Burke set Shaw Stewart free on the right.

The tricky DU winger feinted left with a deft stepover deceiving his marker and freeing up space for a shot to seal his second and Trinity’s third. As the half-time whistle blew, DU were clearly in the ascendancy.

Fettercairn started the second half brightly with several corners in the first ten minutes. A series of spectacular saves from DU goalkeeper Dave Minihane kept Fettercairn at bay. As Fettercairn continued to pile men forward, they left themselves susceptible to DU’s pacey counterattack. O’Reilly, now playing on the wing, picked up the ball on the right-hand side and delivered an inch-perfect cross which was dispatched with aplomb by Ken-

ny Hills. The chances kept coming for DU and they looked sure to score again after some neat buildup play down the right-hand side led to a glorious opportunity for Chris Allen. The ball arrived perfectly at his right foot, only for Allen to miss the ball completely.

It seemed easier to score!

Minutes later, Conor Bobbett found himself advanced on the right wing and almost saw his name in lights after striking the bar with an audacious effort from 25 yards out. The fifth goal did arrive after some athletic wingplay from O’Driscoll ended with a tidy pass to O’Reilly at the edge of the box, who found the time and space to bag his second of the day. This imposing showing from the home side sees DU continue an impressive run of four straight league wins. Tougher games will no doubt follow, but this could potentially be a great season for DU.

Trinity come up short in Belfast Jim Mower of the University of Ulster, Jordanstown shoots out the lights to leave Trinity fumbling in the dark.

David Murphy Staff Writer DU Men’s Basketball Club (DUMBC) are currently sitting top of Dublin Division 1 with four games played. Victories over Oblate Centurions and Swords were followed by a disappointing home defeat to UCD Marian on 26th October. A poor overall team performance with very few ideas on offense led to a 64-79 loss.

This was followed up by a hard fought win against St Vincent’s on 5th November. DU led the game throughout and resisted a valiant late comeback from the Glasnevin side to eventually come out on the winning end of a 62-75 scoreline.

Tuesday 15th November saw the team’s first college league game away to the University of Ulster, Jordanstown (UUJ). Due

to various college commitments a heavily depleted squad of seven players made the journey to north Belfast for an 8.20pm tip off.

Trinity quickly pulled out a seven point lead early in the first quarter but UUJ soon closed the gap with some sharp outside shooting. This shooting would prove to be a significant thorn in Trinity’s side for the entire game.

So far this season, the issue of turnovers has plagued the team and on this night they were heavily punished for it. Poor composure on the ball and a lack of movement on offense resulted in countless turnovers and easy fast break points for UUJ. This, when coupled with the red hot threepoint shooting of Jim Mower, allowed UUJ to stretch out a 15 point lead in the second quarter.

Despite the absence of regular starters, Trinity battled valiantly to stay in the game and at half

time the deficit was clawed back to 38-31 in favour of UUJ. The second half saw players begin to fatigue as the effects of a lack of personnel on the sideline began to show. Frustration crept into Trinity’s game as players and coaches alike lost their cool with what could be perceived as “hometown” calls. Defensively, Trinity’s zone will need extra work for future games as they failed to stem the flow of threepoint accuracy from Mower, who ended the game with an incredible 44 points.

Mower is a business studies graduate from Lafayette College in America and is studying for a master’s in UUJ. He is also working with Belfast’s E-Hoops program, which hopes to raise the aspirations of at-risk youth through sport. His recruitment by UUJ has already proved significant in their season thus far with lead

roles in convincing victories over the Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT) both home and away.

Offensively, Trinity have been over-reliant on newcomer Théo Deleligne to score heavily. In this game Daniel Darby stepped up with a man of the match performance, scoring 26 points and putting in an unrivalled effort in all other areas of the game. Deleligne was top scorer for Trinity with 36 points. In coming games, other players will need to step up offensively to avoid a dependence on Deleligne and Darby for scores.

The game remained close throughout but in the end UUJ ran out 89-77 winners. Trinity’s coach, Todd James, despite the loss, was proud of his group of players who had made the trip, stating that “those who played put on a terrific performance”.

He remained pragmatic about the

areas in which the team will need to improve in order to reverse the result when the sides meet again for the reverse fixture: “We still made too many turnovers, which allowed them too many fast breaks. They also shot the lights out on three-pointers and when we face them again we need to stop those first.”

Trinity’s next fixture is away to Éanna next Wednesday 21st November. This is followed by their second college league game against DIT on Thursday. Hopefully the return of several key players will allow them to continue their impressive form in the Dublin league. They will also be looking to bounce back quickly in the college league as they have big ambitions there this year.

It was a successful weekend for the Dublin University Harriers and Athletics Club (Duhac) in the intervarsity road relays at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth (NUIM), with both the male and female teams placing third. It is a mammoth achievement for both teams, as competition is fierce from the national-level athletes of University College Dublin (UCD) and Dublin City University (DCU).

This was the first intervarsity competition of the year for Duhac, and an opportunity for everybody to reap the rewards from months of training. For the many new athletes joining the ranks this year it was a chance to show us what they were made of, and they certainly did that.

Whilst not a common event elsewhere, road relays are a tradition in Irish university athletics, with the tree-lined south campus of NUIM offering a backdrop year after year. The races themselves have a curious structure: the women’s race comprises four athletes running either one or two miles (1-2-2-1); in the men’s race there is an additional threemile leg in the middle of the race (1-2-3-2-1).

The women’s team shot off to a brilliant start, with junior freshman athlete Iseult O’Donnell dominating the field in the first mile-leg. O’Donnell stormed through the line in a time of 5:13, an impressive feat when facing competition from DCU’s top team.

Joining just this year, this was not only O’Donnell’s debut for Duhac, but was also her first time competing at this distance.

O’Donnell, at 19 years old, is already a well-established track star and is rated in the top 10 in Ireland for the 800m this year.

After O’Donnell’s tremendous first leg, she passed on to the women’s Harriers captain, Irene Gorman, for the two-mile leg.

Gorman performed terrifically, managing to hold off the impressive athlete Laura Crowe from University College Cork (UCC) and bringing us into second place for this leg. Next up for another two miles was Maria O’Sullivan, a regular fixture for our ladies team with a history of securing Duhac team medals.

O’Sullivan did not disappoint, and despite losing some ground to UCC’s Sinead O’Connor, placed Duhac in prime medalling position. O’Sullivan then passed over to Niamh Donnelly, a newcomer, who held off UCD and the Uni-

versity of Limerick to secure the ladies team a new set of bronze medals.

After this performance by the ladies team, the Duhac men had a lot to live up to. Following an inspiring team talk by club captain, Garret Dunne, the men were pumped up and ready to go.

Kicking off for the men with his Duhac debut was Brian Hill, who held off a tough field for the first mile to come in fourth after the first leg. Whilst new to Trinity, Hill comes with an impressive 800m pedigree as a former track captain at Harvard. Hill passed off to regular Duhac medallist and national-level athlete Liam Tremble for the next two miles of the relay.

Whilst UCD and DCU’s toplevel teams left everybody in the wind, Tremble ran an astounding leg to bring Trinity into third position as he passed on to the men’s Harriers captain, Sam Mealy.

Mealy held off strong athletes from both Waterford Institute of Technology (WIT) and Dublin Institute of Technology, including his cousin and former Yale athlete, Conor Dooney, in order to maintain the bronze medal position for the three-mile leg. Donal Foley thundered through the next two miles in 9:44, stretching a 25 second gap between Trinity and the fourth-placed team, WIT. There was a dramatic finish to the race when UCD’s Mark English ran an astounding leg, catching up with DCU’s Brian Kelly at the line and snatching the gold medal by a matter of seconds.

The gap between third and fourth place widened to 35 seconds when Kieron Sexton took over for Trinity’s final mile, and Trinity coasted into the bronze medal position.

Two bronze medals was a huge success for Duhac, with this being the first men’s intervarsity team medal for Duhac in five years. It has become tougher and tougher for Trinity to rival more sportscentric colleges, such as DCU and UCD, where many athletes are offered large scholarships and access to state of the art facilities in return for strong performances at intervarsity competition.

This was a positive start for Duhac, but there is a long year ahead and the competition will only get tougher. With the crosscountry and track seasons ahead of us, Duhac’s athletes will have to train harder than ever to keep up these standards, but with hard work and dedication more medals are certainly within reach.

TRINITY NEWS

Tuesday 20th November 2012

Interview

Sport

Former Edinburgh and Scotland player Alan MacDonald on DUFC and life in Trinity

p21

Photo: Orla Murray

Kiss me, Katie

Ladies Gaelic Football

D Joyce-Ahearne meets the Olympic boxing champion, and discovers a sporting icon Taylor-made for him

A D Joyce -Ahearne Staff Writer

lthough she would not consider it highly ranked on her list of achievements, Katie Taylor repeatedly succeeded in getting me out of bed this summer to watch her fights at 9am Eastern Standard Time, having spent the previous night drinking until six in the morning and waking with a hangover that could have killed a horse (me, not her). As anyone who has drunk from the poisoned chalice that is the J1 knows, neither love nor money will get you out of bed hungover at nine in the morning in the 38-degree heat of August. Love or money might not, but Katie Taylor can.

The staff in the country where I spent my summer was mostly Jamaican and, for them, the Olympic Games are like a two and a half week national holiday. Every one of them spoke about Usain Bolt, Yohan Blake and ShellyAnn Fraser-Pryce like they knew them all personally, not so much as national treasures but as local heroes. We, the Irish contingent, were the very same with Taylor.

She does not box for Ireland as a team, but for Ireland as a people.

Her performances and victory in the women’s lightweight boxing were, undoubtedly, the Irish highlight of the Games. She is the country’s sportsperson of her generation, having won four successive world titles, her most recent being in China last May, as well as being the current European champion and Olympic champion in her weight class.

Taylor is very easy to talk to.

Although it is not great – or even good – journalism to say that someone is “just really sound”, sometimes it cannot be helped.

She is just really sound. I meet her after she has spent hours in Eason signing copies of her new book, My Olympic Dream. Speaking to her is just like getting a vox pop from anyone on O’Connell Street. She answers questions the way any of us answers questions.

What does she like to do to get away from boxing? “I like to go the cinema, go out with friends, go to the theatre.” Y’know yourself, really. When I raise the question of her turning professional, she smiles. “No, I’m not turning pro, I’m staying amateur, I’m looking towards the next Olympics.” Good, I practically yell at her, as if the decision would really affect me in any way. She laughs.

“Yeah, that’s the reaction I seem to be getting from most people.”

She’s right that that is the reac-

tion most people have about her decision to stay amateur; not that it has anything to do with us really, although the most obvious fallout would be that we, the adoring public, would not get to see her compete in another Olympics.

Moreover, there is something about amateur status that just sits well with us as a people. Look at the GAA and our disproportionately high output of artists. We have always had a romantic idea of doing things you love for no money.

At the age of 15, Taylor appeared on RTÉ’s Sports Stream and said how she would love to win Olympic gold, seven years before the International Olympic Committee’s executive board decided to include women’s boxing as an Olympic sport. Taylor has done more than most to raise the profile of women’s boxing and get it to the Olympics. So was that the plan, I ask her – to work to get women’s boxing into the Olympics, and then win it? She laughs, but if an athlete of Taylor’s stature had been denied the opportunity to perform on the greatest stage in sport, it would have been a travesty not just for women’s boxing but for the Olympics themselves.

“It was always my dream to compete in the Olympics so, of course, I was delighted. There’s a lot of talent in women’s boxing in Ireland coming through. Céire Smith is one to watch, she came very close to qualifying for the Olympics.”

Smith comes from Cavan Boxing Club, the same club as Olympic silver medallist John Joe Nevin, one of Taylor’s teammates in London. I ask about what other events she took in while in London.

“Because my fights were near the end, I didn’t get to see much as I was concentrating on my own performances, but it was great to see the lads fight. The support from the Irish fans at the ExCel Arena was fantastic.”

One of the great things about talking to Taylor is that, as I have said, she is so down to earth. The only downside to her laidback demeanour is that it lulled me into a state of casualness that led to me asking possibly the dumbest question in the history of interviews. Because she was so normal, on some subconscious level I forgot I was talking to an Olympic champion. It felt more like chatting to a punter about the Olym-

pics, as you do. So naturally I said, “What was the highlight for you at the Olympics?”

Silence. A curious look from Katie, as if she is wondering, is he for real? An equally curious

“

It was always my dream to compete in the Olympics so, of cours, I was delighted. There’s a lot of talent in women’s boxing in Ireland coming through.”

look from me, thinking, what’s the look for? “Em, I suppose it would be winning the gold medal …” She looks at me as if to say, is that what you were looking for?

I then cop that I have just asked a woman who won Olympic gold what the best part of her Olympics was. “I’m sorry, that must be the stupidest fucking question anyone has ever asked you.” She laughs again, but does not deny it.

Her father, Pete, has begun casting looks over at us and I am sensing that my time is nearly up.

Taylor has been on the go all day and still agreed to talk to me at the last minute, when she should be on her way home by now. I can actually see the car outside waiting for her. The last thing I ask her is actually the first question that came into my head when I found out that I would be speaking to her: if you could hit anyone, who would you hit?

“You, at the moment, probably,” says Pete grinning at me. “Probably him actually,” says Katie, nodding towards Pete. “After a hard training session,” she adds, almost as an afterthought. Better him than me.

Trinity v Waterford Institute of Technology (WIT) Amy Codd Staff Writer DU Ladies Gaelic Football A team earned their first win of the season last Wednesday at the Waterford Institute of Technology (WIT) sports grounds. The team had been building up to this with some tough training sessions in recent weeks, and while it doesn’t secure advancement in the league competition, it brings a positive close to competitive games for the first half of the 2012-2013 season.

WIT got off to a great start with two goals from their full- and corner-forwards in the first 10 minutes of the game. However, DU’s passing and movement of the ball ensured they enjoyed most of the possession, although they were slow to get onto the scoreboard,

seeing the ball drop short and wide a number of times. Meanwhile WIT added to their tally with their first point of the game.

DU’s first goal came from an excellent long range effort by Petra McCafferty. and shortly after that a converted penalty by Lucy Mulhall brought DU right back into the game.

Both sides exchanged points and Trinity’s defenders were constantly put under immense pressure for the remainder of the first half with notable performances from Maeve Breen and Rachel Coleman Horgan.

With little between the sides at halftime, DU were determined to push on for the win and outscored their opponents in the second half, including a goal from substitute Evelyn Kimmage and points coming from all of the forwards.

Trinity established a comfortable lead which they did not re-

linquish for the remainder of the game, allowing the substitutes to be used to great advantage in positions across the field.

DU pressure saw a number of WIT wides, including a closerange deflection by Amy Codd.

The side kept their composure until the end, with the few remaining WIT attacks confidently dealt with, including some close interplay between WIT’s goalkeeper, Clare Foley, and DU’s Jacinta Brady.

This game brings the league campaign to a close, where previously Trinity have often found themselves in over their heads.

This year’s continued hard work and determination saw the team bring their most energy and desire to their last game, securing victory.

14th November 2012 DULGFC WIT

4-11 2-4 DU Teamsheet Clare Foley Rachel Coleman Horgan Amie Giles Amy Codd Grainne Barrett Faye Kearney Maeve Breen Jacinta Brady Siobhan Melvin Sarah Dempsey Petra McCafferty Mairí Ní Mhuineacháin Lucy Mulhall Jessica Comerford Marie Murphy Substitutes: Ellen Beirne Emma Jones Megan Pendred Cathriona Smith Evelyn Kimmage Sarah Cotter Aoife McGovern