“I had my hands tied behind my back with my legs,” explains Moazzam Begg, “I was hogtied, hooded and beaten. I was interrogated in a room with a woman screaming next door. I was led to believe that this was my wife being tortured.”
Begg was on holiday with his family in Pakistan when he was abducted from his home by men who accused him of being involved in the training of al-Qaeda soldiers.
“There was a knock on the door at midnight; I opened the door to be greeted by several non-uniformed armed men. They held a gun to my head and pushed me to the ground, and a hood was put over my head. I was then thrown into the back of a car, all in front of my wife and children.”

“I was taken to some secret unknown location and locked away. I was beaten and questioned, not asked who I was, and they didn’t produce any identification. For all intents and purposes, this was a kidnapping.
“Once there, I had my hands shackled above my head to the top of a cage. I fared much better than most people because I was an English speaker. The interrogators and guards could speak to me and I could understand. The non-English speakers were screamed and shouted at. We were told that the dogs had more rights than us. We were basically classed as sub-humans.
“I first spent about three weeks in this unknown hidden camp in Pakistan, and then I was handed over to US custody. I was there for about six weeks with a few hundred other people who had been captured in Pakistan.
“There, we were punched, kicked, and stripped naked. There were dogs barking all around me, their saliva was dripping all over my face. We were being photographed, shaven, spat and sworn at. We were interrogated while naked. It was a very brutal process, and that was just the beginning.”
The brutality of the American and British foreign policy in the past seven years has been shocking in both its frequency and its excess. While they may argue that these camps are a necessary evil in order to keep the public safe, there are far too many cases of releases without charge after years of brutality, some of which Begg became all too familiar with.
“I was in Bagram, which is a detention centre, where I was held for around eleven months. This was an old soviet warehouse. There, I was witness to, and subjected to, some serious torture. I saw two people beaten to death by American soldiers. Through all of this time, I had no communication with my family.
“In February 2003, I was moved to Guantanamo Bay. There, I was put into solitary confinement and remained there for almost two years. It was a shock to the system.
“I have to say that the conditions in Guantanamo were a relief compared to the rendition camp. Everybody goes through the camps, a lot of them are in Third World countries, and sadly, as a Muslim, many are in Muslim countries usurped by the Americans, and so torture is an unwritten convention.
“I was never beaten by the Pakistanis, which I expected from them, but the Americans made up for it in more ways than one. A lot of people I came across had been severely beaten. I came across one man who had been tortured very badly. He had his fingernails pulled out, had been water boarded, electrocuted in his genitals and been severely beaten.
“A lot of time was spent in a cell. There were sporadic interrogations, but I fared much better than many people. I think that had to do with the complicity of the British, who allowed the Americans to hold many of their citizens, but ensured that they didn’t go too far, knowing that they would have to answer for it sometime.”
The American rendition programme has become infamous. It is brutal, violent and it seems to care little for nationality. If you are Muslim and have been either mentioned or have any flimsy link to a terrorist, knowingly or not, they you are fair game.
“They told me that they had it from a senior al-Qaeda official that I was an instructor in a training camp. I said, ‘Tell me when and what I was doing?’ I asked for facts but there weren’t any given. How do you cooperate with this? How do you challenge it?
“They tell you that you’ve done this, but won’t tell you how, when, where or why. It’s all a secret. I asked to take a polygraph test, but I was never allowed. The Geneva Convention is a myth in these hidden rendition camps, violence and hate seem to permeate every duty and faculty.
“During my time in Bagram, I saw a man hanging beside where we were all being held in a communal cell, around eight of us. I couldn’t see his face because he had a hood over it most of the time, except when he ate his meal. He was locked in what they call the airlock, a small area of around two feet between two doors. His body had slumped and become limp from hanging for so long.
“When they opened the cage, instead of checking to see if he was OK, they punched him in the stomach and kicked him. Then they shackled him like a pig and dragged him off. Around a year and a half later, I heard that he had died.
“He had been taken to a smaller cell and interrogated. He was kicked continually on his legs, to such an extent that had he survived, his legs would have had to be amputated. This is according to his autopsy report, which stated that the man looked like he had been run over by a truck.
“He was kicked simply because every time he was hit, he would scream out, ‘Allah, Allah, God, Oh God, help me.’ I also was shown pictures by an internal investigator later in Guantanamo.”
At Guantanamo itself, Begg was held in solitary confinement, and remained there for two years without charge or opportunity for defence. “There was a time when I completely lost hope. I smashed my head against the walls and completely lost it. I was in an eight-foot by six-foot cell with no natural light. I was in solitary confinement. I had no contract with anyone apart from the guards.
“During that period, I reached an all-time low, but then after, I would say a great high. I came to a realisation and acceptance of my fate, and decided that in this six-foot by eight-foot cell, that I couldn’t take more than three steps in any direction. I was going to better myself in any way possible.
“I started memorising the Qu’ran and memorising everything I could think of, capital cities and lists of words in French, Latin and Arabic that I had studied before. I did lots of press-ups, sit-ups. I wanted to use this period, however long it was going to be, to become as physically and mentally strong as possible.
“One of the things that comes to mind was all those prison films that involved people doing push-ups, but in all honesty, being held in solitary confinement in that sort of a situation is enough to drive a man insane. Some people actually lost their senses, and four people committed suicide.
“I knew that I had four children at home, one of whom I still hadn’t seen. He was born six months after I was taken into custody, and was nearly four years old when I saw him for the first time. I had those things keeping me going; I believed in the concept of natural justice, and that one day, I would be released and get to see my family again.
“They did have recreational time, which was twenty minutes, twice a week, and involved going into a caged yard that was around fifteen feet by fifteen feet. But they wouldn’t take me out unless there were three guards present – two holding me, and one standing behind me with a pistol.
“At the same time, they brought in a dog with a handler, and in the area where I was being held, there was also a Humvee with a mounted machine gun and armed infantry. That’s just when I would come out by myself. I couldn’t understand what the need for this overkill was.
“I was about five-foot-three in height, and I’m not a violent person, yet that was their attitude towards me. It changed over time though; they began to become a bit more relaxed. That was the routine- 40 minutes a week outside my cell.
“It was monotonous, routine, and dreary for me. I spent my time sleeping, memorising things, thinking a lot, and engaging sometimes in discussions with some of the guards who were more apathetic and open minded.”
After four years in custody, locked away from any semblance of the outside world; Begg saw a different world when he was finally freed. And while it was the Americans that held Begg, as a British national he received little help from his fellow countrymen.
“I see the British government’s process is this; you don’t stick a knife nine inches into a man’s back, and then pull it out three inches and call it progress. The British were present from the beginning. At my first interrogation, MI5 were present. They told me to co-operate with the Americans because that was the only way I was going to get out of this.
“They were present every step of the way. They always maintained, in letters that I still have to this day, addressed to my father and my wife, that the Americans would never give access to any British officials, which was complete lies. As far as they were concerned, I could remain there for decades on end and no one would care.
“It wasn’t the British government that brought me home, but the campaigning of people back home. I think what really changed opinion also was that the Americans were building an execution chamber, and I was going to the first person tried by a military commission, and when they spoke of the possibility of me actually being executed, as a British citizen, people stood up and took notice.”
After being away for so long, Begg was faced with the near impossible task of returning to life in Britain, “The children were all three years older. I couldn’t throw my daughter up in the air anymore. I had a new son, who, as far as he was concerned, was a complete stranger to me.
“The attitudes towards Muslims had changed, between tabloid media coverage, and the aftermath of 7/7 of course. Britain has taken this position with the United States and complies with everything from war to its detention laws.
“It has lost its way completely. I think Northern Ireland offers some hope for a solution; I have been there four times now and met with both communities. The answer lies in dialogue, but in dialogue with people you don’t want to talk to.”
While there is a solution, little progress has been made. “It’s a very long way away,” confesses Begg. For a man who has seen and experienced the horrors first-hand, a solution will never give back the four years that have been erased on the long road home from Guantanamo bay.

“I’m serving a ten-year sentence,” explains prisoner Mick Byrne, “But I’ll probably serve seven years. I was involved in an armed robbery. This is my second ten-year sentence, the other one was for armed robbery too, and I did two years in England before ending up back in here.”
The sounds of the prison itself can be heard in the background as the conversation continues. He talks about how the prison has changed in recent years. “It’s completely different, you used to be able to have a bit of banter but that’s almost gone now,” he remarks.

Violence has become an increasingly prominent part of life in Mountjoy. “There’s a lot that goes on between gangs, you know about the Crumlin-Drimnagh feud that’s going on at the moment. The guards have them split up; the A and B wings aren’t allowed mix with C and D because of it.
“The guards do what they can but it takes them 30 seconds to get to something, and most of the time there’s nothing they can do about it. Only last week, there was a lad who had his leg slashed. You see, it doesn’t matter who you are in here if you piss off the wrong people.”
Earlier this year, a man was killed on one of the wings. “It was just outside the door there at the gate. It was because of bullying, we all saw it coming. One of the lads had just had enough. It was his own knife he was stabbed with, he had given it to the chap to hold for him.”
He continues and speaks about the lads inside who are under protection, “They wouldn’t last half an hour on a landing. They owe money or have done something on another prisoner in the past. Without protection they’d be long dead. There’s a lot of cliques in here, lots of gangs. If you piss the wrong people off you’ll get done for it.”
Byrne is a trustee. After years of keeping his head down and refraining from troublemaking, the guards trust him. He washes the floor when others are locked up and performs jobs for the guards. While this seems a good way to use your time, it can also present its own problems.
“Some of the other prisoners would call me a rat or whatever but most don’t have issues with it. I even got some slagging when I was coming to talk to you, it’s all banter but you don’t know what they’re really thinking deep down.
“Sometimes I’d be washing the floors by a cell, and one of the lads would ask me to pass something into another cell, heroin or hash. The guards tell you to just stay away from the doors, but you don’t want to get known for being too in with the guards.
“Most of the lads get on grand with the guards; if you treat them with an amount of respect, you’ll get the same back. Some of the lads will give them all that and cause trouble. You hear them giving threats about getting them on the outside but it never happens. They know that it’ll only land them back in here. I get on great with the guards, that’s why I’m in here talking to you.”
Racism could be seen as a growing problem in the prison, given how Ireland has changed over the past few years. Surprisingly, and contrary to the guards’ opinions, the prisoner doesn’t see it as an issue.
“There isn’t much of that in here, you might hear the odd shout or whatever, but never any violence. The foreign lads are probably better treated by the rest of us because of it. You never hear anything said to a female officer either, and they’re especially never touched.”
After seven years, a place becomes very familiar and it’s easy to become institutionalised. “When I got out first, I was completely institutionalised. I was eating at twelve and four like we do in here. I’d get nervous in small spaces, and miss being around a lot of people like I am in this place.”
It’s easy to see how a prisoner might turn to drugs inside Mountjoy. Locked in a cell for eighteen hours a day raises a lot of boredom and loneliness issues. “Nights can be long, the TV helps but it’s difficult not to think about your family or friends.
“You spend so much time locked up, you have to get into TV programmes or read or something. The waiting lists for the workshops are long, a lot of lads don’t care and refuse to do it but even those who do can have a while to wait. If you interview all the prisoners in here, 90 percent of them are in here because of drugs.”
It’s difficult to see how a place like Mountjoy can produce any form of rehabilitation. “Look at the amount of people who leave but end up back inside. And sometimes the lads in here leave more dangerous than they came in, they’ve gotten an education in crime and built up contacts.
“I’ve seen plenty of lads who came in here straight and ended up on drugs. They end up in a clique, and doing the drugs with the rest of them just to fit in. Sometimes there just isn’t anything else.
“When you’re on drugs you’ll do anything to get more, whatever it takes. That’s how a lot of lads end up in here. I still dabble myself. I’m trying to get clean but in here it’s hard; drugs are everywhere.”
Despite the guards’ best efforts, drugs still permeate the walls of Mountjoy. “Of course they know what’s going on but there’s not a lot they can do about it. They come in via footballs through the yard, or even on visits sometimes.
“I need to get clean, I’ve been on a drug to wean me off heroin for a while now and the dosage I need has been reduced. Hopefully I’ll get into the medical centre; I have to give two urine samples a week there to prove I’m clean.
“Then when I get out, I need to get into Coolmine (Drug Rehab Clinic) or something. I’ll be in my forties when I get out so I need to get clean. In the past seventeen years I haven’t been outside prison walls for more than an entire year.”
With drugs being such a problem is there any solution? “There needs to be a drug-free wing, or at least a landing. Give two samples a week to show you’re clean and give prisoners certain privileges too as a result. That way, anyone who wants to get clean, can. As it is, even the medical centre is full of drugs.”
The prison looks its age, a far cry from the women’s prison across the road. “It’s stuck in the past, stuck in a vicious cycle.” He talks about the differences between the English and Irish systems, having spent time in both.
“The English system is much better, there’s much more emphasis on rehabilitation. Each prisoner has their own welfare officer and there are loads of courses and things to do to help you when you get outside. Here it’s not anything like that; you just do your time.”
Byrne was genuinely approachable and seemed a nice man. He was honest in his discussion and happy to help in whatever way he could. Responding to the question as to whether the guards ever feel sorry for men like Byrne, one responded, “No, none of us do. That’s just the way of life in here.”

“It’s a university for crime,” explains one of the guards as we stride through Mountjoy Prison. “It’s like doing an apprenticeship really. You come in, do your time, and learn your trade,” adds another. Welcome to Mountjoy prison.

The large blue gates tower over you as you arrive. Passing through them, the old stone structure looms ever large, and the architecture is surprisingly impressive. The huge razor-sharp wire fences atop of the tall oppressive stone walls are a timely reminder of where you are. Guards pace around, most of them dressed in blue uniforms.
While the exterior of the prison seems impressive, the inside is an entirely different matter. Mountjoy looks its age. And more so, it smells it. Once you pass the warden offices, you enter a different world.
The four blocks spread out around the centre, each with three landings. A large steel spiral staircase dominates the centre, each block covered with bars and steel mesh. The blocks themselves are shorter than you might expect. The cells can be identified by a small red light that shines above the steel doors that line the corridors.
There is more steel mesh overhead that separates the landings, “You’ll notice most of the guards don’t stand out in the open, you never know what’s going to come down on top of you,” remarks the guard.
The stale stench that lingers in the area is explained by the fact that there are open toilets with only small doors at either end of the landing. “There are no toilets in the cells, only piss-pots. The prisoners get one shower a week, that’s one wash, one change of clothes, underwear and socks,” he continues.
It’s quiet in the prison at first. Most men are locked down, that’s other than the trustees who clean the floors and the guards that pace them. Later on though, it’s a very different story.
The guard presence has become much larger, as the inmates walk around the landings in plain clothes. The calm, quiet atmosphere that existed earlier has completely changed.
The cells are tiny, and most house two men. “There are around 550 prisoners here, it should hold about 450. Having said that I’ve seen this place hold near 850”.
Inside one of the cells, there are bunk beds against the back wall, with the top bunk littered with Liverpool posters and photographs. The right wall contains a few pictures from men’s magazines and a few more photos. The only luxury that’s visible is a small television on the left. The walls and floors are falling apart and very much showing their age. It’s dimly lit and very cramped.
Outside, the yards are fenced with high green nets to try and stop objects being thrown in from outside. “All they do is give people something to aim for,” says the guard. We continue around to the old hang-house, which is used only for guided tours nowadays.
It was last used in the 1950s and there is a plaque outside that marks the spot where Kevin Barry and other Irish rebels were originally buried before being moved to Glasnevin cemetery.
“There are plenty of other bodies under the ground beneath us,” remarks the guard. On the way out, the guard points to a bell, “That was rung to let the families outside know that the execution was over,” he explains.
The spectre of drugs is one that haunts Mountjoy. “They’re everywhere,” according to the guard, “90 percent of people in here are here because of drugs; plenty of young lads come in clean and leave addicts.”
It’s very difficult to see how Mountjoy can escape from the vicious cycle it’s caught in. 85 percent of people who have a prolonged stay in Mountjoy will be back. “Most of these guys come in here and leave here with an education; they build up contacts and knowledge.
“A guy comes in here as an inept criminal and leaves with the knowledge of the others around him. Back in the eighties, the only place with a drug problem in this country was Dublin. Lots of prisoners came up from the country and, after talking with the Dublin lads, saw an opportunity to make money. They had the opportunity to build up contacts and deals were made.
“Drugs are very expensive, and there’s a lot of money to be made in them. A lad looks at his twenty-something unemployed neighbour driving a new Lexus and says to himself, ‘I’ll have a bit of that’.
“Would you or I act differently coming from the same background? Who knows. Last New Year’s Eve, I was walking in front of the wall around the yard and I picked up two grand worth of drugs that didn’t reach the yard.”
He goes on in search of solutions to the drugs problem in Mountjoy, “A unilateral legalising of drugs would get rid of 60 or 70 percent of the prisoners in here. It would take a brave government to suggest it, but maybe one or two generations down the line we might see a difference. Did prohibition work in America?”
Violence has also become a much bigger part of prison life. “There was the lad murdered earlier this year, but we all saw that coming. Often there’s not much you can do except try and protect them as best you can. When I started here, there had never been a man murdered in Irish prisons, now it’s becoming all too frequent.”
A lot of what’s happening seems to be gang-related; “There are so many rival gangs in here, continuing on from the outside.” Weapons have also become a bigger issue. “It’s a relatively new departure, last week I was walking in the yard and I found drugs in a football thrown in from outside, but with it was a knife with a six-inch blade.”
And guns? “There’s been a rumour that there’s one in here for a while, but we haven seen a victim yet so it’s unlikely.” Mobile phones have also been a fixture, but guards are clamping down. New x-ray machines have been installed and most phones seem to have been located. There are also proposals to introduce a jamming device to the prison.
The women’s prison across the road evokes a lot more hope. “Women suffer more in prison then men, they are more abandoned and often have children to worry about; all the men care about is drugs.”
It looks the farthest thing from a prison, more like an apartment block, and prisoners spend much less time locked in cells, and “The problem is that it looks too nice.” Behind the pleasant façade though, a different world exists.
“Half the people in here are already dead, they’re just not on the ground yet,” remarks one younger female prisoner. Drugs are as big a part here as in the men’s prison. There is an awful lot more emphasis placed on rehabilitation and counselling. All the guards and officers in the women’s prison have been trained in counselling and uniforms aren’t compulsory. They even have a dog.
It’s a world apart from the harshness of the men’s regime. Up early, meals at eight, twelve and four, a shower a week and eighteen hours a day locked up. And contrary to popular believe, there have been boys as young as fifteen locked up inside Mountjoy.
It seems clear walking through the prison that the absence of any real effort to rehabilitate these people will result only in the return of the vast majority to the jail.

“I saw her lying face down in the rubble, I knew she was dead,” he recalls, “I couldn’t see my daughter; I didn’t get her for two hours after. The thing that sticks with me to this day is the cries of pain and the smell, the smell of burning flesh. It’s the last thing I think about at night and the first thing I think about when I wake up in the morning.”
Kevin Skelton left his house on Saturday August 15th, 1998 to get a pair of shoes for his daughter. A few hours later, he had lost his wife Philomena. She left behind a husband and three daughters.

“The police came up and told us that there was a bomb scare. I was on my way to the car park but the wife wouldn’t come home. We went down then to a small shop that sells pencils and pens.
“The police came in again and told us to move down. We still hadn’t got the brown shoes for my daughter, so we went down and crossed over the street. I got sick of shopping with the women so I said to my wife that I was going to go to a little ornament shop next door.
“I went and I said to myself that she might not have enough money, so I went to walk back. Then the glass of the shop was sucked out onto the street and I went out after it. Phil was lying face down in the rubble. I knew she was dead.”
“I couldn’t get to my eldest daughter; I didn’t get to her for two hours. Someone had taken her to the hospital. The other two girls I found weren’t badly injured physically. It was chaos though. Everybody went to the leisure centre and there was a list put up on the wall. Everybody was running to see if there were any new names on it, what hospitals they were in.
“I remember someone saying to me to go and have a look. I told him that I had no need to look. I knew my wife was dead. It was the next morning at ten o’clock that I was taken to the army camp to identify the body. I knew she was dead a minute and a half after the bomb went off, no question.
“I knew one of the firemen; I used to referee Gaelic football and Paddy used to play full-back for Omagh. I saw him walking up to my wife and lifting up her arm. When he dropped it again, I knew then that it was all over.”
“The town was always the same to me, but afterwards it was just a war-zone. I knew a guy very well who was there and had also been in the army, and been away in many different places.
“He said he had never seen anything like it in his life. It was like someone had sent in a cruise missile to wipe the town out. It was unbelievable. He had seen bad things in the different places he had been stationed, but he said he never saw anything like he did in Omagh.
“I knew the man who owned the Cosy Corner (A pub near the epicenter of the blast). I can still remember seeing it folding like an old book, like something you would see in an Arnold Schwarzenegger film. When I left the building, the bomb was still going down the street. I was out and I saw it. It blew into buildings and then sucked out all the way down the street. I was amazed there weren’t more people killed, that’s being honest.”
The aftermath of the explosions was devastating, it ravaged parts of the town beyond recognition and weeks later many still lay in hospital beds. “The town was dead for a long time afterwards. I don’t think Omagh will ever be the same again. That day has changed it.
“I don’t feel comfortable on any part of the main street. If I have to do something in town, I get in and out as quick as possible. I need to park my car facing out of the town in a place that I know I can get out quick. I used to love football, but the last match I was at was in 2003. I haven’t been at a game since because I can’t sit in the crowd. In the pub where I drink, I have to sit near the door. It just changed my whole life.”
After witnessing such horrific events and suffering the loss of his wife, Kevin went through a very difficult period. While the day will always have a lasting effect on Kevin, he has got his life back on track following some dark days.
“Drink, you name it, I’ve done it. I’d been out one night, and had drunk a bottle of brandy. I was home and I saw my children’s pictures looking down at me. I said to myself, ‘You have got to get a grip here. What’s going to happen to your children, what’s going to happen to your little girl?’”
After any loss like the one suffered by Kevin, the need for justice is never far from mind. Ten years on, the people of Omagh have yet to see any real progress. “In the weeks after, we were riding on the crest of a wave. We had Tony Blair and Bill Clinton coming here.
“There were different police men coming to the house, saying, ‘We know who these boys are, and they’ll be put away’, but as time went on, you gradually started thinking to yourself, ‘Hang on a minute. There is something seriously wrong here.’ Then people started digging themselves, asking questions and getting no answers.
“From where I stand tonight, I have no doubt that they knew that that bomb was coming. They knew Omagh was a target and they did nothing to stop it. They let it go for political reasons; the troubles started in Ireland on Bloody Sunday, and ended on that bloody Saturday.”

“As he walked down the hall, he looked back and said, ‘I won’t be long’. I think that memory, when he looked around for the last time, will be the one that always stays with us.” Aidan Gallagher was 21 when he died, a loss that still haunts his father Michael.
On that Saturday morning, Aidan had been in town to buy a pair of jeans. “At about half one in the afternoon, I was working in the garage, and the next thing I heard was a massive explosion. For a second it stunned me, although I knew it was an explosion. Then I got into the car to drive home. As I was driving home, I drove towards Omagh and I could see smoke rising in the distance, but I had no concept of where it was.
“I arrived home and my younger daughter was there. She had been in town that morning, standing in the exact spot, at a greengrocer there called the Salad Bowl. Then we heard the helicopters and the sirens and about ten minutes later we put on the news. It was saying that there had been a bomb exploded in Omagh town centre and that there were fatalities. The death-toll began to rise, and I said, ‘Turn off the news and don’t turn it on again.’”

What Gallagher had heard was a car filled with 500lb of explosives tearing apart Omagh town centre. On August 13, a Vauxhall Cavalier was stolen from Carrickmacross, County Monaghan where the perpetrators replaced its Republic of Ireland number plates with false Northern Ireland plates.
On the day of the bombing, they parked the car outside a clothes shop on Omagh’s Market Street. It detonated at about three o’clock in the crowded shopping area. The explosion was so powerful that the bodies of several victims were never found. Farther out, the blast tore the limbs off many people. The intense heat of the explosion caused severe burns. As well as the blast, shards of glass and metal sliced through the crowd of civilians.
That morning, three phone calls had been made, warning of an attack in Omagh. At 14.32pm, a warning was telephoned to Ulster Television saying, “There’s a bomb, courthouse, Omagh, main street, 500lb, explosion 30 minutes.” The office received a second warning saying “Bomb, Omagh town, fifteen minutes” one minute later. The next minute, the Coleraine office of the Samaritans charity received a call stating that a bomb would go off on Main Street about 200 yards from the courthouse. The recipients passed on the information to the RUC.
Police were clearing an area near the local courthouse, 40 minutes after receiving the telephone warnings, when the bomb detonated. But the warning was unclear and the wrong area was evacuated. Instead, people were being directed towards the device when it went off shortly after three.
Women and children, one just eighteen months old, are among the dead, many of whom, only moments before the blast, had been standing behind white tape that police had erected when clearing the streets. Three weeks later, the 29th victim died, and 31 of the original 220 injured still lay in hospitals around Northern Ireland. Two unborn children also perished.
“Aidan was with his friend Michael Barrett; they had both gone into town together. I went to the hospital, and on the third visit to the hospital, I discovered Michael, who had very bad burns. I remember saying to Michael, ‘Where’s Aidan?’ He said, ‘He was beside me and then we were up in the air and that was it.’
“From there, I went to the leisure centre. We were told that that was where the news was coming in. We spent about twelve or thirteen hours there, and we were taken into a room and told that someone fitting Aidan’s description had died that day. We were then taken by bus to an old army hanger that was being used a temporary mortuary. I then identified Aidan.
“In terms of time, this was quite early on. There were people forced to wait a lot longer than us. At the end of that process, some of them had very little to see. Then I had the task of telling my wife and two daughters what had happened. The day just turned into a total nightmare.”
“He was 21, six foot two and an energetic fit young person. He loved music and probably the real passion of his life was cars, we were always involved with a lot of vehicles, he was reared up around cars. He went out at the weekend; I used to give him a lift into town.
“It was particularly sad, because the Good Friday agreement had been signed and everyone was proclaiming peace. There had always been a risk of sectarian attack but that seemed to have lifted. We never imagined that he would die under such horrific circumstances in his own town buying pair of jeans.”
The struggle to deal with such a horrific tragedy led to Michael and others of all religions and political persuasions setting up the Omagh support and self-help group. “We concentrated on the things that united us rather than those that divided us, which was the justice issue.”
Justice is something that has been sorely lacking in the aftermath of such a massacre. After ten years the people who lost so much have gained little in the way of justice. One of the more intriguing facts about the Omagh bomb investigation is that the only men charged in connection with the massacre are related.
South Armagh man Colm Murphy was the first to face charges relating to the bombing. The judge at his trial in Dublin’s Special Criminal Court described him as a “service provider” for the Real IRA bombers.
However, the case against Murphy collapsed and the judge ordered a retrial when doubt was cast on the evidence of two Garda Síochána officers. Legal sources in Dublin have questioned whether the Irish state can ever resurrect a case against Colm Murphy.
The next person arrested was Murphy’s nephew, Sean Gerard Hoey. He was arrested at his home following a massive security operation in the frontier zone in September 2003. More than 200 police officers and British troops raided Hoey’s house, also arresting his wife, though she was released without charge shortly afterwards. Ever since his arrest three years ago, Sean Hoey has denied the charges and protested his innocence.
Throughout the 56-day trial, Hoey declined to give any evidence from the dock and remained in Maghaberry top security jail, where he watched almost all of the case unfold via video link. Last month, he was acquitted of any involvement in the worst act attack in more than three decades of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland.
“We’re continuing to raise the issue, and the fact that there has still been no justice for Omagh ten years on. There have been a lot of failings in the justice systems in both the north and south of Ireland. Things have been handled extremely badly, given the promises that were made to families both publicly and privately.
“After the Omagh bomb, the Taoiseach and Tony Blair said it would be brought before the courts, and exactly the contrary has happened. We have seen a man sentenced, but because two guards perjured themselves at the trial, the decision was quashed. At the Sean Hoey trial, two officers also perjured themselves and the evidence wasn’t sufficient.
“Nobody has been brought before the courts. That causes extreme difficulty for the families. We have called on both governments to enter into negotiations with the families looking at a cross boarder public enquiry. The families have been treated very badly in every respect.
“We also have the issue about the memorial in Omagh; we live in a Sinn Fein controlled council area, and because of certain things it says, it will be removed and never see the light of day again. The reality of it is that all of the families of victims of Northern Ireland atrocities have been treated badly. Many people would say that Omagh was a political bombing.”
After ten years, the families who suffered such pain after the atrocity seem as far away from seeing justice as they did on that August day. While efforts continue toward a public enquiry, hopefully one day Michael Gallagher will see some justice following the tragic loss of his son.

Edgar Allen Poe once wrote;
“Because I feel that in the heavens above
The angels, whispering one to another,
Can find among their burning tears of love,
None so devotional as that of “Mother,”
Therefore, by that dear name I have long called you,
You who are more than mother unto me”
For most a Mother is a vital part of nurturing their lives, for Ken Doyle she was responsible for destroying his.
Two brothers, Ken and Patrick Doyle, from Tullamore in Co, Offaly, were severely abused and neglected by their mother, the Christian Brothers, the Gardai, and the Midland Health Board. During their childhood, the brothers were starved, tortured, brutally beaten, and forced to steal by their mother.

When the Midland Health Board finally removed the boys from their home at 3 Pearse Park, Tullamore, they were sent to state institutions where they were raped and sexually abused.
Ken’s story begins at an early age, around 18 months. “That is when the abuse, according to the records I have secured from the Midland Health Board, began.
As early as 1965 my grandparents contacted the I.S.P.C.C. (Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children) in Athlone, about my mother starving my brother Patrick because he was taking food out of neighboring bins. If anyone had investigated they would have found that Mrs. Doyle was starving both Patrick and myself.”
“In the same file Mr. Doyle even says he went to the priests to ask them to talk to his wife, but they would not come to his home and his wife refused to go to the priests. But yet every Sunday both Mr. and Mrs. Doyle were up to the Church in the front pew for Mass. And, of course, the priests were doing their own child abuse thing.”
“And what did the Midland Health Board do? I was sent to St. Joseph’s Industrial School in Galway, where I was sexually abused by the Christian Brothers. The picture of me on the St. Joseph’s page of this site shows me at the age of 12 from the expression on my face you can see how unhappy I was and how small for my age. After St. Joseph’s I was sent to another school run by the Catholic Church, Scoil Ard Muire at Lusk, Co Dublin, where the sexual abuse continued. What happened to the place of safety?”
“Even earlier, In 1970, I was in the hospital for malnutrition. At that time I entered the hospital at 4 1/2 years old weighing 27 pounds. In my father’s comments to the attending doctor: the child is neglected only getting one meal a day. Because I was getting fed regularly in the hospital I left after 3 weeks weighting 31 1/2 pounds.”
“Starvation was only one of the abuses I suffered for all of my life. My mother used to beat me with anything she could lay her hands on. She kept me in diapers and made me wet them. Or she keep me naked in a cold house or out in the backyard. Cold baths were another thing she liked to inflict on me.”
“In addition to this abuse Mrs. Doyle had various sexual perversions she would force Patrick and myself to satisfy her with.”
Well known around the area, the Doyles were left along and vulnerable.
“I was forced to steal all over the town bringing the stolen goods home to my mother. I stole groceries, Waterford crystal, newspapers, money, clothes anything I could get to please her. My reward, maybe some food or maybe not such a severe beating that night.”
While Ken and Patrick were singled out, there other siblings also suffered.
“One of my siblings committed suicide two years ago, every one of the children in that household were abused.”
To this day Ken lives with the very real consequences of his mother violent abuse,
Rendered unable to work due to and injury sustained as a child.
“At the age of 6 years of age my mother beat me so severely that she broke my leg in several places. I spent 13 weeks in the hospital recovering. My mother told the doctors I fell down the steps and broke my leg. Today she tells the Garda that it was self defense. How could it be self defense since she weighed over 200 pounds and I was maybe 50 pounds at the time. This was pure and simple another act of abuse where she got carried away.”
Since then the true ineptitude of the states role has become clear.
“Back in 2000, while living in Phoenix, AZ I was having some medical difficulties. Mostly with the back problems but also stomach problems, which have been tied by doctors to the child abuse and starvation. I told the doctor of the abuse as a child so the doctor said she would like to see any medical records from Ireland.”
“So I contacted the Midland Health Board in Ireland and asked for my medical records to give to my doctor. Some time later I got a call from a very nice lady at the Health Board who said she had the files and would forward them to me. But first she wanted to tell me how sorry she was for the things I went through as a child in Ireland. I was a bit confused and not sure what was in these “files”. But the whole dirty secret would be revealed in what I was about to get from the Health Board.”
“What I received were 100 pages of social files that detailed who knew and what they knew about the abuse and when they knew it. My guess that no one knew of the abuse was wrong. Social workers, doctors, police and, of course, Catholic Priests all knew that Patrick and I were being abused and did nothing. “
“I finally got about 200 pages before they stopped even answering my appeals and letters. At this point they knew they had made a mistake in releasing the social files, which I hadn’t asked for, and were not going to give up any more information. By then I had filed suites against the Christian Brothers for sexual abuse at their so-called school and the Health Board for not protecting me as a child. If the Irish Government put as much money into protecting children as they did into employees and office space in such areas as information commissioners and ombudsman then maybe there would be no more child abuse in Ireland.”
“From the files you can see that the problem was too many nuns masquerading as social workers and those who were not nuns were just incompetent. And the so-called teachers in the schools were not bright enough to know that something is wrong when kids are searching trash cans or stealing other kid’s lunches for something to eat.”

Its 6:30 am, the early morning heat bakes the barren surrounding landscape. A partitioning wall separates a camp of tents from the chaos outside as the 99th infantry battalion goes through their early morning parade. Welcome to Chad.
In august 2007 the Irish government deployed 200 soldiers as part of the United Nations effort to establish peace between Chad and Darfur. Ireland has deployed the second largest contingent of troops, after France, conducting Peace keeping operations in the troubled region.
“Our role was of an infantry platoon” states Lt. Sarah Jane Comerford who took charge of the mortar division of the Irish deployment between January and May 2009.

“Essentially our role was to evacuate the NGO’s if there was an attack from rebel forces coming over the border from Sudan. Because the NGO’s have money, food and vehicles there were a target.”
“They weren’t so much of a threat to us, we are unbiased and our mandate is not to get involved. On a local level we were beside a town called Goz Beida, we patrolled the town to keep it safe and monitor the NGO’s. We needed to be a deterrent against banditry also.”
“There was quite a struggle when the rebel’s did come over the border about a month before we were due to come home we had to evacuate about 68 NGO’s. The local conflict is not ours to get involved with.”
The land locked central African nation has a troubled history, as a victim of French colonialism and following a civil war in the 60’s; by 1979 rebel factions had conquered its capital. Libya where the next to become involved but by 1987 the French backed President Hissene Habré succeeded in forcing the Libyans from Chadian soil. Habré consolidated power through corruption and violence with an estimated 40,000 people killed under his rule.
“It’s a very barren country, almost Biblical, there’s not many vehicles, the only ones are owned by the army and the NGO’s (non-governmental organisations). The people have very basic lives, they are still semi nomadic and live in mud huts, shops and things like that are things you just don’t see. It’s very barren, desert like, and it’s extremely hot” stated Comerford.
“It got to around 55 degrees from ten o’clock in the morning onwards; working in those environments is very difficult for most people.”
“We got up at half past 5 in the morning. We had tented accommodation so although there was a large wall for defence of the camp. We had a few a UN people living for a while, there was some Dutch people when we arrived and after them Finnish company arrived.”
Idriss Déby overthrew his President in 1990 and attempted to reconcile rebel groups and introduce a multi party political system. Yet when oil exploitation began in Chad in 2003, it brought with it all the hazards that Black Gold can cause. A new civil war broke out as ethnic violence increased, the UN warning that a genocide like that in Darfur could yet occur in Chad. Rebel forces have since made two failed attempts to take the capital by force, in 2006 and 2008, as the humanitarian crisis continues.
The human cost of the attempted 2008 coup remained uncertain. Red Cross officials who estimated more than 1,000 casualties had no word on how many of those were fatalities. The Associated Press quoted Chadian Red Cross officials on the scene as saying that hundreds of people had died.
The rebels say they are trying to overturn a brutal dictatorship; the government maintains that the rebels are backed by Chad’s eastern neighbour Sudan and that their attack represents a declaration of war. Foreign analysts say the fighting is in part a struggle to gain control of Chad’s oil production.
Sudanese women who escaped the Darfur conflict to eastern Chad are facing high levels of sexual violence, according to an Amnesty International report.
Despite the presence of a UN force, women and girls are being attacked when they leave 12 designated camps in search of water, the report says.
It also documented cases of refugees being attacked inside the camps by Chadian aid workers. Chad’s government has denied that any Chadian has attacked a Sudan refugee.
Since 2003 about 250,000 Darfuris have fled the conflict in Sudan, where mass rape of civilians had allegedly been used as strategy to displace entire villages.
As a peace keeping and humanitarian force, the Irish army has no mandate to involve themselves in the conflict.
“When you know what your role is before you go out there you don’t really get frustrated, a lot of our briefs were very specific on what our role was. We were amicable with the surrounding forces, when we drove by there was no animosity between us.”
“They are neither friend nor foe, we were wary because the forces were heavily armed. You have to keep your eyes wide open and realise that you are foreign group of troops in someone else’s country.”
“When we got the good to go to evacuate a NGO camp, we had to wait for a two hour window of opportunity as the rebels passed through to get them out of the town, if they weren’t with us we had to get out by then anyway. IT was good because we actually got to do what we were out there for, but at the same time the tempo was high and we were glad when it was over.”
“If there rebels had come through and a battle commenced there was a chance we would get caught in the crossfire. We had specific rules of engagement and if we had been fired upon we could defend ourselves and the NGO’s. From that perspective we were trained to fight back if we needed to but we were always aware of our role.”

Simon Morley is a very normal, cheerful man with an infectious hearty laugh and friendly jovial nature. He also earns his living making shapes out of his genitals in front of a room full of strangers. Genital origami if you must put a name to it.
How, you may ask with a healthy degree of trepidation, does one arrive at such a career path? “I could give you all sorts of fancy answers but to be honest it was probably after a little too much to drink. It is not uncommon after a few drinks for Australian men to kick off their pants and entertain their friends. I think you’ll find most of the Australian rugby or football teams can do a good hamburger. This is where it comes from – you’d be in the showers afterwards and be like, hey check this out! Basically we decided to put a cape, extend the repertoire and take it to the people.”

What are the qualifications required for such a distinguished career? “We don’t like to talk size, but let’s just say the more clay the sculptor has to work with, the more he can create. Is that tactile enough for you? Let’s be honest – no one is going to pay to see a little willy.”
The name Puppetry stems from the title of a self published “high-brow” calendar. It was on New Year’s Eve in 1997 with a garage full of calendars to sell and burgeoning requests for live demonstrations, that prompted Simon to team up with David “Friendy” Friend and unleash their talents on the world. Together, Simon and Friendy’s solo “acts” became Puppetry of the Penis. A global phenomenon was born.
As the curtain comes down on the Olympia this month, a golden era in genital origami shall to come to an end “It’s gonna be pretty much a hit and run, I’ll be doing the show myself. I don’t do very many shows anymore and this is very possibly my last one. To be honest it’s a great way to finish off – just really going out with a bang.”
Fear not avid Puppetry fans, the show will go on even without its ringleader, “We’re constantly looking for people. We’ve franchised the show. At one point a few years ago we had 8 teams running around the world at the same time.”
So if you do wish do sign up for a life on the high sea’s of genital puppetry, pray caution before taking such a step “Oh god believe me, all the wierdos come out of the wood work! We get to see some very strange stuff. I thought this was a bit funny and I could sell some tickets. Next thing you know I’m seeing more male genital than a porn director. I dunno, it’s not something I signed up for but it’s a cross I have to bear nowadays I suppose.”
“I had a guy in Montreal turn up and drop his pants. He had an eggplant on the end of his penis. I still don’t quite know what he was doing with that. “What are you doing?” I asked him. He mumbled away in French and then just waddled off with an eggplant on his cock. I still have nightmares about it, just wondering what he was up to. What was he thinking?”
Simon also holds a rather unique record of his own. “I actually was contacted by these people about a year ago that said I was in the Sexual Guinness Book of Records. I think the Sexual Guinness Book of Records is people drinking too much Guinness and getting their cock out. Anyway they actually informed me that I had “the most famous flaccid penis on earth”. I wanted to pick up the phone and call my mum.”
Sadly the world has to say goodbye to the man who brought us the genital impressions of George Bush (“He basically just looks like a prick, doesn’t he?”), the Lochness monster (“we wanted to do something special for the Scottish people)” and even Yoda got the Puppetry of the Penis royal treatment. “You expect a few words of wisdom from Yoda. It’s not so much about the dick trick itself; it’s how the Yoda impersonation sounds.” As the curtain falls on an illustrious career, the Irish public has one final chance to catch this unique spectacle.
“I mean everyone reacts a little differently, everyone takes something a different from the show. Women have been told for centuries that you’re not allowed to laugh at a man’s penis. In some countries you could still get killed if a man drops his pants and you just start laughing at his testicles, but not true in our show. You are not just looking at a couple of naked men; you’re looking at three story high flashes of genitalia. Normally when a woman gets close to a penis it turns into something very different.” Indeed.

“We wanted to end it on a bit of a high note and actually the day before Saturday, one of the guys, his guitar broke so we had to talk to fill up time a bit. So, what I actually ended up saying, was promising a big singer on if they came back the following night so the next night we did the white snakes song here I go again on my own. We did a cover of that with Andrew Stanley and Damien Clark to come on and sing it. And Fred cuckoo came on and played three melodicas, It was really good fun. I’m not sure if you’d call it comedy or anything but it was good fun and really hilarious”
Still recovering from the Electric Picnic, Dublin based comedy sketch troupe Dead Cat Bounce have been kept extremely busy since their recent formation in 2008, and their recent trip to Edinburgh has done there reputation no harm.

Having been described as “amazingly talented but they are also brilliantly funny and superbly entertaining” and “flawless,” it seems as if their career may be about to take off. They even pick up the obligatory celebrity fan, of at least so they thought. “Jannene Garofolo did a show in the same venue as us and obviously, she’s a Hollywood actor or whatever so when she came to our show she kind of stayed near the back.”
“Someone in the audience said she spent the whole show doubling over with laughter and then at the end she stood up for a standing ovation and we were like, wow, you know that’s high praise. But our sound man was sitting behind her and said she had apologised that she had a really bad back and had to keep bending over and touching her toes, and at the end she was standing up to make a quick exit out of there.”
Having started out as somewhat of a sketch troupe, Dead Cat Bounce have taken the road less travelled and finished up somewhere surprisingly original, “We started off doing improv comedy when we were students. We started writing bits and pieces like sketches and stuff. We did sketches and stuff as a group called H-bam here in Dublin, we were popular enough with students, I suppose our crowed.”
“So doing things like that for a while, there was always a musical element and it just kind of developed. I suppose about a year and a half ago the 4 of us weren’t really doing anything we wanted to do so we went for it. We wrote one show, which kind of took off. By pure chance Will Ferrell was in the audience and he really enjoyed it so that got us a bit of a profile, then R.T.E came along and started talking to us and it just kind of went well that first time out and kind of snowballed a little bit and we’ve just been working hard just trying to make is stick.”
So at this stage, one has to consider whether they are more comedy or music; “At this stage we’re definitely leaning towards band, you know? The songs and stuff have really taken off for us and we really enjoy them and probably do those best. There’s still some sketches and stuff in what we’re doing and that’s kind of comedy, it’s hard to name it because no one else is doing it, it’s kind of rock and roll, comedy band.”
“Usually what happens is you come up with a hook line you have one line for a song and then just start messing with it. They come about quite differently a lot of instruments around that we’ve collected over the years. Mick is pretty talented with his computers and keyboard which kind of make any sound you like we can have like a whole orchestra and fresh hip hop. So we kind of mess with stuff and see what works play it in front of people and see if it works and if it doesn’t then fix it or abandon it.”
Their R.T.E show had a definite cult following but in may be a while before we see them on Irish T.V again, “Recession hits so beyond that it’s a little hard to say, but there’s a lot of stuff we’re developing and hoping to, do even on other TV stations in the U.K and the States, we’re talking to a few.”
“So hopefully something will come of that but really at the minute, what we’re trying to do is develop stuff and tour as much as possible and we really want to record some of the songs. And we’re touring around Ireland a few places especially with the Bulmer’s festival and in a few months time we’ll be going to a festival in Australia, it looks like we will anyway, it’s not absolutely definite.”
Having already charmed Montreal, they took to Edinburgh with gusto, even making an appearance on Sky News, “Yea, I’m never sure where the Sky News thing came from, I think we just appeared on it and somebody noticed and let us know. The Guardian pod cast was really fun with Janenne Garofolo, Miles Jupitus and the Pyjama Men; it was great like being taken an extra step more seriously.”
Among all this they did manage to get some down time during the hectic schedule “Ah yeah well there’s plenty going on we came on about half seven till nine and you’d need a few beers to unwind. Edinburgh is a great place and all the comedians were there and we know them.”
“We’re staying in the same building and people you know from playing there every year would be there, people you’d see every year in Edinburgh people going to a few shows and reviewing shows and even people living around Edinburgh in bars at night. Ah it was great fun and we had a good time this year.”
With preparations for their Dublin appearance well underway, there newly gained reputation has preceded them and it’s no wonder that they expect to sell out the Sugar Club twice over. “We’re going to do our show wired which we’ve been developing for a while now. It’s the one we preformed in Edinburgh but we’ve been changing it a lot. I thought it was ready when we got to Edinburgh but we’re refining it all the time. We got a lot of good reviews and good responses in Scotland. I’m pretty excited about how it will go for Bulmer’s; there have been a lot of changes done to it. We’re pretty excited as to how people like it.”

“What are the choices here, the current structure that you have of fees up front, a loan system or what we propose?”
With consistent polling above 30%, Fine Gael are pole position to be the next leaders of this country, Enda Kenny may have much to say about education in the coming years. In the surroundings of Leinster house, Kenny seems at his most comfortable, and speaks with a charm and an authority not always evident in his public appearances. Apart from a brief interruption by Bruce Springsteen, via the medium of ringtone; unfortunately for Kenny only Obama can call on that kind of celebrity clout, he rarely breaks stride in his answers.

“I was a member of the government in 94-97 which abolished fees firstly to allow people to go to college who may never have had the chance to go, and secondly to ease the pressure on families, at the time it was costing about 7000 pounds now its 10000euros. So given the circumstances; 370000 out of work, mortgages to be repaid, pressure on all families, what you do?”
“If the Irish students are going to compete with their peers around the world then you can’t put obstacles in the way of education, so we say open the gates, abolish the registration fee, have no fees, don’t get involve with loans. When you graduate, get your PRSI number and work, you then make a 30% contribution to the cost of you course between 5 and 10 years, or be more flexible and pay if up front”
It’s a plan that has been criticised by both students and politicians, Proinsias De Rossa said it would be “a misuse of the social insurance fund, which is intended to insure people against sickness, disability, accidents, unemployment and support in old age, it should not be used as a sneaky tax on education.”
“This situation can’t go on, there’s nothing for nothing in life anymore, but I really do think that our students should have access to universities, secondly that those universities should be of the highest standards to compete.”
“The options are registration fees, fees paid for by parents, grants or loans, however and we would say our option is a third one, the USI president might well say I don’t believe in this but what are doing here is releasing the constraints on going to college; therefore someone from a disadvantaged area, whose parents are unemployed with their mortgage still to be paid, but is brilliant at math would favour a system like these. Open these gates and when you qualify, let them make a contribution.”
As the debate about Fee’s goes on, the issue of college expenditure has become more topical; with a deficit in UCD alone standing over 20 million Euros, as the government impose a recruitment ban across the higher education sector and warned colleges that failure to comply will see them lose funding.
“I think there may be money misspent in places, inefficient or badly run faculties, you can’t deny that serious money is required in universities, if you’re going to be able to compete, not every university can be the best at everything they do, you might have to do with the way universities revolve around specialist areas, so I think you need to look at a real shake up with what is the value for the student, how are they measuring up to their peers internationally.”
Yet its not only those coming into college who will face harsh realities, with the majority of students facing up to the prospect of graduating into a frozen economy, in a recent survey done by this paper its was found that 60% of students are considering emigration given the current climate.
“Where are people going to emigrate to? The options are not that great, as they used to be. What can you do to get graduates into the world of work here; I think you have to be creative with the way you do things. You need efficiency with the way you spend you public service, there is a lot you can do to raise money in a different way.”
“ Every council in the country could take on a number of graduates, engineers for example. Even just for experience to start them off, this recession will end in due course and were going to need these people. Look at all the speech and language therapists and physiotherapist’s , none of them get work in Ireland, so it’s a ridiculous thing to take in young students and not have jobs at the end of it, in a country like this we can equate for that, you are only talking about 4 million people.”
“The department of education is the oldest department we have, it needs to be flexible, energetic and enterprising, the world that students will be dealing with in the next 15 years is going to change, because of genetics and robotics and nano technology and developments in the internet, students will be involved in the design , research and these new discoveries, these are the new jobs for Irish people in the next 20 years, students will be leaders in these areas.
“The development in education has to be linked more closely to the areas of technology and business, we need to be riding the wave all the time, to be ahead of the curve.”
Education is a way out of the recession, the more people who graduate, generally the better jobs they get, well, the best pension policy you can have is a strong economy and people at work. We have an enormous advantage even given this crisis now; we can become a real force for change and good.”
When taking about the future, Kenny is full of optimism; yet as the subject changes to those he opposes, his tone changes.
“I think the government has failed to communicate, the stealth tax in the increasing of the registration fees, the grant has failed in a lot of cases. There are things that can be done in many cases. Brian Cowen was quite dismissive of the comment made by the standard and poor’s analyst there words dictate market trends and what’s happening is that those markets are looking at through the prism of the financial institutions and the government, and they trust neither. So what he was saying was we need a change of energy, Ireland is now paying a higher interest rate which has implications for the future.
“I think we are being left behind, we have been given 5 years to sort out our deficit problem, out of the 27 countries in the euro zone we are in the most critical position.
Neither does he think that the government’s new budget will change much. “There is no confidence, this is the government’s fourth attempt, will families spend, and there is no confidence. The vat should reduce, keep the confidence moving, the tax increases will outweigh cuts in day-to-day spending by three to one this year and by over two to one in the coming three years, this is the wrong direction to take. It is the wrong placing of the Government’s sail if, as the Taoiseach says, it cannot do anything about the wind.”
“I think many of the problems are coming from tiredness, if you are too tired you are not as sharp as you should be, people just don’t want to do business in the country at the moment while the regulation problems are going on. When they see police going into a people’s bank, we have to deal with it. Change the personnel, get on with it. If we don’t change we won’t get the level of trust international markets should have in the country, and therefore money borrow by banks can’t be paid back, your money.
“The government has been looking for constructive suggestions for a long time, and while they welcomed suggestions they didn’t do anything with it. You can’t fix the jobs crisis unless you fix the banks, you can’t use the banks unless you fix the public finances. So it’s a three legged stool, and a key element is job creation and job retention, you have to encourage people to take on new employees, abolish the PRSI for them, reduce vat.
“Give an incentive, then people get confidence, one helps the other. Government can sort out the banks, say this is the new regime, and with respect to them all, clean out the top management.”