A Conversation with Rose Conway-Walsh – Episode 16

A smiling Rose Conway-WalshWe are joined this week by Leader of Sinn Fein in the Senate Rose Conway-Walsh who discusses her Gaelic football days, the diaspora, farming, mercusor, and what is required to create a truly Shared Ireland.

You can follow Rose on Twitter here.

She has a website you can visit here.

You can listen to the bonus part of this podcast here.

Senator Rose Conway-Walsh was elected to the Seanad in April 2016 after serving on Mayo County Council since 2009 and the EU Committee of the Regions since 2014. She is a member of Sinn Féin’s Ard Chomhairle and Leader of the Sinn Féin team in the Seanad.

Serving with her Sinn Féin colleague, Deputy Pearse Doherty, Rose is on the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and the Taoiseach. She holds a BA in Public Management and a Masters in Local Government. Rose has a special interest in Economics and represents Sinn Féin at national and International Events as well as chairing the Party’s ‘Stand Up for the West’ campaign.

Rose has almost twenty years of experience in leading Community Projects in Mayo. She works towards an alternative vision to address social and economic exclusion and health inequality.

Passionate about Rural Ireland, Rose Conway-Walsh strives to put issues affecting the West front and centre of the Oireachtas. After spending over a decade in London before returning to Ireland, Rose prioritises the equalisation of rights for Irish Citizens regardless of where they live. In particular she is to the forefront in the fight to secure presidential voting rights for Irish Citizens in the North and abroad as well as advocating for the undocumented Irish in the US.

Quotes from the podcast:

We have a responsibility toward a wider people whether it’s Loyalists, Presbyterian, Unionists, it really doesn’t matter to me, it’s the individual human being is what matters to me and what part they want to play.

It would be lazy for me to say I can’t stand all loyalists or unionist because they’re different. I learn more from them. I have a lot of unionist friends.

If people believe in the Union or the British Empire, then that’s fine. I don’t, but I am quite comfortable with all that.

The disparity between the regions is one of the biggest concerns I have. Dublin is bursting at the seams with homelessness and housing. The way to address that is sustained investment in the regions, including roads, rail and infrastructure and prioritizing agriculture.

It symptomatic to what has happened. If you have no investment and enterprise you have forced emigration.

There is no change coming. People vote for FF and FG without looking at the policies. In a hundred years have FG or FF delivered for rural Ireland? No they haven’t.

The policies of privatization and centralization work against rural Ireland in all of its parts.

We need more thinkers. People need to examine parties and their policies and ask is their policies going to serve me well, will they serve my children and grandchildren well.

The diaspora keep in touch with politics at home and they need to be provided with an opportunity to have their say.

Do the mainstream parties know what a Republic is, do they know what a republican means? I’m not so sure. Let’s see their vision.

As a Republican there would be no joy in a United Ireland if it meant that Loyalists or Unionists or any other people would be left behind. If I am more equal than someone from East Belfast, then none of this would be worth it.

A United Ireland must be based on human rights across the board. It’s not just Irish language rights, it’s rights to your identity, Unionist, Republican or otherwise.

We can create a wonderful health service here and we can exchange with the North, practices. We can health care free to the point of access.

Two education systems, police forces and health services on one island doesn’t make sense.

There’s huge problems in farming. The beef industry is worth €2.5Bn, yet farmers are getting such low prices. Where’s the money going to? What’s in operation that prevents farming from being viable.

Ireland is the backbone of Ireland. If you were to take farming out of rural Ireland, what are you left with?

In terms of climate change we need to look at the public good of farming. How we make it pay for farmers.

Mercosur in the deal that has been done, the government has sold us down the swanee.

 

 

A Conversation with Senator David Norris – Episode 14

Senator David Norris image.We had the pleasure to sit down with Senator David Norris who discusses with us his early life, the equal marriage referendum, decline of the Roman Catholic Church, taking Ireland to the European court of Human Rights, and more.

You can check out David’s Twitter here.

You can listen to the bonus podcast here.

David Patrick Bernard Norris (born 31 July 1944) is an Irish scholar, independent Senator and civil rights activist. Internationally, Norris is credited with having “managed, almost single-handedly, to overthrow the anti-homosexuality law which brought about the downfall of Oscar Wilde”, a feat he achieved in 1988 after a fourteen-year campaign. He has also been credited with being “almost single-handedly responsible for rehabilitating James Joyce in once disapproving Irish eyes”.

Norris is a former university lecturer and a member of the Oireachtas, serving in Seanad Éireann since 1987. He was the first openly gay person to be elected to public office in Ireland. A founder of the Campaign for Homosexual Law Reform, he is also a prominent member of the Church of Ireland.

He was a candidate for President of Ireland in the October 2011 election. He topped numerous opinion polls and was favourite among members of the Irish public for the position but withdrew from the race months before the election, before returning to the race in September 2011.

 

 

 

 

A Conversation with Sen. Niall Ó Donnghaile – Episode 6

A smiling Niall Ó Donnghaile.Seanad Eireann member Niall Ó Donnghaile joins us this week to discuss early life, why he joined Sinn Fein, role in Seanad Eireann, working with Ian Marshall, Irish Unity, infrastructure and investment in the Island of Ireland and in particular, the North West. You can follow Niall on Twitter here.

 

Niall Ó Donnghaile (born 28 May 1985) is an Irish Sinn Féin politician who has served as a Senator since April 2016. He previously served as Lord Mayor of Belfast from 2011 to 2012 and Councillor on Belfast City Council from 2011 to 2016. Elected as a Councillor for the first time in 2011, Niall made history when he was appointed the youngest ever Mayor of Belfast at the age of 25.

He was born in Belfast, County Antrim. Niall Ó Donnghaile was a Sinn Féin councillor for the Pottinger district electoral area in East Belfast. He was educated through Irish at Coláiste Feirste, Belfast and subsequently obtained a B.A.(Hons) in Politics form Ulster University.

Ó Donnghaile was previously employed as the party’s Press Officer in the Northern Ireland Assembly.

A community worker in the Short Strand, the area of East Belfast in which he was born, and a member of the Short Strand Partnership Board, he also works with various other organisations in Belfast on issues such as the developments at Titanic Quarter and Sirocco Quays, and has spoken strongly in support of residents on the issue of the proposed runway extension at Belfast City Airport.

A resident of East Belfast all his life, Niall sits on a number of local boards and community organisations.

A fluent Irish Language speaker Niall is committed to helping build an inclusive East Belfast which welcomes and embraces all of our enriching traditions and cultures in a spirit of equality and mutual respect.

 

 

A Conversation with Senator Ian Marshall – Episode 5

Professional headshot of former Irish Afrmers association chairman and irish senate memebr Ian Marshall.Seanad Eireann member Ian Marshall joins us this week to discuss cross border cooperation, #irishfood, role as senator, civic groups, and building links with Science Ireland. You can follow Ian on twitter here.

He also has a website which you can find here.

Ian Marshall (born 1968) is a farmer and politician from Markethill, County Armagh. He is from a unionist background and campaigned against Brexit. He was elected to Seanad Éireann in Dublin in 2018.

Marshall is a dairy farmer in the agrifood sector and was president of the Ulster Farmers’ Union (UFU) from 2014 to 2016. In August 2017, Marshall was appointed Business Development Manager at the Institute for Global Food Security in Queen’s University Belfast.

Marshall was elected to the 25th Seanad on 27 April 2018 in a by-election for the Agricultural Panel. The vacancy was caused by the resignation of Denis Landy. He was approached to stand by Leo Varadkar, the Taoiseach and Fine Gael leader; his candidacy was also supported by Sinn Féin. He has never been a member of a political party and sits as an independent. He is the first unionist member of the Oireachtas since the 1930s.

Senator Ian Marshall previously revealed how he declined an invitation to join the Orange Order when he was a teenager. In an interview with the Dublin-based Sunday Business Post newspaper, former Ulster Farmers’ Union president Ian Marshall (50) said his father had told him that he didn’t need to hang his colours from a mast in order to prove he was a good unionist.

Senator Ian Marshall was the first Ulster Farmers’ Union president to speak at a Sinn Fein ard fheis, and his familiarity with the party was helpful when it came to winning republican support for his election to the Senate.

On Brexit, the major issue of the day for the agricultural community, he is opposed to the UK leaving the EU, and favours a second referendum on the issue.

“If they don’t do that, I will feel – as one of the 48% of people in the UK who didn’t want to leave – that I’ve been taken out of Europe against my will,”

 

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