Why this Irish army veteran believes dismantling the Triple Lock is a bad idea
Former Irish Defence Forces member and peacekeeper turned activist Edward Horgan says the government is wrong to be pursuing current legislation
As Israel's concentrated war on Gaza continues and public pressure mounts on the Irish government to enact the Occupied Territories Bill, the future of Irish neutrality and the Triple Lock have also come into question.
In March the government brought legislation to Cabinet to dismantle the Triple Lock which safeguards Irish neutrality by ensuring that the Irish Defence Forces are only deployed for missions that are widely accepted as legitimate and peaceful.
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Irish Examiner
an hour ago
- Irish Examiner
Séamas O'Reilly: Many of the tropes of standard Irishness are not universally applied both sides of the border
You might be expecting me, a topical columnist, to give you, the schoolchildren of Ireland, a timely pep talk about the Leaving Cert exams you've just started, perhaps with a stirring tale from my own experience. Sadly, I can't do that because I never did the Leaving Cert. I was raised in Derry, and thus the British school system, so I did A-levels. They are, I'm sure, similar enough to the Leaving Cert that much of my advice would still be relevant, but still different enough that it wouldn't really make much sense to apply them directly to the exams you're sitting now. Such are the slightly odd contradictions of being raised in Northern Ireland and discovering, over many years, that many of the full-fat tropes of standard Irishness are not universally applied both sides of the border. I should be clear up-front that I've never felt any neurosis about this. It would, I suppose, take a lot for someone named Séamas O'Reilly to gain a complex about being insufficiently Irish. Sometimes, however, these complexes are thrust in front of me. Rarely, however, in London, where few locals know, or care, the difference between north and south. Here, it's mostly had a simplifying effect, where I might as well be from Tallaght, Togher, or Twomileborris, if they had any clue where those places were. No, here it's my status as an undercover Brit that surprises people, and has even granted me the opportunity to shock unsuspecting Londoners with my deep knowledge of BBC radio comedy, or British cultural products of our shared yesteryear. More deliciously still, it's also allowed me to correct them when they've called me an immigrant, usually with the attendant undertone that I should complain less about my gracious hosts. When, this week, the Telegraph printed a rabidly scaremongering report that 'White British people will be a minority in 40 years', they clarified this cohort as 'the white British share of the population — defined as people who do not have an immigrant parent'. Leaving aside how garbled that formulation is — there are millions of non-white Brits who meet that definition perfectly — it carried with it a parallel consequence. I myself do not have an immigrant parent. In fact, every single pale and freckled ancestor of mine since 1800, Irish farmers to a soul, was born and raised in something called the United Kingdom. This is true for a large number of Irish people in the North. And since the late Prince Philip was himself a Greek immigrant, it gives me great pleasure to point out that they'd settled on a definition of 'White British' which includes Gerry Adams but excludes King Charles III. The only people who've ever questioned my Irishness — to my face — are other Irish people, admittedly rarely, and almost always in the form of gentle ribbing from the sort of pub comedians who call their straight-haired friend 'Curly'. The type who're fond of hearing me say 'Derry' and asking, reflexively, whether I mean 'Londonderry'. In the time-honoured tradition of any Derry person who's encountered this comment — oh, five or six million times in their life — I simply laugh it off and say I've heard that one before. Similarly, if some irrepressible wit asks a Derry person whether we're in the IRA, we'll tell them that's quite an offensive stereotype, while also peppering the rest of our conversation with vague, disconcerting comments designed to imply that we might indeed be members of a paramilitary organisation and that they should, therefore, stop talking to us. For the most part, I regard my British birth certificate and UK-system schooling as a mundane quirk of my fascinating personal biography. I am, in fact, confident enough in my identity that tabulating concrete differences between the North and South has simply become something of a hobby. The Leaving Cert is one such mystery. I gather that it involves every student in Ireland taking tests in about 760 subjects, crammed into the same time I was given to learn four. And that you must take Irish throughout the entirety of your schooling, so that you can emerge from 13 straight years of daily instruction in the language, cursing the fact you never got a chance to learn it. I know, vaguely, that some part of this learning involves a book about — by? — a woman named Peig, and that the very mention of her name inspires tens of thousands of Irish people my age to speak in tones of awe, nostalgia, mockery and reverence, always in English. Of course, almost all facets of the Irish school system are exotic to me. I feel that no finer term has ever been coined for small children than 'senior infants' but I've no idea what age it could possibly apply to. I know that there is such a thing as a transition year, but not what that means, precisely, still less what it's for. I know that summer holidays are different, namely that they're longer than what we get up North. I primarily know this because I grew up on the border and suffered the cruel indignity of marching off to school each June, in full sight of my friends eight feet away in Donegal, who seemed to have summer holidays that lasted about eight months of the year. I was told, perhaps erroneously, that this period of glorious leisure stems from the days when kids were expected to be at home on the farm, and the school calendar augmented so as to enable the nation-sustaining pyramid of child labour this demanded. I saw no sign of this in the few kids I'd spy from the bus window as I was conveyed to class, idling on deck chairs and inflating beach balls in the driving rain. Know that you have this glorious reward in your near future, if you're worried about the exams you've just begun. I hope the few you've started have already gone well. Take solace. Be unafraid. By my count, there's just 740 more to go. Read More Colm O'Regan: Cleaning the house can both spark joy and cause a panic
Irish Examiner
an hour ago
- Irish Examiner
MV Matthew: How crime gang's ill-prepared crew fell afoul of Ireland's largest cocaine seizure
When six men were interviewed from Dubai for jobs by a major drug cartel masquerading as a flash shipping company, they grabbed the lucrative contracts. They then flew to South America and boarded a very large and somewhat rusty bulk cargo ship, empty of cargo, in Curaçao, off the coast of Venezuela. On their third night at sea, many of the 21 crew were plied with alcohol 'as a distraction'. As they got drunk, a few men were ordered to load a cargo of 'spare parts' off a shadowy ship that pulled up alongside, manned by heavily armed crew. Fear permeated the MV Matthew from that point, said the six men who have pleaded guilty to involvement in a plot to smuggle 2.25 tonnes of cocaine in the Panamanian-registered 190-metre-long, 32-metre-wide bulk cargo ship, after the ship was seized by Irish authorities off the Cork coast. The Panamanian-registered MV Matthew being escorted into Cork Harbour. File picture: PA They were promised bonuses to 'keep their mouths shut' about the cargo, they said. As the giant ship tracked slowly across the Atlantic, the Maritime Analysis and Operation Centre, an international organisation that monitors maritime traffic to dismantle drug trafficking, alerted Irish authorities that they were suspicious of the ship. The MV Matthew's actual course and its stated course had diverged, since it left the waters off Venezuela, tracked through automatic identification system (AIS) technology. Meanwhile, gardaí monitored four men in Ireland as they travelled to Glengarriff and then Castletownbere in Co Cork to buy the fishing trawler, The Castlemore, and sail it up the coast. This boat was to be the 'daughter' ship to collect drugs from the MV Matthew's 'mother ship' and was arranging to collect the 2.25 tonne cocaine consignment, worth some €157m, from the larger vessel off the Irish coast. Vitaliy Lapa's warning ignored A retired Ukrainian fishing captain, Vitaliy Lapa, aged 62, had been in Ireland since July, staying in hotels in Dublin and Newry that were paid for by his employers, a major transnational organised crime group, waiting for instructions. Vitaliy Lapa. File picture: Brian Lawless/PA Russia's invasion of Ukraine had pushed Lapa, a retired fishing captain, back out to work at sea as the conflict had imposed great financial pressures on his family, his counsel Colman Cody said. Lapa said he was told he would be paid €5,000, which 'considering the largesse from this enterprise, was a very paltry sum' for the risks of involvement, Mr Cody said. His English had been 'non-existent' when he came to Ireland in 2023, the Special Criminal Court heard. He had been hired for his seafaring experience. But when he viewed the fishing trawler, the Castlemore, in Castletownbere, West Cork, with a person of interest to gardaí, on September 21, 2023, he said he had concerns about the boat, believing its engine speed and capacity was insufficient, unable to go above 10 knots. However, his concerns were ignored and the boat was bought by a Dubai-based operative of the organised crime gang. Jamie Harbron had no maritime experience Meanwhile, Jamie Harbron, aged 31, had got the ferry from his home in the UK to Ireland. He bought a ticket on his own debit card just two days before departing on the Castlemore. Jamie Harbron. File picture: Brian Lawless/PA Harbron had suffered addiction issues and was 'the lowest rung' of the drug smuggling operation, his counsel Michael O'Higgins said. Harbron left school at age 14 with no GCSEs. He 'was a man without means', with no home or car, Mr O'Higgins said. He developed addiction issues, consuming cocaine, cannabis, and alcohol, and ran up a significant drug debt. His actions on the Castlemore were to pay off €10,000 of a €20,000 drug debt. He had no maritime experience. Trawler set sail on September 22 The Castlemore left West Cork on Friday, September 22, 2023. A message sent to Lapa and Harbron on encrypted messaging app Signal said: 'Ok lads, no need for luck, really, this couldn't be more straightforward — just relax and this will all be over soon.' A photo released by gardaí of what transpired to be the €157m cocaine haul seized from the MV Matthew. Picture: An Garda Síochána And it was. But not in the way they had hoped. From the time they set sail, Lapa and Harbron met only adversity. Harbron, intensely seasick and with no seafaring experience, was terrified and thought he was going to die when their boat got caught in a storm off the South-East coast. The boat's engine failed and it lost electricity and wifi — vital for their clandestine communications with the cartel and the MV Matthew. Defence barrister Michael O'Higgins said: Notwithstanding the very serious risk to their lives, they were specifically instructed not to contact the Coast Guard. The gang's treatment of the two men showed how 'expendable' they were, the court heard. Castlemore's crucial satellite system A reason the Castlemore fishing trawler had been chosen was because a Starlink satellite internet service was installed. This would allow online communications between people on the boat and off the boat through messaging apps Signal and Whatsapp. The contents of these messaging apps would prove central to the State's case. Messages spoke about the cocaine drop off and 'lowering the food' onto the boat. Positions were shared via messages and multiple attempts were made for the 'mother ship' and 'daughter ship' to meet. 'There will be four jumbo bags, it will be a lot but just go like fuck mate to truck away,' one message from someone named Padre in messages, who was directing the operation from off the boat, said. Another message said the 'parcel' would comprise of 'six big jumbo bags tied together […] total weight 2.2T.' As the weather became increasingly stormy, tensions were clearly rising on the MV Matthew as it tried to convene the drop off. Soheil Jelveh. File picture: Jim Campbell The captain, Soheil Jelveh, complained of how 'these idiots were late again'. He also expressed concern about the worsening weather, saying a drop-off would be impossible in the growing swell. 'Daughter ship' ran aground The Castlemore ran aground off the Wexford coast on September 24, 2023. Terrified, exhausted, and sick, the crew issued a distress call after 11pm. The two men were so exhausted and unwell they couldn't secure a tow rope being thrown to them by the coastguard and had to be winched to safety by a helicopter in rough seas. They were then arrested. When the MV Matthew heard that SOS call over the radio that night, a plan was devised to put the drugs in a lifeboat with Cumali Ozgen, who the court heard was the 'eyes and ears' of the cartel in Dubai, and lower the boat to sea. But this never happened. The 'Irish Examiner' front page report on September 26, 2023 notes that gardaí and the navy had already been tracking the trawler before it ran aground off the Wexford coast. Picture: Irish Examiner Voices from Dubai on the messaging apps also said they could get another boat to leave from Dublin to collect the drugs. The MV Matthew's captain, Iranian Soheil Jelveh, then called for a medical evacuation, being winched off the ship by the Irish Coast Guard and taken to hospital — bringing four phones, more than $52,000 in cash, and two suitcases. He was later arrested in hospital. MV Matthew's attempt to flee Meanwhile, the MV Matthew was trying to escape Irish territorial waters. They wrongly believed they could not be boarded by Irish authorities outside Irish territorial waters and planned to go to Sierra Leone for safety. The MV Matthew berthed at Marino Point, Cork Harbour, in September 2023 after it was seized in the multi-agency operation. File picture: Denis Minihane The crew had also been told to stay out of UK waters as Ireland only had VHF radio but the UK had more technology to communicate and track. The MV Matthew repeatedly tried to evade the naval vessel LÉ William Butler Yeats, even when it announced it was a warship and was in hot pursuit — a maritime law which enables a State to pursue a foreign vessel that has violated a law within its jurisdiction. That pursuit can extend beyond its territorial waters. But the MV Matthew, being directed from Dubai, ignored the LÉ William Butler Yeats' instructions, despite multiple warning shots. It repeatedly attempted to evade it and to burn the drugs aboard. Messaging the Irish naval service — and the gang bosses Harold Estoesta was on the bridge, communicating with the Irish warship via radio while asking for instructions from the shadowy paymaster in Dubai. Harold Estoesta. File picture Dan Linehan He told the navy that the MV Matthew wanted to co-operate, that the crew were crying, panicking, had family to think about. Meanwhile, he was asking the 'captain' in Dubai what he should do. That 'captain' told him to wait and he would call his 'lawyer friends'. 'Please make sure everything is deleted from phones,' a message from Dubai to the MV Matthew crew then said. 'Please don't lose your confidence,' another message from Dubai said. Another message said: We don't want single dollar from this operation. We don't want you to go to jail for nothing. Another message from the 'captain' in Dubai said: 'they've talked too much, show them some real action. 'Be confident, there is law stopping them from boarding the ship.' Incorrect information But the information sent on what constituted Irish territorial waters and their legal rights seemed to be AI-generated and was wrong. The boat headed out towards the high seas after repeatedly saying it would comply with the navy's order to proceed to the Port of Cork. In rough seas, the MV Matthew manoeuvred to try to escape the Irish Defence Forces helicopter as elite army rangers fired a warning shot and abseiled down onto the boat on September 26. Great bravery was shown by the Army Ranger Wing in climbing down that rope from a helicopter in rolling seas to seize the ship, Detective Superintendent Keith Halley told the Special Criminal Court. And the MV Matthew's manoeuvring to evade capture put those elite soldiers in danger, he said. Once on board, the soldiers saw smoke from a life raft on the starboard side, found the drugs alight, and quickly extinguished the fire to preserve the evidence before seizing the ship. Of the 21 crew who left from Curaçao off the Venezuelan coast in August, 2023, on the MV Matthew, six would later plead guilty to involvement in drug trafficking. Crewmen claimed not to know about cargo Ukrainians Mykhailo Gavryk, aged 32, and Vitaliy Vlasoi, aged 33, said in mitigation that they were forced to flee their homes in Odessa by Russia's invasion of their country. Both experienced seamen, they claimed not to know about the ship's illegal cargo until it was brought aboard and they were then at sea with nowhere to escape to. Mykhalio Gavryk. File picture: Dan Linehan Likewise, Harold Estoesta, aged 31, was a qualified seaman and second officer and had been a government scholar in the Philippines. One of the few crew with excellent English — the language of communication on the messaging apps — once he was aboard the ship he said he was 'terrified' and 'alone at sea' so felt he must comply with orders. Vitaliy Vlasoi. File picture: Dan Linehan Iranian Soheil Jelveh, aged 51, the captain, was highly qualified and had no known previous links to organsied crime. He had largely retired to coach football and said he had been lured to Dubai by people offering a better education for his son there, a better life for his family, and help establishing a football foundation. Fellow Iranian Saied Hassani, 40, had worked at sea almost consistently since graduating from maritime college, which he started in 2005, so much so that he missed all of his six-year-old daughter's birthdays, the court heard. Saeid Hassani. File picture: Dan Linehan He has two sisters who need medical care — one is in a wheelchair and one has cancer — and he has worked to provide for his wider family since his father died, defence barrister Mark Lynam SC said in mitigation. However, messages did show him suggesting to the person in Dubai directing the ship remotely that that they should carry guns for the next operation. Cumali Ozgen, aged 49, originally from Turkey but living in the Netherlands for most of his life, was described as the 'eyes and ears' of the cartel on the ship. But his barrister Brendan Grehan said there was no suggestion he had an organising role. Cumali Ozgen. File picture: Dan Linehan He was the only one of the accused with no seafaring experience and his role seemed to be to communicate with Dubai and to mind the drugs. The court heard he had a son who had required brain surgery and he was trying to provide for his future. 'Immense capabilities, unlimited resources, global reach' A transnational organised crime group with 'immense capabilities, unlimited resources and a global reach,' directed the MV Matthew drug smuggling operation, Det Supt Keith Halley told the sentencing hearing for the eight men charged in connection with the seizure at the Special Criminal Court this week. And the crew aboard the MV Matthew were very much directed from voices in Dubai. But the technology they communicated through would ultimately reveal the second-by-second unfolding of the biggest drug seizure in the history of the State. Voice messages, text messages, photos, and videos, mostly captured from phones, showed the entire operation unfold. Guilty pleas All six men arrested onboard the MV Matthew have pleaded guilty to possession of cocaine for sale or supply on the ship between September 24 and 26, 2023. Lapa and Harbron have pleaded guilty to attempting to possess cocaine for sale or supply between September 21 and 25, 2023. The eight men will be sentenced on July 4, in the Special Criminal Court by Justice Melanie Grealy, Judge Sarah Berkeley, and Judge Gráinne Malone.
Irish Examiner
2 hours ago
- Irish Examiner
Clodagh Finn: Restoring some honour to Honour Bright, 100 years on
I will be thinking of Lizzie O'Neill, also known as Honour Bright, this Monday on the centenary of her murder on June 9, 1925, aged just 25. Her death — caused by a single bullet to the heart — rocked the new Irish state, not least because Leopold Dillon, a former superintendent of the Civic Guard, and Patrick Purcell, a doctor from Wicklow, were tried for her murder. It was a sensational trial which recounted 'a hideous tale of a night of debauchery', as prosecutor William Carrigan described it, to a packed Central Criminal Court in Dublin in February 1926. Yet, it took the jury just three minutes to acquit the high-profile defendants. Three minutes. That is not to say they reached the wrong decision. The revolver owned by one of the accused, Dr Purcell, could not have been the one used to kill Ms O'Neill, the court heard. HISTORY HUB If you are interested in this article then no doubt you will enjoy exploring the various history collections and content in our history hub. Check it out HERE and happy reading And while the men were freed, their reputations were in shreds; Dr Purcell was forced to leave his Wicklow practice and emigrate to the UK, while Dillon was dismissed from the police and is thought to have left for Canada. What has always bothered me, though, is that Lizzie O'Neill's reputation was also left in shreds. In court, she was described as 'an unhappy girl of the unfortunate class' and 'a woman who, through some cursed necessity, was compelled to seek her livelihood on the streets at night'. It didn't help that the only surviving image of her was the police photo showing her dead body in a field in Ticknock on the outskirts of Dublin, surrounded by gawping onlookers Nobody has ever been convicted of her murder in a case that has generated much fevered speculation. But that is not the focus of this week's column which, instead, is dedicated to trying to restore a little bit of respect to a young woman on the centenary of her death. Let's start by recalling this single, overlooked detail. During the trial, Superintendent Reynolds gave evidence that her pockets contained a purse, some other small articles and a rosary beads. A rosary beads. Interpret that as you will, but it is a tiny shred of evidence that helps us to counter the reductive image of a woman so misrepresented during the trial. She not only lost her life but her dignity and good name, a phenomenon that endures to this very day. There was no mention during the court case, either, that Lizzie (as her friends called her) was the mother of a young son. Kevin Barry O'Neill was born on November 9, 1920, in the Coombe Hospital in Dublin. The fact she named him for the IRA volunteer and medical student executed just days before says something about the new mother. Like Barry, she had a link to Carlow. Perhaps she was acknowledging that shared connection or maybe she was voicing her support for an independent Ireland. Artist Holly Christine Callaghan restores some dignity to Lizzie O'Neill, aka Honour Bright, in her portrait of the young woman whose murder caused a sensation a century ago. Census returns tell us that Lizzie, born Elizabeth, O'Neill was living with her parents, Elizabeth and John O'Neill, a printer, lino-operator, in College Street, in Carlow in 1911. She was the second eldest of the couple's seven children, three boys and four girls. All the family, and the boarder Patrick Hanrahan, a sacristan, are listed as Roman Catholic and, we can see that 11-year-old Elizabeth was going to school. She's listed as a 'scholar' who can speak Irish and English. She moved to Dublin when she was about 18 and, according to an account in a book by John Finegan in 1995, she got an apprenticeship at a drapery store in Lower Camden Street. He offers this uplifting, though unattributed, vignette: 'People who knew Lil [she was known as Lil and Lily] O'Neill when she first arrived from the country described her as an attractive, fresh-complexioned, warm-hearted girl, with brown hair and deep brown eyes.' She loved dancing too, a detail mentioned by Finegan and her granddaughter, and was apparently a regular at the city's dance-halls and ballrooms despite the political turbulence of the time. Pregnancy We know she got pregnant a year after her arrival in Dublin, but nothing of the man she may have hoped would support her. When he did not, she lost her job and the accommodation that went with it. It is hard to find documentary proof of what happened next, but it seems Lily found a foster mother for her child and paid for his upkeep weekly. We know from court reports that she was living in Newmarket in the Liberties at the time of her death. On the night of June 8, she and her friend Madge 'Bridie' Hopkins were working on St Stephen's Green when they met the two men later accused of her murder. She had assumed the name Honour Bright a few years before. Some said it was because she was fond of the colloquial phrase, 'honour bright', which meant 'on my honour' or 'honestly' (for example: 'I'll do that, honour bright'). It adds another layer of poignancy to think of this young woman adding her bond of honour to the end of her sentences. Or perhaps her pseudonym was her attempt to separate her work persona from her private one, a mother who one day hoped to earn enough money to care for her son. We will never know but what we can do is attempt to pick her up from that lonely field in Ticknock and remember her as she might have been in life Newspaper reports described her as a woman of about five foot four, with chestnut brown hair. She was wearing a black hat, a grey tweed suit with a mauve silk blouse, black patent leather shoes with T-straps and silk stockings. Her hair was in a bob. That in itself says something because, on the same day her trial opened, the Irish Independent ran an article by suffragist Agnes Maude Royden, observing that many women were bobbing their hair even though men, in general, preferred them to wear it long. It was a sign, she said, that women were thinking for themselves and acting accordingly. We might think of Lizzie O'Neill, then, as a young woman who was trying, against the odds, to be independent so that she might raise her son. To help us imagine — and remember — the woman she was, artist Holly Christine Callaghan completed this beautiful portrait: 'Her story really moved me,' she says. 'It reminds me a lot of Black Dahlia (Elizabeth Short, an American woman whose murder in 1947 was highly publicised because of the mutilation of her body), and similar 'discarded women'. I was really struck by how victims are just erased, and rarely honoured properly.' At least Honour's son and her late granddaughter, Patricia Hughes, tried very hard to find out more about her death. In her book, Hughes developed an elaborate though speculative theory that her grandmother's murder was a conspiracy to cover up her connection to the poet WB Yeats. If you take the time to read through the reports of the trial, a question emerges about the taxi-driver who gave Lizzie O'Neill a lift on the night of her murder. One witness said she saw him with a revolver in the summer of 1925, but there is no more than that. On June 9, all we can do is think of Lizzie or Lily O'Neill as a person, snuffed out in the prime of her life. Perhaps we might mark her anniversary by calling for greater recognition of victims in court. Victim Impact Statements were introduced in 1993. Maybe it is time to introduce something like a Victim Profile Statement in murder trials so that victims are no longer lost in the evidence that follows. We might think of it as a small honour in memory of Honour, and the very many others who have been overshadowed in the legal process.
