Maman Poulet

I assume Minister for Justice Brian Lenihan will also be investigating the ‘behaviour’ of the Diocese of Dublin Catholic social service agency Crosscare in providing support to the Roma Family on the M50 roundabout, they also called on the government to put pressure on investigate human rights abuses against Roma in Romania, and they fed and clothed the family each day. They are also a publicly funded agency. Will he also be investigating the Children’s Rights Alliance of the Irish Association of Social Workers? They are among the 20 organisations who called for humanitarian assistance and human rights in Romania – not immigration reform in Ireland, but even if they had when did NGO’s lose freedom of speech?

The announcement of an enquiry into the role of Pavee Point stinks. When did humanitarian assistance become so unfashionable? And why only Pavee Point?

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Garda Commissioner Noel Conroy confirmed today that Niall McElwee is under investigation for a breach of the Sex Offenders Act. Gardai are examining if the offence that McElwee was convicted of in the Netherlands in 2005 would be one which would require him to report the offence in Ireland. If the crime committed in the Netherlands is also considered a crime in Ireland then McElwee would have to have reported it to the Gardai upon his return.

Earlier this week the University of Victoria in Canada confirmed that McElwee’s adjunct professorship at the university has been terminated. The appointment was non-stipendiary (a house and job swap?) and involved guest lectures delivered to mainly graduate students.

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First Count announced before 11 pm tonight in the exam hall, TCD.

The Quota is 4230  – Spoilt votes 60

Total Valid Poll 16917

Bacik 2794
Conway 214
Douglas 183
Efobi 201
Gueret 1155
Hutchinson Edgar 330
McDonagh 684
Martin 223
Norris 5240
O’Connor 514
Ross 5379

Shane Ross and David Norris were elected on the first count and Bacik will be elected tomorrow when the count resumes at 10 a.m.

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I’m not sure if there is any online source of info on the count taking place today. A very unreliable source of info might be found here as I hang around waiting for a vote to be seen.

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I’m offline now until Monday – it’s been a very interesting week as a blogger, lots of traffic, lots of comments, and lots of editing, moderating and deleting of comments. Those who’s comments I had to delete or edit were very nice about it! Thank you.

Eoin O’Dell and Simon McGarr’s wise words at Bar Camp and Blogging the Election have sat on my shoulder for the week – it’ll be nice to park them for the weekend but I’m sure I’ve failed somewhere.

Dermod has also had a very interesting and busy blogging week – his review of Barbara Streisand and the debacle in Celbridge has brought him centre stage in the online location for information and moan space for those attending the conference.

Like Dermod most of my traffic, comment and email correspondence this week has been with non bloggers. I find it interesting at the use of the blog for information by staff in every third level institution in Ireland, many mainstream news outlets, and many sections of the HSE, the Department of Justice, Department of Health and others. Little did I think when I arrived back from a break in Amsterdam to a story that seemed a bit strange that I would be spending the next week delving into the murkier bits of Irish academia and watching a debate on social care, regulation and monitoring.

Anyway Glasgow awaits me and the rooster for the weekend, back next week for some twittering or something from the TCD Seanad Count.

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RTE reports that the inquiry into events which led to the resignation of Niall McElwee will concentrate on child protection issues and only on issues involving Athlone Institute of Technology. [Update - see below for exact terms]
Barnardos have already expressed concern at the failure to extend the enquiry to concerns around Dr. McElwee’s practice in Waterford Institute of Technology. The inquiry will put together a chronology of events (eh… that won’t be too hard) including the exchange of information between Gardai and the Midlands Health Board and will examine international practice in handling information that comes to light involving practitioners who offend abroad and what the HSE did and could have done.

Now it may be time to call on the Higher Education Authority and/or Department of Education to conduct an inquiry into the promotion and practice concerns which will not be covered by the HSE inquiry.

Update: Thanks to the official for emailing me the terms of reference.

The terms of reference are:

*A documentation and information chronology of what information was in the possession of the HSE from sources such as An Garda Siochana, Government departments and the Athlone Institute of Technology in regard to any matter pertaining to child protection issues touching on or concerning Dr McElwee;

*A description of the existing administrative processes for the collection, evaluation and use of this category of information;

*A brief comparison of the Irish system in relation to this area with comparable foreign states;

*Recommendations for improvements in the way these cases are dealt with.

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Several of the lecturers who called for an investigation of the practices and career progression of Dr. Niall McElwee in 2000 have called for the terms of reference of the inquiry to be widened. As mentioned here first on Saturday, 3 female lecturers had written to then Minister for Education, Micheal Martin and expressed their concern on the manner in which McElwee was promoted in WIT, the use of slides containing images of abused children and his attitude towards fellow lecturers.

Today’s Irish Times – (Sub required)

Dr Anne Byrne-Lynch, one of the signatories, said: “We called for an inquiry then. Either it should be included in the terms of reference or the Department of Education should have a separate inquiry. The system clearly fell down.”

Alice McDermott, who has been a lecturer at WIT for 22 years, said there were “red flags” as to Dr McElwee’s behaviour which should have precluded him from his appointment in Athlone. “I went to the head of department about his behaviour, but I should have taken it further,” she said.

“Questions need to be answered as to the extent of the investigation into his behaviour in Waterford and what reference he got that allowed him to take up the job in Athlone.”

Dr Frances Finnegan, who is retiring as a lecturer after 27 years in WIT, said her life had been made “very difficult” when she originated the complaint in May 1998 about Dr McElwee’s use of graphic images of abused children. She said some students who had seen the material had counselling as a result.

“My concerns about Dr McElwee haven’t been done in retrospect. What happened in Waterford was really odd. When he was showing those slides in Waterford, if it had been dealt with properly then, perhaps he probably would not have carried on,” she said.

“We need to know if Athlone knew about these slides or if they didn’t why weren’t they told by WIT, especially given that he was appointed to a position of special sensitivity,” she said.

WIT has defended its actions, saying they had asked him to stop using the slides in 1999 following the complaints. In a statement earlier this week, WIT said the institute “acted promptly and judiciously in order to discharge its responsibilities and obligations”.

Meanwhile over at the Irish Independent it seems that they have become poetry savvy following their numerous visits to Maman Poulet in recent days.

The terms of reference for the inquiry will be published this morning – more later.

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More on the poetry of Niall McElwee – and his former boss John Ennis. Oisin’s Journey Home was published in 2006 by School of Humanities at Waterford I. T. and Centre for Child and Youth Care Learning at Athlone I.T. and was launched in Newfoundland. I still don’t know what the interest in poetry is or the relevance for the Centre for Child and Youth Care Learning is?

This review in the Munster Express looks at the work in more detail.

Review:

Oisin’s Journey Home

There is a huge nostalgia market out there for and bus travel at the moment. Travis Elborough on Granta cashed in on the Routemaster double-decker bus with The Bus We Loved. The fascination with railways is booming with books on Russian gulag trains doing big business as is the current hit Ghost Train Through The Andes. About the author Michael Jacobs, tracing the Chile-Bolivian railway from letters his grandfather sent home. There is an undimmed magic of hope and dreams from Antofagasta to Chocaiabamba across the harsh Atacama desert of Chile to the lush Bolivian uplands.

In my own small way I still have happy moments about the now defunct Tramore Railway, and when I opened the two long poems in the one book about the Newfoundland railway, under the title Oisin’s Journey Home, I could sense what inspired John Ennis and Niall McElwee.

John Ennis in his beautiful heartfelt poem subtitled, A Keen At The Gates Of The Heart, continues his inspirational links and journeys in Newfoundland. He grew up in the midlands where his uncle Larry was a railway man with his flag stickler, breast pocket watch and whistle. Ennis carries this romance of memory with little or no reference to Celtic Mythology to embrace the personae of hardworking engineers coming from Pertshire in Scotland and other far-flung places to build bridges in Sydney, in Ottawa, spanning the Rio Grande, part of Lake Superior and the Grand Rapids.

In his poem there are campfires of one thousand men, fiddlescrapes of tunes, old snorers, teenearners, men whose lives are inbetween or nowhere beneath tarpaper. He elevates in poetry labourers into interpreters of nationhood – section-men, pick-men, shovel-men, dynamiters in desolate places with exotic names. He praises the railway for bringing poetry and Al Pittman, fine arts and drama to Corner Brook in western Newfoundland.

Before he finishes, the railcars are gone in an eloquence of political promises as the rolling stock is exiled (sold off) to Chile, Bolivia, Antofagasta.

The second long poem in this book is Scenes from the Canadian Railway Logbook by Athlone academic Niall McElwee, who takes on the Oisin myth from Tir Na hOige as he poetically becomes Oisin riding the rails of memory and nostalgia. McElwee captures the vastness of Canada where in British Columbia it took 22,000 men to construct 600 bridges and threstles and to blast 27 tunnels through the mountains in a world where developers paid the First Nations people with the wrappers from tin cans.

It is a fine companion piece to the Ennis poem, but at times it tries too hard to take in big themes, and big issues. McElwee uses Oisin by placing a sine fada over the O to pronounce it Osheen and seems to ignore O Hogain (Irish scholar) and MacLennan (who was first holder of the Chair of Celtic Studies, University of Ottawa) who used the unusual version Usheen. Then again it is surprising to see an academic using wikiperia as a reference source.

The book was published by School of Humanities at Waterford I. T. and Centre for Child and Youth Care Learning at Athlone I.T. and was launched in Newfoundland

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The HSE have announced the name of the person that has agreed to act as the independent chairperson of their inquiry into Niall McElwee and how the Midlands Health Board did not tell anyone what they knew about the conviction in Amsterdam. Or is it why the health board never knew anything in the first place? Well nobody knows what the inquiry is about as the terms of reference have not been published yet. There are also concerns as to the powers that the chairperson will have and if people will be compelled to appear.

Brian Hayes, Fine Gael spokesperson on Health called yesterday for the inquiry’s terms to be extended to the hiring of McElwee by Athlone Institute of Technology in the first place and how information regarding the Waterford Institute of Technology. He repeated that call today.

What terms of reference would readers of Maman Poulet suggest for the inquiry?

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I’m sure someone out there can comment on the significance of this publication? Óisín’s Journey Home – A Keen at the Gates of the Heart by Dr. Niall McElwee & Dr. John Ennis

I’m currently at a loss to explain why a social care lecturer and (his former/then?) head of department would edit a book of poetry about railways? Some people think it explains something ? Trainspotting? I’m not there yet. Tips to the email address in the contacts page or in the comments!

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