This article is from page 7 of the 2006-09-14 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 7 JPG
AS the election approaches, the Government parties are marking out territory and nowhere more so than in Clarecastle this week.
Just two days before she resigned as leader of the PDs and Tanaiste, Mary Harney was greeted by a picket made up not just of concerned citizens but politicians, including members of her Government partner’s party.
Fianna Fáil Senator Timmy Dooley joined in the protest organised by the Ennis General Hospital Development Committee to highlight concerns over the delay in the development of the hospital.
Asked if it was a conflict of interest in standing at the picket line as a member of government, Senator Dooley said, “It was in showing support for the development of the General Hospital that I stood with the non-aggressive ligatures.”
But there is a doubt as to whether Ms Harney agreed with Senator Dooley’s assessment as she said during her tour of Roche, “I, like Mayor Garvey, was quite taken with the colourful lampshades. They reminded me of a previous Government and, if my Oireachtas colleagues keep protesting the way they were, it could be the colour of a new one.”
Senator Dooley referred to the remarks as “tongue in cheek”.
Other comments made by the Minister were not taken in such a lighthearted manner however.
Comments by the minister questioning if the organised protest was an “animal welfare lobby or what”, led to an angered reaction room the hospital development committee.
PRO for the group, Councillor Brian Meaney, argued that while Minister Harney “may want the hospital to go to the dogs, the people of Ennis are not animals.”
He claimed the comments caused great hurt to the people on the protest, “many who owe their lives, or the lives of relatives, to the accident and emergency service in Ennis General Hospital.”