How gratifying that the Minister for Social, Community and Family Affairs, Mr Dermot Ahern, is to sign letters personally in reply to queries from the newly elected TD for CavanMonaghan, Caoimhghin Ó Caoláin. Lesser forms of political life, such as those deputies who answer to the Fine Gael whip or to Labour, and, poor lambs, who have not even got the eeniest weensiest fraction of a paramilitary wing attached to their parties, will be favoured with mere replies signed by officials. But Caoimhghin Ó Caoláin will receive letters signed by the Minister himself.
This is good news for the TD who belongs to the political side of the movement whose military wing was responsible for the murder of Detective Garda Jerry McCabe and for the brutal slaying just a couple of weeks ago of two policemen not far from his constituency. If you remember, he declined to comment on the carefully planned murder of the two peelers because, he said, the politics of condemnation did nothing to push the peace process forwards.
Peace process No, indeed not. That is to say, condemnation of what one crowd does will not push the peace process forwards. Condemnation of what the other crowd, such as we heard from so many Sinn Fein leaders last week, does. So too, apparently, do 500lb bombs in Derry. So too do all those riots which wiped out heaven knows how many jobs and caused incalculable amounts of investment to be cancelled. No doubt some would argue that the shooting of a brace of Protestant teenagers as they celebrated around a bonfire edged the peace process a little further towards the sunlit pastures of plenty where there is harmony and joy.
Of course, we might not all be around to enjoy that promised land that will result from the such activities. Jerry McCabe, father of five, won't be there, that's for sure. Nor will Roland Graham, father of three. Nor will David Johnston, father of two.
But still, if Caomhghin Ó Caoláin wants to enquire of the Minister for Social, Community and Family Affairs how the state is minding the fatherless family of Jerry McCabe, he gets a reply from the Minister himself.
But John Bruton, who does not belong to that organic movement which has spent the past quarter of a century wrecking families, butchering men in front of their children and bombing crowded shopping centres - why, poor John will have to make do with a letter from a civil servant representing the Department whose job is to protect the family.
Never in the IRA
I am told that Caoimhghin Ó Caoláin has never been in the IRA. Good. But he did knowingly join an organisation which has a military wing that among other things murdered Senator Billy Fox in his very constituency, and which has bumped off a few Prods at Ballybay cattle mart. He did knowingly join a republican movement which has a military wing that took 10 Protestants off a bus just across the Border and massacred them. He did knowingly join a republican movement which has a military wing that slaughtered four Orangemen at Tullyvallen Hall (one of them 80 years of age). He did knowingly. . .
But enough. He knowingly did what he did; and Dermot Ahern, our much loved Minister for families, is knowingly favouring a representative of Sinn Fein-IRA, which has brought so much suffering to thousands and thousands of families, with a personal form of address which is normally confined to Government TDs, the Ceann Comhairle and the Leas Ceann Comhairle.
How reassuring it must be for the members of the IRA Army Council that, far from this State actually cracking down on its organisation, a senior Government Minister is singling out Sinn Féin's sole TD for favourable treatment because he voted for Bertie Ahern as Taoiseach. An interesting barter.
No doubt Ann McCabe, or Rosemary Graham, or Angie Johnston, as they lay flowers on the graves of their murdered husbands, can reflect on how seriously our Minister for families regards their families. With a single vote for a Fianna Fail Taoiseach, the spokesman in the Dáil for that organic movement which widowed them has purchased privileged communications with the Minister responsible for picking up the pieces of shattered families.
Does this matter? Will it make any difference if people are cool towards those who are the public face of murder?
Parsing politics
Emphatically, yes, at the very least for our self-respect. But it is more than that. It is also a question of the self-esteem and the self-assessment of those who murder in the name of Ireland. They parse politics with obsessive care. Their ambition is to create a respectable political front with one wing of the organisation even as they level cities and ruin lives with the other. Every concession they extract from conventional politicians is another ratchet-notch up the pole of respectability, away from the moral and political consequences of the deeds of their paramilitary allies.
Democrats should be frustrating this conspiracy. Instead, the Government which allowed its policy on the Garvaghy Road to be decided by the "residents' committee" is now helping Sinn Féin towards the El Dorado of parliamentary respect. Strangely enough, up until recently, I thought the PDs were in government too. Apart from having responsibility for unemployment in Mayo, they are clearly not. Fianna Fáil knows Mary has not got the nerve to pull the plug.
Tea, Caoimhghin, mo chara?