FROM THE ARCHIVES:Mayo men appeared, Mafia- like, to be taking over the running of the country in 1970, according to this editorial, which was probably heavily influenced by another future Mayo man of the year, journalist John Healy. – JOE JOYCE
DUBLIN OPINION almost made its reputation on the old joke about the Corkmen taking over our affairs – especially in Government and Civil Service. We have lived through that joke.
The new idea is that the Mayomen are taking over, and it is not much of a joke: it seems to be a fact. That there are no more than two obvious Mayomen in the Cabinet need not lull us into any false sense of security. There are Mayomen all around us.
Like the Mafia, they have stolen up on us unawares . . . Particularly in communications, they are rampant. Political correspondence is almost Mayomen’s correspondence. It is thus that the more knowledgeable must interpret the startling intelligence that once again the Mayomen have chosen their man of the year. He is Mr. Sean Flanagan, Minister for Lands.
Mr. Flanagan is the first politician to be so honoured. The award has been made in recognition of his proposing a radical policy change which promises to revive rural Ireland.
He has condemned the idea of the economic holding of 40 acres; he has condemned the Buchanan- type gospel, and he has staked his political reputation, and future, on the belief that rural Ireland can and will survive by a mixture of part-time farming supplemented by industrial employment in small local factories.
Mr. Flanagan’s nomination, it is understood, gave some rise for concern . . . There seems to have been an understanding that party politicians should not be eligible for the award, which, some argued, should go to men or women who were less favoured than party politicians.
Whatever scruples might have been, they are now gone, and we can celebrate with Muintir Mhuigheo, which is setting a headline of a kind in giving the award to a Minister of State.
They are celebrating the man and his gospel more than the office he holds. It is one of the marks in our egalitarian and republican society that we really have very few opportunities to celebrate goodness (on the other hand, we have no shortage of ways and means to roast individuals we deem to act against the interests of society).
We have the honorary degree, of course, though this is largely reserved for the politician who is more full of years than of energy.
We have a number of highly commercialised awards like the Caltex [for art] and Jacob’s [for television] affairs. Muintir Mhuigheo, on the other hand, is one of the few commercially disinterested groups which celebrate goodness, and for this it deserves recognition . . .
There will be many outside the borders of Ireland’s third largest county who will celebrate Sean Flanagan’s nomination as Mayoman of the Year, 1970. (It will do him and his cause no harm at this week’s Fianna Fail Ard Fheis.)
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