Catherine Connoly

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I don't usually do this, but

when I have a guest on, especially someone like Catherine Connolly I'm gonna get people listening to this podcast listening to this episode who never come here to listen to anything I'm gonna get a lot of Leinster rugby dazz embittered Leinster rugby dazz are currently listening men called Donnell and Brendan who use terms like the adults are in the room or student union politics who become very hot under the collar and excited about the idea of sending other people's children to war.

So Brendan and Donald and Declan, of course can't forget the Declan's.

Maybe a Niels.

Certainly a Nihil.

There's a Nihil contingent.

I know that you're listening and I'm gonna make it really easy for you.

Look, the interview is at 17 minutes-ish and because if I don't do that, it's just gonna be Facebook comments.

He wouldn't stop waffling.

He wouldn't stop waffling at the start of the podcast.

He was waffling, waffling the whole time.

Self-aggrandizing waffle.

So it's a podcast.

This is a podcast.

You have the capacity and ability and agency to fast forward.

Okay.

So the chat with Catherine Connolly begins at 17 minutes.

Okay.

And go there.

There's nothing else here for you.

And just like this real centrist idea, right?

That

to have any type of politics that are about compassion or the public good is student union politics.

Or to say things like, can we get the adults in the room?

The adults in the room.

any political idea is put forward that has to do with a social net, with compassion, with being kind to people.

What you're saying there really is,

you're an adult now.

Have you not noticed that the world is actually really evil?

Have you not noticed that systems of power, that the most powerful people actually do really fucking evil things?

Have you noticed that?

And that to be an adult, what you're supposed to do is quietly go along with it while presenting a solemn veneer of propriety and politeness.

Have you not noticed that?

Are you not an adult?

You need to go along with this because if you don't, it's student union politics.

Only 20 year olds, only 20 year olds who haven't seen what the world is really like try to speak truth to power.

Only 20 year olds in student unions who aren't in the real world,

only those people believe in things like equality and compassion and human rights and fairness.

Okay?

I'm one of the adults in the room here, which means that the world is evil.

And I'm going to participate in that, but I'm going to do it in a really polite way.

In a really polite way with a suit, and I'm going to behave really solemn about it.

So that's what it means when you say the adults are in the room or student union politics.

It's a very cowardly and manipulative position.

Donald.

Or rye.

Might be a few rise.

Before I begin, I want to remind you about my radio show is debuting tonight on BBC Radio 6.

If you can access that at 11 o'clock tonight, it's called Grounding.

It's a music show where they've asked autistic, neurodivergent artists to speak about being NeuroDivergent and to select some music for two hours.

And

last night's episode was Gary Noman.

He presented an episode and then tonight it's going to be myself

and I'm very proud of this piece of work because I got quite a bit of freedom.

Freedom to not only select whatever music I want to select which I adored that opportunity because in a previous career I was a music producer and songwriter.

I adore music with all my heart and I love speaking about music so to get two hours to select tunes and to speak about them I've been waiting for that opportunity my entire career.

And I also just get to speak about what it's like being autistic and what it's like to specifically to be an autistic artist.

So tune in tonight, BBC Radio 6.

The show is called Grounding.

It's on at 11 o'clock at night.

And then I've got two hours on the radio.

Tomorrow night, I have another show.

Tonight is about creativity.

Tomorrow is about how I escape.

Again, 11 o'clock at night.

And then the last episode.

is next Monday the 29th at 11 o'clock at night.

I think if you're living in Ireland you can listen to it live via digital radio but if the English Queen is on your money, if you take money out of your pocket and the English Queen is on it, then you should be able to listen to

this episode on the BBC Player or the BBC Sounds app, I believe.

So that's grounding with myself Blind by Ball Club 11 o'clock.

Tonight, tomorrow night and next Monday.

So people living in Ireland, what can you do?

BBC commissioned it, alright?

So you'll have to find creative ways to listen to it.

So I'm very proud of this radio show.

Very, very proud of it.

Another thing as well, this sounds like I'm sucking my own float this week, but I just have to get these things out of the way.

My documentary, Blind Bite, the Land of Slaves and Scholars, which I made for RTE, in fairness to him, I made it for RTE last year.

That's now been, it's been shortlisted.

for the Grierson, the Grierson Trust Documentary Awards.

Again, it's a British documentary awards.

Not sucking my own flute.

It's one of the most prestigious documentary awards in the world.

I'm very happy to be nominated for that.

Not just for me, but for all the people who worked very hard to make the documentary happen.

I'm up for the shortlisted for the best presenter award.

I mean, that feels lovely.

I worked very hard, so it's nice to have acknowledgement from...

It's the industry, it's the industry at the highest level going fair play to your good job.

So the work is shortlisted for the award, not me.

And many people contributed to make that work

good enough that it could get nominated for such an award, including the contributors on the documentary who I had a chat with.

And I want to give a shout out to Man Con, Man Con Magen, who Man Con's been on this podcast about five or six times.

And also, Mancon was in this documentary, this documentary about early medieval Ireland.

And we had a wonderful chat.

But again, this is this thing that pisses me off about television.

So me and Mancon had a fantastic chat in this documentary, and we

edited it down into the bits that we could use to suit the format of television.

But the best conversation that me and Mancon had was the one that wasn't recorded.

Me and Mancon,

like Noctner Ray is this

collection of passage tombs up in the mountains of Sligo, like thousands of years old.

Beautiful scenery, just steeped in history.

And we needed to get some drone shots.

You know, a drone was flying around to get shots of me and Man Con walking around Noct Naray because it's so visually stunning.

But me and Man Con circled that ancient passage tomb

I'd say for about a half an hour and during that half an hour, it's just just me and man con chatting just chatting about whatever but it wasn't being recorded only only the visual was being recorded not the audio and if i had my way if i had my way like rte came to me what do you want to put on tv do you know what i want to put on tv

me and man con circling that tomb for a half an hour chatting about whatever there's your tv show fuck off That's what I'd like to make because that's like beggot.

That's performance now.

But the format of television does not allow for that.

With TV, things need to be edited and presented in a certain way so that it fits the language of television.

This language that isn't really relevant anymore, but we still do it.

And again, like I'm not blaming anybody there, going someone stopped me from making the TV that I want to make.

No, it's TV is a format and if you want to make television you have to stick to a format.

I mean it was it's my production company that made the TV show, so I'm choosing to make something within the television format because it's been commissioned as a piece of television.

And I try my best to challenge those boundaries and create something that's fucking post-television.

But even my production company is called Conla's Well,

and Conla's Well is it's the well of wisdom.

It's an ancient well that is a portal to the other world where all knowledge exists because it was mentioned in the Dinshenkis and the Dinshankis, which I'm probably pronouncing wrong, it was the lore of places.

A type of early medieval Irish list of names, list of names and places, and

why are certain areas called this and where do the names come from.

So, Conla's well is there in the Dinshankis, but how do you think I know about that?

Because fucking Mancon told me, Because Mankon Magin told me he'd go and read the Dinshankis in Irish.

Mancon's body of work is a continuation of the Tinshankis in our time.

But anyway, I'm thinking of Mankon.

I'm thinking of Mankon because he's very, very sick at the moment.

If you've been watching the news, Man Con has been diagnosed with cancer and it's pretty serious.

And my thoughts are with him and my heart is with him.

He's a wonderful person.

And there's nobody like Mankon.

There is nobody else like Man Con who is doing what Mancon is doing with the knowledge that Mankon has.

He's a mad cunt.

He's a beautiful mad cunt.

And whether it's the Irish language, folklore, Irish mythology, he brings a mad eccentric energy to this space which can sometimes feel a little bit exclusionary because it's so solemn.

So I'd ask you all please to send out...

I mean, what are you gonna do?

Thoughts and fucking prayers?

Just keep Mankon in your thoughts.

He said publicly he doesn't want a bunch of people contacting him.

But engage with Mankon's, his books, his podcasts, his writing and his ideas.

And then just hold them in your fucking head.

Go out for a walk in nature and have a think about Mancon.

Attune your nose to the black current tang of fox's piss.

Stare at a nettle.

Watch a crinkly autumn leaf get born again in the soil and have a little think about Mancon and the wonderful work that he's created over the years and let it inspire you and then create something with it

so we've got a presidential election coming up here in ireland uh literally a month from today 24th of october you'll be able to vote for the next president of ireland now the president in ireland is a

it's a strange role because

it is largely symbolic.

Like the Irish President wouldn't have the type of powers that we said the American President would have, but the President is also the guardian of the Constitution.

They can refer bills to the Supreme Court to see if it's constitutional or not.

The President signs bills into law and can refuse if they feel that the procedures aren't being followed.

But it really depends on how you define power.

The most powerful thing I think an Irish President can do is

how they create discussion, they create

public debate.

The Irish President can draw attention to issues that might be ignored.

I mean, we've seen this with,

I mean, Michael D.

Higgins, the current president of Ireland, who I had him as a guest on this podcast about two years ago, I think, and Mary Robinson.

I mean, Michael D.

Higgins frequently, frequently will bring up discussion about housing in Ireland, about how the government isn't fulfilling its role in housing.

He'll call out the government on how the housing crisis is as a result of policy, or he'll call out the genocide that's happening in Gaza.

And if our politicians are sticking their heads into the sand and the media is sticking its head into the sand, you want an Irish president.

You want a president who will speak about issues that matter that actually impact people's lives and isn't afraid to challenge the dominant political narrative.

And that's the power of the Irish presidency.

And what you want, you want someone who's a critical thinker, who has empathy, who's thoughtful in their speech, who can communicate, who has the capacity to take complex ideas.

A president should be able to democratize speech.

That if an issue appears to be, you know, full of jargon or complex, You want an Irish president who can democratize these ideas so that absolutely everybody can understand these concepts.

And you want to get a bang as well, you want to get a bang of a good person off him, don't you?

You want to just get the vibe that this seems like a decent person, a decent human being who legitimately cares and isn't an absolute fucking snake.

I mean that the great irony of the Irish presidency I find as well is it's very Irish.

Like going back I mentioned their colonel as well, you know, and the other world.

I've spoken about the other world in many podcasts.

This pre-Christian Irish idea where linear time doesn't exist.

And instead, what you have is this world and then this mirror reality, this other world.

And in this world, in Irish mythology, there's battles and fighting and scarcity and pain and hardship.

But in the other world, the mirror world,

endless food.

Endless fun, endless joy, endless sex, no pain,

endless life, endless knowledge and wit and wisdom.

And the way we elect people in Ireland is a bit like that.

We elect the politicians who

do not have our best interests at heart, who have lovely smiles on their faces, but their policies, they push neoliberal policies and take social safety nets and privatize them.

I mean, the housing crisis is the obvious example.

We consistently vote in parties that just perpetuate the housing crisis.

It's what we do.

But then with the president, it's like the other world, the mirror reality.

You vote in a government who uses their power, who act in the interests of profit and giant corporations instead of human beings.

But then you vote in a president who doesn't have the power to change any of it, but is great at talking about what it would be like if it was changed.

And then we get to go, oh God, listen to Michael D.

Higgins there talking about homelessness and the benefit of social housing and calling out genocide.

Wouldn't it be great if Michael D.

Higgins wasn't president and if he was actually Taoiseach and could do something about it?

Ah fuck it.

Better vote for Fina Gale and Fina Fall again.

It's the pre-Christian other world.

There's misery in this world but there's a parallel reality where everything is class.

Having said that, I'd like the next President of Ireland to be someone someone who is actively calling out bad government policy.

Someone who is speaking

speaking compassionately and empathically

about human issues, about issues that are actually affecting the human beings in Ireland.

I think it would be a very sad situation if, for the next eight years,

you have a president who just shows up to ceremonies and

has old party allegiances and doesn't call out the government.

and just smiles and gets on with it and shows up and gives Donald Trump his shamrocks once once a year.

So my guest in this week's podcast is Catherine Connolly.

Catherine Connolly wants to become President of Ireland.

She's an independent Irish politician, years of experience,

used to be a clinical psychologist, she was a barrister and has a good track record of

being compassionate, speaking compassionately.

A lot of the chat that we had is about neoliberalism, how public services in Ireland have been privatised over the years to the detriment of the average human being.

We also spoke about neutrality and the triple lock.

Ireland is a neutral country.

We do have an army, the defence forces, who are deployed as peacekeeping, very, very important peacekeeping units around the world.

And there's a thing called the

triple lock.

And the triple lock currently means that Irish Defence Forces can only be deployed on peacekeeping missions if it's approved number one by the government,

number two by the entire Irish parliament, the Dahl, and number three, there must be a UN mandate.

And this exists because we're a neutral country and certain interests at the moment would like to remove this triple lock.

And that might compromise our neutrality.

Ireland's neutrality is quite a valuable thing.

And I speak to Catherine Connolly about this.

So without further ado, here is my chat with Catherine Connolly.

So Catherine Connolly, thank you so much for coming along to the Blind By Podcast.

Yeah, Falter Roth.

I'm really, do you know what?

The first thing I wanted to ask you about is,

okay, so obviously you want to become president of Ireland, okay?

Yes.

I'm really fascinated by the fact that you have a background in clinical psychology.

Yeah.

Like

I'm a huge fan.

I trained to be a psychotherapist myself a long time ago.

I'm a massive massive fan.

Yeah, massive fan of psychology.

And I find, I mean, look, my job is being a podcaster.

So

I find that a knowledge of psychology helps me to understand the human condition.

It helps me to have empathy.

It helps me to have empathy and to understand people.

And especially when it comes to understanding people that I don't agree with.

If I don't agree with a person's opinions, I find that

my knowledge around psychology helps me to arrive at a kind of an empathy for people to disagree with.

And the first thing I just want to ask you is,

do you ever draw upon your background in clinical psychology with the job that you do as a politician or what you might want to bring to the presidency?

Absolutely, but I'd say that I learned empathy on the floor of my house at home

with 14 siblings.

We learned about empathy and solidarity and understanding well before I ever went on a journey

of getting degrees and further education.

So I just, I think perhaps it's in reverse, the answer is in reverse to what you're saying.

I think psychology gave me the confidence and the ability to reflect back and to articulate experiences.

Because you grew up in one of the first social housing estates in Galway, didn't you?

I did.

I did in a place called Shantala, or Olground, Shantalov.

I would consider it an absolute privilege, the background I came from.

And I think my father and mother gave me that ability and gave all of my siblings that ability to realise we were privileged.

And there were seven boys and seven girls.

And as I said, we learnt about equality and social justice on the ground in the house and

gave us a perspective on life that perhaps it was easier for us to have, given that my mother died young and my dad took over, and then my eldest sister and then another sister.

So we got different perspectives on life very, very, very early in our lives.

I suppose the reason I'm asking you is, I mean, a huge issue that people are facing today in Ireland is housing.

You know, access to affordable housing is a lot more difficult now.

And

I think it's a fantastic thing if we had a person as president.

who was able to have the lived experience and empathy of having grown up with that social net.

In Ireland,

there's an emergence of

almost like the American thing,

make Ireland great again.

Yes.

And I hear this simplistic narrative where people want to hark back to an imagined past where everything was Catholic and everyone had white skin, whereas really what I think people want again is a social net, access to social housing, unions, workers' rights, full-time contracts.

Yeah.

These things have disappeared, and people don't know why, and people feel very confused.

Yeah,

I think you're saying an awful lot there, you know.

I don't look back with a lens that says everything was good.

There was certainly more social housing, without a doubt, and there was certainly a fantastic community spirit in Chantala, where I grew up, and a sense of home and a sense of belonging, absolutely.

And that was crucial.

We were grounded.

We were grounded with common sense, actually.

I think what has happened with housing is

a direct consequence of a neoliberal agenda where we have made products out of everything.

So a house has become a product to be bought and sold as an investment.

And the same with health.

I was on the health forum for 10 years of my life from 2006, I think, to 16.

And I watched the dismantling of our public health service.

I watched as home care was privatised, an essential service where the old health board and the health executive were doing a good job.

And then they privatised everything.

And the same thing with public nursing homes, a complete reversal in terms of percentage.

And

less than 20% are now public nursing homes.

And over 80% are private for profit.

And I watched all that with a sense of utter despair and frustration.

Clearly, I spoke out about it as it was happening.

But they told us it was better.

You know, it was the neoliberal ideology that privatization is good and

less state involvement better.

And the opposite is correct, actually.

And so the state moved back entirely from providing public housing.

So I was on the city council in Galway from 2019 to 2016, 17 years.

And we stopped building social housing or public housing in 2009.

Not a single public house was built after that.

And so that was until about 2020.

And we've been playing catch-up ever since.

So the government policy the whole way along has been instrumental in the housing crisis.

And I've just might mention one other element to me that was absolutely detrimental

in intensifying the housing crisis, and that was the introduction of the housing assistance payment, which was enshrined in legislation.

That if you got that housing assistance payment, which allowed you to source a private house, market rent being paid, market rent being paid to the landlord.

through a combination and maybe we'll go back into the actual intricacies of it, but I'll stick with the general point.

You were then considered housed.

You were taken off the housing waiting list.

You were housed in a private house with absolutely no security of tenure with public money directly into private landlords' pocket.

And

to me, that is a key element of the housing crisis because we bolstered the private market and we have kept the prices, rent prices, extraordinarily high or allowed them to get higher and higher with public funds.

Now, I have no difficulty with people getting assistance to pay their rent.

My difficulty is that the housing assistance payment, we were told in no uncertain terms that that was the only game in town.

And so we privatised the provision of public housing and we did it with in a way that was absolutely disingenuous and unacceptable to me.

Because

that that like that's something

I try to speak about that issue as much as possible.

And because what I find is,

so on the ground, when I speak to people,

they're not aware of this.

Like when I think of something like HAP or just neoliberalism in general, but how I simplify it via storytelling is I say to people,

this is it's neoliberalism is almost a way for

public money to be funneled into private hands, like something like HAP there that you've mentioned.

You've got a person who needs access to affordable housing.

You've got a taxpayer who's like, okay, I'd like to pay for a person to have affordable housing.

And then you have a landlord in the middle who's effectively erecting a toll booth.

It's as if the wealthy have put a toll booth between taxpayers and people who need to benefit from tax.

And then you see this funneling of money.

But then, what results from that, what I find is

this sense of confusion.

Like you have the emergence of the far right in Ireland.

You have people who think that

we do not, that the housing crisis exists because

there are immigrants here.

And,

like,

how are you finding this when you're canvassing?

Are you speaking to people about this?

Are you, do you, even a word like neoliberalism, right?

Even that word itself, like, I know what neoliberalism means because I went to the trouble of finding out what it means.

But it's one of those words that even when you mention it to the average person, it creates more confusion.

Yeah,

in one way you're right.

But I've canvassed in in a good few elections now, and particularly the last three general elections, the one in

20, the one in 24 and 2016, and I just missed out by 17 votes.

In all of those elections, nobody asked me for a reduction in taxes.

And so there was a theme, a common theme from the people, and we knocked on as many doors as we possibly could.

And the theme was: we pay taxes, but we want services in return.

We want public childcare, an integrated public transport system, and public housing.

And we want to extend the remit of those that can have public housing.

And so what really they were looking for are the core ingredients of a republic.

The evidence of the tax being used.

Exactly.

Exactly.

And that doesn't mean that perhaps people will say, of course, we want taxes reduced.

But it wasn't the message.

The message was services, please.

two people going out to work to pay an astronomical mortgage and then paying another mortgage, the equivalent of for childcare.

And of course, the government will say they have done a lot and they have to reduce the cost of childcare and they've brought in different schemes.

But what we should be doing is providing public childcare as the model.

That's what the model should be.

And we should be providing public housing.

And, you know, I think this always has been a snobbery from the top down, never really discussed in relation to what I prefer to call public housing.

And there should be a mixture of people that can avail of public housing.

Obviously, to own a house, and I have the privilege of owning my house now, now,

is also important.

And there's a fallacy, or I can't think of a stronger word.

We're talking about affordable housing, which is a nonsense.

Houses at 300,000, 350, and 400,000 and rising are not affordable.

So all of the language has been inverted, in my opinion.

Misuse of language to confuse and to confound.

And as if the housing crisis happened by accident or overnight or the equivalent of, when it is a direct consequence of public policy.

And the housing commission was set up by the government because of

pressure from people on the ground on us, as has happened in relation to Palestine and the genocide in Palestine.

The constant pressure.

So if we stick with housing for a moment, because of the constant pressure and the opposition, finally the government said we set up a housing commission.

They did that.

The housing commission did their work and came up with some great recommendations.

The

most important one was that a radical reset of housing policy, radical reset of housing policy.

That has never been taken on board by the government.

What they're doing is pushing more

schemes.

And I've often described it like a jigsaw of pieces, a jigsaw of housing pieces with absolutely no overall vision.

And

do you think there's a deliberate attempt to confuse the public around this?

Not a missed truth, but

I certainly think there's been a failure to have an open and honest debate.

The nearest we got to that was the Housing Commission, and that...

that the Housing Commission invited submissions from various entities all over the country and it really is worth reading reading.

And that was

an open and an accountable way that they did their business, came up with recommendations and conclusions.

Really, they've been ignored.

So,

in that sense, there is a failure.

Maybe the government is not setting out deliberately, but there certainly is a failure to explain in a rational.

Of course,

they can't do it because then they'd have to admit that their housing policy hasn't worked and hasn't worked for quite some time.

And I guess they're never going to do that.

Something I just, while we're on the topic, and because you lived through it as a politician,

when we use the phrase neoliberalism, right, we tend to think of, we'll say, Thatcher or Reagan and how these things came about in Britain and America.

We know that story.

But

when did you start to see this emerge as a policy in Ireland?

And when did you start to, because you're there, when did you start to go, this doesn't work?

Well, thank you for that question, really.

Because, you know,

it occurred to me forcibly when

we started doing corporate plans for a city council and a huge effort going in to corporate plans and the language of the market.

I always found that extremely difficult.

I was a chair of a strategic policy committee for a while.

And so I had the experience of sitting on the corporate policy group and so much time and effort to producing a corporate plan.

And then, of course, city manager was changed to CEO.

Yes.

And it's something that never sat comfortably with me because it's my firm belief that as an elected member, I'm there to serve the public.

And I believe a city council and its team,

particularly the manager, and and I have difficulty calling them CEOs because it's not a business.

A council is there to serve the people of the city, of the county.

And that was where it really was brought home to me forcibly.

You saw this corporate language and corporate

restructuring creeping into

what you were doing.

Not creeping in, blatantly, blatantly, not creeping in at all.

I think what really?

I only became a councillor in 1999.

Okay.

So I'm talking about into the 2000s.

Okay.

Yeah.

I really wasn't involved in politics until 98, 99,

in the word of, you know, a councillor or elected person.

But

I sat then from 99 onwards and I was mayor of Galway from 2004 to 2005.

And again, as mayor, I chaired all the meetings.

I did that.

we traveled, we did everything.

I never missed a meeting, to my recollection.

And we also put through a city development plan, which I might come back to because again, it illustrates: we identify the problems and the solutions, but they weren't implemented.

But just on my year as mayor, I really found it difficult in the sense of going to different social events.

That was 2004 to 2005, and watching neoliberalism at its peak.

So I remember being at an auction for charity, and a mini-car was auctioned

at this remove, I can't remember, but it was up at 70 or 80,000 way back then and rising.

And so we were looking at services in terms of charities.

And we were corporatizing all

our services at the same time.

And I found that very, very difficult.

I was at more events where I think I couldn't eat.

You know, I think I lost a lot of weight that year, just simply

just, it didn't sit well with me at all.

The whole, it was an absolute privilege to be mayor, it was a privilege to meet people.

But I'm talking about on a different level, the corporate events I went to, and of course, the fall came very shortly after that.

I served 2004, 2005, and the fall came in the next few years, And it was very obvious to me that we had an economy that was just simply going the wrong direction.

Yeah.

Very briefly now, let's have a little, a little ocarina pause.

I don't have my ocarina with me this week.

We're just going to have to sit with that.

You know, I quite like not having the ocarina, to tell you the truth.

We're going to sit with that, sit with the anxiety of it.

What I do have is I've got a book called Meditation for Dummies, which actually isn't a bad book at all.

A book about meditation for dummies.

Cracking book.

I want to get more into meditation.

I do basic mindfulness stuff, but really, I've been putting it off, but I want to get into cultivation meditations.

To meditate in such a way that you can cultivate certain emotions.

I'd really love to do that.

Not right now, though.

I'm going to hit myself into the head with this book and you're going to hear some advertisements.

Alright?

I'm not even going to explain this to you, Donna, if you're listening to this podcast.

I'm not even going to tell you what this is about.

All right, here's some adverts.

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Oh,

do not hit yourself into the head with meditation for dummies.

That's a that's a toughie.

I'm gonna headbutt it.

Better.

All right, that was the ocarina pause.

I'm gonna have to just explain that.

Christ.

Look, we need a pause for adverts in the fucking podcast.

I usually play an instrument called an ocarina.

I don't have it at the moment, so I just don't want people surprised by adverts.

I don't want an advert to jump out at you.

Jump out.

It's Jesko.

We're here by Fanta and Tesco.

I don't want that jumping out at people.

So what I do is I create a pause.

And this week I hit myself into the head with a meditation book.

You don't need to know about it, Donna.

I doubt you're coming back.

Support for this podcast comes from you, the listener, via the Patreon page, patreon.com forward slash the blind by podcast.

This is a fully independent podcast.

Alright.

This is a listener-funded podcast.

It's fully independent.

No one tells me what to do.

This is a podcast whereby I get to interview a possible presidential candidate for the Irish presidential elections.

A million people are going to hear it.

And then I'm going to hit myself into the head with a meditation book.

And I'm actually really proud.

Very, very proud that that that's what this space is

and that I have the freedom to do that very proud of that and it's only possible because this is listener funded so if you like this podcast if you listen to it please consider becoming a patron patreon.com forward slash the blind by podcast this is how I rent out all my equipment it's how I pay my bills it's how I rent out this office this is my full-time job this is what i do for a living i adore it i adore delivering this podcast each week.

And it's possible because of patrons.

All I'm looking for is the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month.

That's it.

And if you can't afford it, if you don't have that money, listen for free.

You listen for free.

Because the person who can afford it is paying for you to listen for free.

So everybody is getting the exact same podcast.

and I get to earn a living.

It's a wonderful model based on kindness and soundness.

student union politics.

You can call it that if you like.

If you are signing up to the Patreon, try and avoid doing it on the iPhone app, especially if you're a new patron because Apple take 30%.

And when you do go to the Patreon page,

there's nothing there.

I don't post on there.

I don't, because I don't want people who pay to get more than people who don't.

I'd like everybody to get the exact same experience whether they pay or not.

And also, it keeps the podcast fully independent.

So, any advertisers that come along, they do so on my terms.

And no advertiser can tell me,

can tell me, can direct the content in any way.

Alright, we're coming up to the...

I think it's the nine-year anniversary, could be the eight-year-old shit at Matt's.

Coming up to it on the 27th of October, I believe.

Next month, we're coming up to the anniversary.

And this has been working fine for all those years.

Upcoming gigs.

I'm in Derry this Saturday.

Alright, there's about five tickets left for that.

Derry's nearly sold out.

But if you want to come up to Derry, that it's...

Where is it?

The Millennium Theatre this Saturday.

I don't know what date that is.

Is it the 27th?

I don't know.

This Saturday.

I'm in Derry.

Come along to that if you want.

Live podcast.

And I'll just give my UK tour a little plug.

Even though this is a year away, it's October 26th.

Because I need a little break.

October 26th is my next tour of Scotland, England, and Wales.

But I announced it last week, and quite a lot of the tickets actually fucking went quickly.

So

October 26th, ages away, but do get the tickets if you want to come because you'll be disappointed.

Brighton,

Cardiff,

Warwick, Bristol, Guildford, London, Glasgow, Gateshead.

Found out where Gateshead was.

It's basically the bottom and it's

underneath Newcastle.

It's the other world of Newcastle.

It's the parallel Newcastle.

I want to know.

I want to know why I've heard of Newcastle but not heard of Gateshead.

I want to know why

the cultural footprint of Gateshead.

I was told that Viz Comic actually comes from Gateshead and not Newcastle.

This is something I want to investigate.

I'm all about Gateshead.

Then I'm in Leeds.

Don't think I said I was in Leeds last week, but I'm in Leeds.

And then Nottingham.

That's happened in October 26.

Fan.co.uk forward slash blindboy to get tickets for those geeks, right?

Now back to the chat with the incredibly interesting Catherine Connor.

And

like one of the great one of the great things a president can do in Ireland is to bring about discussion.

A narrative is a margin, which is one that's based on hatred and blame.

And

like the other thing I think neoliberalism does is it puts us in such a state of confusion that we tend to punch down or punch the person beside us because what's happening above us is so utterly confusing.

Absolutely.

I would agree with you.

It's very much a focus on the individual and that if you study hard and you work hard, you'll succeed.

It's very much divide and conquer.

But I don't think, Blind Boy, that that applies to the majority of people in Ireland.

And it's certainly not my experience going around the country since the third week or fourth week of July.

And I've been to many, many places and communities.

And

I think people see what's going on.

I don't think they're looking for simplicity.

I think they're looking for

language that can be trusted.

They're looking for integrity.

They're looking to be heard.

to articulate what they feel.

And I think the divisiveness that you're talking about and that loud voice is coming from a small group of people.

That's encouraging to hear.

Yeah, I think it is.

And

I think

I understand some of their concerns.

We have a major housing crisis that's going on too long.

And the government have left a vacuum on an awful lot of these topics.

And so when there's a vacuum and lack of leadership,

certain people will blame the wrong person.

And I think there's a duty on on broadcasters.

I think there's a duty on the local radio stations

not to get caught up with this, actually,

and to not to conflate immigration

and the asylum process.

And I think issues are being conflated

by certain outlets.

And I think it's quite disingenuous and also a very risky thing to do.

So going around, when I've done many, many interviews, I highlight that repeatedly if it's put to me about what do you agree with an open door policy in Ireland?

Do you agree that they're getting everything, they and them?

And I say, first of all, there's no open door policy.

It's quite difficult to get into our country.

It's actually quite difficult.

And I try to explain that it's not helpful to whoever is interviewing me to conflate people coming into our country to work with work visas

of different duration, which is quite hard to get, and people seeking asylum, running away from war and persecution, which any given time is actually quite low.

The figures are quite low.

In the past, it was somewhere around 15,000.

That rose up to around 25,000, give or take.

So there have been

highs, peaks, and lows.

They're people who come here as asylum seekers and seek refugee status.

And that is quite a difficult process.

Now clearly, clearly the system needs to be more effective with decisions and

appeal mechanisms more effectively used and decisions made.

Absolutely.

But that has never happened.

And the system of direct provision, which was introduced 25 years ago, was to be a temporary measure.

And 25 years later, we're still operating a direct provision

system,

which really creates division and segregation.

And it is also allowing the owners of hotels and other accommodation units to make obscene profits.

That's the other thing as well.

Like, how do you feel about that?

Like, that's

sometimes I view direct provision as

it's almost a way for private interests to milk people's misery that they're profiteering from the most vulnerable members of society.

Absolutely.

And it was set up that way and it has been allowed to continue that way.

So again, you know, while

the direct provision should have stopped, we've had numerous reports.

We've had recommendations from a circuit court judge, a retired circuit court judge, in relation to improving direct provision.

We've had reports from the Ombudsman for Children.

We've had a report from Catherine Day, well-respected public servant, and who said this direct provision should stop.

Her solution was a little difficult for me, and maybe I'll come back to that blind boy, because her solution was to house people in the community.

And to me, there was a failure to recognize the extent of the housing crisis.

But absolutely wonderful report to say stop direct provision.

It is not working well, it is wrong.

And I won't misquote her, but it's all set out.

And then we got a paper, a green paper or a white paper from government, also agreeing it should be stopped.

And a quarter of a century later, we're still paying public money to owners of hotels and other units, like I've said, who are making obscene profits.

And

I can never accept that.

And in fact, if I go back, I remember on the city council in 2000 or 2001 when we received our first asylum seekers to the city.

And I had a motion to welcome to the city.

And a certain councillor who will remain nameless, and I won't mention them, said,

some things are better left alone.

Some things are better left not said.

So there was always

a double way of dealing with what we were doing rather than

embracing people who were coming to our country, helping them to integrate once they got their refugee status and realizing that diversity is a blessing.

It's an absolute gift.

Parallel with that, then, of course, we're utterly reliant on foreign workers.

And so I had the privilege of standing with the Indian community a few weeks ago, celebrating Independence Day.

And they moved from where they had planned to hold their celebration to St.

Mary's College, which is a diocesan college in Galway, because they felt safer there.

And I thought that was an appalling indictment.

And I stood with them.

And then the figures that I had to hand at that stage: 18,500 of our nurses and midwives are from India.

Our health system would collapse without those that have come from abroad to work in our system, many of them leaving family behind, many of them sending over remittances to their family to keep them going.

Everything that Irish people did.

You know, when we go back, my aunts went to England and sent home remittances, and those remittances were worth so much to the Irish economy.

And they were really never really valued or taken into account.

So, if I go back again, I think the conflation of asylum seekers with people coming to our country seeking work and actively encouraged by businesses and plowers because they need the workers.

When I was down at the plowing championships, one of the biggest problems identified was the shortage of

labourers.

So

all of these issues need to be teased out in an open way so that people understand

and the vacuum that has been left by successive governments

have allowed a narrative to emerge that does not reflect the reality on the ground.

Why do you want to be President of Ireland?

Because I feel we're at a crucial point in our history where peace has become, I don't like the word dirty, but an unacceptable word peace has become an unacceptable word and we have normalized war and genocide and I think I have to use my voice as I've done in in the doll

to champion the cause of peace we need m my voice and other voices to champion the cause of peace we have absolutely nothing to lose and everything to gain by championing peace in the world and indeed we have a duty under our constitution to look to peaceful resolutions to conflict.

I think climate change poses an existential threat.

I think I have to use my voice to articulate that in as best as I can.

And then just maybe going around in a circle, the communities on the ground.

The amount of work being done by communities in every town, village and rural area and in cities is just phenomenal.

And I can give you many examples which we might come back to, but the amount of work and it's not recognised.

So we have people working on low wages, people working in CE schemes, volunteers, a whole range of people carrying out essential work that is not sufficiently recognised by any government and under-resourced and understaffed.

So

those three themes, I would use my voice over and over.

But I think it's time that we have a voice that's not afraid to go against the consensus when necessary.

And the consensus from the government parties is that war,

I don't think they're saying this, but this is the message I'm taking from them: war is a solution to conflicts.

And we can't free-ride on other countries, and our neutrality is free riding, and the triple lock is no longer fit for purpose.

This is from a Taoiseach that told us the triple lock was an essential part of our neutrality.

War has become privatized now, too.

Yes.

And that's something that deeply concerns me.

Like something I want to ask you, and I don't I want to be cautious that this doesn't veer into conspiracy territory, right?

But my gut feeling is that

there's lobbying groups in Ireland who represent the billions that are to be made in the defence industries, in the war industries.

And I feel as if Ireland is being lobbied to get rid of the triple lock and to up our defence spending for business, for the business of war.

Absolutely.

I would agree with you.

How do you feel about that?

I would agree with you.

I have no hesitation in saying that.

The lobbying group for the military-industrial complex everywhere.

is really, really a cause of concern to me.

And in fact, they're not hiding the fact that the military-industrial complex is the way that you can have your economy thrive.

We've seen this in Germany.

We see this in England, where they're cutting back on social welfare.

And so the military-industrial complex is being put forward as the solution to failing economies.

And it is truly worrying.

Absolutely.

Like, even over in America, like, if you look at the

militarization of the police in America over the past 30 years, like so much of that is because

there's towns in America and the entire economies depend upon the local factory that makes tanks, the local factory that makes guns.

And then those tanks and guns ended up going to police forces really, really cheap simply because they needed to keep making them to keep economies surviving.

And that type of stuff, really,

anytime,

even there with direct provision, It's like

I don't feel confident about something being solved when there's so much money to be made from perpetuating the problem.

Why would anyone want to end war when so much money is being made and generated with the industry of war?

And it's one of those things that concerns me about neoliberalism.

the privatization of things which should be

public and education.

That's the other one.

Yeah.

You know,

my personal opinion is that something like a university, universities shouldn't be run for profit.

Universities should be run for education.

I'm a fan of things operating so that it loses money.

You know what I mean?

Like the arts, for instance, I always say with the arts, the arts should lose money.

Fund failure, because if you fund failure, you get occasional excellence.

But if you try and fund success, people get scared, especially with creativity, you get scared and you don't take risks.

Fund risk taking, fund failure.

Back to the mid the military thing,'cause I I know our neutrality is a huge part of our soft power internationally.

We saw there with

like we've got a huge cultural footprint.

Or the the cultural footprint of Ireland is massive.

For such a tiny country, even something as simple as like Halloween, like Halloween is ours, you know?

Yes.

We've this massive cultural footprint and the international community frequently squints in our direction for ethical guidance.

And our neutrality is key to that.

And the fact that we're we've done enough war, we had 800 years of it.

Absolutely.

You know what I mean?

I would agree with you.

There are so many topics there.

I think we need you and we need other platforms and forum to allow a discussion on all of these topics.

It often occurs to me, you know, that we're a post-colonial country, but our administration is still colonized in their minds.

They don't want to hear that.

No, they don't.

But I think we haven't achieved the aims of a republic at all.

And I'd love to see a movement to realising what a republic really means.

And neutrality is part of that.

And it's been the narrative again is that narrative that

we want it everywhere.

And we want to free ride on other countries' armies.

We want them to protect us.

Our best protection is our neutrality used in a very positive, proactive manner.

And we have, as you've said yourself, we have a huge cultural footprint internationally.

And we have gained the respect, our peacekeeping forces, and the word peace keeping forces, just like the Garda force, so we have a defence force, not an army.

We have the Force I Cusanta and we have the Garda Shikana, the peace guards.

And so we should be using our history and our emergence from colonisation, our emergence from a famine, our emergence from the

conflict in Northern Ireland, building on all of that and on the Good Friday Agreement, using all of that experience to become peacemakers in the world.

But the narrative all of the time is being led in a certain direction.

And I believe we should have a referendum

on losing the trade, changing the trade.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

And it would be give people their voice, let people use their voice, and let's have an open, rational discussion on this subject.

One thing when you were speaking there about peacekeeping, just something I want to bring up because it was so unique and beautiful.

Is

so Irish peacekeeping forces that have been operating in Lebanon for over 30 years now.

And one of the most beautiful things I ever saw was it was a TG4 documentary and they spoke to local Lebanese people who were basically living alongside Irish peacekeepers for 30 years.

And these Lebanese people had full-on Irish Irish accents.

Yeah.

And it's what made it so different was

it was an accent that was gained through empathy.

It wasn't there's soldiers here and we learned English through these soldiers.

The way that this Lebanese person spoke like he was from Mayo,

you don't pick that up with your ear, you pick it up with your heart.

Do you get me?

And what it showed me was this man speaks like this because these soldiers, even though they're here and even even though they have guns, they're not an occupying force.

That's right.

There's no secret threat here.

You don't have to sheepishly approach these soldiers and make friends with them.

No, this is different here.

This isn't colonization.

This isn't violence.

Even though they have guns, this is something different.

And it made me feel very proud of our neutrality.

that these soldiers here are actually safe.

There's no hidden agenda.

This is proper neutrality.

And I've never seen that anywhere.

I've seen plenty, even my own

Jesus.

My granddad was in the IRA back in West Cork, and they took English soldiers,

they took auxiliaries as prisoners, you know, and they managed to find a little bit of camaraderie there with these people who were enemies.

But there was a fear there, obviously.

This was different.

There was empathy with these Lebanese people who had

generations of soldiers from Mayo.

Like, that's the thing.

It's like

the defence forces in Ireland, it's family.

So like someone's da was in Lebanon and then the son is in Lebanon and you have this real relationship thing.

And that's so unique.

Yeah.

And I wish more people knew about it, about the role of Irish peacekeepers and that it is actually peacekeeping.

It's a very important point you're making and well done to TG Carr.

I didn't actually see it, but we need more of that actually.

don't we

to show what's been going on and and that that faith in the peacekeeping forces from Ireland, that's been repeated in other countries, in Africa, in Cyprus, over and over.

And the the decision based on the veto by America to pull out the unified soldiers from the Lebanon in a year's time is truly, truly shocking.

And we've we've had the head of the forcikasuntha telling us if that happens, we're going to have another Gaza in in in Lebanon.

Yeah.

Do we have a say in that?

With the government are going along with it.

Yeah.

The UN was set up after the Second World War, as you know, and it was set up so that slaughter wouldn't happen again or the

concentration camps and the slaughter and we wouldn't do this again and various other international conventions, the Genocide Convention and so on, were all set up.

And

obviously, the veto is problematic, but where I don't trust the narrative from different governments in my time, it's only recently that they've been forced to highlight that America has used the veto many, many times.

Russia has used it, but they only highlighted Russia.

Yes.

Never highlighted.

So if you set up a narrative to justify getting rid of the triple lock because of the use of the veto, then there's a duty on you to look at the use of the veto over all of the years.

Which countries have used it, how often?

And from the research I have done, and I just don't have it in front of me,

despite the veto, the UN has worked in many, many different situations.

But obviously, then we zone in on where the veto has been used to the detriment.

The most recent example of that is America, where they've used it to make sure that there's no peacekeeping force with a mandate from the UN in Lebanon in a year's time.

Which is frightening because it, to me, again, conspiracy hat, but it lets me.

I'm always frightened of this Greater Israel thing.

I'm always frightened of this idea that Israel just intends to expand and that includes Lebanon and it includes parts of Syria to create this massive country called Greater Israel.

Well, you know, no later than this week on the 16th of September, we had a report from the Human Rights Council on its 60th session.

And

my God, it's just, there's 71 pages in it, and I'm in the process of reading it.

But I'll just go back to the conclusions of that.

And this is what we've allowed to happen.

The Commission's analysis in this report, and it goes on about

genocide and the obligations under the

Genocide Convention.

to the responsibility of the state of Israel both for the failure to prevent genocide, for committing genocide against the Palestinians, and for the failure to punish genocide.

And it concludes, it sets, I've set that out badly, but that's the first paragraph.

But it's very, very, it's crystal clear.

The Commission concludes on reasonable grounds that the Israeli authorities and Israeli security forces have committed and are continuing to commit the following actus reus of genocide against the Palestinian people.

And they talk about incitement to genocide, and they specifically name the Commission concludes that Israeli President Herzog, the Prime Minister Netanyahu, the then Defense Minister Galland

have incited,

have incited, remember Rwanda and the French station, radio station with incitement.

And here we have...

have incited the commission of genocide and that Israeli authorities have failed to take action against them or to punish them for this incitement.

And it goes on, and there are recommendations.

There are recommendations.

Is that the UN report?

Is that the UN?

That's the UN report.

That's the one that came out yesterday.

Just yesterday or the day before.

I mean, that's that's like I still find people who are very contrarian about the genocide.

And now I decided this is the UN.

Now, there's no, there's no answer.

That's why I went to the trouble of just even so that listeners will know that I'm actually reading from the Human Rights Council and their report and they've recommendations.

I won't read them all out, but they've recommendations for the government of Israel, they've recommendations for all member states that includes us.

And then they have recommendations for

the final one was the role of the prosecutor.

the international prosecutor in terms of taking action.

So here, and

we still have a reluctance to actually call out what's happening.

Yeah,

that's the thing.

The UN, this is the pillars of international order.

Like, as you said, it was set up after World War II.

Yeah.

Like,

what are the, what's the Irish government scared of?

I mean, is it US investment?

Like, what are they frightened of?

It really goes back, really, to the importance of

our policy of neutrality being used in a very active way and calling out truth to power, whether that's Russia or whether that's America.

And

that's what I would see as part of the role of a neutral country: to call out truth to power, to call out what's happening.

So here we have America back with the help of the EU and van der Leyen very much on side,

backing up genocide.

by an Israeli government in Palestine.

And for a long time in the doll following the invasion by Hamas

in 2023 in October the narrative in the Dal was the condemnation of Hamas which I absolutely condemned but history didn't start on that day of course yeah and so when the government condemned Hamas as I did then they went on about the right of Israel to self-defense and nobody could deprive any country including the Ukraine of its right to self-defense it's the most basic

right that a country has.

However, the self-defense narrative has continued and continued

and is no longer an argument at all from a very early stage, but it has continued and a reluctance to call out genocide.

One thing I'd like to bring up there, again, it takes it a little bit back to privatization, right?

But something...

So let's just take Shannon Airport.

Okay, so Shannon Airport for years going on since since the the invasion of Iraq to 2003 Shannon Airport has been used to refuel military aircraft US military aircraft right I know that from a business perspective that is huge for Shannon Airport like I rem

I remember being in Shannon Airport during the recession okay and the place was empty because like it was either people emigrating or no one was going on holidays.

I'm talking 2012, 2013.

There just wasn't the money there.

And I would go to Shannon Airport and there was no tourists but what there was was

there was cleaners employed and their job was to sweep sand, to sweep sand up from the duty-free area because so many U.S.

soldiers had come in that night with sand on their fatigues.

And

my da

da worked for Erlingus.

He was employed in Shannon Airport for nearly 30 years.

And this is when Erlingus was a government company.

It wasn't privatized.

And my dad was a government employee.

And he was a civil servant, effectively, because he was employed by Erlingus and had a job his whole life, pensioned the whole shebang.

But now we're in a position where

because

we say just something as simple as Shannon Airport relies so heavily on the private business of the US Army, now it puts the government in difficulty to be able to call out something like the U.S.

Army.

Do you get what I'm saying?

And this is, again, another problem I have with neoliberalism.

Like, something else that's emerging, I'm sure you're aware of this, but

let's just take data centers.

We know that data centers are terrible for the environment, but I think the journal did a report there about a month ago.

Quite a lot of

county councils in Ireland are actually receiving a huge amount of money from data centers that are operating in their territory.

I think from rent, I'm not quite sure.

But the danger of this now is if so many local councils are depending upon data centers for their budget effectively, then they don't have true independence.

Do you get what I'm saying?

They have to kowtow to giant multinationals like Amazon or Google who have the data centers.

Am I making sense?

You are, but there's quite a lot in it.

Do you know what I might just do?

I might just give you the third recommendation that

I hadn't in front of me.

The third recommendation from that Human Rights Council was that the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, so that was the exact third, that they continue, they have an ongoing investigation and that they now include the crime of genocide for amendment to the existing arrest warrants and so on.

You've got to arrest Nathan Yahoo if he comes to your country.

Yeah, but they're adding to the causes for that.

that was just the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court.

Coming back to your

area, you're talking about Shannon Airport.

And obviously, I have never agreed with...

I think we're complicit in wars, even though we're a neutral country and we're allowing the American Army through Shannon.

And people far more knowledgeable than me and at great cost to themselves have stood out repeatedly because the government have said we don't have any evidence.

And so civilians on the ground have attempted to get that evidence what what evidence specifically

evidence that the americans are carrying arms that the planes are coming in with arms well what i can tell you i know for sure because i live in limerick city like i've been out on wednesday nights and have met american soldiers who

i i know i i know i'm only talking about the duplicity of the government all right to say they have no evidence but they can't have evidence if they don't inspect the planes and so it has been left to people on the ground at great cost to themselves.

I think of Ed Horgan, who has just done Trojan work on the ground, and all the other people around him that stand down there and that monitor the planes and share that information.

I mean, I have turned up to support them, but I absolutely pay tribute to them and what they have done.

And again, I emphasise a great cost to themselves.

But there are other ways around Shannon Airport to make a thrive.

Only earlier yesterday, I think, Carl Crowe, Finafall TD from Clare, stood up in relation to Shannon Airport and what needs to be done with government investment and take some of the pressure off Dublin Airport and use airports like Shannon Airport.

So there are many ways that we can boost Shannon Airport and not have it dependent on American soldiers and armaments going through the airport.

So

I think it's very important that we look at that.

And I'm from Galway in the west of Ireland and it's very important.

We've all used Shannon Airport, and it's so much more manageable than Dublin, and so near, and it is underutilised.

So, we need a strong government policy on Shannon Airport as a civilian airport.

I want to get your take on the climate collapse and biodiversity collapse, and

Ireland's role with that.

It is an existential threat.

It is the existential threat to our our planet.

And we declared a

climate change emergency back in 19 and a biodiversity emergency.

I think we were the second country to do it.

And let me say that we did that just like with Palestine on the basis of concerned people standing outside Dal Erden, standing out in protests all over the country, begging us and

appealing to us to do something, down to the children from secondary schools.

And actually, I remember the day that we declared that emergency, the young children were outside the door.

So it wasn't, it's good that we've done that, but like with COVID,

like with housing and with climate change, we need transformative change.

And

those words have been used repeatedly, transformative change.

But I'm afraid, from what I can see, it's business as usual.

It's business as usual, yeah.

So, the business model, we paid lip service for a number of years to transformative change, but the actual thing that I see is that it's business as usual.

Again, my role as podcaster, like I'm trying to tell people stories, I'm trying to communicate complex information.

Disinformation around climate change is a huge problem that's emerging now, too.

This belief that it's fake, it's made up, it's just a way to get more taxes um

when you mentioned earlier that certain like the government can sometimes have a colonized mind what i always try to communicate to people is is the decolonial act of being for biodiversity i mean what i adore about

pre-colonial irish society if you go back to the brechon laws you can find something like the Brech Baja.

It was the B judgments.

We have these big law tracts about the importance of pollinators, about how to protect them, that they shouldn't be harmed or hurt.

We had

so much of our early mythology and Bretton Law was about understanding biodiversity, understanding we're part of a system.

Even, I don't know if you know this fella, his name was John Scotus Eriduna.

He used to be on the old five-pound notes.

He like invented modern ecology.

Like he was trying to explain what God was but by trying to explain what god was he basically figured out what biodiversity is every single thing that is alive is connected in some way

and that's it that he was the first person to do that and that's like an irish idea so we have all this beautiful pre-colonial elements of our culture and history and literature which is very much about biodiversity and the importance of it.

Because that's the other thing too with colonization.

Colonization isn't just about colonizing land and it's about extraction of wealth and a great way to extract wealth from land is to remove people's beliefs about the importance of that land and the animals and the rivers

yeah again you know

it's it's a good start to a discussion isn't it it's something that we need to take further on different platforms.

And

if we use the Irish language, and I've made this point, and again, I'm no expert on the Irish language, but I love it, and I went back to learn it because I have such a respect for it.

And it is our first official language.

And I would never like to preach in relation to the Irish language.

I would like to be an example to people.

It's a wonderful journey.

It really is worth making the journey to learn the Irish language.

And I was fortunate to go back and do a diploma and then a translation course.

But more and more as I read.

You find the nature bits is it yes, exactly.

But even before I come to that, you know, we'll have a milestone later, a few weeks' time, where for the first time we're going to have an Irish-Irish dictionary.

How do you mean, explain that?

Yeah, so

if you're looking up the meaning of an English word, you look up Collins or a Thesaurus, and they give you a meaning of the word.

Yeah.

So you look up the meaning of climate change and they'll explain that to you in English.

But we've never had an Irish-Irish dictionary.

So our mind looks to what is the word in English?

What is that Irish word in English?

Or what is that English word in Irish?

I've never even thought of that.

No, no, and

none of us did actually.

And so

I was down an electric picnic and I was talking to one of two people who are behind the project.

And he was telling me the hope to launch it in a few weeks' time.

And it's the first time that Ireland will have an Irish-Irish dictionary.

So that's a huge milestone.

And that takes me around in a circle, really, to, you know, there's no division in Irish between nature and the human being.

There's no false distinction.

The human being and nature are one together.

Whereas the English language, there's an absolute division, and nature is there to be conquered or extracted from.

And those concepts do not exist in the Irish language,

subject to correction.

They don't exist.

And I've always said that Irish is part of the solution when it comes to nature.

Not alone that we have so much words for different aspects of nature and that, but because it doesn't have that artificial distinction.

And lately I had the privilege of launching an art exhibition in Dublin by a man called Owen McLaughlin.

Superb.

superb exhibition and he had used birch as part of his exhibition, the birch tree.

And I I had to read up a little bit about because, no more than the Irish language, I'm no expert on art, but I appreciate art and the value of it and the absolute necessity that we support the arts for creativity, for imagination, and so on.

But looking around at his exhibition and doing a little research on it, I looked at the birch tree and it's known as a pioneering tree.

And again, it goes around in a circle to the Celtic mythology, which you mentioned already, and I'll come back to.

But birch is known known as a pioneering tree so we have two types the tawny birch and the silver birch that people are very familiar with.

And it's known as a pioneer for a number of reasons because after the last glacier the birch tree was the first to recolonize Ireland.

So we're back to that word colonization.

But then in Celtic mythology it was known as the symbol of rebirth and rejuvenation.

rebirth, a new way of looking at things.

And it was just fascinating what I learned from having the privilege to launch his art exhibition and then it brought me around in circle again to the Irish language because apparently the birch trees are very very um not popular but very extensive at the foot of the Spern mountains

and right at the foot of the Spern Mountains we have a Geeltucht a brand new Geeltucht.

There was no Irish speaker there in 1992 and now we have over 200 and something speakers of Irish.

Beautiful, you've got your little rebirth there.

We have an all-Irish school, we have a thriving GA club for girls and boys, and the best thing, they bought 200 acres in trust for the community.

So we had a whole rebirth here,

and all of that

came along really as a result of that artist's work in Dublin that I had the privilege of launching and back to the Irish language, back to nature, and Irish language being part of the solution in relation to climate change, that reconnection with labour, nature, and not penalising people, the poorer people, in terms of taxes in climate change.

The big polluters never paid.

And I've always been very uncomfortable with the principle the polluter pays because it has never applied to the real polluters.

Absolutely.

I don't look on people, ordinary people, as polluters.

Regarding

the Irish language, and like,

for instance, like derry, derry means oak wood.

So that tells us that there used to be a bunch of oak there.

And just regarding the barch there and that, and the rebirth, a strange one, something I'm always fascinated with, is, and again, it ties in with both the Irish language and neoliberalism.

But so Mayo means plain of yew trees.

That's right.

But you, you're really interesting because a yew tree can live to be maybe 800 to 1,000 years old.

Like they're really, really old.

And there's not many yew trees left in Mayo, unfortunately.

It's significant that you see them mostly in cemeteries.

Do you know why that is?

Tell me why.

Because

on the yew tree,

it's either a berry or the leaves themselves are actually poisonous.

And the cattle used to, they didn't want cattle, either cattle or wolves, to be digging up graves.

So they used to put the yew tree in the graveyard because the berries would make animals stay away from graves.

Oh, yeah.

Did you know that?

I'd forgotten it.

I had heard it, but I'd forgotten it.

But the thing I find fascinating about yew trees and Mayo is: so, because the yew tree used to live so long,

they reckon it's likely that it would have been considered longevity.

It would have been looked because if you've got a yew tree that's 800 years old, you've got stories that are generational about the tree that's been there and your great-great-great-great-grandparents.

And it's significant, really, on a different level that they're now seen in cemeteries, you know.

Oh, absolutely,

life and death in a short cycle but the the irony that i find and is

so mayo plain of yew trees which we once worshiped for longevity but all of the world's botox which is the drug of longevity happens to be made in mayo by an american company a pharmaceutical company like literally every single bit of botox in the world is made in mayo really longevity drug and that again it's it's just that

the irony of that is fantastic that's right But

I think,

is there any final thing you want to say, Catherine?

Well, thank you very much.

Thank you very much for the opportunity.

And I really would say to your listeners, you have a choice to make, and I put that in as positive a way as I can.

I'm standing on my record.

I have worked.

I have a work ethic that I take no credit for.

I took it from my father and my siblings.

And I have always striven to do what I think is right, having done my research, having read, and to stand up and be counted.

And I think now more than ever in this election, we need to make decisions that will have serious

whatever decision you make will have serious

consequences because of what I've said at the beginning of the interview.

We need

a courageous voice, a voice you can trust.

Perhaps you mightn't agree with everything I say, but you will know where I stand on issues, and I will represent the country nationally and internationally to the best of my ability in as dignified a way and manner as I can, based on my experience and the privilege of having worked in so many different roles as a mother, a member of a family of 14, and as Las Cancorla, where I think I showed that I could chair the doll in a very fair and equal manner while listening to a wide variety of opinions, because that's the essence of democracy, to be able to listen to each other.

And I would like to think that I would be an inclusive president.

I have tried as a candidate to be as inclusive as possible.

And obviously, there are parties that I wouldn't agree with their policy, but there are other things they say that I do agree with.

And I would like to try and reflect all of that as president in in the different roles that I will have to play.

Thank you so much to Catherine Connolly there for coming onto the podcast and having a chat.

The Irish presidential election, it's next month.

Check it out.

It's all over the news.

You're not going to have difficulty finding out information.

I'm actually legging it right now because I'm recording this yesterday.

I'm gigging Vicker Street tonight.

You won't be able to come because by the time you hear this, it'll be yesterday.

We're doing this time thing again, this fucking linear time thing i've recorded this yesterday and right now in yesterday i have to leave my office to go to dublin to do a gig but by the time you hear this the gig will have happened already okay

fucking hell right okay i'll catch you next week i'll catch you next week i don't know what with

hopefully there'll be a hot take i'm very busy this week with gigs i'm hoping i'll have the time to be able to reflect and explore curiosity and come back with a hot take for you In the meantime, rub a dog, wink at a swan,

scream at a

scream at a no, don't scream at any.

I was gonna say scream at a snail, but that's not very nice, is it?

Actually, I wonder what snails get up to in winter.

There'll be a podcast on that.

Think about winter for a snail, all right?

Dog bless

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