PDs bid to conquer final frontier

De Northside — the final frontier.

These are the voyages of Justice Minister Michael McDowell his continuing mission, to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilisations, to boldly go where no PD has gone before.

The last time a member of McDowell's clan made a celebrated trip across the River Liffey was when his grandfather Eoin McNeill attempted to cancel the 1916 Easter Rising.

Now 87 years later, the explorer extraordinaire and PD president is embarking on an even more ambitious project by attempting to conquer Dublin's northside for his party.

Flagged as the first Progressive Democrat public meeting on the northside since the party's foundation in 1986, Mr McDowell addressed a crowd of just over a hundred at the Marino Institute on Monday night on the lofty subject: The State of the Nation: What we Stand for in 2003.

After venturing into Kerry and Donegal in recent times, President McDowell is now thrusting into the wilds of the far reaches of the capital city.

Overcoming the distraction of some rude anti-war protestors who had infiltrated the gathering, the Minister took questions on as wide a variety of topics from law and order to radio signals being broadcast into people's heads.

Mr McDowell said history would judge whether the Government was right or wrong to allow the Shannon stopover by US military planes heading to Iraq, but it would have been a gratuitous act to withdraw the services.

Indeed it would have been far easier to turn down the US as the media had one particular slant on the war, the media-shy Minister said, and newspaper editorials would have lauded the Government for taking this course of action.

"They would have been salivating at how great we were," he said.

But Valerie Breen from Whitehall was unconvinced and challenged his claim about being a democrat. She said he didn't need to arm the police force as the State had institutionally repressed and systematically assaulted the public.

Playing a tape recording of static into the microphone, Ms Breen claimed radio signals were being transmitted into her home and her head.

"You're killing your own people and its very sad," she said.

In their own colloquial manner, the gathering asked the woman to desist from making such outlandish statements.

Unfazed by the radio waves, Minister respectfully listened and said Ms Breen was entitled to voice her opinion, before wowing the crowd with his plans on prison officer overtime, Garda reform, judicial sentencing and childcare.

Located in the Dublin North-Central constituency, Marino is just a stone's throw away from the Taoiseach's heartland of Drumcondra.

You know what, if this McDowell head could develop a proper Dub accent, go on the Hill in Croker once a year and start drinking Bass, he could go a long way.