Actions of gardaí would have ‘disgusted’ Collins

MICHAEL COLLINS would have been “disgusted” at the manner in which the Garda Síochána’s reputation has been sullied by the criminal behaviour of certain gardaí in Donegal, Fine Gael Senator and MEP Jim Higgins said yesterday.

Giving the keynote oration at Béal na mBláth at the annual Michael Collins Commemoration, Mr Higgins said: “Under Collins the perpetrators certainly would not have been allowed to retire with gratuities and full pension rights or transferred on active duty with full pay - he would have booted them unceremoniously from the force.”

Michael Collins would also have frowned on the fact that the natural gas find off the Mayo coast is being given away to a foreign company for literally nothing - no royalties, a derisory tax rate and massive write offs, Mr Higgins added.

What would Michael Collins think of the performance of some of our politicians in the modern era? Mr Higgins asked the large crowd attending the commemoration.

“I know he would turn in his Glasnevin grave that some of the inheritors of his unselfish legacy as Yeats called it ‘fumbled in the greasy till’ and took hundreds of thousands in bribes for political favours,” Mr Higgins said.

Michael Collins saw the Treaty as a stepping stone but successive Irish Governments in the Republic abandoned our fellow nationalists in the North, he added.

“I find it difficult to believe that a Collins-led Irish Government would have turned such a blind eye - he would have tackled the issue early on by insisting the British Government intervene to stop anti-nationalist discrimination and gerrymandering of election results,” Mr Higgins said.

He thanked Frank Metcalfe for inviting him to give this year’s Béal na mBláth oration and said his father, a great Michael Collins admirer, would have been very proud.

Among those attending yesterday’s 83rd anniversary of the death of Michael Collins was the Ambassador of Brazil to Ireland, Stélio Marcos Amarante, and his wife Maria Lisa.