Outside of Kilcrohane attitudes are frostier towards ‘Lord Ivor’

KILCROHANE in west Cork is the kind of place that makes you believe in God. With this week’s Mediterranean skies and glorious sunshine, it was somewhere that few would be capable of driving through without giving in to the urge to pull up at the roadside and drink up the view over Dunmanus Bay.

The village itself is centred around JF O’Mahony’s post-office, shop and, this being west Cork, wine bar.

With its blood red traditional shopfront, mounds of briquettes and gas bottles stacked outside and single petrol pump, it is the stuff of a Maeve Binchy mini-series. It being off-season, the village is quiet with the only sound the screech of swooping seagulls, distant waves and children playing in the nearby schoolyard. It’s the Ireland that the world fell in love with.

However, if you ask anyone in the village about Senator Ivor Callely and his manner of claiming expenses, you quickly witness another Ireland altogether – one with a discomfiting ability to turn a blind eye when it suits.

I wander up to Fitzpatrick’s bar. Chrome vases brimming with flowers stand on picnic tables outside and tourists’ bikes, with bulging paniers, propped up against the outhouse. A few people, clad in lycra, are quenching their thirst. I introduce myself and ask a woman briskly wiping down tables what local reaction has been like to Dublin-based Senator Callely claiming more than €81,000 of taxpayer’ money by claiming he drives to the Senate from this village. She glares at me.

“I think he’s brilliant. I won’t say anything else. I think he’s brilliant”

But how often is he really down here?

“Aren’t his people from here? His mother is from here,” she thunders.

Back in the village at the Bay View Inn, the women drinking tea at the bar are anything but incensed by the former minister’s declarations.

“People come down here for peace and quiet,” one says.

“We let each man live his own life. We let people be,” she says, smiling gently.

It really is a pity that Senator Callely isn’t seeking election from his west Cork holiday home base, as there is a ferocious loyalty to him in these parts.

Another man on the street tells me he doesn’t “believe in kicking a man when he’s down”.

“They’re all at it,” he splutters. I expect him to lambast the former Dublin North Central TD, but he continues without a hint of irony, “but that fella is just being singled out. I don’t believe in kicking a man when he’s down”.

This week’s revelations surrounding Senator Callely are just the latest in a political career dogged by questionable activities. In 2005, he had to resign a cabinet post after it was reported that John Paul Construction, a company who are given public contracts, had painted his house for free in the 1990s. It also emerged that he had offered to buy a new car for one of his civil service advisers in a bid to stop him going for a new job. And then, in 2005, Mr Callely was forced to apply for planning retention after it emerged that a “garage” for which he had sought planning permission housed two bedrooms and a third room.

Ivor’s palatial home is a quick walk from Kilcrohane village, about 43 kilometres from Bantry and 12km from Sheep’s Head Lighthouse. It is 370km from Leinster House and his constituency office in Clontarf where he regularly attends local Fianna Fáil meetings.

Yet Senator Callely told the Oireachtas in December 2007, after losing his Dáil seat, that his “current principal residence” was Kilcrohane, Bantry, Co Cork.

Arundel’s Bar is on the roadside opposite Ahakista quay. Just four miles from Kilcrohane and best known as the site of the 1986 Air India disaster, there’s a distinctly frostier attitude to Senator Callely.

A fisherman has nipped in from the balmy sunshine to have a pint bottle of Bulmers and a chat with the barmaid. He snorts when I mention their “local politician”.

“Lord Ivor? He’s like a God west in Kilcrohone. He promises them everything and do they get it? Like hell they do. When he’s at the festival, they mind him like he’s Mary McAleese. I tell you what I think of him and his expenses . . .” He splutters and takes a long drink.

“I’ve seen him around in the summer and for the long weekend or the school breaks. He sticks to Kilcrohane when’s he around. But living here all the time?” He throws his eyes up to heaven and takes a swig.

In comparison to Kilcrohane, Durrus is a big village with several pubs, restaurants, a sizeable supermarket and a cluster of holiday homes. A 10-15 minute drive from Senator Callely’s home, the attitude towards him is certainly black and white. From what I saw this week, Senator Callely could certainly describe Kilcrohane as his “political powerbase” as five miles outside the village, his supporters are few.

In Wiseman’s bric-a-brac shop in Durrus, people smile when I ask them about local reaction to the expenses controversy.

“Sure there he goes again, hah? The man who thinks he’s very important.”

“I think it was completely and utterly wrong. Everybody knows it was wrong. This is why this country has gone broke. He will get away with it though, as he won’t have broken the rules per se. You and I all know that”.

Attitudes towards “Lord Ivor”, his yacht, big house, and his expenses claims certainly change with a bit of distance.