Mick Clifford: Catherine Connolly unfairly targeted for past associations

Why is nobody asking Mary Lou about Gemma O'Doherty, or questioning visits of other politicians to Syria?

One way or anther, Catherine Connolly was not a political ally of Mick Wallace and Clare Daly and certainly not in any formal manner. Picture: Gareth Chaney

It’s high time Catherine Connolly was left alone about her past associations with Gemma O’Doherty, Mick Wallace, and Clare Daly.

Every single time she is interviewed, these three individuals are brought up like exhibits for the prosecution.

It’s as if the Independent presidential candidate went beyond the pale to have ever had anything to do with these people, apparently deemed politically unclean, and must now be forced on every media outing to prostrate herself before the electorate and plead for forgiveness.

Let’s deal with Gemma first. Why did nobody ever ask Mary Lou McDonald about O’Doherty? Catherine Connolly signed nomination papers for O’Doherty in 2018 in order to allow her run for president. McDonald did something far more arresting by raising Gemma’s most notorious conspiracy theory, plucked straight from QAnon central, on the floor of the Dáil.

This conspiracy theory involved the disappearance and presumed murder of seven-year-old Mary Boyle in Donegal in 1977. In 2015, Gemma had assembled a theory that the gardaí and elements in Fianna Fáil colluded to cover up the murder, because the prime suspect was a member of the party.

Not just that, but every Fianna Fáil leader since then had gone along with the cover-up. She assembled this in the classic conspiracy theory mode by melding rumour to innuendo and developing theories to the point where, if you held them up to the light in a particular way, might resemble facts for about 30 seconds.

She made a documentary based on the whole thing, travelling around the country and abroad with it. Many in the opposition benches lapped it up.

Apart from McDonald raising the issue in the Dáil, Sinn Féin also did so in the European Parliament.

Cover-up

Leading figures in the Social Democrats and other small parties and Independents welcomed O’Doherty to Leinster House. O’Doherty was praised as a “brave” journalist, kicking against the establishment, in The Guardian newspaper and The Irish Times. Nobody knew at the time that it was all hokum, but it wouldn’t have taken much digging to establish it as so.

Many of these politicians were perfectly willing to go alone with the notion that Micheál Martin, among others, was capable of covering up the murder of a child.

This wasn’t about political differences across a floor, or accusations that one side is more concerned with some sections of society than others. It was about claiming that the other crowd lived in a different moral universe, and were engaged in the kind of depravity that shocked, absolutely shocked, those who convinced themselves that O’Doherty was the oracle.

It couldn’t last. We haven’t yet in this country arrived at the point where QAnon theories go completely unchecked. By 2018, many on the alleged left were drifting away from O’Doherty.

Pretty soon, she gave up on her left conspiracy theories and began propagating from the right — and even far right. However, many of those who championed her appear to be of the belief that left conspiracies are a bit of craic while the equivalent from the far right are a different ballgame altogether. 

Catherine Connolly’s apparent transgression is that she was about three months too late in completely disassociating herself from O’Doherty when the latter was making her way across the political spectrum. Picture: Gareth Chaney

Really? Catherine Connolly’s apparent transgression is that she was about three months too late in completely disassociating herself from O’Doherty when the latter was making her way across the political spectrum.

Is that really worth banging on about repeatedly at this juncture, particularly as all those Gemma-istas of the time have never once apologised for their stupidity, or to Martin for assuming he was in some way depraved?

Is Connolly to be the patsy for all those who flocked to O’Doherty’s standard when she was disseminating the “right” kind of conspiracies from the left? Then there is the Mick and Clare show.

Ms Connolly, have you this week, or have you ever, had a cup of tea with either Mick Wallace or Clare Daly?

“Have you ever spoken to either or both for more than 10 minutes without interruption? Will you, here today, urge Mick Wallace not to vote for you as it might make you feel unclean?”

Last year, Clare Daly lost her MEP seat in Dublin on the 17th count.

It is safe to say that her defeat was largely due to the controversial stances she and Wallace took on global matters while in Europe.

Notwithstanding that, she still got over 26,000 first-preference votes. Wallace lost his Ireland South seat too.

Connolly knew the pair, politically, since they were part of a technical group in the Dáil between 2016 and 2019.

Both Daly and Wallace did some serious work in that term — including around garda whistleblowers, irregularities in State bodes, the Eighth Amendment, and delving into the entrails of Nama.

Certainly, their progress through Europe was of a different order. Many — including this reporter — were taken aback at how their politics appeared to centre on cosying up to any entity that was anti-American.

No political ally

For their part, they repeatedly stated their work in this respect was all about looking for peace.

One way or the other, Connolly was not a political ally of the pair and certainly not in any formal manner. Is she to be associated with everything they did on the international stage since they were first elected to Europe in 2019? One big thing they did while still TDs in 2018, along with others, was visit Syria when it was ruled by the tyrant Bashar al-Assad. Connolly also travelled. As did Independent TD Maureen O’Sullivan and well-known community activist Rita Fagan.

The latter wrote to The Irish Times last week to, as she saw it, correct the record.

“15 of us travelled, at our own expense, to meet Palestinian refugees and hear directly from the UN and the NGOs,” Fagan wrote.

All meetings were collective, taking place in rubble rather than boardrooms. We were not naïve, nor aligned with any side. Our role was to listen and witness

Would all the hullabaloo about this visit have ensued if Wallace and Daly were not among those who travelled?

Is it all just rooting around for something of interest in Connolly’s background to provide support for a campaign that leans heavily on excavating anything that might resemble dirt?

There is much about Catherine Connolly — her politics, her judgement — that can and should be debated. But beyond the initial noting of her allegiances with O’Doherty, and separately Daly and Wallace, isn’t it time to move on to something more substantial in the candidate’s record?