The Race for the Áras (28 page)

The
Evening Herald
columnist Andrew Lynch encapsulated McGuinness's problems with his past.

 

There were two debates on Wednesday 12 October, one hosted by Barnardo's and chaired by Olivia O'Leary, but it was the later
RTE
‘Prime Time' debate, presented by Miriam O'Callaghan, that provided drama. Dana issued a statement:

She made the prepared statement on the programme after being approached by a newspaper. O'Callaghan, who had been given no notice of Dana's intention to read out a statement, pressed her for details. Dana declined to provide any.

‘What are you talking about?' asked O'Callaghan, as baffled as the viewing public.

The other highlight of the programme was O'Callaghan's blunt and unrelenting questioning of McGuinness. ‘How do you square, Martin McGuinness, with your God the fact that you were involved in the murder of so many people?' she asked.

‘I think that's a disgraceful comment to make,' said McGuinness.

‘You were in the
IRA
,' countered O'Callaghan.

‘I was in the
IRA
. I joined the
IRA
as a result of the conflict that broke out on the streets of Derry when I was eighteen years of age …'

O'Callaghan went on to ask him whether he went to Confession, and about his membership of the
IRA
, which he said he left in 1974. She said she would ‘park' what had happened in the past and asked questions about the
IRA
murders of members of the Defence Forces, such as Private Patrick Kelly.

‘What have you done for that man, David Kelly, since you spoke to him, in terms of naming the people who killed his father?'

‘Sure I don't know who killed his father,' McGuinness replied.

‘But you're a republican: you know everyone in the republican movement.'

McGuinness then appeared to lose control. ‘I think that's a stupid statement for you to make,' he said.

RTE
said it received more than a hundred complaints about how O'Callaghan had questioned McGuinness in the debate, which attracted an average viewership of 654,000. Sinn Féin would later deny assertions that it ‘orchestrated' complaints against
RTE
.

After the programme McGuinness confronted O'Callaghan in her dressing-room. The
Evening Herald
stated the following day: ‘The
IRA
godfather went into a hissy fit at the
RTE
studios and tried to intimidate the mother-of-eight, insiders revealed today,' saying that McGuinness went ‘ballistic' over her line of questioning. ‘“There's no doubt that he tried to intimidate her. She looked quite shaken after it but there's no way she's going to let something like that get to her,” said a witness to the sinister encounter.'

 

That morning, 13 October, the
Irish Sun
revealed exclusively that Dana had phoned the police in the United States to ask them to investigate a baseless allegation of sexual abuse against a close relative sent to her by email from America. The allegation referred to a period a number of years previously, and there was never any arrest, conviction or prosecution.

On
TV
3 on Friday the 14th she confirmed that the allegations were about a family member and were of a sexual nature, but she declined to elaborate further.

She said that the allegation came out during a court case taken against her sister, Susan Stein, and that it went back thirty-five years. ‘I will not step down,' she said. ‘I will not bend under this and I will not be broken under this.'

In a statement she issued after the interview she claimed that a ‘despicable and malicious campaign of hatred' was being directed against her and her family.

 

The
Sunday Business Post
of 16 October reported a surge in support for Gallagher, poising him for the Áras, according to its latest
REDC
poll. It now seemed to be a two-horse race, with Gallagher speeding ahead with an eighteen-point jump, to give him 39 per cent of the vote, and Higgins up two per cent, to 27 per cent. ‘By not putting a foot wrong and appealing to the public's desire for a non-party candidate, Seán Gallagher has pulled ahead in the latest poll,' the paper said.

McGuinness dropped three points, to 13 per cent, and Mitchell dropped two points, to 8 per cent, with Norris, Davis and Dana on 7, 4 and 2 per cent, respectively.

Commenting on the poll on
RTE
radio, Mitchell said:

The same day a journalist, Greg Harkin, spoke to Susan Gorrell, who claimed she was molested by her uncle John Brown, Dana's brother, on a number of occasions when she was aged between five and thirteen, and claimed that Dana knew about the allegations for three decades. She told the
Irish Independent
:

On the campaign trail in Co. Donegal, Dana refused to take questions on the issue, saying she wished to ‘leave that behind now.'

The
Irish Times
reported that Susan Stein said she stood over evidence that her husband, Ronald, gave to a court in the United States in 2008. He said John Brown (Dana and Susan Stein's brother) had admitted to him in 2005 that he had sexually abused the Steins' daughter, Susan Gorrell, in the 1980s. The court heard that Brown had denied the allegation while giving evidence by way of deposition.

Meanwhile, with ten days to go, the Gallagher campaign had emailed supporters to ask them to do ten things. They included canvassing, sending text messages to their contacts, using Facebook to urge a vote, and printing a poster from his web site and displaying it. ‘Keep it positive, don't be shy and don't give up,' he urged.

Mitchell had travelled from Dublin to Galway. Now, just after 6 p.m. on Tuesday 18 October, he stood outside the
TG
4 studios at Baile na hAbhann, near Barna, breathing in the fresh sea air. He had taken the microphone off his lapel and walked off the set as yet another candidates' debate was about to be staged. Higgins was the only Irish-speaker among the candidates, and the station he had legislated to establish was in his home constituency.

Mitchell was fuming over the format, which included an opening address in Irish, to be delivered live rather than recorded. He was cajoled back onto the set just in time for the debate to begin at 7 p.m., which would last for more than 100 minutes and be conducted in both Irish and (mostly) English.

Mitchell was the sixth to speak. He said he wanted to make Ireland a better place for the people of Ireland, and strongly believed that Ireland was on the cusp of something great. As President he wanted to guide the country to that greatness.

The debate, like many others, was a ritual the candidates had to go through, addressing different audiences but with the same now well-rehearsed messages. In the
TG
4 debate the importance of Irish was stressed by all the candidates; most said they would like to use it more and would address themselves to learning more if elected.

In response to the moderator, Páidí Ó Lionaird, all the candidates said they were proud of the national anthem and that it needed no changes—except Gallagher.

Although Higgins's team would say that their candidate was always positive, he referred to the involvement of his main rival, Gallagher, in the building industry during the boom years. ‘There was a speculative economy that Seán might favour and a social economy that I might favour.'

The web site
www.thejournal.ie
carried a minute-by-minute blog of what the candidates said and the site moderator's comments on their remarks.

The final question was picked up in the following day's papers for its novelty value. ‘At a social gathering, what's your party piece?' they were asked. Gallagher didn't get the switch in mood, lamenting not being able to sing or play an instrument, and said his party piece was his character, interaction and connecting with people.

Norris said he wouldn't offer any poetry or Joyce but would play the piano—Chopin or ragtime. Mitchell said he usually sang a verse of a song, while Dana admitted singing ‘All Kinds of Everything'—but everyone sings it together, she said. McGuinness said he recited his own poetry. Higgins, already known for his poetry, said it wasn't his practice to read his own poems, but he hoped to release all the stories he'd collected over his life at some time in the future. Davis revealed that she loves karaoke and that she also juggles.

It had been a day of juggling for Davis, with a visit earlier in the day to the Summerhill Community Centre, where she addressed the 250 ‘third-agers' and had a quick waltz at their tea dance. Then it was on to a canvass in Navan and a quick return to home in Sutton, Co. Dublin, where her husband blew out candles on his birthday cake, before travelling to Connemara.

Late that Tuesday night Dana, her brother Gerald Brown, her cousin and her husband were driving back to Dublin from the Landmark Hotel in Carrick-on-Shannon. Dana was asleep in the back seat when a tyre blew out on the
M
4 motorway near Kilcock, Co. Kildare. Numerous punctures were visible on the outside tyre rim when the
AA
arrived. Dana's husband claimed that their car had been deliberately damaged in an attempt to ‘injure or murder us,' and her solicitors lodged a complaint of criminal damage with the Gardaí. ‘It was very, very scary to look at,' she said. ‘As far as I am concerned it was a very, very lucky escape. I never start a journey without saying a little prayer, and I think we are all very lucky.'

Damien Scallon, who was driving, said, ‘When you see the tyre it kind of sends home to us what they were trying to do. Injure us or murder us? Along with that they could have killed someone else.' He had wrestled with the steering-wheel to avoid a lorry in front of them and a car behind before managing to stop safely on the hard shoulder.

The Gardaí would submit the tyre to scientific examination. However, tyre experts shown photographs by reporters said they believed it had suffered a casing break-up, which is caused by the tyre being driven for a while with a puncture.

 

The following day's
Irish Independent
and
Irish Times
paid attention to Gallagher's business dealings and his exclusive claim among his fellow-candidates to be an entrepreneur. Only two of the eleven firms promised investment on television by Gallagher on ‘Dragons' Den' received the agreed funds, said the
Irish Independent
. Five firms received investment from Gallagher totalling approximately €100,000, whereas on television he had offered more than €220,000. His spokesperson explained: ‘It can happen that the contestant or dragon withdraws the offer when all the contractual details, obligations and financial commitments, due diligence, figures, projections and business plans are examined.'

The
Irish Times
reported that Business Expansion Scheme investors in Gallagher's company Smarthomes two years earlier were told in a letter that income would grow to €10 million in 2011 and 2012, as the company was confident that profits could be increased to 20 per cent by entering a distribution agreement with an American transnational corporation. It was indicative of the type of scrutiny Gallagher and others would come under as the pressure-cooker of a presidential election began to reach boiling point.