The Catholic world was shocked last week when Irish politician Aodhan O’Riordain launched a vitriolic attack on the role of faith in Irish education, screeching ‘LET’S GET THEM OUT!’ in a rambling sectarian rally that was evocative of the worst excesses of Ian Paisley in his prime.
O’Riordain’s crazed rant suggested imposing a Bismarck like Kulturkampf on the Catholic faith in Ireland, routing the faith from schools, hospitals and various other parts of public life, using post independence poverty as the 1920s as an excuse.
This seems quite remarkable, given that O’Riordain himself had the rather privileged position of working as a principal in a Catholic school in Saint Laurence’s National School in Dublin before becoming a full time politician during the Labour Party’s time in government as the enforcers of the International Monetary Fund. It was the job of Labour to deliver bruising financial cuts to families and wider society in order to allow for bankers to have their bailout honoured.
O’Riordain’s party also ravaged the education sector in Ireland during their reign of terror from 2011 to 2016, destroying teacher’s wages, sending many overseas and even viciously and sinisterly making disgraceful efforts to remove History from the school curriculum under Labour Minister for Education Ruari Quinn. One of the first actions of the government, which was a coalition with Association of Catholic Priests linked party Fine Gael, was to deflect attention from their cruel economic policies by focusing instead upon scapegoating Catholics. They closed the Vatican Embassy in their opening months, with Taoiseach Enda Kenny embarking upon deranged rants that diverted focus from the burgeoning homelessness and emigration crises to the poverty of the 1920s instead, which was motivated in part towards easing resentment towards the Queen of England on her visit that same year.
Both Labour leader Alan Kelly and O’Riordain himself have family connections to firms that specialise in ‘information’. Alan Kelly’s brother Declan is the founder of Teneo. O’Riordain, meanwhile, is married to one of the founders of Kinzen, a journalist who was also involved with Storyful. Kinzen recently received €110,000 to help the Irish government to ‘combat misinformation’. According to Gript, this was attained ‘outside of [the] normal tendering processing’. The Department of Health stopped working with Kinzen after Gript’s recently article was published.
Now, in a letter addressed to Alan Kelly, Bishop Alphonsus Cullinan raised concerns regarding O’Riordain’s frightening rhetoric, which some have likened to Ian Paisley. The bishop pointed out the chilling ‘sustained applause from the delegates’, who screamed and cheered the bellows demanding ‘LET’S GET THEM OUT!’.
In a fair comment, he asked, ‘I am wondering is this the official attitude of the Labour Party to Religious run schools?’
This of course is important in light of O’Riordain’s past as a principal in a Catholic school, but it is also important in that Labour must know that the vast majority of parents want schools under Catholic patronage as they are better run than those run by secular bodies. For example, in the school league tables published by The Times for 2020, the entire top 20 was composed of Catholic schools. In fact, almost all of the top 50 was composed of Catholic schools. Some would attempt to attribute this to catchment areas and so forth, but the bottom line is that Catholic schools work just as well in inner cities as they do in rural areas, with students excelling in fee paying and non fee paying schools. The same cannot be said of schools that are still trying to recover from the legacy of Riordain’s party, with current teacher shortages resulting from their decision to squeeze working class people out of the profession by making teacher training an extra year and twice as expensive.
The bishop correctly told Kelly that ‘our schools are generally working extremely well’, which they are. He also stated that ‘there is a huge volunteer involvement and the schools are most inclusive’.
Lastly, he correctly stated that, ‘Mr. O’Riordain’s attitude seems to be one of almost inciting hatred’.
An incensed and self pitying O’Riordain venomously responded in The Irish Examiner, which is owned by The Irish Times. He whined, ‘There has been reporting recently that I isolated one faith group in my comments and I didn’t’.
This comment seems contradictory to the actual video evidence, where he clearly implies that it is Catholic education (unless he blames some other group for Magdalene Laundries) that he wants removed before his speech degenerates into an almost involuntary burst of ‘LET’S GET THEM OUT!’.
O’Riordain then comically stated, ‘I’ve never received any letter from him before on poverty, homelessness, education or drug addiction issues but this is the one he decided to get excited about’.
Under O’Riordain’s party’s infamous recent stint in government, the homelessness crisis got so bad, that one homeless campaigner (a Catholic priest no less) compared the levels of poverty to the famine.
Interestingly, O’Riordain’s boss Alan Kelly, did receive a letter about homelessness in 2014 but according to an article in The Mirror, did not reply. The article, by Sarah Bardon, stated that then Dublin Mayor Christy Burke has written a letter to Kelly but it had been ignored. It also stated that 21 homeless people had crossed his path that day, including a woman and her 5 kids forced into a B&B by Labour’s policies. Why should the church be removed from schools because of the poverty of the 1920s, but Labour be allowed into schools despite the poverty that they created 5 years ago?
He stated:
‘‘When I hear Government spokespersons saying they are going to eradicate homelessness by 2016 I sometimes have to hit myself and say are they for real as they don’t understand the whole crisis.
“If you look at reports from Simon or Merchants Quay, massive increases in people homeless, huge increases of people on the streets, addiction services being neglected. The tsunami has happened. The President raised it a number of times.
“I have called Mr Kelly to meet me to discuss homelessness. I am still waiting for a reply.”
Labour had actually had the gall to claim that they would eradicate homelessness by 2016, despite ultimately doing the opposite and increasing it, with Catholics over represented in helping to provide relief and assistance to those in need.
Lastly, O’Riordain, complained about the bishop misspelling his name, an apparent sore point for the politician, going back to his childhood.
Labour had their time in government, it was a disaster for the ordinary people of Ireland.
Perhaps they should learn to show humility for their incompetence instead of asserting blame for their poor education system to the 1920s.
