February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
By Patrick Markey
Bertie, your urinal awaits
A century-old Irish club in Australia wants Taoiseach Bertie Ahern to urinate in their premises to keep tradition alive.
But the Irish leader, who will visit Melbourne in March, has decided not to visit Australia’s oldest Irish center, The Celtic Club, the first time in its 113-year history a taoiseach has not done so, the Examiner newspaper reported.
"Understandably, we are all extremely disappointed and some members are very upset," club secretary Ruairí Kelly said.
Kelly said since the club opened in 1887 every Irish president and Irish prime minister visiting Australia has attended a function at the club.
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But Ahern will break with tradition. A spokesman for the taoiseach said the Ahern will be on a tight schedule, visiting Melbourne, Canberra, and Sydney only for a few days.
"In Melbourne he will be hosting an Irish night at which all Irish club members are being invited," the spokesman said.
The spokesman said the tradition was already broken by Charles Haughey and Albert Reynolds. But John O’Callaghan, a former Celtic Club manager for 30 years, disagrees. He said all previous Irish leaders had paid a visit.
"I hope Mr. Ahern will see sense and visit the club even if only to use the toilet to take a pee and keep the tradition alive. Surely a wee pee isn’t too much to ask?" said club member Anne O’Rourke, 37, from Sligo.
Dubliner Kelly said the club members were extremely disappointed that such a long Irish tradition Down Under will be broken.
"The news hit us like a ton of bricks, and its been quite painful," he said. "Imagine if the American Irish were told there would be no St. Patrick’s Day parade. That’s how we feel just now."
Abusive lessons
He taught her how to dance and guided her to championship trophies.
But the former champion from Letterkenny wept in court recently as she accused her teacher of indecent assault.
The Irish Independent reported that the dancer, who was not named, said she had been assaulted between 1983 and 1988 as she was torn between her love of dance and her need for the abuse to stop.
The abuse started when she was just 12, and continued through her teenage years, the 29-year-old woman testified in Letterkenny Circuit Court. A champion at national and international level, the woman was a student of the teacher from the age of 6 until she was 19.
The paper reported that the woman testified the abuse often took place in his car as they returned from competitions but occasionally it occurred in his house, where she went to baby-sit his young daughter.
"He moved very slowly from one stage to the next and as I got older he would go further and further," she said.
Once when the woman sprained her ankle just before a major competition, he told her it was God’s way of punishing her and that she needed to learn to control her sexual feelings.
Lost remains
In 1996, arch’ologists dug up the remains of 200 Kilkenny people as part of an examination of Ireland’s earlier generations.
But four years later the remains are still being stored in plastic buckets at an army base, reports the Kilkenny People newspaper.
One local councilor is now lobbying to have the remains returned to their graves in respect for the dead.
"Surely, after four years, the people involved would have concluded their studies into the remains," the councilor said.
"And I know that it was the wish of the late mayor that the bodies be returned to their rightful burial place."
The Department of Heritage, Arts, Gaeltacht and the Islands said no decision had been made of the remains which were uncovered during the digging of a car park. Experts believe the remains should be retained for research.
For now, it seems, the bones will stay above ground.