The Curious Case of the Mayo Librarian Read Online Free PDF

people of Mayo that they were better off with a commissioner controlling the purse strings. ‘I believe the people of Mayo,’ he said, ‘are people who pay their rates pretty well up to date, and the people of Mayo who responded to a demand from the County Council in the year 1928-29 by giving them £71,000 odd to carry on their administration had to respond two years afterwards, in the year 1930-31, by giving them an additional £51,000.’
    â€˜The minister is attacking his own party on the council,’ protested Deputy Walsh.
    â€˜I am being attacked by my own party,’ replied Minister Mulcahy.
    â€˜He is now attacking them.’
    â€˜I am telling my own party that it might not be a bad day’s work done on the ordinary administration side.’
    â€˜Let him test public opinion and he will know it,’ added Deputy Walsh.
    â€˜There was just one other point which I might answer,’ continued Richard Mulcahy. ‘Deputy Walsh is full of talk here.’
    â€˜He wants your job,’ suggested Deputy Sheehy from Cork by way of explanation.
    â€˜He gets more coherent when he goes down to Mayo,’ alleged Mulcahy, ‘and you get somehow to understand him better when he speaks from a platform in Mayo, as reported in some of the local papers, than you do when hearing him here on certain matters. I think the same might be said of Deputy Clery and Deputy Ruttledge.’
    â€˜Crusaders,’ exclaimed Deputy Gorey.
    â€˜Deputy Gorey is more at home with his bulls in Kilkenny,’ jeered Mr Kennedy.
    â€˜We are told that we would not have stood by the law in County Mayo were it not that there was a Dublin by-election on, that the freemasons dictated to us – that we had to stand by the appointment of this lady, and that we knuckled under to the freemasons because there was a by-election in County Dublin,’ concluded Richard Mulcahy. He then proceeded to go into forensic detail with regard to his party’s electoral support in County Dublin and argued that they had no need for any extra votes there. Their candidate had received 35,362 votes as opposed to 15,024 for the Fianna Fáil candidate. ‘Deputies on the opposite side ought to read their own papers,’ he advised, ‘Catholic journalism to be effective and to be truly Catholic needs first of all to be fair. We have comments from the great Catholic party over there who are going to replace the bishops in telling us …’
    â€˜No, no; it is the minister who is going to replace the bishops in the west of Ireland,’ interrupted Deputy Walsh.
    Richard Mulcahy continued: ‘that in the matter of doctors and librarians we should be fair. They have to answer, not only to the people here and to one another, but they have to answer some place else for the methods they employ to try to establish the Kingdom of God here on earth.’
    The Dáil was divided: Tá, 73; Níl, 62. The Mayo deputies, Michael Davis and Mark Henry, sided against their party, but were not joined by any of their Cumann na nGaedheal colleagues. The Farmers’ Party and the independent deputies in the main, voted against the amendment. It was solidly supported by Fianna Fáil and the Labour Party. Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney, the Minister for Justice, was the only Mayo TD to support the government.
    The government had prevailed. Later, at that same sitting of the Dáil, Deputy Ruttledge’s long-delayed motion on the dissolution of Mayo County Council was put forward. ‘That the Dáil disapproves of the action of the Minister for Local Government and public health in dissolving the Mayo County Council, and demands its immediate restoration.’ As this substantive matter had already been dealt with, this was voted on without debate. The Dáil divided on this occasion: Tá, 60; Níl, 73. Deputy Michael Davis abstained.
‘The pangs of intellectual famine’
    The Irish Times