Golfer Grealish grovels as nation rages over party on the 19th hole

It was the ultimate betrayal. Treasonous, even, in its disregard of loyalty to one’s country and its people.

The great unwashed hunkered down last Wednesday and digested the demoralising news from the night before – that Covid-19 had reared its murderous head again, to such an extent that further restrictions on our individual freedoms were being re-imposed.

It was another blow to the ordinary folk of a weary nation, who for six months had missed funerals of close friends and relatives; cancelled weddings, christenings and birthdays; forewent necessary medical procedures; lost money on non-refundable foreign holidays; and gave-up simple pleasures in life; haircuts, gym, GAA, freshly-poured pints, visiting nursing homes, hugging grandchildren etc.

Everyone’s sick of the restrictions. But we collectively groaned and said, ‘f**k it, if Dr Ronan Glynn says indoor gatherings now need to be kept to six not 50, and outdoor gatherings must be restricted to 15, to save lives and curtail Covid-19, we’ll put up with it, in the national interest’.

Meanwhile, in a hotel in Clifden that same Wednesday, in a parallel planet populated by pompous plonkers, eighty-one of the ‘great and the good’ of Irish society, quaffed champagne, guzzled porter and grazed on racks of Connemara lamb.

Among them were legislators paid shed-loads to agree new restrictions, and communicate them to the public.

Mayo Minister Dara Calleary, barely a wet week in the job that fell into his lap after another scandal, was on the Six One News on RTÉ television warning about house parties. “Covid loves to party”, said the hypocrite party-animal Calleary who hot-tailed it West less than 24 hours later for a hooley honouring the late Fianna Fáil TD and MEP, Mark Killilea. Sickening.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.

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