Very hairy moment as Grealish goes bald-headed for Trevor

Noel Grealish popped into Tom Nally’s city centre barbers for the obligatory election campaign haircut photo opportunity.

The balding Independent TD, who in fairness hasn’t many hairs left to cut, joked how Tom had given him his first Number One of the campaign – a reference to the closeness of the electric razor blade.

Afterwards, Grealish went bald-headed on the offensive, attacking Sinn Féin rival Trevor Ó Clochartaigh.

As political spats go, it was quite entertaining.

It all started innocently enough but then escalated into a full blown row between the Shinners and the Grealish camp.

A former Progressive Democrats leader and TD, Grealish uploaded on Facebook a photograph of himself and a few canvassers, including several Independent councillors: Terry O’Flaherty, Donal Lyons, Declan McDonnell, Jim Cuddy and Thomas Welby.

Trevor posted a comment about how the PDs were “alive and kicking” in Galway West.

And then Noel blew a gasket. “What about Slab Murphy, he’s still around . . .  Who calls all the shots for Sinn Féin,” he asked.

Trevor said the Árd Comhairle of the party did and he was proud to be a Shinner.

That riled Noel even more. “Sinn Féin/IRA made life pure hell for a lot of people and still do.” In this the 100th anniversary of 1916, he said, “there is absolutely no comparison between the people who fought to give us our freedom and the thugs in the IRA now”.

Trevor said this was “nonsense” and “bluster” and that Noel and the PDs had more in common with William Martin Murphy (MP and press baron), than the signatories of the Proclamation.

Welby reminded Trevor of his Labour past and how he was a “failed” candidate for the party in 2002. Trevor suggested the PDs were a failure and that Noel and Welby’s “Thatcherite” policies were failed too. The online argument flared for hours, with dozens and dozens of replies and insults flying.

Even barber Tom Nally, a Gaelic football referee, would struggle to bring calm to this schemozzle.

Catherine’s cousins the early Risers

There’s a lot of talk these days about the Easter Rising, with all political parties trying to lay claim to the revolutionaries of 1916.

But they’re relative newbies to this Rising malarkey. Not Catherine Connolly, though.

We hear her ancestors were rising-up long before the revolutionaries of 100 years ago.

At the launch of the Independent city councillor’s General Election campaign, Seósamh Ó Cuaig, the Connemara county councillor, told a yarn about her forefathers’ link to the 1798 Rebellion.

“She’s one of our own,” declared Seósamh about Connolly, whose ancestors ‘hid’ in the wilds of Connemara one of the leaders of the 1798 Rebellion.

Ó Cuaig has traced Connolly’s roots to a man called McDonagh who helped Fr Myles Prendergast, a leader of the Rising, who went ‘on the run’ to Connemara to seek refuge from the Yeomen.

This was in the days when Humanity Dick “owned” Connemara.

A publican was about to divulge Fr Myles whereabouts, but he was sheltered by McDonagh, from Carna, who is on Connolly’s family tree.

The Connemara blood at least explains her fiery streak.

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