by Tom Reddy
The odds of his winning a nomination were stacked against him, he claimed, and he appealed to the political parties to take the whip off county councils, ‘out of decency,’ so that he could seek a nomination.
Virtually anyone else being elected would not be news internationally. My election would be a global news item. I would be the first head of state to be openly gay. People have known I’m gay for 40 years; they’ve had time to get over it. On the other hand every channel in North America would cover it and I’m a sufficiently wily old bird to deal with the questions, park them and sell Ireland like no one’s business.
Like Jennifer O’Connell before her, Mary O’Sullivan was charmed by Norris. ‘This man is made to be President. Vote number one David Norris,’ she concluded her article.
On the same day the news pages of the Sunday Tribune carried a picture of the current affairs presenter of RTE’s ‘Prime Time’, Miriam O’Callaghan, and reported her as a possible candidate for a nomination by the political parties. Her brother Jim, a barrister, is a Fianna Fáil Dublin city councillor. However, she is politically non-aligned. She said she had not been approached by
any political party in relation to the upcoming presidential election. You are just one of quite a number of people who have contacted me in the past few weeks on this issue; a number of radio stations also called. At the moment I am just busy focusing on my job, my charity work and my family.
The Tribune also reported that Brian Crowley MEP was seen as the most likely Fianna Fáil candidate, while Michael D. Higgins or Fergus Finlay were likely Labour Party contenders. The sitting MEPs Mairead McGuinness and Seán Kelly, a former GAA official, were being mooted as possible Fine Gael candidates. Among the likely independent field, Senator David Norris, Seán O’Callaghan and the chairperson of the Special Olympics, Mary Davis, were ‘seen as credible options.’
The following afternoon Finlay was in Dublin city centre attending a meeting. He returned to his car to find that the passenger window had been smashed and the contents of the car stolen. As he tidied up, his mobile phone began hopping as text after text came in congratulating him on being elected President of Ireland! According to Finlay,
at first I thought I was the victim of some elaborate practical joke. But it transpired that Joe Duffy’s ‘Liveline’ programme had just finished conducting a poll. After about ten thousand people had phoned in to the programme and eight or nine distinguished people had been eliminated, the show’s listeners had decided that I should be given the responsibility.
In fact the programme had received 16,000 text messages offering their preferences for possible candidates, including Bertie Ahern, John Bruton, Brian Crowley, Fergus Finlay, Michael D. Higgins, David Norris, Feargal Quinn and the Ombudsman, Emily O’Reilly.
Finlay’s party colleague, Higgins, bucked the trend, surviving the round-by-round cull as politicians were eliminated first. O’Reilly and Finlay went through to the final run-off, where Finlay triumphed by five hundred votes. He didn’t specifically reveal his intentions, but he said that
the great thing about yesterday’s poll (apart from the winner, naturally) is that it will encourage more and more people to take part in the debate. At the end, the important thing is not who you vote for—it is to get out, get involved, and start demanding change.
On 9 September he wrote a half-page article for the Herald with the headline ‘President of Ireland? Yeah, I’ve decided to go for it. Here’s why.’ This headline (which he didn’t write) may have seemed casual or flippant, but his intention was clear, firmly focused on winning the nomination and the Áras. He wrote of the decade of wealth the country had enjoyed, but he questioned its legacy. Society was still damaged by divisions and inequality, there had been political failures and a banking crisis, and after a decade of wealth all that seemed to be left was public anger, frustration and ‘crumbling schools and overcrowded hospitals.’
The election is a good bit away for sure. But the time has come for us all to start discussing and debating what the presidency could and should mean to the people of Ireland, and how we can use it to start charting a new direction for ourselves.
That’s the main reason I’ve decided to put myself forward for a nomination within my own party, the Labour Party. I know it’s really early. But I think there’s a great opportunity now for an open and vigorous debate about the issues involved. I’d love to see a debate about the values that should inform our entire approach—the message we should take to the people, and how we should set about winning this crucial election with a professional and committed campaign.
In light of everything that has happened in the last few years in Ireland, it has never been more important that the people be given a real choice about what kind of spirit should inform our politics in the years ahead.
That weekend’s Sunday Independent published the results of an opinion poll by Quantum Research featuring three declared candidates and five speculative candidates. It would give comfort to Finlay.
Norris topped the poll, with 28 per cent, a figure he was to hover around in future polls; Finlay, who had declared only a few days earlier, took a creditable 20 per cent; Higgins polled 11 per cent; Davis and McGuinness 9 per cent; Ahern 7 per cent; and Mary O’Rourke 6 per cent.
In the middle of October, President Mary McAleese honoured five people who between them had given 105 years of voluntary service to the Gaisce Awards when she presented them with an inaugural Dr Patrick Hillery Medal. This award was introduced to honour people who had given twenty-one years of service, and it marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of the foundation of the youth awards. It commemorates its founder and former President of Ireland. President McAleese explained its genesis: ‘Dr Hillery set up the Gaisce awards at a time when Ireland was in the throes of a very deep recession, but rather than bow to it he saw this as a challenge to build a bridge to a certain kind of future.’
On the same day in Brussels, Mary Davis was meeting the president of the European Council, Herman van Rompuy, to greet the arrival of the ‘Flame of Hope’ en route to the start of the European Special Olympics in Poland at the weekend. Davis acknowledged to reporters covering the event that she had been approached by supporters encouraging her to put her name forward for the Presidency. She explained:
Life is hectic for me at the moment. Yes, a lot of people have approached me that would have worked with me in the past … Obviously when I organised the games in 2003 with thirty thousand volunteers, many of whom stay in touch and are all texting me, encouraging me all the way … but we’ll see. I’m busy at the moment.
The European correspondent of the Irish Times, Arthur Beasley, filled in some background, reporting that she had been mooted as a possible Labour Party candidate six years ago but ruled herself out. ‘When it was put to her that she was not ruling herself out now, she said: “I never rule myself out of anything … I’m just a go-getter through and through.”’
Davis would later say that, as she travelled around the country in her Special Olympics role, dozens and dozens of people had urged her to go forward for the Presidency. ‘It hadn’t occurred to me up until then,’ she recalled. However, she took time to think and to consult an informal kitchen cabinet of advisers about the consequences of a bid, what was required to be a candidate, who would make up her campaign team, how to raise finance, what the job required and, most importantly of all, whether it was feasible for an independent to take on the a political party nominee.
A few days later the former Fine Gael leader and Taoiseach John Bruton was interviewed on RTE’s ‘Drivetime’ radio programme by Mary Wilson. He addressed the issue of motive.
There is too much tendency in Ireland to look for other motives behind what people are doing, to say, ‘Oh, he’s saying this because he wants that.’ I am saying what I am saying because I believe it, not because I want anything.
Asked specifically about the Presidency, Bruton said:
You don’t rule out anything of that nature …
That is not really what I am interested in. I am interested in being an active servant of the country, helping it through its immediate problems by whatever little bit of advice I can offer, and helping people to see things in proportion … not talking about personal ambitions.
In the coming months the economic crisis, the general election and the succession of political dilemmas in the Government were centre stage. Meanwhile, out of the public eye, candidates were organising their campaigns with a view to covering both options in the face of a looming general election: would they opt to seek a nomination either from councillors or from what the opinion polls were predicting would be a radically reconstituted Dáil and Seanad?
Chapter 3
PULLED UP
Joe Duffy’s ‘Liveline’ phone-in programme about topical issues often caused controversies and set the following day’s headlines, which ensured that it was consistently in the country’s five most-listened-to radio programmes. On Monday 30 May 2011 Helen Lucy Burke, a former restaurant critic and contributor to the current affairs magazine Magill, rang Joe Duffy to talk about a topic of the day and the need to remind people of headlines generated nine years earlier.
She had interviewed David Norris in 2002 for Magill, and she wanted listeners to know that she thought Norris was not a suitable candidate for the Presidency. She quoted from the article, both from Norris’s words and from her own comments. Norris, she said, was in favour of ‘free-range sexuality’, and she went on to describe his views as ‘startling’, ‘evil’ and ‘astounding.’ She also alluded to a holiday he had taken in Thailand. It was a political bombshell.
Norris issued a statement to the Duffy programme trying to put the Magill interview in context.
During the course of a comprehensive conversation, Miss Burke and I engaged in an academic discussion about classical Greece and sexual activity in a historical context; it was a hypothetical, intellectual conversation which should not have been seen as a considered representation of my view … The references to sexual activity were what was emphasised and subsequently picked up and taken out of context in other media outlets … The presentation of references to sexuality in the article attributed to me were misleading. I did not ever and would not approve of the finished article as it appeared.
John Waters, however, consultant editor of Magill at the time, contradicted him and insisted a few days later that Senator Norris had been given two opportunities by Burke to reconsider his comments before publication. Norris had asked for a few minor amendments and then ‘pronounced himself happy for his views to go into print.’
Duffy asked Burke why she had decided to resurrect the article so many years later. He also interviewed the journalist Joe Jackson on the programme, who defended Norris, citing an interview he had conducted with Norris years before. He challenged Burke, saying she was quoting her own opinions, and said he’d be happy to review the tape of the interview for veracity.
The following morning Norris went on ‘Today with Pat Kenny’ to try to repair some of the damage. ‘This was an academic discussion over dinner; we were tossing around ideas,’ he told the audience. He made it clear that he abhorred paedophilia, and said that Burke’s reference to his ‘holiday’ in Thailand had been ‘left hanging’ when in fact he was visiting the country to investigate sexual exploitation on behalf of the United Nations. ‘The thing I regret most was allowing myself to be interviewed by a restaurant critic,’ he said, admitting that the incident had provided a ‘steep learning curve’.
On Twitter the restaurant critic Tom Doorley tweeted: ‘I personally know and like both David Norris and Helen Lucy Burke. But I think David Norris would be both a better babysitter and president.’ The Irish Mail on Sunday republished the Magill article the following weekend, saying that Norris ‘clearly set out a string of highly controversial views on sex, paedophilia, the age of consent, incest and abuse.’
Burke said that Norris told her he objected to ‘state interference’ in people’s sex lives, recording his initially cautious comments as follows:
I believe very strongly in people being allowed to make any choices they like, within very wide limits … But I also believe that once you make those choices, you should take responsibility for them … I wouldn’t draw the line for other people. I would hope that we could produce a society in which people would be inclined to draw lines for themselves … There’s a lot of nonsense about paedophilia. I can say this because I haven’t the slightest interest in children, or in people who are considerably younger than me. I cannot understand how anybody could find children of either sex the slightest bit attractive sexually. To me, what is attractive about people is the fact that they display the signs of sexual maturity. But pre-pubescent children who lack any identifying characteristics of sexual maturity, I cannot understand why anybody would find them sexually appropriate.
On the other hand—yes, they do find them so. But in terms of classic paedophilia, as practised by the Greeks, for example, where it is an older man introducing a younger man or boy to adult life, I think there can be something said for it.
Now again, this is not something that appeals to me, although when I was younger it would most certainly have appealed to me in the sense that I would have greatly relished the prospect of an older, attractive, mature man taking me under this wing, lovingly introducing me to sexual realities, and treating me with affection and teaching me about life—yes, I think that would be lovely; I would have enjoyed that.
The conversation moved on to talk about public attitudes to paedophilia.
I think there is complete and utter hysteria about this subject, and there is also confusion between homosexuality and paedophilia on the one hand and between paedophilia and pederasty on the other.
Norris also attacked the media, criticising them by saying that,
for example, the gutter press in England and Ireland fanned the flames of this kind of thing, and they dehumanised people, called them evil beasts, perverts and all this kind of thing …
Of course there is a whole spectrum. In my opinion, the teacher, or Christian Brother, who puts his hand into a boy’s pocket during a history lesson, that is one end of the spectrum. But then there is another. There is the person who attacks children of either sex, rapes them, brutalises them and then murders them. But the way things are presented here it’s almost as if they were all exactly the same and I don’t think they are.
And I have to tell you this—I think that the children in some instances are more damaged by the condemnation than the actual experience.
In her article for Magill, Burke said that Senator Norris ‘did not appear to endorse any minimum age, or endorse my protest that a child was not capable of informed consent,’ quoting him as saying that ‘the law in this sphere should take into account consent rather than age.’ The Mail commented:
When asked about incest, he seemed to have no objections in principle. As Miss Burke explained: ‘He hesitated, and conceded that in the case of girls a case could be made for a ban, as a possible resulting pregnancy might be genetically undesirable.’
In the same edition John Waters (now a columnist with the Irish Times and the Mail on Sunday) crystallised the issue. In his full-page essay he wrote: ‘Sorry David, this is not about your sexuality. It’s about your stance on sex abuse.’ Norris’s comments about being introduced to sexual behaviour by older men was, according to Waters, unexceptionable in itself.
It becomes more ominous, however, when connected to other remarks in the interview. For example, in one passage, David Norris appears to be saying that sexually abused children might suffer more from the exposure and ‘condemnation’ of their abuser than from the abuse itself.
Taken in the round, his comments amounted to at least an insinuation that this society is excessively hung up about paedophilia and that there are other, more laid back but perhaps more appropriate options for societies in perceiving and dealing with the issue.
The media response to all this has, in
general, been of a piece with the treatment of recent controversies involving the poet Cathal Ó Searcaigh and film director Roman Polanski. In both cases the defining question appeared to be not the action of these individuals but that they were being challenged at all.
Three years ago David Norris joined with sundry ‘artists’ and media people to defend Ó Searcaigh following the showing of a shocking documentary that raised serious questions about his relations with teenage boys in Nepal. In a letter to the Irish Times, Norris described that controversy as a ‘witch hunt’ and questioned the motives of the filmmaker. Is there, perchance, a pattern here?
The point about the Norris interview is that, taken as a whole, it did indeed trivialise what are, in this and other civilised societies, grave criminal offences. The big question now for this society is not whether or not we will have a gay president but whether or not we are serious in our distaste for paedophilia.
Waters’s opinion would prove to be the central logic and argument for anyone engaging in the debate about Norris’s fitness to run for office.
In a society that had been dominated by the Catholic Church for decades, and that had recently begun coming to terms with the sexual and physical abuse that had been meted out to children in its care and with the systematic cover-up of abuse by priests, Norris’s apparently questionable attitudes to paedophilia provoked outrage.
That same weekend Eoghan Harris, a former political appointment to the Seanad, gave Norris his public imprimatur, having sat beside him in the Seanad, where he witnessed how he had spoken about child sex abuse with genuine grief. Fourteen years earlier Harris had provided perhaps the most memorable sound-bite when he railed against the candidature of Mary McAleese, labelling her a ‘tribal time bomb’. As he wrote:
