THE FORMER governor of Mountjoy Prison has hit out at the “spin” which suggests that a household charge of “only €2 a week” would not impose extreme hardship on people on low incomes.
John Lonergan said at the Boyle Arts Festival in Co Roscommon that it was also spin to suggest that people were choosing not to work.
“There is an arrogance there and a smugness in the suggestion that seems to be becoming increasingly prevalent that people won’t get up off their arses and do something, when we know that most human beings need the status and the job satisfaction – as well as the money – that a job brings.”
Mr Lonergan said it was patently unfair to impose a uniform €100 household charge regardless of income or circumstance and to justify it as only €2 a week, “when €2 is a lot to someone with very little”.
Mr Lonergan and presidential candidate Michael D Higgins both arrived in Boyle yesterday for the festival. The recently closed Xtravision shop is now the Purple Onion Art Gallery, the former Rockingham Arms pub has also morphed into an arts space while portraits by local artist David Gascoigne have pride of place in the shop window at Boles of Boyle.
At King House, the former Connaught Rangers barracks, an elaborate bronze bird table is displayed outside the door, part of the art exhibition, an eye-catching piece for sale at €7,500. Nearby, the birthplace of Hollywood actor Maureen O’Sullivan, famous for her role in the early Tarzan movies, has also been taken over by an artist.
Mr Higgins who read from his recently published New and Selected Poems at the Church of Ireland last night, is an old hand at the festival, having opened it as minister. He said after Boyle he was heading for Sligo and from there to the MacGill Summer School in Glenties, where he will speak today.
Brian Keenan will also drop into the festival for another conversation, hot on the heels of writers Tim Pat Coogan and Colm Tóibín.