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Updated: 4.25 pm, Wednesday.
A PRO SAME-sex marriage campaign group in Kilkenny has denied it was a “front” for the by-election campaign of Renua Ireland candidate Patrick McKee, despite a controversial endorsement on Friday.
“Yes Kilkenny” – separate to “Yes Equality Kilkenny”, the local branch of the national campaign - presented itself as “non-party” and a “cross-community campaign to secure a Yes vote,” during the lead-up to the same-sex marriage referendum.
However, it has emerged the campaign was run by figures within Renua Ireland, including McKee’s campaign manager Adrian Shanahan and local party activist John Eardly.
And on Friday, the eve of both the same-sex marriage referendum and by-election, “Yes Kilkenny” posted an unexpected party political endorsement on its Facebook page.
Enya Kennedy, who ran the “Yes Equality Kilkenny” campaign, said it was “cynical and hurtful,” and her group posted a clarification on their own Facebook page, distancing themselves from the endorsement.
Speaking to TheJournal.ie, however, McKee’s campaign manager Adrian Shanahan denied the Yes Kilkenny campaign was a “front” for the Renua candidate’s campaign.
The Yes Kilkenny campaign was in train long before Patrick McKee announced he was moving from Fianna Fáil.
The suggestion it was set up as a precursor for Patrick’s Renua campaign is completely untrue and unfounded.
Records show that the YesKilkenny.ie website was registered by Shanahan on 6 February, seven weeks before McKee announced his by-election candidacy, on 30 March.
As for Friday’s endorsement, Shanahan says:
I was aware the endorsement was happening, personally I had my reservations, and it was done without Patrick’s knowledge.
Shanahan says the endorsement was posted via his Facebook account, but “it wasn’t my decision.”
Local barrister John Eardly is chairman of Yes Kilkenny, and also a Renua activist, appearing at Patrick McKee’s campaign launch in March and canvassing for him during the by-election campaign.
A spokesperson for Renua Ireland told TheJournal.ie the national party was not aware of the controversial endorsement, and added “We’re not aware of any ‘front’.”
We wouldn’t be chasing up what happens in Carlow-Kilkenny in terms of these things.
It would be a matter of grave concern to the party if anything untoward occurred in so critical an issue as the gay marriage referendum.
We have not, at this moment in time, received complaints, but if we receive complaints, we will look into them and we will respond as swiftly as we can.
Green Party candidate Malcolm Noonan, who got 5.3% of votes, has condemned the Yes Kilkenny endorsement as “shameless and reprehensible.”
Renua in particular need to take a long, hard look at themselves after their stroke with the Yes campaign in Kilkenny completely backfired and threatened to derail the local campaign at such a critical juncture.
Their ploy to win an endorsement from a Yes group was a shameless and reprehensible attempt to grab votes and shows that they are far and away from being the party of ‘new politics’.
Patrick McKee got 9.5 % of first preferences in Saturday’s by-election, garnering a total of 9,269 votes and finishing fourth, behind Fianna Fáil’s newest TD Bobby Aylward.
TheJournal.ie requested comment from Patrick McKee and John Eardly, but did not receive a response.
Update: On Wednesday, John Eardly released a statement clarifying that he alone was responsible for posting the endorsement, and apologising for “any hurt or upset” it had caused.
Originally published: 2.58 pm, Tuesday.
Results are released in September! Norma Foley needs to resign, between this and the school bus fiasco she is abysmal at her job!
@John Long: it’s the junior cert , it really doesn’t matter
@Ciaran: The kids put the effort in. Should that be dismissed?
@Ciaran: except to the kids who did the exams
@John Long: Get over yourself, it’s the junior cert, an exam of no importance of any description.
@Ciaran: you seem to have the same attitude as the rest of the government. It really doesn’t matter!
@Justin Gillespie: No.
@Justin Gillespie: it is important as it’s basic requirement for apprenticeships.
@Justin Gillespie: I think it’s you that needs to get over yourself not every wants to go on to leaving cert so junior cert is very important to those that want to go for an apprenticeship instead.
@Bernard Mc Grath: you might be going over his head here. I doubt he even knows what apprenticeships are let alone their relation to the JC
@John Long: This is the SEC, not the DES. So, no matter what you think of Norma, this isn’t her fault.
@sean o’dhubhghaill: Her position is minister of education!
We keep forgetting that exam fees are paid for a product that has not been delivered in time. Maybe the State Exam commission should refund for being in default of an undertaking.
@Irish big fellow: There has been no exam fees for the last three years nearly because of Covid
Clearly gave this zero priority. Money on offer vs hours and expertise expected not attracting numbers needed, payment for those that do the job takes months to come through. Corrections completed long ago and yet results delayed and delayed and delayed. Ball dropped.
Junior cert provides valuable experience for future state exams, it important the results are released in a prompt manner as people who decided to drop out and take up an apprenticeship need them as it is a requirement for apprenticeships.
I don’t think it can be overstated how completely worthless it is as a learning aid to receive exam results 5 and a half months after the exam.
Students will already be neck deep in a new curriculum by then and preparing for christmas tests on that. They won’t even remember what the questions were in an exam so long and will have already made subject choice or higher level decisions already.
The whole thing is just an insult to students. Forced to sit a state exam the state has seemingly little interest in correcting. It should be a resigning matter for the Education minister but it’s Ireland and we’re used to tolerating less.
Correct me if I’m wrong; Teachers are paid 12 months of the year, yet are paid extra for correcting papers. How is it not a mandatory part of the job??
@El Grogan: Do you want LC exams to be marked by people who don’t want to mark it and who don’t care? What do you do with those, who make a pig’s ear if it? Do you take them off the job and pay them less? So the people who remain marking thw state exams get paid more? Oh, wait…………………..
@El Grogan: I had a similar conversation regarding the leaving cert results. From my understanding of what I got in reply, normal teachers don’t mark state exams, professional exam markers do. My point at the time was that I found this strange as teachers are paid over the marking period yet this is not part of their job. In France, for example, it is. Not all teachers are needed but each teacher chosen, gets a mail detailing what marking centre they are required to attend to mark papers. Exams end in early July and results are published near the end of July, despite the student population being much larger.
@David Stapleton: You can efficiently and accurately mark 25 exams per day. At 5 days a week over 3 weeks that is about 350+ exams per corrector.
Best of luck to all
The results are typically released mid September
I think the junior cert is pointless unless the person wants to leave school afterwards and get an apprenticeship. It’s alot of unnecessary pressure to put on a teenager if they go to do their leaving certificate because when you get that then the junior cert is nothing
@Anthony Hilton: look up the reason
I remember my first day in 4th year. “The junior cert meant sod all lads….the leaving cert will be 10 times as hard and you’ll have less time to learn it all as this is a doss year”
Where did all the examiners go?! 1 in 3 disappeared?
Was it down to the post-covid travel bottleneck or something else?
@Rachel Ray: the problem at the moment comes from two sources: dumbing down of educational standards, accompanied by students’ sense of entitlement. Who would want to involve themselves in a situation where everybody demands that they do well and if they don’t, go for rechecks. A neighbour of mine is a teacher and according to her the economic imperative to get as many people through education right up to college standard has created chaos since she is caught between retaining her own integrity re marking and giving in to economics that insist everybody must do well and then pay for the next stage of their education
@Rachel Ray: They made the perfectly rational decision that time with their families was more important than money, maybe?
have your say