Looking back through the Minutes
As Recording Secretary it is my job to ensure that the past is remembered, and as this, our 150th session draws to a close the time has come to recall some of the oratorical gems debated before the house during the year. The year was opened by Emmet P. Lynch doing his best to persuade the house that ‘beer is better than women’ and thus the precedent set. The old hacks provided us with their educated opinions on subjects as wide and varying as Billy Horan (10th Oct.) telling us that ‘The Life of Brian’ is not based on 100% fact, while Eoin Mac Giolla Rí compared James Joyce to the English in the movie ‘Bridge over the River Kwai.’ Emmet Lynch struck again on 17th October giving his in-depth analysis of the fact that Bosco was sacked by RTÉ bosses while holidaying with the Mac Spuds in Kerry in a motion entitled ‘That this house would put its hand back up the star’s bum.’
Many of our ex-patriots returned during the year to grace us with their views. On 14th November Ciaran Duffy told us we don’t really want Northern Ireland back as it costs too much and it smells; the same evening, Billy Horan spoke on the motion ‘Beauty is only skin deep.’ Conor Bowman felt the Law Faculty was removed from realiy as it had no taught course in embezzlement and theft.
The sound of new voices in our midst rang as long and as loud as any others. From their outset on Gibs’ Night they gave us a taste of what was to come. Caoimhín Mac Unfraidh offered himself up to any woman in the audience who would make him a man! Emer Ryan is another, on 21st November she proposed we set up a parish league table awarding points for baptisms, marriages, funerals etc.
To record all that was said during the year would be to publish the whole minutes book. Oonagh Sweeney, Maria Dillon, Owen Ross, John Martin, Pat Landers, Brian Hughes, Ciara Ní Mhochóir, Ronán Feehily, John O’Halloran and of course the elder statesman Jarlath Ryan are but a few who have made this year memorable. Sometimes serious, sometimes funny, always stimulating is a way of summing up the year, the end of our first 150 years and the beginning of our next.
Oliver Begley-Wall
Recording Secretary