Declan Lynch: Minister Thomas Byrne gets 13 minutes of ‘studs’ at the hands of Colm Ó Mongáin | Irish Independent
Flor Lynch
Junior minister Thomas Byrne. Photo: Sportsfile
RTÉ presenter Colm Ó Mongáin has no fear of confrontation
Junior minister Thomas Byrne. Photo: Sportsfile
RTÉ presenter Colm Ó Mongáin has no fear of confrontation
In a recent feature by Niamh Horan in this paper, Sarah McInerney said that as an interviewer, “holding back gets you so much more than going in studs first”. Coming from the latest Morning Ireland (RTÉ1, weekdays, 7am) co-host, this was a tad troubling for fans who had for long regarded her adversarial approach as an outstanding feature.
“Studs” McInerney seemed to have a heightened awareness that politicians are now over-protected by “special advisers”, equipped with many new-fangled tools in their determination to say absolutely nothing of any interest to anyone. She knew – in sporting parlance – that “you have to let them know you’re there”.
While she is adjusting to the grandeur of her new radio home, the coveted sobriquet of “studs” has now passed to one of her successors on Drivetime (RTÉ1, weekdays, 4pm) Colm Ó Mongáin.
He did an interview last Monday with Thomas Byrne, Fianna Fáil junior minister at the Department of Foreign Affairs, which purged the heart with terror and pity – or at least got as near to that ancient Greek ideal as it’s possible to get in an interview with Thomas Byrne.
Not only did Ó Mongáin let him know he was there, he made the listeners happy we were not in Byrne’s position, trying to explain why Ireland was not going to call the US seizure of Nicolas Maduro, the president of Venezuela, a violation of international law.
It was an encounter perfectly structured for a tough-tackling host to “get stuck in”, because it was clear from the start that there were irreconcilable differences.
For Byrne, the assignment was to get through 13 long minutes of radio without saying the US had broken international law, which it obviously had. This clarified for Ó Mongáin that his job was now that of the interrogator who is prepared to spend all night asking the question in different ways, with the listeners drawing their own conclusions from his opponent’s “taking the fifth”, as it were.
Byrne had settled on what must have seemed like an ingenious formula – Ireland would have to observe the correct process and wait to see what the UN Security Council says. “Well look, clearly it’s not an ideal situation,” he ventured.
Ó Mongáin wasn’t having it: “Are you saying that the Irish government has no opinion on when international law is breached or not breached unless by reference to the UN Security Council?”
Byrne, God love him, tried out lines like: “It is not the type of action that we support… it is not what we do.” Ó Mongáin was there with a quote from the esteemed Professor Ziyad Motala that “international law is many things but it is not a roving moral warrant for great powers to perform regime change by abduction”. And later: “You’re not condemning it, you’re not defending it, what are you doing?”
Junior minister Thomas Byrne. Photo: Sportsfile
To which Byrne unfortunately replied: “I’m stating that this has happened...” Ó Mongáin shot back: “Sure we know it’s happened, we’d like to know the view of the Irish government on it... from a qualified lawyer who has access to the legal advice of the Attorney General...”
Ó Mongáin has been pictured on the job wearing a Jesus and Mary Chain T-shirt, which for Byrne by the end of this session would surely have morphed into the Jesus, Mary and Joseph Chain.
It was in that very shirt that Ó Mongáin went in “studs first” on the otherwise excellent Richard Boyd-Barrett last month, when PBP deputies Boyd-Barrett and Paul Murphy stood but didn’t applaud Volodymyr Zelensky’s speech to the Oireachtas.
They explained: “We stand with the people of Ukraine against Putin’s invasion but we will not applaud the agenda of militarisation which is being pushed across Europe.”
Ó Mongáin was all over it. “In the beginning when Russia invaded Ukraine, should the Ukrainians have simply not resisted or offered some form of passive resistance rather than firing back at them?” he asked Boyd-Barrett knowingly. He added variations to this theme: “The Russians invaded in tanks, the Ukrainians were provided with Javelin missiles which stopped those tanks, do you not think that helped?”