Was Jackie Healy Rae really as thick as he sounded?

Dakota Dan · 19-02-2022 11:08PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118660557#Comment_118660557

Yep Bertie got all his money legitimately 🙄 plenty more as well.

generic_throwaway · 19-02-2022 11:25PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118660750#Comment_118660750

Yes they win all their contracts honestly. Also I have a bridge for sale, you might be interested?

kerryjack · 19-02-2022 11:36PM

Met one of younger generation in kenmere a while ago on a week end away great crack well able to let there hair down. Would have often seen Jackie around kilarney always a few around him sure they show up for every funeral. They are Kerry it's what we are all about cute hoorism trying to make a living on the side of a mountain , no intell, no Louis, no Bus to anywhere, try waiting for a bus sometime down in rural Kerry.

generic_throwaway · 20-02-2022 12:13AM

I have the feeling the Kerry folk think this is them putting one over on the rest of the country. It's not, it's the Healy Raes putting one over on the people of Kerry. I'm not for a moment suggesting this sort of thinking is unique to Kerry - this trick would work just as well in Dublin, but Kerry has the misfortune to host these parasites.

black & white · 20-02-2022 06:29PM

Back when he was elected, one of his demands to support the government was a factory in Kerry. At the time, I was involved in a company involved in facilitating new industries coming to Ireland and we had been sorting out a company who were going to Waterford. We got a call from Government Buildings to change their mind and bring them to Kerry. Can’t remember the name of the company but that’s a true story.

Snickers Man · 20-02-2022 06:45PM

No. But they clearly think everybody else is.

The great Stephen Fry has an interesting take on the essential difference between British and American comic heroes. See below. The American hero is a wise cracking winner who always gets the girl and wins the cash; the British comic hero is a stuffy dutiful loser who fancies himself as an important agent in a well-ordered meritocratic world but instead gets crapped on from on high and by his won incompetence.

The Irish comic hero is the smartest guy in the room who convinces everybody else he's the stupidest.

That's the Healy Raes all over. Bunch of jokers, but we're the fools.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8k2AbqTBxao&t=30s

20-02-2022 10:01PM

The only thickos were Kerry FF, who I think back in the day told him he couldn't run in the general election for FF.

Well he sure showed those boys.

Hangdogroad · 21-02-2022 08:27AM

Thick, probably not. Shifty, dishonest, entitled and arrogant yes.

foxsake · 21-02-2022 09:13AM

Jackie Healy was a really smart guy.

I don't have any issue with them - but for those that do. Remember it didn't have to be this way.

Jackie was a local FF grafter for decades - when an opportunity came for him to run in 1997 the FF party turned their back on him and he ran as an independent and thus the dynasty was born.

If only FF and headquarters hadn't tried to shaft him he could have been a regular joe backbencher.

Mike Murdock · 21-02-2022 05:10PM

^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Irony of that is, they regularly needed him, as an independent, to make up the numbers to form a Government.

Incredibly short-sighted by FF.

cute geoge · 21-02-2022 06:50PM

I would say he was a real community man like I saw a archive photo of Jackie with a ladder on his shoulder putting up the lights for puck fair over 50 years ago and he cut an impressive figure . He was in first name terms with everyone he came to meet with through business and social contact .As far as I know he would have started with naught and married into the pub and the shop!!

buried · 21-02-2022 06:55PM

These guys are hardly thick. They utilize the same game the establishment has done for centuries, Divide and Conquer. Doesn't make them geniuses either, I'd say they were fond of reading books, so fair play to them.

kowloon · 21-02-2022 07:02PM

Doubt they're stupid at all, but I really wish they weren't held up so often by international media as examples of Irish politicians in action because they do make us all look stupid.

Markus Antonius · 21-02-2022 11:03PM

For the last 10 years the Healy Raes were used by RTE as the figure-heads for everything non-Dublin related or 'down the counthry'. That's grand until it comes to things like the abortion referendum where the Healy-Raes did more damage to the No campaign than the yes campaign ever could.

If it's all an act, then they should do us all a favour and f*ck right off.

Manach · 21-02-2022 11:05PM

About as much as a typical Progressive politican cares about the working class.

kowloon · 21-02-2022 11:51PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118670081#Comment_118670081

Very few politicians actually care about the working class. But the progressive ones pretend.

foxsake · 22-02-2022 01:12PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118670081#Comment_118670081

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118670327#Comment_118670327

I agree . but is pretending not worse?

Dyr · 22-02-2022 02:45PM

Clever hoors, they weaponised the revulsion that "Civil Society" Ireland felt towards parochial types carrying on in the Dáíl, knowing their voter base would elect them just to stick it to the Dublin media

kowloon · 22-02-2022 04:07PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118672501#Comment_118672501

I think it drives people to protest vote for candidates who are openly corrupt, because "at least they're straight talkers" and not part of the establishment. This typically backfires, but it's hard to blame people for having well earned cynicism.

eusap · 23-02-2022 10:23AM

As a Dub if you want to understand Michael Healy Rae you need to read his book and watch the episode of Living with Lucy, both will give an insight into the mindset.

Michael does not sit still and never has since a young man, what other TD is a Farmer, Multiple other businesses and will still answer his phone to Mary down the lane in the back of beyond and treat her the very same as the millionaire asking for help. Yes he has built vast wealth but shows none of it, i think it will be a classic case of Jackie (started it), Michael (Minded it) and the Kids (blow it)

foxsake · 23-02-2022 11:27AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118673601#Comment_118673601

oh id be one of them :(

Yurt2 · 23-02-2022 08:14PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118676927#Comment_118676927

It's pure political patronage and a very provincial way of looking at politics, but from any account I've heard of people going to the Healy Raes is that they will shift heaven and earth to sort you if you have a problem. They're not exactly nation builders and won't be crunching policy permutations on the great issues of our time, but the people who vote for them don't want them for that. They're plumbers patching up broken parts of the system on a person-by-person basis, and they're pretty explicit about it.

Contrast to that to Mick Wallace, who refused to do constituency clinics, and is now in Brussels with his mott reading Putin and Chinese propaganda to script in the European parliament and off visiting terror organisations in Syria in his spare time.

I'll take the Healy Raes over that nonsense.

whisky_galore · 24-02-2022 02:42PM

Takes advantage of a broken system rather than do anything about fixing it. It's a great little grift they got going.

Was Jackie Healy Rae really as thick as he sounded?

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