The Phoenix Vol.38 No.13

WILLIE FRAZER’S
RECORD
CHARLIE FLANAGAN’S final act
as justice minister last week was to
warn the Dáil of the continued threat
from republican
paramilitary
organisations in
advance of TDs
approving the
renewal of the
Special Criminal
Court. Flanagan
may also have
noted last week
that the Victims &
Survivors Service
(VSS) in the north
briefed journalists
Charlie Flanagan
that its investigation into its funding of a
group linked to the late Ulster Resistance
figure, Willie Frazer, is still ongoing.
Frazer, who died just a year ago, had been
involved with a number of alleged support
groups for loyalist and security force victims
of the Troubles. Five members of Frazers
family in the security forces had been killed
by the IRA over a 10-year period during the
Troubles.
His first group was FAIR (Families
Acting For Innocent Relatives), which was
set up in the late 1990s. However, even back
then, it was an open secret, at least amongst
police and certain ‘Troubles’ journalists,
that Frazer was actively involved with
loyalist murder gangs. Near the end of 2010,
FAIR’s substantial funding channel from
the cross-border Special EU Programmes
Body (SEUPB) was frozen due to “major
failures in the organisation’s ability to adhere
to the conditions associated with its funding
allocation”.
Frazer then helped to set up the Families
Research and Policy Unit, which was funded
by the VSS until May last year. At this point,
the VSS initiated an investigation with a
view to a possible clawback of funds, just as
the SEUPB has done.
In March this year, The Phoenix wrote
of Frazer’s close relations with former RUC
man and Ulster Resistance quartermaster
James Mitchell (see edition 27/3/20). It was
Mitchell who initially managed the Glenanne
Gang arms dump, from which Frazer
distributed assault rifles and grenades to
both UDA and UVF figures across the north,
with the UDA’s Johnny ‘Mad Dog’ Adair in
Belfast being a primary beneficiary.
Despite all this, Frazer still had the
ear of judges (he was an instigator of the
Smithwick Tribunal), the mainstream media
and politicians in the Republic. Flanagan
demonstrated this last year by tweeting a
praiseworthy obituary soon after Frazer’s
death, extolling Frazer’s “relentless and
unstinting campaigning for victims”.
Flanagan referred to the suffering of Frazer’s
family, but simple research on the part of
his legal eagles or a phone call to Garda
Commissioner Drew Harris would have told
Flanagan all he needed to know about the
other side of Willie Frazer.
More questions will now be raised about
Frazer, with the imminent publication of
Ombudsman reports into loyalist killings,
like the 1992 Ormeau Road bookies attack,
and a renewed investigation into the murder
of Donegal Sinn Féin councillor Eddie
Fullerton in Buncrana in 1991. These attacks
are believed to have emanated from Ulster
Resistance guns supplied to Johnny Adair for
further distribution.
‘THE KAISER’, Dermot Desmond, and
his missus, Pat Desmond, are certainly
exhibiting high anxiety about the housing
crisis, as it affects the nation as well as their
own little neck of the woods in Ailsebury
Road, D4.
Mrs Desmond joined with neighbours
Chris Comerford and John Gleeson in
lodging an objection to the government’s
fast-track planning process (see The
Phoenix 13/3/20). Simultaneously, hubby
Dermo poured forth with a dissertation on
the nation’s housing problems, published by
a helpful Irish Times. There was a certain
conuence of argumentation between
both sets of polemics, with each claiming a
regressive distortion of the housing market
and institutional inestors rofiteering at
the expense of ordinary Irish people.
According to the carefully written IT
article, Mrs Desmond’s legal action was not
directed at Cairns Homes’s proposed 611
apartment development in Donnybrook,
adjacent to and within eyesight of the
Desmonds’ pied-à-terre. But more recently,
Dermo has, according to an equally helpful
Irish Independent, made a ery definite
connection with his housing arguments and
Cairns Homes’s plans for Donnybrook.
You may still be
wet and rainy, but
Ireland, you’re
buff now. You’re
hot. Gina London
on Ireland getting
a UN Security
Council seat,
Sunday Independent,
submitted by
reader
THE PHOENIX JULY 3, 2020 7
I’m a big believer
in democracy.
Gina London
Micheál Martin
won’t shirk from
unpopular opinions, RTÉ News, submitted
by reader
Actress Eve Hewson’s career may be teetering
on the edge of greatness. Irish Mail on Sunday
spots the new Meryl Streep
Drugs smuggler Daniel Kinahan is to
step back from boxing “to focus on other
interests”, the president of the management
company he co-founded has said. Irish Times
reports on Daniel Kinahan’s next move
The 33rd Dáil crossed the Liffey. Today,
Irish politics crossed the Rubicon. Onwards.
Paschal Donohoe, Twitter, submitted by
reader
There’s something about a face mask that
gets in the way. It’s impossible to read other
people’s faces and it’s impossible for them
to read mine. Michael Harding’s astute
observations, Irish Times, submitted by reader
By invoking The Terminator, The Lord of the
Rings and Seamus Heaney, Leo Varadkar
successfully made us feel connected and
engaged with the national effort in response
to the coronavirus pandemic. Orla Muldoon,
Irish Times, submitted by reader
All of a sudden I feel VERY pregnant! Vogue
Williams apparently getting more pregnant,
Irish Mirror, submitted by reader
That day was Ireland’s Walt Whitman
moment. Keith Duggan evokes the American
poet when recalling Ireland’s defeat of
Romania in Italia ‘90, Irish Times, submitted
by reader
Those youngsters do be asking things like
‘would you not have gotten Venetian blinds
there instead of curtains?’, like really sensible
questions. Francis Brennan on the wisdom of
youth, Irish Mirror
Ultimately, a force of polarisation in Irish
society is not necessarily at either end of the
“left” or “right” spectrum; it’s the gaslighting
that centrism perpetrates and perpetuates.
Una Mullaly, Irish Times
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