Fundraiser who worries leaders

PRESIDENT BILL Clinton and Prime Minister Tony Blair share a new common concern about Ireland. They worry that forces are stirring in America to support the opponents of the Good Friday Agreement and to raise money for dissident Republican groups, like the Real IRA, which perpetrated the Omagh atrocity.

The focus of their anxiety is the former public relations director of Noraid, Martin Galvin, who through most of the 1980s and early 1990s successfully raised millions of dollars for the Republican cause in Ireland. He has long been a man of considerable stature amongst Irish Americans, blessed with a smooth tongue and persuasive charm. And he is openly opposed to the peace agreement.

Since mid-April, Mr Galvin, who also practices law, has been speaking his piece at rallies and in New York pubs. He has also openly allied himself with the 32 County Sovereignty Committee, reputedly the political arm of the Real IRA. Soon after the Good Friday Agreement, he ushered one of the Council's leaders Bernadette Sands-McKevitt, the sister of the hunger striker, Bobby Sands, on a visit to Washington and New York. He visited the Council in the Republic just two weeks ago.

Galvin pronounced himself opposed to the Good Friday Agreement in spite of pressure from most of the Irish American community here to keep silent. He has the support of John McDonaugh, another activist in New York, who hosts his Radio Free Ireland talk show here every Saturday afternoon. Last month, the pair launched an eight-page monthly Sovereign Nation newspaper to propagate their views.

Talking to The Independent this week, however, Mr Galvin denied that he was raising money for the Sovereignty Committee. He also seeks to downplay the alleged link between the Committee and Real IRA. "Right now we are in an education process," he says.

Galvin and McDonaugh are confident that the Good Friday Agreement will fail to deliver on its promises and that support for it among Irish Americans therefore will vanish. Their highest hopes, however, are pinned on new anti-terrorist laws. They say the incarceration of scores of innocent Irish will arouse sympathies in the US and start American cash flowing again to Ireland.

Mr Blair this week urged President Clinton to pass new legislation to block any attempts at such fund-raising in the US. Whether Mr Clinton needs to act, however, is open to question. Because Messrs Galvin and McDonaugh may not have the support that London and Washington fear.

"Martin has clearly made clear how he feels about the Good Friday Agreement," commented Larry Downes, the President of Friends of Sinn Fein in New York. "But I would have to say that even among activists in New York the support for the agreement is overwhelming. "

If Mr Galvin was once hopeful of building a constituency here, his standing has been all but shattered by the bomb in Omagh.It was an abomination, moreover, which for days he failed to condemn.

Tony Quinn, a barman at Rocky Sullivan's, a midtown Irish bar where political conversation flows faster than Guinness, notes that Galvin and McDonaugh used to drop in together - until Omagh. They have not been seen in the place since. If anyone among Irish American activists in New York are now sympathetic with Galvin, he adds, "it would have to be a very, very small minority". London and Washington fear Galvin, given his fund-raising record. Send him out with a bucket to New York's Irish bars this weekend, however, and he would be lucky to raise a cent.