Writing back from Ireland these days, to those living outside of the island, it is hard at times not to give what seems like a merely hypercritical, jaundiced view of a country that is still, essentially, a wonderful place to live.
I know this column often comes across like that.
I am aware too that it would be very easy for a reader to think that my own views are isolated, that you merely read the opinions of a malcontent.
So, I thought it might be interesting this week if I gave you the opinions of some others so that you might hear over there exactly what it is people are saying here.
How about this one for beginners? “Bankers and speculators have bought your party and in return you have sacrificed the greater good and prosperity of the Irish nation for the benefit of the few. Truly, a government of national sabotage.” A fellow radical of mine, you might think. But those words were spoken to Brian Cowen’s Government by the president of the Garda Representative Association, the organisation representing rank and file gardaí. Hardly a hotbed of extremism.
Or these far milder, but in many ways more damning, words. “The number of people contacting us is so great that we are on the point of closing our waiting list. While we appreciate the grave economic situation of the country, it is difficult to justify denying help to people who have already suffered so greatly and who were promised support when the Ryan and Murphy reports were published.”
Those words were spoken by a director of One in Four, one of the leading Irish charities working with survivors of abuse.
The director of another charity working in the same field said of their funding cuts by the Government that “we’re talking children’s lives here for the €30,000 or €40,000 it costs to hire a therapist”.
Even after the horrors of clerical abuse were revealed and even after the promises of those in power, this is the reality. In a society that saw fit to give billions to bankers and financiers.
Following on from that, bearing in mind that getting money from the religious organisations who abused children is still proving difficult, is the news that a priest — referred to by one policeman as the Hannibal Lecter of the clerical world on account of the extremity of his abuse — will later this summer begin to receive an $800 pension from the Church. It is part of a deal that saw him give up the priesthood and swear that he would not give evidence against those who helped to cover up his crimes.
And this really is a good one. Michael O’Leary, chief executive of Ryanair, scourge of governments, unions and whingeing travellers who feel they should be compensated for being stranded, champion of the free market and the stand-on-your-own twofeet philosophy of those with more than enough, received a cheque for nearly €30,000 last year from the EU to help run his farm.
The year before it was a cheque for €55,821. Strangely enough one of Ireland’s most vociferous characters doesn’t seem to have a lot to say about that.
Finally, and most importantly, how about this voice from an ordinary Irish citizen who wrote into one of the Sunday papers and had this to say.
This is what the people of Ireland are saying. “From the declaration that we just don’t have the money to pay public workers anymore, to Anglo bankers who destroyed the country needing a pay rise to inspire them to work, we are a cruelly exploited society.
The English never exploited us to the same degree as our own aristocracy.
In fact, we took up arms for less ill-treatment than the abuse we are suffering today under a sovereign, so-called Republic.
Oppression by the English provoked some of our most beautiful folk ballads.
Why on earth have we never written about the abuses inflicted on so many since the foundation of this state?
Why no ballads about forced deportation in 1953, or ’83, or now?
Why no ballads about the fact that the gap between the rich and poor is greater in Ireland than in any other EU country?
Why don’t we ever sing about the thousands of people we sent to forced labour camps or industrial schools, or the many thousands subjected to complicit rape at the hands of an arrogant church?”