Archive News
Coalition parties need to show signs of greenshoots to justify optimism
Date Published: 02-Jan-2013
We know this much from history – the recession won’t last forever.
But what history cannot really tell us is how long more it will last. There are too many variables. The Irish economy is dependent (hugely) on what’s happening elsewhere – in Britain; in Europe and throughout the world. Trying to figure it all out is like doing a 10,000 piece jigsaw depicting a cloudless blue sky.
However, it doesn’t take a Nobel Prize in economics to figure out that a lot of it depends on growth and recovery – in the EU and US economies – and no dramatic slow-down in China or in any of the other emerging economies. And the other factor is debt; that the world has enough collateral to cover the gargantuan pile of past, present and future debt that has been racked up.
I interviewed Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore just before Christmas. He was keen to share his parting shots at Labour’s last parliamentary party meeting earlier that week. He told the party’s (remaining) TDs and Senators that 2013 would be a signal year, that it would be when Labour Party TDs would need to start thinking about a post-recession Ireland.
The implications (and optimism) were clear – after six years of hardship 2014 would see all the metrics that were going up now start going down (unemployment; social welfare budget; mortgage distress cases, interest rates on sovereign debt) and all the metrics that were going down going up (growth, jobs, house purchases, retail and manufacturing sales).
It’s true that the portents are better now than they were a couple of years ago. If the Government’s confidence is well placed and it does get a deal on bank debt, that will certainly allow Ireland to cycle its own bike in 2014 (albeit with stabilisers supplied by the EU to prevent any dangerous wobbles in the initial phases).
There is always the uncertainty, though – is glas iad na cnoic i bhfad i gcéin. And so many things can go wrong between now and the beginning of 2014 that it would be foolhardy to predict a return to some kind of promised land.
What we are interested in is looking at it from the political perspective. And from the Labour Party point of view, Gilmore needs to be right; it will need to show real and tangible signs of a recovery from recession by the end of the year. And that makes this year so crucial.
Even a cursory trip through modern political history will tell you that successful coalition arrangements are rare and that, more often than not, they come at a price.
That price, at its most basic, is that both parties will suffer. The General Election that puts them into power normally represents the high water mark for a coalition, electorally. In the vast majority of cases, it is the smaller coalition partner which acts as the mudguard, taking all the dirt and weathering that comes with a somewhat unnatural alliance with another party with a different philosophy and different personalities. Look at the Greens and the PDs here and the Liberal Democrats in the UK.
When they came into power Labour portrayed this arrangement as a kind of national government to bring the country out of crisis. It also made a big play of the fact that it was a much larger smaller party than is normally the case and it held more sway.
But the fact of the matter is that Fine Gael still has ten ministries and Labour has five. And that two to one ratio of seats has so far been matched with the same ratio of influence. Fine Gael has been seen as the dominant party in the public perception… and that has been reflected in the opinion polls.
Nobody ever said it was going to be easy and the first two years in power for the new Government have been amongst the most difficulty in the history of the State. Both parties made grandiose and promises that couldn’t be fulfilled.
In addition to that, there is a element of Labour’s support, on the left of the party, which believes the party has undermined its own principles in government. And so both have suffered; the smaller party to a greater degree.
Read Harry McGee’s full column in this week’s Connacht Tribune.
People’s living conditions less than 100 years ago were frightening. We have come a long way. We talk about water charges today, but back then the local District Councils were erecting pumps for local communities and the lovely town of Mountbellew, according to Council minutes, had open sewers,” says Galway County Council archivist Patria McWalter.
Patria believes we “need to take pride in our history, and we should take the same pride in our historical records as we do in our built heritage”. When you see the wealth of material in her care, this belief makes sense.
She is in charge of caring for the rich collection of administrative records owned by Galway County Council and says “these records are as much part of our history as the Rock of Cashel is. They document our lives and our ancestors’ lives. And nobody can plan for the future unless you learn from the past, what worked and what didn’t”.
Archivists and librarians are often unfairly regarded as being dry, academic types, but that’s certainly not true of Patria. Her enthusiasm is infectious as she turns the pages of several minute books from Galway’s Rural District Councils, all of them at least 100 years old.
Part of her role involved cataloguing all the records of the Councils – Ballinasloe, Clifden, Galway, Gort, Loughrea, Mountbellew, Portumna and Tuam. These records mostly consisted of minutes of various meetings.
When she was cataloguing them she realised their worth to local historians and researchers, so she decided to compile a guide to their content. The result is For the Record: The Archives of Galway’s Rural District Councils, which will be a valuable asset to anybody with an interest in history.
Many representatives on these Councils were local personalities and several were arrested during the political upheaval of the era, she explains.
And, ushering in a new era in history, women were allowed to sit on these Rural District Councils – at the time they were not allowed to sit on County Councils.
All of this information is included in Patria’s introductory essay to the attractively produced A4 size guide, which gives a glimpse into how these Rural Councils operated and the way political thinking changed in Ireland during a short 26-year period. In the early 1900s, these Councils supported Home Rule, but by 1920, they were calling for full independence and refusing to recognise the British administration.
“I love the tone,” says Patria of the minutes from meetings. “The language was very emotive.”
That was certainly true of the Gort Rural District Council. At a meeting in 1907, following riots in Dublin at the premiere of JM Synge’s play, The Playboy of the Western World the councillors’ response was vehement. They recorded their decision to “protest most emphatically against the libellous comedy, The Playboy of the Western World, that was belched forth during the past week in the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, under the fostering care of Lady Gregory and Mr Yeats. We congratulate the good people of Dublin in howling down the gross buffoonery and immoral suggestions that are scattered throughout this scandalous performance.
For more from the archives see this week’s Tribunes here
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
SLIGO 0-9
GALWAY 1-4
FRANK FARRAGHER IN ENNISCRONE
GALWAY’S first serious examination of the 2013 season rather disturbingly ended with a rating well below the 40% pass mark at the idyllic, if rather Siberian, seaside setting of Enniscrone on Sunday last.
The defeat cost Galway a place in the FBD League Final against Leitrim and also put a fair dent on their confidence shield for the bigger tests that lie ahead in February.
There was no fluke element in this success by an understrength Sligo side and by the time Leitrim referee, Frank Flynn, sounded the final whistle, there wasn’t a perished soul in the crowd of about 500 who could question the justice of the outcome.
It is only pre-season and last Sunday’s blast of dry polar winds did remind everyone that this is far from summer football, but make no mistake about it, the match did lay down some very worrying markers for Galway following a couple of victories over below par third level college teams.
Galway did start the game quite positively, leading by four points at the end of a first quarter when they missed as much more, but when Sligo stepped up the tempo of the game in the 10 minutes before half-time, the maroon resistance crumbled with frightening rapidity.
Some of the statistics of the match make for grim perusal. Over the course of the hour, Galway only scored two points from play and they went through a 52 minute period of the match, without raising a white flag – admittedly a late rally did bring them close to a draw but that would have been very rough justice on Sligo.
Sligo were backable at 9/4 coming into this match, the odds being stretched with the ‘missing list’ on Kevin Walsh’s team sheet – Adrian Marren, Stephen Coen, Tony Taylor, Ross Donovan, David Kelly, David Maye, Johnny Davey and Eamon O’Hara, were all marked absent for a variety of reasons.
Walsh has his Sligo side well schooled in the high intensity, close quarters type of football, and the harder Galway tried to go through the short game channels, the more the home side bottled them up.
Galway badly needed to find some variety in their attacking strategy and maybe there is a lot to be said for the traditional Meath style of giving long, quick ball to a full forward line with a big target man on the edge of the square – given Paul Conroy’s prowess close to goal last season, maybe it is time to ‘settle’ on a few basics.
Defensively, Galway were reasonably solid with Gary Sice at centre back probably their best player – he was one of the few men in maroon to deliver decent long ball deep into the attacking zone – while Finian Hanley, Conor Costello and Gary O’Donnell also kept things tight.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
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