Archive News
Playing the blame game while country topples through the abyss
Date Published: 04-Apr-2012
When it comes to reform of the House of the Oireachtas, there might be a way to save the Seanad after all – and at the same time turn the Dail into the legislative assembly as originally envisaged by the founders of the state.
What we need to do is to officially recognise the Seanad as a retirement home for former and failed politicians – and then allow them to live out the rest of their days doing nothing more stressful than blaming each other for the sins of the past.
That, in turn, will free up our TD’s from this onerous task that currently takes up so much of their time, so that instead they can actually get on with formulating a plan to get us out of the quagmire.
As it is, they’ve just wasted another valuable week raking over the coals of the past – one side throwing mud about Mahon across the floor of the House, and the others flinging back allegations of inaction over Moriarty.
And in the midst of all, the country continues in freefall, with ‘Big Phil’ Hogan wreaking havoc on the little people with his ham-fisted household charges, fresh –if that’s not the wrong word – from landing himself in the sewage over septic tanks.
All of the bluff and bluster of last week’s three-day debate didn’t resolve a single issue, result in a single bribed politician packing his bags for prison or extract a single apology for the wrong done to the rest of us.
In other words, it solved nothing other than provide well-paid public representatives with the chance to trade insults at our expense.
So if instead we gave the Seanad a brief to keep its eyes firmly on the past and the Dail a responsibility to look to the future, we would then have a way of facilitating this mud-slinging without it actually holding back our economic renaissance.
What exactly was the point of the Dail devoting three days to the Mahon Tribunal? It wasn’t as though they’d manage to enlighten us any further than a process which took €300 million and 15 years to reach some less than astonishing conclusions.
Instead we heard more mentions of Denis O’Brien in the Dail than we did of our dire economic straits, as Fianna Fail countered the Government’s punching by digging up the ghost of Moriarty and another dark period in our political history.
Maybe it’s because we love playing the blame game that we spend so much time trying to rewrite history instead of charting our own destiny – or maybe it’s just because you don’t need a lot of vision for revision, but you do to lay the groundwork for a better future.
If public representatives want to spend their time dwelling on the past and talking of Charlie and Bertie and Pee Flynn, then they should stand for our new-look Seanad and leave the forward planning to those not bogged down by history.
Maybe the new Dail might even learn to move on from Civil War politics so that we remove the final historical difference between Fine Gael and Fianna Fail, as we move towards a real left/right dynamic in Irish politics.
Of course the Seanad suggestion is fanciful, but equally this preoccupation with revisiting the past is no joke either.
If we want to learn from recent history, let’s facilitate the state inquiry into corruption so that those who took bribes go to jail; let’s put the resources necessary at the disposal of the Gardaí and the courts so that those who caused our economic collapse face the consequences.
But let’s stop wasting Dail time and public money throwing mud from one side of the chamber to the other, when, at the end of the day, none of it seems to stick.
For more, read 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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