Archive News
Reading between the lines to get a fix on EuropeÕs view of our economic recovery
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
It’s Monday night and the temperature outside in the big bad city is dipping down below zero. It’s bitterly cold and sleet is falling. Nobody is going out.
But hark, is that not your political commentator putting on his anorak? Is he going out into that indescribably awful weather, to face the elements and the dangers on behalf of you dear reader? Yep, he’s zipping it up, throwing up the hood, God he looks determined.
But wait! Why is he still wearing his slippers? And why is he going into the kitchen and putting on his glasses and blowing the dust of that report?
Our hearts sink. He’s not wearing an anorak. It’s worse than that. He is an anorak and now he’s going to bore the bejaysus out of us with some indescribably boring report, all in the name of educating and informing us about the world of Irish politics.
Sadly, the anorak’s offering this week is a report, a technical report that doesn’t exactly make for the most exciting reading. It’s the report written by staff from the European Commission following the last quarterly assessment of Ireland’s performance under the bailout programme.
As a matter of fact, if you read it – and kind of gloss over some of the more technical bank stuff – it’s not all that gratingly bad as a read. Like all of these documents the criticisms are couched but when you get the gist of the argot, you quickly realise that there are quite a few salient and uncomfortable home truths for the Government and for the country.
You see, the headline every at the time of every review is that Ireland had succeeded in meeting all its targets and that the country is a poster boy for a country that’s in a bailout doing everything possible to get back into the good books.
That is true to an extent. But the actual targets that have been set for Ireland aren’t quite as onerous as the ones facing other countries. And on top of that there are a couple of underlying problems and issues that haven’t really been addressed so far.
When you read the report in its entirety, you get a sense that until now that Ireland has been on an interest only mortgage deal to date but that slightly easier repayment plan, that’s about to come to an end and the real pain is about to start.
So here are some of the things that the European Commission is worried about.
For one, it says that labour market growth, if any will be weak. Recent data has suggested that previous projections made by the Government were "somewhat optimistic" as to when employment would start growing again. The Government has put huge emphasis on jobs with action plans and stimulus programmes but this report is saying the outlook is uncertain.
The ratio of household debt to disposable income is still 200 per cent which is twice the EU average. And the efforts to stimulate consumption in the economy have not been helped by precautionary savings by the very young and the very old.
It also says that the projections of the Department of Finance for real Gross Domestic Product Growth envisages €1.5bn more in growth by 2015 than the Commission estimates.
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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