‘Raised Among Vultures’ by Molly Twomey (The Gallery Press 75pp €12.95), and ‘The Boy with The Radio’ by Cormac Culkeen (Beir Bua Press 44pp €8.90)
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Tá borradh tagtha agus ag teacht faoi stádas agus úsáid na Gaeilge sa saol oifigiúil. Is teanga oifigiúil oibre den Aontas Eorpach í gan mhaolú, cíos, cás ná cathú ón 1ú Eanáir 2022. Feasta achtófar agus clófar gach rialachán, treoir agus cinneadh den Aontas as Gaeilge ag an am céanna agus ar aon dul leis na leaganacha sna 23 teanga oifigiúil eile idir mhórtheangacha domhanda cosúil le Béarla, Fraincis agus Gearmáinis agus teangacha na náisiún beag cosúil le Máltais, Eastóinis nó Laitvis. Tá Acht na dTeangacha Oifigiúla leasaithe agus an tAcht leasaithe sínithe ag Uachtarán na hÉireann. I measc na leasuithe is suntasaí anseo féachfar go mbeidh 20% ar a laghad den fhoireann a earcófar chuig comhlachtaí poiblí inniúil sa Ghaeilge faoin 31 Nollaig 2030 agus cuirfear seirbhísí poiblí ar fáil as Gaeilge sa Ghaeltacht. Beidh 20% d’fhógraíocht chomhlachtaí poiblí as Gaeilge agus caithfear 5% dá mbuiséid fógraíochta ar na meáin Ghaeilge. Éascófar úsáid síntí fada, cinnteofar lógónna dátheangacha, foirmeacha dátheangacha agus ábhar margaíochta dátheangach do chomhlachtaí poiblí. Leagfar síos prótacail nó caighdeáin chinnte maidir le seirbhísí as Gaeilge ó chomhlachtaí poiblí agus cuimseoidh na dualgais seo seirbhísí a chuireann comhlachtaí príobháideacha ar fáil thar ceann comhlachtaí poiblí. Tá reachtaíocht teanga á achtú do na Sé Chontae, reachtaíocht lena mbunófar caighdeáin teanga faoina soláthrófar seirbhísí poiblí as Gaeilge agus Coimisinéir Gaeilge a fheidhmeoidh mar ombudsman teanga. Sa chomhthéacs fáis seo, ní foláir a chinntiú go slánófar stádas na Gaeilge mar theanga oifigiúil faoi aon socrú bunreachtúil nua. Is slán don stádas láidir oifigiúil ag leibhéal an Aontais Eorpaigh agus is gá a chomhaith a chur i bhfeidhm ag baile. I gcomhthéacs Éireann Aontaithe, beidh cosaint cearta mionlach go mór i gceist, lucht labhartha na Gaeilge ina measc. Ó thaobh cosaint mionlaigh teanga de, tá múnla eiseamláireach le fáil i ndlí bunreachtúil Cheanada sa Chairt Cheanadach um Chearta agus Saoirsí a leagtar amach agus a phléitear thíos. An Ghaeilge mar phríomhtheanga oifigiúil Ó bhunú an Stáit, tá an Ghaeilge neadaithe mar theanga náisiúnta na tíre agus ó 1937 le h-achtú an bhunreachta reatha is í an príomhtheanga oifigiúil í toisc gurb í an teanga náisiúnta í. Is cuma nach ndéantar beart de réir briathair ina thaobh seo i gcónaí. Is beag dlí a chomhlíontar a chuid riachtanas an t-am ar fad ach ní chealaíonn sé sin an t-ordaitheach bunreachtúil a eascraíonn ón seasamh bunreachtúil seo. Cuimhnítear gur ráthaíodh comhionannas idir shaoránaigh ó 1937 i leith ach gurbh éigean do mhná éirí as poist stáit nuair a phósaidís anuas go dtí 1973 agus nár cuireadh deireadh leis an gcleachtas leatromach seo ach faoi anáil dlí an Aontais Eorpaigh. Mar an gcéanna, is de bharr seasamh bunreachtúil seo na Gaeilge agus an t-ordaitheach a leanann é a baineadh amach aon bhua don Ghaeilge sna cúirteanna. An té a mholann an stádas sin a mhaolú, ní ar mhaithe leis an nGaeilge atá sé, é sin nó ní thuigeann sé an Bunreacht. Bunreacht Saorstát Éireann 1922 D’fhoráiltí le hAirteagal 4 Bhunreacht 1922 mar seo a leanas: Sí an Ghaedhilg teanga Náisiúnta Shaorstáit Éireann, ach có-aithneofar an Béarla mar theanga oifigiúil. Ní choiscfidh éinní san Airtiogal so ar an Oireachtas forálacha speisialta do dhéanamh do cheanntair nó do líomatáistí ná fuil ach teanga amháin i ngnáth-úsáid ionta. Cheadaítí maolú ar an dátheangachas oifigiúil ag deireadh an Airteagail ‘to provide for the contingency of the entry of Northern Ireland into the Free State’ dar le Kohn The Constitution of the Irish Free State (Londain 1932), lch 124. Thráchtaí ar chúrsaí teanga chomh maith in Airteagal 42: Chó luath agus féadfar tar éis d’aon dlí aontú an Rí d’fháil, cuirfidh an cléireach no pé oifigeach eile a cheapfaidh Dáil Éireann chuige sin dhá chóip chearta den dlí sin á dhéanamh, ceann aca i nGaedhilg agus an ceann eile i mBéarla (agus sighneoidh Ionadaí na Coróinneach ceann de sna cóipeanna san chun é do chur ar rolla cuimhnte in oifig an oifigigh sin den Chúirt Uachtarach ar a gcinnfidh Dáil Éireann), agus beidh na cóipeanna san mar fhínéacht chríochnuithe ar fhorálacha gach dlí dá sórt, agus i gcás coinbhlíocht idir an dá chóip a cuirfear i dtaisce mar sin, sé an ceann a bheidh sighnithe ag Ionadaí na Coróinneach a bhuaidhfidh. Tá cúpla léamh ar an bhforáil seo. Dar leis an gcéad Phríomh-Bhreitheamh, Aodh Ó Cinneide, sa chás Ó Foghludha v. McClean [1934] I.R. 469 gur thug an tAirteagal achtú dátheangach le fios seachas achtú as Béarla amháin agus tiontú Gaeilge a chur amach ar ball agus luaigh sé an nós billí/achtanna a rith go dátheangach i dtíortha eile den dlí coiteann a raibh dhá theanga oifigiúla acu .i. Ceanada (Béarla agus Fraincis) agus an Afraic Theas (Béarla agus Ísiltíris). Bunreacht na hÉireann 1937 Foráiltear le hAirteagal 8 den Bhunreacht reatha mar seo a leanas: Ós í an Ghaeilge an teanga náisiúnta is í an phríomhtheanga oifigiúil í. Glactar leis an Sacs-Bhéarla mar theanga oifigiúil eile. Ach féadfar socrú a dhéanamh le dlí d’fhonn ceachtar den dá teanga sin a bheith ina haonteanga le haghaidh aon ghnó nó gnóthaí oifigiúla ar fud an Stáit ar fad nó in aon chuid de. Is ionann stádas príomhúil na Gaeilge in Airteagal 8.1 agus ordaitheach bunreachtúil ar ar bunaíodh na cearta a baineadh amach sna cúirteanna, an ceart chun éisteachta a fháil os comhair breitheamh a thuigeann do chuid Gaeilge, m.sh. (Ó Cadhla v. An tAire Dlí agus Cirt [2019] IEHC 503). Tugtar faoi deara gur mó an poll sa taoschnó áfach in Airteagal 8.3 más ea, in ainneoin nár achtaíodh riamh dlí den chineál a dtráchtar air ann. Tráchtar ar chúrsaí reachtaíochta agus ar chúrsaí teanga in Airteagal 25. Foráiltear le hAirteagal 25.4.4° agus 6° mar seo a leanas: 4° i gcás an tUachtarán do chur a láimhe le téacs Bille i dteanga de na teangacha oifigiúla agus sa teanga sin amháin, ní foláir tiontú oifigiúil a chur amach sa teanga oifigiúil eile. 6° i gcás téacs Gaeilge agus téacs Sacs-Bhéarla de dhlí a chur isteach ina n-iris
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These days normally we divide the world into halves: one which is inside our imagination, and another which is real and outside of us. The first half includes things like love, sentiment, beauty, laughter, and is necessary for our own sanity but a dangerous falsity; the second is bare and severe, a brutal volcanic eruption of the elements on the periodic table, spilling over themselves onto the ground, life as a devouring tapeworm in the stomach of a small child. Historically, ideas tend to have been veiled behind opposed contradictories. Here and now these two things: the blissful dream and the terrible sober waking morning, only seem to be in conflict with each other, but in fact they are mutually supporting. Hedonism has power only because it is considered the sole alternative to what Kurtz saw: “The horror! The horror!”. On the other hand, hedonism tranquillises people and stops them from fighting for the world, or even just looking out at it for themselves: it allows a certain image of the ‘real’ world to be forced on people as if it were something beyond their capacity even to observe. Pages and pages have been written on the malaise – depression, anxiety, indifference – characterising young life in the contemporary West. Malaise for example is at the core of Sally Rooney’s books. But the heart of this malaise is a belief, which goes by the name of ‘unbelief’, that the world is simply a horror from which our only refuge is one or another variety of hedonism. Baudelaire’s word for that malaise was “ennui”. The great French critic, Sainte-Beuve, horrified with Baudelaire’s poetry, wrote that it was “where the pleasure of ornament is united with self-inflicted torture”: “the extreme point of the Romantic Kamchatka [in furthest Russia]”. But now ennui has become the frozen climate of every city that calls itself ‘Western’. But now ennui has become the frozen climate of every city that calls itself ‘Western’. The greatness of the sadly missed cultural theorist Mark Fisher was to perceive this, which he called “Capitalist Realism” – neither a political nor artistic strictly speaking, but a spiritual phenomenon. It is about our current collective relationship with the real. In this play, ‘It Is Good We Are Dreaming’, written by Ultan Pringle, directed by Julia Appleby, staged by Lemonsoap Productions in the New Theatre, the spiritual disaster of our age is perfectly visible. The characters are 20-something Fionn, 30-something Fiadh, and their absent offstage mother -with the voice of Fionnuala Murphy which has its moments but is sometimes too hushed like the whisper of Gollum. They are caught between the fantastical and purple poetic stories their mother told them and believed (in particular that the love of her life was a stone man she met once by the sea), and their grim and loveless daily existences. They do not recognise how much these have in common: like a screen, each half prevents the characters from understanding the true nature of the other. Fionn and Fiadh are consistent, believable, and well-drawn as a dichotomy: two alternative responses to the mother’s principled choice of a life of destructive fantasy at the cost of her children. The performances (by Laoise Murray and Luke Dalton) are compelling, but sometimes too comfortable: they should be more desperate, more anxious. The difficult thing about any relationship like theirs is that the two people cannot find their level. They love each other but do not know how to love each other. They know one another perfectly in a sense but not at all in others, so that naturally they always say too little or too much and they offend and are offended, and they know that this will happen for as long as they continue talking. This makes talking as unbearable as silence: that is why things are hard for them. These performances were not tense enough; but in other ways they achieved a great deal. The audience feels like they know Fiadh and Fionn and their mother by the end – these people are all out there, we have met them, but they have not previously been on stage or brought together artistically. The production has altogether managed a creative, compelling and emotive story that feels like it is already happening somewhere at a kitchen table — two things hold it back, one smaller and the other bigger. The production has altogether managed a compelling and emotive story that feels like it is already happening somewhere at a kitchen table. A creative and interesting play, overall – two things hold it back, one smaller and the other bigger. The first is that the dialogue is sometimes too conscious of the audience: the seeding of expository details is a bit rough especially at the beginning, and later on the abrupt changes of tense, as Fionn or Fiadh launches into describing a scene from their childhood, jar. They are moments when the play steps out of itself inadvertently. The second is that the play has not been put together with a rigorous enough sense of what it means for something to be beautiful. The reason why the parts when the mother speaks – and the ones where Fionn and Fiadh describe their dreams – are so easily dismissed as purple passages or empty fantasies is that, essentially, they are. They invent an alternative reality and sit back finding that beautiful, which is the easy and corrosive thing, rather than making the actual world beautiful and strange as it is in front of us. This is nothing to do with fantasy as a literary genre (c.f. the books of Ursula Le Guin). It is everything to do with fantasy as an escape into meaninglessness. Some of the writing in these dreamy passages is like simulated poetry: plenty of stars and meadows, a great deal
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It’s the IT, BoI Springsteen wasn’t Bank of Ireland’s only recent IT debacle. What is the point of Bank of Ireland? Exactly what, or who, is Bank of Ireland for? Certainly not for ordinary customers if they also happen to be Bruce Springsteen fans. On Friday, the bank’s app crashed just as tickets for the Boss’s RDS concert were released. Moreover, Bank of Ireland (BOI) is not for anyone who needs to complete any transaction face-to-face. About one third of BOI’s Irish branches were culled in 2021 – mostly in areas that already have poor access to banking hall services. And, even if you manage to find a branch that remains open, most staffed-cash-windows have been replaced with self-service teller machines. The cumulative effect of these changes is that most bank customers now obtain their money through digital channels. Payments are made through either websites or the mobile app that is provided by their bank. Banks have a financial incentive to deny customers access to branches and force them online regardless of customer preferences – it is far cheaper to provide day-to-day banking services to ordinary customers online than through physical bank branches. This is a deliberate strategy on the part of banks to make customers get their money through digital channels. Or, in the case of BOI customers, to try to get their money through digital channels. On Friday, BOI announced the latest interruption to its online services. Although disappointed music fans drew most attention on Twitter, in fact, all its retail customers were left without any access to their accounts through BOI’s mobile app. That announcement relied on the anodyne explanation that “some customers are experiencing difficulty accessing our app”. The reassurance that “our teams are working hard to resolve this as soon as possible” will have been little comfort to customers who were unable to complete transactions. In response to questions posed by Village, a BOI spokesperson explained that the interruption of service lasted two and half hours and was fixed later in the morning. The bank confirmed that the service was not overwhelmed by any surge of activity on its app, with the volume of transactions remaining at normal levels. Customers attempting to use the BOI app to buy tickets were the victims of an unfortunate but unrelated coincidence as: “(U)nfortunately the timing of the technical issue overlapped with when the Bruce Springsteen tickets went on sale”. The spokesperson extended the bank’s apology “for the inconvenience caused to customer as a result of the issue”. This carries the worrying implication that what occurred was just an ordinary banking failure – doing little to allay fears that BOI’s mobile app is unreliable even under normal conditions. At the time of publication, BOI had not commented when this suggestion was put to it. Neither had it replied when questioned if the crash represents a repeat of the contraventions identified in the settlement agreement concluded with the Central Bank of Ireland (CBI) on 30 November 2021. Less than 6 months ago, BOI was fined €24.5 million and reprimanded for “breaches of its IT service continuity framework and related internal control failings”. Less than 6 months ago, BOI was fined €24.5 million and reprimanded for “breaches of its IT service continuity framework and related internal control failings”. In its statement, the Central Bank of Ireland (CBI) explained that: “IT service continuity failings were repeatedly identified from 2008 onwards but…only started to be appropriately recognised and addressed in 2015”. The details of the settlement agreement outline that, from 2008 to 2015, and despite third-party contractors repeatedly drawing the bank’s attention to these deficiencies as critical problems, concerns about the resilience of the bank’s IT systems were not brought to the attention of the board or appropriate executive committees. For seven years BOI senior managers either did not know, or, were not told, that its creaking IT systems were incapable of ensuring “continuity of service in the event of significant IT disruption”. For seven years BOI senior managers either did not know, or, were not told, that its creaking IT systems were incapable of ensuring “continuity of service in the event of significant IT disruption”. It took a further four years for BOI to take steps to remedy the situation to the satisfaction of the CBI. As a result, “(F)rom 2008 until 2019, BOI was in breach of key regulatory provisions regarding IT service continuity”. It took a further four years for BOI to take steps to remedy the situation to the satisfaction of the CBI. As a result, “(F)rom 2008 until 2019, BOI was in breach of key regulatory provisions regarding IT service continuity”. The CBI’s Director of Enforcement and Anti-Money Laundering, Seána Cunningham, underlined the significance of these failings for ordinary people: “… IT disruptions, particularly if they were to happen in a bank, could have a very serious impact on millions of customers who rely on ready access to their funds and services to keep their everyday lives and businesses moving…given the ‘always on’ nature of the services BOI provides and how pivotal IT is to the entirety of its business operations”. It is now clear that the CBI was gravely mistaken in its assessment that BOI had the requisite “operational resilience designed to protect consumers and ensure financial stability”. The basis on which the settlement agreement was reached was, in part, that BOI had in place an adequate “runbook” (the plan to ensure the continued provision of critical services should an incident arise including procedures to begin, stop, supervise, test and restart a service/system) and “failover” (a redundancy procedure by which a system automatically transfers control to a duplicate system when it detects a fault or failure) capable of protecting customers. Friday’s debacle makes a mockery of the promise from Christine Hamill – who, without a trace of irony, holds the title of Director of
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The 2010 Report of the Saville Enquiry describes much of what happened in Derry on Bloody Sunday (30 January 1972). Various commentaries and later publications have added further information, some of it of a nature that the authorities must have hoped would never be revealed. It seems however that the ferocity of the slaughter that day has still not been adequately explained. Could ‘pure’ revenge be that explanation, as it had been on several other occasions in the past when the British army committed similar atrocities in Ireland. In the late 1980s while living in Derry and in the course of doing research for my book ‘Siege City: the story of Derry and Londonderry’ (published 1990), I became aware that as well as the terrible deaths in the city on Bloody Sunday, on the same day Major Robin Alers-Hankey, an officer in the Royal Green Jackets, had died also – but in London. Major Alers-Hankey was the first British army officer to be killed in the Troubles. He died of an injury sustained several months earlier while on duty in Derry’s Bogside, at a location that figured prominently in the deaths of the civilians on Bloody Sunday. There are slightly differing accounts of the incident but, apparently, he was shot while providing security cover for the fire brigade which had been called out to a burning building in Abbey Street. It is possible that the fire had been started deliberately with the intention of luring the soldiers into an ambush. I was struck by the coincidence of the major’s death on the same day as the terrible events in Derry itself and wondered if there could have been any connection between the two tragedies. However, I didn’t know what time of the day the major had died and in those pre-googling days I had no easy way of finding out. Clearly his death would have had to have occurred before the slaughter in Derry if there was to have been any connection. I mentioned the subject to various people in Derry from time to time, but I never met anybody who seemed to know much about the incident. Most times I spoke about it I got the distinct impression that people thought I’d be better not to enquire too much into the matter; at best it would be seen as a distraction from the main unresolved issues, at worst I might even be accused of providing a ‘reason’ or possibly an ‘excuse’ for the actions of the paras. The latter, of course, was the last thing on my mind; but as an historian I felt that the question was worth pursuing or, at very least, worth asking. I was asked by the Bloody Sunday Trust to chair a fairly large public meeting in the Pilots’ Row Community Centre in the Bogside on the weekend of the 25th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, in 1997. In the course of my introduction, I mentioned the Alers-Hankey affair and although some of my other remarks were responded to by those attending and reported, for example in the Derry Journal, my reference to the officer’s death seemed to fall totally flat and was not mentioned again. On 25 January 2002, however, the Irish Times reported that Martin McGuinness “was under pressure to state all he knows about 34 murders carried out by the IRA in Derry during 1972”. Among those listed was the killing of Robin Alers-Hankey. On 8 February 2002, the Irish Times published a letter from Jonathan Stephenson, a trades union official in Belfast and a former chairman of the SDLP (1995-8). It appeared under the heading ‘Remembering Bloody Sunday’. In the letter Mr Stephenson (who was English) mentioned that Major Alers-Hankey was ‘a member of my family’. He went on to refer to Martin McGuinness’s role in the IRA in Derry saying: ‘it is entirely possible that Mr McGuinness might have a fair idea who killed him [Major Alers-Hankey].’ I didn’t pursue the matter in any way subsequently although my curiosity about it remained. I assumed that it would be dealt with by the Saville Enquiry. By then living in Dublin, I made a preliminary check of the Saville Report immediately on its publication on 15 June 2010. The Report does mention the major’s death on Bloody Sunday as background to the situation in Derry at that time but (as far as I know) it does not mention the time of his death or suggest any link with the atrocity. There also seems to be some discrepancy in the dates given for the original wounding of the major: Saville states 2 September 1971, while a number of army-related sources (e.g. Holywood Palace Barracks website) suggest 16 October. On the day of the Saville Report publication (15 June 2010) and over the next few days I made attempts to contact a well-known journalist who I thought might be interested in what I had to say about the matter and who might mention it in his own coverage.* Having failed to make contact I wrote a short letter to the Irish Times, still indicating that I was unaware of the time of the Major’s death. The letter was published on 17 June and among those who contacted me as a result (18 June) was a female reporter from RTÉ/TG4 Nuacht who wanted to interview me. Unfortunately, I cannot now remember the reporter’s name. On the phone, I explained to her that my hypothesis that there might be a connection between the two events was dependant on the time of the major’s death and if it was possible that news of it could have reached Derry prior to the attack on the marchers. An hour later the interview crew arrived in my office in Dublin. In the meantime, the reporter had done a bit of googling and had found a relevant reference in ‘Those are real bullets: Bloody Sunday, Derry, 1972’ by Peter Pringle and Philip Jacobson (published 2000). The following is the relevant
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Kendrick Lamar is one of the most popular high-brow artists. He is one of very few people in history whose work during their lifetime has been at once widely listened to (nearly 20 million hits already for the top tracks of this album on Spotify) and deeply scrutinised: every lyric, every note and harmony is unravelled, put together, unravelled, put together again. How does someone become that person? Musicality. This cannot be reduced to craft, the manipulation of melodies and harmonies, just as painting cannot seriously be made a matter of oils and sketches, nor writing vocabulary and punctuation. To an ordinary unversed person, Lamar’s tools would just seem like melodies and harmonies, but for him they are a language, an expressive medium: a way of reaching other people’s subjective interiority. What unites his albums, for all their differences, is that the music is for earphones, for walking around with, eating dinner to, listening to: alone, again and again. They are made for experience, that pre-interpretive affective field that we make around us in our ordinary lives; whose shape has been theorised by many but is obscure to all; which some people have misnamed the unconscious, and which others have – more understandably, although not coherently – called presence. Kendrick Lamar makes people feel something. Not just pleasure – most of the music is hard listening, demanding attention but chipping away , sometimes excruciatingly: songs like ‘We Cry Together’. In Lamar’s music there is an echo, however faint, of the good. Listeners are willing to suffer for this music because there is more than just sensation to it: listening to it is not like drunkenness. Audible , making meaning of its essence, is a sense of theme, the serenity of an idea. In Lamar’s music there is an echo, however faint, of the good. When people wonder what truth artists can express or if there is a connection between art and morality, they miss the point completely if they do not see two things: (1) The echo of the good is the whole source of art’s power and its one true mission on earth; (2) When people misunderstand this they try and take more from art than is there, and it becomes corrupt – this nearly always happens. The first of these is rich and profound. The second explains why our understanding of artists is split: we tend to think of them as either prophets or pleasure-spinners while also forcing them to be both which cheapens them. Like power, when it is twisted from a means into an end, art corrupts. It is one of the myths of our time that taste in art is subjective and arbitrary, like the consumer’s favourite foods and the citizen’s contrived support for a foreign soccer team. Any reasonably deep thinker would tell you that people’s favourite foods and soccer teams are not arbitrary at all but a projection of where they are from, and who they would like to be (i.e., of their social class and place in history) – art too. But it is also not arbitrary because it comes from a need which is not arbitrary: the need for things to make sense. Like the Andromeda Galaxy, the best art in the world does not need us. But we need its inferiors Like the Andromeda Galaxy, the best art in the world does not need us. But we need its inferiors – false images, shaky edifices of bad sense – like the lies people tell themselves: for example, that society develops, that we are a Western liberal democracy, that bad things either happen for a certain type of ‘reason’ or will not happen as much eventually, or that we somehow stand with the people who suffer them. In ‘Mr Morale and the Big Steppers’ we hear the voice of a brilliant musician who at once asks too little and too much of his own art. The album is full of snippets, flourishes, hieroglyphs, loose references, subtle indicators – they lead nowhere. You could walk them around the entire earth and end up where you started. The point of each hidden reference is overwhelmingly the reference itself; the allusion always alludes first to its own allusion. Near the beginning of ‘Father Time’ for example we are told to ‘reach out to Eckhart’. Thomas Pynchon for music lovers. With such things there is an obvious kitschiness (and the lyrics sometimes too. From ‘Worldwide Steppers:’ ‘Photoshoppin’ lies and motives. Hide your eyes, then pose for the pic’.’ From ‘Purple Hearts:’ ‘I’m not in the music business, I been in the human business/Whole life been social distant’). But what these references, and more generally all the songs, keep coming back to is the Christian God. This is not exactly the God of James Baldwin, the sheer overwhelming joy of life together in song – nor the sublimely Christian one of Marvin Gaye – because it is delayed, deferred, like the ‘happiness’ of the ‘pursuit of happiness’. ‘God’ here means ‘Paradise’, the fulfilment of a desire; the album honestly and vividly makes you feel America’s most devastating delusion: that you can ‘pursue’ happiness any more successfully or less destructively than you can chase a dragon. All the best of ‘Mr Morale and the Big Steppers’ is about pain: feeling pain, admitting to it, being afraid of it, working out where it comes from, understanding it will not disappear. ‘Mother I Sober’, the best song on the album, strips everything back to this – a story about something that happened to his mother when he was young, and what it meant and means, its place in history. The worst is when a song leans complacently on its thought, such as the gimmicky and Macklemore-ish ‘Auntie Diaries’ – whose narrator describes his two trans relatives, mixing vulgar discomfort and misgendering with supportive indignance against
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Why Solar In their book, ‘The Menace of Atomic Energy’,published nearly 50 years ago, Ralph Nader and John Abbotts revealed to readers that the person most responsible for developing American nuclear reactors, Dr Alvin Weinberg, admitted he would prefer solar energy if its cost could be brought down to less than 2.5 times the cost of nuclear energy. In 2020, the International Energy Agency (IEA) declared solar electricity the cheapest in history: at least four times cheaper than nuclear. Solar panels can be installed quickly, with minimal disruption to nature. The embodied energy used up in panels and end-of-life disposal remain concerns but diminishingly so. In Germany, plans to open a nuclear reprocessing plant at Wackersdorf in Bavaria were discontinued in 1989 because of major public protests. The experience converted former lead nuclear exponent Dr Franz Alt to the benefits of renewable energy (RE). Alt coined the phrase, “solar panels for peace”, echoing President Eisenhower’s 1950s slogan, “atoms for peace”, referring to using fissile nuclear material for civilian electricity production not weapons. The monstrous consequences of accidents or conflict occasionally remind us that nuclear production poses a persistent security threat. Decentralised energy independence based on 100 % clean renewables is the alternative. Extremely Positive Incentives for Change (EPICS), regulatory changes and financial incentives to reduce and capture carbon, are recommended by Lonergan and Sawers in their book ‘Supercharge Me’. Solar Energy Over 99% of energy in the world comes from the sun. If the sun stopped shining, Earth’s temperature would soon drop to -150 ⁰ C and eventually -270⁰ C. Lighting fires to reach ambient temperature would exhaust fossil fuels within days. Solar energy sustains life. It remains abundant everywhere. The remaining 1% of energy, over which most wars are fought comes from oil, uranium, gas, and coal. Harnessing Solar A great piece last year in the excellent Low-Tech Magazine explores the evolution of solar power. Ancient humans made use of passive heat from the sun to dry materials, light fires, and grow plants, while monuments like Newgrange and Stonehenge that stage solstice alignments suggest ritualistic devotion. A solar cell, or photovoltaic cell (PV), is an electrical device that converts the energy of light directly into electricity by the photovoltaic effect -a physical and chemical phenomenon. In the Victorian era, Charles Fritts’s thin selenium wafers covered with semi-transparent gold wires (1881) produced PV effects. George Cove invented a solar thermoelectric generator, in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1905, with a strong photovoltaic effort, largely forgotten. Einstein identified the photoelectric effect in 1904, and bandgap theory emerged in the 1930s, associated with Felix Bloch and others. The modern solar cell debuted in 1954 at the prolific US Bell Labs. It had a 6 per cent conversion efficiency, a rate which has been nudged up ever since. Current Power Supply in Ireland Included in EirGrid’s Shaping Our Electricity Future report published in November 2021 is a chart showing assumed renewable generation capacities for Ireland by 2030. Source Ireland (MW) Onshore Wind 5,700 Offshore Wind 5,000 Solar10 1,500 Total 12,200 One third of the 1,500 mega-watts (MW) of solar energy is expected to come from microgeneration projects, to be connected to the ESB distribution system. A special category for community-owned projects now attracts particular support. Eirgrid acknowledges “a new era for communities investing in their long-term energy needs”. According to Dr David Meredith of Teagasc: “The first Renewable Electricity Support Scheme (2021) included seven community projects and it will be important to learn from these in terms of good practices in order to develop appropriate models and supports that benefit rural communities in the future”. Perhaps the solar sector is finally being taken seriously. In 2020, the National Just Transition Fund (JTF) awarded a total of €20.5 million in grant-aid to qualifying projects. The categories funded were: business development; education; training and upskilling; development of co-working and enterprise hubs, renewable energies (RE), and retrofitting. Representative groups like the Micro-Renewable Energy Federation (MREF) are now asking that VAT on solar PV panels and their supply and installation for private homes and public buildings be reduced or eliminated. Additionally, Planning exemptions for solar panelsare expected by June, meaning planning permission will no longer be required for larger solar installations across residential rooftops, farm buildings, schools, community centres and a range of commercial buildings. How to go solar The website of semi-state body SEAI (Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland) provides information on solar technologies, including those supported by grants, especially promoting Electric Ireland’s Superhomes retrofit scheme, whose website furnishes case studies. The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) could fund renewable energy initiatives on farms. In February 2022, the Irish government launched the National Retrofitting Scheme, widening the range of supports available to households to improve their energy efficiency. For homeowners, there are three main dimensions to the scheme: individual energy upgrade grants offering up to 80% grant support for insulation and heating, deep retrofit grants offering up to 50% of the cost, and free energy upgrades for those at risk of energy poverty. A state-run low cost loan scheme is also being developed. In ARC 2020’s report Rural Ireland on the Move, launched at Cultivate’s recent Feeding Ourselves2022 conference in Cloughjordan, Dr Olive McCarthy explores a just transition to energy efficiency for low-income households. She notes that provisions of the National Retrofitting Scheme and related low-cost loans fail to adequately support low-income households in achieving greater energy efficiency and lower costs, according to research conducted by the UCC Centre for Co-operative Studies and North Dublin Money Advice and Budgeting Service (MABS). On that basis, they fall short of the Nevin Institute’s just transition criteria. While most households surveyed showing environment consciousness, for those with little disposable income, qualifying for aids was too onerous. Even free retrofitting had limited appeal. A just energy transition cannot happen without other tailored measures, such as one-on-one advice. McCarthy concluded: “The introduction of Community Energy Advisors, as recommended by the Saint Vincent de Paul in its
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The ownership and governance arrangements for the new National Maternity Hospital (NMH) are fraught with risk for future generations of women in Ireland. The board structure of the new hospital makes it liable to capture and control by the 3/3/3 membership structure. The NMH will have minority representation of only three out of nine on its own board, and one of its directors is limited to chairing its own board for a maximum three out of nine years. The three St Vincent’s Hospital Group (SVHG) directors are committed to the “continuance of the fulfilment” of the evidently Catholic mission of the Venerable Mary Aikenhead, the founder of the Religious Sisters of Charity who is well advanced in the process of becoming a saint in the Catholic Church. One of these directors too will chair the NMH board for three out of every nine years. Minister Donnelly claims he can guarantee that his successors over the next 299 years will not appoint three anti-choice members who could combine with the three SVHG members to form a 6:3 anti-choice majority. There is no need to speculate that such a situation might arise in fifty or a hundred years. Memories are clear of the infamous picture of the majority of the Fianna Fáil parliamentary party just four years ago — women to the forefront — holding up “Love Both” posters; while men in the background all affirm their anti-choice position. In a final blow for NMH board independence, one of the ministerial nominees will chair the board for three out of every nine years. The global pushback on women’s reproductive rights is constant. Majorities on controlling boards matter. Just look at how a majority anti-choice Supreme Court in the USA is poised to overturn Roe v Wade. Problems with the NMH relocation plan began can be traced back to a letter written by then Master, Dr Rhona Mahony, and Deputy Chair Mr Nicholas Kearns to Kieran Mulvey in September 2016. Problems with the NMH relocation plan began can be traced back to a letter written by then Master, Dr Rhona Mahony, and Deputy Chair Mr Nicholas Kearns to Kieran Mulvey in September 2016. “We agree that the ownership of what is now the NMH will transfer to the ownership of SVHG, a private company owned by the Sisters of Charity”. Simon Harris, then Minister for Health, enthusiastically embraced this plan in the Mulvey report Simon Harris, then Minister for Health, enthusiastically embraced this plan in the Mulvey report, apparently untroubled by the history of the Magdalene laundries in Ireland and seeing no possible risk in a Catholic religious order owning the State’s flagship maternity hospital. When the predictable public uproar ensued, five years of complicated and secretive legal manoeuvres commenced. The Sisters announced they were departing healthcare. Not true, they were gifting their land to their successor private company, St Vincent’s Holdings. The Sisters announced they were departing healthcare – a plan in the works for several years before May 2017 – and were “gifting lands worth €200 million to the People of Ireland”. Not true, they were gifting their land to their successor private company, St Vincent’s Holdings. They then tried to claim that they did not need Vatican permission for the shareholding transfer. Not true either. They then tried to claim that uniquely among Catholic religious orders they did not need Vatican permission for their shareholding transfer. Not true either. Two more years passed while the machinery in Rome considered the Sisters’ petition. In Ireland, a dizzying number of legal documents whizzed between top law firms as the State’s attempt to dig itself out the hole it had created for itself became increasingly labyrinthine and Byzantine. Following correspondence between the Sisters, the Irish Catholic hierarchy, the Papal Nuncio, and the Vatican, conditional permission was granted in 2020 for the creation of St Vincent’s Holdings. Two further years passed while the civil law process got underway. In a spectacular failure of due diligence, that correspondence has never been seen by the Government who have now committed to spending a billion euros In a spectacular failure of due diligence, that correspondence has never been seen by the Government who have now committed to spending a billion euros, and probably more, on a new hospital whose operating company NMH DAC will be owned by St Vincent’s Holdings – the Sisters’ Vatican-approved successor. Only sustained opposition and public pressure forced the release of some of the tangled web of legal documentation following failure to approve Minister Donnelly’s Memo to Cabinet two weeks ago. Contradictory “definitions” were put forward about the term “clinically appropriate” including one risible proposition that it was to ensure NMH clinicians didn’t indulge in a spot of brain surgery when they were supposed to be doing a caesarian section. In a new twist, fresh consternation arose about the term “clinically appropriate” in the documents. Taken by surprise, different and contradictory “definitions” were put forward, including one risible proposition that it was to ensure NMH clinicians didn’t indulge in a spot of brain surgery when they were supposed to be doing a caesarian section. Doctors such as Professor Louise Kenny and myself were clear that these words make the provision of legally permissible services dependent on the clinical decision of a doctor rather than the request of woman on a case-by-case basis. They remove patient autonomy. Nothing has changed since the Chairman of SVHG, Mr James Menton made clear in May 2017 that the project “will only proceed on the basis of existing agreements that give ownership and control of the new hospital to St Vincent’s Healthcare Group” Irish Times May 30 2017 . His objective has been wholly achieved. Vatican/Vested interests 10: Women of Ireland 0. And the Government, as we now know, has never been on the pitch. Dr
