The ready availability of pornography and sexual imagery desensitises men to real women
Leaders
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The State must provide for abortion Since a 1992 Supreme Court ruling, known as the X case, abortion has been theoretically legal in Ireland if there is a risk to the life of a pregnant woman. Bunreacht na hÉireann now allows Dáil Éireann to legislate on this; however, no political party has dared to, and the Irish Medical Council cravenly considers it malpractice for any doctor to perform an abortion: “The deliberate and intentional destruction of the unborn child is professional misconduct. Should a child in utero lose its life as a side-effect of standard medical treatment of the mother, then this is not unethical”. Remarkably, this edict extends to where the pregnancy does not involve the agency of the woman, such as cases of rape and incest. Meanwhile, the numbers of Irish women seeking abortions in Britain seem to be 150-200 weekly, though figures are unreliable. In May 2007, a pregnant 17-year-old girl, known only as “Miss D”, whose foetus suffered from anencephaly, was prevented from travelling to Britain by the Health Service Executive. The High Court eventually ruled that she could not be prevented from travelling merely because she was a ward of the state, but clearly women’s rights are under practical threat. In 2005, three Irish women who had previously travelled to England for abortions won their case in the European Court of Human Rights, that restrictive and unclear Irish laws violate several provisions of the European Convention on Human Rights. The case, A, B and C v Ireland, held there is no right for women to an abortion, although Ireland had violated the Convention by failing to provide an accessible and effective procedure for a woman to establish whether she qualifies for a legal abortion under current Irish law. A recent Private Members’ Bill, put forward by Socialist Party TD Clare Daly, People Before Profit TD Joan Collins and Independent TD Mick Wallace, sought to create a legal framework for abortion in Ireland where a woman’s life is at risk, including from suicide. The vote was opposed by Fine Gael, Labour and Fianna Fáil. It was backed by Sinn Féin and number of independents, though many of them made it clear they were determined to provide only for abortion in the case of threats to the life of the woman. A recent and moving Irish Times article also notably dealt only with women whose lives had been threatened by pregnancy and who had therefore had abortions. There does not seem to be much of a constituency for abortion in other circumstances. In any event, Minister for Health, Dr James Reilly, rejected the Bill on the grounds that the House should await the report of an expert group on the matter, which will report within months. Abortion is complicated and involves a weighing of the rights of a woman with those of an unborn foetus. We do not even have a language for rights outside human rights and many, particularly in Anglophone countries outside Ireland, believe that the position of a foetus must yield to that of the woman, where her life, her health, her emotional welfare including in circumstances of rape or incest or even just her life plans (at least in the first trimester) demand it. As part of our acceptance that life is complex and circumstances often far from ideal, Village considers that the logic of sympathising with a woman who believes there is an imperative to have a first-trimester abortion extends to a legislative and constitutional imperative to provide for first-trimester abortion where a woman demands it. Ireland should legislate for X and move to provide in the medium-term, through constitutional change, for first-trimester abortions. No country that exports its moral issues in circumstances of great human pain can call itself a Republic.
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The minister for Justice, Equality and Defence – Alan Shatter – has announced a working group to advise him on the merging of the Equality Authority and the Irish Human Rights Commission. There is no evidence that this merger reflects any commitment to the necessary renewal of the equality and human rights infrastructure. It seems to be just another instance of austerity politics. The Minister’s announcement reflects this in referring to the need for a ‘streamlined’ body. The merger is presented as a means to save public money on two bodies deemed to have ‘overlapping functions’. The new Government seems determined to finish out the project initiated by its predecessor to neuter our equality and human rights infrastructure. When this merger was first mooted by the Minister in September, concern was raised that the roles foreseen for the merged body made no ref- erence to providing legal support to those taking cases of discrimination or cases in relation to human rights abuses. The Equality Authority and the Irish Human Rights Commission have been remarkably reticent about providing such support in recent times. The Authority reported a 78% reduction in cases supported in 2010 as compared with 2008. The Commission reported only one case supported in 2010, It is nonetheless a vital function for the effectiveness of the infrastructure. The announcement of the working group states that the new merged body will retain the statutory powers and duties of the existing bodies. However this is undermined when the terms of reference ask the working group to offer a view whether greater use of codes of practice or strategic court cases might achieve the best outcome. The terms of ref- erence disturbingly note that ‘court cases tend to involve the State in one way or another’. The composition of the working group is crucial in such a context. It is confined to members of the Boards of the two Bodies and officials from the Department. There are no representatives of civil society such as trade unions who play a key role in implementing equality legislation or the Equality and Rights Alliance which has done detailed work on this issue. The lack of ambition from the Government is evident in the envisaged role for the new body ‘encouraging’ public bodies to put respect for human rights and equality at the heart of their policies and practices. This is a remarkable dilution of the commitment in the Programme for Government to ‘require’ public bodies to have due regard to equality and human rights in carrying out their functions. There are lessons from mergers of equality and human rights bodies in other jurisdictions, such as Britain and Denmark. Mergers that are contrived to facilitate financial savings degenerate into turf wars between two traditions that are significantly different. They result in confusion rather than coherence. Mergers that fail to evolve and make coherent the powers to promote equality and protect human rights result in a loss of focus rather than increased effectiveness. The renewal of the Irish Human Rights Commission and the Equality Authority, after the depredations of the previous Government, should have been a priority of the new Government. It does not appear to be. Five tests will demonstrate whether renewal or further retrenchment is proposed in this merger proposal. Renewal requires: •Retention of the current powers of both bodies alongside a levelling up of the powers that relate to the promotion of equality and to the protection of human rights. •Broadening of the remit for the bodies such that socio-economic status is a protected ground for discrimination and a focus for promoting equality and human rights. •Introduction of a positive duty on public sector bodies to have due regard to human rights and equality in carrying out their functions. A commitment to independence in Board appointment, staff recruitment and the body’s accountability. •Allocation of adequate resources.
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Day 100 (June 2011 Editorial)
On Enda Kenny rests that most daunting of responsibilities in this battered society: the fulfilment of Hope In our last edition just before the general election we expressed, without confidence, the hope that having been the victims of some of the most notoriously bad governance on the planet, we would have learnt that our political classes need to be replaced. In fact, at election time we saw no new ideas and no significant new parties. The non-ideological, non-visionary parties of the incompetent pragmatic centre touted their old ideas, bolstered only by professions of aspirations to higher standards of ethics and transparency. Village has consistently made the case that Fine Gael is the closest thing to Fianna Fáil, being driven by small-time vested interests (see for example the Cherrywood article at p60) and a blasé laissez-faire. We see no reason to alter this judgement in terms of the fundamentals of policy: wealth creation and distribution (see Niall Crowley at p46), and the environment (see for example the cute handling of the despoliation of Ireland’s raised bogs at p16). The handling of the debt crisis is indistinguishable from Fianna Fail’s, despite a manifest, though comprehensively obviated, public desire for radical change. Fine Gael’s manifesto declared, “Borrowing up to €25bn in additional funds from the EU/IMF at 5.8 per cent to cover additional bank losses from firesales of loans and other bank assets at rock-bottom prices, as this government has agreed, will push Irish government debt towards unsustainable levels and hinder economic recovery, threatening the stability of the entire Euro area”. Yet this is what the coalition is doing, even as the coalition concedes major interest-rate changes are unlikely. Elsewhere also the coalition are pushing the previous government’s programme. Fine Gael implied it would hesitate to recapitalise the banks if bank losses were higher than anticipated. In fact it recapitalised them anyway. It said it would burn unsecured senior bondholders “as part of a European-wide framework for senior debt focusing on insolvent institutions like Anglo Irish and Irish Nationwide that have no systemic importance” but will not. Fine Gael said it would introduce water and property taxes only after preliminary measures and safeguards were in place but is now moving ahead anyway. And so on. There have, however, been some substantial policy improvements. Restoring the minimum wage level is a welcome gesture to social solidarity as is the IMF-mandated intention to shake up the legal and medical professions in openness in government. There have also been important improvements in openness including promised referenda on compellability of witnesses for Dáil committees and overdue whistleblowers’ protection, (see Noel Wardick’s article at p25), extension of the bodies covered by Freedom of Information and expansion of the role of the Ombudsman. There have too been marked improvements in tone. These include the reduction in ministerial cars, a promised referendum on judges’ pay and less-partisan Seanad appointments. Nevertheless, the change is fragile: nepotism continues in the hiring of political assistants and drivers and, depressingly if predictably Phil Hogan has downgraded John Gormley’s review of local authority planning malpractice. In our last edition we predicted that Mr Kenny would collapse under scrutiny, particularly on the international stage, and we churlishly queried his credibility. This was too harsh. In fact, despite a strange cattlemanish delivery and a tendency to term his co-nationals ‘Paddy”, lachrymosity in the presence of Riverdance and some probably-unfairly-derided oratorical plagiarism, he has performed adequately, and sometimes well, as his confidence has risen with high office. In this he mirrors the ascent of other assumed light-weights such as John Bruton; and even Albert Reynolds and Bertie Ahern. The Taoiseach has certainly been helped by recent State ceremonies and the associated pomp. The Queen’s visit was a triumph and, like most reconciliations, worth the effort. President Obama too, though not at his charismatic best, leavened the pervading national misery; and the death of Garret FitzGerald provided an opportunity to reflect on the possibilities of a lifetime dedicated to public service. Enda Kenny should use his political capital to take a braver, more economically-literate and indeed, since it is unfair to make a country including its most vulnerable pay the debts of its banks, more ethical stance on the elementary truth that Ireland is insolvent (see Constantin Gurdgiev at p6). It will anyway be exposed as such next year when it must seek investors in government bonds who, given current rates of 11%, are not likely to provide affordable funding. While the government ignores this, pursuing chimerical economics, it is difficult to divine much clarity of purpose anywhere, a difficulty that can only get worse if the political capital dissipates. On the narrow shoulders of Enda Kenny rests that most daunting of responsibilities in this battered society: the fulfilment of Hope. On the economy, on the environment and on equality he should be braver.
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As Village went to print, the main governing party had 13% support and its grumpy leader satisfied only 14% of voters. The country looks likely to finish up losing 20% of its predicted GDP to ineptitude and corruption. The country is insolvent, unless it can maintain unsustainable 6.5% growth rates, even though our leaders pretend not to have realised it. Insolvency has been caused partly by a hasty and reckless government guarantee to insolvent banks, that cosseted speculator bondholders. The country has just surrendered, following a period of dishonest governmental denial, to an ignominiously-loaned European and IMF €85bn ‘bailout’ at draconian interest rates. A vicious and somewhat regressive budget has hammered the whole of society particularly the poorest, in pursuit of planned cuts of €15bn over four years. The unapologising Taoiseach has appeared on the nation’s flagship radio programme soggily hungover. One public-sector boss in Ireland takes home a staggering €752,568. The government hasn’t had the will to annihilate bankers’ bonuses, though it has filleted the minimum wage. The principal opposition party is led by a lightweight who lets himself down whenever there is a mic around. And finally the coalition government, on the verge of internal-dissent-driven collapse, has announced that an election will be held as soon as possible [later specified as March 11]. What would a visitor from Mars expect – anger on the streets, strikes against government policy, the occasional riot by those who cannot contain themselves? And on the positive side exciting new public debate, new political initiatives, and above all alternatives to the discredited old guard. Not the very real, imminent prospect of more Fianna Gael and Labour. The country needs to take immediate action to avoid the excesses of the European/IMF deal. We should take the most aggressive position legally possible against every last bondholder, curtail future payments to redundant non-systemic cash-torchers like Anglo Irish and re-negotiate the interest rate on the bailout, including on those portions of it being advanced bilaterally by so-called friendly neighbours. If this is not to the liking of our international friends, then we should threaten to default. The associated international debate on our institutionalised mugging can only work to our advantage. Eurobonds issued by the EU rather than member states would infinitely improve Ireland’s liquidity and solvency difficulties; and save the Euro. The least responsible thing is to commit, as Fianna Fáil and the Greens would have us, to increased debt to get us out of a situation where we cannot pay our debts. It is a recipe for societal immiseration and national bankruptcy. More generally, we need institutional and political reform. In the current edition of Village, Niall Crowley one of the protagonists in Claiming our Future, writes (p7), “A civil society force … needs to be able to shape and influence political discourse and to create a situation where political parties take up the ideas from the October event as their own”. This is all very well but it’s probably simply too late to get the political parties to take up any agenda before an election in March. It is clear that all the movements in the world do not a political party make. The country needs two new political parties: one of the left; one of the right. Prospective members tainted by either a Fianna Fáil or a Fine Gael past should not be welcome in either. Defiannafailification (p32) is a national imperative but Fine Gael sat on their oppositional hands for a decade and more. They are the closest thing to Fianna Fáil in the global political firmament; and should hasten into oblivion. If they are this bad in opposition, how despised will they become in government. It would be refreshing to see the back of both of the retrogressive clans that have driven Irish politics since the very foundations of the state. The country needs an agenda. It needs constitutional and institutional reform. Village would favour the prospective party of the left. Equality, Sustainability and Transparency are national imperatives. The more specific agenda of Irish Times journalist, Fintan O’Toole’s (p48), is a good starting point. Time is short. While there have been some half worthy attempts to establish new parties, they mostly seem to lack ideology and ideas. The United Left Alliance, while strong on integrity and offering a sound analysis is a little too negative for Village. We would like to see a party of the radical left formed out of a convention involving those who have shown willingness to engage. That might involve those who have offered interesting analysis and solutions: journalists like Fintan O’Toole, Vincent Browne, David McWilliams, Duncan Stewart, Joe Mulholland and Elaine Byrne; movements and thinktanks like Claiming our Future and Tasc; Community and environmental activists; individuals who have done the state some service like John Lonergan, Adi Roche and Niall Crowley; distinguished academics such as Morgan Kelly, Peadar Kirby, Diarmuid Ferriter and Kathleen Lynch; independent political stalwarts like Mary Robinson and David Norris. It should probably also be open to the more open-minded activists from more or less progressive forces like Sinn Féin, the United Left Alliance, the Labour Party and the Green Party. Somebody needs to convene the first meeting. Mary Robinson commands the most respect, has just returned to live in Ireland and would be ideal.
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This edition we look at Ireland’s Left. We scrutinise the Labour Party and find it a little short on radicalism. We also look at alternative political movements – particularly on the left – and find them somewhat wanting in clarity of purpose. More generally we also survey [ p80] Ireland’s currently-ubiquitous crisis-driven outpourings of ideas on Renewing the Republic, particularly those on RTE and in the Irish Times and find little inspiration there either (though at least they opened the discussion). Perhaps Frank Callanan’s thesis [p44] that the country was mesmerised by Bertie Ahern is true. Far too many Irish people became Economic and practical rather than idealistic or ideological. We simply don’t have many good ideas. That, even more than the reality of the Economic Depression, posits subduing prospects for the future. We interview three key Labour Party spokespersons. They display competence, shrewdness and an acute awareness of the public interest, if a pronounced weakness on the environment. However, their party has consistently failed to play to public anger and the appetite for change, often fudging and triangulating its policies. While Éamon Gilmore, perhaps the country’s most talented politician, certainly provides leadership in the Dáil, there is little sign Labour is leading the country towards a new humane ideology. Joe Higgins [p6] describes Labour as “fundamentally dishonest about election campaigns”, since it is doomed to coalition and a watering down of the political premises that drive it. Nevertheless, Niall Crowley’s interview [p22] suggests Gilmore is thoughtful and passionate about society and equality – even equality of outcome – though no doubt the prospects for this ultimately lie with the unimpressive and rightist Fine Gael which seems to have learnt little enough from our values crisis. Labour’s Finance Spokesperson, Joan Burton, gives a sparky interview [p26] and highlights Labour’s thoroughly circumspect attitude to the guarantees recklessly given to Anglo and Irish Nationwide – encapsulating the difference it makes to be driven by the public interest. Indeed in general Labour probably reflects what most of the country believe in when they apply themselves. This does not necessarily endear it to this magazine. In short the Labour Party is neither as radical nor as fresh as it needs to be. This all opens up a gap, into which hopes to jump a smorgasbord of fringe groups. We assess them in this issue [p47]. Richard Boyd Barrett [p13] offers the compelling analysis that the Left‘s “failings include being too divided and failing to communicate its message in a language that ordinary people can understand”. But Village prefers Déirdre de Búrca’s perspective that there is a need for a new electoral party and not just a movement or an alliance. In particular there will be a need to take on Fine Gael which, without a concerted new electoral movement, will take power – presumably in coalition with a compromised Labour Party – and exercise it in a way that will be almost indistinguishable from the Fianna Fáil (or at best Fianna Fáil/Green) way. Many people believe the country deserves a citizens’ forum. Village concurs but hopes that any consensus achieved should be used to animate a new political party. Village believes renewing the republic would best evoke a tri-partite agenda animated by equality, quality of life/sustainability (which – since the purpose is to pass our resources undiminished to our children – is equality between generations) and transparency. Bunreacht na hÉireann was driven by greater pariochalism and religiosity than is appropriate in a sophisticated and diverse society like Ireland’s today. The constitution should be overhauled immediately: to reflect these tripartite principles. Change might be expected to entail removing the religious and ritualistic elements; guaranteeing equality of outcome (so account is taken of the structural disadvantages in some people’s lives); including commitments incrementally but swiftly to improve the Gini coefficient (which registers equality); promoting the rights of minorities and the vulnerable including women, sexual and ethnic minorities, children and the aged. A new constitution would need to ensure that the exploitative and criminal are properly investigated no matter how great their resources; guarantee a right to a good and improving environment and that Ireland aims to the highest standards of planning and environmental protection; explicate rights to work, shelter and facilities, rights to equal access to first-class health services and education up to third level; attenuate the current rights of property and provide that land may be cumpulsorily purchased at current-use value and should be rezoned in the public interest by public authorities rather than under pressure from vested interests. Political parties should be funded only from the public purse, whistleblowers would be protected, the judiciary and the legal profession subject to scrutiny by independent assessors. We would also like to see government at a level so local (‘parish’ or ‘Community’) that elected representatives represent and are responsible to their own most immediate communities. That tier of government should be supplemented by powerful directly-elected mayors in urban areas and a new level, of regional government. Elected members should take decisions in concert with cross-sectoral elected-stakeholder roundtables i.e. elected members’ decisions should be informed by the views of businesspeople, community activists, environmentalists, trades unions etc, as well as ther usual bureaucrats. Balanced roundtables conduce to sustainable development and would preclude the excesses of régimes like the Dublin Docklands Authority and the zoning-profligate current local authorities. This preclusion would be reinforced by strict legal obligations on Community and regional authorities to implement a planning hierarchy at the apex of which would be national spatial strategy. These precepts emanating from a new constitution could drive a comprehensive vision of society, implemented in multifarious ways. Other issues like Dáil expenses, an electoral list system, Seanad abolition and the length of a Presidency relate to the efficacy rather than purpose of the system. In the context of a new constitution they are of rather less concern to us. The main opposition parties offer an agenda for change. It is unlikely their agenda will transform society in the way public contempt for
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The Green Party
In this edition of Village we direct light at the Greens. Ministers John Gormley and Éamon Ryan are good influences in government. They are intelligent and articulate and seem open and honest. Unfortunately, their job of implementing a radical green and leftist agenda – with which Village is sympathetic – with only six seats out of an original eighty-seven on the government side, is exceptionally difficult. The Green ethos is diametrically different to that of their coalition partners, Fianna Fail – being idealistic, scrupulous and long-termist rather than realistic, parochial and populist.