Something strange happened to me yesterday, at about 11am, when electricity and water were restored to our North Tipperary home, and it’s a feeling worth writing about because I think it explains some major problems with democracy in general and Ireland’s various issues in particular.
The thing that happened to me was this: My irritation levels dropped tremendously. I was, once again, alright, Jack.
As I wrote on Saturday, my wife and I spent most of the weekend away from our home on the basis that there simply isn’t much point sitting around in the dark with no heating or running water, and only the slightly confused looks of the dog for company. It would be too dramatic to say that we had been forced from our home, but certainly events had made home inhospitable.
And I was annoyed: I was checking ESB’s powercheck website for updates so often that google now lists it officially as “you visit this website often”. I was – because I am something of a weirdo – preparing the little speech in my head for the next Government canvasser unfortunate enough to cross my path (not that we’ll be seeing them until 2029 anyway). “You take half our money in tax and you can’t even build an electricity network that can withstand the very kind of storms you tell us will be coming more often”. That sort of thing. Had a canvasser called to me, they would probably have written me off as an unreasonable crank.
And then the power came on and I stopped caring as much. Despite the fact that as of the time of writing, hundreds of thousands of Irish people have not been as fortunate as we have, and despite the fact that some of them are being told they must wait until February 5th to have basic conveniences restored.
I was speaking to one such person on Sunday afternoon. This particular person does not live in the middle of nowhere – about halfway between Athenry and Tuam, to be precise. In any case, you can’t even hold where he lives against him because neither of those towns, Athenry or Tuam, had electricity three days after the winds had died down. He is being told that his family must exist without electricity or water for another week and a half. Both parents work, or would normally, but it’s very hard to work when you can’t even take a shower.
On my podcast with Sarah the week before last, I recounted a terrible experience somebody close to me had gone through in the accident and emergency department of a major public hospital. It was not simply that this person was left on a trolly for two days, like hundreds of others. What struck them – and their loved ones – was the basic lack of care or compassion displayed towards the patients. Trolly-bound people being forced to use bedpans openly in corridors, patients going hours without as much as a check-in on their welfare from hospital staff, cold food, that sort of thing.
And of course, most of us aren’t angry. We’re not angry because it doesn’t affect us directly. We might get angry when it’s our relative who ends up in that position, but we don’t really care that much up until that point. And then, when our own terrible experience is at an end, we go back to not really caring. That’s what I could feel happening to me yesterday, in real time.
There’s another very Irish thing at play here, which is the national fondness for “ah sure everyone’s doing their best” which is deeply embedded in the culture. Much as I was deeply frustrated at the lack of electricity and water in our home for days on end, it would have felt churlish to complain while, patently, there were hard working men from the ESB out in fields getting lashed with rain trying to re-connect everybody. Churlish, and ungrateful for their efforts.
But of course, that’s not what we should be annoyed about. Nobody doubts the efforts put in by ESB workers in a crisis, or the strain that nurses are under in A&E departments nationwide.
What we should be annoyed and upset about is the series of decisions made by the people who run the country who land us in these messes to begin with.
You might say, “but John, that was a once in a hundred year storm, there’s nothing Government could have done”. The problem is, this simply isn’t true.
This is the very same Government (by which I mean civil service and politicians combined) that warns us endlessly that storms like this are coming, and will increase in number. Which leads to obvious questions: What did you actually do about it? What is the plan to do something ahead of the next one? How do we ensure that this is the last time that an Irish Government has to open “humanitarian hubs” because 10% of the population don’t have access to running water, let alone electricity?
The answer to all of those questions, as far as I can see, is “fuck all, to be honest”.
And yet, I know why. Because part of me cares less about this today than I cared about it when I was directly affected. If admitting that makes me seem like an uncaring and callous person, so be it. But if you want the evidence that I’m not alone, then just watch as the country sails on from this crisis, determined to learn nothing, change nothing, and hold nobody to account.