The Government says it wants the Electric Picnic to go ahead, but the matter is up to Laois County Council. The council says it would be open to letting the event go ahead, but the Government must change the law first. The truth is that neither of them probably want the event to go ahead.
The Government is under huge political pressure to allow hospitality events to go ahead. But, ever since last Christmas, it has been cowering in fear of a new Covid surge, and, worse even than that, taking the blame for one. Even though NPHET’s summer predictions of utter doom befalling the country thanks the Delta variant have not come to pass, the electric picnic is scheduled at a time when Government nervousness will be at its peak: Back-to-School time.
The recent outbreak of 5,000 cases of Covid on foot of a concert in Cornwall, for example, will be at the front of their minds. Nobody will mention the fact that not one of those 5,000 cases resulted in a hospitalisation. Covid, says NPHET, is presently a disease of the young, healthy, and unvaccinated: In other words, a disease without danger to the overwhelming majority of people currently getting it. But, of course, that is not how the public see it. A surge in cases – not deaths or hospitalisations – is still enough to send a shudder through the public imagination, and embolden the voices claiming that the Government “opened up too quickly”, who are still out there, just waiting on the call from Claire Byrne.
Laois Council, incidentally, is probably perfectly content with this state of affairs as well. The Electric Picnic might bring jobs and trade to Stradbally and the surrounding areas, but that does not mean it is popular with locals. Add to that the fear that the festival will bring dirty, disease infested Dubliners down to Laois to spread the plague, and the council is probably all too content to stand in the way of approval, and delighted to be able to blame the Government.
So, this situation suits both council, and Government, just fine.
And, depressingly, it sums up the reasons why Ireland is still, absurdly, so far behind the rest of the world when it comes to easing restrictions. We might complain about it, and make the case for liberty (as we do, daily, on these pages), but the truth is that the situation in Ireland as it stands is exactly how a significant proportion of the people want it to be.
Make no mistake, if the political will existed to allow the Electric Picnic to proceed, proceed it would. That will does not exist, and it does not exist because the politicians are afraid of their voters.
Most of the blame for this state of affairs must fall on the media, which insists on perpetually highlighting bad Covid news stories, and giving scant attention, if any at all, to the massively reduced death rate.
A lot of blame, though, must fall on the public themselves. We have proved ourselves, in this pandemic, to be an insular people in more senses than just the literal. There has been very little public interest in what has happened elsewhere in the world. Even if you believe sincerely that the liberties that Irish people have given up were worth sacrificing to “stop the spread”, the ease and comfort with which we gave them up remains remarkable. Denied the right to go to mass, or to leave the country, or to go to the cinema, or to go to a concert, the public have, in almost all cases, happily acquiesced. Those few who have not acquiesced have been widely scorned – and not just by the media, but by their fellow citizens – as headcases.
The danger here was always that these freedoms, once given away, would come to be seen as completely unimportant. After all, what does your right to go to the Electric Picnic matter to me? Why should we care if you cannot go to the cinema? Once we, the public, are safe in our homes, with a nice dinner and Fair City on the television, what else matters?
That’s the thinking. It is the dominant strain of thought in Ireland. It is all well and good to blame the politicians (and we do, when they deserve it), but if Irish people are losing their rights, it is because the vast, overwhelming majority of us were happy to give them away, and are not that bothered about ever getting them back.
It’s not especially hard to see why the Kings of England found no great difficulty in keeping hold of Ireland for 800 years. The truth, for those 800 years is exactly the same as the truth today: The big majority of people were happy enough with it.