Because I write here for a living, and very occasionally appear on television or radio, various people in my life seem to – probably unwisely – consider that I know more about global events than they do, and ask me questions. In the last week or so, the volume of those questions has increased, just as it did when Covid arrived at our shores. And let me tell you: older people in particular are, at this moment, terrified. Terrified of the cold. Terrified of poverty. Terrified of not being able to cook their dinners. One told me of an elderly friend, living alone with only RTE for company, who has already taken to using candles in the evening instead of lights and keeping the TV and the heating off.
Imagine that. An older person, sitting at home, in candlelight, wearing a coat. In early September. Unwilling to turn on even the television for company because of how much it might cost. Living in mortal fear of the immersion button and avoiding even a hot shower. While Eamon Ryan burbles and gurgles on the radio about long term solutions. It should make you retch.
This is not, of course, just the doing of politicians: The media has learned well from Covid, and what they learned – or re-learned – is that terrifying people is good for the bottom line. And when it comes to voluntarily living in misery, the pandemic has trained us – especially and unfortunately, I think, the elderly amongst us – well.
It’s a funny thing, in 2022, to live in a modern, tolerant, compassionate country like Ireland. Our essential goodness as a nation is the one thing that is not in dispute. It is almost universally agreed. Our country is green. Our country is kind to Ukrainian refugees. Our country is tolerant of gay people, and minorities. Our country is diverse. Our country attracts cutting edge American tech companies to come and build their headquarters here. Our country is at the heart of Europe. Our country is welcoming, and decent.
And yet.
In the last week, my colleague Fatima reported the case of Hugh Dunne, a man who is 71 years old and sleeping in his car in Waterford, and who has been treated like a hot potato by various local authorities who cannot, it seems, bump him up a housing list. When we published that story, some of the comments on it both on this website, and on social media, were instructive. Some people wondered whether we were “leaving bits of the story out”, and so on, and whether it might be Mr. Dunne’s own fault that he is homeless and sleeping in a car. To which I say: We were not, but what of it? Hugh Dunne has committed no crime. He has never hurt anybody, that we know of. He is one of our own, fallen on hard times in his elder years. Surely a modern, tolerant, compassionate country can give him a roof, and a bed? But for luck and the grace of God, any of us in the wrong circumstances could be Hugh Dunne.
Enoch Burke was escorted to court in handcuffs yesterday, flanked by a phalanx of Gardai and Prison Officers. The legal legitimacy of his imprisonment is not in question, but surely the wisdom of it must be.
This is, at its heart, the country that liberalism has built. Outwardly Green, and compassionate, and tolerant, and kind, but rotting slowly from within. I hesitate to write, for example, about the person I know who has recently fallen into quiet alcoholism. Or the couple, recently divorced, where the husband no longer sees his children, and is on medication for depression. It is not hard, in Ireland, to find misery if you want to see it.
And then there are the stories we tell here at Gript. The mother fighting a battle to find a school for her son with special needs. The local people, in town after town, who find that buildings ignored and let fall into ruin by the state are now to become home to a hundred or more refugees who do not speak their language and do not have any prospects of employment. The old man trying, against all hope, to stop the state from forcibly putting down his little dog.
I do not have a conclusion to this piece, really, other than that I find it hard to escape the conclusion that something is deeply wrong. That we have forgotten something or cast it aside. If I might venture an answer to what that is, it would be as follows:
That we have outsourced an incredible level of control over our lives and our happiness to politicians and Government. By that I mean that we no longer seem to measure compassion and kindness on the individual level, but almost solely by what the Government does and funds. Compassion is an industry now: We have an armada of NGOs and private businesses to deliver it, not that they do much of a job. Kindness is a job for politicians. Basic decisions about our lives are now in the gift of the news: Do we go to the beach? Better check if there’s a yellow sunburn warning first. Do we have a shower? Best check with what Eamon Ryan says about the coming power crunch. Can I get married? Ask Tony Holohan.
And that extends to policy. We know what the right questions are, the approved ones. And we know what the wrong ones are, too. Was spending billions on wind turbines a sensible use of money? Climate Change denier. Have we taken too many refugees? Racist. Should Enoch Burke be in jail? You don’t understand the law. Is all this liberalism on social issues good for society? Right wing catholic fundamentalist. We have been trained to stop thinking, and to behave well, and to just accept things they are.
And that’s the thing that scares me the most. Not the fact that there’s an older person sitting in their coat, in the dark, with candles on and the television off in September for fear of the electric bill.
The fact that the rest of us just accept it. As if this is the way things always had to be.