In recent days a string of press releases from opposition parties and TDs have reached us here at Gript Towers, all demanding the same thing: That the Dáil be recalled to hear statements on the ongoing failure to restore electricity to hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses that were afflicted by Storm Eowyn.
Now I confess that, at first, I was in the ranks of the cynics on this one.
It should be patently obvious that absolutely nothing said in the Dáil will speed up or slow down whatever efforts are underway to restore electricity and water to those without it. In the very best case scenario, we will get the spectacle of opposition TDs jumping up in their seats to make speeches in which they pretend that if they were only in Government, things would have been done differently and perfectly, and that all of those affected by the storm would already have had their services restored. It will in short be a talking shop, and an occasion for political theatrics, and will likely annoy far more people than it helps.
But then, that’s the whole point of the national parliament.
In some ways, whether the Dáil helps matters doesn’t matter at all. We have it – we pay for it – precisely because it is the one forum in which the public may make their views known, through their representatives, to the people responsible for governing the state. Even if all that happens is that various TDs stand up and say that their area is being disgracefully neglected, well, that’s the very thing they are paid to do. It is a forum for representation, and a forum for, in theory, shaming the state into action.
Indeed, that shaming is important. Psychologically and democratically.
More than one person has said to me in recent days that they feel entirely ignored by the state and by the media. Yes, the Irish Times might report that 100,000 are still without electricity, and there is nothing inaccurate about that. But what many people feel the media is not covering is the sense of isolation and abandonment felt by many in rural Ireland. The sense that the rest of the country has already passed them by, and already moved on, and is now just shrugging its shoulders at the prospect of people waiting another full week with no power or electricity.
Being in the dark, lit by candles, for a single night might be a novelty. Over two days, the absence of phone signal, and the loss of television or radio, might be an opportunity for what the worst kind of social media influencers call a “digital detox”. By a third day, the house will start to feel very cold. By the fifth and sixth, there begin to be real mental health issues for people.
My point is this: By calling back the Dáil and letting people shout and roar, we would probably be doing those people a service. Even if it is only so that they feel seen, and heard, and represented.
This might be the only time I have ever written, or will ever write, that the sight of Pearse Doherty shouting at some Minister across the Dáil might have benefits for people’s mental health. But speaking to a few people yesterday, I am convinced that it might.
Joe (not real name) told me that his family, which comprises his wife and three children all under the age of five, are in real trouble. The biggest trouble for them is not the electricity, but the water that powers his farm. This being winter, his cattle are all indoors, and are supplied water by automatic drinkers which are dry. Joe is having to ferry over 20 gallons of water from the local river daily. To get hot food for the children, they have to eat out every night and power has only just been restored to the local town. “I haven’t a clue what’s going on in the rest of the country”, he told me, because the only place he can get phone signal is at the top of a local hill, and even then it is good enough only for calls, not for data. I’ve known Joe for years. He sounded at his wits end.
The point is simply that stories like his need to be part of the parliamentary record. Even if not for today, then for people in the future looking back on parliamentary debates which maintain a permanent record of what was said, and by whom. There is no point having a parliament at all, if stories like Joe’s cannot be added to the record, for future historians to find.
Finally, the argument against calling back the Dáil is essentially that calling it back would do no good in terms of speeding up the response.
The answer to that is that it would do no harm either. Whatever else our Ministers are doing, they sure as hell aren’t on the front line, fixing power cables. They should make the time to come into the Dáil and listen to the stories of the people who, with every justification, feel very let down.