Cassandra Voices

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  • Compost Hill

    Few among the crowds walking down Thomas Street will know there is a hidden garden in the heart of the Liberties. In the past this site served as a car park, and a popular place to shoot up. Later it was bought up and fenced off. Shops and houses, however, had back door access and it became an unofficial dumping ground.

    I first came across it in the spring of 2014, and met Tony Lowth the Guerrilla-Composter of Dublin City. By that time it had become a garden space, using a No-Dig method, with Tony’s stashed compost.

    I was unemployed at that time and straight away I was hooked on the project. The students from nearby NCAD wanted to grow vegetables, Tony wanted to make compost and I was just looking for my place in the world (and some fresh vegetables).

    Located in the city centre, there was an abundance of organic waste from some surprising sources. We were bringing in coffee grinds, horse manure, garden and vegetable waste. Tony went to Dublin’s Victorian fruit and vegetable market almost every morning, and came back with a van full of discarded vegetables. The main challenge was to scale the hill leading up to the garden: everything was pushed up on a wheelbarrow.

    The right location for the heaps was selected by Tony, and we just layered the materials to achieve the perfect carbon to nitrogen ratio. The rest of the work was done by nature. First with bacteria and microbes starting the bio-digestion process.

    A pile of compost pile literally cooks. The heat kills the pathogens which could be dangerous for human health. The remaining work is done by earthworms, which rapidly multiply as they munch trough the organic waste. Their saliva and intestines further reduces the pathogens. As the worms digests the organic materials it consumes, it refines them. Nutrients, including minerals and trace elements, are reduced to their most usable form. The castings have a neutral pH of 7.0.

    Bit-by-bit the site was cleaned and converted into a very productive garden where events and workshops were held, with many volunteers coming and going. At a certain stage we simply ran out of space, and started to build heaps against a big pile of construction rubble which had been dumped on the site over the years. We kept going and our heap became the symbol of the garden, the Compost Hill.

    Lots of hard work went into the garden, and with all the compost on site, we had created probably the most fertile patch in all of Dublin city. The garden was becoming a pilot social and enterprise project showing what can be made of vacant plots around the city. That was until relations began to sour between Tony and the College.

    Without warning, locks appeared on the gate not long afterwards, and the famous hill diminished as the compost creatures were no longer fed. Access was restricted to one day per week at midday for designated people with access to the space. We had to sign in at the college reception and take a key. Restrictions were eventually eased, but without Tony managing the works and bringing volunteers and workers the garden became wild again.

    Nature with its amazing productivity made the most of the rich compost and covered all the beds with lush growth. We tried to keep up with the weeds, but with limited time this became very hard.

    The compost hill and the garden is now covered with weeds of a size you would not see elsewhere. If you look closely you can still harvest lots of vegetables and if you look really closely you will find amazing biodiversity.

    The city centre site is now worth millions of euros, but not for its environmental importance but because developers are willing to pay that amount for space to build more student accommodation, or a hotel.

    Fortunately, some teachers in the College recognise this as one of the last green places in the Liberties and also as a great opportunity for the College to facilitate students to learn about nature management and farming. Perhaps in the time the garden will became a unique art and ecology outdoor studio.

    Video Links:
    Our Mountain: https://vimeo.com/195645359
    Rewilding Liberties: https://vimeo.com/347249091

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    Martin Obst works as a project engineer, in the middle of a new boom in Irish construction. As an escape from the corporate world, he and his wife-to-be are building a perma-culture garden and planting native woodland on the west coast of Ireland, close to his favourite surf breaks.

  • Carbon Negative

    One fine day all this will burn
    Strange but true

    The blue woods of Oregon
    Silver snakes of her rivers
    Her dark lakes gone like steam

    Something will come
    A hammer at high noon
    To stove in this huge porcelain egg of a world

    Our hopes were only ever
    The white wisps of clouds
    Full of love and silence

    Let them nestle there
    Snug as shadows
    In the shoulders of the hills

    We are men
    We ride high
    Brains blazing on jet fuel.

  • Dubliners Deserve Better Than Bus Connects

    Under normal circumstances, developing a bus network should confer great benefits on a city: it is cheap, quick to implement, and causes little disruption. Yet, remarkably, the BusConnects plan manages to achieve precisely the opposite effects.

    Furthermore, ever since BusConnects has been on the agenda, it has diverted public attention away from other improvements that should be ongoing. Delivering more buses with clean, non-diesel engines would be a tangible improvement that could happen without controversy, as would priority traffic lights. Instead we seem to be forging ahead with a costly megaproject, which threatens the city’s character, and ultimately may not even come about.

    Dublin has an unenviable history in terms of delivering public transport megaprojects. DART Underground is an obvious example, while the Airport Metro has been in gestation since 1966: to date the only element is a station recently built beside the Mater Hospital.

    I have repeatedly sought details as to cost of that station, by way of Access on the Information on the Environment Requests to the National Transport Authority, yet these have gone unanswered, after being initially acknowledged.

    Where megaprojects have been touted in the past, this has tended to divert progress that could more easily be made in other areas. For instance, there was little interest in getting the Phoenix Park tunnel brought into passenger use while the DART Underground project was being advanced.

    Failed megaprojects can also be incredibly costly: reports indicate that €200 million was spent on the last effort to build the Airport Metro.[i]

    The real issue is that, if realised, BusConnects will make permanent space for private motor cars. This would be achieved at the cost of the city’s built heritage and green infrastructure – including thousands of road side and privately owned trees. As such, this element appears to contravene both the Dublin City Development Plan[ii] and the EU Habitats Directive[iii].

    Thus, Objective GIO27 commits: ‘To protect trees, hedgerows or groups of trees which function as wildlife corridors or ‘stepping stones’ in accordance with Article 10 of the EU Habitats Directive.’

    While Policy SC15 seeks: ‘To recognise and promote green infrastructure and landscape as an integral part of the form and structure of the city, including streets and public spaces.’

    And Policy SC12 aims: ‘To ensure that development within or affecting Dublin’s villages protects their character.’

    It is noted that at a public meeting earlier this year in the Clayton Hotel off Leeson Street, on behalf of the National Transport Agency (NTA), Hugh Creegan, stated that plans have not yet been prepared for replacement of trees.

    Given the massive scope of the scheme, it seems essential to provide plans for what will occur after the initial destructive phase – otherwise, the plan is missing key elements, and is premature.

    Road-widening schemes for Dublin during the 1970s and 1980s were not a solution to our transport ills then – and do not provide one now.

    Areas along the inner tangent such as Summerhill, Bridgefoot Street, and Christchurch, are still scarred by those developments. Other areas, including both canals, were also under extreme danger – yet fortunately, the megaproject of road-widening was never realised.

    This brings us to the real question: why is a road-widening project being foisted on Dubliners, when they clearly prefer rail and tram transport to bus? Luas and DART provide end-to-end services and enhance neighbourhoods (and property values) along the routes. This is certainly not the case with road-widening schemes, which contribute noise and air pollution.

    BusConnects envisages 1,400+ compulsory purchase orders (CPOs), including the removal of many private gardens, bringing traffic closer to people’s front doors. Costs are far from clear. There is a major discrepancy between values suggested by the NTA ranging between €30,000 to €60,000 per CPO, and the potential diminution in the value of certain properties along the routes. A figure suggested for some properties has been as high as €500,000,[iv] a difference by a factor of ten.

    The assumption that bus represents better value for money does not hold true when assessed over a thirty-year time span: trams last longer and carry more people, as well as requiring fewer drivers. Moreover, road surfaces generally demand more frequent maintenance than rail tracks.

    According to an ArcGIS assessment I undertook, over 100,000 Dublin residents could have access to the Irish Rail network, if stations were opened at logical sites along the route, such as Ballyfermot, Cabra, Dublin Zoo, Croke Park, East Wall. and Dublin Ferry Port. As with the Phoenix Park tunnel being brought into use, there is no serious impediment to extending the city’s existing rail network – except for a lack of will, combined with an apparent preference for meretricious megaprojects.

    Moreover, BusConnects also effectively gets in the way of decent cycling infrastructure being developed. Although the adverts proclaim that over two hundred kilometres of cycleways are to be built as part of BusConnects, in reality that scheme has priority over the extensive cycleway plans announced five years ago by the NTA.[v] Hence cycle provision is once again put on the back burner.

    This Bus Connects plan does not represent value for money, and would destroy wildlife, diminish the built environment. It should be set aside. Dubliners deserve better than Bus Connects. The NTA are expected to make planning applications so as to develop the BusConnects scheme during 2020.

    Do you think this piece is valuable? If so, you might consider providing us with financial support via Patreon, or simply pay us a small sum directly using PayPal: admin@cassandravoices.com. Thanks for supporting independent journalism. Subscribe for free to our monthly newsletter here. 

    This piece has been composed from a submission filed with the National Transport Authority (NTA) by Ruadhán MacEoin BSc. MSc., who is a planner and urban designer. For his Master’s Degree in Richview UCD (2017), he assessed recent delivery of public transport in Dublin, and produced a thesis entitled ‘Democratic Accountability or a Speculator’s Blank Cheque: What Lessons Have Been Learned from Dublin’s Experience of Transport 21?’. In the past, MacEoin wrote for numerous publications on planning matters, including The Sunday Times, The Irish Times, and Plan Magazine. He lives and works in Dublin.

     

    [i] Hugh O’Connell, ‘Government denies €200m spent on Metro North is ‘money down the drain’’, thejournal.ie, November 11th, 2011. https://www.thejournal.ie/government-denies-e200m-spent-on-metro-north-is-money-down-the-drain-276605-Nov2011/

    [ii] ‘Dublin City Development Plan 2016-22’ http://www.dublincity.ie/main-menu-services-planning-city-development-plan/dublin-city-development-plan-2016-2022

    [iii] ‘Council Directive 92/43/EEC on the Conservation of natural habitats and of wild fauna and flora’ https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A31992L0043

    [iv] Tim O’Brien, ‘South Dublin homes affected by BusConnects could get €500,000 each, resident claims’, Irish Times, March 4th, 2019. https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/south-dublin-homes-affected-by-busconnects-could-get-500-000-each-resident-claims-1.3812877

    [v] Rónán Duffy, ‘These maps show the planned 2,840km of cycle routes for the greater Dublin area’, thejournal.ie, April 11th, 2014, https://www.thejournal.ie/dublin-cycling-plan-1410242-Apr2014/

  • Culchies – An Excerpt from ‘A Monk Manqué’

    In the mid-1990s Seosamh O Cuaig and I were filming a programme for TG4 in the State of Minnesota. It concerned an 1880 shipload of emigrants from Conamara.

    In the city of St. Paul we were told that the term ‘Connemara’ was a century-old Minnesota synonym for lazy. This was curious, because nobody in the 19th century could survive on the rocky garrantaí of Conamara without hard, relentless physical work. There was no dole.

    We learned that the ‘Connemara’ slander originated in 1880 when a Catholic Bishop, John Ireland, publicly blamed his financial troubles on a group of fisher-families from this area. He had taken them from their rocky fields and canvas currachs in the West of Ireland, and settled the oldest and youngest members of the families, against their will, miles from the city on the vast prairies.

    They were instructed to become farmers. For the fit and young of the same families the bishop organized jobs in the city of St. Paul. Then came the worst winter in living history with temperatures thirty below.

    The plight of those raw prairie dwellers was so desperate that they became the subject of national debate in the American Press. The Bishop, responding to WASP criticism, said they were too lazy to work. His criticisms were widely reported.

    Naturally his urban flock and his separated brethren – the Freemasons of Morris County – did not doubt his word. But the Conamara immigrants, being neither literate or English speakers, could not defend themselves in that language, had no access to the print media.

    In Spring the Bishop relented, the ‘Connemaras’ were delivered back to the city of St. Paul – which was where they had thought they were going in the first place. They made a success of their lives, one of them eventually becoming mayor of the city.

    At least one Conamara family persevered on the prairie – that of Learaí Ó Flathartha – and also thrived.  Nevertheless the slander of ‘laziness’ had persisted to this day, mainly because the immigrants could not defend themselves in English.

    ‘But,’ as Seosamh O Cuaig grimly said to me during the course of making the film, ‘I can read and I can write, in English’ Therefore we intensified our researches and the film eventually showed how these people had been used as scapegoats for the failed ambitions of the colonizing Bishop, a Republican and an entrepeneur. Helped by a laicised Bishop Shannon we detailed his predecessor’s personal ownership of the railway land awarded to him for the purposes of Catholic settlement. It seemed clear that as time was running out on his contract, Bishop Ireland used these poor people simply to buy time and fulfil his undertakings to his friends in the Railway company.

    So fraught were his financial dealings that after he died his sister, a Mother Superior, destroyed all of the personal papers that related to the incident. But the mud stuck. Two Irish-American Minnesota lawyers happily told us, on film, that their Limerick-born father had emphasized to them: ‘Make sure people know you are from Limerick, not from Conamara.’

    ‘the cash crop’

    Nearly a century after the Minnesota mess, in 1973 in Conamara I had recorded a vox populi with youngsters attending the Irish Summer Colleges in Conamara. All townies, they unanimously dismissed the place as consisting of nothing but rocks, with no attractions whatsoever. The locals, according to a few, were lazy.

    How could they have made this judgment in three weeks? Presumably they had brought that bit of baggage with them from their suburban homes. Luckily, they know a little better now and there certainly is no local resentment to the Summer College industry.

    Business is business and the modern students are referred to locally by the affectionate term ‘the cash crop’. Nevertheless, from Marx with his term ‘rural idiocy’ to Garret Fitzgerald’s opposition to Knock Airport; from John D. Sheridan’s bucolic ‘Thomasheen James’ to stand-up comics today, there is something universal in this urban contempt for rural-dwelling ‘culchies’.

    The painter Michael FarrelI would jokingly ask sculptor Eddie Delaney and myself: ‘Are you two still rotting away in Connemara?’ The perception is based sometimes on ignorance, sometimes on fear of the wild men of the West.

    A film editor whom I brought to Conamara years ago confessed to me that his ventures beyond the Pale had hitherto never brought him further than Leixlip – fifteen miles from Dublin.

    Over the years, and quite separately, I remember two old friends of mine, a journalist and an actress, saying they felt threatened in the company of people in South Conamara. In forty years I have never felt thus threatened. My friends could not explain why they felt that way. I can only speculate on the reasons.

    Dancing at the Crossroads

    First, there may be resentment at the imposition of obligatory Irish on the monoglot English-speaking population of the island. This State policy was a Dublin invention but the resentment it engendered was directed at the imagined native speakers in their ghettoes in the West, as well as at soft targets like the writer Peig Sayers, and former Taoiseach (prime minister) and President Éamon de Valera, universally known as ‘Dev’.

    The latter’s quite admirable ambitions for human beings on this island were regularly ridiculed. Incidentally, what precisely is wrong with good-looking girls and athletic young men, small local industry, and the human activity of dancing which Dev advocated?

    Whatever his faults, Dev was way ahead of E. F Schumacher’s ‘Small is Beautiful’ philosophy. The small linguistic communities of the Gaeltachtaí may in the past have been a material source of resentment in that the grants the natives received were positively discriminatory and favoured Irish-speaking households. But they did not get electricity until 1956!

    The pure and simple truth of the resentment, according to research by Mairtin O Catháin, published in the Galway Advertiser, is, as Wilde said, rarely pure and never simple. O Catháin showed that substantial Gaeltacht grants – not the petty ones based on linguistic facility but the serious ones for business and enterprise –  actually benefit more the fictional ‘gaeltacht’ residents of booming suburbs such as Bearna, Moycullen, Knocknacarra and Claregalway than the actual Irish-speaking families in small villages like Cill Chiarån or Carna.

    Garnering votes from such dense English-speaking suburbs once guaranteed Fianna Fáil success in elections to such quangos as the Board of Udarås na Gaeltachta. Indeed one of that party’s proud successes was a man from Claregalway who could speak no Irish whatsoever!

    This is the pragmatic reason why the outrageously fictional extension of ‘the gaeltacht’, invented by Fine Gael’s Patrick Lindsay more than fifty years ago, could be maintained by Fianna Fáil’s clever directors of elections. The result is that the only community for which Irish is the first language gets a minimum of the kudos and all of the brickbats for speaking Irish.

    The above Mr. Lindsay actually spent his retirement as my neighbour in Conamara. He once said publicly and in my presence that he was attracted to the place by its ‘touch of savagery.’ Despite his unconscious racism, the locals drank happily with him in Tí Michael Jack’s pub.

    One can be sure that the modern version of W.B.Yeats’s freckled fisherman in Connemara cloth going to a place ‘where stone is dark under froth’ is no Irish speaker at all. He probably has a pad in Ballyconneely, Connemara where three-quarters of the houses belong to weekend visitors from Dublin and environs.

    Then there is the neo-liberal urbanite’s association of the Irish language and rural life with poverty and idiocy. There is the canard that, as in the nineteenth century, incest flourished because the roads were bad and that this resulted in a population of malformed retards.

    But a medical doctor’s RHA survey of Leitir Mealláin in 1891 – which I possess –  described this community as the healthiest and handsomest he had ever seen. The endless parade of bright and beautiful young native speakers on TG4 for more than the past decade should by now have given the lie to that perception.

    ‘Going to the Source’

    But a lie that’s big enough – as Goebbels proved – becomes the conventional wisdom. Years ago I attended a Temple Bar debate in Dublin where Dr. Terence Browne of Trinity College and Fintan O’Toole of the Irish Times locked horns. In the course of it Terence Browne referred to Irish as a dead language. Fintan did not disagree.

    I had just driven up from my Béal an Daingin post office, where the staff and customers all joked and did their business in Irish. I mentioned this as evidence that the rumours of the demise of Irish might be exaggerated, and asked Terence how he could support his impression. His dismissive answer was couched in analogies to ‘dead’ Latin.

    I concluded this was not personally researched, and a second hand opinion derived from the conventional East coast urban wisdom, i.e. that Irish was a suspect badge of the unholy trinity of nationalism, Catholicism and Provo-ism.  I did not have the nerve to remind this fine scholar to take his own academic advice and ‘go to the source’, before dismissing the language.

    The source of my own experience is over forty years living and working in the only bilingual community in Ireland, whose tradition is neither narrow nor insular: it knows Boston better than Enda Kenny, and all the main cities of England better than Bertie Ahern – in other words, Conamara is made up of men and women of the world.

    Long before Sir Anthony O’ Reilly said Ireland was a great place to tog out in, but that the real game was ‘elsewhere’, the people of Conamara and rural Ireland in general were forced to explore that ‘elsewhere’. And it was not to play the gentleman’s game of rugby, but to survive their abandonment by the entrepreneurial class from whom O’Reilly sprang.

    In the time I have lived in Conamara most of my work has been devoted to countering this subconscious racism, trying to persuade Irish urbanites – including its professional gaeilgeoirs – that my rural neighbours are not lazy thugs, but the hardest-working people I ever encountered; not ‘thick’, but the most coherent and smart, bilingual community in this island.

    At a practical level, every family in Conamara could build their own house and make any repairs necessary, grow their own food, build a boat, excavate their own fuel, subtly negotiate the traps of central bureaucracy, and be on first name terms with their local and national public representatives. Such skills are pretty thin on the ground in suburbia and, when global warming intensifies, my neighbours are the kind of people from whom I will certainly be seeking survival advice.

    Reference Group Theory

    Years ago in Canada I learned the principle of reference group theory. It is better known as the pecking order, establishing who we are in relation to the echelons above and below us. Thus, Toronto English speakers look down on the French of Quebec. They both look down on the Scots of Nova Scotia who in turn look down on the Irish of Newfoundland or ‘Newfies’.

    In the US the WASPS looked down on the Irish Catholics, who looked down on the Italian Catholics. And everybody agreed that all a Polack fish was competent to do was drown. At the bottom of the heap were the Blacks and then the aboriginal native Americans.

    It was social benchmarking, each group maintaining its pecking order. Conamara is not entirely free of this. I have heard a man from An Spidéal expressing doubts about the degree of civilization of people twenty miles west of him.

    Reference group theory is not just financially and socially alive in a class-ridden society such as ours. It has deep roots in our insecurities. It emerged in Kerryman jokes, yummy mummies and SUVs, the DART accent, Ross O’Carroll Kelly and especially the terms ‘culchies’ and ‘knackers’ It is accepted as part of the natural order.

    But we are essentially social animals and have depended for our evolutionary survival not on our individual natures being red in tooth and claw, but on the social behaviour called cooperation which is designed to keep the more ugly parts of our nature under control.

    No bypasses or rat-runs

    It is a poor reflection of Western civilization that, before and since Hiroshima, the animal species most actively practising cooperation is the ant. The ruthless competitor, the profiteer at all cost, those CEOs who show a paper profit by getting rid of as many employees as possible are still our heroes, no matter how often they have revealed their feet of clay.

    Is this an argument against Market values and modern Progress? Yes, if progress and the oil that lubricates the so-called free market and our modern lifestyle mean the death of community and consequent lack of empathy with our neighbour, quite apart from the distant deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis, together with the destroyed lives of 30,000 decent young Americans. Not to mention the imminent decay of our planet.

    Is there any point anymore in pleading for non-consumptive lifestyles – not to mention understanding, tolerance, respect, love your neighbour, kiss a Traveller for Christ?  Did the warnings of Mountjoy prison ex-Governor John Lonergan, or homeless children’s protector Fr. Peter McVerry have any effect?

    Did Bono and Geldof and all the NGOs make us deaf to the fact that Charity begins at home? The corporations and advertisers who make so much money from our insecurities, fears and petty snobberies have set us on a material and metaphysical road which has no bypasses or rat-runs or backwaters.

    There may be no escape from our unsustainable lifestyles and topsy-turvy values until the sea levels rise, oil runs out, the tankers grind to a stop and clean water is $100 a barrel. It will end in tears. Perhaps sooner than we think. But I am an optimist. That’s why I long ago embraced the rural life, planted trees for my six children and ten grandchildren and cut wood for my stove.

    I believe that despite all the spin-doctoring, truth will out, that we are all now aware of our responsibilities, all travellers on the road to God-knows-where, tourists in the departure lounge, mice sailing on a ship of cheese. But I’m also realistic enough to remember Dorothy Parker’s words:

    ‘O life is a glorious cycle of song, a medley of extemporanea / And love is a thing that can never go wrong / And I’m Queen Marie of Romania.’

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    Featured Image is of Dara Beag O Fatharta.

  • Bull Moose: Talking to the Person Seated Next to You

    Alternative Realities…

    Among the least discussed, but perhaps most important influence of the Digital Age is our tendency to live in bubbles. We no longer have to be rich to live in the equivalent of gated communities.

    TV, radio, and the internet provide echo chambers for our beliefs. Sophisticated algorithms deployed by Facebook and Google generally only exposes us to what we agree with. Friends with different opinions? Don’t worry, Facebook has it figured out. You won’t find them on your feed any longer. An article in Google News about Sudan? Not a chance. Google determined that based on my geography and preference for inane sports news this is unlikely to appeal to me.

    This is important, not least because we spend hours each day glued to our smartphones. What we see is curated for us and controlled by a handful of corporations.

    I was reminded of this recently on a flight to Atlanta from Chicago, when I struck up a conversation with a man sitting next to me, a doctor, who, despite holding very different world views to my own, made for a great travel companion.

    We shared stories, asked questions and even argued about the nature of America’s divided politics. It was entirely refreshing. As we left the plane, he thanked me, noting he hadn’t had such a meaningful chat with a stranger in years, despite being a regular traveller. Why? Because most of us hardly look up from our smartphones, even to say hello.

    Politics today is an extension of these echo chambers. We hear what we want to hear. That is nothing new – we have long preferred to block out whatever hurts us, or flies in the face of our world view. What is new is that we no longer need to block out anything ourselves.

    Were I to listen to talk show radio, turn my TV to Fox News and read articles on Breitbart, supplemented by Google or Facebook curation, I am likely to agree with Trump’s reality. There, immigrants are invading our Southern border and taking our jobs; liberals are down with killing third trimester babies; global warming is a hoax; the economy has never been better; and we’re making America great again.   Who is to say I am wrong? It is my reality.

    If I listen to NPR, switch to CNBC/CNN and read the Washington Post or the New York Times, with a little help from social media, I am likely to see Trump as a mean-spirited bully, who is out of touch with reality, my reality. There immigrant children are needlessly torn from their families; conservative men are taking rights away from women; the environment is being destroyed; the economy is pumped up on steroids by virtue of a tax cut for corporations; and only the next election can save America. Who is to say I am wrong? It is my reality.

    These alternative realities are borne out in poll numbers, which have been remarkably consistent over the last few years. Trump’s approval rating hovers around forty-percent, no matter what he does. Why?  Mainly because in this ‘alternative reality’, the truth is hard to distinguish.

    Fake news does exist – except its not fake. It is real news written from a point of view that serves the interest of their owners/advertisers, and, yes, the consumers of news. It is only fake because it is not unbiased, objective news. Instead of fake news we ought to call it biased, lazy news.

    I include lazy as well as biased, because news such as a natural disaster occurring doesn’t have an agenda, nor is it always mean-spirited. Often what we get is simply lazy journalism, jumping on immediately apparent realities that gets more eyeballs today, even if it will not stand the test of time.

    A case in point. For those who read the previous edition of Bull Moose, what about this for an attention-grabbing headline ‘GOP Equates Abortion to Holocaust,’ which, for anyone who took the time to read the Bill, is what they did. Except journalists rarely read a Bill, they merely see its news value, and talk about how restrictive it is.

    By being constantly in the news, Trump has attained mastery over media in today’s America. Rather than blame him, however, journalists, and the public, should look themselves in the mirror. Being informed is a choice we make, no matter how difficult it is. This requires us to be citizen journalists, on a continuous quest for truth, and discerning about who and what we believe.

    It should also involve talking to our neighbors. Engaging in free and open dialogue is a hard-earned democratic entitlement. Let’s step out of comfort zones and try talking to the person sitting next to us.

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  • Review: Night Boat to Tangier by Kevin Barry

    In the ferry terminal of Algeciras, on Spain’s southern coast, two middle-aged gangsters from Cork sit and wait. Maurice and Charlie have been tipped off that at some stage in the next twenty-four-hours Maurice’s estranged daughter Dilly will show up. They can’t be sure whether she will, or what she’ll do if and when she does. For now, they keep watch, and reminisce about their wild and violent past.

    Night Boat to Tangier cuts from the ferry terminal to locations across Spain and Ireland, at various points between the mid-90s and the present day. Maurice and Charlie are no strangers to the sea routes between Morocco and Ireland, having smuggled hash along them for many years. Lately times have been hard on them though: ‘The men are elegiacal, woeful, heavy in the bones. Also they are broke and grieving.’

    The gritty port-side setting is tense and edgy, and makes for a vivid backdrop to the gangsters’ dialogue. These conversations are by turns comical, philosophical, sentimental, and laced with the threat of violence. Towards the end of the first scene, Maurice and Charlie accost a passing English traveller to ask if he’s seen Dilly. They charm his dog and chat about football, but it’s not long before the threat is spelled out: ‘I don’t know if you’re getting the sense of this yet… But you’re dealing with truly dreadful fucken men here.’

    Night Boat to Tangier is Kevin Barry’s third novel. His first, City of Bohane, cemented his reputation as one of Ireland’s most inventive and exhilarating writers. A gangland thriller set in 2053, City of Bohane is futuristic and nostalgic, violent and tender, funny and sad, sometimes all at once. Barry’s second novel, Beatlebone, imagined John Lennon’s 1978 visit to Ireland. Barry conjures Lennon’s voice with uncanny accuracy, giving it unexpected depth and pathos, and he makes some bold choices with the novel’s form. To say any more would amount to a spoiler…

    Alongside the two novels, two collections of short stories have been published, There Are Little Kingdoms and Dark Lies The Island. In a quieter way, these are at least as impressive; they certainly show the breadth of Kevin Barry’s ability and imagination just as clearly.

    Night Boat to Tangier is effortlessly readable, the pacing succinct and cinematic. Impressionistic images flash past rapidly. Descriptive passages are pared back to a few evocative details. Even the punctuation is economical: by leaving out speech marks, Barry blurs the lines between what his characters think, feel, see and say. The fluidity of his free indirect style quickly brings each character to life. This is true not only of Maurice and Charlie, but also of the three women in their lives, each of whom emerges as complex and convincing.

    Kevin Barry’s first novel was a genuine ground-breaker. It was inevitable that Night Boat to Tangier would come freighted with high expectations and unfair comparisons. Each one of Barry’s books brings its own distinct pleasures though. His latest is funny, wistful, colourful, violent, tender and profound. It will stand with the best of them.

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  • Visita de obra

    No soy yo quien atraviesa
    estos valles prendidos de ocres,
    ni este el tren que me lleva
    de un lugar a otro lugar.

    La tierra se retuerce
    mostrando sus costuras
    y de las balsas de agua
    emana un vapor sin voz.

    Los túneles construyen el paisaje
    con su lenguaje de fronteras.

    En el vidrio reflejado,
    superpuesto a los adolescentes chopos,
    a los desnudos almendros de otoño,
    a las hayas, sabinas y retama,
    al maíz con sus artríticos penachos secos,
    mi rostro descansa entre los otros.

    Por delante del dormido campanario,
    de la vejiga de la fábrica,
    de los afilados dedos de los álamos,
    otros ensayan a escuchar
    el rumor de un tren que nunca se detiene.

    Site Visit

    It is not I who traverses
    these valleys hung in ochres,
    nor this the train that takes me
    from one place to another.

    The earth writhes
    uncovering its seams,
    and from the water reservoirs
    a voiceless vapour rises.

    Tunnels build the landscape up
    with their language of borders.

    Reflected on the glass,
    superimposed over the adolescent black poplars,
    the naked almond trees of autumn,
    the beeches, phoenician junipers and brooms,
    the cornfields with their arthritic dry cobs,
    my face rests amongst the others.

    In front of the sleeping bell tower,
    the factory’s bladder,
    and the sharpened fingers of the poplars,
    others are rehearsing to listen
    to the whisper of this train that never stops. 

    Alberto Marcos is an architect and designer who lives between Madrid and Hampshire. He has published several books of poetry:  “Mujer desnudando el Mediterráneo”, Calambur, 1999  (UPM Poetry Prize), “maya”, Pez Privé, 2001, and  “NSEO, la urdimbre del mapa”, in-constant, 2014. He has been inconstantly working on his new collection of poems, “School Run”, since then. Hopefully it will soon see the light.

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  • The New Experiment in Gaeltacht Education

    In 2016 the Department of Education and Skill’s outlined its latest scheme for Gaeltacht (designated Irish-language) districts: ‘Policy on Gaeltacht Education 2017 – 2022’. It aims to reverse the adoption  of English as the primary language of these areas, a process which is pretty well complete.

    Irish speakers are now in a minority in twenty out of the twenty-six ‘Gaeltacht Language Planning Areas’, often with numbers which are quite miniscule.[i]

    The new education scheme is, nonetheless, being implemented throughout the defined districts. Each school’s Management Committee was offered the choice of becoming a designated ‘Gaeltacht School’, and 106 out of 133 primary schools agreed, as did 27 of the 28 secondary schools at that time, with the last one joining in subsequently. [ii]

    Their participation is entirely unsurprising, however, given it qualifies any school for extra teaching staff and other resources to implement an enhanced Irish-language curriculum, as well as to teach the general curriculum through Irish. Remarkably, no English at all is taught to any children for the first two years of their primary schooling.

    This plan will fail as all such Revival of Irish plans have done, and for the same reason. They derive from a defective belief that official action can reverse the people’s choice to speak English. It is simply impossible to sustain a separate language community as a relic of the past among an overwhelmingly English-speaking nation, even assuming the parents of the children concerned are actually seeking this.

    Is this a new insight? Hardly! In 1963 ‘The Final Report of The Commission on the Restoration of the Irish Language’ was clear:

    The preservation and strengthening of the Gaeltacht, therefore, must not be approached as if it were an attempt to preserve in one corner of the country an aboriginal reservation to remind us of the past…

    In any case, the new Gaeltacht Education Policy is not a scheme to preserve a Gaeltacht, but to re-invent one. It is a sort of linguistic Jurassic Park experiment, where the captive school children are expected to mutate into an Irish-speaking tribe after a spell inside the Department of Education’s fantasy laboratory.

    Of course it won’t happen. Today’s infants will emerge in due course from their Irish-medium ‘Gaeltacht’ designated schools as native English-speakers. As adults they will live their lives in the English-speaking world, of which they are already a part.

    In 1990 Reg Hindley the author of The Death of the Irish Language painted a revealing picture of children in Gaeltacht areas:

    the problem is not usually one of downright mendacity, much as it feels it when being assured by respectable people in positions of considerable trust that the children in their area all speak Irish excellently and are devoted to it, whereas the infants in the playground are playing loudly in English and the teenagers of whom one enquired directions where chatting in English when interrupted. [iii]

    But the account of a deviant Sassenach was denounced by Irish language enthusiasts, and his research dismissed with contumely.[iv]

    Nonetheless, in 2017 a Department of Education report on an Achill Island school bluntly stated that ‘the pupils speak only English.’[v]

    In 2018 another Department report on the new Gaeltacht Education scheme itself said: ‘There are significant challenges in encouraging teenagers to speak Irish among themselves in social situations in the school environment.’[vi]

    Thus, it seems the schoolchildren chat in their home language as soon as they can get away from their teachers. What a surprise!

    In 2004 a ‘Study of Gaeltacht Schools’ carried out for COGG (the ‘Council for Gaeltacht and Gaelscoil Education’) said that ‘English is the main language used by pupils in normal conversational interactions in the vast majority of Gaeltacht schools.’

    Subsequently, in 2014, a report by NUIG ‘Analysis of Bilingual Competence – language acquisition among young people in the Gaeltacht” revealed:

    Unbalanced bilingualism or dominant bilingualism is the norm. English is the dominant language since it is the language in which they exhibit greater ability. Irish is the weaker language or it is the weaker language for the majority of pupils … From the point of view of formal linguistics, the majority of pupils function better in English, since it is the language in which they have the greater ability.

    These facts about Irish-language use in Gaeltacht areas is of course well-known to State officials, considering that altering them is the stated purpose of their grand experiment.

    A moral question arises here around using pupils as guinea pigs. On this point, Joe Mac Donncha in the Dublin Review of Books opined:

    One might well ask, at this stage, if it is morally tenable for the state to continue to encourage parents in Gaeltacht communities to raise their children through the medium of Irish when the state itself is aware, or should be aware, that those children will struggle to acquire native-speaker competence in their first language, given the linguistic dynamics of the current Gaeltacht.[vii]

    So why is this still happening? The answer is that it is a matter of a fixed political ideology, and it is in the nature of ideologues that they are immune to external influence, moral or otherwise. And as we know, when social engineers have the power to carry out their schemes, they often acquire a sense of absolute entitlement to do so.

    Spare a thought for the school children concerned who choose to speak English whenever they are able. We may ask what entitles the Department to impose such ‘revivalist’ policies on them especially in many districts that have long since abandoned Irish.

    ‘Saving’ the Irish language may serve the interests of a coterie of enthusiasts, but does anyone care whether or not it benefits the children concerned?

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    [i] Untitled, ‘Cainteoirí laethúla ina mionlach i 20 den 26 ceantar pleanála teanga sa Ghaeltacht – figiúirí nua daonáirimh’, July 20th, 2017, www.tuairisc.ie. https://tuairisc.ie/cainteoiri-laethula-ina-mionlach-i-21-den-26-ceantar-pleanala-teanga-sa-ghaeltacht-figiuiri-nua-daonairimh/

    [ii] Untitled, ‘Na cúiseanna nach dteastaíonn stádas ‘Gaeltachta’ ó 27 scoil sa Ghaeltacht’, May 14th, 2019, www.tuairisc.ie. https://tuairisc.ie/na-cuiseanna-nach-dteastaionn-stadas-gaeltachta-o-27-scoil-sa-ghaeltacht/

    [iii] Reg Hindley, The Death of the Irish Language, Routledge, London, 1990, p.59

    [iv] For example: ‘Buried Alive – A Reply to Reg Hindley’s The Death of the Irish Language’. Dáil Uí Chadhain, 1991

    [v] Unknown, ‘Achill Island pupils ‘speak only English’ The Sunday Times, December 10th, 2017.

    [vi] ‘Schools participating in the Gaeltacht School Recognition Scheme’ September-December 2018, Department of Education and Skills.

    [vii] Joe Mac Donncha, ‘The Death of a language’, Dublin Review of Books, April, 2015

  • Section 8

    It is the job of the market to turn the base material of our emotions into gold.
    Andre Codrescu

    In Ireland, if you hear ‘Section 8’, you might think THEFT, as here we have a statute for that, oh and FRAUD. No need to applaud. Meanwhile in America, they might mean housing the homeless or be talking about WWII-era homosexuals, bisexuals, crossdressers and transgender people deemed mentally unfit to serve in the military. Their undesirable behaviour being quaintly labelled ‘dishonorable discharge.’

    Social engineering aside, it seems even at the federal level, there’s a fine line between love and hate. But be aware there exists a vital Section 8 under Article One of the venerable U.S. Constitution, called ‘The Copyright Clause’. It reads: ‘To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive rights to their respective writings and discoveries.’

    Also known as the ‘Intellectual Property Clause’, these precious words provide that each patent granted remains inviolate for a solid seventeen years. And I speak from personal experience: in the sixties, once expired, patents could not be renewed.

    Since then, Congress has consistently cobbled together rules around a patent to galvanize its value, with consequent financial benefits for the holder. These and other actions by Congress systemically thwart the laws that governed a creative capitalism under which America once thrived.

    One result has been to tilt the playing field in favor of corrupt oligarchs and multinational corporations, who can afford the capital-intensive funding of new ventures on the front end.

    While the Constitution’s specified process for amendment was ignored by Congress, a slew of new laws were spawned to maintain the 99% at 1960s income levels. This legislation bedevils a middle class who slaves for longer and less, but still pays the sky-rocketing price of ingenuity and innovation.

    To become a songwriter, performing artist, or movie producer today requires alliances or confrontations with giant media or technology corporations, and involves fighting prohibitively expensive legal offensives to retain patent rights in perpetuity.

    Michael Jackson’s heirs have inherited the highest-earning estate in history according to Forbes magazine, which collects more royalties than Jackson himself ever did. Michael’s life ended in a homicidal dose of sedatives administered by his personal physician. After being convicted of involuntary manslaughter, the doctor served four years, before being released based on a combination of prison overcrowding and his own good behaviour.

    Samuel Clemens, who wrote under the nom de plume Mark Twain, was a staunch advocate for authors against publishers. He identified the latter as pirates of copyright and speculated that last minute augmentations to his works could prevent them ever entering the public domain.

    Do his descendants still receive royalties for Tom Sawyer? The short answer is no. In 1966 the last of his line, granddaughter Nina, a heavy drinker, informed bartenders of her preference for vodka to be served, graveside, at her funeral. Found in her oft-frequented Los Angeles motel room, Nina was declared a suicide, and her cause of death presumed to be alcohol and an overdose of pills.

    Generating billions every year, Big Pharma makes minuscule changes to the secret sauces developed just prior to the expiration of a plethora of profitable patents. The drug cartel’s strategy buys another seventeen years of protection for products which remain fundamentally unchanged, while Americans continue to be overcharged. Smaller firms that could otherwise create efficacious generic alternatives at lower prices are cut out of this highly lucrative cycle.

    In technology for twenty-six consecutive years, IBM has maintained its position as the U.S. patent leader. Big Blue dominates the market and is on track to tally a grand total of ten thousand patents. This leaves companies like Apple, Google, Intel, Microsoft, Samsung and Qualcomm to quibble over the crumbs of core technologies, meaning more artificial intelligence, cloud computing, virtual reality and drones.

    Be they for licensing or litigation alone, reaping the hefty annual fees from these expansive global portfolios remains their primary business activity, and these companies don’t feel compelled to produce anything of lasting tangible value at all.

    On reflection, a beacon can be weakened, but does the U.S. Constitution seek and destroy the same creativity it claims to preserve? On closer inspection, do ‘We the People’ get what we deserve at the till, when those good ol’ boys we elected hand us the bill?

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  • Irish Media’s Business Model Brings Climate Inaction

    Following a global trend since the arrival of the Internet, mainstream Irish media, including the so-called ‘paper of record’ the Irish Times, is increasingly required to sell itself. The days of someone reading a daily newspapers cover-to-cover are fading into nostalgic memories. Now editors feel obliged to dangle click-bait, and even fake news, often through social media feeds, with content increasingly accessed on smartphones.

    The result is diminished intellectual content, with greater emphasis on sports, titillating lifestyle stories, and consumer surveys. Moreover, advertising paymasters, generally multinational companies, often appear insulated from probing investigations; in Ireland’s case leading to a reliance on foreign-owned publications to break stories.

    Journalism should not be placed on a pedestal, or equated with a secular priesthood: any writer has conflicts of interest, biases and personal foibles. Nor are business people bereft of ethical considerations. The point is about how the interests of the public informant and salesperson are balanced across a media spectrum, and the danger inherent to any democracy when media is run on a purely commercial basis, identifying its interests with other businesses. This now appears to be the case with the three main Irish players: the national broadcaster RTÉ, Independent News and Media and the Irish Times newspaper (which last year purchased the only other indigenous national daily, the Irish Examiner).

    It is also apparent that the current Irish government’s ‘pro-business’ policies align with the interests of leading providers. This brings broadly sympathetic coverage, evident especially in the uncritical ‘reporting’ of strategic leaks, and publication of generally flattering images of leading politicians, especially media-conscious Taoiseach Varadkar.

    The close relationship between mainstream Irish media and the government came into sharp focus last year when unmarked government advertorials appeared across indigenous print media.[i] This now has serious implications for reporting on the environment, including man-made climate change and the Extinction Crisis.

    Climate Inaction

    On June 16th the Irish government launched a Climate Action Plan that gained essentially positive press coverage, emphasising how seriously the government was taking the issue. For example, the headline in the Irish Times the following day read: ‘Climate action plan promises ‘radical’ change.’

    Environmental NGOs, however, reacted very differently to the Plan. An Taisce said it fell ‘well short of the kind of radical, transformational document our recently declared national ‘climate and biodiversity emergency’ warrants.’[ii]

    Friends of the Earth offered a more favourable assessment describing the machinery for delivery as ‘the biggest innovation in Irish climate policy in 20 years.’ They cautioned, however, that the ‘plan gets us to the starting line on climate action. It will take consistent political leadership to ensure it is implemented on time…’[iii]

    Elsewhere, The Environmental Pillar, a coalition of over thirty national environment groups, lambasted a ‘general lack of clarity, ambition and urgency in the new Climate Action Plan to Tackle Climate Breakdown’, or reverse biodiversity decline.[iv]

    Finally, the Irish Wildlife Trust in its press release bluntly stated: ‘There is no indication that the government is willing to rethink agricultural expansion plans which are as odds with environment goals.’[v]

    Importantly, agriculture (essentially livestock agriculture) and transport (mostly of the private motor car variety) are projected to remain the main sources of Irish greenhouse gas emissions (currently combining to comprise over 50% of the total – rising both in absolute terms and proportionately. See table below).

    Climate Deception

    The Plan does little to address the Irish population’s disproportionate contribution to a climate change (the third highest per capita in the EU[vi]) that is already giving rise to extreme weather events close to our shores, and increasing frequency of storms here too. It also all but ignores a potentially irreversible Extinction Crisis facing the natural world, including in Ireland.

    Since then the government has blocked the passage of a cross-party Climate Emergency Bill, using a previously arcane and potentially unconstitutional ‘money messages’ parliamentary procedure. The Bill would have denied any further licences being granted for the purpose of oil or gas exploration in the country. This is certainly not evidence of the kind of “consistent political leadership” sought by Friends of the Earth, who, on reflection, more recently acknowledged that the ‘actual measures in the Plan don’t add up to bringing Irish emissions down far enough fast enough.’[vii]

    In essence, the Irish Times, among others,[viii] helped generate positivity in the Plan’s wake. This is apparent in the opening paragraph to an editorial the following day:

    The appropriately broad scope of the Government’s Climate Action Plan must be acknowledged. A scan of the plan’s headings shows that this administration, however belatedly, has fully grasped that global heating is negatively impacting every aspect of our life and that a plethora of policies and behaviours require urgent changes.[ix]

    Over the following days, opinion writers debated aspects of the plan, but none, it seems, was permitted to excoriate it.

    The greenwashing is best illustrated by a photograph featuring the following day in the Irish Times of the full Cabinet of Ministers arriving in the Phoenix Park to launch the Plan on an electric bus.[x] Yet this is one of just 13 State-owned electric vehicles among 6,573 listed, and came after the National Transport Authority recently announced the purchase of a further 200 diesel buses,[xi] for use nationwide. In Dublin nitrogen dioxide levels from diesel engines are already in breach of EU standards in a range of locations,[xii] seriously imperilling human health.

    The EPA’s recent emissions’ projections[xiii] make for stark reading:

    Mt CO2 eq 2017 2020 2025 2030 Growth 2018-2030
    Agriculture 20.21  20.32  20.66  20.85  3.2%
    Transport 12.00  12.68  12.48  11.86  -1.2%
    Energy Industries 11.74  11.95  13.66  8.62  -26.5%
    Residential 5.74  6.42  5.66  4.55  -20.7%
    Manufacturing Combustion 4.66  3.86  3.70  3.44  -26.2%
    Industrial Processes 2.23  2.39  2.67  3.01  34.6%
    Commercial and Public Services 1.97  1.31  1.15  0.97  -50.9%
    F-Gases 1.23  0.98  0.90  0.78  -35.9%
    Waste 0.93  0.58  0.49  0.44  -52.2%
    TOTAL 60.74  60.53  61.43  54.55  -10.2%

    The highest-emitting sector, agriculture, is predicted to increase its share to almost forty-per-cent of the total by 2030, while emissions from transport flatline. There is no evidence that the government’s Plan will alter these trajectories.

    Climate Opportunism

    In fact, climate change is being sold as an opportunity to roll out a fleet of electric cars, especially once the implementation of Bus Connects – really a road-widening exercise – ensures Dublin becomes even more of a U.S.-style motor-city.

    Foreign manufacture of electric vehicles externalises environmental and human impacts, including the mining of cobalt in Congo for lithium batteries.[xiv]

    Considering the success of the Luas, light rail seems a superior option to develop in our urban areas than noisy, uncomfortable and polluting buses. With a comparable population to Dublin, Prague has an extensive tram network offering a rapid, regular and comfortable service.

    A sensible climate action plan for urban areas could offer scope for a new generation of electric vehicles, including electric bikes, scooters and vehicles for the elderly – perhaps even involving state assistance to manufacturing enterprises. The motor car, as currently conceived, is not simply a major polluter, it is also unnecessarily large and poses serious dangers to other road users, as well as leading to social atomisation.

    Moreover, as long as fossil fuels generate electric power (under the Plan coal-burning Moneypoint power station is to be phased out in 2025,[xv] conveniently beyond the lifespan of this or the next government), electric vehicles could actually generate higher emissions than diesel equivalents, as one German study shows.[xvi]

    Another lacuna to the Plan is a failure to discuss reducing air travel between Dublin-London, accounting for 15,000 flights per annum, making it the busiest air corridor in Europe.[xvii] This might involve improving ferry services out of Dublin and, at the very least, providing a rail service from the Dublin city centre to the Port. It could even involve cooperating with the U.K. government to achieve improvements in the rail service out of Holyhead, potentially making sail-rail journey times competitive with air travel alternative.[xviii]

    Furthermore, the tired argument about maintaining the status quo in agriculture, the worst-offending sector, to the benefit of a narrowing elite, and underpinned by billions in subsidies, is based on a common misconception that Irish livestock ‘production’ diminishes impacts from livestock agriculture occurring elsewhere.

    This is the ‘our coal smokes less than their coal’ argument. In fact, recent analysis by An Taisce of U.N. figures[xix] shows Irish agricultural products to be responsible for among the highest emissions in Europe. Any plan purporting to diminish Ireland’s contribution to climate change is a waste of paper without proposals for radical reform of Irish agriculture. Emphasis, and subsidies, should shift to the cultivation of fruit and vegetables for the home market thereby reducing fossil fuel dependency, increasing employment and potentially raising the nation’s health.

    The so-called ‘Paper of Record’

    The Irish Times should not be considered a ‘paper of record’, or an unbiased conduit of ‘facts’, as it advertises itself. Although managed as a trust, a significant salary overhang and investments extraneous to news-gathering and commentary, including www.myhome.ie, have seen it develop into what is an overwhelmingly commercial concern. This approach may be a necessity for the survival of a medium-sized newspaper in the digital era, but it has important, generally unacknowledged, consequences for Irish democracy.

    It should be emphasised that many Irish Times journalists display diligence and integrity, and stories are still broken, but since Paul O’Neill became editor in 2017, the paper has become noticeably more business-friendly, and deferential to the current government.

    One leading columnist, Stephen Collins, is particularly partisan in his support for the dominant economic consensus of steady growth and rising rents administered by a political duopoly.[xx] Left-wing analysis of Irish politics and society is only given an intermittent platform, especially since Vincent Brown’s retirement, and with Fintan O’Toole mainly devoted to international commentary.

    Notably, Dan Flinter, chairman of the Irish Times Trust since 2013, holds a range of external directorships, where potential conflicts of interest could arise. For example, he is a non-executive director of Dairygold Co-Op, and chairman of its Remuneration Committee and a member of the Acquisitions and Investments Committee.[xxi] Ongoing expansion of the dairy sector since the lifting of EU milk quotas in 2015 has been the leading cause of the agricultural sector’s (and the country’s) rising emissions.

    A worldwide environmental crisis is upon us, and many, particularly young, Irish people are focused on the country’s global responsibilities. Meaningfully addressing the gathering storm – in Ireland’s case by shifting agricultural priorities (and subsidies) away from livestock production and phasing out the motor car in urban areas – would work, however, to the detriment of vested interests that advertise heavily in Irish media.[xxii] Such an approach would also be anathema to the dominant paradigm of economic growth-without-end, oblivious to environmental impact.

    The government’s Climate Action Plan seems to have been designed to assuage the justifiable fears, and desire for real action, among wide sections of the population, but it is really a greenwashing exercise, as the responses of leading environmental NGOs show.

    Unforgivably, the Irish Times misrepresented the Plan as a ‘radical’ document, despite its obvious deficiencies. This is a betrayal of a loyal readership, and honourable journalists working there. Irish democracy is being undermined by an institution which many of us grew up believing was one of its cornerstones, on an issue of crucial global importance.

    [i] Kevin Doyle, ‘Varadkar orders review of Project Ireland €1.5m publicity campaign amid controversy’, Irish Independent, March 1st, 2018. https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/politics/varadkar-orders-review-of-project-ireland-1-5m-publicity-campaign-amid-controversy-36660463.html

    [ii] Press Release. ‘New Gov’t Climate Plan offers much improved rhetoric: but An Taisce cautions that “winning slowly will be the same as losing”’ June 18th, 2019, An Taisce – The National Trust for Ireland. http://www.antaisce.org/articles/new-gov%E2%80%99t-climate-plan-offers-much-improved-rhetoric-but-an-taisce-cautions-that-%E2%80%9Cwinning

    [iii] Press Release, ‘Promised mechanisms to ensure delivery and oversight are biggest innovation in Government climate plan’, Friends of the Earth Ireland, 17th of June, 2019,  https://www.foe.ie/news/2019/06/17/promised-mechanisms-to-ensure-delivery-and-oversight-are-biggest-innovation-in-government-climate-plan/

    [iv] Press Release, ‘All-of-Gov Climate Plan falls far short on biodiversity measures’, Environmental Pillar, 17th of June, 2019, https://environmentalpillar.ie/all-of-gov-climate-plan-falls-far-short-on-biodiversity-measures/

    [v] ‘PRESS RELEASE: Nature largely missing from the government Climate Action Plan’, Irish Wildlife Trust, 18th of June, 2019, https://iwt.ie/press-release-nature-largely-missing-from-the-government-climate-action-plan/

    [vi] Conall Ó Fátharta ‘Ireland’s Emissions the Third Highest in the EU’, November 23rd, 2016 Irish Examiner, https://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/irelands-co2-emissions-third-highest-in-eu-431895.html

    [vii] Untitled, ‘End of Term Climate Report: ‘Little Leo is falling in with the wrong crowd’, Friends of the Earth, 9th of July, 2019, https://www.foe.ie/news/2019/07/09/end-of-term-climate-report-little-leo-is-falling-in-with-the-wrong-crowd/

    [viii] Broadsheet.ie offers a summary of the newspapers headlines the following day: https://www.broadsheet.ie/2019/06/17/de-tuesday-papers-321/

    [ix] Untitled, ‘Irish Times view on the Climate Action Plan: activity must match ambition’, June 18th, 2019, Irish Times, https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/editorial/irish-times-view-on-the-climate-action-plan-activity-must-match-ambition-1.3928552

    [x] Miriam Lord, ‘Miriam Lord: From emission agnostics to climate apostles’, June 17th, 2019, Irish Times, https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/miriam-lord-from-emission-agnostics-to-climate-apostles-1.3930031?mode=sample&auth-failed=1&pw-origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fnews%2Fpolitics%2Fmiriam-lord-from-emission-agnostics-to-climate-apostles-1.3930031.

    [xi] Juno McEnroe, ‘Only 13 of 6,700 State vehicles are electric’, July 1st, Irish Examiner, https://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/ireland/only-13of-6700-state-vehicles-are-electric-933924.html

    [xii] Cormac Fitzgerald, ‘Levels of dangerous air pollutant NO2 possibly exceeding limits on M50 and on Dublin street’, thejournal.ie, July 9th, 2019, https://www.thejournal.ie/pollution-traffic-4715146-Jul2019/

    [xiii] ‘EPA’S GREENHOUSE GAS PROJECTIONS SHOW THAT IRELAND HAS MORE TO DO TO MEET ITS 2030 TARGETS’, Environmental Protection Agency, June 6th, 2019. https://www.epa.ie/mobile/news/name,66072,en.html?fbclid=IwAR3cGLpPKV9k4fTIVE8EMCJ_DPqG4bK_Ked5xWObMD5pzt_j63_wGQK7R24 accessed 9/6/19.

    [xiv] Untitled, ‘CBS News finds children mining cobalt for batteries in the Congo’, March 5th, 2018, CBS News, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cobalt-children-mining-democratic-republic-congo-cbs-news-investigation/?fbclid=IwAR1uNxopb2YEdfPIUyQvoTtfBVWn-o7OKTvAHuPH_IgV4HfVnmAeSzFE9_Q

    [xv] Government of Ireland, ‘Climate Action Plan – To Tackle Climate Breakdown’, June 16th, 2019, p.23. https://dccae.gov.ie/documents/Climate%20Action%20Plan%202019.pdf

    [xvi] Commentary, ‘Electric Vehicles in Germany Emit More Carbon Dioxide Than Diesel Vehicles’, June 10th, 2019, Institute for Energy Research, https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/international-issues/electric-vehicles-in-germany-emit-more-carbon-dioxide-than-diesel-vehicles/?fbclid=IwAR3PGVCkKRWjp12WtvqFMCgqKpOYhh4f001QxrRt6OEeUJ7S0eLQI5DkLys.

    [xvii] Untitled, ‘Dublin-Heathrow Busiest International Route In Europe’, 21st of January, 2019, Roots Online, https://www.routesonline.com/airports/2412/dublin-airport/news/276780/dublin-heathrow-busiest-international-route-in-europe/

    [xviii] Ruadhan Mac Eoin, ‘A User’s Guide to ‘Sail-Rail’ with Bicycle and Opportunities on the Dublin-London Route’, April 30th 2019, Cassandra Voices, http://cassandravoices.com/environment/off-the-rails-sail-rail-with-bicycle-from-dublin-to-london-with-some-observations-on-opportunities-for-improvement/

    [xix] Press Release, ‘Bombshell for Irish Beef’, An Taisce – The National Trust for Ireland, February 10th, 2019, http://www.antaisce.org/articles/bombshell-for-irish-beef.

    [xx] For example: Stephen Collins, ‘Politics of centre ground has served Ireland well’, May 2nd, 2019, Irish Times, https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/stephen-collins-politics-of-centre-ground-has-served-ireland-well-1.3877455

    [xxi] Dairygold Annual Report, 2018. https://www.dairygold.ie/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Dairygold-Annual-Report-2018.pdf

    [xxii] As regards the motor car industry, see Stephen Court, ‘Drivetime’, Cassandra Voices, 31st of May, 2018. ‘http://cassandravoices.com/environment/drive-time-the-irish-medias-message/