LOOSE LEAVES:Who'd have guessed that the route of a new Irish book to the local library would be via Norwich, in England? Yet this is what is going to happen in three local-authority areas since South Dublin County Council, Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council and Fingal County Council decided last month to award their library-supplies contract, worth more than €500,000, to the UK company Bertram Library Services.
The councils say that they were obliged under EU law to open the tendering process to foreign companies, and were under pressure to accept the cheapest offer, but Irish suppliers counter that any savings will quickly be offset by lost jobs (and increased social-welfare payments) in the Irish bookselling and small-publishing world.
They are also furious because the tender notice for the contract stated that a detailed knowledge of Irish publishing was essential, a stipulation that seems to have been forgotten in the rush to get the cheapest deal.
At the Open Book Company Library Services, in Kinsealy, Co Dublin, “a minimum of eight jobs will go with this tender”, says its director, Brendan Bannigan, who has been in the bookselling business for 22 years.
As a member of the Irish branch of the Booksellers Association of Great Britain and Ireland, he is part of a campaign to get an amendment that would exclude books from the EU public-procurement directive. The campaign has the support of German booksellers, and its case is being made by Françoise Dubruille, the French director of the European and International Booksellers Federation.
Meanwhile, let’s hope that obscure but fascinating books of local history and experimental novels from small Irish publishers won’t be forgotten, and will get to make that long and slightly surreal trip to East Anglia and back to the shelves of a Co Dublin library.
Hay to make its way to Borris House
In a newly announced collaboration, the touring version of the internationally respected Hay literary festival will be coming to Eigse Carlow Arts Festival next month. Borris House will host a series of talks and readings over the weekend of June 9th and 10th, and the line-up of writers is first rate.
The event will open on the Saturday afternoon with a reading by the poet Kerry Hardie from her forthcoming collection, The Ash and the Oak and the Wild Cherry Tree. This will be followed by a presentation from Colm Tóibín on writers’ relationships with their families, which takes as its starting point his recent book New Ways to Kill Your Mother. Other speakers during the day will include the comedy producer John Lloyd (Spitting Image and Blackadder, among many other shows), the playwright Marina Carr, and the journalist and film-maker Ben Anderson, who will be interviewed by Fintan O’Toole about his account of the war in Afghanistan, No Worse Enemy.
Saturday evening will be taken up by Leviathan, a public discussion among participants, interspersed with satire, comedy and music.
Taking part on Sunday will be the Booker prize-winning novelists Anne Enright and John Banville and the Oscar-nominated director Stephen Frears, whose films include Dangerous Liaisons, The Van and The Queen. The Waterboys frontman Mike Scott will read from his new memoir, and the Orange Prize winner Lionel Shriver (author of We Need to Talk About Kevin) will talk about her latest book, So Much for That.
Shriver will also take part in an event called 5x15 Stories, in which she and four other writers will each “talk passionately” for 15 minutes on a subject of their choice.
For the full programme, and bookings, see eigse.com.
