Annual Hyde gathering told State aids private landlords 'to obscene degree'

THE IRISH obsession with owning property is certainly connected with our history of dispossession, “but that’s no excuse for what we’ve done to ourselves, and the shameful lack of any meaningful rights for tenants”, the 2011 Douglas Hyde Conference in Ballaghaderreen, Co Roscommon, heard yesterday.

Catriona Crowe, head of special projects at the National Archives of Ireland , said the State was subsidising private landlords “to an obscene degree” in order to house social welfare recipients, but rights of tenants were not being protected.

Ms Crowe revealed that in the run-up to the 1916 centenary, the country’s archival resources will be enriched by the phased release of the Military Service Pensions Files collection, starting early next year.

“These records are the last big piece of the archival jigsaw puzzle relating to the revolutionary period,” she said. They comprise about 250,000 files, dealing with pension applications for veterans of the period 1913-23 and their dependants.

“Because money was involved, the standard of proof required was very high, with several referees and corroborating witnesses needed to verify applicants’ claims”, she said, thus the records will provide a valuable insight into period.

Speaking of the series of centenary commemorations that are being planned, Ms Crowe said: “ I am hoping that we do not go through the next 12 years with a soft-centred aspiration to please everyone.”

She said that, for example, the formation of the Ulster Volunteers in 1912 was “a totally undemocratic, deeply threatening event, and should not be honoured in the Irish Republic”.

She added that she hoped that we would be able to relate “our violent origins as a State” to the endemic violence in our society and examine both.

“And I am hoping that in spite of the hubris of certain representatives of the nationalist community in the North, that they too will take part in some honest self-examination and really, truly repudiate violence as a means to any end,” Ms Crowe said.

The accepted narrative running through the Irish media suggesting that there is no alternative but to protect bondholders and property developers was criticised by another speaker.

Sinead Kennedy, a lecturer at NUI Maynooth and spokeswoman for the People Before Profit/United Left Alliance, said this “powerful narrative” did not acknowledge that economic decisions were being made and that banks were being bailed out while special needs assistants were being cut.

The theme of this year’s conference was: “The Economy v the People – Ireland’s Divided Mind.”

Poet Theo Dorgan, who chaired the conference, spoke about economists being “good servants but poor masters” and he questioned the role economists have been given in shaping civil society in the current recession.

“Nobody envisaged that citizens would be obliged to conduct their lives in accordance with the wishes of economists,” he said.

“If you live in parts of Roscommon and you have a heart attack, you may not be able for the 1½-hour ambulance trip to Roscommon but your life looks different on somebody’s graph, deep in the bowels of an office building in Dublin.”