Within a week of learning that the Irish are just about the most promiscuous and sexually active people in Europe, we are about to elect as President a right-wing Catholic who is so well regarded by the lads who run the Church that they let her represent them at the New Ireland Forum. At one level that might seem odd. At another, it's not odd at all.
Now, I have to say, it did come as a shock to me that anybody has the least idea how many times we all have sex in a year. Presumably there are folk in white coats with stopwatches and clicking devices recording our every move in bed, notching up every time we manage the deadly deed. Apparently, in the Republic we manage it 114 times a year, but in the North they manage it 116 times, and the poor British only manage it 113 times a year.
Still, it's a close call. If I were Mary McAleese, I'd check under the bed when I move into the Aras just to make sure noone is there to record whether or not the Presidential couple achieve Northern rates, Republic rates, or heaven forfend, British rates. The shame of it. Imagine how one must feel. It's 11.00 p.m. on December 31st, and you've only managed it 112 times in a year. One more to catch up with the Brits, another to be a citizen of the Republic, and four more to be a true Northerner. And only half an hour to go before we start with a blank sheet again. Oh, let's settle for a cup of cocoa instead.
A smile of approval
But how is it that we are free and easy with sexual matters, and about to elect the nearest thing to a reverend mother I've seen outside a wimple this side of a shower curtain in years? How can the most sexually active people in Europe possibly elect as President a woman who is against ["]unnatural["]
contraception and whose opinions on morality would bring a smile of approval to the face of John Charles McQuaid? How can a country ringing with the snap of knicker-elastic elect a woman who can unblushingly talk freely about her "ministry"? I have to say, at times I have been deeply grateful to have been spared talk of her pontificate, though that too has been a near-run thing. (Pontificate actually means bridge-building.)
There is one word to explain the double phenomenon. Tribe. Fianna Fail is the political manifestation of the Gaelic tribe, the people who once shocked the Anglo-Normans with their sexual ease. The almost combustible spontaneity of Irish sexual mores has been concealed for centuries; with the death of the Catholic Church's authority over our private conduct, the people of Ireland are reverting to cultural type. Needless to say, I am referring to the plain people of Ireland, not the piano-playing classes, who call their sons Quentin and their daughters Emily and who, according to my fond theory of things, are descended from the Anglo-Normans. They still have a touch of the anally-retentive conqueror about them. They tend to marry for money and mind it with a Norman regard for parsimony, They are not promiscuous; far from it - as anyone who has ever watched the front bench of Fine Gael in Dail Eireann knows, the p-word which comes to mind is piles.
Not just the blokes
Fianna Fail is a different kettle of libido. Though, for the most part, we are lucky not to have a tabloid press like the British, it would on occasion be nice if the plain people of Ireland could read about the capers of the party of Dev. Fianna Fail is the party of Bodenstown, the Republic and a bit on the side. And not just the blokes. Fianna Fail women are no slouches in the pelvic line, either. I cast no aspersions on the party's - and our own - beloved leader, but it is hardly coincidental that he is the first Taoiseach to set up home with a lady not his wife. Albert, of course, was a perfect model; I understand his predecessor's record is a little different in that regard.
They are the party of the tribe, and generally speaking, the Northern minority is perceived as being part of the Fianna Fail tribe, even though, recently, Northerners - Austin Curry, John Cushnahan - went distressingly to Fine Gael. But Mary McAleese - Maire, daughter of the son of the servant of Jesus is her name in Irish - is a representative of the tribe of the Gael, Fianna Fail. That tribe will always win presidential elections. 1990 was a fluke. Generally Fianna Fail are assured of victory simply because demographically they are in the ascendant; and if they keep at it hammer and tongs the way the sex survey suggests, demographically, that's the way they're going to stay.
Treachery and traitors
And, by heaven, something vile happens to Fianna Fail whenever their hegemony is challenged. The year is 1997, we have been members of the EEC or EU for over a quarter of a century, and the Anglo-Irish secretariat in Maryfield has been exercising limited shared governance over Northern Ireland for a decade, and yet come election time, what do we hear from Fianna Fail but all sorts of sneers about treachery, traitors and West-Brits. Translate that language into the language of British politics, and you hear the ringing tones of the National Front.
This year, for the first time ever, the Fianna Fail tribe was island-wide. It was uncanny and unnerving to hear all this talk of national treachery from a tribal monolith that reached from West Belfast to West Cork. And it was uncanny and unnerving to be on Radio Ireland last week with Eoghan Harris, and to hear the volume of abuse and undiluted hatred being directed at him in the phone-in after our conversation. Killers do not earn such obloquy. The first thing the coming pontificate is going to do - after it has checked under the bed, that is - is build bridges towards the right to dissent within the tribe before it can meaningfully build them elsewhere.