Beneath the urbane and prosperous face of New Ireland, what dark and pagan forces do we see stirring? It is possible that there are moderate, clinical and inoffensive words to describe the events at Lispopple, in Co Dublin, where people are picketing Carlton House because it is to be used for half-a-dozen psychiatric patients, but I certainly don't what they are. Nor, indeed, does my dictionary. Even to harbour such feelings about the psychiatrically unwell - which will over time include just about the entire human race - should be a matter of deep shame, rather like discovering that one has sexual fantasies about children, that or one harbours anti-Semitic feelings.
Psychiatric patients
But actually to righteously parade such bigotry against psychiatric patients is a moral inversion so profound as to beggar belief. Such behaviour is not merely intellectually backward and morally disgusting; it also involves a surrender to a primitivism that is so barbarous and incon scionable that even those driven by it seek anonymity in the mob. It's hardly surprising that a picket outside the house concealed his face from the Irish Times photographer.
And of course, the threat being deployed - by some at least - against patients being moved there is the classic weapon of cowards and bullies. All those who passed the picket line would, a leaflet declared, be "spurned and boycotted", and there would be no contact between protesters and people working in the house (much to the latter's relief, I imagine).
Since I am unable to utter another word about such pagan behaviour, I would like to speak about James Kavanagh, the sheep farmer who illegally imported 500 sheep from Cumbria - world capital of foot-and-mouth - and sold them in another man's name to avoid paying tax, or unleashed them on Mount Leinster. This gentleman took a court action to prevent the Department of Agriculture culling these sheep (if it can find them, that is). As I say, I would like to speak about this matter, but am unable to do so, because once again, words fail me. Clearly I'm in the wrong job.
James Kavanagh unlawfully imported beasts. He admits it. He admits too he sold some of them illegally under a false name to avoid tax. Yet as shamelessly as the Lispopple pickets parading their mumbo-jumbo superstitions, he has tried to use the law to prevent his illegal herd being culled without compensation to him. He was not in court defending himself against allegations of illegality; the Department of Agriculture was defending itself against accusations of legality. My brain is beginning to whirr and shake, like the Chernobyl reactor before the big bang.
Cabinet accountability
As it approaches meltdown, it can miraculously see into the special forthcoming convention called by the GAA after it discovered that the Government's £60 million gift to the it was not a foregone conclusion, and that pesky things like Cabinet accountability still matter. The forthcoming GAA Congress will meet to reconsider the future of Croke Park, opening with an address from a Tipperary delegate.
He will tell delegates that they should never forget the Dark Ages, when Irish missionaries brought light and civilisation to pagan Europe. His peroration will stray from Glendalough, Clonmacnoise, Cashel and thence to Sceilig Micheal. And those great Christian institutions, he says to rapturous applause, are why we should not be allowing the sporting codes of the evil, heathen English in Croke Park. Moreover, the GAA should insist that the government pay it the £60 million, and now.
After the tumult dies down, a delegate from Cork rises to agree with his friend from Tipperary. Had we forgotten that Cromwell put Drogheda and Limerick to the sword? Had Congress forgotten the later defence of Limerick and its honourable surrender, followed by the flight of Wild Geese under Sarsfield and the violation of the treaty by the forces of the crown? Did the gallant men of Limerick perish by the hundreds on the city's ramparts in order for the GAA to surrender Croke Park to the pastimes of the barbaric oppressor? Is that what it has come to, that the sporting heartland of the Irish nation should capitulate to foreigners? The GAA should stand firm on this - and on a point of order, was it not reasonable for all members of Congress to be given free tickets to the next Neil Diamond Concert?
Penal Laws
The point of order was then reformulated as an emergency motion, and was promptly passed, before a delegate from Monaghan rose. He pointed out that those who wanted soccer and rugby at Croke Park would have us believe that the Penal Laws concerned a small operation performed on Jewish boy-babies. These so called Irishmen would maintain that the yeomen of '98 minded female sheep.
No doubt they thought that the Famine was just an early version of the Scarsdale Diet, and the Black and Tans a pack of hounds. They probably maintained that Bobby Sands was an English policeman, or maybe just a beach. And had delegates forgotten the glories of Solohead Beg? Of Kilmichael? of Crossbarry? Had they forgotten Ireland's Bloody Sundays - take your pick: 1914, 1920 or 1972?
The motion to permit foreign sporting codes to be played in Croke Park again failed to reach the necessary two-thirds vote; the Government gave the GAA £60 million anyway. Moreover, the courts awarded James Kavanagh compensation for his sheep, and also closed down Carlton House. And there was a loud boom on a Kildare hillside as a certain columnist's brains exploded.