An Irishman's Diary

IT’S A PARADOX, given our international image as the “Fightin’ Irish”, that the citizens of this country are among the most stoical people on the planet: capable of accepting the twin imposters, triumph and disaster, with an equanimity even Kipling would have to admire.

This fatalism is part of our image too, in fact – at least among financial analysts. The point was made on radio yesterday by Dan O’Brien of the Economist Intelligence Unit, as he first spoke approvingly of the signal Wednesday’s Budget had sent to overseas markets and then played down fears that the cutbacks might be defeated by violent street protests of the kind seen in Greece.

“Generally Ireland, compared to most other countries, is not a country that does social unrest,” he said. And if anything, this was an understatement. The winter of discontent is still young, but the unlikelihood of anti-Government violence in Dublin is probably among the EIU’s safer predictions for the coming months.

We were talking here recently about the term “patriot”. This is a particularly interesting word when you break it up – not that I’m encouraging readers to break up anything – into its component syllables. Yet, as Dan O’Brien suggests, the markets need not worry. The fact is, that despite his volatile image, “Pat” and “riot” are words you rarely hear reported in the same sentence.

Never mind recent events in Athens. Compare Ireland with France, whenever any section of society has a disagreement with government. So much for national stereotypes – just as the Irish are reputed to be belligerent, the French are famous for shrugging philosophically. But try telling that to any reform-minded French minister as his effigy is guillotined by an angry mob.

Or consider even mild-mannered Iceland, where the volcanic activity is normally confined to the underground but spilled over onto the streets last spring and swept away the government. By contrast with us, those hot-blooded Scandinavians are downright unstable.

Certainly we like to complain here, and we’re very good at it. It seems telling – of what, exactly, might be the subject for a PhD – that the nearest thing we had to a public revolt over last year’s budget climaxed non-violently in a church, with pensioners verbally condemning politicians from the altar. This was the closest thing to revolution most of us had ever seen.

Government TDs might have been given an earful outside the Dáil this week too. But such lobal warming is generally as far we Irish go. Before we get around to fetching the pike out of the thatch, a mood of resignation has usually descended.

This is where national stereotypes are inverted. Unlike the Fightin’ French, we are quickly reconciled to our fate: reacting with what should be called the Gaelic shrug.

No doubt the 800 Years of Oppression are to blame. We must have inherited the endless forbearance from our ancestors, the long-suffering Gaels. In fact, as even this grim winter of floods and cutbacks fails to provoke us, I'm reminded that the classic account of the subject comes not from Dan O'Brien, but from his near-namesake Flann, in his masterpiece The Poor Mouth.

This epic tale of rain-soaked Irish poverty and squalor ends, memorably, with the narrator’s one and only meeting with his father, when the latter emerges from a 29-year prison sentence (for something he didn’t do, of course) just as the former is beginning his. Yet even as they part, tearfully and forever, these true Gaels find reason to be grateful.

As the book’s preface notes: “It is a cause of jubilation that the author, Bonaparte O’Coonassa, is still alive today, safe in jail and free from the miseries of life.”

THERE WERE a lot of signals coming out of Ireland this week. Even the Dublin City engineer got in on the act yesterday when he said that the new bridge over the Liffey, the Samuel Beckett, would send the message “that Dublin is open for business”.

And maybe it will. But those overseas markets might be a bit nervous about this particular message if they’ve read any of Beckett’s work.

Unlike James Joyce, whose made a habit of name-checking every shop or pub his characters passed, Beckett could hardly be described as pro-business. His oeuvre is also rather short on optimism, even in the more conventional narratives. But in one of his later plays, the 25-second-long Breath, the script comprises two screams separated by the sound of a person inhaling and exhaling, followed by the curtain. Maybe the latest Liffey crossing should be nicknamed the Bridge of Sighs.

Still, there is an undeniable symmetry between this latest addition to Dublin and Santiago Calatrava’s last bridge, named after James Joyce and opened in 2003. The pair are at opposite ends of the city quays, and they represent opposite ends of Ireland’s recent economic fortunes too. With his expansionist tendencies, Joyce was a writer for the boom years; whereas with his relentless minimalism, Beckett belongs firmly to the recession.

Characterising his and his former mentor’s differing approaches to art, Beckett once said – I’m paraphrasing – that where Joyce wanted to put everything in, he tried to take everything out. A neater summary of the contrast between the Ahern-McCreevy budgets, and those of the Cowen-Lenihan era, would be hard to come up with.