People in Roscommon may have just cause for complaint. But certain messages of death are a milestone too far, writes ANN MARIE HOURIHANE
DRIVING THROUGH Roscommon the other evening one could not help noticing, as Bertie Wooster might have put it , that the population was rather far from being gruntled. There were black crosses everywhere. “So Many Lies” said one particularly striking poster, which was dominated by a large, black cross. It did lend the journey a slightly melancholy air. Then there was the poster that intimated that, thanks to the decisions of our Taoiseach Enda Kenny, the people of Roscommon would shortly be wearing body bags.
According to Fintan Kilroe of the XLNT Signs company, one of the two businesses printing these posters, the body bags idea arose earlier in the summer from the controversy about the dress code then being discussed for our public representatives in the Dáil. It is fair to say that local campaigns on matters of local interest – Roscommon is not losing its entire hospital, but has lost its accident and emergency department – are not renowned for their lightness of touch.
In fact, death was the dominant theme on the ditches, hedgegrows and roundabouts of Roscommon. To be more accurate about it, the death theme started, with the posters, in Mayo. It continued until Athlone, across more than half the country. The sheer effort required must have been remarkable.
What is also striking is the fact that many of these posters – there are 12 to choose from on the campaign website – are sponsored by local residents or businesses. Thus the “So Many Lies” poster I saw was sponsored by the McNamara family.
Similarly, the poster which states “The First Hour Is Critical” (this first part is printed above the black cross) and “No Hospital = Death” was sponsored by Casey’s Supermac’s.
This is as local as it gets.
According to Mantis Gruzdziunas of Roscommon Signs, the second company printing the posters for the hospital campaign, the “The First Hour Is Critical No Hospital = Death” one is the most popular of all.
Asked how many copies of “The First Hour Is Critical etc” posters he had printed, Gruzdziunas replied “Over the 200, it could be.” And you did get the feeling that you’d seen every single one of them.
Faced with rather extreme statements such as “Not Just Broken Government Promises [the large black cross is inserted here] People Will Die”, one finds oneself reflecting that even those of us who are not going to be killed by a vindictive government are going to die at some stage. It does seem to be taking localism a little too far to blame death itself on the evil people in Dublin.
This is not to say that the people in Roscommon don’t have a right to feel aggrieved. Election campaign promises were broken. And assurances from the experts and planners in our medical system fall on stony ground these days, discredited as the system is by financial greed, shameless self-interest and empire building – and that’s just the doctors.
Nevertheless, arriving in Roscommon only to find a large, black cross accompanying the announcement that “No AE For Up To 125kms It’s Life Or Death” is not a pleasant experience. “If You Get A Heart Attack Or Stroke Here?” asked another poster with a large, black cross. Those of us who have not yet had our heart attacks or our strokes don’t really think about them; and would prefer not to start thinking about them at a roundabout in Roscommon. “Taxed Out Of Existence Now Sentenced To Death” screams another poster.
It’s like the Shell To Sea campaign, another protest with a good point at its heart – not least the view that our natural resources should not have been given away for nothing – but the aggression and sheer hate of which have alienated potential support.
In Ireland the local too quickly turns personal. Unanimity seems to be compulsory. The new mayor of Boyle, Co Roscommon, Sinn Féin councillor Jane Suffin, wrote obscene, puerile things about local TD Frank Feighan on her website. She got a lot of publicity for it, for which she must be grateful. Frank Feighan is a member of the ruling party during a time of national bankruptcy. He voted with the Government to close the AE at Roscommon Hospital. That’s not a crime.
As The Irish Timesruns its "County Colours" series, in which various writers examine their home place, perhaps it's worth thinking of the vicious nature of much localism. As Keith Duggan put it in his interesting article on the subject of county loyalty on Saturday, "those randomly drawn lines have acquired a sacred quality for the Irish". And that's not a good thing.
Local passion does not always equate with a serious disaster. Other cuts to the public service will cause much wider damage than the cutbacks at Roscommon Hospital: the extinction of special needs assistants springs to mind here. Unfortunately, many Irish children may well be more than 125km from a professional who is both trained to help them and employed. Yet the parents of these children have not mounted a campaign even approaching the anger of saveroscommonhospital.com.
They are probably too tired. Or perhaps they have decided that the results of these campaigns linger for years, and that success is not one of them.