Opinion

Four political lessons from a trip to Ireland’s southwest

Pat Leahy: There are already signs of what the next major issues will be

Derrynane beach, in Co Kerry. File photograph: Nick Bradshaw

Pat Leahy's face
Pat Leahy
Sat Aug 21 2021 - 01:00

Observations from a few weeks in south Kerry and west Cork, and what they might mean for politics in the autumn:

1. There's lots of money around. The number of 2020- and 2021-registered cars on the roads was astonishing – and not just new cars, but expensive new cars, big expensive new cars. Motor industry stats for this year show increases across the board – with 3,700 newly purchased BMWs, 2,600 Mercedes, 700 Land Rovers, 150 Jaguars, 140 Porsches, Rolls Royces, Bentleys, Aston Martins. (During the blazing hot days of early August, all of the above seemed to be trying to get into the car park at Derrynane beach.)

Holiday homes were costing €1,500 and upwards a week; one well-paid friend gave up last-minute plans for a few nights in Kerry last week when she discovered the cost of hotel nights. Want to land on the Skelligs?

As we emerge from it, it is clear that the pandemic has taken a fearful toll on people's health, mental and physical

A tasty €125 per person, and you better book six months in advance. (The banter is free: "We haven't lost a passenger since last week.") In Baltimore, on Sherkin and Cape Clear islands, in Schull, there were new boats everywhere.

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Clearly, this is not the story for everyone. The last 18 months have seen businesses wiped out and incomes slashed for many people. The economic burden has fallen like a hammer blow on hospitality, on casual workers, on the young and on many of the self-employed.

But for many others – residents perhaps of the satisfied suburbs of our cities and towns who took three weeks in Ireland instead of two weeks in Spain this year – savings have accumulated and spending is now being unleashed. That will inevitably drive inflation; house prices and rent cannot be immune. The cost of rents will be one of the stories of the autumn, and will be one of the questions that dogs the Government's new housing plan, due to finally arrive the week after next. Fertile ground for Sinn Féin; tough terrain for Fianna Fáil.

2. As we emerge from it, it is clear that the pandemic has taken a fearful toll on people's health, mental and physical. Everywhere, people spoke about the impact on their children from the loss of schooltime and on their parents from the prolonged isolation of lockdown. Expect psychiatric health services that are already comparatively underfunded to creak under the strain in the autumn.

Healthcare waiting lists will be the next thing we have to deal with, one health insider tells me, warning that they will surge as the demand for consultant appointments and treatment comes up against the backlog that accumulated during lockdown.

I'm told that HSE chief executive Paul Reid said something similar to the Cabinet subcommittee on Covid on Thursday. It is not an especially penetrating insight to say that the health service will be under pressure in the coming months and that this will be a political issue, but there are some people in a position to know who fear it will be worse than ever.

3. There is a vastly increased awareness of climate change and of the case for climate action measures. Even many of those swanky new cars were electric, or at least hybrid. There were walkers and cyclists everywhere (the latter exhibiting impressive courage in duelling with car traffic on tiny roads as well as a commitment to carbon-neutral forms of transport). Businesses trumpeted their sustainable character.

Will this emerging public mood translate into public acceptance for the costs and inconveniences that climate action measures will require? For higher fuel costs? For changes to our current methods of farming? For more expensive private transport?

Among many businesspeople, there is an impatience to get back to normal, and an attendant frustration with the pace at which government operates in many areas

That is the great political task for the Green Party – and, by extension, for Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, who will not be able to fudge all of the commitments on climate action they made to bring the Greens into Government in the first place.

The first task for the Greens is to get climate action measures – that is, the actual changes in laws and behaviour, not just the targets they are intended to achieve – agreed with their Coalition partners, and then the party must sell them to the public.

That won’t be easy: look at how public opinion mobilised against water charges, a campaign that has left a deep scar on politics. Hear the opposition to carbon taxes. Listen to the suspicion of farmers told they must change. But nobody said it would be easy.

And it is, after all, the reason why the Greens are in Government. They have their work cut out for sure, but my weeks knocking about the southwest suggest to me the greenification of the public is advancing. That must be important for politics.

4. Among many businesspeople, there is an impatience to get back to normal, and an attendant frustration with the pace at which government operates in many areas. Many hospitality businesses are still finding it impossible to get staff, and some restaurants remain shuttered. Comparisons with the pace of reopening in other countries were chucked about frequently.

At the same time there is a horror among parents that any spike in infections could affect the return to school. For many people, one of their staycation day-trips was to the nearest vaccination centre to get their teenager jabbed.

Everywhere you hear constantly the exhortation that the Government should “get on” with things, demonstrating most people’s disinterest in many of the daily comings and goings of politics and their prioritisation of the things that affect their daily lives.

The controversy over Katherine Zappone’s appointment as special envoy was a godsend to my unfortunate colleagues looking for political stories in the quiet dog days of the summer; I am not sure anyone outside the Dublin political bubble really noticed. I spoke to many people about political matters; very, very few of them mentioned Ms Zappone.

But if the Government continues this proclivity to harm itself – both collectively and in its individual components – then that will matter quite a lot in the turbulent political term to come.

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