OPINION:Willie O'Dea decided last week not to salvage Ireland's tall ship following her sinking. There has to be a metaphor in all that somewhere for Ireland
I WAS 16 when I fell in love for the first time. She was beauty like a tightened bow, worthy of a Yeats sonnet. Without warning, lingering sunsets and seascape stars now submerged each magnificent night and day. My rural Wicklow upbringing was challenged by stunning newborn horizons.
I was completely and unequivocally at sea.
Christy Moore once sang about a voyage with the lyrics “Life is an ocean, love is a boat”. How right he was. Two months of my teenage years were gloriously spent living on the Asgard II, the Irish national sail training vessel. She taught me the difference between a clove, gasket, cow and half hitch. When to tie a reef knot and when not to fasten a figure of eight. That when “there is no red port left”, starboard side is green. A new world filled with new words. Belays, brances and brails. Bowsprits and buntlines. Fife rails, spiderbands, ratlines and clewlines.
She gave me the confidence to walk on the footrope to the flemish horse at the farthest edge in the stormiest sea to furl the t’gallant sail, my favourite place on this earth. Clipped only to the jackstay with just the backrope for support, the t’gallant provided the highest, proudest view of the brigantine’s masts and rigging. It was from here she showed me how big the world was but not to be afraid of it when land had disappeared. But most of all, every tack, jib and sail trim was underpinned by a simple set of values. These core principles have shaped thousands of teenage characters over the last 27 years.
Fairness, Solidarity and Trust.
There was no hierarchy between those that took the helm or cleaned the heads (toilets). Sail trainees from disadvantaged backgrounds and wealthy families sweated the ropes as one. Those with well worn sea legs and never before in deep waters, jointly heaved and hauled to gather the wind. We relied on each other to circumvent the at times, unpredictable Irish coastline and navigate stormy international waters.
We worked together. We listened to one another. We had to. She was our ship and we were damn proud of her. The Asgard II earned her reputation as a distinguished ambassador for Ireland because she ran a tight ship.
In Norse mythology, Asgard means the home of the gods and today she lies there, on the seabed of the Bay of Biscay. The Minister for Defence, Willie O’Dea, decided last week not to salvage Ireland’s tall ship following her sinking off the northwest coast of France last September. I reckon there has to be a metaphor in all that somewhere for Ireland?
Feeling a bit like a fish out of water, I attended my first Fianna Fáil ardfheis at the weekend. “Do you notice much of a difference in the people there?” a Fine Gael councillor texted. “The exact same as Fine Gael but more country,” I replied. The exact same.
There is no debate, discussion or deliberations. The local election candidate presents a motion, in three minutes, for the television cameras, which unswervingly supports and congratulates government policy. The audience applauds. The bell rings. The next candidate steps up. Hours of this, over and over again, punctuated with an obligatory partisan ministerial speech.
Each session ended with the mantra: “Those in favour, those against? Motion carried.” The motion is always carried. Indeed when one chair forgot to put his session’s motions to the floor last Saturday morning, the next chair in workmanlike fashion announced: “I take it we can carry the previous motions en bloc?”
This qualifies as modern democratic participation for the party of government. Fianna Fáil is not alone. Her sister party, Fine Gael, will replicate a similar cosmetic exercise at their ardfheis this time next month.
Minister for Transport Noel Dempsey’s robust warm up speech, which evoked the memory of Oliver Cromwell no less, was classic batten-down-the-hatches rhetoric: “The temporary popularity they [Fine Gael and Labour] now enjoy will not last. It will not last because the people of Ireland spot cynicism a mile off, and they know the difference between random rants and real leadership.”
They do indeed Minister, which is all the more troublesome for your party.
At a combined 53 per cent in the latest opinion poll, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are just 4 per cent from no longer having the majority confidence of the Irish public. This goes beyond unprecedented territory. Both parties are sailing three sheets to the wind and are entirely oblivious to it in their dogfight with one another.
The highest to date combined Fianna Fáil-Fine Gael vote, 84.6 per cent, occurred in the February 1982 election. This was reduced by almost 20 percentage points to 68.9 per cent in the 2007 election. Recent polls demonstrate a persistent decline in the shared Fianna Fáil-Fine Gael vote. In the last two years alone, it has spectacularly fallen by 15 per cent.
The dynamics of politics have changed. Ireland has changed utterly and we are in uncharted waters. Where lies the spirit of Granuaile Ní Mháille, the figurehead of the Asgard?