"And did you ever think so many of us would now have central heating in our houses." Another voice: "But you never had to walk five miles to church on a Sunday. And back." Yet another memory: "Did your mother ever send you round the hedges looking for a Rhode Island that would be laying out and what a fool you'd feel when one of them walked into the yard parading a clutch she reared God Knows Where?" All this and much more (a Donegal man sighed over the crickets or griosai na teine of long ago) arising out of John Quinn's interview with two eminent public servants Paddy Lynch and Ken Whitaker, on last Thursday night.
The theme, if you like, was the contribution of the public service rather than the politicians to the building of this state. Not denigrating in any way the latter, but rather filling in for those who do not speak to the people as do TDs and senators, but work away, many of them unknown to the public. John Quinn's guests were, of course, not voiceless or faceless, but they spoke for many unknowns as well as for themselves. All the difficulties of the new State were touched on, from the wreckage of the Civil War to the splendid success of the National Loan of 1923 - £10 million was raised "from the people".
The crash of 1929 in America, the economic war with England in the early Thirties. How did a small, poor State survive? The handing over of the ports solved one problem, but the question of supplies during the war tested not only Lemass the minister mostly concerned, but also his team of civil servants. If we were still in the rural world to a great extent in the Fifties, a document published in 1958 Economic Development and modestly signed in the dedication `Department of Finance' began the demolition of the protectionist outlook and launched us into the wide world of trade. There was still an oil crisis, even when 1973 had brought us to the EU as it now is.
In about half an hour we were brought from the rural life to the largely urban; with huge numbers in third level education, with a civil service staffed as never before with trained minds. Ken spoke movingly, in this regard, about the Irish language. Love and respect are called for. Paddy Lynch spoke of the arts and the National Concert Hall now in his old alma mater. The whole should be printed.
And no mention in it all, said John Quinn, of a "large striped animal of Irish extraction." Or maybe he said `provenance.' And the talk in the room, which began this article went on "But do you remember the trains run on turf in the war and all the stops to get the ashes cleared out. Twelve hours Dublin to Cork." And "how many kinds of bread (this from Antrim) did your mother bake: brown and white farls, treacle bread ..." The `good old days' are gone, thank God, This will do.