Una Mullally: Mother and baby home issue shows Government disconnect from public sentiment

The furious reaction to legislation being passed concerning the database of information relating to the Mother and Baby Homes commission is a righteous one. It also demonstrates, once again, how disconnected this Government and its parties are from public sentiment, and the collective aspirations and desires of a nation to not just “move beyond” a torrid, cruel, misogynistic and, in many cases, criminal history, but to confront it, and process it.

The only way to do that is to tell the truth, all of the truths – and to face them, no matter how difficult. Politicians may constantly look for an easy way out, but people in Ireland don’t.

In recent years, we have shown maturity and resolve in confronting the dark recesses of our past and present. The public seems up for doing the hard yards. As has been the case since the last recession, the public leads, and politicians think about following, reluctantly, or, in this case, fumble.

First-time ministers tend to get a bit of a land, and Roderic O’Gorman has just had his. Being a minister is not just an administrative role, it is a leadership role, and his inability to shout “stop” as the situation was spiralling out of control speaks, not just to the trademark Green Party naivety, but to getting lost in the paperwork and missing the context.

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The Government’s collective whine that the legislation brought forward by O’Gorman was being misinterpreted by the public and various experts missed the point. The public had already moved ahead and were examining the bigger picture.

They also pay attention to smart people, such as Dr Maeve O’Rourke. You could almost see O’Gorman clock what was happening in real time, as he looked nothing short of shook in the chamber when the legislation – and, more importantly, the issue itself – was being interrogated by Opposition politicians.

In that chamber, credit should go to Holly Cairns, Richard Boyd Barrett, Catherine Connolly, Gary Gannon and others, who shirked grandstanding and instead channelled the very valid concerns that were cascading on social media.

Patronising voices

What followed in some parts of mainstream media were the kinds of patronising voices that appear to be much more aligned to an out-of-touch political system than their readers, viewers or listeners, and more interested in nitpicking the legislation itself than zooming out.

Government needs to understand that on this issue, people – and not just those who survived this reign of terror, or who live with the legacy of it – don’t want legislation papering over gaps, they want the cultural change that has occurred in Ireland to be recognised, and for approaches to issues that concern our dark theocratic past to be imbued with at least a recognition of that seismic shift.

No doubt, this will continue to be framed as a “communications disaster”, and that’s part of it. But it’s also about so much more. The officials, presumably now scrambling to defuse what will be a massive detonation once the commission report is published, don’t have to run for election, and they don’t need to engage with the public– but politicians do. Not only that, it is their duty to represent and serve the public. Nobody wants a political establishment that only reacts to whatever whims are bubbling up on Twitter on any given day, but there needs to be at least a semblance of connection to not just what people are thinking, but how they’re feeling.

O’Gorman is a Green, but it’s Fine Gael that has honed the political aesthetic in recent years, and now Fianna Fáil and the Greens mimic it. Fine Gael politicians increasingly adopt the stance of someone auditioning for the role of a politician who appears in an ad – like those “dentists” plugging toothpaste brands – as opposed to something authentic.

Some Fine Gael politicians take this even further, acting as literal presenters, in either increasingly inane video “content” promoting the Fine Gael brand, or as podcast hosts, such as Senator Barry Ward. Such superficiality is not unique to Fine Gael. The king of this shtick in Government is, of course, Stephen Donnelly, who delivers interviews as if he’s standing in front of a mirror pretending a hairbrush is a microphone.

The upshot of all of this is that the attempt to clean up a debacle of the Government’s own making got tangled when the smashey-and-nicey stuff broke down, and reverted to type, imbued with a tone that was patronising and paternal. The same kinds of settings characterised the Catholic Church and its entwined State’s response to women in this country.

Authentic responses

People aren’t feigning shock and anger. They’ve much better things to be doing. Yes, we exist in a reactionary, hyperbolic culture, but that doesn’t mean that authentic responses don’t exist. Yes, the frustration, stress and grief people are experiencing during the pandemic has a tendency to transfer on to other issues, but that’s just the way things are right now. It doesn’t mean people are “wrong”.

Yes, current affairs has become a sort of infinite serialised drama increasingly central to our experience considering it’s the only “news” people have. And, yes, Twitter is a wasteland on which people dump their rage, but it still occasionally offers a glimpse into a valid collective mood, albeit distorted and not entirely representative by any stretch.

Fundamentally, the feelings are real, and the Government better prepare for facilitating and holding the collective grief, upset, shock and trauma that will emerge when the report is published. “Well actually …” is not an appropriate response from politicians regarding such a devastatingly potent issue. The public is being real about their feelings; it’s far past the time for Government to connect with this reality.