ASPER

There are always new Government Departments coming on stream these days. This is the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform. It has been split off from the original Department of Finance for a variety of practical, political and personal reasons which it is not necessary to go into here.

My immediate interest here is the logo. Clearly a new logo was required. In recent times, Government Departments and some State bodies have tried to use variations on the harp. I suppose you could say that this retains a sense of consistency across Government but there are clearly limits to the number of variations you can come up with before the thing becomes unrecognisable. Or should I just say limits to the imagination.

Anyway that unstable looking thing above is, I assume, a variation on the harp, though Brian Boru might not quite know what to do with it should he encounter it on a dark night.

That thought provoked me into wondering what else it might be if it was let out on its own, and my thoughts are below. Additional thoughts are welcome. My imagination is limited, or my mind boggled, or I'm just too plain tired to carry on any further.


Before I leave you, I should explain that the new Department likes to be popularly (if that is the appropriate adverb) known as PER and its blog is As PER and ASPER in Latin is rough or harsh, so I'll leave you to mull over that one.

ReactionsA former colleague with a deep understanding of the national psyche and of the present cataclysm suggests:

Two redundant motorway junctions plus ten intermediate entrances to ghost estates.

A Government Easter Egg

Last Sunday, in the very early morning, the clocks went forward. That was probably just as well as everything else seems to be going backward.

It emerged in the course of this gravity defying exercise that Alan Shatter is the Minister for Time. Clearly not the most taxing element in his portfolio, reminding people twice a year, to go forward in the Spring and backward in the Autumn.

That got me meditating on the distribution of Cabinet portfolios, and the Alice in Wonderland world we live in, and it occurred to me that this particular portfolio might be more appropriate to another member of Cabinet.

But then I realised that that particular Cabinet member is already the Minister for E=MC². Giving him charge of the speed of light, which is supposed to remain a constant, would surely constitute a conflict of interest of the highest order?


What a confusing world we live in.

Can't be Trusted

Click image to read
I know why, a purely technical point. But it is a bit un-nerving when you are trying to get to the Government website and even your browser tells you they can't be trusted.

Reminds me of the time I tried to go to the Taoiseach's (Bertie) site in work on valid business and Websense wouldn't let me in on the grounds of the site's inappropriate sexual content. Again a technical point that could be explained.

Nevertheless, these things pull you up with a start. What was Bertie up to? Why can't the Government be trusted? And this coming from the dogs in the street, or more precisely the fox in your browser.

And me sitting here with me tongue in me cheek.

Stirring times.

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Room @ the Inn

In 2001 the then Fianna Fáil Government extended universal (non-means tested) entitlement to the medical card (a passport to free health care) to all those over 70 years of age.

It was an expensive concession. It was announced before it was firmed up with the doctors who subsequently held the Government over a barrel and extracted maximum fees for their participation. Many of the doctors saw this as a legitimate redressing of the inadequate fees being paid for the treatment of the bulk of their existing medical card patients.

In its recent undignified scramble to balance the recessionary books, the Government, inter alia, withdrew this universal entitlement and subjected it to a means test equivalent to that for other social welfare benefits. This was a breach of trust for the many over 70s who had made life decisions in good faith based on the future availability of this facility.

The over 70s erupted with such vehemence that the Government went into a tail spin. Deputies saw their Dáil seats at risk, county councillors ran for cover. The Government bled and came up with a succession of elastoplast revisions of qualifying thresholds which they claimed now only excluded 5% of the over 70s from benefit.

A negligible saving then, as many of this 5% would not have claimed the card in the first place. So why not simply abandon this proposal which was a major breach of faith with one of the more vulnerable segments of the population. Pride and stubborness and a finger in the dyke. Weakness here could unravel the budget.

Pensioners took to the streets and jammed the switchboards of radio talk-shows in an unprecedented outburst of frustrated anger. They travelled from all parts of the country (free in many cases) to face down the Dublin Government. And they had an effect, even if this was limited to what was required in the short term to buy off the votes of those TDs necessary to scrape the measure through parliament.

So why have I a photo of a church at the head of this post?

Well, the hotel where the pensioners were to assemble was not big enough to accommodate the vast crowd that arrived.

Parish Administrator, Fr. John Gilligan, seeing so many elderly and infirm people overflowing into the street in cold weather, made a snap decision and offered St. Andrew's Church, Westland Row, to house the meeting.

He had the foresight to remove the Blessed Sacrament from the church to forestall any likely criticism. This criticism was subsequently directed at the misuse of a sacred place for secular/political purposes, the "unrestrained" anger of the old folk, and the denial of the right to speak to a junior Government minister who arrived to plead the Government's "case". None of which criticism is worthy of comment.

Remember the Good Samaritan. Remember who Christ threw out of the Temple. Remember his anger.

No mere stable for the old folks this time round, full accommodation at the inn.

Not exactly liberation theology, but socially progressive, nevertheless. This is a city centre parish and it does date from the time of Catholic Emancipation.

To paraphrase another person, I am very glad to see this church, which poured water over me and called me names, and in which I have not been since, put to another constructive use. Long may it continue.

Many a slip 'twixt cup and lip

I passed by the offices of the (Irish) Instute of International and European Affairs, in North Great George's Street, this morning and some little thing caught my eye.

I went back for a look and saw that some concerned citizen had removed a banana skin from the footpath and placed it harmlessly on the base of the railings.


Would that an equally concerned Government had spotted such a skin before the Lisbon referendum and quarantined it as efficiently.

Towards a New Theocracy?

Catholic Ireland's dead and gone,
it's with John Charles in the grave.

I have just finished reading two books.

The first is a book I read in college many years ago. It was a sort of a banned book. You needed a licence to read it (yes, in a university — a Catholic university, that is). It was called "The Irish and Catholic Power" and was an intellectual "Catholic Irish for Dummies".

It was written by Paul Blanshard, partly in response to an assertion that the Ireland of its day represented the perfect marriage between the civil power and the Roman Catholic Church, and partly as a means of explaining their Irish Catholic heritage to Irish Catholic Americans.

For those of us brought up in the repressive and closed atmosphere of Ireland in the fifties and early sixties, it was a shocking read, and while I found it an education, I was not impressed by what I took to the be the author's style of bitter diatribe.

On a recent re-read I was, on the contrary, very taken with its restrained presentation and the academic robustness of its argument.

And the banning? Well the book was available in the University library but was kept in a special location and to get hold of it you needed a letter from your tutor stating your "bona fide" reasons for needing to consult it as part of your studies. Thank you Maurice Manning.

Incidentally, the copy I acquired recently originally belonged to the library of the Southern State Teachers College, Springfield, South Dakota. They seem to have acquired it in 1955 and it was in circulation (once every few years) until 1975 when it appears to have been withdrawn. Whether this was from lack of sufficient demand to warrant the storage space or whether there was any other ulterior motive involved I don't know. That institution has since been assimilated into the University of South Dakota, but enquiries to that source have so far elicited no response.

The second book is a biography of "John Charles McQuaid - Ruler of Catholic Ireland". John Charles was Archbishop (RC) of Dublin from 1940 to 1972 and by far the most influential Irish churchman in this period as he strove, by hook or by crook, to mould Irish society to his image of Christian living. It is written by John Cooney, a former religious correspondent with the Irish Times. It draws extensively on the recently released papers of John Charles himself. It is a gripping read, at least for those of us who lived through this period, and you can sense the author just barely keeping his temper in check throughout the book.

I did not set out to read these two books together. I decided recently to try and get a copy of Blanshard and re-read it to see what would be my reaction from the perspective of today when so much has moved on and so much has stayed the same. Then a priest cousin of mine, who was reading Cooney's book, expressed surprise at how all-pervasive had been John Charles's control of Irish society during his Archbishopric.

Reading these two books close to one another really brought me back to the fifties and sixties. You can very easily forget how repressive things were then, particularly as we have now swung, probably a bit too far, in the opposite direction.

The Nation

To understand the background, you must remember that the Irish, or at least a certain influential proportion of them, have long considered themselves an oppressed race and most, if not all, of their woes and deficiencies were the fault of the English oppressors. Being the first country to achieve independence from within the British Empire (1921) was no mean feat and shaped the Irish psyche from then on. That this independence was intially only partial and that it provoked a bitter civil war is neither here nor there. The main point is that we were newly independent and the psyche was delicate and prone to paranoia.

The second thing to remember is the role of the Catholic Church in all of this. While the institutional church frequently condemned Irish rebels to hellfire, particularly if it saw them as a threat to its own position, the church on the ground was, more often than not, sympathetic to the rebels and at times even led the revolution. So there was a strong identity, and coincidence of interests, between nationalism and catholicism.

No surprise then that the State, when set up, was Irish and Catholic. What is surprising is the extent to which these two strands were interwoven, the repressive and stunting effect this had on Irish society and the self confidence of the nation, and the ruthlessness with which the Catholic Church set out to exterminate all other religions and enshrine Catholic teaching in the law of the land.

You can't help thinking "Sharia" as you read these books and you would have to admire the sheer diabolical efficiency of the Church which succeeded, for a considerable period, in moulding Irish society to the dictates of Rome and the "informed" Catholic conscience. I have already touched on this theme in an earlier post.

These books are recommended reading for all budding Ayatollahs. This is how it's done lads.

The Protestants

What really shocked me on reading these books from today's perspective was the sheer ruthlessness with which John Charles set about exterminating the Protestants. That this extermination was of the religion rather than the people themselves makes the word no less appropriate. Protestants were, after all, heretics, mired in subversive error and a blot on the nation's newly polished escutcheon. You (me, a Catholic) were almost not allowed to talk to them for fear they would contaminate your faith. You were forbidden, on pain of mortal sin (eternal hellfire), to debate religion with them (except to convert them and then you needed another licence), or to enter their churches, or to attend their services (including your next door neighbour's funeral). Like the state in the final triumphant phase of communism they were supposed to wither away, and wither away most of them did. Had they been ethnics this would have been ethnic cleansing on a grand scale. And don't mention the Jews. Having crucified Christ what could they hope for from this new theocratic state?


The Catholics

Some Catholics stood out against this. For the most part these were literary people and were banned, and banned again, for their trouble. John Charles was effectively a co-author of the 1937 Constitution though he did not always get his way and on occasions de Valera either ignored him or defused his point with a gesture. But, make no mistake, this was a Catholic Constitution for a Catholic people. It enshrined the "special position of the Catholic Church" in what may have been intended as a gesture with no legal effect, but this provision informed the way people thought and, sometimes, the way the law was applied.

Most Catholic's, went along with this. Some out of fear, others from conviction. One institution which shamefully proved to be the handmaiden of the Archbishop, or as we would say today the Archbishop's poodle, was the University. No, not Trinity College, with its charter from an English queen, the bastion of Protestant proselytism in Ireland. Yes, University College Dublin, where you needed a licence to read Blanshard, where Noël Browne was banned from speaking, and where most of the chaplains and the philosophy professors were spies for the Archbishop.

A particularly close eye was kept on the L&H (the Literary and Historical Society) which was a major potential subversion spot in the intellectual and religious life of the capital. Speakers were regularly banned at the common behest of Palace and President.

In looking back now, I am a bit surprised that my own contribution in 1967 passed divine muster, or maybe it was that nobody knew who I was, nobody had seen the script, and the influence of the Palace was on the wane - though John Charles was nominally in charge up to 1971. His influence at this stage was diminishing and in the light of the nation's gradual coming to terms with the changes following Vatican II, he was probably proving an embarrassment to his colleagues. Still, it is nice in retrospect to have gotten in while the shutters were still down.

Tomorrow

Taken together these two books evoke an era which is way beyond the ken of today's younger generation. Try and explain it to them and they would think you were off your head.

It would be nice to forget all about this aberrant era but, unfortunately, there are signs it may not have entirely gone away. The gradual backsliding from the enlightenment of Vatican II, combined with the perceived challenge of Islam, may yet see a resurgence of the theocratic state.

If you find the above depressing, or beyond your ken, go here and have some fun, at the church's expense.

Bertie's Office

I was approaching Government Buildings, in Dublin, from Fitzwilliam Lane, when it struck me that I was seeing an unusual but interesting view of the buildings. There they were, in the distance, vying with the rear end of some Georgian buildings and the renovated entrails of the "back lane". They looked less imposing but more at home.


Anyway, it was a change from the usual view presented to the tourists where the front arch towers over you and the main building is safely ensconced behind its massive railings and automatic gates.

The building took 18 years to complete, from 1904 to 1922. The engineering college occupied the central domed section from 1911 and the complex was conveniently completed in 1922, just in time for the new Executive of an independent Ireland and several new Government Departments to move in.

It was originally intended that the wings of the building would house the existing British Government Departments of Agriculture and Local Government. The figures below the urns hold scrolls to this effect.

The buildings are now occupied by the Taoiseach's (Prime Minister's) Department in the centre section, the Department of Finance in "South Block" - the left wing as you face the building - and the Attorney General's Office in "North Block" on the right.

The centre section was extensively renovated in 1989-90, after the UCD College of Engineering moved out of town to the Belfield campus. You can catch up on the full story here