Category: Media (Page 9 of 11)

My column in The Kerryman. 16 January, 2013

I’d like to begin with some history. A history of abortion in Ireland, in a couple of paragraphs. In 1861, an Act of the British Parliament made abortions illegal here. In 1983 our Constitution was amended to say that the born and unborn have an equal right to life. In 1992, a teenage victim of rape tried traveling to the UK for an abortion, the X-case. The State felt obliged to try stopping her, however, the Supreme Court decided that as her life was in danger (from suicide), she should be entitled to an abortion. In 2002 a referendum was held to try and remove suicide as grounds for an abortion. This was defeated.

Every Irish government since 1992 has avoided creating legislation to reflect the 1992 Supreme Court decision in the X-case. In 2009 the European Court of European Rights ruled that this failure violated the European Convention on Human Rights, because it left unclear and undefined what rights a pregnant woman had regarding abortion.

In 2012 Savita Halappanavar died in a Galway hospital, while miscarrying. It is unclear why she died, but the possibility that she may have been saved by a timely abortion, led to demonstrations demanding legislation for X. Now our politicians have finally begun conducting hearings on how best to legislate for X.

Meanwhile, since 1983, over 100,000 Irish women have had abortions. Most people in Kerry will know at least one woman who has made that trip to the UK.

Those hearings were held last week. Three days of them. For the first two days our legislators spoke with legal and medical experts in the fields of reproductive health and law. This is as it should be. When lives are at risk and rights are being discussed, experts are who we turn to. The third day of the hearings however, was dedicated to more of an ethical debate. Twenty years of avoiding responsibility and our politicians waste an entire day consulting opinions that could’ve been found with the briefest of brief internet searches.

To my mind there is no possibility of compromise between pro-life and pro-choice. A person who is pro-choice is never going to agree with someone who believes a foetus has the same human rights as its mother. A pro-lifer is never going to stop believing that human life begins from the moment of conception and is therefore entitled to the same protection as any other human being.

It is clear that some people want to a see a more liberal abortion regime in Ireland, others want there never to be abortions in Ireland. The only option then for our politicians is to ignore those who are on diametrically opposed sides in the debate. The politicians must assemble a collection of opinions from the less certain and combine these uncertainties with the best legal and medical expertise available, to find the middle ground.

There will be legal abortions in Ireland, but they will be rare, so rare that both the pro-choicers and pro-lifers will be massively frustrated. That is the key, any solution which angers both pro-life and pro-choice will most likely satisfy the majority of citizens. It’s more than a moral issue, it involves an impossible compromise between competing rights. The very definition of democracy.

My ‘FIRST’ column in The Kerryman. 9 January, 2013

There are few things we would like to hear more at our funeral than, he or she was a person of principle. To be described as someone with principles is to be associated with those virtues we value most; honesty, integrity, consistency and bravery. We owe the existence of our State to people of principle. Men and women who stood toe to toe with an enemy that dominated the planet, yet principle won out.

A week before Christmas, 20 children were murdered by a young man, using weapons American principles allowed him access to. This epic tragedy, uniquely common in America, is an example of why principles are not always a good thing. The majority of Americans have an almost religious belief in their right to own whatever type and quantity of guns they can afford. And woe betide any politician who would dare question this fervent clinging to a principle.

We are so impressed by the idea of principle, we rarely take the time to examine its dangers. We have but to look at our ruinous Civil War to see how principle can destroy as effectively as it inspires. We could also look to the men of principle who flew jumbo jets into The Twin Towers.

Principles can be incredibly destructive. Destructive of life and property, but mostly of thought. Once we place a principle above life, then it is a very short step indeed, to death. Fanaticism has taken hold. Imagine if you can, the warped thought processes of a man who shoots a teenage girl in the head, because she dares to demand an eduction. Where does one begin to explain to a member of the Taliban, why this is wrong? How does one cure such sickness? How does one bridge the gap between humanity and the fanaticism which condemned Jean McConville to torture and murder?

But what of guns in Kerry? I know many people here who own shotguns and rifles. Mostly farmers who are protecting their crops, but others who merely shoot for sport. Some of the weapons in Kerry have been involved in suicides and accidental deaths or injury. They are deadly weapons, but no one suggests that they should be banned.

Why don’t we demand the removal of these dangerous things? Because it would be silly in the extreme to ban the relatively few guns that are legally held in Kerry. The practicalities aside, there is just no good reason why a few incidents of misuse, should be used as an excuse to deny the vast majority of responsible gun-owners the use of these weapons. Even if many of these guns are just toys for big-boys, do we really want politicians to get so scared for us, that we lose access to anything that might be considered dangerous?

I know I don’t. I get very worried when someone says I can’t play with something, just because they think it’s too dangerous. Unless of course it’s my mother. She’s allowed. That’s a principle of mine and this is why I don’t think it’s extreme; we don’t have ordinary people carrying high-capacity rifles that can spew out bullets at high speeds, murdering our children.

We may have our fair share of unwell individuals, but we lack the capacity to kill a dozen children at a time. A shotgun can do devastating harm, but it cannot massacre. A bolt-action rifle can kill at a distance, but it cannot kill en mass. And most fortunately of all, we don’t have an arms industry heavily invested in the ‘principle’ of keeping our citizens terrified and armed to the teeth.

As appeared in Letters – The Kerryman –  19 December 2012 edition

In the recent American Presidential Election, great emphasis was put on the fact that the incumbent Vice-President Joe Biden, and his challenger Paul Ryan are Catholic. Many asked if their faith would influence the decisions they’d make while in Office.

The answers these two Catholic men gave, could not have been more different. Joe Biden said his faith was a private matter and it wasn’t his place to impose his faith on others. Paul Ryan answered that he would govern as a Roman Catholic.  

You might think it remarkable that this question was asked, but don’t forget that the USA had always considered itself to be a White Protestant Nation. John F. Kennedy was the first Catholic President and don’t think he didn’t have to give a bit of reassurance about not imposing Rome Rule.

This election, the Americans chose men of faith, but men who would not impose their particular faiths. This had never been an issue in Ireland as we have always had Catholic men, ruling as Catholics, wielding their Catholic Constitution. The few Protestants left in the Free State after independence, were slowly pushed near out of existence. We became even less diverse.

Fortunately for those of us who are not Catholic, or who’s Catholicism is worn lightly, Ireland again has difference. There are even atheists about the place. And this change means that our Catholic politicians must now face the questions that Biden and Ryan faced. 

Will our politicians insist that non-Catholics adhere to Roman Catholic dogma? Will our schools and hospitals remain Catholic? Will gay people continue to be second class citizens? Will women ever be allowed to control their own bodies? 

I consider myself most fortunate to be a citizen of an increasingly multi-cultural, multi-ethnic and an ever so slowly secularising 21st Century Republic. I’d hate to see us return to the days when priests and bishops could command our leaders. Do we really want to return to a time when Catholicism was law and the law was Catholic? We know where that led. We know what the consequences are, when a religion is given too much power.   

I hope we don’t allow ourselves be herded backwards. And I hope our Catholic politicians will put their duty to us before their loyalty to their church.

As appeared in Letters – The Kerryman –  5 December 2012 edition

There is something the dead do for us, that no one living can ever manage. They become whatever symbol we demand of them. Whatever symbol suits us best. And who better demonstrates this, than the Men of 16?

Within a few short years, heroes were killing heroes, based on what they thought dead heroes would have done. No one can ask the dead what they think, so a mother of ten children, can be kidnapped, tortured, murdered and her body not returned to her family, because that is what someone thought the Men of 16 would have done.

Not that using the dead is always a bad thing. How many young men and women were inspired by their dead heroes to fight in The War of Independence? It wasn’t a war of chivalry. It was ugly and people died ugly, but the Men of 16 inspired heroism.

Unless of course one is a Unionist. Then the Men of 16, were, and have aways been, a symbol of wrong. They have their King Billy. He might be dead longer than our dead, but dead is dead.

Today we have a new dead hero to inspire us, Savita Halappanavar. We don’t know all the reasons behind why she is dead but the truth hardly matters.

Savita is no longer real to anyone other than her family and the medical professionals who treated her. She now exists as a symbol of inspiration to those who wish to fight for a county not yet realised. A country where women are safe and respected.

Of course safe and protected mean diametrically opposed things to different people. In a recent poll, 36% of people were of the opinion, women are best protected and respected by a right to choose an abortion. Fine Gael received 36.1% of the votes cast in 2011.

For that 36%, Savita is a hero. What she’d think if she’d survived, is immaterial. She was denied an abortion. She died.

In this poll, over 80% were shown to want the x-case legislated for. Most of these people do not want abortion on demand. Savita is still their hero. No matter why she died, over 80% of Irish people now refuse to accept legal grey areas continuing to exist. A woman’s life is too important and the law must reflect this. Over 80%. That’s the combined votes of Fine Gael, Labour, Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin.

Like all our dead heroes, Savita Halappanavar will divide us as she inspires us. We don’t even know for sure how and why she died, but we are certain she is another dead hero, to be used as we see fit. And we are certain that she is inspiring change, even if it is taking our betters an inordinate amount of time to realise it.

As appeared in Letters – The Kerryman –  14 November 2012 edition

It’s amazing how simple it is to access information these days. I sat at my computer for less than five minutes and with the calculator on my phone, I was able to work out some interesting facts. For example, in 1997, 2002 and 2007, the years we gave Fianna Fáil the power to destroy our nation, they never received more than 30% of the first preference votes, of the entire electorate. They were the preferred Party of less than 1 in 3 of those eligible to vote.

It took less than a third of us, to enable Fianna Fáil ruin this country. In 2004 we voted in a referendum which sought to prevent, as many black babies as possible, becoming Irish Citizens. Nearly half of us came out to pass that proposition. Last week, less than one in five of us voted to ensure that children had a voice, a legal and a real voice, in their own destinies.

As appeared in Letters – The Kerryman –  21 November 2012 edition

It costs a lot, to stop people rocking the boat. So much, that the people running the boat cannot keep an eye on everyone, yet the boat seldom gets rocked. Why? The people who think they own the boat, use shame. What is shame? It is that invisible policeman, convincing victims they are the guilty ones, condemning them to silence.

Shame is what prevents the victim of a rape from reporting their attacker. It is the reason a parent will feed their child cornflakes for dinner, so they can continue paying the mortgage. It is the reason young men kill themselves, rather than seek help. It’s the reason a spouse will continue to endure abusive fists and slurs.

Can this shame be defeated? Yes. Our mothers and grandmothers demanded access to birth-control. They got on a train to Belfast and returned with condoms. The were supposed to be ashamed. They weren’t and the power to oppress them was broken.

Our mothers and grandmothers were consigned to prisons, if they got pregnant out of marriage. They were expected to feel shame and we ashamed of them. We grew to see their jailing as more shameful. The power to imprison was lost.

Our relations, our friends, our neighbours were abused in too many unimaginable ways by our vicious institutions. They were expected to stay silent about their torture, they were to be shamed into silence. They raised their heads and faced those who took them to hell, breaking the power of the abusers.

How many of us were trapped in marriages of crippling loneliness, but expected to endure? Too ashamed to escape? The shame faltered and we found our release.

How many of our children were born less than perfect and were whipped off to live behind locked doors? Never spoken of, never referred to, never embraced. But that shame turned to love and their prisons emptied.

Today and every single day, 12 women are forced to flee these shores so that they might retain control of their bodies. They do so, as their mothers and grandmothers did so, in silence and in shame. Keeping their heads down, voices silent, needs unmet and freedom denied.

Those who deny them choice, are content for our neighbours to provide the services Irish women require. Content that shame will keep Irish women cowed and bowed. Content for 4000 Irish abortions to take place every year, as long as they occur on foreign soil. Content that Irish doctors are unsure about what treatments are legal or illegal. Content that being the loudest means, they are the ones in charge. Ever hungry to keep things as they are.

Will they succeed? The women of today are learning the lesson their mothers and grandmothers learned. To defeat the shamers, the finger-pointers, the condemners and the moralisers, one just has to remember one thing, who the shame rightfully belongs to. When the oppressed look the oppressors in the eye, the bullies will be defeated. The boat is being rocked.

Some related articles; Things I learned today, To debate or not to debate, Good Abortions?, My thoughts on abortion (In Ireland)

As appeared in Letters – The Kerryman –  3 October 2012 edition

I note that some of the commentators who have expressed their opposition to legalising gay marriage base their argument for continuing to discriminate against gay people on a supposed link between procreation and marriage. How very Henry VIII of them.

Procreation has never required marriage. When we lived in the trees and even in the caves, babies were being born, but marriages, Church or Civil, were not taking place. Indeed I hear tell that there are babies born, even today, without there being a marriage.

Marriage involves and encompasses issues to do with private-property, succession rights, tax incentives, joint-custodies, infidelities, powers of attorney, financial dependency, people choosing to marry and not have children, people choosing to marry and not being able to have children, funeral arrangements, mortgages and pensions.

Marriage is about society recognising the status of certain relationships. Marriage is about the State giving a legal endorsement to certain relationships. Marriage can also be about romantic love and it can be about providing a stable and loving environment for raising children.

We tried linking marriage to procreation and that got us into a situation where we locked women up and sold their babies. Fortunately we have, for the most part, left that kind of religious zealotry and ignorance behind. Today children can experience different kinds of family model. One being, a family with same-sex parents. Access to marriage in that instance, allows these families to enjoy the full protection and rights afforded to other families.

I doubt Mister Whelan wishes to restrict marriage to fertile couples who’ve promised to procreate, so I can’t understand why he is content to see gay people continue as second class citizens.

 As appeared in Letters – The Kerryman – 22 August 2012 edition

Patrick O’Neill (August 8, 2012) seems to defend a narrow definition of marriage on three grounds. First, the Constitution promotes the family. Second, the traditional family unit has been with us since time immemorial. And third, he contends that children are so much better off in traditional families, that to change marriage, would be to selfishly reduce the quality of life, of children, who will be raised by gay couples.

In my view traditional marriage is discriminatory and I think if I was going to use any document to defend it, I too would probably wield our Constitution. A Constitution our Government is keen to drag into the 21st Century. This is the Constitution that did not protect thousands of our poorer children being locked up and used as slaves. This Constitution did not protect singe-mothers being enslaved and their children sold. This Constitution did not protect women from being raped by their husbands. And it did not protect gay people from legal discrimination. That’s our Constitution. A document that now needs amending just so the State will be empowered and obliged to look after children properly.

As for history? Marriage and the Family have been evolving since our species left the caves. The idea of co-equal parents, bonded for life, as father and mother, is as recent as it is rare. Even our understanding of what a child is, continues to develop. And I don’t mean we view children differently today, than we did a century ago, but every decade our attitudes and understanding changes. Some cultures once discarded their infirm children. Other cultures sent eleven year olds to the gallows. We allowed teachers to beat children. There are even some people who still think teachers should be allowed beat children with sticks. But times do change and, for children, it is much now thn has been in the past.

As for children doing better with a father and a mother? Well I have yet to see any credible evidence, which shows that children with mixed-gender parents, do any better than children with same-gender parents. And be assured, people who campaign against equality, are spending huge amounts of resources looking for any evidence that would allow them to say, children will suffer if equality and respect become the norm.

I see no rational grounds for continuing to treat gay people as second class citizens. Quite the opposite in fact. Gay couples up and down the country have children, but exist in a legal limbo as our laws continue to treat them as less than other humans. Marriage is the only institution which can regularise these unions and give legal protection to their children.

Yes the Catholic Church is against recognising the equality of gay people, but this is not about the Catholic Church. This is about respecting all of our citizens and treating them as equals. Science cannot distinguish between the children of gay couples and the children of straight couples. So will we choose to continue to discriminate or will we say to all of our children, that regardless of their sexuality, regardless of the sexuality of their parents or parent, they are all entitled to respect, dignity and equality? I know which Ireland I would prefer to live in.

As appeared in Letters – The Kerryman – 18 July 2012 edition

I was reading Stephen Fry’s Autobiography recently and was struck by a wonderful anecdote he relates, which demonstrates just how close we are to history. He describes an event he had organised in honour of the journalist Alistair Cooke. They shook hands and Alastair Cooke reminded Fry, that his hand had also shook the hand of Bertrand Russell, a famous English philosopher. Further, Bertrand Russell’s Aunt, had one danced with the Emperor Napoleon.

Think on that, five people linked, from the end of 18th century to the beginning of the 21st. Consider also, that for a great deal of that period, Catholics in this country were second class citizens. It took a Kerry Man, Daniel O’Connell, to mortally wound this vicious discriminatory system, though it wasn’t until 1871 that we were finally rid us of this heinous imposition.

Many of us will have been held in the arms of grandparents, who themselves will have been held in the arms of grandparents, who were alive in a time when Catholics were forced to pay for Protestant Churches. That’s how recently laws were allowed, which harmed and oppressed citizens rather than helped and protected us.

Well that’s not exactly accurate. Everything didn’t become wonderful and equitable in 1871. Neither did it in 1916, 1922, 1937, 1973, 1993, nor yet even today. An exclusionary law, based on nothing more than prejudice and custom, remains on our statute books. We still bar gay men and gay women from marriage.

For centuries, the Protestant Ascendancy felt no quibbles about imposing their values on disempowered Catholics. They were in charge, thus they felt entitled to behave as they saw fit. It took centuries and it took heros like Daniel O’Connell to remove this hated rule from our country. Unfortunately, it seems the lessons that should have been learned and remembered from that short short time ago, have been forgotten or are being ignored.

We appear to feel entitled to impose a singular and narrow version of morality on others. On people without the numbers to resist this discrimination. We persist in condemning gay men and women to second-class citizenship. Would we endure laws which encroached on a Catholic’s marriage rights, inheritance rights, reproductive rights? No, we fought wars to ensure this would never happen again in this country, yet we allow it, nay willfully enact it, against our gay neighbors, our gay brothers and sisters, son and daughters. We allow it against our gay grandparents, who can remember the grandparents who were forced to pay tithes to another person’s Church.

There are many things wrong with our country. Many things that call for our immediate attention. Not least is the struggle many of us have with debt, unemployment and other financial wounds. It can all seem so disempowering, wondering what negotiations are being held in what EU country today and what will our politicians achieve. Did any of us envisage a time when we would have to so care about the economies of Italy, China, the US? Did any of us really think there would be a time when the outcome of the French Presidential election would be assessed in terms of what it added to or subtracted from our bargaining position vis a vis the Germans and the IMF?

It’s like being back in school and being forced to study a subject where the exam will determine the rest of our lives, yet the answers have yet to be decided on. It is in fact a perfect time to stop caring about things that don’t pay the mortgage, the bills and for the new and eye-wateringly expensive school books. But today we are writing the history our grandchildren will be studying. Today we are deciding what our grandchildren will think of us.

We get to decide if our grandchildren will assess our generation as that which fought and struggled for equality, just like our ancestors did, in the midst of economic turmoil, or do we bequeath them a legacy of condemning gay men and women to continued second-class citizenship because we had neither the interest nor the inclination to see past our own prejudices and financial woes to rid our nation of yet another Penal Law.

THIS IS A RESPONSE TO MY LETTER, PUBLISHED A FEW WEEKS LATER

As appeared in Letters – Irish Independent – 29 June, 2012 edition

Reading ‘The Report of the Independent Child Death Review Group’, I could not escape the feeling that only the mad and the naive believe we will ever spend the kind of money required to keep all our children safe, happy, content and fully equipped with the emotional wherewithal to live their life to its potential. To even suggest the possibility is silly and so bedevilled with ideology that I doubt one could even get a consensus on what ‘safe’ means.

As for the other three? Well, good luck with that.

What I think we can safely agree on is that a social worker should maintain records to an agreed standard or risk censure. We can agree that the death of every child should be fully investigated and statistics collated, be they in or out of the notice of the HSE. We can agree that the in camera rule may be protecting the identity of individual children, but it is blinding the entire child-protection field, professional and academic, to what is happening to children in the courts.

We can agree, because it was agreed nearly 20 years ago, that any child who comes into the care of the State should have an individual care plan. A plan that is regularly assessed by a multi-disciplinary team. We can agree, or should agree, that the professional standards that social workers, teachers, doctors and judges apply to themselves in theory, should actually be applied in practice.

And we surely can agree that anyone who aspires to a management position in any of the child-protection professions should be able to recognise as failing any professional for whom they have responsibility.

Once recognised, they should be able to support or, if necessary, terminate the job of that failing professional. The job is just too important and too poorly resourced for bloody amateurs to be continually endured.