My column in The Kerryman. 3 April, 2013

When I was growing up in Kerry during the 80s, one thing I swore, I’d never begin a sentence with, ‘In my day…’ For nearly 30 years I’ve stuck to that.

In my day young people were expected to be as ignorant about sex as their parents and it worked. It worked because any mistakes this ignorance caused, were quietly shipped off to a distant relation, or to England, or a Laundry, or if it involved a Priest, simply moved to another parish.

Then things started to attack our ignorance. Our generation was given a huge scare by AIDS. There were strong women looking for control of their bodies and futures. Some pregnant women wouldn’t be shamed into giving up their babies. We learned that girls and their babies died, if left out in the cold. We discovered Bishops, even our own Bishop Casey, had normal sexual appetites, which they indulged. We discovered some Bishops would not protect our children from perverts with other kinds of appetites.

We learned that children who received sensible sex education were more likely to have positive experiences of sex, to wait till they were older to have sex and to be safe having sex. We learned that young people with good self-esteem were less likely to make choices about sex they later regretted.

Today we have the internet and even with the poor quality of internet speeds in Kerry, we know that the average age that children are exposed to pornography is 11. Think on that, 11.

What hasn’t changed since the 80s is that parents who are too embarrassed to speak to their children about sex, will teach their children to be too embarrassed to speak to them about sex. What hasn’t changed, is that the only one more ignorant about sex than a teenager, is two (or worse three) teenagers about to have sex.

How do we help teenagers make the best possible decisions? First, parents get over the embarrassment and talk to your children about sex. Be the people your children turn to. Second, teach your children to value themselves too highly to be pressurised into making decisions they are not ready to make. Thirdly, make sure they have access to information. All kinds of information. Finally, investigate the information they are looking at. If they look up something, like threesomes for example, it doesn’t necessarily mean they want to try that. Most likely they’ve heard the term and just want to know what it actually is.

Young people these days (another phrase I hoped to never use) are exposed to exactly the same pressures we once were, only lots more of it and in a lot more ways. A large part of that is the internet. Fortunately the internet can also help teenagers and their parents to better deal with these intense pressures.

Take for example the charity, SpunOut.ie. If you are a parent of older teens, have a look at it. It has over 3000 articles and some of them will make you uncomfortable and maybe even spitting mad. It is however a huge source of information for 16 to 25 year olds and for you the parents.

The HSE part funds this charity with a donation worth less than the cost of a TD and gets much more in return. This little piece of the internet gives young people and their parents a common language. But it is a dead language, unless you’ve raised your child to be a young adult, with confidence enough to make decisions you may not agree with, but that you can respect.

My column in The Kerryman. 27 March, 2013

I’m a big fan of science fiction. I especially like Star Trek, as it paints such a positive picture of our future. There have been five different Star Trek series. The very first of the franchise was broadcast in 1966. The most recent series ended in 2005. The series which ended in 2005, called Star Trek: Enterprise, was conceived of as a prequel to the original series.

What was the biggest problem that faced the producers of this latest Star Trek? Just watch the original series and you’ll see very quickly, that in 30 years what was once considered futuristic has quickly become commonplace. The writers and set designers had to balance being faithful to the original series with not offending the sensibilities of a modern tech-savvy audience.

In 1966 it would not have occurred to anyone, that we could all have small, sleek and very fast computers, tucked away in our pockets. That’s not a criticism of their lack of imagination. We are talking about the generation who put a man on the moon, using computers less powerful than the phone I use to order my Indian food with. We are talking about a time when automatic doors were cutting-edge. Who even notices automatic doors anymore? It’s revolving doors that catch our attention these day.

Science fiction writers from the 60s, the age of sexual liberation, could imagine ‘magic‘ doors, but it never occurred to them, that a child could be born in the 21st Century, to four different mothers. There’s science fiction and then there’s the true wonder of science.

Our courts have recently had to adjudicate on who are the ‘real’ parents in a situation, where a surrogate mother was involved in the production of a baby. I use the term ‘production’ purposely, because what we once thought of as a rather straightforward, biological and closed process, is now anything but closed.

Let’s return to the four mothers scenario. If a lesbian couple wish to have a baby, they must source sperm. That’s relatively easy. If however neither of them can carry the foetus, then a surrogate will be required. There is zero legislation in Ireland governing this, so a woman can volunteer or be hired to provide her womb. Further, if this couple cannot provide eggs, then eggs can be donated or bought.

When the baby is born, it has ‘commissioning’ mothers, a ‘genetic’ mother and a ‘birth’ mother. Not to mention a ‘genetic’ father. So many possibilities yet there are no laws to say how all this should be managed. Seán Lemass was Taoiseach when Star Trek was first aired. We really can’t complain about him not legislating then for what science can do today. We our entitled however to ask more of present day politicians. They are living with the science.

That science can find a way to defeat circumstance and infertility is a wonderful thing. The drive to have children is so primal, that we sometimes get a bit judgmental about those who choose to remain childless. For many, having children is a fundamental part of being human and thought of as a fundamental right.

It is, however, time to begin a very important conversation. We need to start debating the possible pitfalls of this new technology. We need to begin to create safeguards for everyone involved in these new equations. This can be a wonderfully progressive step in the evolution of our understanding of parenting, or it could be a disaster. None of us is smart enough to predict the science will allow next, so let’s at least sort out what we can do today.

My column in The Kerryman. 20 March, 2013

It’s now over 20 years since I was in Causeway Comprehensive School studying Hamlet for the Leaving Cert. I remember having mixed feeling about this. The play was interesting enough I suppose, but there seemed an awful lot of elements to it, that’d have to be remembered for the exam.

I’ve no idea what came up on the day, but I’ve been fortunate enough since then, to have developed a real affection for Shakespeare. I’ve even had the pleasure of seeing ‘The Merchant of Venice’ performed in The Globe Theatre in London. And pinned to the wall in my kitchen, are tickets for King Lear, which is in The Abbey Theatre this month.

My only regret is that I cannot quote Shakespeare from memory. I don’t think there’s any scenario, where a quote from Shakespeare wouldn’t describe and explain the situation better than anything a mere mortal could mumble.

So it was back to Hamlet I went, when I read the Government had invited an organisation called BeLonG To, to run a campaign to highlight and hopefully tackle homophobic bullying in our schools. Studies have shown that our schools our failing to protect gay teenagers, so this intervention is more than necessary.

Yet the quote I think most appropriate for this situation is, “Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.” This is Ophelia returning gifts to Hamlet, as his behaviour towards her since he’d given them, had been so terrible.

The State is making an attempt to address the very real dangers, physical and emotional, that gay children are facing in our schools. That’s a gift, well a duty, but let’s not quibble. The problem is the State is also standing over a law which permits the sacking of gay teachers. Section 37.1 of the Employment Equality Act 1998, allows schools that are run by religious organisations to refuse to employ or even fire teachers, who they decide are not adhering to the religious ethos of that school.

As the vast majority of our schools are run by the Roman Catholic Church, gay teachers are forced to either hide or deny who they truly are, when in or out of work. That is not to say the Roman Catholic Church is openly homophobic. The church strongly denies being a homophobic organisation, but it does condemn homosexual acts as immoral and it is entitled to do so.

No adult is forced to be a Catholic, but few children get to choose a school with an ethos that’ll accept them for who they are. A gay teenager who survives our unsympathetic education for long enough to study Hamlet, will see what Shakespeare has to say about tragedy, irony, hypocrisy, treachery and crushing isolation.

We can hope that teenager will go to college and have a great time being themselves. After that, perhaps they will go on to teach Hamlet. He or she can take their turn pretending to be something they are not and they can watch their teenage students struggle with isolation just a they once struggled and be powerless to intervene.

There are so many famous lines from Hamlet. So many ideals expressed that we often don’t realise we are quoting from the play. We try to teach our children to; “This above all: to thine own self be true” as it is how we all wish to live our lives.

How unfortunate then, that our schools are best described as; “But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue.” I doubt even Shakespeare could describe such hypocrisy without being reduced to a “wtf?” and a “seriously?”

My column in The Kerryman. 13 March, 2013

I watched a film recently, starring Claire Danes. It’s a true story about an autistic woman, called Temple Grandin. I’d thought it’d be about a woman with mental health issues, who was extremely intelligent and who’d an interest in animals. I assumed it would be a feel-good movie, describing Temple overcoming her difficulties, integrating into society and who would now be running an animal shelter somewhere in rural America.

I was very wrong. The film is about the limits of normal. How the majority of us, who are ‘normal’ make life so very difficult for those who just don’t fit in. How unkind we can be and how people like Temple have to battle all their lives to find their place in our world. In this film we have the good fortune to witness Temple reshaping the world, so that it better fits her.

That is however, less remarkable than the career she chose for herself and in which she had to battle hard for recognition. To be honest, if it wasn’t a true story, it would seem too farfetched to make a film about. Temple Grandin is famous in the American cattle industry, for designing cutting-edge (pardon the pun) factory-sized slaughterhouses.

She did this by conducting a detailed study of cattle behaviour and psychology. In America, cattle are herded for slaughter in their tens of thousands. The scope for chaos and the loss of stock is huge. Temple, with her study of cattle, worked out how to take the stress out the entire process. The cattle’s stress that is, so every cow walks calmly and willingly to the bolt in the head. Stress free for the unfortunate cattle, but most importantly, expense free for the ranchers and processors.

‘Stress free’ must seem like a dream for famers and meat processors in Kerry today, who despite our politicians going on about ‘knowledge economy’ this and ‘broad band connectivity’ that, continue to be vital to our economy. Temple Grandin believes that there is nothing immoral about eating meat, but that we owe the animals something in return. Not gratitude exactly, not even kindness as such, but respect. Our animals are conceived, raised, slaughtered and consumed, all on our say so. They exist because of us, and our appetites are sated and our export euros roll in, because of them.

To treat them only as products, fails to respect and accept that they are living things. This is not the first step to vegetarianism, oh the horror, but failing to acknowledge that these creatures, we own and eat are alive, diminishes a part of what we are. We risk losing a portion of our empathy to the pressure of profit.

Worse than the farmer hardening his heart, is the rest of us deluding ourselves about price. In a rural county like Kerry, it is inexcusable for any of us to expect meat to be cheap. Even in a recession, meat costs a lot because animals cannot be cajoled into growing faster and bigger, with less food and shelter. There are drugs and hormones and in time there will be gene manipulation, but there are some costs never worth paying.

Pig rearing units must now take into account the mental wellbeing of their sows, even though the cost of feed is always going up. Chicken growers must allow their hens space to move, as the cost of heating increases. Meat is only ever going to cost more.

We can accept that, or if we think even horse burgers still aren’t cheap enough, then remember that last year in Ireland, 5000 stray and abandoned dogs were put to sleep.

My column in The Kerryman. 6 March, 2013

We like to think that in times of great crisis, people from all different backgrounds will unite to meet that challenge. Even those of us brought up in Kerry, have been fed a diet of films telling us how united Londoners were during the incessant bombing they suffered during World War Two. I doubt there’s a man or woman in Kerry who couldn’t now identify the sound of an air-raid siren if they heard it, because of all the films made to romanticise that period of British history.

What we aren’t taught is that crime in the UK, increased by 57% during the War years. Looting and Black Marketeering were rife as criminals took advantage of a reduced police force and the chaos of destruction.

History is full of such people, who are quick to pounce on their own when a crisis hits. We would probably remember the Great Famine a little less, if it wasn’t for the fact that this catastrophe was a money making bonanza for the Gombeen Men and the already rich. A crisis divides as often as it unites.

Think about that as we shoulder the burdens of yet another recession. We could be forgiven for thinking us well used to these economic crises by now. Except for the mismanaged Boom of the noughties, we’ve been in one downturn or another since independence. There are people from Kerry and people descended from the people of Kerry, in every corner of the planet and it wasn’t searching for good surfing that took them away.

The problem with this recession, is the unimaginable level of debt. Our country, our banks, our property developers and we ordinary citizens have separately and collectively, built up a level of debt so ridiculous, we are no longer capable of looking at it in its entirety.

Instead we look at the ‘promissory notes’, the monthly borrowing by the State, the amount of mortgage debt in arrears, what a single developer owes, what a singe bank owes. What we don’t look at, is the total figure of hundreds of billions of euro owed, which is so high it’ll have students of history and economics, from all over the world, studying our recession for decades to come.

And how are we uniting to combat this devastation? Well that depends on how much you owe. If you owe millions then it’s off to the UK and but a single year of bankruptcy. If that doesn’t suit, then NAMA will pay you a six-figure salary while they manage your losses.

If you only owe your mortgage, then you can expect to be crushed by your unrepentant bank and your disconnected politicians. If your bank repossess your negative-equity house, they will pursue you for any balance outstanding, while our politicians are preparing to abandon each of us to the banks, for up to eighth years. Abandoning us to the banks and loading us up with extra taxes, as food and transport costs keep increasing.

Bankers, politicians and developers, this new looting class, these new Gombeens, have been spared the gut-wrenching despair of true poverty. They have been spared the true pain of this recession. Worse, they are growing fatter as we buckle under the weight of them. But that’s ok. They’ve worked out how to save us all. Just cut a nurse’s Sunday pay. The nurse may go on strike, but that just means she will be working for free, because that’s what a true public servant does.

My column in The Kerryman 27 February, 2013

I imagine it’s a frightening and lonely experience, growing up gay in Kerry. There are no famous gay role-models here. Our schools are dominated by a religion which dismisses homosexuality as disordered. Relationships between gay people are given second class status. Even worse, it is not safe for a gay couple, to walk hand in hand down any street in Kerry.

That’s the environment our State, our Church, our schools and our parents have created. It’s the environment in which we expect vulnerable teenagers to grow up in. This toxic environment in which studies show, gay teenagers are more likely to self-harm and/or to suicide, than their straight peers. We’ve created an environment that’s fatal to gay children.

Last week however, our Kerry politicians took a small step towards reducing the poison we’re subjecting our gay brothers and sisters to. They took a small step towards making homophobia less acceptable in Kerry. That’s not to say that a public display of affection between two men in Kerry, will not now most likely invite violence. No, but in voting to support marriage equality, our Kerry politicians sent a message to Kerry’s gay community, that yes, finally we recognise you should be full citizens and you are deserving of the respect and the protection of our laws.

One small step, but not yet enough. This symbolic motion was opposed. We heard councillors talk of homosexuality not being natural and fears expressed for the adopted children of gay couples. Yet no scientific evidence was cited. No reason. No insight. Just please protect the status quo.

The next step in this change, is up to the people of Kerry. It is the people of Kerry who must now decide how to contribute to ending the vicious anger and hatred their gay neighbours endure. But no one is going to knock on your door and demand you take responsibility for your part in this process.

That first step though, can take place in your own home. There’s a good chance that if you’ve children, they’ll be straight. There will however be someone in your child’s class who’s gay. That child’s life is in your hands.

Your son or daughter, no matter how different they think they are from you, will learn almost all their values from you. Ten, twenty, thirty years from now, they will use a particular phrase or clear their throat or tug their ear and they will instantly realise that they are doing it exactly as you do. As you bequeath mannerisms, you instill values. And by your actions and words you will decide how your child behaves towards others. You decide how the ‘different child’ gets treated.

If you’ve been taught to recoil, taught to fear, taught disgust, then it will be effortless for you to pass this hatred onto your child. Without thought, you will empower your child to attack the ‘different.’

Are you prepared to make the effort to teach your child a different lesson? Those who hate homosexuality say that Marriage Equality is about children. They are right, it is about children, but not in the way the haters presume. It is about teaching children to embrace and support and celebrate difference. It is about making the teenage years of our gay children no more awkward than what they were for the rest of us. It is about sending a message through our laws and our words, that what went before was wrong.

Our politicians have spoken loud and proud in support of equality. Is it not time that we found our voices too? Surely our children deserve no less of us?

My column in The Kerryman. 20 February, 2013

There is a generation of people who remember exactly where they were when they heard President Kennedy had been assassinated. They took his death very personally because he was one of us, an Irish Catholic. The closest I’ve come to that, is on that Sunday in September when Kerry lost to Offaly.

It was 1982, I was eight and I watched the match in my aunt’s house in Ballyduff. At eight I’d no conception of Kerry losing matches, never mind an All Ireland Final. It just didn’t happen. WE never lost. WE were the best. WE were entitled to our five-in-a-row. WE are Kerry.

We are Kerry. Even at eigth, I thought in terms of we. This ‘we’ business is not something we tend to think about, nor wonder the whys and hows of the process. A child is born an individual, but family, schools, the media and friends, teach that child to see themselves as part of a collective. This has positives. We club together to pay taxes which go to ‘our’ schools, ‘our’ hospitals’ and ‘our’ roads.

We’ve even invented symbols to make that process run smoother. We have anthems and emblems and festivals and we have jerseys. The ‘green and gold’ of Kerry, ‘Munster Red’ and the ‘green jersey’ of Ireland. Symbols fed to us from such a young age that we think them natural and real.

It’s not unique to Ireland. Every country uses the same tools to instill loyalty to the idea of ‘we’ above the individual. And we treat those foreign symbols as seriously as we treat our own. Remember when the English rugby team played in Croke Park? There was so much symbolism about, that we almost burst when ‘God Save the Queen’ was played. And when it passed without incident ‘we’ patted ourselves on the back and thought ‘ourselves’ wonderful altogether.

We do love collective self-praise. Unfortunately we aren’t so good at self-criticism and collective responsibility. In fact, we’re awful at it. All through the 20th Century we locked-up women who didn’t toe the line. Some for a few months, others for life. We worked them hard, we took their babies and in the end we disposed of some of them in mass graves. We did that. Hundreds and thousands and tens of thousands of individuals making hundreds of thousands of decisions for an entire century, all resulting in the enslavement of Irish women, by Irish people, in Irish labour camps. We!

There aren’t many of our victims left, but I’m confident and content that these few remaining women, will be compensated from our near empty coffers. But we should not let ourselves off so lightly. Money alone for historical crimes is too easy. Let’s not pat ourselves on the back again, for merely doing the barest of bare minimums.

Why not instead create a legacy that may eventually wipe the slate ‘almost’ clean? Today we don’t have Magdalene Laundries but we have innocent men, women and children being daily reduced in dignity, freedom and hope. We have 5000 Asylum Seekers, who must endure up to seven years of tortuous legal entanglements, to have their escape to Ireland approved. These are the new powerless. This warehoused mass of humanity, starved of the right to say ‘we’ are now safe, ‘we’ are now free and ‘we’ are now equal.

5000 men, women and children, from some of the worst places on Earth. Imagine allowing them to take the Oath. To become ‘us.’ We could save 5000 lives by merely saying yes.

Isn’t that a chapter in a history book ‘we’ would just love to know ‘our’ grandchildren will one day read?

My column in The Kerryman. 13 February, 2013

February was once a difficult month for the sellers of chocolate, greeting cards, flowers and decorations. Broke from the excesses of Christmas, we would throw our empty purses and wallets into a kitchen drawer and not expect to need them again till Easter or Saint Patrick’s Day. Then our American cousins happened upon a wonderful caper to extend the spending through the bleak poverty of February. They invented Valentine’s Day.

And no, this isn’t one of those ‘I’ve no partner so I hate Valentine’s Day’ articles. I have a partner. Honestly. And while I can be cynical, I really am a romantic. I will see my other half tomorrow and there will be hugs and knowing smiles, that acknowledge that it is a day we are expected to be all lovey-dovey.

There will be no gifts or cards though. Tomorrow is not something I choose to celebrate, and it isn’t because it’s a bogus holiday, but because I will have been celebrating something much more important. Tuesday was the 12 February and it was Darwin’s Day. The day on which we mark the birth, in 1809, of the man who, more than any other person, has shaped our understanding of our species. It’s the day we remember the great Charles Darwin.

It was Darwin who first explained that all life on this planet has a common ancestry. That the amazing diversity of life we see all round us, stems from the same primordial soup. We now know that it took our species millions of years to evolve into the world-dominating bipedal mammals we have becoem.

He developed his theory of Evolution, in a time before genetics were understood and before we knew just how old this planet is. (Approximately 4.5 billions years) Science has unlocked more and more wonders since Darwin’s time. We now know that there have been almost 30 different human species, since we diverged from the ancestor we share with chimpanzees, about 6 million years ago. All of them extinct, except for us.

Most scientists agree that our species originated in Africa, and that all of us outside of Africa descend from one small tribe of Africans who crossed into Asia about 100,000 years ago. One of the reasons they think this, is how remarkably similar, on a genetic level, all non-Africans are to each other. While there is a huge amount of genetic diversity in a relatively small area of East Africa.

All these amazing discoveries began with Darwin’s, On the Origin of the Species, published in 1859. Of course his theory was, and is controversial, though no credible scientist questions Evolution anymore, as there is just too much evidence.

We once thought this planet was about 7000 years old. It is impossible to think such a thing and be from Kerry. Could a peninsula such as Beara, be cut from solid rock so quickly? Could the boulders that were pulverised to make the sand on Banna Beach, be made so fast? Did the rivers of ice that drove a path through a mountain to make The Gap of Dunloe not need time? Does anyone think it took mere millennia for the waves to create the rugged majesty of Slea Head?

That which is most beautiful in Kerry appears timeless and our existence in comparison, fleeting. So perhaps today, we should combine Darwin and Valentine. Visit somewhere beautiful, a very easy thing to do in Kerry. And just revel in the splendour of our ancient landscape and appreciate evolution for giving us the ability to perceive that beauty.

My column in The Kerryman. 06 February, 2013

After finding horse DNA in cheap burgers, we may find ourselves taking magnifying glasses when we go shopping. Anything to see the small print, showing every ingredient being squashed into products we hope to be good quality food. We may also need dictionaries and degrees in biology and chemistry. We will do this because, though this recession is squeezing the life and joy out of our existence, we still retain enough self-respect to expect to be told honestly what we are eating.

Unfortunately we are less demanding about what our politicians are selling us. We appear content with having all kinds of offal and dodgy matter shoveled down our throats. And we say thank you for it as well. And say Sir and Minister and three bags full too. Never do we take the magnifying glass to these suspect products and examine closely what the ingredients really are.

Let’s for example look at our Kerry County Council. 27 individuals, who have managed to make them and us, famous nationally and internationally for voting in support of drink-driving by permit. That Kerry is a laughing stock at the moment is not something I’m unduly bothered by. Politicians and scandals are by their very natures, frequent and easily forgotten. So the laughter we must endure will quickly pass.

Drink-driving by permit though? Drink-driving by permit so isolated seniors can go to the pub and not succumb to the pain of loneliness. Drink-driving by permit so pubs can sell alcohol to those afflicted by loneliness and depression. Drink-driving by permit so misery can be used for profit. Drink-driving by permit so politicians (and the rest of us) can avoid dealing with the very real problem of maintaining community ties, in rural areas in a cost effective manner and that allows us to keep onto that bit of common sense which tells us, drink-driving kills.

Five councillors (not all from the pub trade), voted to call on the Minister for Justice to allow drink-driving by permit. Three voted against. Seven abstained. Twelve weren’t there. Last year five people died on the roads of Kerry. In 2006 it was 21. In the last three years, the number of people failing the breathalyzer test has almost halved. We increasingly see drink-driving as an immoral act. Since politicians began to take drink-driving seriously, they have, to their eternal credit, managed to save lives. Hundreds nationally and dozens in Kerry. Five councillors, now wish to snatch defeat from the jaws of that victory.

Look closer though. These councillors, have no power to make this proposal anything other than a witless wish. No Minister in any government, would ever entertain a law permitting certain people to drink and drive. What we seem to have, are five councillors, being allowed to get a huge amount of publicity for themselves, through this cheap stunt.

And as regrettable as the behaviour of these five councillors is, it is the seven who abstained and the twelve who weren’t there, who allowed Kerry to announce to the world, that drink-driving is tolerated in Kerry by our politicians. I just hope that the five councilors (who are not all involved in the pub trade), will volunteer to change our “Welcome to Kerry‘ signs, so that they say; “Welcome to Kerry, stay off the roads at night. Drink-driving officially tolerated.” After all, we wouldn’t want to mislabel our county.