Let’s start building a better Ireland

ON SATURDAY 50 million people around the world will be celebrating St Patrick’s Day – from the streets of Manhattan to Montserrat.

But the day can be a challenging one for us Irish.

On the one hand, you find yourself being very pleased that millions of people around the world are celebrating your little nation’s existence. On the other, you find yourself cringing as you watch the wacky plastic hats, identity tourists, and the fluorescent green beer.

And as those people all over the world revel in Irishness, we ask ourselves what that label even means any more.

Irishness is real. It’s washing airing in the hot press. It’s tales of ancient warriors and a sense of community. It’s the GAA. It’s offering visitors a cup of tea before they’ve taken their jacket off (we welcome people like no other nation). It’s Irish mammies. It’s Patrick Kavanagh’s poems. It’s obsessions with land and language, religion and rebellion.

You often hear about how the notion of Irishness is being diminished, as scare stories in the media would have it, but in reality our collective sense of identity is as strong as ever.

Paddy’s Day is a time we ask ourselves hard questions about what life is really like here today.

We have lots to be proud of this year. We’ve emerged from a horrendous recession with its double-digit unemployment and net emigration. We shouldered the biggest burden of private debt ever carried by a sovereign state without a revolution.

But we as a country have come through worse, much worse. We have a horrible history, but it’s one of survival: colonisation, centuries of occupation and starvation, oppression, defeats and degradation.

You’d imagine that would have damaged and diluted us. It never did. We’re fighters with an incredibly indomitable spirit.

No country’s perfect but we could do better. I love my country in the same way that I love my family: for no particular reason other than that we are part of each other.

I tolerate its quirks and faults and am disappointed by its cruelties and moments of dishonesty. I consider it my duty to tell it – like I’d tell anyone I am close to – when it’s being blatantly unfair to other people.

There are still many things wrong with Ireland. Those at the bottom of our society are stuck in poverty with few chances to escape.

Although employment is on the up, so many jobs are low paid. Right now the fastest-growing category of people in poverty are the so-called squeezed middle.

Inter-generational inequality is real. We have snatched away the dream of home ownership from young people. You won’t need reminding previous generations had it better than 20 and thirtysomethings when it comes to home ownership.

For all the talk of entitled millennials, recent grads are dealing with a whole heap of depressing economic trends.

There’s the fact that anybody graduating during a recession never makes up for the lost wages, sure, but the term “entry level” has also become a joke. A college degree barely gets you in the door, because companies refuse to train new employees anymore.

THIS winter showed us graphic evidence of our health inequalities once again. Far too many mental health and community services stretched to capacity. Far too many patients stuck in ambulances queueing outside heaving A&E departments. Far too many 12-hour trolley waits in busy corridors.

There are 9,104 people homeless in Ireland at the moment and more than one-in-three of those in emergency accommodation is now a child. Our inadequate disability services are simply cruel.

Yet we don’t or can’t resolve these inequalities which have been festering for years. The fact they linger despite government after government and policy after policy just isn’t right.

I want to wake up in a country where people are decent to one another and tolerant of other people and of other ideas. A country where everyone can feel at least a little bit safe.

I want to find myself in a country where we really do cherish everybody equally. I want an Ireland where people feel they have options and choices in their lives. A country that cares about people.

Everyone I talk to has a thousand opinions on the political and economic situation. But changing things at a top level seems so unrealistic and detached from our lives that we should all go back to the ground and try to change things from there. As Terry Pratchett wrote in his novel ‘Witches Abroad’: “You can’t go around building a better world for people. Only people can build a better world for people. Otherwise it’s just a cage.”

We could stay living in a fantasy country or we could all start building a better one from this St Patrick’s Day.