An Irishman's Diary

I’M NOT SURE what exactly that dramatic, climbing female figure on the wall of the Treasury Building in Dublin means. But whatever it is, she has grown to suit the location. This is now the headquarters of Nama, after all, and as such is the focal point of taxpayers’ enormous bail-out of the banks. Dramatically climbing figures are what it’s all about these days, unfortunately.

As for Nama’s use of an abstract harp as its corporate logo, however, this seems somehow less appropriate. Yes, it’s an echo of the even more abstract version used by its parent organisation, the National Treasury Management Agency. But both are variations on Ireland’s State symbol, which until now has been a source of great national pride.

Maybe in time, the bank rescue will also be recalled proudly, as a patriotic sacrifice out of which a new Ireland arose. For the moment, though, this looks like a distant dream. Lending the national symbol to the financial clean-up may only encourage the view of cynics that, when our leaders first adopted a stringed instrument to represent Ireland, the fiddle might have been a better choice.

Rather than representing pride or hope, the Nama harp currently evokes something closer to shame and despair. Even with its modernised, geometric shape, it’s a sad-looking instrument. Indeed, Tom Moore could well have been writing about it – and about post-crash Ireland in general – in his famous song: “The harp that once through Tara’s halls/The soul of music shed,/Now hangs as mute on Tara’s walls/As if that soul were fled./So sleeps the pride of former days,/So glory’s thrill is o’er,/And hearts that once beat high for praise/Now feel that praise no more.”

OF COURSE, its role as our State symbol aside, the noble harp been much used, and abused, down the centuries, for all sorts of purposes. It has been most famously adapted by Guinness, which first deployed it on exports to Britain and elsewhere, hoping to strengthen the association between its product and Ireland’s image as a producer of wholesome agricultural produce.

Only later, and for slightly different reasons, was the logo added to stout sold at home. With the growth of nationalist feeling in the 1890s, the company needed to emphasise the product’s Irishness by allying it with what would soon be the symbol of an independent country.

In more recent times, Ryanair also deployed the Irish harp, albeit in a heavily modified way, on the tail-fins of its planes. This does face the same way as the State symbol, although there is no danger of the two ever being confused. Among other things, the Ryanair logo incorporates another female figure – a flying angel, I suppose – as the front of the harp.

This was further modified a few years ago with the effect, whether intended or not, of increasing the angel’s breast measurements. The similarities with the conventional instrument became even less obvious as a result. Indeed, some observers have noted that, as well as a harp, the logo can also be interpreted in a completely different way.

With a little imagination, the frame of the instrument becomes instead the (wide open) jaws of a shark, with the strings as teeth. This illusion is said to be more powerful if you’re a Ryanair passenger who has just been hit for extra baggage charges.

BUT BACK to Nama, and the present sad state of Ireland which its symbol only seems to mock. Not even that great harping standard, Carolan's Lament, is adequate to express the public mood this week. So here's Tom Moore again, still right on the money as he surveys the gloom of Namaland 2010: "No more to chiefs and ladies bright/The harp of Tara swells/The chord alone, that breaks at night,/ Its tale of ruin tells./Thus Freedom now so seldom wakes,/The only throb she gives/Is when some heart indignant breaks,/To show that still she lives."

In this verse, à laRyanair, Moore is using a poetic device by which the harp, or "freedom", is represented as a female. Indeed, Ireland in general has almost always been so depicted.

Which, come to think of it, could be what the figure on the wall of Treasury Headquarters means. One naturally assumes she is climbing upwards, but I suppose she could equally be climbing down. As such, perhaps she represents a panicked Cathleen Ní Houlihan, having lost her shirt (and everything else) in the disaster, and attempting to flee the building with what remains of her dignity.