Instead of viewing Irish communities abroad as commodities, we must acknowledge the great contribution that they have made to their country, writes SARAH CAREY
COUNTY MEATH never suffered from mass emigration. We didn’t even have much in the way of a famine here and that has left a curious legacy. The poorest western counties that experienced the great exoduses now have the richest associations in the cities to which their people flocked. As St Patrick’s Day approaches and the floats representing Mayo, Roscommon or Cavan are being assembled in London, Manchester, New York or Boston, there is a great constituency available to provide logistical and financial support. There are building and earth-moving companies to provide shiny low-loaders and forty foots for the float. There’s sponsorship for glittering banners, brass bands and plenty of volunteers to march. They can put on a great face and are rightly proud.
Not so for the couple of dozen members of the Meath Association who have to struggle to put together a float for the London parade. There are no bands, no twirling batons and no uniforms. They made a breakthrough two years ago when they managed to get a white pick-up truck onto which they could put a lone St Patrick. Observers weren’t able to identify the small group until the urban councils in Meath found a few shekels to buy them a decent county banner. It takes four of them to carry it and they do so with immense pride.
What never fails to surprise my father are the looks on their faces when he shows up each year to join them in the parade. He’s a Meath county councillor and his duties back in Enfield permitting, he’s one of the regular official representatives at the Hyde Park parade. He can never get over how happy they are to see him. “Me!” he exclaims. “Me” being a comfortable-shoe wearing small businessman from a village of little import.
Poor “me” is so accustomed to being the subject of derision at home that the delight he encounters abroad comes as a terrible shock.
It shouldn’t require much to understand why the annual visit is important. Sending an elected representative is such a simple statement that though the State failed previous generations so badly, our people are not forgotten. The associations are not just idle social clubs, but do important work. Their saddest task is keeping tabs on the emigrants who are down and out and dying. Arranging funerals for the abandoned is a grim job. The annual morale boost around St Patrick’s Day isn’t free, but it doesn’t cost much. All they want is a bit of recognition that they exist, that they matter and that we still care.
Why is it then that every single year we insist on indulging in the meanest, laziest form of begrudgery over this simple gesture?
In good times and bad, the St Patrick’s Day trips by politicians are good for a dozen lazy columns and a couple of hours of cheap radio.
Last week’s Liveline devoted itself to whipping up bile over planned visits by other Meath councillors to Sydney and New York.
Joe Duffy hammed it up as he read out statements from Meath County Council defending the trips. He laid it on thick and like flicking a switch, got a result. It’s so easy you have to wonder if he’s not bored by the sheer predictability of the reaction. I could’ve scripted the calls myself. “It’s desperate Joe, not giving cervical cancer injections to young girls and this crowd going off on junkets.”
We have an obligation to call to account profligate habits such as large ministerial entourages availing of five-star hotels and first-class travel. But the councillors who travel are frugal, with many staying in the homes of their hosts rather than in hotels.
There are no partners or officials along for the ride and everyone travels economy. After they were set up as targets of the Liveline mob, constituents began making abusive phone calls to councillors’ families and at least one has cancelled her trip. I suppose Liveline would consider this a result.
The Government usually defends the trips by pointing to the business and trade links created during the visit. That’s a fair argument, but is typical of the “what they can do for us” approach to our diaspora. What about what we can do for them? We are quick to boast of the great Irish communities abroad and slow to do right by them.
Having driven them out of the country, our first instinct when we think of the Irish abroad is to wonder what we can get out of them.
Jobs; tourism revenues, investment and fundraising. We even got them to sort out the peace process because we couldn’t do it on our own. We have no romantic notions about the diaspora. The emigrants are reduced to a resource that we are entitled to use for our own benefit. Despite all our money and success, we still see ourselves as the poor relations at home depending on their remittances.
But they don’t owe us anything. We owe them and all they want is acknowledgment in the form of an annual visit from an elected representative, even a county councillor in an ill-fitting suit.
In every practical way possible, our emigrants have contributed an enormous amount to their country and got nothing back.
Hopefully the availability of Irish media online hasn't exposed our mean-minded message to our emigrants – "Don't call us, we'll call you. If you've any complaints, call Liveline."