Diary of Claire X:WHEN I was small, after the morning messages, my grandmother would take me to our local church. It was black, loamy, old ladies' white heads, scattered loose among the pews, like beads from broken rosaries. All bowed before pale, illuminated Virgins, whispering like mad.
“What are they doing, Gran?”
“Praying, love.”
Gradually, I got the hang of it. I’d kneel down, squeeze my eyes shut and go shhhwshhh, shhhhwssssh, shhhwsssshhh, as if summoning battalions of celestial cats.
It’s much the same at Social Protection. At the start, you haven’t a clue. But you get the hang of it.
Community Welfare, though, is another matter. Random.
The Welfare Officer is available 10 to 11.30 Monday to Wednesday. Four hours a week in the biggest social recession in a century. You can’t make an appointment. The Welfare Officer doesn’t take phone calls. Phone calls? You have to show up. And queue. Even if you just have a question? No, it’s all the same. You come, you queue.
The advice says there could be five people. Or 50. Who knows?
The receptionist – plonked behind glass – is either channelling, rude or has zero training. Either way she shouldn’t be there. By phone and in person, I’d gleaned from her that the Welfare Officer was Eileen. Great.
Monday, off I go.
“In there. Queue,” says the Channeller.
But there in the converted chapel, there’s no indication of who Eileen is or where she might be. An electronic ticket system is in place. But not in use. Instead, it’s like experimental theatre. You sit and see what happens. There are two doors like the lids of stripped-pine coffins. Through one, people move in and out, disembodied voices reverberating in the deconsecrated acoustic. Maybe mingling visions, ecstasy, tongues. No-one is certain. But she must be inside.
Shhhhwwwwssh.
It feels a bit like queuing for Santa when you’re small. The nerves, the mystery. Inside, would there be an elf? Even a live deer.
When I got in, there was neither. Nor was there Eileen, who retired years ago, says Anne the new her. Anne is lovely. In a pink hoodie. Good. Because behind her pane of glass, the girl is perished with cold.
And, despite all my enquiries by phone and in person, I’m in the wrong place after all.
“God I’m sorry,” says Anne. Like it was her fault. “I’m like Health and they’re Welfare. You’ll have to go and get all that documentation again even though you already gave it over there. They were supposed to link all these services up but . . . it didn’t happen.”
“Grand. Thanks Anne,” says I. Off I go.
Back at the Dole office the words NO, WILL NOT, CANNOT, DO NOT, ONLY AT, LATE, CLOSED, CLOSED, CLOSED scream in various states of urgency from its double doors.
Grubby words on grubbier A4 sheets, containing not even a homeopathic memory of “Social” never mind “Protection”.
They remind me of the Verboten messages my little girl would post on her door for her brother: entir an di. Though, now she’s nine, she’s left these childish things behind.
As public words, though, they are revelatory. Exposing the carelessness at the top of many Irish institutions, in what passes for a public life. The parallel universes of Big Ireland and Small Ireland. The Big Ireland of Bertie fiscal amnesia. Of John O’Donoghue’s vulgarfest. Where an ex senator is paid more than Ban Ki-moon. Where a semi-State CEO is paid more than the leader of the Free World.
In Small Ireland my fellow queuers worry what they’ll do if the gas and electricity are cut off. Ah. I forgot. A candle. To Big Ireland it might be Kirstie’s Home-made Christmas. But to Small Ireland it’s no hot water, no hot food for the children, no showers, no heat, no light. What if you have a baby? A small child afraid of the dark? How will they do their homework?
Ironically, Fás brings hope. While Big Fás is rumbled, Small Fás’s high standards are a bit like the God of the old Catechism: everywhere. From phone contact, to the women at the front desk, right to your adviser.
Take mine. A one-man field hospital. He saves lives with a heart and attitude to match his tissues: big-box man-size. When I arrived, shellshocked, instead of explaining my “entitlements” he got me focusing on what I wanted, not what I’d lost.
“What’s the dream job? Anything. Sky’s the limit. Go for it.”
A no-brainer. Something involving writing and working with an aid agency. I’m volunteering already and with this column, hopefully, writing my way back to work. Mary Coughlan, should bottle John O’Connor. Better still, make him CEO. His stellar standards could go national. Even global.
At Social Protection, the lovely blonde woman, Amanda, wishes me luck going self-employed.
She, Michelle, Brian and Martin probably have no idea how terrific they are at their jobs. The difference they make to the queuers’ lives. But just maybe no-one in Big Ireland Social Protection knows either. Or cares.
Shhhhhhwwwsssshhhhh.