One of the funniest experiences offered by Irish politics for many years was to be had listening to the fulminations emanating from Dublin 4 in the wake of Dana's election as an MEP for Connacht-Ulster. Rarely has the self-appointed elite of Irish society been so beside itself with rage and frustration, and never so incapable of keeping its true feelings under wraps.
For several decades, the Dublin-based intelligentsia had been seeking to elevate the minds of those who reside west of the Shannon, and for a time it even seemed they were getting somewhere. But now, alas, the truth has emerged: there is no hope for these people.
How could there be, when they have flung our efforts back in our faces by electing a woman who is best known for being opposed to abortion? Did you ever hear anything worse? Just as we are preparing to deliver the final kicks to the departing posterior of the Catholic Church, these mucksavages have elected someone whose views are indistinguishable from those of the Pope himself.
And this person, this infidel, has the brass neck to describe herself as a woman. Does she not know that to qualify as a woman - in any sense that has meaning in modern Ireland - it is not possible to be opposed to abortion? Does she not know that only reactionary male misogynists seeking to control female fertility are opposed to abortion?
Perhaps the reason Dana's election is both so amusing to some of us and so shocking to others is that it illustrates so well the stark division that remains between what used to be known as "rural Ireland" and what we now know as the "Celtic Tiger". Dana's election is perhaps the most progressive and interesting development in Irish politics in many decades, much more so than the election of Mary Robinson as president a decade ago.
She was not elected purely because she is opposed to abortion, or because the people of Connacht-Ulster are gagging for another referendum, or because of any desire to rehabilitate the Catholic Church. If the voters had wanted to vote for Roman Catholicism, they had a real-life priest - a decent man, it should be noted - to vote for. Many more of them voted for Dana. Dana was elected because of her values, of which her opposition to abortion is but one illustration. She was elected because she is a decent person, and because there is an emerging realisation that her kind of decency and values cannot much longer be taken for granted. Most of all she was elected because people wanted to make a statement. And if you wished to condense this statement into one word, that word would be: "enough".
Enough of destroying the values of Irish society with poison and cynicism. Enough of damaging the fabric of our beautiful country with imported belief systems. Enough of putting the interests of capital before those of people and their lives. Enough of telling us what we should believe. Enough of humbug. Enough of condescension. Enough of liberal claptrap. Enough of evading responsibility for the consequences of what is imitated and imposed without thought or consultation. Enough of neurosis masquerading as progressiveness. Enough of telling us you are the fruit when everyone knows you are the peel.
One of the great dishonesties of the pseudo-liberal discourse is to equate traditionalism with intolerance. The west of Ireland, although certainly "traditional", is the least intolerant part of this island. It is vital that this society as a whole comes to understand how misplaced is the sense of superiority inhabitants of Dublin and other large population centres feel towards the people of the west.
Those of us who come from there have long laughed off the condescension of our supposed betters, knowing that in truth the boot was on the other foot, that we had a much richer and more positive experience than those who, on account of their alleged urbanity, regard us as products of some underdeveloped backwater. It has long been impossible to convey our absolute lack of identification with descriptions of our home place which depict it as lacking enlightenment and compassion, or as holding intolerant views of people whose lifestyles do not conform to the norm. But something has changed in the psyche of the west since I left there 15 years ago. Up to the mid-eighties, it was possible to live west of the Shannon and be blase, even cynical, about the wash of anti-values being pumped in from the east coast. I really don't believe that the denizens of Dublin, still less most of those who run and operate our national media, have the faintest notion about the degree of irony with which pronouncements from the centre have always been greeted in the west.
Newspapers are read there in quite a different way to the manner in which they are scrutinised in, for example, Dublin. The people who produce our national newspapers fondly imagine that they are communicating directly with their target audience, but in the west such publications have always been read with the aid of decoders designed to filter out cant and hypocrisy and pretension.
Similarly, although RTE has long been viewed more by the denizens of deflectorless Connacht than by inhabitants of other regions, it is regarded there almost as the voice of an alien society, pumping propaganda in from outside. Everything is perceived through a gauze of irony and sardonic playfulness. People watch and listen, and then smile to themselves.
But in recent years the smiles have been moving to the other sides of western faces. For a long time it seemed indigenous phlegmaticism was more than a match for the incoming tide, but lately this has seemed far less certain. For many years, the people of the west really did not take the new anti-values seriously enough to feel genuinely threatened by them. But now their children are being offered drugs at the corner shop; now they see the poison of the gutter press - British and Irish - feeding intravenously into the souls of the upcoming generation; now they watch the human wastelands springing up where once there were orchards and paddocks and open fields.
Now they see it is no longer possible to walk down the street leaving your front door ajar, and find themselves having to take for granted things - - like video surveillance cameras - they previously regarded as bad American jokes. Meanwhile, they read in the newspapers reports of Garda statistics which inform them that crime is on the decrease.
And deep down they have become aware that all this is happening because the values which they regarded with inscrutable amusement have seeped into their lives, perhaps to an extent that could yet prove fatal to the essential dignity and decency they have always taken for granted. Now they are beginning to realise that irony is not enough.