THE END OF the year is as good a time as any for solemn reflection. A time to think about what we’ve gained, what we’ve lost, and how on earth we made it through Christmas without the help of the Argos catalogue for the first time since 1996.
It has been six months since the Surrealing in the Years column made its debut, and in that time I have been grateful for each and every reader, kind email, and also many of the funnier mean comments.
So, what kind of year has it been?
2023 began on a note of hopeful rebellion as tens of thousands gathered on the streets of Dublin and across the country as part of an Ireland For All demonstration. Living legends like Bernadette Devlin McAliskey and Christy Moore took to the stage to call on the Irish government to provide adequate housing, healthcare and human rights for all who live here — including those seeking asylum. That demonstration was organised in response to localised anti-refugee movements which emerged towards the tail-end of last year, and have continued throughout the last 12 months. More on that later.
US President Joe Biden visited his ancestral home back in April, receiving a rapturous response from crowds in Ballina as he walked out onto the stage to the thumping beat of Shipping Up To Boston by Dropkick Murphys — a song one might more closely associate with the start of a Notre Dame football game, or a scene where someone gets beaten to death in The Departed. He also confused the All Blacks with the Black and Tans. That made us all laugh, at the time.
Biden has since fallen out of favour with much of the Irish public over the US government’s support for Israel’s bombing campaign in Gaza, which began after a raid by Hamas on 7 October left over a thousand citizens, mainly civilians, dead. Over 100 hostages remain unaccounted for. In under three months Israel’s attacks have left over 20,000 dead, the majority of whom have been civilians. Photos of bloodied Palestinian children buried beneath rubble of blown-up hospitals will surely stand as the defining images of 2023.
The US has voted against calls for a ceasefire at the United Nations General Assembly and provides billions in military aid to Israel – resulting in a petition that sought to revoke Ireland’s supposed “symbolic support” for Biden’s 2024 presidential campaign. A mural bearing Biden’s image in Ballina has also been defaced in a demonstration that it takes more than declaring ‘Mayo for Sam’ for an American president to win the blind loyalty of those with whom he shares an ancestor or two.
Around the same time, the nation was left rapt by the trial of Gerry Hutch. The Dublin man stood trial before the Special Criminal Court over the 2016 Regency Hotel shooting of David Byrne and was acquitted. Over the course of a dramatic murder trial, the country was made privy to hours of conversation Hutch had with the State’s star witness Jonathan Dowdall, in which Hutch spoke of, among other things, his fandom of singer Imelda May.
Any other year, Hutch’s trial would surely have been the only public hearing to have warranted such attention, but that was not the case in 2023.
This summer, of course, dished up one of the strangest sagas to which we’ve borne witness in a long time. Never, and I mean never, has there been such interest in Oireachtas committee hearings. I’m a journalist and at almost any other time, you couldn’t even pay me to watch an Oireachtas committee hearing. They’ve tried, but I won’t do it. It’s called having journalistic principles.
That all changed when it was announced that RTÉ had made undeclared payments totalling €345,000 to their highest earner Ryan Tubridy over the course of five years between 2017 and 2022.
In order to get to the bottom of the corporate governance scandal, RTÉ executives appeared before both the Public Accounts Committee and the Media Committee, excluding Dee Forbes, who resigned her post as Director General in the wake of the furore and declined to appear, citing health reasons.
The hearings were a bemusing embarrassment of riches, with Tubridy delivering such gems as: “Yes, the salary is enormous, I understand that… But that doesn’t affect my soul.” Words that will echo through the ages. The pay deal resulted in a collapse of licence fee payments, a salary cap for new contracts at RTÉ, and the resignation of several executives.
Further investigation of the barter accounts through which RTÉ made these payments uncovered that the national broadcaster had spent €5,000 on flip-flops for a client’s summer party. Other expenses included trips for clients and executives to the Champions League Final and 2019 Rugby World Cup in Japan.
Speaking of the Rugby World Cup, Ireland’s latest campaign ended the very same way the last one did. Out in the quarter-finals at the hands of New Zealand. T’was ever thus. The only difference was that this time we wasted three whole weeks debating the appropriateness of the song Zombie by The Cranberries – discourse that was almost as insufferable as the hours and column inches devoted by certain radio broadcasters and journalists to The Wolfe Tones’ record-breaking performance at Electric Picnic.
So energetic was the debate surrounding these two songs that one could almost be forgiven for forgetting that Ireland continued to break other records, such as homelessness levels and hospital overcrowding. Surreal indeed.
In chronicling the stranger stories to have emerged throughout the year, it’s become unavoidably apparent that strangeness has the potential to land either on the side of entertainment, or in more disturbing ground.
For the last several months it has felt as though Ireland is mired in the latter territory.
Ireland has never been perfect – or anything close to it – but the uptick in aggressive and, at times, criminal behaviour fuelled in some cases by anti-immigrant sentiment, in other cases anti-LGBT sentiment, is truly harrowing. If Gaza is the story that defines 2023 in the global sense, Ireland’s year may well be remembered by the sight of Dublin Buses, Luases and Garda cars up in flames on the very same street where tens of thousands of Ireland For All marchers made their stand at the start of the year. The number of rioters is believed to have numbered in the low hundreds.
Still, it would be grossly negligent to downplay the increase in anti-immigrant activity. the ghoulish demonstrations outside of emergency accommodation, vigilantes performing “head-counts” on buses transporting those seeking asylum, and the burning of buildings supposedly earmarked as asylum centres, to say nothing of a gallows erected outside Leinster House when the Dáil resumed sitting in September. Elsewhere, libraries were forced to temporarily close for fear of camera-wielding aggressors barging through their doors for having the temerity to shelve books that offer sexual education.
Few would argue that 2023 was a good year for Ireland. The spirit of the country is all the poorer for having lost no fewer than three legendary artists in Sinead O’Connor, Christy Dignam and Shane MacGowan. MacGowan’s funeral, at least, proved that there is still music, mayhem and joy to be excised from even the darkest of times.
With just days left, there was time for a final twist. Micheál Martin announced this week that Ireland would be suing the United Kingdom before the European Court of Human Rights over its Legacy Bill, which seeks to effectively prevent prosecution of British soldiers for crimes they may have committed in Northern Ireland.
The UK has already responded to the suit in a combative fashion, with a senior government source telling The Telegraph: “Ireland needs to back off. The Irish Government, Sinn Fein and Joe Biden are all cut from the same cloth. But we are not going to climb down over this. We are confident we will win.” Anglo-Irish relations, therefore, seem set to continue the rapid deterioration that began with the 2016 Brexit referendum.
With that in mind, 2024 promises (read: threatens) to be stranger again. As we head into the new year, we know that we will be faced with a referendum on deleting references in the Constitution to women’s role in the home. That will be held on 8 March, also known as International Women’s Day. The campaign to preserve the article, which “recognises that by her life within the home, woman gives to the State a support without which the common good cannot be achieved,” has already begun.
Later in the year there will be local elections, which rarely fail to provide some eyebrow-raising (and hair-raising) moments of incredulity. Irish democracy will be put to the test as far-right candidates attempt to capitalise on the same sentiment that has fuelled the kind of activity we talked about earlier.
Yes, 2023 has been bad. 2024 might be worse. Yet, our fate remains squarely within our own hands. The tide can yet turn on making Ireland a safer, more inclusive place, with housing, healthcare and human rights for all. Such an outcome might demand that tens of thousands organise yet again, as they did in February, to march, demand better and take action. It may take hundreds of thousands. Far away though it may seem, it is a goal worth pursuing above all others.
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