CRUEL AS IT may be, Leitrim doesn’t make it to the top of the nationwide news agenda very often.
Residents of The Ridge County would probably have just as soon kept it that way, but unfortunately for them, this week will be remembered both within and without county lines as “the week that Leitrim got hit by a tornado”.
It bears acknowledging that if one was struggling to describe kind of story that might fit perfectly into the average Surrealing in the Years column and just couldn’t think of anything realistic, one might suggest something like: “A tornado in Leitrim.” The very words “tornado in Leitrim” evoke the energy of an expression your grandfather might have used to the convey the idea of something unlikely, like a mule with a spinning wheel or a fish on a bicycle.
So, what’s the story? Are we the kind of country that gets tornados now?
In one interview this week, Met Éireann metereologist Liz Walsh said: “In Ireland, we get about 10 a year and a lot of the time we do not even notice because nobody sees them.”
There is something unquestionably adorable about a tornado so small that it happens in secret, doing a little spin without hurting anyone or breaking anything until it tires itself out and packs it in for the night. And this happens 10 times a year! Really, we should be devoting more energy to tracking these tiny little tornadoes.
Sadly, the tornado that hit Leitrim this week made itself known in a particularly severe fashion. Locals say in one case the high-speed winds carried a tree trunk 100ft before dumping in on top of a car while a woman sat in the driver’s seat. Elsewhere in the village, kitchen windows were shattered and roofs were blown asunder.
Of course, it’s too soon to say that climate change explains the tornado that struck Leitrim on Sunday. It doesn’t kind of feel that way, though, doesn’t it? Like there’s something automatically unnatural about a tornado hitting Leitrim. This is not a scientific argument, merely an acknowledgement that when you see a tornado barrelling through Leitrim, your first thought is not “ah, yes, the monthly Leitrim tornado” it’s “there’s something not quite right about this”.
Met Éireann have said that events such as the flooding and storms Ireland has experienced this year are more likely to increase in frequency as the climate crisis worsens. Perhaps that is why there’s a touch of the “new normal” to the latest ordeal.
Severe flooding in Midleton back in October forced the government to offer a €10 million relief package to affected homes and businesses. This was followed only days later by similarly dramatic floods across Munster during Storm Babet, and further deluges in Louth, Antrim and Down during Storm Ciarán. As of the Leitrim Tornado, we’re only on Elin. God help us when the rest of the alphabet shows up.
In other, admittedly less strange, news, businessman JP McManus this week reaffirmed his status as the de Medici of the GAA by pledging €1,000,000 to each county board.
McManus has long been a patron of sports. After Limerick’s All-Ireland hurling championship win in 2018, McManus made a smaller donation of €100,000 to each county board.
While the county boards will hardly be giving the money back, it is another chapter in the unusual relationship between Ireland and the patronage of our domestic sports by wealthy donors.
Soccer fans will also certainly remember billionaire Denis O’Brien’s agreement to finance the contract of former manager Giovanni Trappatoni. O’Brien also had a commercial agreement with former Irish rugby captain Johnny Sexton, which greased the wheels for the out-half’s return to Leinster in 2014.
While none of the beneficiaries are ever likely to decline such offers, it does raise eyebrows that such a pattern exists at the very top level of Ireland’s most popular sports. And €32 million is an awful lot of money. Maybe it’s time that this generosity trickles down to some of our less popular sports. Competitive online column-writing, for example. Hard to get any less popular than that.
Lastly, looking ahead to one of the seminal events of the Surreal calendar, RTÉ said on Wednesday that it had received almost 500 emails calling on it to boycott next year’s Eurovision Song Contest over Israel’s involvement.
While Ireland’s absence from the Eurovision final is typically an enforced one rather than a matter of choice (we’ve been exiting during the weekday semis for most of the last decade), this email campaign puts pressure on the national broadcaster to take a stand on the bombing campaign that continues apace in Gaza, as the reported death toll rises above 18,000.
Campaigners have pointed to an apparent inconsistency in the approach of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), which is maintaining its ban on Russian participation in the contest since its invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
So far, RTÉ has offered a statement that straddles the line between naive and disingenuous, arguing they approach Eurovision as “a non-political contest designed to unite audiences and bring people together through a shared love of music and entertainment”. RTÉ faced similar calls to boycott the 2019 Eurovision, which was held in Tel Aviv after Israel had won the contest the year before.
“RTÉ is not aware of any participating Public Service Broadcaster who is planning to boycott the upcoming Eurovision Song Contest,” this week’s statement adds, suggesting that RTÉ will take refuge in the argument that, as long as no other country pulls out, neither should they be expected to.
Nevertheless, as public horror continues to rise in parallel with the bloodshed beamed in through our smartphone screens, it is likely that conversations around boycotting Eurovision will only gather heat as May 2024 approaches. RTÉ should start thinking of a better answer now.
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