Get them while they're young - Catholic Church are experts at recruitment

Initiation into the Catholic club

Say what you want about the failings of the Catholic Church but they are experts at recruitment.

You're a paid up member of the club by the time you can even say "christening", and once you arrive at secondary school, Catholicism is so deeply embedded with ceremonies that contain a large social element and weekly reinforcement, that it will stay with you for the rest of your life, no matter how your views evolve.

You have to hand it to them - it's a pretty successful strategy.

It's a principle we could do with using a bit more. When you get people interested in a topic at a young age and convey a subject's importance early, the better it is for their development, especially if they get to actively participate in it and feel they can shape what goes on.

And at the moment, there is scarcely anything more important than making sure young people get to use their talents, have their opinions heard and get a chance to shape the world around them.

A campaign for the voting age to be reduced to 16 is currently gathering momentum, with a recent conference in Dublin dedicated to it as well as a nascent Facebook support page.

Lowering the voting age is laudable in and of itself - it absolutely makes sense that young people get to have their say on issues like national debt and climate change, especially since it's their generation that will have to deal with the brunt of hothouse fiscal compacts.

But without a massive corresponding overhaul of the way we approach civics and politics in the classroom and beyond, it would almost be like throwing good votes after bad.

A civics class might seem like 35 minutes you'd much rather be spending anywhere else, but it's a subject that is so much more than dry stats.

Giving young people the chance to have a say and a hand in local policies and decisions like health services, education and public amenities makes enthusiastic citizens of them from an early age, and responsible ones too.It stands to reason that young people will have more interest and respect for an initiative if they've helped set it up, or indeed set it up by themselves.

The more often young people do these projects, the better they get at them, the more beneficial public service as a concept becomes to them, the more established and valued youth participation becomes in the wider community. Apathy then has to up sticks and try somewhere else.

But just as important as embedding the concepts of citizenship locally through visible projects and action is a reimagining of how we deal with national and international politics. Nobody would ever say your opinion on music is invalid if you didn't know all the instruments in an orchestra, yet politics as a topic of discussion often has a kind of snobbish high cordon around it, a minimum qualification stipulation. It needs to be taken down.

Whether people think of them as such or not, everyone has political opinions - the key is to make that as relevant and interesting as possible, and give context as to where their ideas fit in the world.

I've run myriad courses over the years designed to do just that with youth groups of very different stripes and every time I do I'm astonished at the level and enthusiasm of debate.

For example, a simulated cabinet I ran with the teenagers of the Donegal Youth Council passed a budget that dramatically increased health and education spending, resolved that nuclear power was not a viable energy source and forsook hosting a major sporting competition to invest in rail networks, all within a few hours. Give young people that chance to talk and take action and watch them fly.

In the Catholic Church, expert HR people that they are, Confirmation is the sacrament that gives the chance for 12-year-olds to reinforce for themselves something their parents did for them at birth.

The secular world too needs to build a foundation for young people, all young people, to be able to participate fully in their communities and make the changes they wish to see, for themselves and for others.

That way, by the time they come to vote at 16 they'll not only be ready, they'll be able and willing too.

Che-nge the record, it's just a statue

Every so often you see a story and think “How the hell is this still a thing?” The furore around Galway’s proposed Che Guevara statue is one such story.

You’d think that the chair of the House Foreign Relations committee would have a loaded plate, what with North Korea in a dangerous state of flux, the war in Afghanistan in its final throes, a cataclysmic situation in Syria ongoing and a band of nuke-happy lunatics purporting to be concerned about Israel getting more baying and mobbish by the day. But Ileana Ros-Lehtinen has still managed to find time to warn of the terribleness of Galway, a city thousands of miles away one eighth the size of a US congressional district, erecting a monument to Che Guevara. It is, she says, “an outrage” that such a thing is being proposed. An outrage! Some would say that a senior congresswoman placing a hold on millions of dollars of development aid funding for Palestine because of their audacious plan to become a country outrageous, but we won’t judge.

She is joined in her outrage by Iron Man wannabe and selector of antique causes celebres Declan “Senor Burns es El Diablo” Ganley, who warned that putting up the statue would be disastrous for tourism, credibility and Galway’s chances of getting a nice summer. And the story trundled on with a comment from the magnificently monikered historian Carlos Eire, who skilfully invoked both the “Bad as Cromwell” card and the “This is pure like denying the Holocaust, so it is” card.
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For the past few weeks people seem to be jumping out of the woodwork any time Che is mentioned in any half decent way, a bit like when someone on Irish Central says something positive about multiculturalism and we get insane rants from...well, you know. What is most galling of all though is not even the arguments themselves, but the double standards at play within them. Lehtinen blasts Guevara as a monster (as many Cuban-Americans understandably do) but the real problem was he wasn’t an American-sponsored monster, of which there have been many. Similarly, Ganley fulminates about the dangerous terrorist who murdered people, but when 2016 comes and the Easter Rising centenary comes around, it’s unlikely he’ll have such strident words for brave rebels Pearse and Plunkett.

Personally, I wouldn’t be in favour of the monument. Not because I have serious objections to Che’s character (I’m actually quite ambivalent about him) but having seen the drawings of the thing, it’s so gawky and out of place I wouldn’t be in favour of it if it had someone unanimously awesome like Steve Allen or Carlton Banks been emblazoned on it. But, monster or not, monstrosity or not, it’s still Galway’s decision to make. Perhaps they should take a leaf out of the American book on this one, and pursue their own interests vigorously, first and foremost.

An Irishman's guide to celebrating St. Patrick's Day in Ireland

St. Patrick's Day Parade in Belfast City

Hail glorious Saint Patrick, dear Saint of our isle! Of course St Patrick’s Day is a momentous one in the world calendar (there aren’t many other national holidays that prompt an audience with the President or turn rivers a different color) and it’s a day to be savored. But before you do, consider the following things to make the most of the national day.

If you don’t get to the city by midday, don’t expect to move freely

It can be hard to get all your ducks in a row on St Patrick’s Day. There’s no school so there are more people to coordinate, and harder to get them out of bed, to say nothing of the inevitable last-minute-scramble-for-shamrocks-down-the-garden-to-attach-to-your-lapel. But if you’re not in the city early enough to nab a decent place for the parades, all you’re likely to see is the back of a 6ft 5 man’s head for an hour and a half, and that’s if you’re lucky. Although, if you’re not located in such a bustling metropolis you might be OK, which brings me on to...

The local parade

Habitually these start about 3pm and end about 3.25pm, although this can be stretched to 4pm if you include the Pied Piper-esque ritual of walking up the street after the floats have passed. Well I say floats, I mean tractors and lorries with people in wigs on the back and kids holding banners while dancing/doing karate/martial dance.

Have a roster of Irish songs ready to belt out at a moment’s notice

If you’re exhausted after the parades and fancy a refreshment in one of Ireland’s myriad public houses, you may a) have to wait a while and b) be called upon to sing a verse or two of The Irish Rover. And possibly some others, because once a crowd gets into the singing groove they won’t stop just because the Irish songs have, as I learned when dozens of revelers outside The Quays in Galway started singing Eternal Flame.

Pace yourself

Once you’ve served your time at the bar (approximately 4 months on St Patrick’s Day), the intoxicating mix of a day off, effusive atmosphere and beer can all get a bit much. That mixed with the fact St Patrick’s Day is one where you can break Lent means things can get a bit messy. Disappear for half the night messy. Wake up the following morning feeling like Adagio for Strings was written just for you messy.

Try and avoid The Daily Mail the day after

Head rattling is bad enough, but hand wringing won’t do your fragile self any good. It’s pretty common for everyone’s favourite makeshift doormat to write a “Think of the children!” diatribe the day after St Patrick’s Day, shoving genteel Ireland’s face in debauchery they apparently hate but must show. A few pages after that, they may also have an affectionate piece on that loveable old troublemaking roister doister Oliver Reed.

March is not a great month for Irish sightseeing

If you’re away from home on Patrick’s Day and resolved to do some sightseeing round the general area, bear in mind the weather may not sit well with your plans. So if you were spending Paddy’s Day in, say, Cork, going to the Cliffs of Moher on the way home may result in being soaked to the skin and blown around the adjoining fields without mercy in near-hurricane weather, before being flung down the steps on the way down at great speed by a gust of Beaufort-busting wind. Not that I’m speaking from experience. Ahem.

A good oul film to end it all

If you decide not to go down the drink yourself into a Daily Mail-outraging stupor on St Patrick’s Day, you can always go home, perhaps with a takeaway, and watch a good oul Bank Holiday film, often with an Oirish twist (Sean Connery as an Irishman in Darby O’Gill anyone?) but sometimes without (Tropic Thunder, as RTE showed last year, crosses all ethnic barriers. Except maybe Vietnamese ones). Sure what else would you be doing?

University qualifications - what do they really mean? Confidence goes a long way

Recently I started a new job in Belfast, namely as a question writer for a TV quiz show. As you might expect it’s a conversation-starting occupation, as proved to be the case when talking to a taxi man a few days ago. When I jokingly asked him if he’d ever take part in a quiz on telly and maybe win a bit of money, he said back without much consideration: “Ah sure I’d be no good on things like that, I don’t have any qualifications or that."

It’s an attitude that is sadly pervasive. Be it through a lack of opportunity, a lack of application at the time, a lack of self-esteem or a combination of both, there are a distressing number of people who link intelligence to knowing capital cities or remembering what an ox bow lake is. Worse yet, they underplay the talents they actually do have and won’t be convinced they’re anything but a social misfit. Never mind the fact that maintaining one’s calm while navigating round a city center at rush hour is a pretty invaluable skill, that taxi driver thought of himself as stupid.
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I’ve seen this all my life in Donegal. People of an older generation were spat out of schools where being given a clout across the head featured heavily on the syllabus, where the focus was getting a job, inevitably in a factory or some such, getting some money into the family home, and that was about it. Bettering yourself was not an option, and if it was it was often actively discouraged through ridicule and a significant dearth of opportunities in the first place. Sometimes it’s so severe that even when opportunities do appear they aren’t taken up: Donegal sometimes feels replete with men of a certain age who turned down offers to play football abroad because they didn’t have the confidence to make it stick. That bad educational experience has in a lot of cases transmitted to their children’s generation, and low self-esteem dogs them for the rest of their lives. 

If the value of education can or should be defined at all, it should be to widen people’s base of knowledge and to pursue the fields people enjoy without obstacle of any kind. More than that, it should widen the base of things we deem worthy of study and pursuit. Up and down the country there are people young and old with talent, talent submerged and undermined and eroded. Helping those people is the smartest thing we could possibly do.

Has the time come for Celtic Independence? - Scottish win could spell seismic shift

Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond

Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond is currently embroiled in a power struggle with British PM over a referendum for Scottish independence, but if he wins the dominoes won’t just stop at Hadrian’s Wall.

If the Scottish win independence, then it spells a seismic shift in not just how the British Union works, but the European one. Salmond’s Scotland has much more in common with the Nordic countries in terms of social provision and much more Europhile than Cameron’s England, and independence would not only copperfasten these differences but create a new diplomatic entity on the EU stage. Especially so, if Scotland win the custody battle for the oil off their coast.
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If Scotland and England do take divergent paths, that leaves Wales and Northern Ireland essentially in a “back me or sack me” situation, stuck between siding with their Celtic brethren (and to a lesser degree Europe) and the Westminster government who supply the block grant for their respective assemblies. And if they do, then it may be the best chance proponents of a United Ireland will have in decades. 

If the UK becomes more of a loose confederation as would be likely the case under Scottish independence, then Northern Ireland’s closeness to the Republic of Ireland will come under closer scrutiny, in terms of trade, services, culture and a host of other things that will suddenly become relevant if such a debate ever arises. Of course, that means it will energise both sides of the argument. 

Already you can see the Unionist side in particular sharpening their swords. This Tuesday on Spotlight, a Northern Ireland current affairs discussion programme, DUP Health Minister Edwin Poots claimed First Minister Salmond was like a dog agitating to get off the leash and went on to essentially claim that the fundamentals of the Union were strong. But United Ireland advocates are getting more nuanced in their approach, with younger members of Sinn Féin like Pearse Doherty providing a counter-balance to old irredentism by considering a range of ideas about how the arrangement could work, even how to accommodate hardline Unionists in an Irish parliamentary setting. More interesting still, they’re focusing on a referendum of their own for around the 2016 mark. 

As I’ve said before, the case of a United Ireland is something I’m intensely ambivalent about and would be of the opinion that an independent Scotland would more likely precipitate a kind of Celtic alliance, each country becoming more independent of London but still under the kind of loose confederation I mentioned earlier. But, the political sands are changing and changing quickly, and for those who dream of a United Ireland they should make their case extremely well for the debate ahead. Their day may finally be coming if they do.

The Ian Paisley paradox - considering the career of Dr. No

As I write this, Ian Paisley remains in the intensive care unit of the Ulster Hospital, and like everyone else in the media I’ve been reflecting on the career of an incontrovertible political giant of these islands.

But it’s incredibly difficult.

Ireland is no stranger to high-profile politicians with mixed legacies who split opinions; Parnell is revered now but his relationship with Kitty O’Shea split his once monolithic party down the middle. Eamon de Valera was a demi-god or a treacherous wretch depending on who you talked to. Charles Haughey and Bertie Ahern are grand lads in the eyes of their deathly loyal supporters, but it wouldn’t have taken you long to round up a pitchfork-wielding posse to picket their houses either. But Paisley is in a different orbit altogether.

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At the time and place I grew up, the word “Paisley” was synonymous with terror, even loathing. I used to dread hearing his booming voice on the radio on television, fulminating recklessly about something or other. It’s been said Bill Clinton could make you feel like the only person in the room, with Ian Paisley it seemed like he could make you feel like the focus of all his hostility and hate. For someone from Donegal in primary school in the nineties, Paisley felt like a genuine bogey man.

Yet, even then you’d hear stories that bordered on urban myths about him that confounded the obstreperous image. He was lovely in person, apparently. Catholics in his constituency supposedly felt well treated if they ever went to him about local business. According to legend he once met some Cork students playing a game of rugby against Ballymena, and gave them a hearty welcome and money to buy fizzy pop or some such.

In more recent years, that side of him seems to have shown itself publically, with his moderated attitude on power sharing and his surprisingly good relations with Martin McGuinness. Last year I even saw him giving a kind of flash mob sermon outside Belfast City Hall, a pious elderly man far removed from the gulderer famed for shouting “Never!” in that very same location a quarter of a century earlier . In a very short space of time, he’s gone from Ireland’s greatest monster to avuncular bridge builder.

While there’s something fitting about the evangelical preacher’s Damascene conversion on the road to redemption, and it’s better late than never that he turned heel, it’s important that when it comes to legacy, recent good doesn’t altogether overwrite past bad. Had Paisley not forced Terence O’Neill from office over One Man One Vote, or poured kerosene on the Ulster Workers Council Strike over Sunningdale, heaven knows how differently things could have developed.

Northern Ireland is in a situation now, mercifully, where past rivals can put aside hostilities and attempt to work together. But when it comes to considering legacy, it’s crucial that we take the whole picture, rough and smooth. Especially so with Ian Paisley.

RTÉ sport's inspirational Colm Murray and his battle with motor neurone disease

RTE sports anchor Colm Murray

The documentary on Colm Murray, RTE's sports anchor, promised to be must-see viewing, and yet extraordinary difficult. 

A documentary about Colm Murray, the much-loved veteran RTE sports broadcaster and horse racing specialist was always going to be an interesting watch, but the circumstances under which it was made tinged it with real pathos. 

A couple of months ago Colm went on the Late Late Show and announced that he had motor neurone disease, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease after the Yankees player who died of MND aged 37.

Gehrig is well known for his emotional “Luckiest man in the world” speech in front of a rapturous crowd upon his retirement, and in a sense this documentary was Murray’s equivalent to a heartfelt speech on the diamond. 

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The show tracked the methods in which he was living with and attempting to control the disease, including his participation in a trial for a new drug that could be of significant help, and his trips to a speech therapist.

For me, this proved the hardest to watch. It seemed especially cruel that a broadcaster with a voice the whole nation knows would have that taken away from him, especially as within weeks of announcing his condition he was reporting sports news from behind his desk in a wheelchair. The dramatic way in which his life has changed in such a short few months has shocked and saddened the whole country.

But, in spite of the terrible hand he’s been dealt, Colm wasn’t willing to give in to fatalism. Instead he soldiers on, trying to find a cure, trying to keep himself the best he can and live the best life he can.

For years, Colm Murray was not just a familiar face and voice but a quiet hero of Irish life, dutifully reporting on the sporting moments that have coloured the nation, all without ever putting a step wrong. It is with that same quiet heroism and positive attitude that he battles motor neurone disease. The whole country is willing him on. 

Click here to watch the RTE documentary.