Ireland (23 page)

Its main declarations were: that the people of Northern Ireland alone could decide their future; all parties would agree to pursue their aims by peaceful means; that a Northern Assembly would be set up with parties sharing power depending on the number of votes they received; the Republic of Ireland would give up its claim to Northern Ireland; there would be cooperation between the republic and Northern Ireland with the setting up of various councils; paramilitary organisations would decommission their weapons and paramilitary prisoners would be given early release; there would be a withdrawal of British troops and reform of the RUC.

Talks continued to try and agree on how these proposals would be put into operation. There were major disagreements on decommissioning and policing and the release of prisoners, and also with ongoing paramilitary activity. Eventually, these difficulties were resolved. The Assembly and the Power-Sharing Executive were established in December 1999, but soon encountered problems, especially over the question of decommissioning. This led to the suspension of both bodies. In 2003, new elections were held, and the DUP won the majority of Unionist seats. This party had been opposed to the Assembly and the Power-Sharing Executive, and it now seemed as if both were doomed.

But to everyone’s surprise, Ian Paisley agreed to talks between his party and Sinn Féin. This decision of Paisley’s had been helped by the fact that the Provisional IRA had decommissioned its weapons, though their description of what had occurred was that the weapons ‘had been put beyond use’. Both the DUP and Sinn Féin had been implacable enemies, so the agreement to talk boded well for the future.

The talks were not without difficulty, but eventually agreement was reached, and the Assembly and the Power-Sharing Executive once more became operative in May 2007. Ian Paisley became First Minister for Northern Ireland, in effect the Prime Minister, with Martin McGuinness as his deputy. It was a historic moment as these two sworn enemies sat down together to govern Northern Ireland. After 800 years of war and strife on the island of Ireland, it seemed as if a permanent peace had at long last been achieved, though over 3,000 people had died during the Troubles.

It is a fragile peace, which has been threatened by those who still wish to achieve the 32-county Irish Republic envisaged by Wolfe Tone and those who fought and died during the rebellions which followed that of 1798. The fledgling government in Northern Ireland will undoubtedly face further problems in the future. But with the majority of the people of Ireland, north and south, wishing to have peace and opposed to violence, we can only hope that peace prevails. If it does, then perhaps we may one day see the 32-county Irish Republic so many Irish people fought and died for, and in which all the people, of all beliefs and faiths, will live in peace and harmony with each other.

F
rom the time when those Stone Age people settled at the Céide Fields in County Mayo, Ireland has been a farming country. Before the introduction of money, a person’s wealth was measured by the number of cattle they possessed. Later it was measured by the amount of land they possessed, and even yet land can still be a measure of a person’s wealth.

Today, farming is still Ireland’s most important industry and its produce our more important export. It provides jobs and contributes a large amount of money to the government. This in turn is used to provide schools and hospitals and houses and roads and transport, and the other services we need to live a happy and contented life.

Yet it is only in the past fifty years that Ireland has changed from a country where the vast majority of the population was dependent on farming. Since the 1960s more and more of our people have been employed in factories that make electronic components and goods, and pharmaceuticals.

Most of these factories have been set up by companies from other countries, especially the United States. They’ve come here because we have a favourable tax system; they have access to European markets because Ireland is part of the EU, and because, since the advent of free education, we have a highly educated workforce.

With these factories providing work, young people no longer had to emigrate. Now they could remain in Ireland and raise their families here. This meant that we needed more schools and hospitals, houses and transport, and so we had to employ more people in those areas. During the last fifteen years, Ireland has had a thriving economy with almost everyone who wanted to work having a job. All these workers and those who employed them paid tax to the government. This meant that the government had more money to spend on improving services.

With more people now living in the country, we needed more houses. So construction companies began to build houses and apartments, providing even more employment. In order to have the money with which to build, these companies borrowed from the banks.

Now that people were working and earning good money, they were able to buy houses and cars and luxury goods. They also wanted to enjoy themselves and went on foreign holidays. Parents wanted to provide the best for their children. They bought them computers and video games and iPods, and many children were given ponies. Quite often the parents couldn’t pay for those things right away so they borrowed money from banks and credit unions and used credit cards.

Now people began to measure their wealth not by the number of cattle they owned – you couldn’t own cattle if you lived in a city or town – but by the amount of money they earned, the size of their house and car, and the type of luxury holiday they took. Instead of going to the seaside, which was the kind of holiday families took before the 1990s, families now were flying off to Disneyland and to exotic places around the world.

With almost everyone employed and wages increasing, which gave people lots more money to spend, Ireland’s economy grew. A journalist described it as the ‘Celtic Tiger’ and the name stuck. Other countries marvelled at our success – that Ireland, that small, poor country they had once known, was becoming one of the richest in the world.

For about ten years the ‘Celtic Tiger’ economy was a huge success. Many people became rich. Almost everyone benefited from a better standard of living. But then problems arose. Those who owned factories had to pay higher wages. This made their products much dearer. Many of them closed their factories and moved to countries where wages were lower. This meant that they no longer paid tax to the government.

The people who had worked in the factories lost their jobs. They could no longer buy houses or cars or go on exotic holidays. More importantly, they now no longer paid tax to the government. Instead, the government had to pay them unemployment benefit even though less tax was coming in. This meant that the government had to borrow more money to pay unemployment benefit as well as paying teachers and doctors and nurses and all those other people they employed.

With people no longer able to buy houses, those working in the construction industry also lost their jobs. The construction companies, which had borrowed large sums of money from the banks, could not pay it back. This caused problems for the banks. They now had no money to lend, so companies could not get money to pay wages, or to continue their business. Many had to close and so more and more people became unemployed.

Eventually the government found that it could no longer borrow money to pay for wages and services and the unemployed. At this point it had to appeal to an organisation called the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which provides money to governments which are almost broke. The IMF loaned Ireland the money but insisted that the government cut back on the amount it spends. This has meant that schools have lost teachers, hospitals have lost doctors and nurses and many other services have been cut because the government can no longer pay. When this situation arises, we say that a country is in recession.

At present, Ireland is in recession. But it is not the first time this has occurred. There have been recessions in the past. They brought great hardship for a while, but with good government and the support of the people, the country soon began to prosper again. Right now we believe that Ireland will survive this recession. It will not be easy but down through the centuries the Irish people have proved themselves a tough, resilient race. We have survived occupation and repression, wars and famines and I’ve no doubt but that we will survive our present difficulties. One day in the future we will become a strong, vibrant economy again, a country which we can all be proud of.

W
e’ve come to the end of our history of Ireland. But of course, history does not end. It goes on, and what happens today is tomorrow’s history. In 100 years time people will read about us, and then we will be part of Ireland’s history. Those people will wonder what we were like, just as we wonder what the people of 100 years ago were like. We might even wonder if they liked history and if they were happy. That is what everyone wants – to be happy.

Ireland has come a long way since those first people settled at Mount Sandal in County Derry 9,000 years ago. Back then a person might have expected to live for about thirty or forty years or so. Now, our expectation is that we will live to be seventy or eighty, or perhaps even longer, as medical advances are made almost everyday. Our technology is advancing, too, at an enormous rate. Perhaps children in 100 years time will travel to school in flying vehicles. Or perhaps there will no longer be schools, and children will learn at home over some such facility as the Internet. Or maybe they will have intelligent computer chips linked to their brains and won’t have to learn at all. But that won’t be half as much fun as school, though you might not think so right now.

There is a proverb that says: ‘May you live in interesting times.’ I suppose all people think that the time in which they live is the most interesting. And if you think about it, it is – for them. But if given the choice, wouldn’t you prefer to be living now, rather than at the time of the Vikings, or when Cromwell was here or during the Great Famine? It might have been interesting, but not so terribly pleasant with the prospect of having your head chopped off by a Viking sword, even if it was called Leg-Biter; or being massacred by Cromwell’s soldiers; or of going hungry during the Famine.

Just imagine if you lived back then and had toothache. There was no chemist where you could get painkillers, and no dentist to painlessly pull your tooth. Your father, or maybe the local blacksmith if your father was too squeamish, would pull the tooth for you with iron pliers. You would not be given anaesthetic because there was none. So think about that for a moment. Doesn’t it make you glad that you live today and not back then?

Medicine, too, in times gone by was very primitive. There was no penicillin to treat infections, and a simple cut or graze could lead to infection, and eventual death. There were no vaccinations either, and common illnesses like measles and whooping cough could kill. When you consider all that alone, then you begin to realise how lucky you are to live in Ireland today.

You are lucky in other ways too. There are no longer any wars or rebellions or famines here. You don’t live in a mud cabin without heating or sanitation or hot and cold running water. You have enough to eat. You don’t go about barefoot unless you want to, and you don’t have to go to work in factories at nine-years of age, nor are children forced up chimneys. You can enjoy holidays in Ireland, or go abroad to enjoy the sunshine and swim in the warm waters.

In Ireland we always complain about the weather. It’s always too cold or too wet or too warm. But we are actually lucky to live in this country. We do not get extremes of weather like they do elsewhere. We don’t have to worry about hurricanes or tornados, or blizzards or monsoons, nor even heatwaves, though we sometimes wish for those. We don’t have to worry about earthquakes or tsunamis either.

So don’t you now feel lucky to have been born in Ireland and to live here? Don’t you feel proud when our sportsmen and women achieve greatness on the world stage? When our musicians and singers and actors and writers and artists are lauded all over the world? When our people go abroad to poorer countries and, without any recognition or monetary reward, work with the poor and the downtrodden? When the Irish people, relative to our population, give more in charity appeals than almost any other country in the world? And don’t you think that when children read the history of our times in 100 years from now, that they will realise what a great generation of Irish people you belonged to?

That’s why, as I mentioned at the beginning, history is so important. Those children, who read our history in 100 years from now, will be our descendants. They will be our great grandchildren. Aren’t you glad that they will look back and realise what wonderful people their great grandparents were? In another 100 years from then, the great grandchildren of those children will also look back at their great grandparents and then at their great, great, great, great grandparents and wonder about them. Have you figured out who those great, great, great, great grandparents might be? You’re absolutely right. It’s you! And if you go forward another 100 years … I think I’d better stop because all those greats I’d need to use are making me dizzy, and would only make you dizzy too.

But if that makes us dizzy, think of going back 9,000 years. Remember that it would take a page of greats just to go back to our ancestors who first came to Ireland. In another 9,000 years, the children living then would need a whole page of greats to get back to us. To them we would be part of ancient history. But we still wouldn’t like them to forget that we existed, or think that we weren’t important. Because if we hadn’t existed, they would not exist either, just as if those ancestors of ours hadn’t existed we wouldn’t exist. It’s a bit scary when you think of it – that your great, great – imagine that page of greats – grandfather or grandmother could have died 9,000 years ago; or that any of your ancestors could have died in the intervening 9,000 years. If that happened, you wouldn’t be here now reading this book.