IRISH people can be great and they can be ghastly. Two events from last week highlighted the ghastly side of the Gaels.
The first was a decision by the Football Association of Ireland (FAI) – that’s the people who run soccer south of the border.
Like all of us, soccer enthusiasts have been appalled by what, for month after month, their TV screens have shown them from Gaza.
Some 73,000 Palestinians have been killed since 2023, with 170,000 more injured. The great majority of these were defenceless civilians – men, women and children blasted to pieces by drones, crushed beneath the rubble of buildings, starved of food supplies by the Israelis. And on to that horrific total you can add the hundreds killed by illegal Israeli settlers on the West Bank and the 4,000 civilians and Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon.
It’s hard to grasp the brutality of Israel’s actions, so try this: Imagine the slaughter of Bloody Sunday being repeated next day and the day after that, on and on every single day without break for 14 years. Then you’ll be getting near to the slaughter Palestinians.
Appalling.
The FAI, however, was more appalled by the possibility that not playing Israeli might result in forfeited matches or financial penalties. Faced with a choice between showing the world what Irish soccer thinks of Israel’s genocide, the FAI looked at the money that might be lost and said, “Sure, we’ll play the Israeli team, but not in Dublin, as that might provoke violence.”
Can you think of a more shameful bending of the knee?
The other ghastly incident from last week that showed Irish people at their worst happened in the Dáil. Sinn Féin introduced a Planning for Constitutional Change Bill, asking the Dublin government to publish a Green Paper on Irish reunification inside the next 18 months, and following that to establish a citizens’ assembly to examine the issues around Irish reunification.
There was a vote, with 79 voting against the bill and 69 voting for it. Just to be clear: A green paper simply puts forward informed proposals. The government doesn’t have to do what’s proposed. And a Citizens’ Assembly is just a cross-section of Irish people discussing, interviewing experts, confronting any obstacles.
Again, nothing binding. Just providing an informed electorate so Irish people don’t fall into the trap that Brexit did, where the English voted for something with very little detail on what they were voting for.
Micheál Martin said the people of the South would be better finding out more about their neighbours North of the border. Or put another way, a Green Paper or a Citizens’ Assembly might frighten the unionist horses.
But as Marx said, the problem is not just to see the world, but to change it. Clutching our pearls may give us a rush of contempt for those in the Dáil who have no more enthusiasm for Irish unity than turkeys have for Christmas. But except we can find ways to respond to the refusal of the Dublin government to do any serious planning, we’re wasting our time feeling betrayed. So what can we do?
Sinn Féin and others must find a way to shame the Dublin government into action.
If Sinn Féin in every county in Ireland were to set up a Citizens' Assembly – or better still, were to hire an independent company to do the work – and publicise what those citizens assemblies produce, laying it out in clear, easy-to understand terms how a new Ireland might look, that would be an achievement
That would not only provide clarity on what a reunited Ireland might look like, it would show up the shameful inaction of the Dublin government and, behind that, its fear of losing the power it’s held for well over a century.
Face it. Micheál Martin will do everything conceivable to avoid doing the work that must be done. And Simon Harris’s talk of big things come November are delaying tactics we should know better than to believe.
