This is Galway on a Friday night

The mood was sombre as we left the ground. Galway United had just lost a crucial game to a last minute goal from Dublin club Shamrock Rovers and the unseasonable drizzle matched the mood of the home fans for the walk back to the city centre.                            

Homelessness is far more visible than in the past

It was the first Friday night in months that Eamonn Deacy Park was in darkness as we left the ground following a home game and the shortening days seemed to bring grim tidings of a long winter to come for the city’s soccer club.

Relegation was beckoning and suddenly, given the biting wind and incessant drizzle, optimism was in short supply.

I normally drive to Galway United games and park my car across the river at NUI Galway. On this night, though, I had brought a group of 22 students from Mexico, Switzerland, Spain, and Brazil to the SSE League game, where they had revelled in the atmosphere and the quality of the football, if not quite the result for the home side.

So I zipped up my jacket and braced myself for the 15 minute walk into the wind and rain, towards the city centre where I had arranged to meet an old friend in a pub.

What I didn’t expect to discover was that a whole new “neighbourhood” had popped up in my city, barely ten minutes away from Eyre Square and the pedestrian heart of the city.

The Dyke Road is really green at this time of year, a bush-lined roadway between the soccer ground and the heart of the city.

To our right, amid the overgrown bushes, a number of discarded sleeping bags caught my eye. I had ignored them earlier, given the logistics of arranging match tickets for 22 foreign language students, but now I was in no particular hurry as I made my way back into town.

I heard some voices coming from behind the bushes. Someone, unseen, called out to me from just metres away.

Galway is famous for its festivals in Summer time

Curious now, I stopped and peered in through a gap in the bushes. A man of about my own age approached me.

I asked him politely what he was doing there and he told me this was his “home”. Leaving the road for a few minutes, I walked in through the bushes and discovered a makeshift village of six or seven of the kind of cheap tents you can buy for €25 or €30 in one of the discount supermarkets.

He told me that there were a dozen people living there and I felt ashamed that I knew nothing about this makeshift “community” which had popped up just ten minutes from the heart of my city.

I asked him if he was alright and told him I didn’t smoke when he asked me politely for a cigarette. There seemed to be a look of resignation in his weather-beaten face and despair in his quiet voice as I surveyed his appalling living conditions for just a few brief moments.

This was Galway in 2017, the kind of place the tourists never see, and it made me wonder how many other people scattered throughout the margins of my city were living in similar conditions just minutes from prying eyes.

How many were sleeping on friends’ couches or in their cars because the hostels were full? How safe did these people feel, sleeping in tents so near to the city’s main thoroughfare?

And so I walked on into the city centre, where my friend had arranged to meet for a post-game drink before driving home to his small town an hour from Galway.

It's "normal" now to see homeless people on the streets
of Irish cities throughout the year.

With him was another man I had met once or twice before. Also about my own age, he began to question me urgently about the rental situation in the city.

On strong medication for the past decade, the man is desperately seeking a change. He wants to move out of the small town where he can’t find any employment opportunities, where he feels trapped, but feels he is stuck in limbo and can’t move on with his life.

He has battled mental health problems for a long time and now feels it’s time to move on. He would love to get a job in the city, to have something akin to a normal life, and I can see despair on his face when I tell him it costs about €350 per month now to rent a room in my city.

How could he afford that? he wondered. How could he get a job when a decent place to live is beyond his means?

He wants to live a fruitful, meaningful life, but he’s in a spiral of unemployment and broken dreams, surrounded by people in the same predicament as him. Although he barely knows me, he confides that he’s trying desperately to get off medication and that it has hampered his ability to regain control of his life.

I feel bad. I feel as though I’m destroying his dream, even with a brief little chat about the rental situation in my city. And I wonder how hard he would struggle to return to the jobs market, given how the medication has “numbed” him out for years now.

I feel desperately sad to see how sad he is about his prospects of getting a job or a flat in Galway. The “half-way house” he lives in is keeping him off the streets, which he is thankful for, but things most of us take for granted (a job, independence, a girlfriend) seem totally beyond his reach.

Surely, in 2017, “numbing” people out of pain because they have had mental health difficulties in the past is just not good enough. Especially if they really want to make changes in their lives.
I feel apologetic as we bid our goodbyes.

I’m not drinking tonight, as I left my car in Salthill an hour before the football game. So I take my leave after almost two hours in the pub and make my way through the city centre.

In Forster Street, there are bodies huddled in doorways, beside some of the city’s busiest and most trendy pubs. Their faces covered under hoods, people have laid their sleeping bags out as they prepare for an uncomfortable night’s sleep.                              

Students enjoying the Galway Untied game on Friday,
just metres from where people are living in makeshift tents

In Eyre Square, two young men in their early 20s shout loudly to each other as they urinate in full view of a group of appalled Swiss or German tourists. They are oblivious to the disapproving eyes.

I cross the road, where three young women are alighting loudly from a taxi. Already drunk, one of them clutches a drink in her right hand. Excited, perhaps, by the prospect of a night out in one of the city’s clubs, they shout loudly at each other. One of them racially abuses the cab driver before heading off into the night.

The driver glances at me for just a brief moment, shrugs, and drives off to pick up his next fare. His reaction seems to make it clear that this is not an isolated incident on a weekend night.

At the corner of Eglington Street, it seems there is a riot going on. Not to worry, it’s just a group of young people socialising loudly outside one of the city’s biggest bars.

I’m no prude. I used to love socialising in the city centre late at night in my 20s and 30s. But trying to walk by a large group of people who are clearly out of their minds with alcohol is no fun if you are completely sober and walking alone on a Friday night.

I turn down Shop Street, a place which tourists tell me they find scary in the early hours. The place is buzzing with activity, as young people make their way towards the city’s late night bars and clubs. It will be heaving again when the clubs empty out around 2.30am.

I have to admit I haven’t been here for a while in the early hours. On the city’s main thoroughfare, in the heart of the pedestrian zone, I’m quite shocked to see quite a few people bedding down in doorways on either side of the street.

A couple from Eastern Europe seem oblivious to the passing eyes as they argue loudly while laying out their sleeping materials for the night. Tomorrow, people will be drinking lattes right next to the place they now call “home” for the night.

Just 50 metres away, some poor woman is sleeping out on her own. I don’t want to appear too curious, to discover her nationality. A kindly passer-by is down on his knees, asking her if she is ok, and I wonder what circumstances led her to sleep in a shop doorway in my wet and windy city, of all places, in August 2017.

I wonder how she will sleep when the pubs empty out at 2 or 2.30am and the young revellers make their way to the fast food premises. Will she face verbal or physical abuse? It’s already cold and wet in August, but will she still be here in November when the conditions will be much worse?

How did it come to this? That a little makeshift village has sprung up within a ten minute walk of the city centre or that people have no option but to bed down in shop doorways through the night?

That young revellers now see it as “normal” to come across people lying outside under the elements as they make their way to and from the late night clubs?

When did scenes like this become "normal" in Ireland? 

This is Galway, in August 2017. We have just had an amazing festival season, yet the sad underbelly is impossible to ignore if you venture into the city at night.

Why isn’t there more of an uproar in a place where the City Council can devote an entire meeting to whether or not they should say a prayer before their monthly meetings?

Yes, I felt like a bit of a prude on Friday; or a little naïve, to have been so oblivious to the extent of the homelessness problem in my city right now.

 But the City of the Tribes did not feel like the most welcoming place for everyone when viewed through sober eyes on a cold and wet Friday night.

Ciaran Tierney is a journalist, blogger, and digital storyteller, based in Galway, Ireland. You can find his Facebook page here

Find Ciaran Tierney on Twitter: @ciarantierney

Joyous faces in the Galway rain

So what does it mean to be Irish?

And what’s the best way to celebrate on our national holiday?        

Awaiting the parade in the Galway wind and rain

Those questions hit me on a strange St Patrick’s Day this year, when I took in my city’s rain-swept parade, attended the funeral of an old friend’s sister, and somehow managed to survive a night as possibly the only sober person in a crowded Galway pub.

Is the best way to celebrate being Irish to get absolutely hammered, as so many did on our national holiday?

Friends in the service industries tell me they hate to work on this particular day.

The stereotype of the "drunken Irish" has become such a cliche that Amazon even tried to sell an offensive green 'Drunk Lives Matter' t-shirt this year.

In one fell swoop, they managed to insult the entire Irish race and the black people in the United States who have genuine grievances with the racist elements of their country's police.

I've long since given up on hard drinking on March 17, as it can be alarming to walk through Galway city centre in the evening and to see so many drunken "zombies" milling about the place.

And, normally, I'd give the parade a miss if the weather was foul.

But this year there were lessons to be learned from the way thousands of people made the most of atrocious conditions to celebrate our national holiday.

To be honest, like many people, I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with my native land. For most of my adult life, I have fantasised about leaving the cold and wet island behind in order to live in a place with a warmer, more welcoming climate.

As a young man in London in the late 1980s, I revelled the experience of leaving the confines and constraints of home behind. London offered freedom, wildness, and a multi-cultural environment which seemed alien compared to the confines of ‘Catholic’ Ireland.

Try telling people now that it was impossible to buy a condom or to get a divorce in the Ireland of my youth. That repressive country felt like a different planet from the one that voted for Marriage Equality in May 2015.

A view of the parade
by Turlough Moore

I experienced long breaks in places like Australia, Egypt, Spain and Thailand, and loved the experience of holidaying or scuba diving in hot climates.

I fantasised so much about moving to hot countries, I almost wished my life away.

If you decide in November that you are going to hate the next five months of your life then - guess what! - that invariably becomes your truth.

You don't make any room for joy on a winter's afternoon down by the Salthill prom.

Wanderlust, of course, is part of who we are. I have friends from Galway who are scattered all over the world.

They have made new lives in the US, UK, Australia, Norway, and Thailand, because they never saw their futures back home on the wet and windy rock.

In 2010, during a gap year, I lived out my ‘Bucket List’. A full year away from Ireland brought me unbrldled joy, the chance to live and work in Thailand and Nicaragua, and left me with a real sense of doom and gloom upon my return.

So I have to admit I had one of those dark days of the soul when I opened the curtains on Friday morning. I cursed the dark, grey sky and found myself wishing I hadn’t agreed to cover the Galway St Patrick’s Day Parade for a national newspaper.

It was with dread that I made my way to Eyre Square, wishing I could just close the curtains, put on a fire, and spend the day at home. But work is work, especially for a freelancer!

And there was a valuable lesson to be learned.

All around me were smiling people, making the most of the driving wind and miserable rain. Tourists and locals alike were determined to enjoy themselves, even though the rational side of any human being would say it was no day for an outdoor parade.

It was amazing to see such good humour among the 1,000 poor participants who were soaked to the skin as they approached the end of the parade route.

I didn’t see a single person cry or complain, although a politician joked to me that the Town Crier “must be crying now” with the kind irreverence and good humour us Irish can take for granted at times.

Could you imagine a British MP joking with an English journalist with such informal ‘craic’ in his voice as he sat outside in the cold and rain?

Given our country’s terrible relationship with alcohol – and how downright messy St Patrick’s Night can become – it felt so fitting to me that a young man who has battled alcoholism and addiction was the guest of honour at the Galway parade.

The weather was simply awful, but it was great for me to meet Gavan Hennigan for the first time.

This young man from Knocknacarra rowed solo across the Atlantic earlier this year and showed plenty of good humour as he surveyed the one hour parade from the viewing stand.

“If you can put up with conditions like this, that’s the best training you can get!” joked the extreme athlete in the relentless rain.

“The conditions are pretty tough. It’s as bad as it is out in the middle of the Atlantic, nearly. I think it’s incredible that so many people came out to enjoy the parade today, given the conditions.”

Gavan has been overwhelmed by the welcome he has received in his native Galway since completing his solo row.

What a role model he has become for the children of his native city. Gavan hit rock bottom in his late teens and early 20s, but he has shown us all what can be done with determination and the will to turn his life around.

“I was kind of worried that a lot of people wouldn’t know who I was, but a lot of kids were shouting out my name as I made my way through the city today. Overall, the reception has just been incredible since I got back,” he said.

Following Gavan at the head of the parade were the Galway 2020 activists who secured European Capital of Culture status for the city and the Let’s Get Galway Growing network, whose community-based projects played a key role in securing the prestigious Green Leaf 2017 designation.

There's no rain like Galway rain .... !

The awful weather failed to dampen the spirits of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company of Massachusetts, the oldest military company in the United States and one of three visiting groups from overseas.

Some of the more colourful floats were provided by representatives of the city’s ethnic communities, including a fantastic red and yellow dragon from the Irish Chinese Society.

The Galway Traveller Movement celebrated their recent designation as a minority ethnic group, while That’s Life Gamelan Players highlighted the wonders of performance theatre for people with special needs.

The most magical moment of the day came when a young man with special needs brought a giant love heart up to the politicians in the viewing platform, and then decided not to share his love with them.

That simple, wild, irreverent gesture prompted a huge ironic cheer.

Representatives of the city’s Filipino, Polish, South African, and Indian communities underlined just how multicultural my city has become, and every one of them seemed to be genuinely thrilled to be representing their communities in the driving rain and near gale-force winds.

I was amazed by the salsa dancers. They revelled in showing off their slick dance moves on the street in conditions which must have been totally off-putting for most of them. And they went through their dance moves with huge, beaming smiles.

There was a special round of applause for the Ahmadiyya Muslim Association, who marched behind a banner which proclaimed ‘Love for All, Hatred for None’.

“I haven’t seen the parade in years, because I’ve been away gallivanting on adventures, but the first thing that jumped out at me today was the diversity of the communities here in Galway. It’s great to see it,” Gavan told me afterwards.

It was a relief when the parade ended, I have to admit, and a joy to get home to put on a hot drink and change my clothes.

But it was still so uplifting to see the joy on so many faces on a horrible day in my native Galway, the kind of day which would normally make me fantasise about moving to sunnier climes.

The drunken steretype: one of the more offensive t-shirts
on sale in the USA to mark St Patrick's Day

Each and every one of the 1,000 participants in the parade, and the thousands watching them pass by, taught me a lesson about acceptance.

You can wish your life away, dreaming of beaches and sunnier climes, or you can leave the house with a smile on your face and celebrate the joy each new day can bring.

Attitude is so important and the people in Galway city centre on Friday could teach a cynic a thing or two about making the most of life in horrible conditions.

And that’s how I will remember a joyful St Patrick’s Day, 2017.

The true spirit of the Irish is in the beaming faces who embraced a  communal event despite in the rain, not in the scenes of drunkenness in the crowded pubs hours after the parade had ended.

Slainte!


Earlier blog post: Banned from the land that made us refugees .... http://ciarantierney.blogspot.ie/2017/01/banned-from-land-that-made-us-refugees.html


Check out Ciaran Tierney Digital Storyteller's Facebook page: http://facebook.com/ciarantierneymedia

Ciaran's website: http://ciarantierney.com/

Bring on the clown

On Saturday, in cities all across the world, people are set to gather to protest against the election of US President Donald Trump.

At first, when I heard about the Galway protest, I decided I would not bother to attend.

I felt it was time to bite the bullet and accept a democratic vote as, after all, more than 62 million Americans voted for the New York businessman and reality TV star.

The 45th President of the USA.

Never mind the fact that Hillary Clinton polled over 64 million votes – I wasn’t a great fan of hers either – Trump was the legitimate winner of the US election.

I felt the Galway march would be organised and attended by the “protest against everything” brigade, the kind of people who condemned An Taoiseach (the Irish Prime Minster) Enda Kenny for congratulating Trump on his election victory in November.

Some of these people are never happy.

Whether they like it or not, they conveniently forget that the tiny Irish economy is over-reliant on American jobs in a globalized world.

They forget or ignore that sometimes in politics it’s important to play the game.

Kenny may have called Trump a racist during the election campaign, but it would be political suicide for an Irish leader to antagonize an incoming US President before he has even taken up office.

The US has always been close to the hearts of Irish people. It was an escape valve during tough times, when the ‘coffin ships’ set sail from Cork or Galway to allow people on one-way trips to flee from persecution and famine.

There are 40 million Irish-Americans and few countries as small as ours have such a big influence at the White House, where the Taoiseach gets to socialise with the President every year on our national holiday.

So I decided I would find something better to do this Saturday afternoon.

And then I began to read the comments on-line in response to the Galway protest, in which people felt free to vent their hatred towards immigrants, Muslims, or liberals.

They defended, and tried to justify, a presidential candidate who mocked a disabled reporter in front of millions of TV viewers. And claimed we had not seen the evidence we had witnessed with our own eyes.

Some of them genuinely believe that this billionaire businessman, whose father famously gave him a “small loan” of a million dollars to give him a start in life, is the answer to America’s problems.

This is a man who tweets with venom when he dislikes a piece of brilliant Alec Baldwin satire on ‘Saturday Night Live’.

Or who takes the time to send out a vitriolic reply to Hollywood actress Meryl Streep after she dares to criticise his views, at a time when he should be focused on putting his new Government together.

If Trump can take such offence when actors express concern about what he’s about to do to their country, how’s he going to behave in the Oval Office if he feels slighted by the Russians or the Chinese?

Presidential? Protests will take place across the globe on Saturday

Unfortunately, he will have access to a lot more damage than the Tweet machine.

To judge by so much bile and hatred on-line in recent weeks, the election of this man seems to have emboldened people who think it’s ok to spread hatred of immigrants, or Muslims, or Mexicans on-line.

It’s scary that 62 million people felt so angry or disillusioned that they voted for a man who boasted about "grabbing" women "by the pussy". Because he was rich and famous, he could act as he pleased.

It’s even scarier that Trump is a buffoon and a liar when it comes to climate change.

He has surrounded himself with people who have a vested interest in fossil fuel industries at a time when the very future of our planet is under threat.

Senior members of his Government have already admitted that short-term gain is more important than the state of our planet over the next 50 years.

The ice cap is melting, the oceans are rising, but Trump wants to reopen the mines and to "make America great" again by building gas-guzzling cars.

We can see it everywhere … global warming is no longer an abstract concept. We can see it in rising temperatures or freak storms, or the terrible air quality in big Asian cities which threatens the health of millions of people.

His treatment of a CNN reporter at a press conference last week brought to mind the way tyrants like Hitler or Stalin went out of their way to suppress and silence a free press in the 20th century.

But who cares what CNN say when you can get updates from Breitbart or Fox News?

This week, I've had people argue with me that Trump is not a racist, a sexist, or Islamophobic. They send me to obscure extreme right wing websites in a bid to discount what I've actually seen with my own eyes.

They'd rather keep the Mexicans out than look at the uneqaul power structures in this desperately unfair world. They'd rather build walls than bridges, when it was the immigrant experience which made America "great" in the first place.

It’s astounding that a property speculator with racist views is now seen as the salvation for so many people who are angry at the state of the world.

The people who pour scorn and venom at "illegal" immigrants see no irony in the fact that their own ancestors, many of them impoverished, set sail for the Americas in search of new and better lives.

Few of the people I have heard ranting about the Islamification of Europe and America seem to have spent much time in the Muslim world, where most people just want to get on with living happy and peaceful lives.

It’s simply absurd to condemn all Muslims – there are 1.6 billon of them across the world. It’s frightening, rather than absurd, that people still voted for Trump after he threatened to tag Muslims in America with special IDs just as Hitler targeted the Jews in 1930s Germany.

By voting for Trump, people chose ignorance over understanding and hatred over love. And I don’t want to live in that kind of world.

Like millions of others, I really hope that Trump will be a success, that he will shock the “lefty liberals”, and that he won’t destroy America and the world.

But he has said too much before and since the November election for people to face the future with anything other than concern or trepidation.

Which is why I feel it’s important to attend the protest against his inauguration on Saturday.

Not because we don’t accept the result of the election, but because Trump’s message of fear, loathing, and division is capable of destroying the entire world.

·         * There are two Galway events taking place on Saturday at 2pm. Check out the Facebook pages for Celebrate Diversity https://www.facebook.com/events/559992617530274/and the Women’s March on Washington Galway https://www.facebook.com/womensmarchgalway/

Check out my Facebook page: Ciaran Tierney Digital Storyteller

Check out my website: http://ciarantierney.com/

An uncomfortable truth for Culture Night

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It was a gorgeous evening in Galway.

The giddy excitement which usually greets the start of a weekend was magnified by the magnificent range of cultural events taking place for free all across the city centre and Salthill.

Down by the Claddagh, three musicians called Shiftwork were conjuring up beautiful songs from the deck of an historic boat.

A seal popped his head above the water to share in the general merriment. Later, traditional Galway hookers sailed around the perfectly still waters at the mouth of Galway Bay.

An asylum-seeker's room, recreated in the heart of Galway

There were musicians, artists, and entertainers providing wonderful free entertainment throughout the city as Galway really got into the spirit of Culture Night.

Over in Eyre Square, however, passers-by were being reminded of an aspect of modern Irish “culture” which many of us would prefer to ignore.

The Direct Provision system is not something we celebrate, not something we would prefer to highlight in the European Capital of Culture 2020.

But the role of an artist should sometimes involve exposing uncomfortable truths, and there is no more uncomfortable truth in Ireland in 2016 than the way in which the country treats its refugees and asylum-seekers.

In Galway, we know that they are living in a former hotel facing the seafront in Salthill or a hostel just off Eyre Square in the heart of the city.

Galway artist Richard Chapman's take on Europeans'
hypocrisy towards refugees. 

But how many of us have ever stopped to check out their living conditions or to ask how they are getting on in 21st century Ireland?

Do we really know about the months and years it takes to process their applications while entire families live in tiny hotel rooms?

To mark Culture Night, the Galway Anti-Racism Network (GARN) invited Galwegians to spend a little time in Direct Provision.

The exact dimensions of a “normal” direct provision room were marked out in the middle of the city and passers-by were asked to imagine what it was like to live in a tiny hotel room for months on end.

The space available for furniture, belongings, and beds was mapped out on the ground and the ‘live’ exhibition attracted hundreds of curious on-lookers.

Some children lay on the ground, imagining the reality of sharing a tiny room with siblings and parents for months or even years on end.

It was interesting to see so many people check out the dimensions of the tiny room, trying to envision what it’s like for a family to live in such a confined space.

A stark message for Culture Night.

A direct provision centre hardly features among the “normal” cultural heights of the city.

Residents were on hand to engage with curious on-lookers and to give us an insight into their normal lives in Galway and Salthill.

They cannot work, so they asked us to imagine what it was like to get by on €19.10 per week while sharing a hotel with dozens of others.

They told us that some of them had been living in this limbo, in the land of a thousand welcomes, for over ten years.

They asked whether we knew that 17 firms across the country were taking in about €50 million per year from the Irish Government to run 34 accommodation centres across the State.

Some of them have to survive the winter months in mobile homes.

They asked us to imagine what it was like for the children, who attend primary or secondary schools in Galway, when their curious friends asked them about their living conditions, the food they ate, or when they’d be able to invite them over for sleepovers.

They can’t cook or bring food to their rooms and they most certainly can’t invite their school friends over to stay the night in the centres. Keeping a pet is also out of the question.

It was news to me that they were given a rule book, containing 44 pages of rules, when they arrived.

Or that any complaints they may have had about the running of a centre could only be made to the manager of their own centres. Even if their complaints may have been related to the management of the centres.

During the week, residents of the centres had written testimonies about the reality of their lives. The testimonies were posted on a wall, next to the Browne Doorway, for revellers to read as they made their way around Eyre Square.

“At least as a prisoner you know when you are getting out – not when you are an asylum-seeker,” wrote one lady.

The asylum-seekers present were so welcoming, so happy to share their stories. They spoke of the depression they experienced, as they waited anxiously to discover if they would be allowed to stay in Ireland or deported back to their countries of origin.            

Recreating a room in the heart of Galway.

Mental health problems in the direct provision system are estimated to be five times higher than in the wider Irish community.

It reminded me of a heart-breaking exhibition I attended in Galway last year, in which a South African asylum-seeker admitted that the system felt “familiar” – because it reminded her of the Apartheid system.                                                                          

In terms of raising awareness, it was a hugely admirable three hour event organised by the Galway Anti-Racism Network and the Movement of Asylum Seekers in Ireland.

It was not the most “enjoyable” event in the packed programme for Culture Night in Galway, but it served a hugely important purpose in reminding hundreds of people of one of the great scandals of our own era.

We can ask why Irish people turned a blind eye to clerical sex abuse or the scandal of the Magdalene Launderies in the past.

With Direct Provision, we have no excuse. Thanks to initiatives like last Friday night’s, nobody can claim that they don’t know about this system which condemns children to grow up in unsuitable accommodation for months or even years on end.

Thanks to Richard Chapman for the cartoon. You can view more of his work at http://lightbulbcartoon.com

Check out my website http://ciarantierney.com/ or follow me on twitter, @ciarantierney. 

The death of Irish journalism?

Maybe it’s the circles I move in or some of the events I happen to attend, but I keep hearing people denounce the current state of Irish journalism in the midst of an undercurrent of anger and frustration over recent weeks and months.

You might argue that it’s very unlikely you would hear anything good about the mainstream media or the Government at a protest march against Irish Water on a Saturday afternoon or a meeting about the same issue in a hotel room two nights later.

What surprised me in Eyre Square last Saturday week, though, was how few journalists attended a march which attracted hundreds of protesters on a bitterly cold afternoon. Despite all the demonization, hundreds marched through the city centre to show their opposition to the Irish Water ‘quango’.

Journalists have lives, and need their free time, but when newsrooms cut up to a third of their staff it’s inevitable they will have fewer reporters on the ground.

Working for one of the country’s largest provincial papers, I always took some pride in how much coverage the Connacht Tribune would give to protest campaigns and groups. 

If I attended a demonstration in solidarity with the people of Gaza, a march for women’s rights, for turf-cutters, or against austerity, it was heartening to know that the news editor would be happy to take a few hundred words for the following week’s paper.

If a paper lets a third of its editorial staff go, however, it becomes inevitable that there will be fewer bodies available to give publicity to those whose voices may not otherwise be heard. Throughout the country, many newspapers have let staff go over the past couple of years.

During November, as I recovered from surgery, a friend gave me a box set of The Wire, one of the best TV series ever made. The final season of the programme focuses on the city’s newspaper, the Baltimore Sun, and so many issues facing the US journalists a few years ago have since gripped the newspaper industry on this side of the big pond.

How can you cover two courts if one of the two staff court reporters has taken a ‘buyout' (the US equivalent of a voluntary redundancy)? How can fewer people produce more, which became a mantra for senior management at the Baltimore Sun? 

And how can morale remain upbeat if you watch a third of your work-mates leave by the exit door, leaving empty desks and unfilled specialities in their wake?

Marching in the cold in Galway

I was lucky enough to be paid to write for a newspaper for over 22 years and I hope to do so again, but in the age of the Internet, social media, and so many cutbacks across the industry it seems that many readers have lost trust in the mainstream media.

This week’s arrests of anti-water charges protesters were a case in point. If people found it objectionable that so many Garda resources were put into arresting a few politicians in dawn raids, then how come their voices were hardly being heard on the national airwaves?

If people see Gardai being heavy-handed with protesters on social media, only for the protesters to be labelled by members of the Government as the “sinister fringe”, then why would people not trust their Facebook feed more than the information they are fed from the national media?

Rightly or wrongly, RTE are seen to 'massage' the figures of those attending protests against Irish Water across the country. They highlight abuse by a vocal minority of protesters, but video footage of Gardai being heavy-handed with the same protesters in housing estates (widely circulated on YouTube and Facebook) rarely makes it onto the TV screens.

If the role of a journalist is to keep a check on those who wield power, then no wonder so many people have lost trust in the media. Much of what passes for journalism is little more than pro-Government propaganda.

People know that 2,200 people were needlessly murdered in Gaza last Summer – and yet they only saw anger being expressed at protests and through social media, rather than on our national TV station or in the national papers. Hundreds upon hundreds marching for the people of Palestine was not deemed an important news story.

Over 100,000 marched against water charges last October, but all some Government Ministers and national journalists wanted was a chance to demonise them. The vocal protests against President Higgins provided perfect ammunition for their ‘spin’ and took all the focus off the ridiculous salaries and bonuses being paid to senior executives at Irish Water.

Readers find it hard to trust journalists if they feel their bosses have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo, or a financial interest in installing the water meters in estates throughout the country.

Those who wield power have an interest in stifling protest movements, as Paul Murphy TD (Socialist Party) discovered when he was hauled from his bed at 6.55am on a Monday morning.

Did it really take six Gardai to arrest the diminutive Mr Murphy for a protest which took place three months earlier? It’s not as though he had been in hiding since November, so the Gardai were well aware of where he lived and worked. He can usually be found in the Dail on a weekday.

And how many journalists questioned this use of State resources at a time when our hospitals are overcrowded and there is a homelessness crisis in our major towns and cities?

I spent four hours in a crowded A&E yesterday and could not help thinking about how many resources were wasted on arresting and detaining four protesters the previous morning. No wonder people are cynical when we never see six Gardai calling to the house of a disgraced banker, politician, or developer.

Of course there are honourable exceptions in the media. Fintan O’Toole in The Irish Times and Gene Kerrigan in the Sunday Independent are never afraid of questioning or challenging the powerful in Irish society.

But many people have told me in recent weeks that too many journalists view Irish society through the same prism as the Government Ministers they write about each day. 

They drink with them in the Dail Bar and meet at functions where they rail about the “sinister fringe” who dare to wield placards outside. When Sinn Fein bring a Dail motion in solidarity with the people of Gaza, they are labelled as cynical opportunists.

Meanwhile, frighteningly, if papers like my former employers continue to let staff go there will be fewer journalists around to witness what’s really happening at protests, marches, and campaigns in cities and towns throughout the country.

If the Gardai or RTE underestimate the numbers at protests, who is going to challenge them if there are no ‘neutral’ people available to report the facts on the ground?

When a news editor decides that a five day old video of an idiot hurling abuse at the President should be the main item on the national evening news, where are the voices who can object to such a blatant abuse of power?

And where are the journalists who challenge why anti-austerity protesters are being arrested while corrupt bankers and politicians (who bankrupt Ireland almost five years ago) are still allowed to operate with impunity?

Of course Irish journalism is not dead yet. But this perception that double standards abound (allied to the clear difference between what people see on social and mainstream media) has added to the anger and cynicism across the land.