Farewell to a West of Ireland dad

Irish Current Affairs Blog of the Year 2018

If there is one thing my family learned over the past nine months or so, it’s the amazing public health system we have out in our communities here in Ireland.

A team of nurses, carers, and staff from our local pharmacy were on call every day of the week to give my father as comfortable a life as possible and to fulfil his wish of dying in his own home.

Thanks to our public health care professionals, and the support of a loving family, my dad had the most peaceful death anyone could ever hope for. He had spent an entire Sunday surrounded by people who cared for him, before deciding to leave this world just before 1am on a Monday morning.

Last August, we saw the other side of the Irish health service when, at 93 years of age, he was forced to spend 48 hours on a trolley in an overcrowded Emergency Department after sustaining a fall in the family home.

Never a fan of hospitals, all Micheal Tierney wanted was to get home to his own place. And, thanks to a rota devised by his family, the support of care workers who called twice a day, and an amazing Public Health Nurse, we managed to let him realise his dream of staying in the home and the neighbourhood he adored.

Our public hospitals may be in crisis, but the care provided to our most vulnerable in their own homes and communities is second to none.

Patients lying on trolleys in an Irish public hospital

My dad showed the true spirit of a fighting Irishman.

He lived far longer than the few weeks he was given back in January and even defied the doctors to be still with us when his beloved son, Micheal Junior, flew in from New York 48 hours before he passed away.

Family meant everything to my dad and it was the love of his family which drove him on, confounding the nurses and doctors with his determination and will to live over the past few weeks and months.

After he had been told never to climb the stairs, my sister came into the house one day a few months ago to find him frantically cycling on a gym bike he had installed in an upstairs bedroom. On another day recently he went upstairs to “sort out the bills” because our mother “knew nothing about them”!

His generation, born in the first few years of an independent Ireland, were made of stern stuff. Most of his aunts and uncles had emigrated to the United States in the early part of the 20th century, because of the grinding poverty in Co Galway at the time, and he used to recall trying to pinch bread from the priests in his boarding school in the 1940s.

It was hard for him to see his strength go, to have to get people to put him to bed at night, but amazingly he became firm friends with some of his carers and could be heard laughing and joking with them as they helped him get to bed at night.

How amazing it was for his adult children to see him befriend carers from Malaysia, the Philippines, Holland, or Mayo, after his initial reluctance to even allow them into his home!

Dad with my sister, Mura, at a wedding in Spain in 2006

In the West of Ireland, in particular, we tend to do funerals and dying with great dignity and compassion.

We spent three hours shaking hands as literally hundreds of people made the effort to get to the Funeral Home. Such a tribute to a Civil Engineer, almost three decades on from his retirement from the local authority, would not be deemed unusual in this part of the world.

An amazing priest, Father Martin Downey, brought great peace and comfort to the family home when he made three house calls in the last few weeks of his life, as it began to dawn on my dad that his race was run.

My father only stopped jogging at 84 years of age, after embracing the fitness craze of the 1980s, and the medics were astounded by both his physical stamina and determination to live for as long as possible.

The staff at our local chemist in Galway City made the family feel that our father was the most important man in the world and a gentleman – they would repeatedly offer to call down with medicines, even giving us their mobile phone numbers if we ever needed them when the shop was closed at 3 or 4am.

That kind of personalised service would be unthinkable in many parts of the world.

Showing determination at University College Hospital Galway (UCHG)

And the neighbours rallied around over the past few weeks of his life, repeatedly calling in with cakes or ready-cooked meals. It was impossible not to shed a tear when they formed a Guard of Honour outside his home for his final journey.

His last day on earth was a perfect Sunday in a West of Ireland household.  His adult children did not feel guilty about leaving his bed side to watch a championship hurling game between Galway and Wexford on television, because that’s exactly what Micheal would have wanted.

Indeed, his beloved grandchildren, who gave Micheal so much pleasure in his later years, were dispatched to give him regular updates from the game every five minutes or so.

His six year old grandson, Mateo, would tell him “Ganga, it’s Ireland ten points, Waterford five” (It didn’t seem to matter that it was actually Galway against Wexford!) and granddaughter Sofia would report back that his pulse had settled every time Galway scored.

Like many Irish families, we grew up loving Sunday dinners and GAA games on television during the summer months.

Growing up in tough times, education was very important to my Dad. He might have seemed to be obsessed with education when we were teenagers in the 1980s, but – like many West of Ireland people of his generation – he saw it as a way out of poverty.

So many people from his area and generation were forced to emigrate in search of new lives that he and his friends wanted as many opportunities as possible for their children. They knew all about the heartbreak of people being forced to leave their homeland against their will.

These days, of course, we are connected by technology and the cousins in New Jersey or California don’t seem to live so far away any more.

He gave his children a life-long love of travelling since we used to go camping every Summer on the West coast of France in the 1980s, where he met some amazing life-long friends from throughout Ireland. Before that, virtually nobody he knew could afford to go abroad and our family holidays were spent, often in pouring rain, in Donegal.

He also gave us a love of nature. In Galway we are blessed to live beside Connemara, the Burren, and the wild Atlantic Ocean, and he loved to swim in the chilly waters of Galway Bay.

He has given all of us a love of the outdoors, an appreciation for healthy living, and a sense of justice and fairness which ensures that, like many Irish people, we always seem to root for the oppressed or the underdogs.

The extended Tierney clan assembled for his Requiem Mass

As children in the 1970s, we were thrilled when he allowed us to get up at 3am to watch the Mohammad Ali versus Joe Frazier fights as small kids in the 1970s.

Like virtually every West of Ireland family, America and Americans were always close to his heart. His own father, Martin, had spent five years working as a tram conductor in St Louis, Missouri, a century ago and used to joke that he wished he’d never come home!

There was a lot of heartbreak involved in emigration in those days – none of dad’s uncles or aunts ever made the journey home – but he got great joy in rekindling friendships with the New Jersey first cousins when transatlantic travel became affordable for ordinary Irish and American people.

Ireland is not a perfect country by any means, but the outpouring of affection, love and compassion which surrounds the death of an elderly Irish person after a long illness shows that that we do live life the way it should be lived, when it comes to family, community, and respect for the elderly here in the West of Ireland.

“May he Rest in Peace”

In the last few weeks of my father's life, my family received wonderful support from the Irish Cancer Society which allowed him to stay in his own home. You can find out more here

--  * Ciaran Tierney won the Irish Current Affairs and Politics Blog of the Year award at the Tramline, Dublin, in October 2018. Find him on Facebook  or Twitter here. Visit his website here - CiaranTierney.com. A former newspaper journalist, he is seeking new opportunities in a digital world.

In Ireland, you've got the people ...

What exactly is “home”?                                                        

Boxer Sean Mannion; The film about his life brought
many members of a Galway audience to tears

If, for example, you grow up in the wilds of Connemara, with the backdrop of picturesque but barren mountains, roaring Atlantic waves, stony fields, and the beautiful, living Gaelic language, can you always call it your home?

Even if, as thousands upon thousands have done, economic necessity forces you to leave your native place and to spend your entire adult life hundreds or thousands of miles from home?

The thought struck me, watching the wonderful ‘Rocky Ros Muc’ film this week, that few are connected to their land, their local communities, and the stories the rocks and the stone walls could tell, as the people of the West of Ireland.

Boxer Sean Mannion returned home from Boston for the emotional Galway screening of the new documentary film about his life and it was striking to see how many people in the capacity audience were moved to tears by his life story.

Not because he lost a world title fight, because Sean achieved a level of fame most of us can only dream of when he fought Mike McCallum in a gruelling bout for a world title in 1984.

But because Sean’s story was their story, and this extremely modest man – who in many ways has been his own worst enemy – epitomises the struggles all of us face when the land which produced us fails to sustain us and we are forced into exile, to start new lives in places like Boston, Brooklyn, Birmingham, or Brisbane.

It was striking to see that a man who has spent most of the past 40 years living and working in the US still felt more comfortable speaking “as Gaelige” (in Irish) when it came to a questions and answers session after the film.

Ciaran Tierney with boxer Sean Mannion at the European
premier of 'Rocky Ros Muc' in Galway

All through his life, Sean has been so proud of Ros Muc, the village where he was born and the place he still refers to as “home”.

Yet Ros Muc, through political incompetence or geographical isolation or deliberate neglect, never offered Sean and most of his generation a future and so he found himself bound for South Boston and a new life at a time when he was an Irish junior boxing champion.

In Dorchester, in ‘Southie’, he found a community that sustained him, a place where he could work on the buildings when his 15-year boxing career came to an end, a place where he could enjoy a laugh and a story in an Irish pub, or a game of cards with friends and family members from “home” who would converse in Irish into the early hours.

And yet, after 40 years away, Sean still looks at Ros Muc, and Galway, and Ireland as “home”.

It’s an experience which is so common to so many of us . . . the spirit of adventure, the need to travel for opportunities, the start of a new life, and yet the loneliness and the longing many of us experience for home.

Sean is a quiet-spoken man and yet it’s remarkable how film-maker Michael Fanning and writer Ronan Mac Con Iomaire manage to get him to open up about his own personal demons, which could resonate so much with Irish people scattered all across the globe.

We see how he embraced the new life in Boston, how the close-knit Irish community sustained him, and how his attempt to move home to Ros Muc, the place he dreamed of and was so proud of, ended after a few short months when he compared life in the rugged, wild west with the new life he had made for himself in Boston.

Sean Mannion with Heather Mackey of
the Galway Film Fleadh 

The story of the Irish is one of exile, broken dreams, loneliness, but also a stoic determination to succeed and a story of a people who have always tried to make the most of life, even when the odds were stacked against them.

We sometimes rail against the stereotype when we are depicted as the “drunken Irish”, but even our fondness for a night out and a pint is just a reflection of how much we love to engage with and socialise with each other.

Memorably, in the film, Boston Mayor Marty Walsh talks about his own battle with alcoholism and how it was common to so many Irish simply because they were so lonely for their friends and family members back home.

Walsh grew up in an Irish-speaking household and still refers to Mannion’s village, little Ros Muc on the Atlantic seaboard, as his “second home” even though he grew up in the tight-knit community of South Boston.

Some got into drugs, some drank their lives away, others joined the police or put their children through college and created opportunities which were never available to them in the little Irish villages they left behind.

At one point in the film, we hear that Mannion turned down an offer of $25,000 to wear a sponsor’s logo on his shorts at Madison Square Garden, a figure which would have matched his pay package for the biggest fight of his life.

The prospective sponsor was miffed that someone else had got there before him. What he didn’t know is that Sean didn’t want any money, he wanted the words ‘Ros Muc’ to be prominent on the front of his shorts when his 1984 title fight was beamed live all across Ireland.

It was the only one of his 57 professional bouts in the US to be beamed live across the Atlantic to the Irish people, something which is still a cause of regret for Sean. It meant so much to him to represent his own people, and to do so with pride.

The sponsor wanted to know what product his supposed rival had.          

Ciaran Tierney previewing 'Rocky Ros Muc'
on Galway Bay FM last week

“People,” was Sean’s simple and honest reply. "Human beings."

He was fighting for a world title, before a huge global audience, but he wanted to honour the tiny community which produced him and gave him a love of boxing, and of life.

The wonderful film makes it so clear that Sean’s life has been tormented by regrets over how he lost that fight in 1984, so it was amazing to see a capacity crowd give the Southpaw (now 60) a standing ovation for this fantastic film about his full, but troubled, life.

Sean Mannion would never consider himself a national hero, but in the way in which he has battled with issues such as emigration, loneliness, broken dreams, addiction, and a sense of belonging, he really has encapsulated so much of what is so good about being Irish.

And, of course, the film also has plenty of belly-laughs, because where would the Irish be without humour, even in the toughest times?

Sean has never felt fully settled in the United States and yet, like so many, he’d find it difficult or impossible to return to Ireland after so many years abroad.

The wilds of Connemara didn't offer much of a future
to the young people of the area for decades

Perhaps, though, it’s not so much about the village or the town you are from, but the people you get to know and connect with throughout your life.

His comment about the Ros Muc people reminded me of an Egyptian scuba diving instructor I undertook many trips with a decade ago.

Sabry Awwad taught people from all over the world how to scuba dive in the Red Sea for many years.

Every year, he used to laugh heartily when he’d hear me complain about having to return to the wind and rain of the West of Ireland in December.

He loved meeting people from all over the world, but he had a special regard for the Irish people he met on holidays in Egypt.

“You don’t know how lucky you are,” he used to tell me. “Different countries have different things to be proud of, but you guys are the luckiest of all. In Ireland, you’ve got the people.”


http://ciarantierney.com

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

Read Ciaran's piece about 'Rocky Ros Muc' for Irish Central, published on July 7, 2017: https://www.irishcentral.com/culture/entertainment/the-connemara-contender-an-irish-rocky-recalls-his-career

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/

The gathering of the Tribe

My website

When I took voluntary redundancy from my local newspaper almost a year ago, my head was full of plans to cut loose again and travel the world.

Having enjoyed the best year of my life far from the “safe harbour” in 2010, when I took a 12 month career break, my mind was buzzing with potential projects in far-off, sunnier climes. Another winter in Galway was definitely not part of my plans.

But sometimes fate works in mysterious ways and health complications – I picked up the MRSA bug in my local public hospital – put paid to my dreams of a radical change. 

The Galway players line up at Croke Park

Instead of volunteering in Nicaragua, guiding scuba divers in Thailand, or teaching English in Spain, I was confined to the safe harbour for seven months as a team of wonderful public health nurses set about healing my wound.

I had too much time to think, but I also began to appreciate the gentle beauty which us natives can often take for granted in the West of Ireland.

Not for nothing was my home town voted the “friendliest city on earth” just last week. But I must confess that, for much of my life, I was too busy or too preoccupied by perceived problems or injustices to revel in the delights of the people around me.

A scuba diving instructor in Egypt once told me that the best thing about Ireland was the people, when I complained about returning home to another wet and windy winter in the City of the Tribes. Sabry had never been to my country, but he had met enough Irish people through his job to appreciate the friendliness, easy-going nature, and hospitality of the people.

My long illness brought on some unwanted anxiety and uncertainty, but it also helped me to appreciate the simple things. Like the people in the clinic’s waiting room, who would share tales about their lives. Many of them had returned home after years spent working in England. Or the nurses, who went out of their way to accommodate me with early appointments when I had to reschedule during a digital marketing course.

Sometimes it feels as though there is a deep sadness in the West of Ireland, brought about by melancholic weather and the generations of people who have been forced to move overseas in search of better lives.

But the sense of community, the sense of place, is something to be revelled in; the way people will pause for a chat on the street or spend hours interacting with strangers in pubs is something we should never take for granted, because you don’t find that in many parts of the world.

On an emotional weekend in Dublin, I got to really appreciate my tribe. Galway, the Tribesmen, had reached the All-Ireland hurling final and I had friends and family home from the UK, Spain, New York, and even Australia.

We dared not dream of winning a first All-Ireland title in 27 years against the raging hot favourites, but we didn't want to miss the event just in case ... When we saw how muted the Kilkenny celebrations were, it was painful to imagine how wonderful the party would have been had the underdogs defied the odds.

There is nothing like an All-Ireland weekend to heighten the emotions, as we recalled past battles, defeats and victories, and the sheer heartbreak of following a team who have come close so often only to fall at the final hurdle.

The Galway hurlers break our hearts, but let nobody say that Galway people are not passionate about the game.

In the capital's pubs before and after the game, we swapped tales about games we had witnessed (or where we’d watched them) down through the years.

I was a young student squatting in London in 1988, the last time Galway won the All-Ireland. I was having too much fun to come home for the final and never thought I’d wait at least 27 years to see them win again. I have been to all six finals they’ve lost since then.

In 1989, I was on the Hill with my younger brother for the semi-final clash with Tipperary when there was a poisonous atmosphere in the air after the ‘Tony Keady Affair’. A year later, he watched the final in the Bronx, on the day Joe Cooney produced a master class but still ended up on the losing side against the Rebels.

In 1993, after we'd lost to Kilkenny, an old man on the train home said he’d never see Galway win another All-Ireland. It’s the kind of fatalism we share with Mayo football fans and I knew exactly what he meant. Defeatism and negativity can be traits of those of us who grew up among the stones, the drizzle, and windswept fields of Connacht.

It took us eight years to get back to Croke Park in September and Tipperary ruined our plans in 2001. Four years later it was Cork’s turn and Kilkenny, the game’s dominant modern force, blew our dreams to smithereens in 2012 and again this year.

Celebrating the semi-final win over Tipperary

To add to the torture, our team even managed a draw against the best team in history three years ago. We could have, and should have, beaten them to end the famine that afternoon.

When the hurlers beat Tipperary in last month’s semi-final, I suddenly felt pangs of regret that I was no longer involved in writing about them for the newspaper. There’s a giddy excitement about the build-up to an All-Ireland final – unless you’re from Kilkenny, where it’s probably just another annual event like Christmas or St Patrick’s Day.

On Saturday, my sister took the ferry home from London. She refused to miss the final. It cost her a fortune she could hardly afford, but as she headed back on Monday morning she said it was all so worthwhile.

From the singing in the pubs, to the chats with fans of all ages who had made the trip to Croke Park, there is something truly special about the All-Ireland weekend.

The way the supporters of the opposing teams mix and share their passion for the game is unmatched in any sport. There were over 82,000 people in Croke Park with no need for the kind of segregation I’ve seen following Liverpool to Champions League, UEFA, and FA Cup finals.

My cousin flew in from London, too, to see his team get beaten yet again. He doesn’t even remember his team winning an All-Ireland, but he had to be there, as did the old musician friend home from the Canary Islands.

We lost, but we celebrated all that is good about being Irish – and the West of Ireland in particular – in the crowded bars along Dorset Street on Sunday night.

These are the things that dreams are made of, even if our dreams were shattered yet again last weekend.

Galway people love their hurling and we should remember that there are passionate fans in places like Laois and Carlow who would love to see their team take part in just one All-Ireland final at a captivated Croke Park.

I’m so glad that the team got a rousing reception when they returned home. 

They reminded this cynic about so many of the good things associated with life in the West of Ireland, whether it's pucking a ball against a gable wall or spending hours talking about the game we love.

I could have been lying in the Nicaraguan or Spanish sunshine on Sunday, starting a new life, but it just felt right to be in the middle of my crazy, passionate, wounded Tribe, as we learned to cope with the pain of defeat once again. Sure, that's life!

Demonising the downtrodden

http://ciarantierney.com/

It is not nice to be unemployed or trying to set up a new business from scratch in a country in which a senior Government Minister can get away with claiming that some people are “allergic to work”.

 

Neither is it any fun to go through the daily grind of trawling through jobs websites to see if any companies have vacancies which match your skills, full of urgency and anxiety while friends and family tell you how important it is to be patient – that the right job will eventually come your way.

No doubt, Minister for Finance Michael Noonan has not experienced the despair of spending two or three days online without finding any opening to suit his skills. He does not know the frustration of seeing another weekend arrive and not a sign of a new job on the horizon.

The “guilt” of going to the soccer match on a Friday night, knowing that others have done a full week’s work and all your efforts have been in vain.

And, of course, even if he was turfed out of office tomorrow Minister Noonan would still land himself a handsome pension which would see him live in comfort until the end of his days.

I know that he was not generalising about all unemployed people, but his comments were shocking all the same.

Has he ever had the indignity of queuing for two hours to see someone behind a hatch in the Department of Social Protection? Perhaps just to report that, hey presto, he’d managed to get one day’s work this week.

Or wondered what it’s like to feel stigmatised while collecting the weekly payment from the local post master, no matter how genuinely friendly she is as she hands over the small allowance on a Wednesday morning.

I know a neighbour who collects his Jobseekers Benefit at 9am in the hope that he won’t bump into anyone who might recognise him. No matter that he held down a job for over 20 years. Tell him there’s no stigma attached to being on the dole.

How handy too that people at the lowest rung of society are being demonised again, in the week in which lone parents have had their allowances slashed and local authority tenants have had their private details forwarded to Irish Water.

It is no wonder that people feel there are “two Irelands” now. One for the rich elite who have their debts written off, and a parallel universe for those who face losing their homes due to pressure from the banks, or trying to make ends meet on vastly reduced payments for single parent families.

In my experience, Minister Noonan is completely off the mark.

Over the past three months I undertook a Build Your Own Online Business course with ten classmates who were all in their 30s or 40s. Most were changing careers and had been out of work for weeks or months.

The mix of skills and life experiences in the room was incredible. The way we “buzzed” off each other meant that I sometimes learned more about digital marketing from my fellow students than the tutors.

We built our own websites, we shared ideas and advice, and the energy in the room was a joy to behold. Each and every person in the room was mad keen to either set up on their own or to get back to work.

Not one of them enjoyed the weekly ritual of calling into the unemployment office or post office to collect a meagre amount of cash, far less than they would live on if they were lucky enough to have a job.

One of the people on the course has been out of work for five years. It was heartbreaking to hear him describe how many jobs he has applied for and how many courses he has undertaken to improve his graphic design skills.

We have been told that Ireland will have full employment within a couple of years, which is fantastic after seven years of austerity, emigration and pain.

But try trawling through the websites and finding that so many vacancies are “internships” or JobBridge schemes.

A few weeks ago I noticed that one of the richest businessmen in Ireland, who also happens to be a tax exile, was offering an “internship” for a garage forecourt attendant at one of his large chain of petrol stations. 

Just imagine how many new skills a young person would learn during a nine month “internship” filling petrol.

Try telling someone in their 40s that they should work a full week for an employer for their social welfare, plus €50.

I learned a lot about digital marketing from my course.

But I learned an even more valuable lesson over the 12 weeks – there are immensely talented people all around us who have an awful lot to offer and are genuinely anxious to find employment again.

I know Minister Noonan was not talking about all of us, but it was quite insulting to say that people like them are “allergic” to work.

Because there is nothing immoral about being “allergic” to rip-off schemes which allow employers to take advantage of the current jobs market by hiring people to work in garages for €50 a week.

If anything the Minister’s comments are offensive to people who are struggling to make ends meet and mind their mental health in parts of the country which have not been touched by the latest “boom”.

Oh, and we haven’t even mentioned emigration, with so many young Irish people now living in Canada and Australia. Imagine how high the jobless rate would be if Ireland did not have that safety net?

The real scandals in this country relate to dodgy deals done in the corridors of power, lengthy hospital waiting lists, and the preferential treatment of the rich in writing off bank debt. 

Not the small minority of unemployed people who have no interest in ever getting a job.

If Minister Noonan tried to spend six months or a year living on less than €200 a week, he’d soon realise that there are thousands of people all around the country desperately searching for work. Despite all the hype from his Government about the wonderful "recovery" which is now well underway. At least over in that parallel universe of his!