Nanny state stumbles over gate safety

ONE WONDERS how far the nanny state can go in terms of nanny-ing us. I was amazed when an obliging digger driver said he couldn’t dig a pond deeper than two feet in our yard.

The reason? Health and Safety. He couldn’t dig deeper for fear a child would fall in and drown. I remarked that we’d raised seven children without drowning one of them. We’d hardly start now.

Last month, I was trying to get a modest length of estate fencing. This fencing is encountered in parks and is made of iron, painted black. It stands 39 inches high with a round top rail, four flat rails beneath and supporting posts every four feet. Seeking a supplier, I phoned Killarney National Park and asked where they got theirs.

Mr Pat Foley, the Park spokesman, was unable to disclose this information. Why? The Health and Safety Authority had declared estate fencing a public hazard and the Park could not aid and abet its use. In future, when park fencing had to be removed, it could not be replaced. Children might hurt themselves climbing it. To avoid such exigencies, the distinctive railing that has graced the verdant park lands of Muckross House and lined the paths of the National Park for generations must be committed to the smelter.

As sections deteriorate, they will be replaced by 1.1m high fencing with vertical bars. Prisons have vertical bars. I cannot see the new design having anything of the former’s sweeping, see-through elegance.

Recently, apparently some serviceable fencing had to be taken up so as to enlarge a car park. Could I buy some of this? I asked Mr Foley. No: if someone hurt themselves on it, his department might be responsible.

What if I came with a trailer and took it away, gratis? Surely, recycling it would be a worthy energy-saving and conservation exercise and, if no money changed hands, the department couldn’t be held responsible. No: if injury was later incurred, the department might be sued.

The legislation isn’t Mr Foley’s doing. It is Health and Safety that has condemned this lovely fencing to oblivion. In insuring that removed sections are put beyond use (the bars and rails begin to sound like lethal weapons) Mr Foley has to be firm and unbending. I understand the constraints under which he works. He must watch the Park Department’s ass, and he is doing so conscientiously. Meanwhile, the Health and Safety Authority is staffed, no doubt, by honourable men but one wonders if they are creating work.

They proscribe what they perceive as dangerous. Deep holes dug in gardens. Beautiful pitch-pine doors in a Victorian convent which have to be replaced with ugly fire doors.

Now, common sense would say that parents would stop their children drowning in holes in gardens, but apparently they can’t be trusted to do so. The said convent hasn’t burned down in 200 years but, nevertheless, the Nanny Department dictates that its aesthetic and spiritual integrity must be compromised. How many people have broken and arm or a leg over a piece of Muckross fence? There can’t have been many. But just in case, for all its elegance, it must go.

Increasingly, eight-foot high chain-link surrounds private estates and public areas. Planning authorities insist on it in case children might fall down slopes, wander onto streets or climb other, more aesthetic, fencing.

How did we survive at all, when we were young? We scaled orchard walls, climbed trees, swam in rivers, whipped wooden tops, used catapults, boated without life-jackets, rode motorcycles without helmets. And our feckless parents allowed us do such things! It is ironic that while we Irish at home must be nannied, we somehow manage, when on holidays in Spain, to negotiate the multiple unmarked holes, protruding pipes, broken pavings and other life-threatening hazards of the Spanish streets.

In Spain, there is no nanny society and you can whistle for compensation if you fall off a railing in the park. Like in Ireland years ago, those who venture out of doors are expected to keep their eyes open. And there’s nothing wrong with that.