A nation divided by tribalism outsources its politics to Europe

A total of 90% of Irish law now comes from Europe, according to an expert on a radio programme. 90%. Only 10% of what we elect TDs to do is actually being done in this country. Just as companies outsource their manufacturing to China, we as a nation have outsourced our legislating to Brussels and Strasbourg.

We do the 10% to stay in practice. To keep our hand in. So if it’s discovered, as it was last week, that half the legislation governing healthcare in Ireland was built on a faultline in the constitution, we can lash in there and produce a legislative patch to keep Mary Harney in business.

We do displacement activity, to distract from the fact that the main business has moved to another plant, overseas. Displacement activities like the Dáil committee, which provides paperwork, media coverage, extra cash in the back pocket and the hope that, over time, a participating TD might become as forensic and fearsome a committee combat commander such as FG’s Michael Noonan.

According to the book that will be found under every brainbox’s tree this Christmas, Leinster House denizens shouldn’t be killing themselves trying to convince us they’re busy about legislative things at all. Marc Coleman’s The Best is Yet to Come, says Ireland needs to get over Tip O’Neill’s famous dictum “all politics is local”. Coleman would hold that it has become way too local to be effective. A country mile too local. Tribal, in fact.

Coleman’s take on the problems of modern Ireland is that we are a nation divided by tribalism.

“If the tribes are even achieving something that is in their own interest,” he says, “it might not be so laughable. But, by destroying the ability of central government to rule effectively, the tribes are only undoing themselves. And they are undoing the future”.

The “tribes” are the local political interests who must be placated, whether it’s by delaying the closure or downgrading of the local hospital or — he maintains — by decentralisation. The plan to bring FÁS to Birr, Co Offaly, he singles out as a particularly pointless example. It may have some appeal as an improvement to the quality of life of the public servants who choose to move, he admits, because of the low house prices in the area, the fine scenery and the adjacency to mountains, but, these advantages apart, is a move without merit driven by the need to placate the local tribe.

“Like Stalin’s attempt to make rivers run backwards,” he writes, “decentralisation is bringing policy implementation activities to small towns that benefit little from them. State-owned activity is low rather than high technology, and bureaucratic rather than entrepreneurial. Bringing highly paid public service jobs to small towns also makes it tougher for the private sector to recruit good staff. It raises house prices for locals in modestly paid employment. Given the essential nature of interaction between public servants of differing disciplines and perspectives, it also makes it harder for them to do their job.”

It can be argued most interaction between public servants is by phone and email, rather than face-to-face brainstorming. But his argument about tribalism is wider than decentralisation. It’s based on the premise that, no matter how much a government wishes to concentrate on the national good, every five years, it loses the plot and goes native, bribing local tribes in order to get back into office. Or, in some cases, bribing local tribes with promises AFTER the election in order to get the support of individuals like Jackie Healy-Rae.

Now, the towns which have benefited from the disproportionate spend wrung from the exchequer by Healy-Rae would, of course, maintain that they got what was long overdue anyway, and that disproportionality in central expenditure had gone the other way for several decades. The “tribes” involved would see the influence of Fianna Fáil DNA Independents as a valid corrective to the Dublin-centred thinking which might otherwise, they believe, tilt money and infrastructure even more into the counter-productively congested areas around Dublin.

It could also be said that what Marc Coleman portrays as a tribalism that’s bending the ability of the legislature out of shape is a uniquely empowered Irish mistrust of bureaucracy. Better the bureaucracy we know (like the local Health Board) and can influence to a massive grey entity like the HSE that nobody seems to be able to influence.

This mistrust is always — and inevitably — portrayed pejoratively by Big Picture visionary planners: here we are, coming up with institutions and approaches that match the best international practice, and progress gets held up for years by troglodytes who refuse to accept the scientific evidence about incinerators or who get hung up on a few oul’ pre-historic artefacts and stand in the way of productivity and progress.

The opposition to any centrally planned move is always portrayed as selfish headbangers with a strong covert Sinn Féin leadership. Why can’t they move away from their squalid little local concerns and join the national consensus?

If humans were regarded — by the EU and others — the way animals are now regarded, these local tribes would be protected species, demonstrating a valid form of vivid diversity so necessary if we’re not all to end up like terra cotta soldiers, all alike and marching obediently while staying in the same place.

Rejecting consensus is anti-democratic. It can also be a strong survival mechanism. I speak as one of a tribe you don’t hear much from these days. The Huguenots. Persecuted, highly skilled Protestants who came to Ireland for the freedom to practice their religion without hindrance.

One of those Huguenot families, arriving in Ireland around the time of the Great Famine, was called Van Proen. They arrived in an Ireland where the ruling classes were Protestant, where the nearly-ruling classes were “Castle Catholics” who kept their rosaries to themselves and made career progress by shutting up about their religion. Around the time they immigrated, a forceful form of conversion was prevalent, with starving Catholics being asked to abjure their faith by the promise of food.

Into that context came the Protestant Van Proens, who almost immediately became Catholic. Go figure. My great-great grandparents preferred perversity to progress.

However, the fact is that you don’t meet many Huguenots these days. They contributed a lovely little graveyard to Dublin and a bunch of weaving skills nobody uses any more. They are a footnote.

Tribes who perversely fight the national consensus may prevent the orderly planning Marc Coleman’s delightful book calls for.

But they don’t become footnotes. And would we be Ireland without them?

* The Best is Yet to Come, by Marc Coleman, is published by Blackhall Publishing.