A year of change tinged with loss

WERE it not for the visits of Queen Elizabeth II and US President Barack Obama to Ireland, 2011 would have been the bleakest of years, blighted by unemployment, mass emigration, harsh austerity measures, another hairshirt budget and a deep sense of crisis across the eurozone.

Both at home and abroad, it has been a time of chaos and turbulence. The Arab Spring saw an end to Muammar Gaddafi’s tyrannical dictatorship in Libya. And after endless clerical sex abuse scandals, the Government took the unprecedented step of closing the Irish embassy at the Vatican following Taoiseach Enda Kenny’s lambasting of Rome’s mishandling of a tragic scenario.

There was a welcome ray of sunshine when the Queen and then-president Mary McAleese appeared side by side at Áras an Uachtaráin. It was a deeply psychological and symbolic moment, an acknowledgment by the British head of state that she was in Ireland as a visitor, a guest of the Irish head of state, a meeting of equals.

Her visit was a breathtaking success, crowned by a happy stroll through Cork’s English Market. And who could forget the moment she bowed her head in sorrow at the Garden of Remembrance in Dublin as she recalled the tangled history of British and Irish relations?

Politically, it was a year democracy reigned supreme and angry voters transformed the political landscape by kicking Fianna Fáil out of office. People had a bellyful of arrogance and self-importance from government ministers out of touch with the public. It would be the understatement of the year to say taoiseach Brian Cowen had distanced himself from the electorate right up to the minute he resigned with his government in shambles.

The concept of public service that once characterised the country’s biggest political organisation had long been supplanted by motives of self-interest. Ever since the Haughey era, a whiff of corruption has tainted Fianna Fáil. And they have yet to exorcise the spectre of extravagant Charvais shirts and costly vintage wines purchased at the taxpayers’ expense, not to mention blank cheques, brown envelopes, nod-and-wink deals, cronyism, dig-outs and financial amnesia at the highest level.

This reflects the enormity of the challenge confronting leader Micheál Martin as he strives to restore the fortunes of a party decimated in February’s general election. In sharp contrast, for Mr Kenny the election was a spectacular success. Giving force to democracy the voters used the ballot box to sweep Fine Gael into power as the senior partner of a Coalition with Labour, whose leader Eamon Gilmore also tasted sweet success in the hugely popular victory of Michael D Higgins as President.

Sadly, 2011 also marked the passing of two outstanding politicians — former taoiseach Garret FitzGerald, a kind, decent and caring man, and ex-finance minister Brian Lenihan, a man with all the qualities to be taoiseach, had he not been taken before his time by cancer at the age of 52.