There’s a lot of political talk beyond the Pale — but is anyone listening?

TRYING to trace the national conversation, I spoke to some of the nation’s great listeners. The hosts of Ireland’s most tuned-into local radio talk programmes — the ones that outpace locally, the big names and stations nationally. One of those conversations was on air on Monday morning when I chatted with Joe Finnegan on Shannonside Radio.

He was curious to talk to a past political practitioner about why ministers swarm en masse across the countryside during elections. He had obviously picked up more than a bit of annoyance about ensuing traffic jams in small towns. There was grumpiness about political posters too.

We think in story boards not pie charts. We remember stories better than facts. There is a lot of that in our situation now. We all have our stories, but few of us feel any commensurate obligation to have our facts aligned. We can tweet, Facebook, call Joe Duffy on Liveline or any number of talk shows on local radio, but talking at people is no substitute for being listened to. Most of the noise up in the ether, is not conversation; it’s just sounding off. It provides passing relief from anger but no lasting satisfaction at all.

Straight into light and airy mode with Finnegan I pattered on about people, whatever their mood, expecting to see their politicians and wanting to be asked for their vote personally. The posters add a bit of carnival, and get faces known. I have a sense now, there were not many takers for the lite mood. It’s bloody cantankerous out there.

Three other well-known names on local radio flagship programmes around the country, chatted to me, after I talked on air to Finnegan. I was curious to know if at the coalface locally, they felt national media is missing the plot; in a bubble of its own methane, so to speak.

The answer I got, from my geographically varied, but otherwise unscientific research was “no”. They aren’t picking up locally on major issues that are being ignored by the national media. Yes there are specific local issues here and there that are not national, but otherwise the conversation is much the same. Local property tax, water charges, unemployment and a deep, deep disconnect with the whole political game. One bit of contrary feedback though. Talk of recovery may be credible in Dublin and a few other large urban centres. Beyond that, it’s largely invisible and talk of it is met with incredulity. Interesting then the way facts and stories diverge. The facts are that unemployment is coming down everywhere. But it hasn’t come down enough in a lot of places for the story to change.

And into the mix of the story are additional charges and a sense of lost competence and direction at the centre. Add in whatever you are having yourself, stir and it’s instantaneously noxious.

The sense I got from the highly-trained antennae of local radio was generally of popular disgruntlement, and disengagement. The possibility of a low turnout was mentioned more than once. Who that will favour is anyone’s guess. And yes the posters are the source of a lot of petty annoyance, a sure sign of an electorate that got out on the wrong side of the bed.

Another part of the disconnect that was coming across clearly on local radio was the widespread sense of the irrelevance of local councils and local councillors. As one of my interlocutors pointed out, the borough councils went out with barely a whimper of protest. Once prestigious, substantive institutions, laden with a history people might be proud of, their lack of relevance in the end made them surplus to requirements.

National issues are reported to be highly prevalent in these local elections. If local authorities are historically largely powerless, the European Parliament is increasingly powerful. My sample of the opinion-makers who work to put your opinions on air was fairly clear. It’s an almost European issue-free zone out there. Ironically local councils are going to get some significant powers and may, if still anaemic, be more influential than any time since the abolition of domestic rates after the 1977 general election.

Local councillors will be utterly powerless to do anything about water charges, so any candidate offering relief on that front can be safely told to save their breath to cool their porridge. But on the local property tax, councillors will be able to vary it up or down by 15% within an approved band. This won’t be a free kick of course. Council budgets will have to be balanced.

Local property tax can be reduced, but services may have to be cut to match. So before you shoo them off the door step, ask some hard questions about whether they will reduce your property tax, then ask the harder ones about what services may have to be cut to accommodate the cut. If it all sounds too good to be true, it probably is. The stories coming back are of houses with the lights on, the telly on, people inside and nobody bothered to come out and interrogate the candidates on the facts.

Inside they feel that nobody has bothered to listen to their story. There is a deeply-wounded disconnect out in our society and this campaign is not proving to be a poultice for it.

Rural policing, medical cards, the closure of post offices and the old refrain of the late John Healy: “No one shouted stop”, are all out there as issues. Alan Shatter, apparently has melted away, but not before damage was done. Strange then how this national conversation is entering its final week. Stranger still how with our strong bond to the locality, we lack the means to politically invest effectively locally.

I live off Manor Street in Dublin’s North inner city. It’s no Champs-Élysées to be sure. But rising up from an ancient fording point across the Liffey, it is the old royal road to Tara. Then it became the main street of ‘Cow Town’. Cattle beefed to the heels from Meath and across the midlands were brought into the city to be bought and butchered there.

A maze of small artisan houses, modern apartments, old and new; it’s home. Like every inner city area it has enormous challenges. But the possibilities are fairly obvious too. The problem is not that I am not taking local government seriously, it is that most of the candidates think they are in a heat of the Rose of Tralee. They don’t have a plan, they just want to be there: decent, well-intentioned, largely aimless and if elected likely to be almost wholly ineffective.

Management will go on managing, councillors will go on complaining and the sense of the local, the most intense sense of Irish identity will remain politically under-exploited. It’s a pity for Cow Town, and every other town too.