Irish Examiner view: St Patrick's Day parades let us celebrate communities
Isabelle O’Brien, Stephanie Desmond, and Erin O’Brien enjoying the 2025 parade in Cork on St Patrick’s Day in 2025. File picture: Darragh Kane
Hundreds of thousands of people will today brave the elements to watch, or take part in, St Patrick’s Day parades in towns and villages up and down the country.
Some of the parades will be modest affairs, featuring perhaps, bedraggled banners hoisted by youngsters kitted out in local clubs’ colours, or shivering dancers or majorettes smiling through their well-rehearsed routines. Others will offer more sophisticated fare, with elaborate floats, professional entertainers, and vibrant music troupes that would be a credit to a Mardi Gras celebration.
The cynics will stay home and scoff at the idea that we have anything to celebrate, or bemoan the notion that it is all a show for the tourists and an excuse for drink-fuelled partying. The cynics would be wrong.
Certainly, we have problems — too many families suffering financial hardship, not enough homes for all who need them, chronic shortages of certain health and education services, and the myriad stresses and strains of getting by in a turbulent world.
However, we do have reasons to celebrate. The parades themselves are proof of the commitment of the volunteers on which all our communities are built. Today, you’ll see children proudly representing their sports clubs; there will be scouts and girl guides; town bands and school bands; tidy towns committees; drama groups; environmental protection groups; and all manner of other groups without whom our lives would be considerably poorer.
Witness, too, the overseas celebrations of St Patrick’s Day and the enthusiasm with which the non-Irish and the Irish abroad, from Philadelphia to Tokyo, embrace the chance to celebrate our patron saint’s day. This should be an opportunity for us to reflect on whatever values they see in Irishness that many of us neither see nor appreciate.
It will be much later today before we learn whether another St Patrick’s Day staple, the Taoiseach’s visit to the White House, gives us any cause for celebration. If last year’s meeting between Taoiseach Micheál Martin and US president Donald Trump was preceded by trepidation, this year’s event takes place in an even more charged and volatile atmosphere.
The issues that dominated agendas this time last year have been overtaken by the US- and Israel-led war on Iran. It remains to be seen whether the Taoiseach will offer even a mild rebuke over what is widely considered a war launched outside the bounds of international law.
Given the position Trump now finds himself in, the value of any such rebuke is questionable. In the US, opposition to the war among Republicans is growing. Outside it, countries including France, Germany, Australia, and Japan have rejected Trump’s calls to enter the war by sending ships to the Strait of Hormuz.
Perhaps the best we can hope for from today’s meeting is that Trump has enough on his mind without picking a fight with the Irish on St Patrick’s Day.
She brought audiences to tears with her portrayal of a heartbroken mother, and now Jessie Buckley has evoked a wave of pride and joy with her historic Oscar win.
President Catherine Connolly led the tributes, saying the Academy Award was “a thoroughly deserved testament” not just to Ms Buckley’s performance in Hamnet but to her performances in both film and on stage across her career to date.
However, the warmth and admiration for the Kerry woman is not entirely explained by her prodigious talent or hard work. It is clear from interviews with former teachers, neighbours, extended family, and childhood friends that they have always held Buckley in high regard, and are quick to speak warmly of her as a decent, fun-loving person who has very much stayed close to her roots.
The rest of us have caught a glimpse of that person through her interviews and acceptance speeches during an extraordinarily successful awards season: The actress had already picked up a Bafta, a Golden Globe, and an Ifta. Her speech at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles was as joyful, gracious, generous, and enthusiastic as we have come to expect. In it, she thanked her husband and her baby daughter and spoke of the gift of motherhood; she thanked the family who had “built” her, and her parents for encouraging their children to have dreams and to follow them. Previously, she has acknowledged in her speeches the support she received from fellow actors, cast and crew members.
It is uplifting to witness Buckley’s genuine enthusiasm and joy in her work. We hope she continues to enjoy her craft so we can look forward to seeing her perform for years to come.
The speed with which this country could be brought to its knees by a hybrid attack, involving both cyber and physical assaults, on our electricity grid is nothing short of terrifying.
Cormac O’Keeffe’s report in this newspaper yesterday described how experts in the Defence Forces have warned that such an attack could lead to local and national electricity blackouts within two hours.
Within six hours, it could hit hospitals and water pumping stations and overwhelm emergency communications. Within two days, water from our taps could be down to a trickle, fuel rationing would likely be introduced, food chains would begin to be disrupted, and Government authority would be undermined.
While this doomsday scenario, outlined by a Defence Forces team, related to possible outcomes of an attack on a critical electricity transformer, the team also pointed to the serious consequences arising from vulnerabilities in other elements of our infrastructure.
The narrowness of the entry points to our three major ports, for example, means that a sunk ship could block one, disrupting food supplies within days and oil supplies within three weeks.
Sub-sea cables and pipelines are particularly vulnerable to Russian attack, and our transport networks are far from secure against bad actors who want to sow chaos.
Thankfully, the kind of hybrid attack described by the Defence Forces experts has not yet happened, although the cyber attack on the HSE during the height of the covid pandemic in 2021 gave us an indication that Ireland is viewed by some as a target.
Thus, it is with great interest that we await the imminent publication by the Department of Defence of the country’s first critical entities strategy. This will map out the critical national infrastructure and identify the risks. Most importantly, it will set out the State’s responses to those risks.
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