How to read the symptoms of a national disease

EXIT polls suggested that the Sinn Féin surge in the recent local elections was attributable in part to young, employed males, mainly from marginalised districts.

SF supporters, for reasons mainly but not entirely to do with an irrelevant and inappropriate Northern agenda, entered the count brandishing the tricolor.

There is only one national flag south of the Border - and it does not belong to or need to be flown here by any one political tribe.

There is, however, another motivation, maybe not understood even by those involved.

There is a sickness at the heart of our society, and in few sectors are the symptoms more obvious than among young males. They are not of any particular political affiliation, or from any socioeconomic group, or any geographical location. Nor is it restricted to young males.

One aspect of this phenomenon is the widespread feeling that we do not belong to a republic which cherishes all the children of the nation equally.

It is not just a question of hospital trolleys, of disparate educational and therefore socio-economic opportunities, of the inability of a growing segment of the population to acquire the housing which is their right, of the deterioration in the quality of life, of the pre-eminence of greed and selfishness.

It is a sense that our ‘community’ is being destroyed. Values - and not just simplistic, fuddy-duddy ‘conservative’ values - are disappearing and are being replaced by a moral vacuum. The centre of the golden apple is rotten.

In this context, it seems that elements of the current Government (not restricted to one of the coalition partners) are determined to dismantle not just the material products of our struggle for independence such as certain semi-states and community services but more fundamental symbols of our identity.

The proposal to ram a motorway through the Tara/Skryne valley is of such fundamental symbolic importance. That area is, at one level, no more than one patch of physical space which, on its own, should not necessarily stand in the way of the reasonable material advancement of living people in the 21st century. However, there is possibly no other similar plot of land which reminds us so deeply of our common origin.

Tara/Skryne focuses our need for a symbol of our need to be and to act together as a people.

The contempt and indifference of our rulers towards it displays a contempt and indifference towards us as a nation and a people.

Maurice O’Connell

19, Forge Park

Oakpark

Tralee

Co Kerry