The West’s Awake

Spent the weekend in Spiddal in the Gaeltacht visiting Tinson2.

First, a short moan (I’ve been called that before). The Galway road is about fifteen years behind the Sligo road, in terms of development. While the new Moate by-pass looks about ten minutes away from completion, the road from there to Galway is a nightmare of single-lane, double-white-line dreariness where, if one person wants to drive at 51 miles per hour, that’s what we’ll all do. The people of the West deserve better.

The Cruiscín Lán

For the last two years, when we went to visit Tinson1, we’ve gone down on the actual Saturday morning and come back that evening. This year we decided to go down on Friday, visit T2 on Saturday and stay over again that night. As soon as we decided that I rang An Crúiscín Lán in Spiddal, since I so much wanted to stay there.

I still remember it from family holidays, although they were probably nearly forty years ago. It wasn’t a hotel then, so we stayed in a B&B somewhere nearby, but there would be traditional Irish music, the food was fabulous, and I still have a vivid picture of moonlight playing across the water of Galway Bay out the back window. The trad music is gone now, but the food is still terrific, and the staff are charming and friendly.

And not just there. On each of the three years now we’ve gone for lunch to Paraicín’s, which is a couple of miles on the Galway side of Spiddal, and again the food there is great, and the view is lovely. There is a large shop just outside the town called Standún, like an Avoca or a Kilkenny design, which is visited by tour buses and which sells all the tweed, báinín, Newbridge & Guinness related stuff that you’d expect, but at a reasonable price that you wouldn’t.

In Spiddal itself there is a little craft centre, with shops selling candles, celtic jewellery, weavings and things

The craft centre

like that. One of the shops, An Spailpín Fánach, sells T-Shirts & hoodies with humourous slogans in Irish, and a new T-shirt this year says “Tabhair dom an cáca milis” on the front, and “Ciúnas, bóthar, cailín, bainne” on the back.

In all of these shops, and in the supermarket, and by the bean an tí, we were made welcome. The weather, while not sunny, was warm, and you found yourself really hoping that, even at this late stage, we get some sort of a summer, as these people deserve to do really well.

Tinson2, by the way, is tanned and happy. He has made new friends, tried new foods and new pursuits, and his Irish has improved enormously.

The people who run these schools, and the women who turn over their homes to the children, are providing a wonderful service, not only to our native language, but also to the youth of our country.

Go raibh maith agaibh go léir.

We’ve been very, very bold

The opposition have blamed Brian Cowen. Brian Cowen has blamed the world economy. Everyone has made sure to point out that it wasn’t their fault. Eamon Ryan, though, knows who is to blame for our failing economy – we are. This report is from the Irish Times, as politicians today voted in an 11-week Dáil break.

Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources Eamon Ryan told the House that Irish people had helped burst the Celtic Tiger boom by indulging in bigger houses, cars and holidays.

Mr Ryan said affluent consumer behaviour helped contribute to higher energy prices and a rise in the general cost of living.

“We bought bigger cars for the status that it gave. We built bigger houses with X number of bedrooms and bathrooms, regardless of how we were going to heat these massive properties.

“We flew to New York in a way that turned Madison Avenue into our latest Grafton Street. Let us be honest with ourselves, that is the phenomenon that occurred.”

There you have it. It’s all our fault. Not the Government who solved every potentially embarrassing industrial relations problem over the years by throwing money at it. Not the councils whose land rezonings created instant millionaires. Not Charlie McCreevy, whose single-rate 20% Capital Gains Tax made it more profitable to be a property speculator  than to earn income by working. Not the builders, who took the Government’s largesse, enriched themselves, and then stopped building stone-dead as soon as it looked like their profits might dip. Not the Central Bank, who stood by while the financial institutions bent the lending criteria in every way possible to lend people bigger and bigger mortgages, thus feeding the property inflation flames. Not the financial institutions themselves, who have now panicked and stopped lending to anyone, thus turning a slump instantly into a collapse. It has nothing to do with people abroad – speculators who play with currency rates and oil prices, or idiots who lent ’subprime’ mortgages to people with no jobs and poor credit records, and who found to their amazement that these people didn’t keep up the payments.

So the next time you hear of a young couple who’ve lost their jobs and can’t keep up the repayments on their tiny house miles from Dublin, or of a child still schooled in a prefab because capital grants have been decmated in the Government’s slash-and-burn panic solution, or of a pensioner who can’t afford to heat her home because of the savage price hikes, don’t feel sorry for any of them.

Remember, it’s all their own fault.