Lessons learned since taking redundancy

Just over three years ago, I found myself in a terrible place. The company I worked for was in serious difficulty, my industry in turmoil, and I was offered an opportunity which seemed like a poisoned chalice at the time. Voluntary redundancy? After more than 22 years in the newspaper industry, I was so fearful of change, even if there had always been a wanderlust and a desire to explore new horizons running through my adult life.                                                 

On my last day at work in the Connacht Tribune.

I had even taken a gap year in 2010 which opened me up to a whole new world. Diving in tropical waters off the coast of south-west Thailand or helping out at an educational project in Nicaragua provided wonderful experiences and rich spiritual rewards, but hardly offered the security and material comfort most human beings crave.

Our own history of famine, eviction, and emigration has given Irish people an understandable sense of anxiety about the need to forge out comfortable lifestyles – there are surely deep-rooted reasons for our obsession with the property market – and I found myself paralysed with fear as I stood at a crossroads in my life.

Three years ago, I wanted to run off and fight for social justice in a far-off corner of Central America. And yet I was gripped by a fear of leaving my family and friends behind. It’s amazing how scary freedom can be when it’s offered to you on a plate, as though life is somehow easier if you are chained to a 9 to 5 job and an all-too-familiar routine.

Three years on, I don’t claim to have all the answers or to have somehow, miraculously, found the meaning of life. And yet it has been a time of deep personal awakening which has forced me to re-evaluate what’s important in life.

Two weeks ago, I stood in Dublin at the Irish Blog of the Year awards and realised I had come so far without having a need to travel the world. I may not be making a fortune, but I feel I have learned so much.

Because too many of us can stay in unhappy or unrewarding situations for years or even decades, understandably so when there are mortgages to pay or children to feed, but it’s really sad when we let our lives by governed by a fear of change.

So here, for what it’s worth, are seven lessons learned since I took voluntary redundancy. Sometimes we don’t measure our lives for what they are really worth and winning second prize at the V by Very Irish Blog Awards is not really an important milestone in itself. But the award got me to ponder on what I’ve grasped since October 2014.

My V by Very blog award (Current Affairs)

Dignity is so important: Often we, as human beings, can be harder on ourselves than anyone else could possibly imagine. My first visit to a Social Welfare office after more than 22 years of working was a huge blow to the ego. As I sat in a lengthy queue, waiting for my number to come up, I wanted the ground to swallow me up. I was judging myself a failure for every second of every day, when I suddenly found myself out of work. I learned a lot during that seven months, the pain of unemployment compounded by a ‘superbug’ I picked up in the local hospital.

It was amazing to see some members of staff treat people as less than human beings. After waiting maybe two hours to see someone, perhaps to report that I’d managed to get a couple of days’ freelance work, it was demoralising to be faced with a scornful civil servant who seemed to look down on everyone they met on the other side of the barrier.

There are no votes in complaining about the length of queues at dole offices, but it would be nice to think people might realise that there are real human beings behind the statistics. I met some lovely people sitting in those endless queues and was struck by how infrequently we hear their stories on the national airwaves.  And, of course, dignity works both ways. It’s important to remember that the person on the other side of the window is a human being, too, even if some of them play the part of faceless bureaucrats far too well at times.

Friends and family are important: It’s a cliché, of course, but if you have a really busy life, as I had in the newspaper business, it can be very easy to take things – and especially people – for granted. In my wanderlust, in my desire for sunnier climes, I never really paid enough attention to the good things I already had in my life. The Irish story is very much one of heartbreak and emigration, but there are very good reasons for staying in your home town, village or city. Plus, teaching foreigners English on a part-time basis has given me a whole new appreciation for my city, when I view it through their eyes.

The people you grew up with are the people who will help you out most in your time of need, even if of course it can be great to take off on new adventures and meet a whole new circle of friends. I remember one call out of the blue, on a wet and windy January night, which really lifted my spirits at a time when I was really feeling blue and so uncertain about what was coming next in my life. That call was from somebody I have known all of my life.

So many people are struggling ... how often do we just walk by?

Learn to accept: I have a friend, a yoga teacher, who has a sign inside his isolated rural cottage which proclaims “Relax: nothing is under control”. So many of us cause ourselves so much suffering by trying to control the people or events which occur in our lives. When a former work-mate let me down recently, I took his stab in the back too much to heart. When I didn’t get a particular job, I might mull on it for weeks. Acceptance is key to a happy life. We sometimes forget that we are all going to die and that we should just make the most of our time on this planet, rather than getting caught up in ego-driven disputes and dramas. It’s not what happens to us, but how we deal with events, that counts.

Don’t isolate yourself: Hours spent on Facebook are no substitute for a cup of tea and a chat shared with a good friend. The sudden blow of finding myself out of work was reduced when I would arrange to meet a friend to catch a movie or a football game. I soon realised that friends were going through, or had gone through, similar experiences to me, but perhaps I had not paid enough attention to them because I had such a busy life. A chat in the sauna in my local gym, at the end of a fruitless day job-hunting, might have meant an awful lot more to me than the person I was talking to realised.               

"Life is so much wiser and kinder than
your mind imagines" - Mooji

So many people are struggling: When you take a huge cut in income, when you get out and have really meaningful conversations with people, you soon realise that so many people are struggling to make ends meet. You take a bus instead of a taxi and you find yourself deep in conversation with a person on the margins. You take a ‘zero hours’ contract job and marvel at the people bringing up families on tiny incomes.

You stop and chat to the homeless person on Shop Street and realise he is a real human being who has experienced real suffering and, there but for the grace of God, you could be in his exact situation if you had been thrown the same roll of the dice. I haven’t had a drink for almost a year and my city looks an awful lot different late at night when viewed through sober eyes.

Look after your mental health: Do whatever it takes to relax, treat yourself, and overcome those fearful, negative thoughts. For me, a meditation group gave real solace in the midst of a personal crisis. A weekly yoga class allows me to switch off, forget my problems, and perhaps have a giggle with some people I hardly know.

A swim in the pool or a walk on the Salthill promenade on a winter’s night is far better than lying on the couch, obsessing over what might have been or the uncertainty of what will come next in this crazy adventure called life. If you look after your body and your mind, the problems which seemed insurmountable a week or a month ago suddenly pale into insignificance and perhaps you can even learn to wake up with a smile on your face and to appreciate all the good things in your life.

‘Career’ is not everything: It takes courage, or perhaps madness, to say goodbye to a job or a career you have had for more than two decades. Even if that career is in terminal decline. But the happiest people I have met don’t drive BMWs, golf in the best clubs, or wear a shirt and tie to work. They may be teaching refugees English, helping out in a Direct Provision centre, or running educational projects in some of the poorest places on earth.

A great quote I disovered in the wilds
of Connemara last year

Some of us spend so much energy trying to get to the top of our chosen fields, we never stop to take stock, to see if that is what really makes us tick or happy with life. My city has a reputation as the “graveyard of ambition”, but that could be a good thing, too. Life is about so much more than promotions, bank balances, or getting one over your colleagues in a mad dash to the top.

Some of the happiest people I’ve met are surviving on $2 a day in the poorest neighbourhoods of Nicaragua and it’s easy to forget that if you spend your life judging yourself, or comparing yourself to the people around you.

Life never was meant to be a competition or a race, but it’s easy to forget that when we get caught up in the “politics” of a particular career. It must be awful to spend your life rushing to get to the top of the ladder, only to realise you never wanted to climb that particular ladder in the first place!





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Debasing the prize

“War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.”

In his bleak vision of a totalitarian future, conjured up long before the era of social media and “fake news”, George Orwell depicted with alarming prescience the way in which war could be used to debase the English language.                                               

A little girl takes shelter in war-torn Aleppo

In his dystopian novel, 1984, Orwell did not want to depict his central character, Winston Smith, as a hero, but rather an unfortunate victim who dares to question a terrible system in which language has been twisted far beyond its original meaning.

Political life in Western Europe may not have turned out exactly as Orwell predicted – those who question the authorities are generally not “vaporised” or forced to disappear from sight in 2017 – and yet he would be impressed by the 21st century vocabulary of war.

“How could freedom be slavery or war be peace?” a modern reader might ask.

And yet when you look at terms like “friendly fire”, “carpet bombing”, or “collateral damage” it’s clear that the language we use has been twisted completely to avoid describing the terrible reality of modern warfare.

There is nothing friendly about friendly fire, described as the act of killing people on your “own side”, no carpets involved in carpet bombing, and not much collateral in collateral damage. To those preposterous terms, we might also want to add the term “peace prize”.

In recent years, the notion of a peace prize seems to have lost all meaning.

Last October, for example, the then US Secretary of State, John Kerry, flew into Ireland to collect the Tipperary Peace Award.

Remembering a Syrian child, murdered in a US
air strike, during a protest at Shannon Airport

As he was just two months away from the end of the Obama presidency, you might have thought he had more pressing concerns on his mind. But he was delighted to fly to Ireland to pick up his award.

The then US Secretary of State might have been shocked, even, to get this recognition from the Tipperary Peace Convention as he looked up the tiny village of Aherlow on a map ahead of the awards ceremony.

After Kerry flew into Shannon, effectively a US military base for the past 16 years, before being whisked to Aherlow, it is doubtful that anyone mentioned the seven wars the US had engaged in – and countless lives lost – during the eight years of the Obama administration.

Such talk would hardly have been appropriate in the context of this glittering prize, presented at a star-studded event in rural Tipperary.

There was no mention of the “terror Tuesdays” when President Obama would sit down with his advisers to plan bombings across the globe from the relative comfort of Washington DC.

We tend not to see the victims of those bombings on our TV screens, so their lives don’t matter in the greater scheme of things.

In Tipperary, nobody cared to mention that Obama dropped 26,171 bombs in his last year in office. And it’s doubtful that anyone expressed concern that even a few innocent civilians lost their lives due to these bombings by the administration which won the 2016 Tipperary International Peace Prize.

The Tipperary committee were dazzled to have such a giant on the international stage in their midst last October and Kerry himself was clearly delighted to pick up their award as he came to the end of his term of office.

Local heroes don't make international headlines

It seemed that nobody, apart from a few vocal protesters outside the gates, expressed concern at what it meant to give the representative of such a Government a “peace prize”.

It’s doubtful if the organisers sought feedback from civilians in places like Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, and Syria, where over two million people lost their lives in wars involving the Obama administration.

Just days before John Kerry’s award was announced, 85 people in a tiny Syrian village were murdered in a US air strike in an atrocity which was barely mentioned in the Irish or British media.

John Kerry, the 2016 winner of the controversial
Tipperary Peace Award

Those villagers were not on anyone’s radar when Kerry arrived in Aherlow to collect his prize.

Garnering publicity and rubbing shoulders with the powerful were far more important than showing any understanding of the meaning of the words "peace prize".

So now the Tipperary Peace Award is in the headlines again this month, with Syria’s White Helmets in line to pick up the 2017 prize.

The 3,000 volunteers who constitute the White Helmets are said to have saved more than 60,000 lives since the outbreak of the terrible civil war in Syria in 2011.

An estimated 160 members of the Syria Civil Defence (the 'official' name of the White Helmets), who are based in rebel-held areas, have lost their lives in the civil war.

They have shown great bravery on the front lines in places like Aleppo, a city which faced relentless bombardment from Russian military aircraft last year.

There is no doubt that the men who volunteer for the White Helmets are immensely brave, but does it not devalue their “peace prize” that the 2016 winner was part of an administration which brought so much death and destruction to countries such as Syria and Iraq?

And isn't it amazing that a small committee in Tipperary knows enough about the war in Syria - where the truth is so hard to find - that they can give their coveted "peace prize" to a controversial group which faces questions over its founding, its funding, and even links to radical groups?

Ironically, when John Kerry flew into Shannon in October 2016 he was faced by a small group of protesters who have staged a monthly protest at the airport every month over the past 16 years.

Ireland is supposed to be a “neutral” country and respected academics at Shannonwatch have been highlighting Shannon Airport’s role in the US “war on terror” since 2001.

They have documented every plane carrying US troops and possibly munitions landing at or leaving Shannon over that period, despite indifference or downright hostility from the Irish authorities.

These local heroes give up their free time in a bid to stop bombings in countries such as Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq.

They are kept under surveillance outside the airport fence, while nobody in authority ever stops to search the planes, bringing so much destruction to the Middle East, inside.

Respected academics like Edward Horgan and John Lannon, who are regularly filmed by undercover Gardai just for staging a peaceful monthly protest, might not generate the same international headlines as the White Helmets or John Kerry.

I guess that’s why they are never in the reckoning to pick up a Tipperary “peace prize”.



Ciaran Tierney is a journalist, blogger, and digital storyteller, based in Galway, Ireland. You can check out his Facebook page here

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Deported - for trying to bear witness to degradation

Have a look at this picture of four Irish people arriving back to Dublin after being deported from an international airport. Do they look like terrorists, subversives, or a threat to the State?

Four Irish people arrive  back in Dublin Airport
after beingdeported from Israel

Their “crime” was to attempt to pay a visit to one of the most troubled regions on the planet, in order to bear witness to the terrible reality of daily life for ordinary people on the ground.

They didn’t travel with hatred in their hearts or violent intentions, but to listen to ordinary people and the charities who work among them, show solidarity, and learn from those living and working in a conflict zone.

There was a time when Northern Ireland was a “no-go area” for tourists. If you went to Belfast, according to the prevailing wisdom of the time, you probably needed your head examined.

Nobody ever went there unless they had family or business reasons.

In the early 1990s, I was among a small group of journalists who spent a few days exploring the delights of the beautiful Co Antrim coastline as the area was finally, after so many years of turmoil, beginning to open up to tourism.

Our guide, with typical Northern Irish humour, used to take pleasure from telling us that we were going back to the “most bombed hotel in Europe” every night.

We felt so bad for the staff and management at the Europa Hotel, which had suffered 36 bomb attacks during The Troubles, when another explosion just a few days after our stay greatly hampered the huge strides which were being taken in promoting this wonderful region.

They told us that journalists like us were the only people who ever stayed there, apart from the occasional businessman from the UK or Dublin. They felt we had an important role, to tell their story and the story of their city as it emerged from three decades of conflict.

A journalist colleague told me recently that her mother rang her one day around 1996, to marvel at the fact that she had just seen a couple of Japanese tourists outside City Hall. In its own small way, that was a sign of progress in a divided city

Belfast back then was completely different from the thriving metropolis it is today. The look-out towers, military bases, and armoured tanks ensured that its mean streets were off-limits for all but the bravest of tourists.

Northern Ireland during the Troubles was not quite the equivalent of modern-day Palestine and, even during the worst of the violence, the British authorities did not take measures to prevent international observers or journalists from seeing what was going on.

In Belfast, people on all sides were welcoming towards journalists and international observers in general, happy that we were able to tell the truth we had seen with our own eyes.

International activists at the 'Apartheid Wall' in the
West Bank, 2017. Photo: Ian O Daliagh

But in Palestine, in 2017, it seems that more and more people are being prevented from seeing what’s really happening to those who have been living under an illegal occupation since 1967.

Earlier this month, four Irish people found that they were not welcome at the start of an eight day fact-finding tour.

On their way to meet Israeli and Palestinian NGOs in the West Bank, they never made it to their destination. They were seized by the Israeli Authorities at Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv, questioned, and deported.

It’s amazing this issue did not receive more coverage in the Irish media.

To look at the photo of the four of them arriving back at Dublin Airport, it’s hard to believe that they were considered such a threat to the Israeli State. Not that we should ever judge anyone by his or her appearance, but Elaine Daly, Fidelma Bonass, Joan Nolan, and Stephen McCloskey hardly fit the profile of “terrorist sympathisers”.

One of them, Elaine, has brought 451 people, mostly Irish citizens, to the West Bank on fact-finding missions over the past 11 years. Her only aim is to show people the reality of life under occupation for Palestinians and to let the visitors speak to NGOs and peace-makers on the ground, including organisations from Israel.

Elaine doesn’t preach. She lets her groups make up their own minds about the kind of conditions Palestinians in the West Bank have been living under for the past 50 years.

Elaine was particularly singled out this month because of her history of bringing Irish groups to Palestine. She was deported on the basis of public safety, public security, or public order considerations.

She has since asked the Israeli Embassy in Dublin for clarification, given her record of bringing almost 20 tour groups to the region on fact-finding missions since 2006.

They only intended to be in the West Bank for eight days. All four were travelling with valid Irish passports and they didn’t kick up a fuss upon their return out of concern for the welfare of the 27 other members of their travelling party who were allowed through to the West Bank.

What did they not want them to see? Was it the humiliation of daily checkpoints or the way in which Israelis and Palestinians have different coloured licence plates on their cars?

A Palestinian family home which has been seized
by Israeli settleers, Hebron 2017

Was it the way in which “settlements” (illegal under international law) are encroaching more and more onto Palestinian land, beyond the 1967 borders?

Was it the daily humiliation of strip-searches, checkpoints, and attacks on farmers trying to tend to their olive trees?

Was it the consequences of living beside a huge wall, which in some cases cuts the West Bank farmers off from their own land?

Veteran broadcaster Mike Murphy was one of the 27 who was allowed through after being questioned at Ben Gurion Airport. He was genuinely shocked by the conditions he saw Palestinians living under over the following week.

“The only resistance open to the Palestinian people in the face of their daily degradation and humiliation is simply to remain. The Israelis patently wish them gone,” he wrote in a moving piece in The Irish Times.

At the airport, he had asked Israeli immigration police why his colleagues had been deported.

He was shown a video of a demonstration which showed a couple of Irish people waving a Tricolour and throwing stones at a huge wall. All four had denied attending the regular demonstrations in the village of Bili’in.

On a visit to a small village in the West Bank last month, Galway activist Ian O Dalaigh was told of the intimidation faced by a Palestinian man, Omar Hajajla, whose house happens to be near an illiegal Israeli settlement on occupied land.

There have been repeated attempts to force Omar off the land and he refuses to leave after taking care of it for more than 40 years. It is hard to imagine how much more difficult his life would be if international observers were unable to visit him and bear witness to the pressures he is subjected to at regular intervals.

In Hebron, international visitors to a refugee camp visited a Palestinian house which had been seized by Israeli settlers. Draped in an Israeli flag, it was clear that the original inhabitants were no longer welcome in their own home. There has been a systemic campaign to remove families from similar homes across the region.

One suspects that, deep down, even the Israeli authorities themselves must feel there is something wrong with the daily humiliations Palestinians are subjected to as a result of the 50 year occupation of their land.

Why else would they prevent four peace activists from Ireland from visiting in order to bear witness to the reality of life on the ground in Palestine?

Millions of people have been abused and humiliated on a daily basis for five decades and the cost of a never-ending conflict has taken a terrible toll on everyone involved.

It’s harder to show solidarity with the oppressed, people who are abused and discriminated against every day, when you are not allowed to even visit them to see the stranglehold the occupiers hold over their daily lives.

* If you wish to protest the unjust deportations of four Irish people from Israel this month, you can contact the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Simon Coveney, at minister@dfa.ie.

Ciaran Tierney is a journalist, blogger, and digital storyteller, based in Galway, Ireland. Check out his Facebook page here

Find Ciaran on Twitter, @ciarantierney

At least Leo remembers where he was ... !

If you want to see how modern Ireland works, take a look at the media coverage of the devastating floods across India, Bangladesh, and Nepal last week and contrast them with the aftermath of Hurricane Irma in Florida.                                                    

Flooding in Bangladesh, September 2017

It may have escaped your attention that more than 1,200 people died in South Asia last week, with more than 40 million affected by the severe flooding, but you would never know that if you received all your news from mainstream Irish media.

In Florida, two people had died as of late Monday night, but you heard a lot more about the hurricane in the US than the 18,000 schools which were destroyed or damaged in South Asia, leaving 1.8 million children unable to attend their classes.

It’s quite clear that some lives are far more important – and worthy of reportage – than others.

And that’s just the way President Donald Trump wants you to think, as he and elements of the media divide the world into “us” and “them” while playing on our fears.

Why should we care about “illegal” Mexicans or Muslims when we don’t see them on our TV screens?

If you want to know how Ireland works, have a look at the way in which the anniversary of the appalling terrorist attacks on 9/11 is marked with tribute pieces and eyewitness recollections every September.

Of course, the attacks in September 2001 shocked the globe. They had a particular resonance here in Ireland, where so many people have connections with the United States, but our media only tell a tiny part of the story.

Irish-Americans were rightly proud when Ireland declared a national day of mourning in response to those terrorist attacks.

In terms of Irish media coverage, Syrian lives don't matter much

People should never forget Ground Zero, but don’t we diminish ourselves as human beings when we make it clear that some lost lives are not even worthy of reportage?

Do we question enough? Do our TV news channels really tell us everything that’s going on?

How often do they ask us to stop and think of the innocent lives lost in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen, Pakistan, or Libya as a result of US bombings since 9/11?

How often are we told the human stories behind the estimated 26,000 bombs which were dropped by the US last year? Do they matter?

Or do we not care because these people have been dehumanised by those in comfy offices who plan drone attacks? And by the news editors who decided not to even bother telling us about their bombs?

Take just one example. In July of last year, 85 people lost their lives in the village of Tokhar, in Northern Syria. They were killed by US air strikes, but their deaths did not even merit a mention on the main evening news.

Is it a case that their lives don’t matter? How can we care about them when we aren’t even told about their deaths? Just as we don’t tend to see the victims of the Bangladeshi floods on our TV screens.

If you want to know how modern Ireland works, take a trip down to Shannon Airport on a Sunday afternoon.

Once a month for 16 years now, a small group of peace activists have congregated in rain, wind, or sunshine to highlight the fact that a civilian airport in a ‘neutral’ country has effectively been transformed into a US military base.

You will see special branch Gardai filming the peace activists and jotting down their car registrations.

Funny how they have not once stopped to search one of the US military planes bringing so much death and destruction to towns and cities across Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

But we don’t like to talk about that in Leo Varadkar’s Ireland.

Instead we have a Taoiseach who tweets about where he was when Princess Diana died, 20 years ago, on the day two homeless people died on Irish streets.

We have local politicians who can spend a full meeting arguing over whether nor not they should have prayers before meetings, while the homelessness crisis in their city has reached unprecedented levels.

We have politicians who pay tribute to a retiring Garda Commissioner who was in charge of our police force when a brave, honest whistleblower was branded a sex abuser and almost 1.5 million bogus drink and drug-driving tests were conjured up out of thin air.

US troops at 'neutral' Shannon Airport

We have the retiring managing director of the laughable Irish Water company waving goodbye with €655,000 in salary, severance, and pension contributions in his final year.

This is taxpayers’ money, a reward for leading a venture – mired in controversy from day one – which now won’t even see the light of day.

We have patients lying on trolleys in our public hospitals, makeshift tent villages hidden away behind trees and bushes in our major cities, and an unprecedented rental crisis, but, hell, at least An Taoiseach can remember where he was the day Princess Diana died.

Ciaran Tierney is a journalist, blogger, and content writer, based in Galway, Ireland. He is available for freelance and travel writing. Find him on Facebook here

http://ciarantierney.com/

Find Ciaran Tierney on Twitter, @ciarantierney

To win with class ... !

After 29 years of waiting, many a tear was shed. As the final whistle blew I hugged the big, burly Rahoon man in front of me, before dancing up and down with my brother, and running about five seats down to embrace the boys from Turloughmore. Similar scenes were erupting all around us in the 82,000 capacity stadium.                                                      

A joyous Galway homecoming at Pearse Stadium

After 29 years of heartbreak, Galway were champions. We nearly had to pinch ourselves, we were so overjoyed.

I was a young student, squatting in London, the last time Galway won the Liam McCarthy Cup and I consoled myself that there would be plenty more September victories when I declined my father’s offer of a ticket and a fare home.

Our team was the best in Ireland and I figured there were plenty more glory days ahead, so I delayed my return home for a winter of studies at NUI Galway.

I thought of the old man, aged over 90 now, presumably shedding a few tears at home in Galway City. He brought me to Croke Park when I could barely walk and, as an adult, I used to curse him for this strange, seemingly fatal, and beautiful addiction which can arise such passion on summery Sunday afternoons.

He had followed the team long before I was born, with the same sort of fatal pessimism which was common to our Tribe until about 5pm on Sunday.

I remembered 1980. My brother and I were small boys, held aloft by crying adults amid the din of seeing our side become triumphant for the first time in 57 years. Those tears made a lot more sense now, after so many years of heartbreak of our own.

My brother and I had been to every final Galway had lost since a youthful Conor Hayes bounded up the stairs to collect the Liam McCarthy back in 1988. It only added to the drama and excitement that there was so little between the teams in the end on Sunday.

Celebrating under the Cusack Stand after the game

Poor Waterford! If it had been Kilkenny, or Cork, or Tipp, we might have been less emotional and a bit more joyous. All week, we had consoled ourselves that at least we’d be happy to see them win it if the Tribesmen went and broke our hearts again by losing another final.

Hadn’t they been waiting 58 years? Hadn’t we roared on the likes of Tony Browne, John Mullane, and Michael ‘Brick’ Walsh hoping that they, like us, could end their curse against one of the ‘traditional’ powers?

Galway didn’t score a goal, again, but it didn’t matter when we had such supreme marksmen scattered around the field. They tested our nerves by letting in two goals, but was it ever going to be any other way.

In my previous life as a sports reporter, I had been to many All-Ireland finals. But this was different. I had watched Kilkenny and Cork teams pick up the Cup with the casual appearance of people who were out for an afternoon shopping trip. But what’s rare is wonderful and, all around us, people in maroon were shedding tears of joy.

The sun came out in the closing minutes and many of us were thinking of those who had not lived to see this wonderful day.

I thought of friends in London, Sydney, New York, Vietnam, and Brazil, and how joyful they must have been at that very moment, crammed into Irish bars in their maroon jerseys at all sorts of hours. Few things can unite our global diaspora like an All-Ireland final.

I thought of men like Ollie Canning, Joe Rabbitte, Eugene Cloonan, Kevin Broderick, and Damien Hayes, so many brilliant Galway hurlers who had put their hearts and souls into winning that elusive Celtic Cross. And, as I looked out towards the Hill and the emotional outpouring all around me on the Cusack Stand, there was no shame in our tears.

And nobody wanted to leave. Why would they, when we had been waiting for 29 long years? Those of us who remembered the glory days of 1987 and 1988 were reminded of our mortality, while the youngsters singing on the Hill must have felt they’d never see those kind of days.

It wasn’t just a victory, it was something wondrous achieved with such class both on and off the field.
To have a captain like David Burke, a man who battled back from injury and knew the pain of losing finals, step forward to collect the cup on behalf of the maroon hordes.

A TOUCH OF CLASS ... Galway captain David Burke and Joe Canning
with Margaret Keady, wife of the late Tony Keady, on Sunday

What a magnificent speech he produced, to remember the late Tony Keady, Man of the Match in 1988 and a man who had roared on among us just a few short weeks ago during the semi-final win over Tipperary.

He hoped that the win would give Tony’s wife and children just a little comfort in the midst of their grief, just as the fans had risen en masse to salute their former centre-back six minutes into the game.

What a wondrous gesture to remember the late Niall Donoghue, whose tragic passing in 2013 devastated an entire rural community. In the absolute joy of what once seemed an impossible victory, he reminded us all of the need to look after our mental health.

What a wonderful platform he used to raise this issue in front of hundreds of thousands of TV viewers. Even at the happiest moment of his life, he gave a shout out to those who struggle with demons and the organisations, like Pieta House, who provide wonderful help in the darkest of times.

There’s a lot wrong with Galway GAA – I know too many loyal fans who failed to get tickets for the final – but our young sportsmen did us so proud on Sunday afternoon.

Down on the pitch, our 28-year old ‘superstar’ showed the kind of humility he never gets enough credit for as he embraced Margaret during his captain’s speech. Without Joe Canning, Galway would never have reached this final and now the nay-sayers can no longer slag off the most gifted player of his generation for not having that elusive All-Ireland medal.          

The Galway hurlers undertake a lap of honour following
a thrilling All-Ireland final victory over Waterford at Croke Park

Did he bask in the glory? Of course he did. But he took time out to hug the newly bereaved widow, shared a tear with his parents at the front of the stand, and embraced children with special needs long before he made his way back to the dressing-room.                              

Such class from a young man who has faced far too much derision and begrudgery since his phenomenal talent began to generate headlines a decade ago.

The Galway hurling community is very much like a big family and the family rallied around the Keady family with absolute class throughout the weekend.

It would have been the perfect weekend if the GAA could sort out the ticketing arrangements which somehow leave some genuine supporters out in the cold.

The single mum from East Galway who takes her son to every game or the club hurler in the city who only missed the final deserve better than the people who attended their first and only game of the year on Sunday.

It was embarrassing to note that Galway fans were outnumbered about 4-1 by their Wexford counterparts at the Leinster final in early July.

The 'Maroon Army' took over Hill 16 on Sunday

Too many Irish sports fans tend to jump on bandwagons and it seems hugely unfair that so many tickets for the showpiece occasion of the year don’t go to the people who actually go out and support the teams in the earlier rounds.

Having said that, the Galway team of 2017 conducted themselves with absolute class, both on and off the pitch, throughout the weekend.

What a moment of pure emotion it was to see their wonderful manager Micheal Donoghue embrace his father, Miko, after bringing the Liam McCarthy Cup across the Shannon for the first time in 29 years.

Micheal surrounded himself with a wonderful backroom team and instilled the kind of self-belief in his players which has been lacking in Galway teams for much of the past three decades.

It was a wonderful championship. My favourite memory of all was of the three Tipperary supporters who embraced us and wished us well for the final in the Upper Hogan Stand at the end of a thrilling semi-final in August.                                        

So magnanimous in defeat, such worthy All-Ireland champions, I thought to myself as I remembered that I used to “hate these guys” when Tony Keady was at his pomp back in the 1980s.

Hatreds can disappear with time, old enemies can embrace and share their love of a brilliant game, and sometimes even the bridesmaids can become champions.          

Thank you, Galway hurlers, for filling an entire county with wonder, joy, and pride. And for showing us that some tales of woe and heartbreak really can have wondrous endings when you mix in belief, hard work, and skill.

The West has awoken from its slumber and the new dawn is a joy to behold.

Ciaran Tierney is a journalist, blogger, and digital storyteller, based in Galway, Ireland. Contact him via his website, http;//ciarantierney.com/

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Holding out for heroes

Was Richard ‘Dick’ Dowling a racist? And is it appropriate to commemorate him in the middle of his home town in the West of Ireland?                                                                

White supremacists in the streets of Charlottesville

The thorny issues of white supremacy and slave ownership made their way from Texas to Tuam, Co Galway, last week and the debate has raised some pertinent questions about how Irish people choose their heroes.

Just as quite a few of us are soul-searching over whether or not Conor McGregor is a suitable role model for Irish children – people respect his bravery, but not his bigoted bluster – it may be time to ask whether we have a tendency to hero-worship rather unsavoury characters?

In the West of Ireland, in particular, where the history of poverty, mass emigration, and the decline of our native language can be so sad, we tend to overlook the dark side of those who left oppression and famine behind in order to seek out fame and fortune across the globe.

So what if they were racists or slave-owners, it seems, as long as they were poor Irish people “made good”! Our barren land, which experienced such devastating population decline, was crying out for heroes.

Dick Dowling was enough of a folk hero for a statue to be erected in his honour at Tuam Town Hall in November 1996. People were proud that a starving 19th century refugee became a cult figure in his adopted home of Houston.

When the statue was unveiled, nobody at the ceremony cared to mention that he used to rent slaves, including one who was just 12 years old. That did not fit the narrative of the civic leaders who assembled at the North Galway hall to honour one of their own.

Was he a racist? It was a moot point in 1846, at the height of the Great Famine, when he boarded a ship for Liverpool. He was a traumatised nine year old child whose only concern was survival as he faced a new and frightening world.

Together with his ten year old sister, Honora Dowling, Dick must have been distraught at being separated from his impoverished parents back in Co Galway.

Like so many people across the region, Pat and Bridget Dowling had been forced into the workhouse after being evicted from their farm in Dunmore, just eight miles north of Tuam.

Dick Dowling left extreme poverty in North Galway
to become a Confederate Army war 'hero'

In sending their children to America, their only hope was that they might survive.

By the time they set sail for Liverpool, and then the Mississippi delta, it is doubtful the two terrified Dowling children would have set sight on a black face or considered the terrible injustice of slavery.

Their parents only wanted to give them some sort of a life away from the mass starvation all around them and they trusted their futures to family friends in New Orleans.

The children were part of a mass wave of Irish people who fled the famine for new lives in North America. In Galway, the nearest city to their parents, a hundred ‘coffin ships’ set sail for America in the space of just three years, 1847 to 1850. Many passengers did not survive the voyage.

These ships saved the lives of thousands, as did those which left the port of Liverpool. The population of Ireland fell from eight million in 1846, the year Dick and Honora left, to fewer than four million by 1911.

It’s more than likely they did not speak a word of English before they set sail. Irish was still the dominant language in North Galway at the time.

Had Dick and Honora set sail for New York or Boston, it’s quite possible the Confederate Army Major could have become a war hero on the other side.

By complete chance, a wave of anti-Irish sentiment in New Orleans – when immigrants from Ireland were banned from working on the waterfront – prompted Dick to move on to Texas.

According to the contentious Tuam plaque, Dick Dowling became a “business and civic leader” in the frontier town, which had a population of just 4,000 at the time.

He leased a saloon and became a real estate owner, marrying the daughter of Irish immigrants, but it was his bravery during the US Civil  War which turned him into a folk hero in Texas.

The Celia Griffin Memorial Park in Galway which remembers
all those who took the 'Coffin Ships' to America

At the Battle of Sabine Pass in September 1863, Dowling led a Confederate militia which repulsed an invasion of 5,000 Union troops, capturing two gun boats and several hundred prisoners. He died of yellow fever four years later, at just 30 years of age.

His bravery in battle turned Dowling into a controversial figure on both sides of the Atlantic. Two streets in Houston, Dowling Street and Tuam Street, were named after him. Dowling Street, however, was renamed Emancipation Avenue earlier this year.

A statue in memory of Dowling, erected in 1905, still stands in the city’s Hermann Park. But a school named in his honour was also renamed last year.

When the Tuam plaque was erected in November 1996, nobody mentioned or was told that Dowling used to rent slaves. But, according to records at Rice University, one of the slaves he rented was just 12 years old.

The plaque does not even mention that he fought for the Confederate Army, on the side of the slave-owners, in the Civil War.

To modern eyes, it seems incredible now that an Irish child who fled appalling oppression would find himself on the side of slave-owners.

But as Tim Collins points out in his 2013 biography, Dick Dowling – Galway’s Hero of Confederate Texas, Irish immigrants in the southern US states sympathised with the right to “home rule” during the Civil War.

They had little or no connection with the cities of New York and Boston and, like Dowling, it was only really chance which brought them to the southern states of America.

Times have changed since the city of Houston decided to honour Dowling with a statue in 1905.

Indeed, times have even changed since the good citizens of Tuam decided to erect a plaque in his honour on November 15, 1996.

A full civic reception was held in his honour in the town square where, presumably, nobody had any knowledge of his connections to the slave trade.

Back then, there were no white supremacists parading up and down the streets of Charlottesville, brandishing Nazi flags. People with appalling racist views did not feel emboldened by a US President with questionable views of his own.

Nor did Tuam have the small but thriving African community, including a church, it hosts today.

“What is heroic about supporting slavery?” asked local historian Catherine Corless, who broke the ‘Tuam Babies’ story, today.

A recent Galway vigil in solidarity with Charlottesville

“Our school history books never gave us the full facts behind our heroes. Hence, very few people, including myself were aware of the true intentions of Dick Dowling when he fought for the Confederates.”

There are plans in place for the construction of a new museum in Tuam, a town which has a population of 8,200.

Perhaps that might be a more appropriate place for a plaque commemorating a Confederate Army ‘hero’ than a prominent place at the Town Hall.

Tuam people might once have been proud of Dowling’s success as a businessman in Houston, but they can no longer claim to be oblivious to his murky past as a trader in human beings.

Ciaran Tierney is a journalist, blogger, and digital storyteller, based in Galway, Ireland. You can find his Facebook page here

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This is Galway on a Friday night

The mood was sombre as we left the ground. Galway United had just lost a crucial game to a last minute goal from Dublin club Shamrock Rovers and the unseasonable drizzle matched the mood of the home fans for the walk back to the city centre.                            

Homelessness is far more visible than in the past

It was the first Friday night in months that Eamonn Deacy Park was in darkness as we left the ground following a home game and the shortening days seemed to bring grim tidings of a long winter to come for the city’s soccer club.

Relegation was beckoning and suddenly, given the biting wind and incessant drizzle, optimism was in short supply.

I normally drive to Galway United games and park my car across the river at NUI Galway. On this night, though, I had brought a group of 22 students from Mexico, Switzerland, Spain, and Brazil to the SSE League game, where they had revelled in the atmosphere and the quality of the football, if not quite the result for the home side.

So I zipped up my jacket and braced myself for the 15 minute walk into the wind and rain, towards the city centre where I had arranged to meet an old friend in a pub.

What I didn’t expect to discover was that a whole new “neighbourhood” had popped up in my city, barely ten minutes away from Eyre Square and the pedestrian heart of the city.

The Dyke Road is really green at this time of year, a bush-lined roadway between the soccer ground and the heart of the city.

To our right, amid the overgrown bushes, a number of discarded sleeping bags caught my eye. I had ignored them earlier, given the logistics of arranging match tickets for 22 foreign language students, but now I was in no particular hurry as I made my way back into town.

I heard some voices coming from behind the bushes. Someone, unseen, called out to me from just metres away.

Galway is famous for its festivals in Summer time

Curious now, I stopped and peered in through a gap in the bushes. A man of about my own age approached me.

I asked him politely what he was doing there and he told me this was his “home”. Leaving the road for a few minutes, I walked in through the bushes and discovered a makeshift village of six or seven of the kind of cheap tents you can buy for €25 or €30 in one of the discount supermarkets.

He told me that there were a dozen people living there and I felt ashamed that I knew nothing about this makeshift “community” which had popped up just ten minutes from the heart of my city.

I asked him if he was alright and told him I didn’t smoke when he asked me politely for a cigarette. There seemed to be a look of resignation in his weather-beaten face and despair in his quiet voice as I surveyed his appalling living conditions for just a few brief moments.

This was Galway in 2017, the kind of place the tourists never see, and it made me wonder how many other people scattered throughout the margins of my city were living in similar conditions just minutes from prying eyes.

How many were sleeping on friends’ couches or in their cars because the hostels were full? How safe did these people feel, sleeping in tents so near to the city’s main thoroughfare?

And so I walked on into the city centre, where my friend had arranged to meet for a post-game drink before driving home to his small town an hour from Galway.

It's "normal" now to see homeless people on the streets
of Irish cities throughout the year.

With him was another man I had met once or twice before. Also about my own age, he began to question me urgently about the rental situation in the city.

On strong medication for the past decade, the man is desperately seeking a change. He wants to move out of the small town where he can’t find any employment opportunities, where he feels trapped, but feels he is stuck in limbo and can’t move on with his life.

He has battled mental health problems for a long time and now feels it’s time to move on. He would love to get a job in the city, to have something akin to a normal life, and I can see despair on his face when I tell him it costs about €350 per month now to rent a room in my city.

How could he afford that? he wondered. How could he get a job when a decent place to live is beyond his means?

He wants to live a fruitful, meaningful life, but he’s in a spiral of unemployment and broken dreams, surrounded by people in the same predicament as him. Although he barely knows me, he confides that he’s trying desperately to get off medication and that it has hampered his ability to regain control of his life.

I feel bad. I feel as though I’m destroying his dream, even with a brief little chat about the rental situation in my city. And I wonder how hard he would struggle to return to the jobs market, given how the medication has “numbed” him out for years now.

I feel desperately sad to see how sad he is about his prospects of getting a job or a flat in Galway. The “half-way house” he lives in is keeping him off the streets, which he is thankful for, but things most of us take for granted (a job, independence, a girlfriend) seem totally beyond his reach.

Surely, in 2017, “numbing” people out of pain because they have had mental health difficulties in the past is just not good enough. Especially if they really want to make changes in their lives.
I feel apologetic as we bid our goodbyes.

I’m not drinking tonight, as I left my car in Salthill an hour before the football game. So I take my leave after almost two hours in the pub and make my way through the city centre.

In Forster Street, there are bodies huddled in doorways, beside some of the city’s busiest and most trendy pubs. Their faces covered under hoods, people have laid their sleeping bags out as they prepare for an uncomfortable night’s sleep.                              

Students enjoying the Galway Untied game on Friday,
just metres from where people are living in makeshift tents

In Eyre Square, two young men in their early 20s shout loudly to each other as they urinate in full view of a group of appalled Swiss or German tourists. They are oblivious to the disapproving eyes.

I cross the road, where three young women are alighting loudly from a taxi. Already drunk, one of them clutches a drink in her right hand. Excited, perhaps, by the prospect of a night out in one of the city’s clubs, they shout loudly at each other. One of them racially abuses the cab driver before heading off into the night.

The driver glances at me for just a brief moment, shrugs, and drives off to pick up his next fare. His reaction seems to make it clear that this is not an isolated incident on a weekend night.

At the corner of Eglington Street, it seems there is a riot going on. Not to worry, it’s just a group of young people socialising loudly outside one of the city’s biggest bars.

I’m no prude. I used to love socialising in the city centre late at night in my 20s and 30s. But trying to walk by a large group of people who are clearly out of their minds with alcohol is no fun if you are completely sober and walking alone on a Friday night.

I turn down Shop Street, a place which tourists tell me they find scary in the early hours. The place is buzzing with activity, as young people make their way towards the city’s late night bars and clubs. It will be heaving again when the clubs empty out around 2.30am.

I have to admit I haven’t been here for a while in the early hours. On the city’s main thoroughfare, in the heart of the pedestrian zone, I’m quite shocked to see quite a few people bedding down in doorways on either side of the street.

A couple from Eastern Europe seem oblivious to the passing eyes as they argue loudly while laying out their sleeping materials for the night. Tomorrow, people will be drinking lattes right next to the place they now call “home” for the night.

Just 50 metres away, some poor woman is sleeping out on her own. I don’t want to appear too curious, to discover her nationality. A kindly passer-by is down on his knees, asking her if she is ok, and I wonder what circumstances led her to sleep in a shop doorway in my wet and windy city, of all places, in August 2017.

I wonder how she will sleep when the pubs empty out at 2 or 2.30am and the young revellers make their way to the fast food premises. Will she face verbal or physical abuse? It’s already cold and wet in August, but will she still be here in November when the conditions will be much worse?

How did it come to this? That a little makeshift village has sprung up within a ten minute walk of the city centre or that people have no option but to bed down in shop doorways through the night?

That young revellers now see it as “normal” to come across people lying outside under the elements as they make their way to and from the late night clubs?

When did scenes like this become "normal" in Ireland? 

This is Galway, in August 2017. We have just had an amazing festival season, yet the sad underbelly is impossible to ignore if you venture into the city at night.

Why isn’t there more of an uproar in a place where the City Council can devote an entire meeting to whether or not they should say a prayer before their monthly meetings?

Yes, I felt like a bit of a prude on Friday; or a little naïve, to have been so oblivious to the extent of the homelessness problem in my city right now.

 But the City of the Tribes did not feel like the most welcoming place for everyone when viewed through sober eyes on a cold and wet Friday night.

Ciaran Tierney is a journalist, blogger, and digital storyteller, based in Galway, Ireland. You can find his Facebook page here

Find Ciaran Tierney on Twitter: @ciarantierney