Delugions
It's now a couple of days since John Gormley announced new policies as regards half the country being underwater. Quite apart from him being the Minister for the Environment, you'd think that flooding due to crazy weather is sort of a Green Party thing.
To be absolutely fair, conflating the two events is a little unfair; the guidelines have clearly been a long time in the making, and a very thorough document the report is too (you can read it here, if you're so inclined, although "Don't let people build in flood plains" is a decent summary). Credit the Greens where it's due; any documents they have produced as regards planning and building are well-drafted and well-grounded. The revised Building Control Act and Regulations, for example, are excellent pieces of legislation. If they've presented this as a response to the floods, then it's difficult to blame them; when cities and towns are ravaged by rainfall, it must be nice to show you've been thinking about it all along.
Still, if the Guidelines are fine on their own merits, the response has two blinding weaknesses*.
One: the overwhelming majority of buildings in Ireland have, y'know, already been built. Yay for for getting it right in the future, but there's several million buildings in existence with no defence of flooding whatsoever. There's little enough that can be done about that, not without massive public expenditure. Still, an alteration to the Building Regulations, asking that all Buildings be cogniscant of flood risk, wouldn't do any harm at all. Many of the flooded areas in Ireland weren't "flood plains**", as such; it is possible to build in flooding-vulnerable areas, with certain safeguards (it's common in some American states, where houses are habitually raised about a foot off the ground). If there's already houses in an area vulnerable to infrequent flooding, then it seems acceptable to add more, provided they're adequately safeguarded. It also makes sense to put a code of practice into place for when existing houses, in flood plains, are extended or modified. Still, if another flood happens to come along, it's unlikely to benefit that many buildings.
There are also collective methods of protection against flooding, but most of them are massively expensive. At least some of the flooding was due to inadequate or badly-maintained drainage. Dredging lakes, or building artificial levées and flood barriers, does work to an extent, but it's a fair investment and more complex than it sounds. Creating artificial flood plains is theoretically possible, and has been done elsewhere, but the chances of this happening on a large scale are nil; it would be a huge infrastructural project, and you don't get many of them in a recession.
In other words, while this document is pretty well-drafted, it's about twenty years too late. For his next trick, John Gormley will bail out the Titanic with a teaspoon.
The second problem, if anything, is more serious; while we live in a system where local councillors can overrule planners, the document means nothing anyway. There are enough loose clauses in the document to allow any unscrupulous councillor to overrule it whenever they see it as convenient. For example, take this sentence:
"Planning authorities will ensure that development is not permitted in areas of flood risk, particularly floodplains, except where there are no suitable alternative sites available in areas at lower risk that are consistent with the objectives of proper planning and sustainable development."
Put Michael Healy-Rae in a room with that, and he'll have permitted a housing estate by a river quicker than you can say "gombeen". The document is written for planners, but planners don't make all the decisions. It's a culture that we've created; we're uncomfortable with the concept of planning in this country, particularly in rural areas. This isn't surprising - land has been important in the national psyche for centuries, and the it's-my-land-I'll-do-what-I-like attitude is a direct descendant from this.
Leaving the armchair social anthropology aside, the fact remains; a good chunk of the Irish populace, especially in rural areas, will find a friendly councillor as soon as they get a planning refusal. I'm not going to claim that planners are perfect but, when we systematically undermine them at every turn, it's hardly surprising that we've wound up with a system that can't possibly make long term decisions in the public interest. I mean seriously, this article by Fintan O'Toole tells you all you need to know about how it works.
What's Gormley to do? He could have said that the problem with our infrastructure is systemic, endemic, and entirely a problem of our culture. Or he could trot something out about "planning reform" and hope that it plays. We wouldn't forgive the first option.
Would we?
Today's Irish Times editorial is all the proof you need of the attitude. While apparently maintaining a line of righteous anger, it's very clear on blame. "Ultimate responsibility... does not lie even with the Irish hierarchy as a whole. It lies with the Vatican."
It doesn't, of course. It lies with us. We set up the industrial schools. We ignored the victims. Our doctors and gardaí colluded to send them to those places. The lies told by bishops, following the directives of their superiors, bear no comparison to the lies we told ourselves***. And let's not forget that the priests and bishops and Christian Brothers are Irish people, born into Irish families, raised in Irish societies. They aren't cloned bodysnatchers sent by the vatican, they're the sons and daughters of our culture. That's not the way that media comment is working now, however. We'd rather cast them ourselves as the innocent and powerless victims of a great global conspiracy, trapped within the evil machinations of a paedophile church. We don't like to think of ourselves as collaborators.
There isn't much to link the recent flooding with the Dublin and Ryan reports. The only thing they share is the tone of the backlash; the gratuitous fury of a nation shouting loudly for someone to blame. It's got to be someone's fault, and we seem frighteningly secure in the knowledge that it isn't ours.
*That's pretty good, for an Irish Planning Document. No, really.
** The definition's in that document, but I had to read the bloody thing, so make an effort. C'mon.
***Have you ever heard a first-hand horror story about the Christian Brothers? If not, you're in the minority. And yet this is all a shock to us.
To be absolutely fair, conflating the two events is a little unfair; the guidelines have clearly been a long time in the making, and a very thorough document the report is too (you can read it here, if you're so inclined, although "Don't let people build in flood plains" is a decent summary). Credit the Greens where it's due; any documents they have produced as regards planning and building are well-drafted and well-grounded. The revised Building Control Act and Regulations, for example, are excellent pieces of legislation. If they've presented this as a response to the floods, then it's difficult to blame them; when cities and towns are ravaged by rainfall, it must be nice to show you've been thinking about it all along.
Still, if the Guidelines are fine on their own merits, the response has two blinding weaknesses*.
One: the overwhelming majority of buildings in Ireland have, y'know, already been built. Yay for for getting it right in the future, but there's several million buildings in existence with no defence of flooding whatsoever. There's little enough that can be done about that, not without massive public expenditure. Still, an alteration to the Building Regulations, asking that all Buildings be cogniscant of flood risk, wouldn't do any harm at all. Many of the flooded areas in Ireland weren't "flood plains**", as such; it is possible to build in flooding-vulnerable areas, with certain safeguards (it's common in some American states, where houses are habitually raised about a foot off the ground). If there's already houses in an area vulnerable to infrequent flooding, then it seems acceptable to add more, provided they're adequately safeguarded. It also makes sense to put a code of practice into place for when existing houses, in flood plains, are extended or modified. Still, if another flood happens to come along, it's unlikely to benefit that many buildings.
There are also collective methods of protection against flooding, but most of them are massively expensive. At least some of the flooding was due to inadequate or badly-maintained drainage. Dredging lakes, or building artificial levées and flood barriers, does work to an extent, but it's a fair investment and more complex than it sounds. Creating artificial flood plains is theoretically possible, and has been done elsewhere, but the chances of this happening on a large scale are nil; it would be a huge infrastructural project, and you don't get many of them in a recession.
In other words, while this document is pretty well-drafted, it's about twenty years too late. For his next trick, John Gormley will bail out the Titanic with a teaspoon.
The second problem, if anything, is more serious; while we live in a system where local councillors can overrule planners, the document means nothing anyway. There are enough loose clauses in the document to allow any unscrupulous councillor to overrule it whenever they see it as convenient. For example, take this sentence:
"Planning authorities will ensure that development is not permitted in areas of flood risk, particularly floodplains, except where there are no suitable alternative sites available in areas at lower risk that are consistent with the objectives of proper planning and sustainable development."
Put Michael Healy-Rae in a room with that, and he'll have permitted a housing estate by a river quicker than you can say "gombeen". The document is written for planners, but planners don't make all the decisions. It's a culture that we've created; we're uncomfortable with the concept of planning in this country, particularly in rural areas. This isn't surprising - land has been important in the national psyche for centuries, and the it's-my-land-I'll-do-what-I-like attitude is a direct descendant from this.
Leaving the armchair social anthropology aside, the fact remains; a good chunk of the Irish populace, especially in rural areas, will find a friendly councillor as soon as they get a planning refusal. I'm not going to claim that planners are perfect but, when we systematically undermine them at every turn, it's hardly surprising that we've wound up with a system that can't possibly make long term decisions in the public interest. I mean seriously, this article by Fintan O'Toole tells you all you need to know about how it works.
What's Gormley to do? He could have said that the problem with our infrastructure is systemic, endemic, and entirely a problem of our culture. Or he could trot something out about "planning reform" and hope that it plays. We wouldn't forgive the first option.
Would we?
Today's Irish Times editorial is all the proof you need of the attitude. While apparently maintaining a line of righteous anger, it's very clear on blame. "Ultimate responsibility... does not lie even with the Irish hierarchy as a whole. It lies with the Vatican."
It doesn't, of course. It lies with us. We set up the industrial schools. We ignored the victims. Our doctors and gardaí colluded to send them to those places. The lies told by bishops, following the directives of their superiors, bear no comparison to the lies we told ourselves***. And let's not forget that the priests and bishops and Christian Brothers are Irish people, born into Irish families, raised in Irish societies. They aren't cloned bodysnatchers sent by the vatican, they're the sons and daughters of our culture. That's not the way that media comment is working now, however. We'd rather cast them ourselves as the innocent and powerless victims of a great global conspiracy, trapped within the evil machinations of a paedophile church. We don't like to think of ourselves as collaborators.
There isn't much to link the recent flooding with the Dublin and Ryan reports. The only thing they share is the tone of the backlash; the gratuitous fury of a nation shouting loudly for someone to blame. It's got to be someone's fault, and we seem frighteningly secure in the knowledge that it isn't ours.
*That's pretty good, for an Irish Planning Document. No, really.
** The definition's in that document, but I had to read the bloody thing, so make an effort. C'mon.
***Have you ever heard a first-hand horror story about the Christian Brothers? If not, you're in the minority. And yet this is all a shock to us.
posted by Nyder O'Leary at
19:17
2 Comments:
For Fuck's sake.
You yourself on these threads came up with the charge 'harbouring paedophiles' and all that entails: obstructing justice and being an accessory to a serious crime. Or was I on mushrooms?
Now, is it not only possible, but in fact likely that these charges - YOUR CHARGES! - can be levelled at a hierarchy in Rome as well as a hierarchy in Ireland. Yet we ought not to, because what exactly?
Besides that - after, before or in parallel - you can have a good old go at the cops for turning a blind eye all these years. Fine. Have a pop at the doctors or other institutions named in the report. As you wish, I'll be there to lend support.
In terms of 'getting things done', blaming other people doesn't necessarily help, but neither does wallowing in it. So simply list of all those responsible for harbouring paedos, and get busy. If FF want to defend the Vatican, then I declare war on them - fuckers are on record asking all bishops worldwide to obstruct justice. That doesn't mean we have to accept a 'just following orders' defence from our lot, why should we? But if we fail to take it to the top, then all we get is the spectacle of a bunch of contrite middlemen, and no chance of true reform.
I simply fail to get whatever point it is you're trying to make. I dont get you point about schools. Would you have us remove the catholic church from the face of Ireland, like St. Patrick did to the snakes? Would not the same middlemen accuse you of restricting freedom of religious expression? The moral authority for your crusading educational reform derives in part from the rotten state of the church, yet you'd slag off those who would seek to reform it as having an attitude problem. I'm not even going to begin on your 'man of action' action plan whereby the only people still in work in Ireland have to stay at home with their kids to provoke an enormous primary school buyout by a clapped-out economy...
And that 'we knew all along' argument is highly dubious. It's like saying we knew about Haughey's finances, or Tony Blair's motivations for going to war in Iraq. It's all hearsay until some evidence is produced, and in all these cases, at the time there was a vortex of spin to hide the now glaring truth. In other words, it's complicated, and I can't see how it's helpful.
I've got no truck with apologising for the Vatican. By all means take them on. I just object to the way that everyone is focusing on them, as if they're solely or "ultimately" responsible. It smacks of denying our own guilt, which I think is plain nasty.
That doesn't seem an overly complicated point.
Bravado aside, we cannot reform the Vatican. It's another country over whom we have no jurisdiction. Sure we can expel the nuncio. Then what? What does that achieve, apart from making us feel good about ourselves?
What we can do is reform our society, and remove the continuing reliance on / deference to the Church in our national institutions. We can prosecute the people involved in withholding information. That's not about the Vatican; they are Irish people, bound by Irish law. As you say, let's get busy.
re: the education thing. I'm not suggesting a buyout. Deeds should be handed over with no financial recompense. In view of the massive compensation deal done between the government and the church, and the fact that most of the schools & lands were granted to the church by the government anyway, that seems to me to be reasonable. It may slightly increase running costs, but the benefits could be enormous; the current system of Patrons is desperately inefficient.
It's got nothing to do with freedom of religious expression. If you want to send your kid to a catholic school, fine. But it's got to be a privately funded one. The church can teach as many kids as it likes, but not with state money.
As for direct action - there's obviously a basic issue of who looks after the kids. So collective measures need to be put in place. And the teachers need to play ball. Those problems are surmountable.
If you don't like the idea, fine. All I'm saying is that our society let this happen, & it's within our power to reform that society. Instead, we rage about an institution we can't possibly change or affect, from a spurious moral high ground. Until we admit our part and reform ourselves, that seems rather hollow to me.
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