Articles in DISCUSSION are published according to the guidelines of the Editors and do not necessarily reflect the views of CPPC, they are to encourage investigation and discussion on the issues facing us.
Katie Taylor, Riverdance, Munster Rugby, the 1988/1990 Soccer Teams, gifted people in the Arts, Medicine, Science, in Education, in Sport and in Business and all of whom, at one time or another, have occasioned people to comment, ‘It’d make you proud to be Irish’
‘Proud’? It should make us feel ashamed.
It should make us feel ashamed that while we continue to produce outstanding people, in every area of endeavour, we have failed to build a country of which we can be proud, instead of this corrupt, bankrupt, place we call the Republic of Ireland.
How can we be proud of a country that, since 1922, has only survived by exporting its people?
Uniquely, in the developed world, we have failed to steadily grow our population and, in doing so, have failed to build a country that can plan for the future.
In 1922 we had some 3.1 million people in Ireland, now we have some 4.4 million.
The United States had 110 million in 1922, now has some 311 million.
Australia had 5 million in 1922, now has some 24 million.
With our exceptionally high birth rates up until the late 1960s, and allowing for the fact that as Islanders we would always have many people who’d want to look outside, by any reasonable growth standards we should now have some 8-9 million people living and working in Ireland.
There is your sustainable Construction Industry. There are the places for our newly qualified Teachers, Midwives, Doctors, Accountants, Architects and Lawyers. There is your viable Public Transport and there are the Consumers and Taxpayers to pay for it.
It’s called, ‘The Future’, but a future requires a ‘Plan’, a ‘Plan’ we’ve never had, and still do not have.
We are told that, over the past 3-4 years, some 350,000 people have emigrated to Canada, the U.K., the U.S., Australia and New Zealand. Our youngest and finest forced out of Ireland as a consequence of corruption, and of deplorable governance, that has destroyed our economy and their future.
Has it dawned on any of our so-called, ‘Leaders’ that this appallingly high figure represents almost 8% of our entire population? This would be the equivalent of some 4.7 million people leaving the U.K., or some 24 million people leaving the United States.
When is the constant haemorrhage of our people, our very future, going to be identified as the scandal that it is, and has been, since the foundation of this state?
DeValera told us that his vision was, ‘…of a People satisfied living in frugal comfort…’ Now Enda Kenny and Eamon Gilmore tell us that we have to be satisfied living in frugal ‘discomfort’, but have they asked themselves ‘Why’?
Mr. Kenny, Mr. Gilmore, Mr. Martin and Mr. Adams what is your vision? Do any of you have a plan? Will any of you share your plan with us, the people? Or is it that, like all of your predecessors, the only plan is for the next Election, or how to spend the Pension?
To the above, gentlemen, I say what many people out here in the real world of Ireland 2012 are saying, the political system that has evolved here, by design or indifference, flies in the face of the aims of our Founding Fathers and has turned it’s back on the aspirations outlined in the very document that was to have been the blueprint for a people free at last to fulfil their potential in their own country, The 1916 Proclamation.
“We declare the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland, and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies, to be sovereign and indefeasible. The long usurpation of that right by a foreign people and government has not extinguished that right, nor can it ever be extinguished except by the destruction of the Irish people”
Well, thanks to our populist political system of buying Votes and pandering to vested interest, we’ve lost our sovereignty, we are not in control of our own destiny and the destruction of our people through forced emigration is at hand once again. Our rotted, corrupt, political system is responsible for this and is to our shame.
Colm Lynch, Dec. 18th. 2012
