RATHER THAN RALLYING the people of Ireland in opposition to the EU/IMF bailout as he might have hoped, Diarmuid O’Flynn’s 153-mile run from Ballyhea, County Cork to Dáil Eireann served only to remind him that talk is cheap.
On Tuesday morning, O’Flynn, who is one of the Irish Examiner’s chief hurling writers, set off on a three-day run which culminated with him hand-delivering an anti-bondholder petition to the government following a short march in Dublin this morning.
The past 72 hours have been among the most physically demanding and exhausting of his life, as he told The Score.ie when we caught up with him ahead of this morning’s march from the Garden of Remembrance to Kildare Street.
Yesterday’s third and final leg of the run, from Portlaoise to Dublin, had to be completed by a team of relay cyclists who offered to take up the mantle after his legs simply couldn’t take any more.
“At this stage I’m just hobbling,” said O’Flynn earlier today. “I wouldn’t say I was legless – I still had the legs, they just weren’t working very well.”
However, with just over 500 signatures gathered on the digital petition by the time it was submitted this afternoon, it seems that all the hard work and physical punishment might not have been worth it after all.
“To be honest though, if I’d ended up crawling all the way to Dublin, I don’t think it would have had any impact in terms of encouraging people to join me. I don’t think there’s anything at all that will shake the Irish people.”
We’re a great nation for complaining but not so much for action.
The most galling thing about this apathy and disinterest, in O’Flynn’s eyes, is the fact that the people of Ireland don’t seem to realise that we haven’t quite hit the bottom insofar as financial hardship is concerned.
“There are an awful lot more squeezes coming down the road. Already this week, we’ve heard about water charges and property taxes. They’ll hit the weakest in society who are also those with the weakest voice. Nobody seems to notice and nobody seems to react and it goes on and on and on until we hit the wall.”
His growing anger and frustration became evident earlier this week when he described himself in a tweet as “baffled by the apathy [and] baffled by the lack of national coverage” which his protest has received. Since February, he has been involved in organising weekly protests against the terms of Ireland’s bailout deal in his native Ballyhea.
Though obviously disillusioned by the traction which his campaign has gained across the country, he was quick to pay tribute to those who have worked alongside him for the past few months.
“I’m very proud of my own community and what we’ve done,” he said. “I couldn’t have asked for any more effort from them.”
I couldn’t bring myself to pick up the phone this morning to ask them to make the trip to Dublin to keep supporting something that is doomed to failure.
Read: National sports journalist sets off on run to deliver bailout petition to the Dáil >
Crowd for Obama 30,000
Crowd for EU/IMF takeover of the Country 50+
Shame!
The Irish people will never support a protest. We cheered the British army when hey put down the rebellion in 1916. We are a nation of muck savages payed off by high dole payments and the rest.
You have a point there, not about the British Army because many of those who put down the Rising were Irishmen themselves, but about the dole payments. Of course it’s not just social welfare recipients who don’t want to rock the boat. Thousands of people work directly for the government, thousands more work indirectly or benefit from government contracts. Home owners have more on their plate holding on to that home rather than some vague idea of bondholders. We all have a stake in the country one way or another and maintaining the status quo is more important than some high flown ideas about finance, the ECB or whatever.
The vast majority of Irish people don’t care about those things because they do not relate them to their every day life. And they’re right because the majority didn’t get rich out of the Celtic Tiger and they know that burning the bondholders won’t make them rich in the future. So why would thousands of people take a day off work in order to benefit the rich.
Apathy Rules.
Because Michael, it’s going to make them poor!!!
Or maybe its just because far too many people have extremely pressing problems to deal with to spend on such protests? As far as I can see, people are not so much apathic as knuckling down to the hard job of getting on with life.
eh….we don’t like ourselves very much
I live in Switzerland, have GB and Swiss passports, you could say I’m “top of the food chain”.
My heart goes out to the people of Ireland, and most of all to Mister O’Flynn and the folks people of Ballyhea,
who made the trip to Frankfurt. I won’t forget you!
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The ratings agency Standard & Poor’s (S&P) promised on Friday to take a tough line if the European Union attempts to disguise a default by Greece on its debts to save French and German banks from suffering losses.
Michael Dolan has in his comment above described the Client State.Many times I have mentioned Common Purpose in an attempt to highlight this method that they use to ensure that they have control. Remember Tony Blair?, he allowed massive immigration into the UK and created such a State within a state. Millions of captive voters who depended on his government for all of their needs as most could not,and still cannot speak English and have no chance of jobs.
Our Kenny has us tied up too.tied up in fear for our homes and what chance we have of getting jobs that will help us survive.
In the UK Cameron ,who is a member of Common Purpose, has taken on the Client State that Blair created and uses it as if it were his own.Please consider this comment carefully and maybe you will see where we are being dragged to?