Irish bastards
Stan Gebler Davies
Kinsale, Co. Cork politicians in a small republic must necessarily be accessible to the public, as Julius Caesar found to his cost. The Population of the Republic of Ireland is still some way under three and a half millions, though it is increasing at the Malthusian rate of 1.5 per cent per annum. There is no longer any export market for surplus Irish since the British have quite enough spare brawn available these days to dig up their own roads and the Americans, Australians and Canadians demand a high- er class of immigrant than was the case 20 Years ago. The prospect of a couple of million unemployed and unemployable Youths lounging about the streets (half the Population of Eire is under the age of 25) at the end of the century has given the Government pause to think. At least I suppose it has. There is no Other rational explanation for Dr Fitz- gerald's battered coalition's proposal to Put before the Dail legislation extending the availability of contraception, even to the unmarried. There is an excellent chance he is on to a loser and if both government parties, Fine Gael and Labour, apply the whip and still lose, there can be no question but that resignation is O n the cards, followed by an appeal to the country and the triumphant return of Charles J. Haughey. Haughey it was who put through the present legislation, describing it, in a tamous phrase, as 'an Irish solution to an Irish problem'. This Irish solution allows Fbndoms and the other paraphernalia of birth-control to be bought by married Women, and married women only, on Prescription from a doctor. Hard cheese if tpe local doctor agrees with the Pope that r‘rench letters are the invention of the !-Ievil and it happens that the nearest clinic is 200 miles away. As for the unmarried . . . well, I notice that in this locality young women, whose stIPPly of rubbers, bought in Boots in quantity on the last trip to England, is now exhausted, are not beyond borrowing a Married friend's wedding band before making the trip to the clinic in Cork City. Last spring a dead baby was found on 1,1,1e foreshore at Cahirsiveen in County 1‘etrY. It was in a bag and had been stabbed to death. At about the presumed date of the death of the child an unmarried Mother near Tralee on the other side of t'-hat Bay, whose neighbours had noticed that she had ceased to be pregnant, was arrested by the police and charged with the Murder of the Cahirsiveen baby, which they thought to be hers. Members of her 'amity were charged.also, the police believ-
ing at the time that her brother had taken her child, murdered immediately after birth, and driven to the end of the Dingle peninsula and cast it into the sea. The charges, based upon confessions extracted from the young woman, her mother and her sister, were later with- drawn when it became evident that she was telling the truth when she said that she had actually given birth, at night, alone, and standing up, against the wall of her family's farmhouse, but had disposed of the body of her stillborn child in a nearby field. This baby was also found.
Subsequently she complained of police brutality in extracting her confession. The tribunal of inquiry into the circumstances of the case has now been running for nearly three weeks in Tralee, with counsel repre- senting the family, the police, the Attorney General and even the tribunal itself.
The cross-examination of the woman, who has become as familiar in Ireland as the host of a chat show, has necessarily been harsh and it has even been suggested in court that she might have been the mother of both babies, had they been twins and had she had intercourse with two separate men, conceiving by each, in the space of 48 hours.
This piece of drama is known to every- one in Ireland as 'the Kerry babies case' and is talked about everywhere. Irish feminists, a tough and vocal breed, have protested mightily against her cross- examination by police counsel, which is plainly designed to demonstrate that she is a loose woman and a liar, and even C. J. Haughey, who is no slouch at picking up the trend of popular feeling, has de- nounced the police defence as 'insensitive and harsh'. The case continues.
It is reminiscent of another incident the winter before, when a 15-year-old child in Granard, County Longford, crept into an outdoor Marian shrine to give birth to her bastard. Both froze to death. Nobody in that town will talk about it, still, but Mrs Hussey, the Minister for Education, men- tioned it in passing on the radio when she sought to defend her proposal to teach the facts of life, including contraception, to Irish schoolchildren. A female child spoke on the same programme of the conviction of a friend of hers, when she had her first period, that she must have cut herself. The new Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, a Kerry man of robust faith, has denounced the proposal to teach Ireland's children what goes on in their bodies on the grounds that sex is no business of the state.
It is under these circumstances that 'Garret' (or 'Garret the Good') as every- one calls him, chooses to introduce his liberal legislation while the vulpine 'Char- lie' waits in the wings. Garret's problem is that while he cannot be sure of whipping his own party into line on what is deemed to be 'a moral question', Charlie certainly can. Fianna Fail are not about to vote for licensed fornication and neither are a handful of Fine Gael deputies. The opposi- tion within Dr Fitzgerald's party is led by Mrs Alice Glenn, a formidable matron, and by 'Sir' Oliver Flanagan, a Papal Knight, who had a few good words to say for Fascism as late as 1943.
Dr Fitzgerald has already been beaten hands down on another 'moral question' by Mr Haughey, who had the co-operation of a large slice of Fine Gael in his crusade a couple of years ago to enshrine in the constitution a prohibition of abortion which had in any case been on the statute book since long before the British left. Garret lost that one and is now under pressure from the liberal wing of his peculiar party (surely the only political organisation in Europe to accomodate both crypto-Fascist and Social Democratic factions) to hold a referendum with the intention of removing from the constitu- tion the prohibition against Parliament making provision for divorce. That would be a good one: Charlie would love it.
Hence the gloom on the face of the cabinet minister who dropped into my local for a drink a couple of weeks ago. He was wondering what prospect there might be of getting a little liberal social legislation through the Dail. Apart from divorce and contraception, the Government were thinking also of removing some of the disabilities attendant on illegitimacy, but facing vociferous opposition from legiti- mate heirs who do not think that bastard brothers, in a Christian country, should get their hands on a share of the loot.
The consensus of opinion in the pub was that Garret and friends would be on to a hiding to nothing if they tried anything of the sort. There was nothing to do but get the poor minister a hot whiskey to cheer him up.
You may wonder whether anyone in the Republic is concerned that the certainty of such Catholic triumphalism may offend their Protestant brethren in Ulster, with whom they seek political union.
If so, you may cease wondering. Nobody gives a damn. The minister had a last question before he left. What did I think the reaction would be of HMG, he wanted to know, if the Republic washed its hands of the North altogether and pulled back its security forces from the border, thereby saving themselves a lot of money. It is an interesting question, to which I hope to return. I wonder if it has been discussed in the Irish cabinet.
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