A Letter from Ireland
a Chara,
Happy New Year. I am writing this from the daze of the week between Christmas and New Year. A time of meeting up with old friends and family, reading, walking and eating chocolate for breakfast.
I don’t do new resolutions or predictions. Experience has shown that my only confident prediction is that I will break any resolution I make. I have been thinking about the coming year.
Like every year, 2026 will bring new opportunities and challenges. In politics, as in life, change is inevitable. The challenge is how to manage, shape, and adapt to change. The current Irish government is living in denial. This is true of their approach to housing, public services, the economy and Irish Unity. A government devoid of vision and ideas, lurching from crisis to crisis.
As the new year turns, parents will be dropping their grown-up children to the airport because of a government that refuses to change course to provide houses and opportunities at home.
This government is out of sync with the reality of people’s lives, their hopes, and aspirations. This is most evident on the issue of Irish Unity. Blinded by a need to shore up the status quo, they are missing the opportunity to define and deliver a new and united Ireland. We can secure and win unity referendums by 2030.
The work today that begins today, to build the momentum until the calls to plan and prepare for unity referendums can no longer be resisted. Over the past year, the Irish government’s position has shifted from resisting to ridiculing, and on to ignoring the issue.
In 1918, US labour leader Nicholas Klein addressed striking workers describing the path to victory as, “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win”
Sounds like the path of recent years. The next step is to ensure that we win the Irish Government around to planning and preparing for unity referendums before the end of the decade.
The peaceful and democratic resolution of constitutional conflict and the building of a new post-colonial state can become a beacon of hope for a world in conflict.
On an international stage, we have the ongoing invasion of Ukraine by Russia, a ceasefire in name only in Gaza, and the international rule of law being upended by a belief that “might is right”. The world is a very uncertain place. Relations within Europe and between Europe and the US are changing.
Technology is changing the lives of many for good and bad. Just as social media brought communities together, it also divides society, rewarding conflict and disagreement. The advent of AI will help with research and automating processes, but will also mean job losses, and we will not be able to believe any of what we read, see, or hear, and a new AI-generated consensus emerges that minimises a diversity of voices and thoughts.
I always travel in hope. One of my favourite Poems is Ode by Arthur O’Shaughnessy which begins with the lines:
“We are the music makers
And we are the dreamers of dreams,” and ends with the lines,
“For each age is a dream that is dying.
Or one that is coming to birth”
I remain on the side of the music makers, the poets and the dreamers of dreams.
Happy New Year, the future is ours to define.
Have a great weekend,
