The year that was in it.

As with any look back over a year one’s view is always an entanglement of the global the national and the personal.

From my vantage point here on Ireland’s western seaboard much is changed and much remains the same.

Nationally this was a year of seismic changes. The world-banking crisis that started in 2008 with the collapse of Northern rock and Lehman brothers quickly tumbled into the Irish high street. The lack of regulation of the Irish banking sector was so shocking that the public quickly became numb from endless revelations. The Irish financial services sector, it was revealed, was something akin to a free fraud zone. The Fianna Fail government and their quiescent Green party coalition partners moved to guarantee the banks. A new word was added to the Irish political lexicon “Nama”. The National Asset Management Authority.

The first Late Late   show hosted by rising star Ryan Turbidy had Taoiseach Brian Cowen as his guest.

Turbidy, often dismissed as a candyfloss lightweight, is actually a very tough cookie. Both side of his house have medals from Flying Columns-and he knows it!

His mother’s brother is David Andrews the former Foreign Minister under Bertie Ahern. In short Turbidy is Fianna Fail to the core and, subsequently, he was just the guy to nail Cowen and he did.

His description of the public perspective of Nama finished with the killer line: “Little Guy screwed!”

Cowen stumbled for an answer as the studio audience roared approval of Turbidy’s allegation.

The banking crisis-a crisis entirely of their making-has now become a fiscal crisis. The Irish state is, in effect bankrupt, and is borrowing huge amounts on a daily basis to meet current spending.

The last budget saw social welfare benefits cut. The austerity programme is just starting and the IMF is waiting in the wings.

 

The Murphy Report on the Dublin archdiocese revealed abuse of children. There is a similar report being prepared on the diocese of Raphoe in Donegal.

That report will also reveal industrial quantities of evil. This appalling abuse was colluded with and covered up by the Irish state at all levels.

On this island the North remains a worry.

The capacity for loyalist lynch mobs to murder as the mood takes them was evident in 2009.  In Coleraine a mob celebrating Ranger’s championship win in Scotland decided that a dead taig was required for such a happy event.

Any taig would do and it was Kevin McDaid’s awful luck to be out of doors when the Billy Boys visited his street and stamped him to death. Two members of the PSNI looked on, apparently helpless, as the life was kicked out of Mr. McDaid.

 

Also in the North Republican “dissidents” killed two British soldiers and a policeman.

Martin McGuiness standing shoulder to shoulder with First Minister Peter Robinson and Hugh Orde called the killers “traitors”.

 

The Provisional Movement, now shorn of the IRA, has become the Fianna Fail of the North. They seem capable of delivering the Northern nationalist population of Northern Ireland into an entirely status quo position for at least a generation.

During that time the green half of that statelet will grow in numbers and influence.

It is certainly a preferable option to bloodshed.

Ah but events dear boy, events…

A child abuse scandal that no one in the Irish commentariat could have envisaged is now upon us.

The Liam Adams story is now, it would appear, out of control of the Sinn Fein spin machine.  This story, in all probability, has some distance to run.

The allegation that the Sinn Fein president covered up sex abuse of his niece by his brother could not be more explosive or damaging.

For now it remains just that-an allegation.

So far Gerry Adams’ version of events apropos his relationship with his brother after he was told of the abuse of his niece Aine in 1987 does not stack up.

Adams is revered and detested with equal fervour on this island. Some people want this allegation to be true and others have shut off in their minds any possibility that it could be true.

For the rest of us it is a story to be observed at this stage rather than commented upon. However, a review of the year that included the North could not fail to mention the potential for this story to topple Adams.

As I finish this piece the security forces are working to defuse a bomb twice the size of the one that caused carnage at Omagh eleven years ago.

Storm clouds seem to be gathering in the North again as globally there is the small matter of climate change and what we, as a species do about it.

The Copenhagen summit, like the Congress of Vienna, broke up in some disarray.

As my home in Donegal has been snow bound for two weeks the prospect of global warming seems far off.

However 99% of climate scientists seem convinced that climate change is happening and we are largely to blame.

This article is being finished in Westport county Mayo, my father’s town that, this year saw a British military funeral probably for the first time since independence.

Young Robbie McKibbon was buried in Aughavale cemetery where my kin also rest.

The entire town closed as his cortege was taken from St. Mary’s on the Mall.

It was the correct act of respect to one of our own.

Young Irishmen are fighting and dying in the war in Afghanistan as they did in Britain’s three other Afghan wars.

Ultimately the tribesmen of Helmand will win against the foreigners and their corrupt local allies. The British have struggled to control their part of Afghanistan. The situation had become untenable, as there was even a helicopter to transport a colonel.

Rupert Thorneloe was killed with his young driver in a flimsy vehicle by a roadside bomb. The Americans were privately horrified. The US military has since flooded Helmand province with troops and war material. The British have been sidelined as they were in Basra.

Afghanistan is Obama’s war and will continue for his presidency.

I fear that it can only be a matter of time before that war come to the mass transit system of Dublin.

The attackers will not have to travel from the Hindu Kush to exact revenge for destroyed Pashtun villages.

If you think such an event is fanciful ask the Madrilenos the price they paid for their top guy joining in with the American wars in the Middle East.

 

As I was travelling south to Mayo for the New Year celebrations I spoke briefly with a journalist colleague. He told me that the extent of the awfulness unfolding actually challenged this abilities as a journalist to make sense of what was happening and transform that understanding into the written form.

I know what he means.

2009 was hardly an uneventful year on my island.

All any of us can do is to carve out a liveable niche for those we love in 2010 and beyond. That is my plan for next year I hope it yours as well. 

I hope 2010 is a peaceful and happy year for you and yours.