For 'Elite' read 'Emigrant'

I wonder why the government hasn’t learned from the Nice and Lisbon referendums? Nobody wants to see even more money wasted by having to give the right answer next time. The electorate doesn’t like being told what to do; and we have good reason not to trust government in general. The supposed saving of €20m is nothing compared to the amount that will be spent on the new privately appointed committee experts, as proposed by Richard Bruton TD recently.

The chronically insulting aspect of the Seanad Abolition Referendum is the Yes/No option. A reduced and reformed second house of actual experts, as opposed to failed TDs is an alternative. But the Taoiseach won’t engage or debate an alternative proposal.

There’s a lot of talk of ‘elitism’ about the Seanad, yet the unions have nomination and voting rights, almost twice that of the universities. The Socialist Party launched their Yes campaign recently, citing figures for graduates eligible to vote in particular Postal Zones. As you’d expect, Dublin 4, a densely populated area including Irishtown and Ringsend and many rural migrants, has markedly more university panel votes than Dublin 10. Dublin 4 is also twice the size. Similarly, the numbers in Rochestown, Cork, outweigh those of Ballyvolane.

What’s disingenuous about this extrapolation is the suggestion that everyone who has a vote is ‘elite’. Any graduate of UCD, UCC, TCD, NUIM, NUI Galway can be one of the six candidates and vote. Or simply, anyone who worked hard to get into college, took a part-time job or two, paid their way, somehow studied and passed exams. Does that make every social worker, nurse, secondary teacher an elite? The architects who’ve studied for at least five years and have lost their jobs? Not every graduate is the offspring of an affluent dynasty.

It’s easy to slap the label on all graduates, easy to demark society by people’s earnings, by those who try but can’t find work and those who claim benefits. But the main problem with the Seanad is the political appointees; all candidates should be drawn from a broader category base. Why are there eleven senators on the Agricultural Panel and eleven on the Labour Panel, with only five on the Culture and Education panel? Why isn’t there a computer science panel, a medical and legal panel?

The Seanad simply requires reduction and reform. As does the Dáil and, if anything, the Dáil needs more so called ‘elite’, professionally qualified practitioners, industrialists, thinkers and do-ers and less school teachers on long term leave.

I took a straw poll of fifty people on my email list, equally divided between men and women, most are sole traders, some are doing something different to their ‘celtic tiger’ job, some are retraining or planning to emigrate.

Within a day I had twenty replies: Yes to Abolition: 4; Unsure: 1;   No: 15

The fifteen who will vote No were very clear why; the alternative is non-transparent, unsafe, wide open to corruption and ultimately jobs for the boys.

I was a first-time graduate at thirty-three, with two small children and a part-time job. I didn’t bother with Seanad elections, there was too much paperwork and I didn’t know any of the candidates, there were other things to worry about. It wasn’t until the last election, when my children were old enough to do my research that I voted. I asked my sons to go through the list and choose someone. On the basis he was well qualified as a cancer surgeon, ie. he might know a thing or two about medicine and he was donating his Seanad salary to cancer research, we picked Professor John Crown, who has since drafted a reasonably sensible Reform Bill. Both of my sons have now finished college, the youngest has a Seanad vote, the eldest does not. Does that make one penniless son elite and the other one, with a Cork girlfriend who has a vote from UCC, bitterly cynical?

The reality is that our ‘elite’ university graduates won’t be here to vote, they will all have emigrated.

Getting to the Bar

It's all ahead of us .....

The dress code is black, or even grey, knee length. No red shoes or fishnets if you please.

I have eleven black dresses, short sleeve, long, plunge, straight, floaty, then there's the suits, Dolce & Gabbana with leopard print lining, a lucky find in a sale in  my actual size, pin stripe and plain, a fifteen year old John Rocha, well cut and still wearable. I’ve even got a Paulie Costelloe ‘dressage’ look, even though he says Irish women dress hideously. There's only one problem with them, the zip won't go up on anything, repeat, anything.

And that's just the dining code. This is the first thing I learned on day one at school this week. I think the lecturer introduced the dining nights to get us all excited. We're sitting in the vaults of the Honorable Society of King's Inns, below the great hall where, during registration, we were offered cups of coffee and biscuits, welcomed and praised, given piles of manuals so we didn't need to take notes. The room wouldn’t be out of place in The Tudors, in fact King’s Inns dates back to Henry VIII.

Outside, the seniors are languishing in a beautiful garden taking shade from the Indian summer. There's even plenty of parking and you don't want to turn up here in a hoodie and jeans, the staff dress in smart suits and pearls and the women have had their hair done.

I've acquired a very bad habit and it's only night two, we start at 5.45 and at break time I succumb to a double espresso, I'm a woman who doesn't drink coffee after 2pm. It brings on a cracker of a headache by 8 so now I'm carrying panadol in my handbag. The hours in between I'm held in thrall, I can feel the love of learning and awe of law in these walls. The class is small, about fifty, we smile encouragingly at each other, young women, burly men, white haired and glossy maned, bald, Asian and African all with hope of knowledge, advancement and escape, who knows. I’m not even sure why I'm here. The best part is walking out into the night with new stuff in my head, into the cool air and shadows in the arches, street light falling on the cobbles, big black gates, silhouette of oak trees, the north side.

A Free Speech is an anagram of Cheaper Fees

Life is not a bowl of cherries, but these look nice anyway

I’m two thirds through the first year of landladyhouse and life as I know it is about to cease. The daunting prospect of two strangers living in our midst is ameliorated as the decent gentlemen lodgers are hardly ever here. From next week on I’ll be missing every evening too; the house will become a veritable sea with five ships passing in the night.

I came home one summer evening from an art gallery party with a load of barristers at it and decided I’d give that a go (the law, not the art). Seeing as I wasn’t getting anywhere on the interview circuit, while painstakingly editing a novel and writing book reviews, I still needed to find work for the rest of my life. I got accepted to King's Inns a few weeks ago and my induction is two nights from now. I’ve been quietly panicked over this as it draws nearer, what with two years of night study and a further full-time year after that, then the devilling. Maybe the bank will look on me benignly and help with fees or at least count me as a good debt when I come up for review. If I could barter my future services for sponsorship now I would, only there aren’t too many takers with that kind of confidence in me, or indeed moolah.

A cluster of barristers got together last week for the launch of Brian Cregan's first novel on Charles Stewart Parnell, I had read the book for review, for once I knew the subject well.
All the bits of Irish history I missed on account of the miserable nun that taught me, were retrieved and pieced into the very large jigsaw of the party split and goes some way to explain  ‘why we are where we are’. It's hard to believe the Education Minister is proposing the dumbing down of history in our schools.

On political parties, I was to have an audience with Justice Minister, Alan Shatter, and confide I had a first edition of his racy book, Laura,  but held back, that tête à tête will have to wait as I have more pressing things to ask him. 

A few days ago I went to the RHA and stood in a huge, crowded, humid room listening to Fr Tony Flannery at the launch of his book, A Question of Conscience, an insight into the Inquisition-like conditions that prevail in the Vatican. It’s hard to believe in our supposed enlightened times that he is silenced and threatened with excommunication for speaking out about corruption in his Church. I bumped into a senior counsel there and told him of my impending studies. 

'Ah you'll be looking for a master then,' he asserted. 
'A mistress will do too,' I helpfully suggested.

Luckily, for the rest of us, speech is free, that and air. That’s what I’m going to live on….

A Load of Old Rubbish

Model of #Success

It’s a wet Saturday; I’ve just bought the Irish Independent having scanned it in the Spar to make sure my piece is in it, otherwise, I’m afraid it’s online for me. I’m still pinching myself that my opinion is getting into print. No point in wondering if I went public on the D v Ireland case eleven years ago how my *career* might have shaped. Would my yearning to be a writer have been fulfilled sooner? I wouldn’t have done all the other stuff like a Masters in Building Conservation to block  the memory of the D Case and because the college was in walking distance.

The Cost Centres were eleven and thirteen when I started that course, I was sure it would slot nicely into our lives. One should always remember that taking exams and writing a thesis in a subject one loves is guaranteed to put you right off. It does, until it suddenly helps you find work, work that you enjoy and that pays. I'm even going back to college again in a few weeks, or rather I will be if I can pay my fees in kind. More anon.

Since the Big R the old building conservation work dwindled to nothing, so in 2011 I decided to write a novel based on my thesis; the Cost Centres were going to be away for the whole summer on their J1s, absolutely no excuse to put it off any longer. I had it finished in six months. Finished as in 70,000 words with a beginning, middle and end. Basing it on the thesis didn't work (as in boring) so I set half in New York and half in a rural Irish backwater. I'm not trying to sell it here BTW.... Plenty of time for that.

This week I did the thirteenth re-write, cut from 140,000 words to 98,000, having been two books in one, with a screenplay rearing up every now and then.

Discipline, I realise now, is everything in writing, I just filled pages to get wordcounts up, which is a good ploy, very motivating. But then you've got to get the scalpel at it quickly.  It has been read in many versions by dear friends and one professional editor. The editor had me dismantle my ‘experimental’ structure; every alternate chapter was set in 1850 and 2011. After meeting an agent three weeks ago who encouraged me to shorten it and change the title, I had a new version on Tuesday to be read by a literary queen. It just had to be printed and bound, I was relieved to email it to the printers with instructions for two copies.

Little Cost Centre graduated in Economics and Philosophy this week, he wasn’t even bothered about his graduation, but a lot of work went into those exams so I encouraged him, planned a lunch with his girlfriend, brother and a dear family friend and prevailed on jewellery star, Clarice, to find a worthy memento for the day, the *boy* version of the ‘success amulet’. I sat beside his girlfriend in UCD while the ceremony proceeded, naughtily tweeting and checking emails on my phone while other people’s children were being conferred.

I had an email from info@panda.ie ‘this appears to have been sent to us in error’.

My manuscript. My two and a half year slog. The meaning of my future career/life. 

I’d sent it to the binmen.

The cost centres have told me not to over-react.