The sound of marching voices

RADIO REVIEW:THE PHONES were hopping on Liveline(RTÉ Radio 1, weekdays) on Tuesday. This was even before the all-new four-year budget cuts were announced. Callers were upset about cabinet members rolling into Farmleigh in their ministerial cars. Many weren't happy about them employing drivers either. No doubt those drivers would also like to hold on to their jobs during the recession. Though, in retrospect, a minibus with worried faces pressed up against the glass would have made a nice photo opportunity.

Annette in Beaumont said she would fight any kind of property tax in December’s Budget. “Not in this lifetime, Joe. I have already paid every red cent due on my home. To me a home is a human right. They want us to be homeless like in the Famine days; is that what we’re going back to? I’ll hire a Rottweiler to smile at them as they come up the path; that’s a start.” Annette had moxy. She will do just fine without a Rottweiler.

Radio in a small country such as ours is a hugely important medium. Unlike television, it gives the public a powerful and instant voice. But it’s too often used as the broadcasting equivalent of a punchbag. Yet it can also have moments of great clarity and humanity.

“This kind of pantomime has gone too far,” John from Donegal told Duffy. “It didn’t impress me that they were working on a bank-holiday Monday. If those people had a dog, and took a walk with their dog and took a look around, they would have learned a lot more.” The image of the Cabinet on a group dog walk to assess the state of the nation is a novel idea but hardly a practical one.

Ken in Cork called in. He wasn’t impressed by what Duffy called “the optics” of a fleet of cars pulling up to Farmleigh. “Why was it ever held on a bank holiday?”

Duffy said, at the risk of complaints to the broadcasting commission that he was pro-Fianna Fáil: “They can’t win either way.” It was a fair point.

And then along came Dermot and Betty to provide some unity. Just in time. “I think there are a lot of begrudgers. How can people come from one part of the country in one car?” said Dermot. “I’m not a begrudger at all,” Betty replied. “I cannot stand waste. Look around: it’s everywhere.” They had found common ground. “I quite agree with you,” Dermot said. “I wouldn’t be one to advocate waste either.” It was a welcome, if fragile, accord.

On The Right Hook(Newstalk 106-108, weekdays), George Hook asked listeners what they thought of the Fianna Fáil Senator Donie Cassidy, who during the week said of living on €65,000 a year that "it's not easy". In fairness, Cassidy later apologised for his remarks. Hook ran with the item anyway.

Mary, a psychiatric nurse from Celbridge, said, “Coming from a public representative is probably what makes the statement worse.”

Hook read out an e-mail from Ian, who at least had a sense of humour about Cassidy’s comments. “He witnessed the way the Minister allows the wastage of public money,” Hook said. “On Saturday in Church Street he saw 11 council workers standing around a small hole in the road. Only one of them was digging with the shovel.”

Still, people are angry. Or are we world-weary? Or scared? Or all three? On Thursday RTÉ Choice broadcast an edition of the BBC World Service's Assignment. Its reporter Ed Butler said, "A grim mood has gripped the Irish." That was probably the most accurate of all possible opening gambits for any foreign correspondent, and it made up for his follow-up: "The Celtic Tiger is reduced, it seems, to a bedraggled pussycat."

Declan Murphy from Limerick was closing his family business, established in 1889, and moving to Australia. “I’m angry because I’m leaving a country I love,” he said. “I feel like this decision has been taken away from me like everyone else.” Seamus Sherlock, the man who chained himself to the gates at the ESB’s headquarters, said, “Financial debt really pulls the heart out of people. There was a bill of €2,261, and I said there’s no way I can pay this. My big worry was I was going to lose my children.”

Sherlock said of his now famous protest, “It was a lonely street. I was facing a very bleak future.”

But, as we now know, passersby shook his hand, a crowd soon gathered and taxi drivers stopped to ask if he wanted tea and sandwiches. “At that moment,” he said, “I was so proud to be an Irishman.”

We haven’t shown the same anger as voters in Iceland or Greece, it’s true, but perhaps in Ireland the medium of radio is where people go to march.

qfottrell@irishtimes.com