As Ireland enters a new cycle, who will be left behind?

I cycled from Celbridge in Co Kildare to Galway city recently in aid of the suicide charity Console, a very good cause. That fact didn’t help my legs (or head) the following morning, however.

About 300 of us set off at dawn after a quick breakfast of bananas, coffee and cereal, and a bag-load of nerves. We loaded up with water, electrolytes, energy gels that prevent you from collapsing in a heap, fig rolls bursting with carbs and fruit, sun cream (for all the use we got out of it) and a great sense of challenge. It lashed in biblical proportions and the westerly wind slammed into our faces for good measure, as we pounded our way in convoy down the “old road” to Galway.

We passed through Enfield, Milltownpass, Moate, Rochfortbridge, Tyrrellspass, Ballinasloe, Loughrea, Aughrim and other villages and towns along the way, through Kildare, Westmeath, and Offaly. We passed the farms and housing estates, roadhouses and pubs in the middle of nowhere and thousands of those bungalows some people like to hate. Rural Ireland is quiet, beautiful in some parts, depressing in others.

Gallop majestically

In between the chat I noticed a few things. There are many, many horses in fields on the road to Galway, more than I remember when I used to travel regularly to Galway city back in the 1990s to see herself. This time around, every second field had a couple of horses or foals grazing in it. The horses do not like the sirens and loud speakers associated with a large charity cycle and tended to run, jump over gates and gallop majestically as we passed. Cows are a different story. These curious beasts tended to run towards the fence as we approached and ran along beside us on occasion.

The Irish weather really is a thing to behold. I had to change my socks four separate times and was completely soaked after the first 45km stage, yet when I arrived in Galway I was bone dry and had a perfect red strip of sunburn on my arm, between where my long-sleeve top ended and my cycling gloves started.

We have within us an incredible ability to be kind to each other and to work together. There was the couple who stood outside their house at a crossroads in Co Kildare at about 6.30am in the freezing cold to wave off the peloton on its journey. There were the many families who leaned over their front walls to shout encouragement as we whizzed and panted by their homes. There was one of the outriders, who stopped traffic for us along the route and who got off his motorbike at every roundabout to stand and applaud.

There were the marshals who cycled with the group and who looked after those who found it too much, who shouted at those who strayed over the white line, who pushed people up hills (while cycling themselves) and made sure everybody was present and correct at every stage. People shouted “slowing down” to warn those behind to hit the brakes, or “hole” to point out a pothole in the road.

Working together

It was heartening to see a group of Irish people working together with common purpose. An underpinning principle of the cycle was that nobody be left behind and we would cycle into Galway as a group, including those who still had strong legs and were up front and those who tired of the journey and sat out some of it on a bus. We regrouped 10km from our destination and rolled into the City of Tribes as a unified and happy bunch.

I thought about Ireland and wondered who was getting left behind as we slowly exit the hell of the recession. Are children who continue to live in poverty getting left behind? Are people who are strangled by debt and mortgage arrears getting left behind? Are Dublin’s heroin addicts still getting left behind? What about people living in our direct provision centres or the 102-year-old woman who languished on a hospital trolley for 26 hours? Are they getting left behind?

Can a Government that has consistently pointed up the mistakes of the past really strike grubby public sector pay deals and dangle tax cuts in front of the electorate, while ignoring repeated economic advice on its budget, just ahead of a general election, and still claim to be making the recovery real for all Ireland’s children? Is getting re-elected now the most important item on the agenda?

We squandered the last boom on short-termism, greed, vested interests, self interest and party politics. Let’s not go there again. If it isn’t already too late, let’s reach our destination together.

• @paddylogue
• Michael Harding is on leave