The Republic remains dominated by centralised powers and “unaccountable elites”, and hostile to ideas and reform, UCD historian Prof Diarmaid Ferriter has told the MacGill summer school.
Speaking on the topic, “the ambiguous republic”, he lambasted a political culture which was anti-intellectual, hostile to new thinking and opposed to reform.
The Government’s push to abolish the Seanad, rather than to seek reform of it, seemed to be a “grubby power-grab” Prof Ferriter said, adding: “Those who seek to abolish the Seanad should be asked a simple question – have you learnt nothing about the dangers and consequences of the excessive centralisation and abuse of power in this State?”
“One of the chief causes of the contemporary crisis was the absence of alternative views and insufficient scrutiny of flawed decision-making,” he said.
True republic
"Handing absolute power to a dysfunctional Dáil, which in any case is a servant of the Cabinet and its civil servants, beggars belief." He called for a real effort to establish a true republic worthy of the ideal.
“If we accept a definition of republicanism that is about participation . . . we face the conclusion that any exaggerated celebrations in 2016 will mask the persistence of ambiguity and the endurance of the gulf between rhetoric and reality.”
Dr Margaret O’Callaghan, a senior lecturer at Queen’s University Belfast, said the very term “republican” had been distorted.
“After 1916, to be a republican meant that you supported Sinn Féin, you were done with the old parliamentary party, you were broadly prepared to take a hard line with England. It may even mean that you supported the Anglo-Irish war. But it did not necessarily mean that you were a republican.”
Kevin Barry
She said the reburial of the bodies of Kevin Barry and others were Bertie Ahern's bid to ensure that Sinn Féin did not steal a march on Fianna Fáil in honouring the republican dead. There is now a queue to see who will own or steer what it means to be a republican in 2016."
Writer and broadcaster Theo Dorgan told the summer school a “flawed republic” had been created, which was “uncertain and fitful in its provisions for the children of the nation, certainly not a secular republic as the French might have it, and not underscored by a bill of rights as the American republic is, but to most people a republic nonetheless.”
He said it was his “profound sense . . . that we are sliding inexorably towards the withdrawal of [the] consent to be governed in accordance with a mutually-understood compact.”
'Post-colonial cringe'
Ireland suffers from "post-colonial cringe", a belief that "the best practice is England and Westminster," Prof Dermot Keogh said. Education was "seriously in need of new ideas" and he lamented what he called closed doors and elitism in education.
Speaking on the topic, “The Irish Republic – More by accident than design”, he looked to the early years of the State, saying the new structures achieved much. “But the wider aspirations in relation to education fell well short of the mark”.
The Irish State has failed to measure up to its responsibilities, he believed, because of a shift from “citizen engagement”, moving it towards neoliberalism and allowing the market free reign.
Values were different under the Celtic Tiger, he claimed, and the recently revealed Anglo tapes illustrated the crassness of those times.
Pearse the educator
Dr Elaine Sisson said Pearse's ideology concerning education was more telling than his political philosophy. "Pearse was first and foremost an educator," she said. "His political philosophies are meaningless without studying his views on education."
He believed the Irish experience of education, rather than empowering children, tamed them. She said his school at St Enda’s in Dublin was run on a much more humane level than on the public school model brought over by the English. His philosophy centred on the question How is a citizen made? His school was “an Ireland in miniature”.