CURRENT AFFAIRSTHIS IS A compilation of articles which have appeared in The Irish Times over the past year. The annual compendium is now in its ninth year and is bought during the festive season as a Christmas read and an opportunity for many to catch up on the events of the year. The Irish Times Book of the Year 2008Gill & MacMillan, 305pp, €26.99
In terms of my own review, it might be timely to declare an interest, given my own propensity, at behind-closed-doors political meetings, to excoriate the newspaper with abandon due to its coverage of my own party in 2006 and 2007, particularly in relation to its coverage of the former taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, and his travails at the tribunal in Dublin Castle. The book contains a description of Bertie's final departure and I am described as "distraught" on the day he finally stood down. It is fair to state that I was so, since it was Ahern more than anyone else who defined the course of my own career from Dáil deputy to Government Minister. There were others, more senior than me, in tears on that occasion, not least because of the enormous achievements in office that Bertie Ahern had recorded over 10 years, arguably the most successful period of any taoiseach in our recent history.
2008 was a year of intense change both in Ireland and at an international level. The US election and the emergence of Barack Obama as a breakthrough candidate for the office of president is well covered by The Irish Times, even if the publishing deadline for the book did not allow the inclusion of analysis of Obama's ultimate victory. The paper's Film Correspondent, Michael Dwyer, produces, in a lengthy interview with the actor Robert Redford, a telling insight into US politics. The piece appeared in The Irish Times in November 2007 and includes the following prophetic quote from Redford on who he would like to see in the White House in 2009: "Well, just somebody different from what we've got, obviously, but I haven't found it out there yet. So far there's not anybody terribly inspiring."
The year will also be remembered as the one in which China became the acknowledged new power in the world. The Beijing Olympics were testament to its vastness as a country and its capability in organisational terms. Sports commentator Tom Humphries had a good Olympics, and one piece, among many others in this book, screams out to be quoted. In it, Humphries deals with the beach volleyball competition: "It's just before 9am in Chaoyang Park in Beijing and 12 women wearing dolls' house napkins as swimwear are effectively lapdancing an early-morning crowd into wakefulness. It's an easy sell."
Given that my previous ministerial portfolio was that of development cooperation and human rights, I was very taken by a thoughtful article by Mary Fitzgerald, Irish Times Foreign Correspondent, on the subject of the influence that China has brought to bear in Africa. The World Bank has praised the Chinese for their infrastructural investment in Africa but there are sceptics as well as enthusiasts for such investment and the ability of the Chinese to look the other way with regard to human rights issues in countries such as Zimbabwe and Sudan. Fitzgerald's piece sets out the arguments both ways and avoids the all-too-common moralising that sometimes underpins pieces on development aid in Africa.
One of my regrets as the minister responsible for the Irish Aid programme was that I never took up an invitation from Bill Clinton to come with him on a visit to Lesotho, an Irish Aid programme country, and in the course of the visit meet with Bill Gates. Clinton and I had been on a joint visit to Mozambique at the time, but my diary prevented me from accompanying him to the meeting with Gates. Danny O'Brien's piece on the computer entrepreneur and computer geek is one of the best pieces I have seen about the man who is now transforming development aid for health systems in Africa. The influence Gates has exerted is underlined by the fact that Warren Buffett, the sage of Omaha, has now entrusted his own philanthropic fortune to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to further their work.
THE SPORTING YEAR is well covered and, in fairness to both Seán Moran and Tom Humphries, they maintain their crowns for their coverage of the all-Ireland season with their descriptions of the Tyrone and Kilkenny victories. Other highlights include the wondrous Munster win in the Heineken Cup and of course Padraig Harrington's second successive victory in the British Open, a truly great achievement in golf.
There are great pieces about the legendary people who passed away, including Ronnie Drew, Tony Ryan, Joe Dolan and model Katy French. Noel Whelan, the political columnist, also wrote a poignant obituary of his father, a man whose own political involvement in my party was merely an extension of his deeper commitment to his own local Wexford community. Quentin Fottrell's obituary of Katy French as a work of social commentary is one of the best pieces of writing in the book. Ryanair's Michael O'Leary is well quoted in homage to the entrepreneurial greatness of one Tony Ryan.
Fintan O'Toole, who rarely receives praise from a Fianna Fáil minister, commands the high ground of culture with his piece on the sad death in August of the much-loved Ronnie Drew. He writes of Ronnie: "His mother-in-law, whose beautiful and refined daughter he stole away from middle-class respectability, referred to him, not by name, but simply as 'the minstrel'. And she was right. He was nothing but a classless, free-floating troubadour, with guitar, a beard, a voice from the bowels of the earth and an insolent attitude".
Its editor, Peter Murtagh, has taken care not to select articles that will date too quickly, eschewing the news values of the newsroom in favour of opinion, interview, analysis and the lifestyle feature.
Life, as is often said at funerals, belongs to the living and, as this is a Christmas book, there are life-affirming positives included. Eileen Battersby's account of the winter solstice at Newgrange is captivating: "More than 5,000 years on, we remain humbled by ancestors who possessed a complex grasp of the physical world as well as a spirituality and humility that continue to elude us, their clumsy descendants."
For my own part the shining quote and photograph that emerges from this book is provided by Liam Cosgrave, our most distinguished former taoiseach, when he states, while perusing a vellum manuscript in the Royal Irish Academy: "At times, you have to take the national line as distinct from a party line. I always thought that you must put the state first or the country first, even if it's not sometimes the political thing to do."
The global financial crisis and its knock-on economic impact here at home does not receive the amount of coverage it deserves. However, this is not to fault the editor; the hugely seismic developments on both the international and the domestic front all occurred in the period after September of this year. Unfortunately Peter Murtagh had to take a cut-off point of September.
Hopefully, next year's volume will draw from The Irish Times for insight on this matter. Perhaps it is still too hard to tell anyhow the precise implications of our own bank guarantee and the US bailout efforts.
Another "work in progress", namely the Lisbon Treaty, receives copious coverage. Perhaps the most spectacular contribution to this particular debate is an article by John Waters written in the aftershock of the referendum result. He describes the electorate's decision as having been primarily motivated by fear and ignorance. He then says: "The outcome then, was a disgrace, not because of the content of the decision but because of the justification offered for it." With this particular column, Waters has again proved his worth as a person who is willing to state uncomfortable truths, in this case a truth which the political class, of which I am a member, dare not utter in public despite the fact that the same opinion is widely expressed by politicos in their private discussions on Lisbon.
Conor Lenihan is the State's first Minister for Integration and a Fianna Fáil TD for Dublin South West