Those pondering participation in our next government should make it their business to visit the BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition in the RDS this weekend. Rightly celebrated at this time of year, the exhibits always do much to showcase how young, inquisitive and motivated students choose to frame the challenges, not just of their generation, but of all of us, including in relation to climate change, artificial intelligence, sustainability and health.
Significantly, the exhibitors are also adept at highlighting evidence-based solutions – something to be particularly commended during an era when deriding evidence has become such a destructive political tool.
While many of the Young Scientists’ projects have a local focus, they are far removed from the myopic nature of constituency champions who, it is likely in the coming weeks, will celebrate their “victories” in cutting deals to make up the numbers for the new government.
The ghost of one of the most voluble of the Independent TDs from 25 years ago, Jackie Healy-Rae, will loom large; he boasted he had “delivered” £250 million for his Kerry constituency from 1997 to 2002 for supporting Bertie Ahern’s coalition government. The Independents that supported this government, dubbed the “pillars of clientelism” by the political correspondent Dick Walsh, were marvellously indulged, with weekly meetings with government chief whip Séamus Brennan, a civil servant in the Department of the Taoiseach assigned to deal specifically with their concerns and Cabinet ministers made available to them to discuss legislation.
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The deal was simple: give us your shopping list and we will buy your government supporting vote for five years. Roads featured prominently. And it delivered longevity for the coalition, which became one of the longest-serving Irish governments. As one of the Independents, Donegal’s Harry Blaney, recalled: “I remember that there was nothing we asked for that they didn’t say was okay.”
As recorded in Liam Weeks’s 2017 book Independents in Irish Party Democracy, the former Donegal TD Thomas Gildea, who was another Independent who supported that government from late 1998, said he “saw it as an opportunity to be able to derive more benefit for the constituency, because at the end of the day, that is what it is all about”.
Gildea also noted that the commitments given to him by Ahern were not formally written down, but taken “on trust” as “the other parties could find out through the Freedom of Information Act what I was looking for if it was in writing”. That pesky irritation of transparency about taxpayers’ money could be conveniently surmounted.
Before the recent general election, Prof Brian Ó Gallachóir, associate vice-president of sustainability at University College Cork, suggested that for future governments “the longer they hold off grasping the nettle, the more the climate system will progressively warm and the bigger burden they’re leaving to our future selves”. And that was before the Green Party was decimated.
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Ó Gallachóir listed the pressing issues pertaining to climate change that needed to be acted on: car dependency, electrifying transport, decarbonising industry, investing in wind, solar and the grid, retrofitting and heat pumps.
Also highlighted were the warnings of climate scientist Joeri Rogelj: “Political decisions that disregard evidence ... will be harshly course-corrected by the hard physical reality of climate change.” Recent months have brought a series of worrying reminders of that physical reality, but it looks doubtful such concerns will penetrate the politics of government formation.
Are we back to the future, even as the consequences of business as usual are ever more frightening, especially in relation to the extreme consequences of climate change and even though eco-anxiety is so prevalent among our youth? Research last month from ECO-Unesco in partnership with SpunOut.ie found that 73 per cent of young Irish people aged between 14 and 29 are stressed about the impacts of climate change.
To counteract such worry, how about this for a list of issues a new government could address instead? The differential impact of climate change in regions of Ireland. An intervention to reduce eco-anxiety and increase climate engagement in teenagers. Water purification. A biological solution to heavy-metal pollution. An investigation into the concealed effects that chemically treated wood has on biodiversity and nature. Microbial fuel cells as an alternative energy source. Vertical-axis wind turbines: the new way to save energy. Harnessing tannins and food additives to clean up slurry tank emissions. The impact of the school run on air quality. The sustainable and renewable harvesting of Donegal seaweed. A novel solar desalination method to extract clean water, fertiliser and biochar from our coastal resources.
These are just a small selection of this year’s Young Scientists’ projects, representing schools in Wicklow, Limerick, Westmeath, Wexford, Carlow, Clare, Dublin, Cork, Donegal and Sligo. But who represents them? And how will their priorities and questions be addressed if we move backwards to the politics of constituency deals?