CONTRASTING EVENTS in Dublin and Reykjavik today may give a twist to the now-tired joke – which wasn't funny to start with – about the difference between Ireland and Iceland, writes FRANK MCNALLY
While 82,000 people converge on Croke Park to cheer the Irish soccer team on against France in a game deemed important enough to merit a special broadcast by the Taoiseach, our near namesakes in the North Atlantic are also holding an event of national importance in a sports stadium.
There the similarities end, however. Because the affair in Reykjavik’s Laugardalshöll is a debate on the future of Iceland, no less: a debate to
which 1,500 randomly-chosen citizens have been invited, with their airfares – where necessary – paid.
It’s true that, even considering Iceland’s much smaller population, the Laugardalshöll event is not as big as the game in Croker. A proportionally similar cross-section of the Republic’s citizens – 22,000 or so – would easily fit in the RDS arena; at least if you included the pitch.
Nevertheless, the organisers of Iceland’s great assembly think it may the first time such a statistically representative sample of a nation has met in this way.
The group behind the initiative is called The Anthill: described as “a collective of Icelandic grassroots organisations”. Its name refers to the hope that, as in an ant colony, an entire society may have a collective wisdom that escapes individual members. In any case, the group claims to represent all sections, with no secret agenda, and the Icelandic government seems to agree.
The prospect of delegates turning into soldier ants and seizing parliament is probably slight – this is Scandinavia, after all. But the government is staying on the right side of it, anyway: joining the individuals and companies supporting the initiative by chipping in €35,000 towards the cost.
The Anthill has its sceptics; and it is perhaps naively optimistic. Until now, the most famous event ever held in the Laugardalshöll was the 1972 “chess match of the century” between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky. That went on for a month and a half: whereas the assembly will last a single day, ending tonight with a “meat soup feast”.
Even so, the hope is that the delegates, brainstorming in groups of nine with the help of trained moderators, will come up with a “road map” to point the country out of its current mess. Such conclusions as it arrives at will later be published and no doubt debated further.
WHATEVER THE MERITS of Iceland’s national assembly, it is in dramatic contrast with the nearest thing of the kind that Ireland’s crisis has yet produced. There were no grassroots organisations at the Farmleigh conference in September. It entirely bypassed the grassroots, and indeed the grass: focusing instead on the flowers of our race – a collection of prize tulips from all around the world, who debated behind closed doors.
Not that I’m knocking it. On the contrary, I applaud David McWilliams for coming up with the idea and seeing it through. Indeed, like most people, I was cheered by the rumoured optimism of this bardic convention of business brains. I’m still optimistic that they too may be drawing up a road-map. And if the element of surprise is vital to their driving plans, well – hey – my seatbelt is already fastened.
But are we even capable of holding an event like the one in Reykjavik, anyway? Well, we seem to be all for such a thing in principle, at least. Not a month goes by in Ireland during which a politician or community leader doesn’t call for a “national conversation” about something or other. In fact, it’s not long ago that our then taoiseach called for a “great national conversation”, which is just what Iceland is having today.
Bertie Ahern made the suggestion during the 90th anniversary celebrations of the Easter Rising and his proposed topic for the GNC was, of course, “what it means to be Irish”. The question was necessary, he explained than, because Ireland faced a “new set of challenges arising out of its success and prosperity”. A particular problem, as he added, being that “our scarcest resource of all is time”.
Yes that was as recent as April 2006. Who knew? A mere three-and-half years later, all the problems he mentioned have been solved already, and without the conversation. But leaving that aside: assuming both a much-revised agenda and the availability of the RDS, could we have a day-long GNC, Iceland-style, now? I doubt it, sadly. Notwithstanding its large Irish genetic inheritance, most of it from female slaves brought there a 1,000 years ago, Iceland’s anthill seems to have a lot more solidarity than Ireland’s. Already our soldier ants – or gardaí, prison officers, and nurses, at least – are holding separate protests. And the public and private sectors of the colony are increasingly estranged.
Logistics would be enough of a problem. But even if we gathered a statistically representative sample of the population in one place, Brendan Behan’s first item on the agenda would loom large. There would be separate official and provisional anthills before the morning coffee break; and, by the end of the day, real and continuity versions would probably have emerged too. As for the meat soup feast, if the soup involved cooks from all the factions, you wouldn’t want to drink it.