It may be all the black and white footage, or the sepia tint provided by all the benign reminiscences, but the era when Haughey was in his prime seems long ago and in a galaxy far, far away. It was a much simpler, two-channel world, writes Breda O'Brien.
Being able to access BBC and ITV signalled the apex of sophistication. Most people read an Irish newspaper, and the idea that British newspapers would be bothered wooing Irish customers with freebies and heavily subsidised editions would have only raised an incredulous laugh.
National conversations were more possible, if only because our media choices were so limited. The epic clashes between Garret the Good and Charlie the Chancer provided us with plenty of material. Yet, there were areas that were not explored, and those who tried to explore them were likely to be reprimanded or find their careers damaged. Much has been made of the hypocrisy of the past few days, of the near-canonisation of the former Taoiseach. Yet there were multiple hypocrisies at work in his heyday.
Certain people knew well that he was a kept man, but it was not something that the "little people" needed to know. It is as if there was a national conspiracy to believe in the over-blown mythology that Charlie specialised in, the idea that instead of a humble Mayo via Donnycarney boy, he was in fact some kind of Renaissance prince whose extravagant lifestyle might one day be shared by far more of us.
Some of the nostalgia is an understandable reaction. Many of those in the media who despised Charlie were and are such po-faced killjoys that he looked like a more human option in comparison. By their thundering denunciations of everything associated with him, from his nationalism to his arrogance, they polarised opinion still more. Given a choice between those who seemed to despise not only Charlie's many real flaws, but everything that was traditionally associated with rural Ireland and being Irish, many plumped for Charlie.
Apparently Charlie said loftily to a media adviser during the unemployment-blighted 1980s, that one day soon our problem would be not having enough skilled workers to fill the jobs available. As in so many other things, ludicrous as it might have seemed at the time, Charlie was not too far off the mark. Instead, what happened was that many unskilled and low-skilled jobs became deeply unattractive to Irish people in new-found boom times, and we were forced to rely on immigrants to fill the gaps. Not even Charlie could have foreseen that there would be such incredible ethnic diversity here.
Like a lot of Irish people, I spent time in the United States during the 1980s. I was perhaps a bit unusual in that I was not an illegal, but a student on a course where there were people from Latin America, Asia and Africa. I remember on return to Ireland walking down Grafton Street and suddenly understanding for the first time why people say all Chinese look alike. In comparison to the diverse faces I had left behind me, all Irish people looked alike to me. No one strolling on Grafton Street could say that today.
We desperately need a national conversation about our recently acquired wealth, and about the changing face of Ireland. We need an honest and thoughtful evaluation of how well we treat those on whom our economy now depends. Just as debate was not well-served during the Haughey era by the stridency and extremism of some commentators, and the cowardice of others, we are not well-served today by those who treat any reservations about multiculturalism as untrammelled racism. Neither are we well-served by those who refuse to see any action or belief as racist.
There has been a retreat from hysteria about asylum seekers, yet it was deeply chilling during the recent Afghan hunger strike to hear the shouts of, "Let them die". The hunger strike was ill-advised and disastrous for its cause, yet it should be asked why people felt the need to resort to such desperate measures.
The numbers of asylum seekers are relatively small in comparison to the numbers of economic immigrants who are now everywhere. Recently, I heard a disturbing and all too credible account of a man who is a citizen of another EU country but is originally from an African country. He works in a large supermarket chain, where the Irish workers are invariably rostered for the hours that suit them. Workers from EU countries such as Poland and Latvia are treated less favourably, but not explicitly discriminated against. Still another group appear to be undocumented Indian and Pakistani workers who keep their heads down and accept their treatment, no matter how unfair. He, in contrast, the only worker who happens to be black, keeps applying for training and promotion prospects, and is always turned down. He also regularly receives the most unfavourable hours, which are often not enough to properly support his partner and child. He appears to have enough evidence from timesheets and rosters to take a case to the Equality Agency.
It is dispiriting to find evidence of this kind of racism against a capable and motivated individual. The idea that there may be an anti-immigrant virus in incubation that may spread rapidly in the event of an economic downturn is even more worrying.
Yet we also have to be careful not to squelch debate by labelling any questions about multiculturalism as thinly-veiled racism. Every society needs a core set of values to which the majority can assent. To take just one example, we are already seeing practical problems in our education system, where pupils from other cultures are used to corporal punishment, and treat teachers with derision because their sanctions are so soft.
Wallowing in overly benign nostalgia about the Haughey era might be understandable around the time of his death. However, the controversies that rocked Ireland during his time pale in significance to the challenges that face Ireland of today. If we have advanced as far as we think we have, we need to devise ways of having a genuine national conversation about our core values.
bobrien@irish-times.ie