Tales from the canvas 2019

“Of course I’ll vote for you” said the man who answered the door to me,  “But first my girlfriend has to have a shower”. “Come in”, he gestured; “I’ll show you the bathroom”

“I’m not so sure about all of this”, I said with the slightest hint of protest.  I must have been canvasing for over an hour that afternoon. We all know the score, never leave the door without a vote.

Up the stairs he marched me to show me the bathroom. Thankfully it was empty as he explained exactly what the problem was. His girlfriend is a local authority tenant. She’d hurt her back and raising her leg was bit awkward for her. She found the side of the bath difficult to manoeuvre when bathing, Her boyfriend was asking me to intervene with the council on her behalf so as to have a shower installed

When I eventually met her my heart sank. She is a pleasant cheery lady who’d just returned from working as a carer. Not the easiest of sells to a local authority engineer in the housing section of the council. Still there’s an election and small hope for the voter is better than no hope at all.

There’s been no election like this one. Local elections tend to be a referendum on the serving government. Five years ago the local election was played out against the backdrop of Phil Hogan’s decision to install water meters, Alan Shatters high handed attitude to Mick Wallace and James Reilly’s cancelling of medical cards to children suffering from cancer.

This one is very different. Few on the doorstep refer to the government. I suspect that many voters would fail to name half of the cabinet, such is the low profile ministers keep with the exception of the Taoiseach and Shane Ross. With Brexit hovering in the back ground many voters understand that normal political rules don’t apply. The novel approach to the likelihood of extra seats at European level is confusing depending on the outcome of Brexit. nobody can be certain.

But that is not to say there are issues. Control is key to politics. No candidate likes to be seen out of step. That’s why some candidates will develop a line of patter about what they believe the main issues are, Often the candidate can be wide of the mark. National issues can be repackaged with a local blás.

The major issue is the neglect of Wexford over the last 5 years and lack of representation. With the honourable exception of George Lawlor, many struggle to name local councillors in Wexford Town. Large parts of town have not seen either Fianna Fail or Fine Gael representatives since the last General Election.  All politics is local. Those voters are not too impressed that decisions taken by the council were taken by councillors they barely know and rarely meet.

Still, there’s 5 more weeks to polling day. Nobody has voted and we’re only starting out on the road. Maybe the lady I met on the hustings may yet get her shower?

Building connectedness in Wexford's School Communities

It doesn’t happen often, what’s rare is welcome. A day out of class but a day well worth it. Those were just some of the reactions to Monday’s unique conference for all 5 post primary schools in Wexford which dealt with self harm and suicide. A range of speakers educated and in some ways entertained their captive audience from 9 until almost 4 O’clock. It might surprise some to use the word entertained. It wasn’t just about dealing with mental health in pupils, it was about mental health and well being in the workplace. We all have a stake in that, parents, pupils and teacher. It was a day when parents like myself who teach became the pupil. This post is much longer than my normal posts are and may be too long to read.
Stick with and it may just give you an insight into what happened.

In the next few blog posts I will try to share the best of the contributions to make sure they get to a wider audience. What happened was valuable and worthwhile.  A lot of work went into yesterday by management in schools, HSE and Tusla which brought in agencies that deal with mental health in Wexford. A huge thanks to the principals and their staff who worked on it as well as the HSE.

It was good to see Wexford Marine Watch, It’s good to talk, Pieta House, Wexford Rape and Sexual Assault Centre, the HSE, FDYS among other groups there on stands interacting with teachers. I know a lot of the people involved, it was great to see them all under the one roof. Cllrs George Lawlor and Davy Hynes have a long track record on the issue of mental health in Wexford from different perspectives. Both were in attendance.  But it was an event where politics was put aside and focus was on welfare.

First up was Athol Henwick who works for the HSE in the South East. Athol is a South African and he dealt with the issue of self- harm and suicide. He spoke for 45 minutes unscripted. I’ll try my best at getting in today’s post what he said.

In essence he asked the audience what they considered to be self harm, would smoking, tattoos, drinking alcohol be self harm? If not what makes that different to cutting yourself? In his view it is all about intent. Why does a person set out to cut themselves? Athol gave us 3 different sub sets of people who self harm. One group was those who are determined to take their lives regardless. The other end of the spectrum are people who don’t want to take their lives but harm themselves for attention and can be recovered. And in the middle there’s the rest. And that’s the biggest group by far.

He set out a spectrum ranging from hair pulling to cutting oneself with small implements to slashing or taking poison. He set out how there are 8 fundamental characteristics to self harm, the 8 C’s as he called it. Here they are; the belief that self-harming helps cope with the problem, that it has a calming effect, that it comforts and gives control and for victims of abuse cleanses them of how dirty they feel. It may also confirms their existence and also can chastise the person for something they feel they may have done. But it also communicates to others that they are unhappy.

Athol then spoke about suicide and how he believes the level of self harm exceeds enormously the level of suicide. There are no accurate figures on self harm. There is no automatic from transition to suicide from self harm but many suicides have a history of previous self harm.  Just because a person self harms does not mean their behaviour will automatically lead further to a depression, mental illness or suicide. It may well but there is no certainty. The reality is that self harm is by its very nature secretive. Often the last people to find out are the parents. But it’s very likely that when parents find out there is already a significant difficulty.  But self harm is a symptom of unhappiness. Young people who suffer from it need to be equipped to cope with whatever makes them unhappy.

Athol turned to suicide and asked what were the causes.  He says there are 2 theories. The Joiner theory is that people feel worthless and that they conclude that everyone and everything would be better if they simply ended their lives.  Another theory suggests that the person who wishes to take their own life simply refuses to see the other person within them and simply decides to destroy what they see not appreciating that they are also killing everything else.

At the end Athol invited questions, So I put my hand up. I wanted to go back to the issue of self harm. I asked were there any particular one of the 8 C’s that we teachers need to focus on with young people. We teach children from 12 to 18. They’re fundamentally different types of people. Which of the C’s should we need to focus on? Is gender an issue in occurrence of self harm?

In response he said that young people feel an overwhelming sense of relief when they self harm. The possibility of infection doesn’t strike them. While self harm in girls may have initially had a higher occurrence, boys are catching up. 

There is a national registry of self harm for Ireland, here’s the link

https://www.nsrf.ie/our-research/our-systems/national-self-harm-registry-ireland/

I hope this post is of help, It’s a lot longer than my usual posts but I think what happened yesterday was useful. Next post will be on contribution by other speakers notably Bríd Carroll.

Local elections Round up!

Less than 2 months to polling in the local elections, I’m out knocking doors already so what’s it all about? Well this is the first election that it is all about local issues. Five years ago, it was all about Phil Hogan, Alan Shatter and James Reilly and the disastrous decisions they made in office. Nowadays I reckon few voters can remember what they looked like let alone the chaos of the last local election.

Firstly, there’s 12 candidates in Wexford District. Fine Gael are running 3; John Hegarty, Ger Walsh and Angela Roche Reville. Fianna Fail has 2 standard bearers; Colin Murphy and Gary Laffan. Labour run 3; myself, George Lawlor and Maura Bell, Sinn Fein run Thomas Forde while Davy Hynes and Leonard Kelly will be the independent candidates. People Before Profit will run Tony Walsh.

Wexford Town and District will elect 7 councillors to represent a population of about 30,000. Most of the voters live in Wexford town inside the by pass. Castlebridge and Barntown are the 2 other major population centres in the ward.

So what are the issues? Mental Health services and local authority housing are both issues that some candidates are keen to highlight. There’s no doubting that both services in Wexford are not on a par with other counties. I’ve strong views on both. Let’s summarise them. Mental health provision and social housing rely on external funding from the state. The council will build houses if central government comes up with the cash. What are needed are the skill sets in County Hall to build.

Mental health is a diverse topic. As a parent and teacher I’d still think I’m learning something new everyday. That doesn’t give me an automatic in on how older people are affected. My experience has been that when a councillor no council avoided discussing issues on funding and service availability. But we recognised that it was a matter for the HSE or Tuasla  as the case may be. Wexford county council doesn’t deliver mental health services. A councillor may make the case for them and many candidates do that already.

So when it comes to the traditional topics that a council does, and does well, what is making Wexford voters think? Abolition of the borough council and the democratic deficit is the big issue on doors. The electorate know they have less councillors now than 5 years ago. Were it not for my colleague George Lawlor, Wexford town would be in a sorry state.

Since 2014, decisions affecting Wexford have been taken by councillors who by and large don’t live in the town and never represent the electorate there. Most Wexford town voters would be hard pushed to identify a rural based councillor from a photo or identify something the councillor has achieved for the town. That sounds harsh but it’s true. Again and again this comes up on the doorstep.

Clear blue water has opened up in the last 5 years between the local electorate and the council that takes decisions that affects it. The council often tends to focus on issues that have little bearing on the lives of town dwellers. The Wexford dividend that Brendan Howlin put in place as a minister is coming to an end. The business that were expected to open off the back of natural gas, improved road network are nowhere to be seen. Issues such as footpaths and potholes in rural parts of South Wexford dominate councillors time.

The electorate don’t expect a IFS to be built in town but they’d appreciate a vision of how things could be better for them and their children’s lives. For a few years, despite the last local elections giving us new councillors who promised a lot, little has changed. Setting out a new vision for Wexford is the task ahead of candidates in the next 8 weeks. Deciding which vision is best is the job of the electorate!

Not on our own when it comes to social isolation

Urbanisation is a growing trend in Irish society. Critical mass, planners tell us, is the key to delivering better services and access. So it might  surprise you to find out that in fact isolation levels in Co Wexford are highest in urban parts of the county.

This contradicts the narrative of the death of rural Ireland where post offices, garda stations and shops have all shut in recent years. What stands out in figures released by Wexford County Council is that social isolation is highest in Enniscorthy, and all 3 urban areas of Wexford.

Social isolation is the absence of social contact and can lead to loneliness. It can be caused by ageing, distance from loved ones, poor personal health, unemployment among other factors.  When you drill down it is easy to see why Wexford might have levels of isolation above the national average.

It has an older population, family structures branch when children leave school and are drawn to work or study in large cities. Lower incomes mean that older people have less resources to socialise. There’s cultural reasons too. Strong attachment between parent and child can lead to a sense of loss when young adults go to work or study. How we interact has changed, we visit and talk less on the phone and WhatsApp or message more. Lives are more busy, we consume more in greater amounts in our lives.

Social isolation didn’t arrive overnight. It is a product of a cultural and societal value shift over many decades. There’s lots of different forms of social isolation. How it impacts on one group can be different to how it impacts on another. Older age groups will have a wider set of life experiences and may be better able to address how to tackle isolation. My concern is about younger people being isolated.

Young people nowadays are under more pressure than when their parents were in the same age group.  Players drift away from GAA or sports clubs when they are 12. That’s a lot earlier than my day. Young people are not coping well with the highly competitive nature of society. Add to that the influence of social media, the instantaneous impact of posting, the speed and acceptance of social anger in daily discourse. It impacts on boys and girls in different ways and it adds stress on top of social isolation with inevitable consequences for mental health.  Parents may find themselves in the position that instead of being the first person to see something is not as it is, but the person who has to cope and play catch up.

That’s why I’m convinced  that when it comes to dealing with mental health issues, it is too late to be looking for a cure when you have an issue.   We tend to blame government for societal negatives and believe that solutions can be instant. It’s not the done thing to give a government a free pass at election time. But if it took decades to get to this stage in terms of the causes of isolation, it will take decades to get to a better place. That’s an awful prospect for our children and future generations.

Government have a role to play, sure, but so too have parents, schools, society, business  and how each of those components behave. Until such a time as all work together isolation will continue, young people will carry a burden and some of us will ask why and who benefits at the end of the day.

Closer to the next election than we think

You really got to wonder if there wasn’t a back drop of Brexit would there have been an election long ago and would Leo Varadkar still be Taoiseach? In Britain the right wing media lambast Varadkar for as they see it stalling their departure from Europe.

Many people in Ireland will give him a pass on this one as Britain is in disarray and Irish citizens are getting used  to playing the role of the parent in the room as departure date approaches. Many suspend their judgement personally on Dr V which is a mistake.

One way or another 2019 will see the Brexit question resolved.  Eventually we will get back to our domestic politics. And when you look a bit closer at Fine Gael, all is not as it seems.

5 years ago Labour got it on the neck during the 2014 local elections. Three ministers in particular wound up the electorate; Phil Hogan over the shambles in Irish Water, Alan Shatter for his handling of the Garda whistle blowers controversy and James Reilly for cutting back medical cards to child victims of cancer. There was a common thread that ran through the criticism, information was handled poorly making the electorate angry.

To plug the holes Dr Varadkar gave a large budget to his spin unit once elected Taoiseach in the hope of improving his image. Then the unit was scrapped and once more we’re back to obfuscation and deliberate confusion. Varadkar’s stock response on each occasion is to threaten a general election. At some stage that bluff will be called. It hasn’t yet. Firstly it was Frances Fitzgerald who jumped rather than see a general election one Christmas on account of information that was contested. Next it was Denis Naughten who was behind the doors about releasing information on the national broadband plan. The latest minister in trouble is Simon Harris and how the over runs on the National Childrens Hospital came about and who knew what. Lurking in the background are more questions about what the Department of Public Expenditure knew.

When there are question marks about transparency, political trust diminishes. That’s why we are slowly but surely heading towards a General Election. It may sooner than we think, once Brexit is out of the way.

Whether the outcome will give a clearer picture in terms of forming a new government is another question.