'This area needs help and support'

Offaly Independent columnist Kevin Egan on how BNM and the ESB helped shape the identity of West Offaly people and what needs to be done to help the area in the years to come.

All across Ireland, but particularly in the country’s rural heartlands, the lines between news and sport are blurred at the best of times.

If someone from abroad happened to pick up the Offaly Independent, or any other local publication, it wouldn’t be uncommon for them to see a sporting image or story on the front page, then to get to the sport section and read about GAA or FAI politics, or possibly the achievements of someone in Scór Sinsir or Scór na nÓg. One can only speculate as to where their mind goes when they try to figure out how a ballad group or a recitation act is somehow meant to be a sports story.

Sport also bleeds through into everything aspect of the Irish psyche. Unless you’re from Yorkshire, any UK resident will tell you that your county boundary doesn’t mean a lot to you. Here, it’s everything.
And while pride of place is a good thing, sometimes it can lead to inefficiency. The absolute insistence on fighting one’s corner, even when it defies logic, is just part of Irish life – and more often than not, that approach works, because those with influence recognise the power of that idea.

Decentralisation was the primary example, where there had to be something for everyone in the audience, even if it meant rendering the whole plan unworkable. If county boundaries weren’t so important, then the project might have had a chance. Instead of bringing a handful of roles to every medium-sized town, it might have been more practical to bring a larger group to one urban setting, with the resultant employment benefits being felt across a wider area – but that wouldn’t do in an era where “Sligo got lots but Leitrim got nothing” would be seen as an act of betrayal, even by Leitrim people who live much closer to Sligo town than Carrick-on-Shannon.

Fighting this mindset is the challenge facing Offaly now, in particular the western part of the county.

This area needs help and support in the light of recent decisions that were taken regarding Shannonbridge power station, and it’s entirely possible that the biggest challenge won’t be getting firm commitments of support, it’ll making sure that the support is targeted and effective, as opposed to being spread too thinly to be of any use.

If there is one thing that defines the people of my home town of Ferbane and all the areas around it more than sporting tradition, it is the local landscape. Thriving communities were built around the manner in which people harnessed the natural resource that is that landscape.

The connection between the employment provided by the ESB and Bord na Móna around these parts and the county’s success in football and hurling is well-documented. In the 1970s and 1980s, these two giants of Irish industry gave people from these parts good employment opportunities, and meant that while there was no shortage of emigration from Offaly to all the usual places, if you wanted to stay around to play football or hurling, it was usually feasible to do so.

The effect on the county’s psyche isn’t as well-explored, but it’s not unrealistic to suggest that there might be some link between the area’s ability to stand on its own two feet as a community and Offaly’s refusal to meekly accept a fate in keeping with the county’s comparatively small population.

Peat and electricity production in this county provided local people honest work, it offered the dignity of paying wages that could sustain a family, and it was all in the name of supplying a vital service to the country. As I used to joke with some Wexford friends back in college, if this country didn’t have Offaly, the nation would be without heat and light. If there was no Wexford, the country would have to go without strawberries on top of a flan.

That might be a ludicrous assertion, but it was rooted in something that was a genuine source of pride for all Offaly people, even if (like me) they were a couple of generations removed from anyone who worked in either Bord na Móna or the ESB. If you were working in Offaly, either directly for these companies or indirectly in the services economy around them, you knew that our contribution to Irish society was a significant and real one.
Of course time passes, society evolves and the world around us changes. The recent news of the closure of Shannonbridge power station, along with the facility in Lanesboro, brings into close view a day that everyone around here knew was coming.

For the past week, this has been big news. High level politicians have made the trip to the area and shook the right hands, nodded at the right time and generally tried to appear sympathetic.

Those with a real affinity with the area have been vocal about what needs to be done, but the danger now is not that those at the top will shrug their shoulders and do nothing, it’s that the real help that this specific area needs will be pilfered along the way down. Already the conversation has moved from supporting South Longford and West Offaly to talk of trying to support “the midlands” and that will be music to the ears of a couple of political figures, one local one in particular, who is always quick to be seen working the parish pump.

I grew up in West Offaly, the people there are my people, and while it would of course be ideal to simply replace the jobs that will be lost in the local power station and in Bord na Móna with a like-for-like industry that’s just introduced and is ready to go, that’s neither realistic nor expected. If working on the bog taught you nothing else, it taught you the value of patience, and of doing a job once and doing it right.

Try to do things quickly by turning or footing your turf before the skin has hardened, and you’ll have all winter to regret your decision. Try to bring too much home from the bog in one go, and next thing your tractor sinks into the ground and you have to unload the trailer again just to move it. Read the situation, make the right decision and do what needs to be done.

The people of this area have proven that they don’t need handouts, they just need the right conditions to be allowed to flourish of their own accord. Lots of people have talked about the difficulty of retraining people that have only worked on the bog for decades – but significantly, it’s never the people themselves, who are far more stoic and far more optimistic.
Sport has proven this. Elsewhere in this sport section, there is a report on Naomh Ciarán’s successful bid to reach an All-Ireland final, and that club is the perfect testament to what people will do if they are facilitated, and then left to go about their work.

West Offaly doesn’t need charity, or handouts. This is an area that made a living out of the very ground they grew up on, and they can do the same again. Open another door for them, whether that’s in terms of upgraded communications and broadband infrastructure, supports for entrepreneurship and small business, investment in new energy technology (as opposed to the litter that is more wind farms) and people will walk through that door.
Kevin Doyle, another product of my home town, wrote in the Irish Independent this week that there will be no quick fix. He’s right, but nobody expects that. At the time of writing, Doon, Shannonbridge and Ferbane are the current holders of gaelic football titles. Naomh Ciarán and St. Manchan’s hold ladies titles, and that only leaves Cloghan and Banagher, bearers of the camogie and hurling crowns. Those trophies weren’t just won in 2019, they were won over the course of years and decades of work creating the right environment and nurturing the right people.

West Offaly understands the need to take time, and do things right – but that means real support and help for the affected area – not political considerations dictating that it’s more important to throw a few crumbs all over the midlands, only for those tiny morsels to be gobbled up by the most eager and eagle-eyed jackdaws around.