Communicating Europe: Ireland EU50

Ireland EU50

By Hannah Kelleher

Communicating Europe Participant

As someone who can remember the poverty and mass emigration in Ireland pre EEC accession, I am proud of our transition to the strong, credible nation that is Ireland today. On the world stage Ireland has become a confident EU member-state capable of influencing policy on a European basis. Fifty years of Ireland’s membership of the EU are evident throughout every strand of Ireland’s society from the development of child-care, education and research in all sectors, agriculture and fisheries, to the creation of high-tech jobs, environmental improvement and protection, and supporting rural communities.

IRD Duhallow has been extremely effective in conducting EU Leader projects for the benefit of local communities in the Duhallow region as is evidenced by the study of the Upper Munster Blackwater, The Duhallow Barn Owl Project, The Owentarglin River European Innovation Partnership (EIP), Duhallow Farming for Blue Dot Catchments to mention but a few. The widespread, successful programmes operated in the area by IRD Duhallow are responsible for the significant improvement in water quality and biodiversity in the region. IRD Duhallow has provided rural communities with expertise and funding to awaken potential and enable us to continue to live in our own locality, surrounded by family, where we are happy and gainfully employed.

The inclusive and cooperative vision of the EU promotes respect for human dignity, freedom, equality, the rule of law, respect for human rights and is underpinned by democracy. These are the values that shape our lives in Duhallow today.

The founding vision was one of uniting European countries economically and politically to promote peace and prosperity through cooperation and sometimes compromise. EU membership with its principles of democracy and respect for all, has improved the lives of individual men, women and children in this country. Today we, the citizens of Ireland can play an effective part in shaping not only Ireland but Europe also.

Ní neart go cur le chéile!

Hear Us

By AIDAN BARRY

Communicating Europe Participant

Just look at what has been achieved by IRD Duhallow. Jobs, crèches, environmental protection, and much more. Young people staying where beforehand there was flight and rural population malaise, a transformation due substantially to local community workers and EU support.

Subsidiarity is a principle at the heart of the functioning of the EU. It is the principle that a central authority should have a subsidiary function, performing only those tasks which cannot be performed at a more local level. Does that feel to you like how we do things in Ireland? Many think otherwise. Tony O’Grady, a community development practitioner quoted in Finola Kennedy’s ‘Local Matters’ published last year, claims that a major imbalance has developed in government-supported community development, so that the more local and community-centred approach ‘has been effectively obliterated in favour of the more centralised and prescriptive approach’.

Why is the tendency to centralise. Are power dynamics getting in the way? Could a paternal approach apply - a view among experts that local people cannot be trusted to identify what is needed in their own communities? Whatever the reason, we have not embraced the principle of subsidiarity. This matters. The difference is whether we get a say in what affects us in our community or not.

Our people want to take responsibility for ourselves. We want decisions to be taken openly and as locally to us as is practicable. We want subsidiarity. When our representatives don’t hear, let us raise our voices!