I want to tell you a story today about two men born in the age of Parnell.
 
Ireland after Parnell, in the dying years of the 1800s, was a grey place of paralysis. Politically stuck and fighting with itself.
 
The opportunity to right the wrongs of the Act of Union seemed lost.
The promise of Home Rule forlorn.
 
Yet [...]

Ireland’s economic future is being decided by events far beyond our shores, which we cannot influence, writes ELAINE BYRNE in the IRISH TIMES May 11 2010
 
DEMOCRACY IS a fragile thing. It becomes even more delicate when taken for granted. For many, the duty of citizenship to democratic action ends when a vote is cast at [...]

The country’s power dynamic must change if we truly aspire to be a republic in which citizens come first, writes ELAINE BYRNE in THE IRISH TIMES February 23 2010
 
OUR CONSTITUTION does not contain the word republic. Although the memory of the republic is rehearsed each year at the gravesides of Wolfe Tone and others, it [...]

ITAY TALGAM is a renowned orchestral conductor from Israel who believes that the orchestra is a metaphor for the workplace. The conductor has the opportunity and possibility to create an organised collective sound from the untidy noise of a diverse ensemble of individual musical instruments with the nuance of a single gesture, writes ELAINE BYRNE [...]

“The constitution may for a time seem lost. The character of the country cannot be lost. The ministers of the Crown will find that it is not so easy to put down for ever an ancient and respectable nation by abilities, however great, and by power and corruption, however irresistible. Liberty may repair her golden [...]

MY GAELIC football season is almost over. I still don’t know why people insist on calling it ladies’ football. Sunday’s All-Ireland final witnessed a brilliant battle of wits between Tadhg Kennelly and Graham Canty but I’m not sure that the Kerry and Cork men would wittingly describe their sporting skills as gentlemen’s football, writes ELAINE BYRNE in the IRISH TIMES September 22, 2009

I’ve played football for Wicklow and Limerick clubs but Dublin is different. Our games bring us to parts of the city that most people never have the inclination to visit. Last week’s match was in an area of the city probably well-known to the Garda, as that subtlety goes. The dressing room was a burnt-out prefab decorated with graffiti, with no electricity or toilets.

Educational reform means young people are better educated and more informed than any previous generation, writes ELAINE BYRNE in The Irish Times July 14, 2009

DEAR COLM, I read your Irish Times letter to the editor yesterday.

“I have to yet sit the Leaving Cert,” you wrote. When third-level fees are reintroduced “I consider the prospect of a severe financial burden with a lump in my throat”. You then asked if there was any point in paying for an education which you might never use because there won’t be any jobs anyway when you graduate.

Ireland needs to implement policies that promote participation in public life, writes ELAINE BYRNE . in The Irish Times March 17, 2009

‘IN THE darkness of despair, we saw a vision, We lit the light of hope, and it was not extinguished . . . we melted the snow of lethargy and the river of resurrection flowed from it . . . the vision became a reality, winter became summer, bondage became freedom and this we left to you as your inheritance. O generation of freedom remember us, the generation of the vision.”

Liam Mac Uistin’s poetic words are inscribed beside the Children of Lir statue at the Garden of Remembrance in Dublin’s Parnell Square. The St Patrick’s Day parade will begin there today, this memorial of reflection, which symbolises the rebirth and resurrection of the Irish nation. Incidentally, Brian Cowen will present an illustrated edition of The Children of Lir fairytales to Barack Obama’s daughters, Malia and Sasha, during his visit to the White House today.

This writer believes in providence rather than coincidence. When both men stand side by side, with the obligatory shamrocks, we will have the opportunity to reflect that Cowen is just 18 months older than Obama and that a generation of young Irish now identify more with an American president of Offaly ancestry than a Taoiseach of Offaly birth.

Two-thirds of Ireland’s population, some 2.8 million Irish citizens, are younger than Cowen. What vision will my generation inherit? The deep regret and betrayal of Fionnula, Aodh, Fiachra and Conn, the Children of Lir, trapped as swans and banished from their homeland for 900 years? Is this the future that awaits us, one where we pay, through unemployment and emigration, for the mistakes of our institutions, those role models of irresponsibility that lecture my generation on responsibility?

OPINION: Enlightened self interest, moral imagination and social responsibility can help economic recovery, writes ELAINE BYRNE in The Irish Times, March 10, 2009

‘PANDORA TRIED to clap the lid on the box again, but it was too late. The happy childhood of mankind had gone forever, and with it the Golden Age when life was easy . . . Only one good thing came to man in the box and remains to comfort him in his distress, and that is the spirit of Hope.”

According to Greek mythology, Pandora was the first woman on earth and sent by the gods to punish man. She is deftly doing her duty. Pandora’s name denotes the “one who gives all gifts” and her gift is the curiosity to open the box, although it certainly does not seem like that right now.