The government recently launched a campaign to promote active citizenship. Nothing wrong with that, you might say. And on the face of it, why would anyone demur?

Over the past 20 or 30 years there has been a pervasive spread of victim culture in Ireland. It’s a way of looking at the world that starts from the basic assumption that, whatever woes might befall us (note the language!), it is – or rather they are – always someone else’s fault.
It might be your mother’s (she left when you were 10). It might be the Christian Brothers (they beat you up when you were 12). It might be your employer (of course you deserve a promotion, they just don’t understand you). It might be your health (He’s a martyr to the lumbago). Or it might be the Government (they should never have given out so many taxi licenses)…
But people who share this gene are in agreement about one thing – the problems with which they are faced are never, ever, of their own making. And what’s more, it isn’t up to them to do anything to fix the problem.
Sometimes the special pleading is justified. But as often as not, it’s a cop-out. The bottom line is that whinging is the easy option – far easier, at any rate, than making the effort that’s required to take your fate, to one degree or another, into your own hands.
Well, if that was what the Government was on about, you’d have to think fair fucks to them. But sadly, I don’t think that’s what they’re interested in, at all.
The truth is that their behaviour, in so many ways, suggests that they are not really interested in encouraging active citizenship – certainly not in any meaningful sense.
What do they want? Well, they want people to be more actively involved in snitching. That’s right: they want citizens to be actively involved in imposing the narrow, restrictive social model that they have spent the last five years promoting. Become a Garda reserve! Alternatively, if you see someone burning a bit of refuse in the back garden, just call the cops or the local council on the QT. And they also want people to engage in charitable work (if the St. Vincent de Paul are doing it, the Government don’t have to).
But do they want the kind of active citizenship that involves dissent of any kind? Do they want the kind of active citizenship that involves people standing up for themselves, and demanding their rights? Do they want the kind of active citizenship that involves ringing the alarm bells when there is a problem that needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency?
We all know by now that there is a major problem with the quality of the drinking water in Galway. Already there have been a couple of hundred cases of cryptosporidium, as a result of people drinking infected tap water. Basically, the water is contaminated with shit. Human shit. And the filtering system is inadequate to deal with it.
The local authority are, they say, not interested in getting into the blame game. Well, of course not – since they are obviously the first in the firing line. The Minister for the Environment, Dick Roche, isn’t interested in getting into the blame game either – since he too might reasonably be held responsible. (Actually, having said that he doesn’t want to get into the blame game, he went on to point the finger at Galway City Council, but we won’t get into that here).
The truth, however, is that both the Minister and Galway City Council were forewarned. They were put on notice that a major problem was inevitable in the first instance by anglers, who had become alarmed at the changes they were witnessing in the waters of Lough Corrib – from which much of the Galway tap water is derived. In a sense, this is a definition of active citizenship. For a start, the anglers are involved in a sport that is important both socially and from a tourism point of view. But more importantly, knowing the waters as well as they do, they were uniquely qualified to raise the red flag and warn the local authority, and the Department of the Environment, of an imminent problem. But what happened when they did? They were ignored. No action was taken to address the issue, or to rectify the problem. They were treated as cranks. Dismissed as a pain in the official arse. And then – finally – the time-bomb, to which they had alerted the authorities up to five years previously, went off. Boom! The people of Galway were faced with an appalling crisis – one that could certainly have been avoided if, between them, the Government and the Local Authority had listened to the concerns of – well – active citizens.
There is another, perhaps even more sickening, example.
The State has failed dismally to provide adequate education for autistic children. In the face of official neglect, a number of parents have begun to take the situation in hand. They have set up schools, among them Achieve ABA in Donaghmede. There, the children benefit from the availability of Applied Behaviour Analysis – a system of one-on-one learning that has proven to be hugely beneficial for autistic children.
You might think that this was an example of active citizenship at its finest. Autistic children are among the most vulnerable in society – and rather than allowing them simply to sink into a condition of being a permanent, institutionalised burden, the parents involved set about the enormously demanding task of education and rehabilitation.
There has, however, been an ongoing battle with the Department of Education in relation to recognition for the school. So far, at best, the Department has been obstructive.
“Early intervention is critical for autistic children,” says Ian Talbot of Achieve ABA. “We managed to open our school within four months of meeting each other, yet after fourteen months, we are still waiting for the Dept. of Science and Education to give us a decision, to approve our school.”
In this regard, discussions are ongoing. In the meantime, however, the Department has engaged in a pre-emptive strike. In an act that has all the appearances of official vandalism, bizarrely they have found the time to give approval to a new autism unit, to be located in the same school that currently houses Achieve ABA. The effect of this will almost certainly be that grants that were available to the parents because of the absence of any official provision will now be closed off to the founders of the school. Already, a huge amount of fund raising is required to make Achieve ABA possible. Now that burden is likely to be increased prohibitively.
So, this is what the Government really thinks of active citizenship. When people take their lives and their problems into their own hands and go about setting up something that has real value – and in particular that challenges the bureaucratic orthodoxy – the full resources of the State are unleashed in the effort to crush them.
Active citizenship or not? hotpress has joined forces with Rock The Vote on the run-in to the upcoming general election in Ireland. What we are saying to people, and especially to potential first time voters is – if you want to have your say, this is the best possible starting point. Your vote is your voice. If you aren’t registered, it isn’t too late. Get active and do it today. And if you are registered, make the resolution now that come hell or high water, you will get to the polls.
Once the voting has taken place, there’ll be plenty of time to ponder the real meaning of active citizenship – for the long-term…