Claims About Ireland
4th September 2024
The wealthy and influential networks in society use moral-sounding concepts such as environmental protection and invoking famine-era evictions to establish legal frameworks that protect existing capital by preventing growth. They also use the civil service as a massive programme of sinecures for the less ambitious within the upper middle classes. To take a random example: Ireland still claims to have ‘free’ university (though there is a significant registration fee). But the cost of renting is so high that effectively only the wealthy can send their kids away to college. Superficially left wing, but de facto oligarchy. This is everywhere: health service (half the population have private), public transport (unusable if you actually need to be somewhere), and there are shakedowns at every financial touchpoint — bank duopoly, huge insurance fees, dysfunctional legal system
I once asked my mother’s mother (a Brennan from Mayo) whether she would like to go back to Ireland someday. She blew up. “No! There’s nothing there but losers and the descendants of losers. Anybody with an ounce of gumption left a hundred years ago!”