My entry appears solely here for bad reasons but reasons all the same. I haven't been able or bothered to print the submission to post it to the Áras. Also, the website to submit online forces the contributor to answer three individual questions which would ruin the continuity of my submission.
So, I present my submission to the open forum here in this format.
If
Italia ’90 and Sebastian Barry’s The Pride
of Parnell Street have taught us anything it is that the success of a soccer
(from hence referred to as ‘football’) team using the misrepresentative name of
the Republic of Ireland increases sentiments of camaraderie, local and national
pride, and a sense of international respect through the actions of a panel of
elite football players.
Although
the mode of achieving these positive features may not be to the predilection of
all, it is worthwhile now to explore the avenues of using the distraction of
indirect participation in football to heal the short-term disappointment and
disenfranchisement that many young Irish people feel presently.
It
may be fruitful to appoint a committee (whose membership should include members
of Seanad Éireann, sports commentators from Ireland's national public service broadcaster
Raidió Teilifís Éireann, and the president and/or members of the Executive
Committee of the Football Association of Ireland) to research the feasibility
of an inter-breeding programme with a national or ethnic grouping that is more
strongly associated with a prominent proclivity for producing talented football
players. Perhaps a Hiberno-Brazilian link would be of particular interest to
such a committee.
A
significant tax incentive would be given to married couples of Irish and ‘more-successful-at-football-nationality’
origins upon their offspring reaching the age of four-and-a-half and a further
cash sum could be awarded on their enrolment in a programme for the
introduction and indoctrination of football culture into their young lives.
Not
only would this lead to the next generation to possess greater genetic
abilities and propensity to join a team that would inaccurately represent the
‘nation’ but this style of scheme would also reinforce the family basis of the
country as date-stamped by the state’s constitution, Bunreacht na hÉireann,
while encouraging multiculturalism and integration.
Further
investment would be needed to provide the necessary infrastructure for this
vision. Community services for the upcoming talent would have to be solidly
founded before the first participant children could be enveloped in this
positive projection for Ireland’s future— a future that envisions a more
content community spirit and an active, healthy, agile, multicultural society
based on the successes of an ‘Irish’ national football team.
Community
would be at the core of the vision for Irish aggrandisement. The early history
of Cumann Lúthchleas Gael teaches us to keep the structure of
any such organisation local and tied to meaningful entities. In this case it
may be prudent to utilise the existing (or perhaps revised?) constituency
boundaries instead of using a parochial structure. This would add
responsibilities for the maintenance and progress of the programme to the brief
of the local Teachta Dála and ensure it remained in the open political sphere.
This
programme would fit into previous and existing attempts at using the inept
notion of ‘nation’ to boost morale, productivity, and personal contentment,
within the boundaries of this state’s share of the island on which we live, by continuing
the tradition of paradoxically juxtaposing the local with the national and
positioning it against what is conceived as the international while maintaining
an openness for the diaspora and the ‘other’.
And just while I have you here, at a brief glance what other prominent figure of Irish and United Kingdom politics does this picture of Michael D. remind you of?
http://cdn.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/multimedia/dynamic/00630/Irish_News_7-1_jpg_630925t.jpg
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