As if enough divisions weren’t already roiling urban and rural Ireland, it seems that we can now add the weather to the ever-growing list of wedge issues. Surveying the effects of “the sneachta” across the country, Oliver Callan (RTÉ Radio 1, weekdays) notes that the hardest-hit areas lie beyond the Pale. “I can tell you Dublin is getting off very lightly in the cold snap so far,” he notes on Tuesday’s show, “much to our relief here.” Lest anyone think he’s some smug metropolitan type, however, the Monaghan-born presenter adds that things are much worse in Munster and the midlands.
But Callan hits neatly on the contrasting situations in the city – where the low temperature is merely an inconvenience for most – and in much of the countryside, where everyday life has been paralysed. It’s a thread he unpicks, affably casually, when talking to Ger Harkins, who recounts how there was so much snow in her Co Cork village that she was unable to bring her son Kieran to regular dialysis in Cork city. Happily, the problem was solved by Cork University Hospital dispatching an Army jeep to collect mother and son, though even then the trip wasn’t without its hazards. “The first 20 minutes was no fun at all. It was like going through the Alps,” says Harkins.
It’s an unabashedly feelgood item, with Callan palpably buoyed by his guest’s indefatigable personality, even when she mischievously pegs him as a jackeen. Recalling how her son suffered total kidney failure as a healthy 15-year-old (he’s awaiting a transplant), Harkins tells the host that she spent nine months in Dublin – “your part of the country” – as Kieran got treatment at Temple Street hospital. “I’m not a huge fan of Dublin, but I have to say they were amazing up there,” says Harkins with a chuckle. “Phew, they redeemed themselves, the Dubs,” the host replies, conspicuously deploying the third-person plural. You can take the boy out of the country, and all that.
Increasingly, such everyday vignettes provide the more absorbing material on Callan’s show. Despite his satirical roots, the host’s daily introductory monologue is more likely to consist of gently mocking observations rather than the merciless strafing one might expect. (Tellingly, he bemoans the current political scene in Ireland as the dullest since the rainbow coalition of the 1990s.) The rest of the show follows the same easy-going lead, from the host’s breezy opening catchphrase – “It’s Oliver on the air” – to the human-interest stories he hears.
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Accordingly, Callan chats with Canon Donal O’Mahony, who describes the snowfall in his parish of Charleville, Co Cork, as the worst since 1963, the fabled “big snow” that still haunts the Irish ancestral memory as the benchmark of cataclysmic winters. But Callan sounds more interested in his guest’s backstory, commenting on the healthy size of his congregation – “You’ve a surprisingly busy church” – and asking whether the priesthood made for a worthwhile life. “It’s a beautiful life,” O’Mahony replies. “It’s not an easy life by any means at times, but we plough on.” Not a snowplough, one presumes. Still, it’s an appealingly reflective moment.
Even when Callan interviews a celebrity such as Mary McEvoy, the conversation hews to the idiosyncratically personal. Delighting in her own vaguely non-PC persona, the former Glenroe actress (her preferred term) talks about posing for a tastefully racy charity calendar with local friends, the trials of getting older – “I think wrinkles are beautiful” – and the joys of life in her native Co Westmeath. “There’s a lot of wild women around,” she says. “Don’t you worry about feminism in rural Ireland.” Callan’s show may be unexpectedly (and possibly disappointingly) benign, but if ever there was a time for warm stories, this is it.
The nationwide Arctic conditions are comprehensively covered on The Hard Shoulder (Newstalk, weekdays), starting with Kieran Cuddihy’s Kilkenny home. “My own attempts at re-engaging with the world hit an early snag this morning,” the presenter tells listeners on Monday’s show. “When I tried to leave, several centimetres of snow had frozen overnight, so the car was effectively sitting in a sheet of glass.” Luckily, Cuddihy could get a bus to Newstalk’s studios in Dublin, but his experience surely informs his coverage of the cold snap, as he hears from reporters, politicians and Civil Defence officials in the worst-affected areas.
Cold comfort it may be, but at least the weather woes in the countryside are only temporary (for now, anyway). On Tuesday Cuddihy speaks to Liam Heffron, a historian and columnist for the Western People, who thinks the real threat facing rural Ireland is not precipitation but evaporation, albeit of the metaphorical variety. The recent closure of the sole general store and pub in Moygawnagh, Co Mayo, exemplifies for Heffron the “catastrophic depopulation” of his native county and the entire western seaboard. “I call it ‘ethnic evaporation’,” he says, “where you have a whole ethnic community disappearing in a silent spring.”
Though Heffron’s chosen term for depopulation may sound uncomfortably like the name of some extremist conspiracy theory – presumably unintentionally, as he’s a former local chairman of the Green Party – his sincerity and, indeed, despair are clear. He recalls talking to an elderly man who mourned the silence in his garden since the closure of a local school: “All I can hear now is myself and the wind,” was the man’s wistful comment. In terms of causes, Heffron decries commercial and agricultural conglomerates buying up “vast swathes” of land while asserting that “the State establishment is actively discriminating against rural communities”.
The host’s interest and sympathy towards this hypothesis are obvious, but equally he wonders what a realistic solution looks like. “We can’t go back to the two-room school in every parish,” says Cuddihy. His guest doesn’t present many practical suggestions, but it’s hard to disagree with his message that viable communities need to be sustained in rural areas. If not, more chill winds beckon for the countryside.
Moment of the Week
Meta’s announcement that it will abolish content moderation – laughably dubbed “censorship” by Mark Zuckerberg, the social-media giant’s boss – prompts Seán Moncrieff (Newstalk, weekdays) to discuss the concept of free speech with the Trinity law professor Eoin O’Dell. It’s a zingily intelligent conversation, with O’Dell running through definitions of free speech – “There’s the idea of participation in the democratic process and there’s the idea that speech is good for you” – while noting how freedom of expression moved from being a left-wing cause to a right-wing one. But O’Dell is blunt about Meta’s move. “By removing the expenses relating to moderation, and pushing more extreme speech to encourage more engagement on the platforms, Meta is looking to the bottom line.” Or, as Moncrieff more pithily puts it. “It’s about money.” It’s good to talk freely about these things.
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