In his address to a conference last week in University College Cork (UCC) to mark a century of Irish radio, Taoiseach Micheál Martin noted that in its early days, radio broadcasting was “a modern, intimate and open medium which dramatically changed the pace and nature of society”.
It developed, he suggested, into something that united people and earned public trust. But such has been the change in recent technology that broadcasters can now live in “an ideological silo” and practise “selective narrowcasting”. Martin also suggested media organisations needed to demonstrate “the expertise and standards which are the core foundation for lasting trust”.
Martin presumably agrees that such necessity also applies to social media companies. But he could only say on Wednesday that it was “concerning” that X, owned by Elon Musk, and with its European headquarters based in Dublin, refused an invitation to attend an Oireachtas media committee hearing which was attended by other social media companies including TikTok, Meta and Google. The refusal of X to attend was despite a request from the Taoiseach that they do so.
Martin is renowned for his caution and insists it serves him and his country well. But too often, it is also a screen he hides behind and, as demonstrated by the contrast between his comments in UCC and his reaction to the contempt shown by X, he is inconsistent in his messaging about standards. In 2023, the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, announced she was quitting X because it had become a “gigantic global sewer”. It has only got worse since then; much worse than “narrowcasting”.
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There will be a lot of discussion in the coming weeks about the annual Irish visit to the White House. Martin will travel, and few will envy him another excruciating exposure that is likely to be marked by his customary caution. But it is also demeaning, for him and us, to be pooled with a court of flunkeys. In 2017, during Trump’s first term, then taoiseach Enda Kenny had the gumption to push back by speaking about the value of immigration to the United States. Martin argues that confronting Trump is counterproductive, but dignity also matters in foreign policy, and we do not currently have enough of that.
British prime minister Keir Starmer has his own caution screen; the supposed “special relationship” between the UK and the US, which has been invoked to justify his sycophancy towards Trump. It has done his political reputation and the two countries’ relationship no favours.
Ireland should not be part of the obsequiousness in the face of the outrageous lies and illegalities of the “hard men” and their toxic keyboard servants. Fianna Fáil commemorates 100 years of its existence this year and hiding behind curtains, whether that is the curtain of the EU, the investment of social media companies, or historic Irish-US ties, is no way to mark that centenary.
Martin told The Irish Times earlier this week that “standing up sounds great and all that, but be under no illusion that if there is an implosion in the US-EU relationship, everybody suffers. And the damage is very serious because it is a very critical and trading relationship”. Surely this is a case of tugging the forelock in the national financial interest?
Martin is now the longest serving leader of Fianna Fáil after its founder Éamon de Valera, whose main mission was to achieve Irish sovereignty, and as far as he was concerned, the capacity to implement an independent foreign policy was the ultimate measure of that sovereignty.
That did not make Ireland a major player in world affairs, but it did, according to historian Ronan Fanning, give de Valera a “larger claim than any other Irish politician to the title of statesman”. De Valera had his own delusions, as reflected in his claim that Ireland was in the business of “helping, as far as a small nation can, to bind up some of the wounds of suffering humanity”.
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But he at least sought to fashion a foreign policy that made the case for smaller nations to assert a degree of independence internationally. Other Fianna Fáil leaders also made much of this, at least rhetorically. When speaking to the Foreign Policy Association in New York in 2000, Bertie Ahern declared that the “first and foremost” argument in relation to Irish foreign policy was the “moral dimension”. What is the first and foremost argument now? That Ireland connects itself to the world only on terms that are agreeable and profitable?
In 2023, Martin said that “our belief in a rules-based international order goes to the core of who we are as a people. But it is not a magic charm ... Ireland’s commitment to global law and human rights does not inure us from reality”. But that commitment does require a much bolder decrying of the current fascism.
