Come for the high-end books, stay for the state-of-the-nation debate.
That was very much the vibe at James McBarron’s book stall at Bantry Market on Friday, where he and regular foil, Con Traynor, were putting the world to rights. “This is our parliament,” Mr Traynor said. “You are missing some of the deputies [today]. Friday – this is a therapy session. James is Ceann Comhairle.”
With a late November general election all but assured, Mr McBarron and others at the popular market on Bantry’s Wolfe Tone Square are considering their options. Mr McBarron lives in Mahon in Cork City but brings his second-hand and vintage books to markets in Kenmare, Castletownbere and elsewhere.
As he poked the tarp overhead every now and again with a stick to shake off the pooling rain, he admitted he wasn’t necessarily looking forward to the election, but he and Mr Traynor had a clear view of the political terrain.
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For Mr Traynor, voters can have a “default position” once they get into the polling booth, the X in the box veering into traditional patterns. Mr McBarron said, “There is a need for churn in politics”, adding there was a desire for new faces and people with vision.
The issues, as he sees them, very much include housing – he referred to a property near him in Mahon that was vacant for 17 years before being declared derelict, and another house with three generations of the same family living in it.
“In Cork City, a council house when it goes idle takes two years to put it back in stock,” he said. “That’s not acceptable.”
As it happens, not long beforehand and just five minutes up the road, Minister for Housing Darragh O’Brien had been cutting the ribbon on new cost rental homes at the An Cnocan development. The Minister was keen to emphasise the exceeding of targets in metrics such as housing units completed, social housing units delivered and the rest, with 2020 pitched as Year Zero, the moment when the numbers started moving in the right direction.
He admitted the ever-increasing level of homelessness was still to be overcome, stating it was the “number one priority”. All the while the Minister was flanked by current and prospective TDs, with those from his own Fianna Fáil party and Fine Gael repeatedly namechecked in what seemed like a whole-of-government approach to re-election.
Yet back down at the bookstall, Con Traynor doesn’t believe the current Coalition is working. “Neither can be themselves,” he said, adding that the parties “cancel each other out”.
“Sinn Féin haven’t risen to the task either, and nor have the Greens,” he said. He and others at the market have an obvious respect for Social Democrat leader Holly Cairns, also a local TD, but Mr Traynor said that, even if her appeal was different from that of regular poll-topper Michael Collins, “her grip is tenuous”.
Another who knows Ms Cairns from her pre-politics days is stallholder Martin Hobbs. From behind his extensive array of handmade soaps, he queried why the last budget was deemed a “giveaway” when, in his view, it did “very little” for the self-employed.
“I wish they would look a little bit more towards people like us who are actively generating jobs,” he said, musing about the “leap” many small businesses have to make to move from the town square to the supermarket shelf – if that’s what they want to do.
“I like the small is beautiful model,” he said. “Myself and my wife have a nice thing going.”
A market trader for 18 years and living outside Inchigeelagh, Mr Hobbs admitted to a “certain amount of disillusionment” with the Government parties yet added that he would like to see a rainbow Coalition lead the next Dáil.
The next stall down is Sycamore Grove, where Hugh Rothwell is selling vegetables and jams. For him, the issues relate to infrastructure and the need to improve it across the board. He remarked that in recent weeks businesses in Bantry yet again fell victim to flooding, while his own water supply in Drinagh was patchy.
For Patricia Cadogan from Dunmanway, picking up some Friday fish, it was the issues affecting the next generation that should take centre stage at the election.
“I feel sorry for the young people now,” she said. “They have huge rents, you can’t save.” She wondered whether one of her own children would ever be able to purchase their own house, with supply and demand most acute in the cities. For Graham and Glenda McFadden, it was following their son which brought them from Staffordshire in England to living just near Ballingeary.
Their accents haven’t changed and, as far as they are concerned, the governments on both sides of the Irish Sea were performing equally poorly. Both mentioned the recent Oireachtas bike shed as a high-profile example of public misspending – as Con Traynor remarked elsewhere, “we walk into our own self-made problems” – and they remain singularly unimpressed.
“It’s more than just the bike stand – the waste of money in Government is ridiculous,” Graham McFadden said. “They tell you one thing and do the opposite when they’re in power.” His wife added: “Or they don’t tell you, and then do it.”
If that all sounds pretty gloomy for the politicians who will soon be schlepping up and down the lanes and roadways looking for votes, all is not lost. Conor Cooper from Bantry said he was perfectly happy to listen to people who knocked on his door, which he stressed would remain unslammed. “I want to hear from everybody, how they would benefit us if they are elected,” he said.
“The issue for me, honestly, is public transport, that’s the number one thing here,” he said, referencing a bypass and even a railroad. “There’s also the housing crisis,” he said.
And yet his two American companions were quick to argue that things could be worse. After all, there’s an election looming there as well. “There’s a reason I want to move here and not live there,” one woman said.
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