DISINTERESTED BUREAUCRATIC GOVERNMENT IS DESTROYING OUR INNATE DESIRE FOR SELF-RELIANT COMMUNITIES.
First published in the Western People, 21 January, 2025.
Video of Altadena Wildfire, taken from Glendale apartment by Kate Heffron 2025-01-08 at 08.57 am.
Thousands of miles away, my drowsy wife was none too pleased to be woken up so early by my frantic messages. Sitting in my parent’s home in Mayo, I was shocked by the fiery images of hurricane-fuelled wildfires consuming vast swathes of neighbourhoods in Los Angeles county. My wife, on the other hand, took some persuading to open the curtains to our balcony, but she then was jolted fully awake, as a distant wall of orange flame illuminated the Glendale horizon. Black smoke filled the north-eastern sky as in a Hollywood post-apocalyptic blockbuster. Thankfully, that was as bad as it got for our location, as the winds eased and firefighters heroically battled the several blazes that had broken out over the week. After a day’s evacuation my wife was able to move back into our apartment. Many others were not so lucky, with at least 27 people killed, 12,000 structures and thousands of acres of habitat destroyed, alongside thousands of people displaced to date. When I arrived back to Los Angeles, the main threats facing the areas near the wildfires came from dangerous particulates in the air, as the winds carried all sorts of airborne contaminants from the charred remains of vegetation and buildings.
The outpouring of money, aid and concern for those affected by the wildfires by their fellow Angelenos has been a joy to witness. None more so than the sense of ‘meitheal’ within the local Irish ex-pat community, which I observed through their WhatsApp group conversations — originally set up during Covid restrictions. I was introduced to the group just after Christmas and in time to see how those Irish affected were quickly matched to temporary accommodation in spare rooms, transport facilities, donations of food, clothing and furniture, as well as simply finding shoulders to cry on or heartfelt hugs, from their fellow countrymen and women. For the most part, these were strangers connected together by their Irishness in a self-reliant and connected community. The Los Angeles GAA club – The LA Cougars — similarly rallied their members and the wider GAA community here to provide assistance, advice and even raised funds using a GoFundMe campaign for displaced families.
The collective response to the L.A. wildfires reveals the importance of a sense of community and self-reliance that a local population (not just its Irish members) must have, to be part of a healthy society and be able to face up to the threats and opportunities experienced by it. Well-functioning government and bureaucratic institutions cannot replace the effectiveness of communities in such situations, but can leverage these grassroots’ efforts into cross-community and coordinated responses, matched by their considerable resources and multi-level planning. However, poorly run civic institutions or political bodies can have the opposite effect – dampening the very bonds of agency and goodwill necessary for people to be willing to come together and work freely and altruistically for the common good.
Archaeologist Dr Mathias Schouten speaking at the official launch of Bord Failte's 'Ireland Naturally' campaign at the prehistoric Ceide Fields site near Ballycastle in the 1990s.
The same week as the L.A. wildfires, the Irish Independent announced the ‘Céide Fields ditched as possible World Heritage Site due to lack of public support’ in their 12 January edition. Mayo County Council was reported to have blamed the lack of ‘unanimous local public support’ for its decision to drop their nomination of the 6,000-year-old Neolithic farmed landscape for consideration on a prestigious UNESCO list of world heritage sites.
The council had originally proposed UNESCO status for the Céide Fields and surrounding boglands back in 2009, being one of the most extensive Neolithic farming settlements in the world and the best archaeological evidence available of the earliest form of farming in Ireland. However, Mayo County Council failed to renew its proposal in 2019 when the Irish Government sought an updated list of nominations from across the country. In a statement, the local authority effectively laid the blame in North Mayo stating that ‘as local support could not be demonstrated, an application was not advanced’. The Connaught Telegraph of the 15 January led with the fact that Mayo County Council still remained ready, willing and able to ‘support any future UNESCO designation plan for Mayo's Céide Fields’.
Thus, the impression is given that but for the disinterested community of Ballycastle and surrounds, the wholehearted efforts of Mayo County Council could have seen the Céide Fields join Ireland’s only other three sites on the UNESCO list: Sceilg Mhichíl, Brú na Bóinne and the Giant’s Causeway. However, the claim of a ‘process’ of engagement with the local community by Kevin Kelly, Mayo County Council Chief Executive, overstates what was at best a lukewarm effort. From the beginning, Council officials appeared half-hearted about the project, without anyone championing the campaign. A couple of poorly planned, ad-hoc meetings with local landowners failed to adequately address concerns of the effects of the UNESCO status on their farming methods or residential building restrictions. This was fuelled by some local politicians privately advising against any cooperation with the proposal. Officials quickly retreated from their ‘process’ on receiving pushback from their initial public meeting, so that the nomination had in effect had long died a death by the time of the 2019 reappraisal. Several community advocates suspect that key local government figures were only too pleased to see this campaign fail, as the region became designated for extensive wind-energy generation instead – something a UNESCO status could certainly have impeded or at least complicated the planning process.
A genuine County Council ‘process’ needed a self-reliant, cohesive and healthy local community as a partner, who had the agency and organisational structure which allowed for healthy debate and proactive decision-making on behalf of both landowners and the wider population affected by any restrictions a Céide Fields UNESCO status would have on them. The Irish ex-pat community proved during the L.A. wildfires our innate sense of wanting to work together selflessly for the common good. Indeed, the several superb GAA pitches and community centres built during the 1980s and 1990s throughout North Mayo proves the same at home. However, with local government seriously unfit for purpose, neglect by the state for nourishing civic society at the community level and the diminishing of both the Catholic church and GAA structures in a depopulating rural west of Ireland, dreaming of such big ideas as UNESCO sites or dealing with existential threats as the Mayo equivalent of L.A. wildfires will all suffer from the same so-called ‘lack of public support’.