World of Politics with Harry McGee

A remarkable feature about Irish politics — and I suppose it applies to politics anywhere — is that it mixes the minutiae of local life with the big macro global issues of the day.

If you reel through the debates, or the parliamentary questions, there will be questions about concerns raised by TDs and Senators about a school hall, or a local road, or about hedge cutting on country roads.

You will often find that TDs, when making speeches in the Dáil, will often namecheck nearly every half-parish in their constituency.

That’s an important part of our democracy. The localism of Irish politics is, I would contend, a good thing.

Poet Patrick Kavanagh captured that quality of Irish life better than anybody else in his classic ‘Epic’.

“I have lived in important places, times

When great events were decided, who owned

That half a rood of rock, a no-man’s land

Surrounded by our pitchfork-armed claims.”

He summons no less a scribe than Homer at the end of the poem, who whispers to him.

“I made the Iliad from such

A local row. Gods make their own importance.”

But it’s not the local we are talking about this week; this week we’re looking at how Ireland looks outward to the world.

For the past number of years, in early May the Government convenes a one-day conference in Dublin called the Global Irish Summit. Every Irish ambassador, diplomat and consul general comes home for the occasion. Most of the Cabinet are there, including the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste.

There are interesting seminars on topics, often about new areas of discussion and new opportunities. It’s a chance to glimpse how Ireland conducts its foreign relations with the world. It deals with big issues like trade, conflict, climate change, and developing countries.

This year’s summit has a very urgent theme — and that’s reflected in the ‘clár’. It refers to Ireland’s place in the world at a time of global geopolitical upheaval and change.

Pictured: Taoiseach Micheál Martin addressing the Global Irish Summit this week.