Welcome to Ireland. The exit is over there. by Chama Brian

Author:Chama, Brian [Chama, Brian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Unknown
Published: 2012-11-21T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 5

We Are What We Do

The flight was scheduled for later that evening. How I hated flying these days! I needed something to keep me distracted for the next six hours or so. I packed my bags. Something did not seem right. I unpacked everything, changed a couple of things and packed again. A quick glance at the watch, I had only managed to shave a whole of fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes! What a disaster!

Five hours and forty five minutes to burn. I rummaged through the magazines in one of my drawers, found one that I had bought a couple of days earlier but never got round to reading it. I stretched out on the bed and immersed myself in the stories.

There was a story about the results of the referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. The EU had wanted a yes vote. The government had gone through a lukewarm and uninspiring campaign that had ended in the inevitable. The people had voted NO. There was a lot of back-slapping among the groups that had opposed it. They were very happy that they had given Europe the middle finger. However, this was considered to be the wrong answer, so the government called for a second vote. They must have explained the issues a shade more articulately the second time, because they voted yes! This exact scenario was repeated during the referendum to accept or reject the Nice Treaty. The message seemed to be that if the government did not like the answer, then you will keep voting until you get it right.

Another referendum was held during my time in Ireland. It had to do with the changing of a citizenship clause in the constitution – or a loophole that had allowed heavily pregnant Nigerians to come into the country and deliver a couple of weeks later to a bouncy Irish citizen. The mother would then be entitled to an Irish passport based on the child’s parental rights with the possibility that the father would follow suit a couple of months later. This topic generated a lot of excitement and heat. This loophole was not meant for Nigerians or other Africans for that matter. It was one of the least controversial issues and went through without a fuss.

Why had I not opened this magazine before? I flicked the pages to a story about contaminated pork and other meat products. This provoked a huge outcry especially from the farmers as you might imagine. Pork was taken off the shelves locally and the export market dried up. That meant abattoirs shut, distribution outfits closed and lots of jobs lost. Farming was subsidized by the EU but there was no bailout or compensation forthcoming from the EU.

There had been a similar issue which had happened when dioxins were found in chicken. Havoc was wreaked each time foot and mouth disease flared up. It was interesting to see how the foot and mouth disease would rave and rage in the UK, jump into Northern Ireland and then just fizzle out when it reached the border with the Republic of Ireland.

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