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Duffy’s Cut Victims Will Be Remembered, But Not Recovered

Duffy's Cut Memorial Cross Designed by Johnnie Rowe

From the beginning of the Duffy’s Cut project, back in 2002, Bill and Frank Watson knew there was a possibility that they would not be able to recover the bodies of the 57 Irish workers who died in 1832 under mysterious circumstances while building Mile 59 of the Pennsylvania Railroad. But the brothers—historians-turned-archaeologists—successfully located and excavated the first seven bodies, and the dream of finding and retrieving the rest of the workers looked increasingly realizable.

Until last week when Amtrak officials informed the team that the bodies in the mass grave were located too near to the tracks that are still in use today, and are therefore unreachable.

For 170 years, the story of Duffy’s Cut was simply an urban legend that had been passed down by locals through the centuries, the tale of railroad laborers buried alongside the Malvern Curve.  But when Frank Watson inherited a file from his grandfather, who had worked as an assistant to many of the railroad’s presidents throughout his career, the legend became a true life tale of Irish immigrants who suffered the reality of prejudice, cholera and murder before being deliberately erased from history.

The summer of 1832 brought the ship The John Stamp to dock in Philadelphia, plentiful with Irish laborers eager to find work. Philip Duffy, the man charged by the Philadelphia & Columbia Railroad to build the dangerous section of track called Mile 59, met them as they came ashore and offered them jobs. Within six weeks, all these men (and at least one woman) were dead, supposedly from the effects of cholera which had become an epidemic in the area. Consigned to a mass grave, these immigrants were quickly forgotten and the details of their deaths covered up.

Frank and Bill Watson, in possession of the original file amassed by Martin W. Clement, the last president of P&C Railroad before it was bought out, and then given for safekeeping to their grandfather, Joseph F. Tripician, began the arduous task of setting up an archaeological dig at the site. Over the past several years, their efforts have paid off beyond all expectations.

Artifacts found at The Duffy’s Cut site include buttons, bowls, forks and pipes from the men’s home counties of Derry, Donegal and Tyrone. Working with forensic dentist Matt Patterson, University of Pennsylvania anthropologist Janet Monge and geophysicist Tim Monge, plus a dedicated team of students, the Watsons recovered seven bodies buried on the site, yet set apart from the mass grave. These first seven were six men and one woman who tried to flee the quarantined camp, but were hunted down by a local vigilante group known as The East Whiteland Horse Company. All of these victims show the effects of murder, from blunt force trauma to their skulls to bullet holes.  It seems they were tended to by a local blacksmith named Malachi Harris, who built coffins for them and gave them their own burials.

Many details yielded by the bones of these seven have helped to provide clues to their identities. The body of one victim matched up by age to one of the immigrants listed on the John Stamp’s ship list; John Ruddy was the youngest of the laborers, and DNA testing is underway with descendants of the Ruddy family back in Donegal to see if there is a positive match. It turns out that John Ruddy had a distinctive dental trait: he was missing an upper right molar, a genetic quirk that is also shared by other Ruddys in Donegal.

The discovery that one of the bodies was a woman was another revelation. Several of the men on the ship were traveling with female relatives, and the bones seem to point to her identity as Catherine Burns, a 29 year old woman listed on the ship’s manifest. The condition of her stooped shoulders show that she was most likely a washerwoman, and certainly used to hard labor.

With the advance of technology, Tim Bechtel was able to use electrical imaging and seismic surveys to positively locate the mass grave where the majority of the laborers had been buried. But what his equipment showed is that these victims are buried 30 feet below ground level, level with the line of tracks as they were originally built in 1832.

“It’s a huge area,” Frank Watson explained. “So they’re all there together. But because they’re 30 feet down, there’s no way to safely excavate.  If we started excavating at any spot along there, it would probably destroy the memorial wall and could possibly undermine the tracks.”

The news that Amtrak was not allowing excavation at the mass burial site came as a disappointment to the team, to know that they were so close to recovering the bodies of the workers but that any serious digging in that location was off limits due to safety concerns.

They’re taking the frustration in stride, however, and the work at the site is far from over.

“We can stay as long as it takes,” Watson explained. “We’ve been working on this last body that was under a large tree. We have the skull and all but one tooth. The teeth are in great shape, considering that the roots of the tree went through his skull and more roots had broken through his jaw, separating the upper and lower, actually splitting the jaw in half.

“We also found pewter buttons buried with him, probably from a haversack, together with a Barlow pocket knife. These are likely some of the best preserved items from an Irish-American laborer’s grave from the 1832 era.

“We still have so much more work to do.”

That work includes proper burials for these bodies that have been rescued. If the body that is thought to be John Ruddy is proven to be part of the Donegal Ruddy family, it’s likely that he will be sent home and laid to rest. For the others, interment at West Laurel Hill Cemetery in Bala Cynwyd has been arranged, and a Celtic memorial cross has been designed and built to commemorate the laborers. Johnnie Rowe, from County Laois, has created a hand-carved cross and ledger from Kilkenny limestone that’s been shipped over and will be placed at the graves of the Duffy’s Cut victims. The ceremony is planned for March of 2012.

So the work of the team will continue. In fact, they’ve been called in to investigate what is thought to be a Potter’s Field in nearby Downingtown. The back story is that possibly one of the men from Duffy’s Cut was able to escape from the camp, then went and infected other Irish workers in the nearby town, leading to another mass anonymous burial ground. The possible connection to Duffy’s Cut makes this especially intriguing.

Amtrak’s pronouncement that there will be no excavation of the mass grave site may be a disappointment, but ultimately it doesn’t detract from the importance of the discovery at Duffy’s Cut.

“The most important thing is that the story is being told,” Frank Watson affirmed. “After being ignored for all these years, they have definitely earned a place in the Irish American pilgrimage.”

Duffy\’s Cut Photos

 

November 11, 2011 by
News, People

2012 St. Patrick’s Day Parade Grand Marshal Named

John J. Dougherty, left, with Parade Director Michael Bradley at the parade.

John Dougherty, AKA “Johnny Doc,” business manager of Philadelphia’s powerful electricians’ union Local 98, has been selected as Grand Marshal of the Philadelphia St. Patrick’s Day Parade. The parade theme this year is “St. Patrick, Bless the American Worker.”

Dougherty is a long-time supporter—financially and otherwise—of the St. Patrick’s Day parade. His union marches in force, usually accompanied by a pipe band and dancers, and funds the pre-parade party held at the offices of CBS3, which televises the parade live. Union members also donate money and their time to a variety of causes and organizations, including the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, the Variety Club, Habitat for Humanity, the Police Athletic league, the Gary Papa Prostate Cancer Run, the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure, Magee Rehabilitation Hospital and others.

In addition to becoming the youngest business manager in the history of Local 98 (at 33 in 1993), Dougherty has been president of the Philadelphia Mechanical Trades Council, vice president of the Philadelphia Building Trades Council, vice president of the Philadelphia AFL-CIO, chair of the board of the Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority, and Commissioner of the Delaware River Port Authority, among others.

“I’ve never met anyone who helps more people than John,” says Parade Director Michael Bradley. “He’s done more for the parade than anyone else. That alone would qualify him, but he’s done so much more. His work in the Irish community is legendary. He supports every Irish cause, he supports the neighborhood, he’s done a great job with local 98, with the Variety Club—he brought them back from bankruptcy. And the political arena–he’s probably the most powerful unelected leader in Philadelphia today.”

In 2003, Dougherty was named to PoliticsPA’s “Power 50” list of politically influential people in Pennsylvania and in 2010 “Politics Magazine” called him one the most influential Democrats in the state. His own foray into the arena wasn’t successful—he didn’t win the vacant state senate seat of Vincent Fumo in 2008—but he has successful marshaled his union’s clout and money behind other winning candidates. The latest, Bobby Henon, his longtime aide, who Tuesday won Joan Krajewski’s seat on Philadelphia City Council. Dougherty and the union also backed two other winners: incumbent at-large candidate Bill Green and newcomer Mark Squilla.

This wasn’t the first time Dougherty’s name came up as a potential grand marshal, says Bradley. “But he’s turned down the honor so many times, even being nominated. He finally said he would allow himself to be nominated and we were thrilled. He’s the perfect choice. We have excellent candidates all the time and he really stands out. And he really ties in with our theme this year.”

Dougherty tends to “revel in his bad boy image,” says Bradley, with a laugh. “But there’s a whole lot of good stuff going on there that he doesn’t let you tell people. He’s a very complex, a very bright man, and one of my favorite people I’ve ever met on this earth. I’m proud to call him a friend.”

The Philadelphia St. Patrick’s Day Parade is scheduled for Sunday, March 11, 2012.

November 11, 2011 by
News, People

John Donovan: 2011 Delaware Valley Irish Hall of Fame Inductee

John Donovan

By Kathy McGee Burns

“Enthusiasm is: a quiet spiritual strength; an inner glow; and faith in action.”

If you know John Donovan, as I do, you’ll see him immediately in this quote. These are the qualities this Mayfair native lives by.

John was born in St. Matthew Parish, one of the eight children of Jean (Dunn) and John Donovan. His parents were typical inner city, Irish-American, Catholic parents.

Jean, whose roots were Dublin and Mayo, was a stay-at-home mom; John (Cork and Sligo) worked two jobs to keep his family going. The Donovans later made that inevitable move to the suburbs—in their case, to Havertown (St. Dennis Parish). They managed to squeeze all eight kids—and a granddad—into a three- bedroom twin home: One room for the parents; one room for the two girls; and one room for the six boys and their grandfather.

And only one bathroom and, says John, “there were no locks on any door.”
Each year the kids would ask where they were going for vacation and their father would say, “Yardsville” referring to the backyard. As an occasional treat, they would go to Longport at the Jersey Shore for the day, changing in the car and off to visit Lucy the Elephant, in Margate. John tells these stories with such a twinkle in his eye.

His were loving but firm parents who expected the children to pay their own school tuitions and clothes themselves….and they all did. John went to Archbishop Carroll High School. and in order to earn tuition, he worked at General Mills from 3 to 6 PM in the mail room and 6 to 9 PM cleaning offices. While at Carroll, he became a National Honor Student and a Mathlete (an active participant in mathematical competition).

John went on to St. Joseph’s University as an accounting major and shared a room there with Jay Coyne. Jay had a very pretty sister, Elizabeth, who always turned up at their parties. There was an immediate attraction. After John graduated in May, he got his first job in August and married Elizabeth Coyne in September.

I asked John what first got him interested in his Irish heritage. Surprisingly, he said it was through the Coyne family. Their house was full of Irish music and John’s new in-laws, Jim and Ginny Coyne, were in touch with their roots. There was an awareness of Irish history and culture which very much appealed to John.

Today, Jim and John are very close. Jim Coyne told me that when Elizabeth first brought John home to the family, he was put off by his shoulder-length hair. Elizabeth said, “Daddy, he is really a nice person”. This was a monumental understatement, Jim says. “John is one of the finest men I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing,” says Jim.

Under Jim Coyne’s tutelage, John joined the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick in 1977. He has been the secretary, vice president, president and now, director emeritus. Now theirs is a Friendly Sons family dynasty. Most of the Donovan and Coyne men have joined.

Through the Friendly Sons came one of John’s finest achievements. It was his father-in-law who led the charge to establish The Irish Memorial at Penns Landing, a tribute to the courage and sacrifice of Irish immigrants who fled An gorta mor—the great hunger—to start new lives in America. But it was John Donovan who saw to all the minute details: construction, bookkeeping, government grants, auditors–he handled all the nuts and bolts.

Bob Hurst, past president of The Irish Memorial, says of John: “John Donovan is a rock solid man who places great importance on routine, where actions have consequences.” John, he says, is the epitome of trustworthiness, honesty, quiet strength, dependability and character.

The light of John’s life is his family. His inner glow shines when he talked about his seven brothers and sisters: Mary ( Marty Roddy) , Kathy (Michael Dolan), Joe and Anne, Father Bill, Ed and Ellen, Tom and Mary, Jim and Dana. Of course, there are his own kids and grandkids; Stephen and Michelle (Bree), Michael and Lori (Gabriella, Emma, Madeline and Jack), Beth, newly married to Brendan Egan, Brian and Susan (John). John and Elizabeth have been married for 35 years and he is an Executive at Compas, Inc which specializes in pharmaceutical marketing.

As for faith in action, the Donovans are loyal members of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart parish located near their hometown of Perkasie, Bucks County.

John Donovan is being honored by the Delaware Valley Irish Hall of Fame this Sunday, November 13, at The Irish Center, along with Kathleen Murtagh and Tom Farrelly. For information or tickets, contact President Kathy McGee Burns at 215-872-1305.

November 11, 2011 by
News, People

No Longer Alone

Every Wednesday, a platter of sandwiches is delivered to the Irish Immigration Center in Upper Darby for the weekly seniors lunch. Then, the regulars arrive, many of them men and women who emigrated to the United States in the ‘50s, ‘60s, and ‘70s, spending most of their lives separated by a vast sea from family and old friends. They’ve raised new families here and they’ve become old friends, but the weekly lunches are an opportunity to hear Irish voices again, to share memories, and make new ones.

When lunch is over, some of the seniors wrap up the leftovers and, on their way home, visit other seniors, those who are isolated by illness, disability, or lack of transportation.

And it’s those people–the ones who don’t come–that motivated the center’s board to approve the hiring of an Irish social worker who’ll be able to regularly visit homebound immigrants to offer them support and the familiar lilt of home.

“The people we see all the time are the healthiest and in the best shape,” says Immigration Center Executive Director Siobhan Lyons. “We would love to do more for the seniors who come here—but, of more importance—the ones who can’t come here.”

At the end of November, Leslie Alcock, a native of Carlow with a master of social science from University College of Dublin, will join the staff at the immigration center. Her first job, says Lyons—assess the needs of the community’s seniors. Alcock, who has wide experience with various communities, from prisoners to families, will be providing services to all ages, but the impetus for bringing her on is to make sure that Philadelphia’s elderly Irish immigrants don’t experience the same fate as others around the world.

“One of our regular lunch people, Attracta O’Malley, sent me a news story about an old Irish immigrant in New Zealand who died and whose body wasn’t found for a year,” says Lyons. “Just a couple of years ago there was a famous case in New York that served as the inspiration for a survey of Irish senior citizens in New York.”

In 2009, the headlines in New York newspapers blared, “He died alone.” He was 72-year-old Tony Gallagher, a retired carpenter from Mayo whose wife, who has Alzheimer’s, was in a nursing home. The two had no children. Gallagher was found dead in his Queens apartment about a week after he died of natural causes.

Ireland’s unique Immigrant Support Programme, which funds immigration centers around the world, was created in reaction to stories of increasingly isolated immigrants, mainly in England, who hadn’t become educated, married, saved, or assimilated into the culture—essentially becoming ghettoized.

“The inspiration for a lot of these senior programs are the experiences of the London Irish, who emigrated in the ‘50s, sent money home, didn’t assimilate into the English culture, didn’t get married or have families, and by the time they were in their ‘60s they didn’t have a support system,” says Lyons. “Our seniors are better adjusted and assimilated and certainly wealthier than the London Irish, but when a spouse dies they get isolated. Some of them are living in a neighborhood that used to be Irish but is now not a neighborhood they necessarily feel part of. Some have less confidence in their physical abilities and are wary of going out.”

Kathleen Murtagh, one of the center’s Wednesday “lunch ladies,” knows some of those people. A widow and mother of six, she regularly takes them leftovers, visits the homebound, and calls those she hasn’t seen in a while. “We try to keep track of people we know,” she says. “We’re always looking out and reaching out. If there’s someone you normally see and you don’t see them, you check on them. But there are people we don’t know and I think having a social worker who could find them, call or knock on their door, would really help.”

The inspiration for hiring a social worker from Ireland came from Chicago, says Lyons, where an organization called Wellspring Personal Care joined forces with the Chicago Irish Immigrant Support Center to bring Irish social work students to the US as interns to serve the elderly Irish population. Alcock is a graduate of that program.

“I’m familiar with what they’re doing in Chicago and they’re a few years ahead of us in their program, but they’re the model for what we’re doing,” says Lyons.

The Irish government is impressed too. It has funded “The Chicago Irish Project” and encouraged other immigration centers to replicate the design, which also gives field training to Irish social workers whom it hopes will bring their knowledge of senior care back to Ireland.

“I love the idea that we could set up an exchange program between schools in Ireland and schools with great social work programs here, like Bryn Mawr and Temple with Trinity maybe,” says Lyons. “That’s our long-term strategic plan, but right now the first step is for Leslie to sit down the seniors here and start making a list of all the seniors we’re not reaching and for her to go out and see what their needs are. That way we can build up a database of who is out there who needs help and what they need.”

Eventually, says Lyons, she’d like to establish a volunteer program of younger people who would do home visits, run errands, and do small chores like lawn mowing and snow shoveling that the elderly now have to pay for—a financial hardship when you’re on a fixed income. “It will be nice to see the next generation of the Irish community helping our seniors,” says Lyons. “We want people to know they’re cared about.”

You can help Philadelphia’s “Irish Project” by attending a fundraiser on Sunday, November 6, from 3-6 PM at Finnigan’s Wake, 3rd and Spring Garden Streets in Philadelphia. The $40 per person ticket covers a buffet and open bar and live music with the popular Bogside Rogues. For more information, contact Siobhan Lyons, 610-789-6355.

November 3, 2011 by
News, Sports

May They Have This Dance?

You don’t have to be a D-list celeb. You won’t be dressing up like the Bride of Chucky. And you don’t have to worry about the judges referring to you as a cute and cuddly Ewok. Probably.

But if you’d like to learn to dance, lose more weight than Kirstie Alley, or already dance better than the stars and want to support a great cause, you may want to sign up for the Delaware County Gaels’ “Dancing Like a Star” fundraiser which will be held at the Springfield Country Club on February 24.

That’s next year, so why are we telling you about it now? There’s only room for eight couples on the dance floor, and you’re going to have to practice, practice, practice, says Anna Bonner, who is handling public relations for the event.

And you need to raise your hand fast. More than 100 people were nominated as contestants and they have until November 9 to sign up, which gives you non-nominated folks a chance to throw your dancing shoes in the ring.

“This is something that has become really popular with the Irish GAA where it’s modeled on a show called ‘Strictly Dancing,’” say Bonner. “GAAs in San Francisco and New York have already done it and it was very successful.”

The Delco Gaels—a Gaelic Athletic Association club with more than 250 registered members—are hoping that the dance competition will help them raise enough money to send players to the Continental Youth Athletic Games championships in Chicago next year. More than 100 players from the Philadelphia-are club competed in the games when they were held in Boston last year, and the under-14 footballers brought home a trophy.

“With the economy the way it is, parents who would never have missed a CYC are concerned about the costs,” says Bonner.

The Gaels have also traveled to Ireland for the Feilie Na nGael, a competition for boys and girls under 14, sponsored by the GAA.

The club will be providing dance competitors with instructors and requiring a minimum of three hours a week of free instruction and practice. “It is a commitment,” says Bonner. “And if they want extra training, instructors will be available.”

Each couple will perform two dances. “They’ll all learn a waltz and either jive or swing,” Bonner says. “The third dance will be taught by an instructor from New York who specializes in ballroom dancing. But only the finalists will have to do that third dance.”

Don’t worry about clothes shopping. Each dancer will be given a costume, and hair and makeup are also provided.

“There’ll be a dress rehearsal a week prior to the event,” says Bonner. “We don’t want them to panic that night. It’s one thing to do it in a room with two people, another thing to do it in front of 300 people.”

If that doesn’t scare you off, contact the Delco Gaels at delcogaels@verizon.net and tell them you can dance, you can dance, everything’s out of control. Or something like that. See below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7movKfyTBII

November 3, 2011 by
Music, News, People

A Samhain Celebration in Lansdale

Was it a good time? That smile ought to tell you.

It was a taste of samhain–that’s Gaelic for Halloween–at Main and Wood Streets in Lansdale on Saturday at the annual Molly O’Ween street festival at Molly Maguire’s Pub. There was nonstop music–Scotland’s Albannach and Philly’s The Hooligans took turns on stage–and the Celtic Flame Dancers filled in the rest. There were vendors and costumes. Oh, were there costumes. Some people really know how to dress up for the holiday.

Don’t take our word for it. We were there and took pictures!

Check them out here.

October 26, 2011 by
News, People

The Return of the “Baron of Bass”

Jamesie Johnston of Albannach, looking healthy.

He’s baaack.

Jamesie Johnston, the popular, long-haired “baron of bass” for the Scottish percussive group, Albannach, literally wasn’t missing a beat on Saturday in Lansdale despite a three-month respite to recover from stab wounds he received after a Scottish festival in Kentucky last summer.

On June 5, an intoxicated fan stabbed Johnston in the mid-section and thigh, puncturing his lung. Johnston had been attempting to eject the man, who had become belligerent, from the cabin where the band was relaxing after their show.

“It took a good two or three months to recover from that,” Johnston said, as the band was setting up for the first of half a dozen sets they would play at the annual Molly O’Ween street festival at Wood and Main streets, outside Molly Maguire’s pub. “Three weeks out I was so out of breath I couldn’t do anything and with the wound in my thigh it was hard to walk. I like to jog and exercise most days, so it got depressing.”

The punctured lung kept Johnston from returning home to Glasgow, Scotland. “I was on a no-fly thing because I couldn’t be in a pressurized cabin,” he explained. Band mate Jacquie Holland stayed with Johnston for a time while he recuperated in the University of Louisville Hospital and later at the home of a friend.

He refused blood transfusions and rehab. “I ate healthy, took lots of vitamins and stayed as active as possible,” Johnston explained. “I just wanted to get on with it so I would get up and move about as much as I could.”

On Saturday, only his fifth gig since rejoining the band in September, he appeared none the worse for wear, rocking and jumping as he hammered out the heart-pounding rhythms that make Albannach (the Gaelic word for Scotland) one of the most popular bands on the Celtic circuit. They appear every year at the Mid-Winter Scottish and Irish Festival in Valley Forge, at Molly O’Ween, and occasionally at Brittingham’s Irish Pub. They’re managed in the US by Bill and Karen Reid of East of the Hebrides Entertainments in Plymouth Meeting.

Like many who’ve been through a life-threatening experience, Johnston considers himself lucky to be alive. “If I’d been stabbed an inch to either side, it could have been much worse,” he said. “I’m very lucky.”

October 26, 2011 by
History, News, People

The Rise and Fall of the Celtic Tiger

Dr. Sean Kay

Ireland is famous for its writers and storytellers, but these days, numbers, rather than words, are what tell the Irish story. Numbers like these:

• Between 2006 and 2010, the average family income in Ireland was cut in half.

• The average per capita debt is 37,000 euro ($51,544).

• Ireland lost 20,000 jobs between the years 2000 and 2006.

• The country’s debt now stands at 876 billion euro ($1.2 trillion).

Sean Kay, PhD, has been a regular visitor to Ireland since 1987. He traces his roots there and his wife is an Irish citizen. But until recently, his private and professional lives hadn’t meshed the way they do now. As Gershon professor of politics and government and chair of international studies at Ohio Wesleyan University, Kay had written about, in his words, “the big wars, global security stuff, and big international security issues,” the kind of thing that got him noticed by Barack Obama during the 2008 presidential campaign.

“I was asked to be part of a team advising Obama on issues related to Europe and Afghanistan, and because I had contacts in Ireland, I asked if I could also advise on Irish issues,” Kay explains. “I’m not a political person, but I was interested in getting involved and it was a good experience that I would never do again. But it got me thinking that there was a story to tell about Ireland and I wanted to tell it.”

That story is Kay’s latest book, “Celtic Revival? The Rise, Fall, and Renewal of Global Ireland “ (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2011). He’ll be speaking about Ireland’s boom and bust, along with Irish Consul General Noel Kilkenny, on Friday, November 4, at Temple University Center City. The program is sponsored by Irish Network-Philadelphia. For more information, see our calendar.

We talked to Dr. Kay this week about the collapse of the “Celtic Tiger” and what the future holds for Ireland.

In your book, there are a couple of lines that really struck me. “For a young generation that had never experienced bad times, a wealthy and comfortable Ireland was the new norm—and the expected future. Thus the desperate condition Ireland found itself in by 2008 came as a horrific shock to a country that had never previously experienced boom and bust.” Ireland is one of the “young” countries in Europe—that’s at least a quarter of their population and they’ve never known anything but prosperity until now. Where does this leave them?

By about 2001 an entire society for first time in history had disposable income, purchasing ability, all built on loose credit. It was a mirage. It wasn’t real. When it burst, you had an interesting set of layers going on. The first one is that this was brand new wealth. People got rich pretty fast and that was just gone. The second layer is that people under 35 who didn’t cause any of that are going to be feeling the effects for the rest of their lives probably, between emigration and having to pay back somebody else’s broken promises on debt.

What went wrong?

There were really good foundations for the original Celtic Tiger of the late 1980s and mid-1990s. [In the book, Dr. Kay writes that Ireland benefited from its well-educated population and low business taxes which attracted significant foreign investment largely by pharmaceutical, technology, and healthcare companies.] Then the politicians got so obsessed with the electoral rewards and manifestations of the idea of large growth. Instead of slowing economic growth to about three percent and going for strong, gradual growth, they wanted eight, nine, 11 percent annual growth. But the export market flattened as had the impact the foreign direct investment. Ireland had lost its competitiveness, which was the premise of the Celtic Tiger. The way they sustained it was by artificially inflating the economy by allowing de-regulation of the mortgage market. Then you got a microcosm of what happened here: people leveraging a mortgage to pay for two or three other mortgages and then there was less revenue for the budget. [In his book, Dr. Kay quotes Irish economist Morgan Kelly who captured the housing bubble fiasco succinctly: “We have spent the last five years learning to believe that exports and competitiveness don’t matter, and that we can get rich by selling houses to each other.”] But what has shocked me the most is how steep the decline Ireland’s education system has been. It’s off the cliff. It went from being one of the best education systems in Europe and now ranks at the bottom in how much the government spends for education.

One of the things I learned from your book was that U2, whose lead singer Bono is linked to African causes including hunger and AIDS, actually took its publishing arm out of the country when the tax laws for artists changed and they were going to be taxed on anything above a quarter million euro. I found that hypocritical and disappointing.

To be fair, they didn’t do anything illegitimate or illegal. They’re not tax dodgers. They still live there and pay taxes as individuals. They were taking advantage of a tax loophole that the government tried to rein in. In Ireland, artists lived tax exempt. Of course, the idea was to help struggling artists, not massive bazillionaires. It was to give them a leg up as they got started. When it changed, U2 packed up and left. That represented a loss of 40 million euro a year to the Irish people. There is a point to be made that keeping the tax rate friendly to business is a good thing. The problem is that U2 posture themselves as a moral business, their own countrymen are hurting and they’ve taken their money out. But lots of wealthy Irish people moved to Monaco and Cyprus, and that money has yet to come back.

You talk in the book about how the cultural lack of self-esteem and avoidance of talking about serious problems has kept Ireland from asking for help and for getting back on track in ways both economic and social. What exactly did you mean by that, and has it changed?

You know, when I mention that to people, everyone knows exactly what I’m talking about. Look at the church for example. For years, people never talked openly about the Catholic Church and the scandals they knew were in it. I spent some time talking to [singer] Sinead O’Connor about her ripping up the photo of the Pope on Saturday Night Live [in 1992], something that was offensive to me and to many other people at the time. I asked her why she didn’t tell people why she was doing it. Americans didn’t understand, but people in Ireland knew what she was trying to say and they didn’t want to grapple with it. Now, with the child abuse scandal in the church and the economic crisis, all these things that couldn’t be talked about before are forced on people. Debt is not something anyone wanted to talk about, but now the whole country is in debt and it’s affecting everyone at the kitchen table level. We’ve picked that up in America too. The president didn’t even mention the oil spill in the Gulf in his state of the union speech this year and it was one of the biggest things we should be talking about—our dependence on oil. This is one place where the Irish are leading the world.

You’re sounding a little hopeful. Do you think things are going to get better in Ireland?

I see a ray of hope, but it’s different from what people might expect. It’s not going to one of getting back to where things were by any means. But there are
five key reasons there’s good reason to be optimistic about Ireland’s future. The first point has to do with fact that the Irish are being brutally frank now, demanding an accounting from their leaders and their banks and demanding transparency because of harsh lessons they’ve been through. Now they’re talking about it and even having some basic discussions of what it means to be responsible citizen in a democracy. Because of the church issues, you also see a real desire for justice and equality. You have [Taoiseach] Enda Kenny giving a speech where he says “this is not Rome, this is the republic of Ireland 2011.” And you see a major social transformation going on involving the face of Ireland. Walk around Dublin today and it’s not all white Irish-looking people you see. It’s multicultural, multi-religious, and much more progressive than most people realize. Ireland has much more progressive national legislation on civil partnerships, for example. Seventy-two percent of the population say they support gay marriage, so it’s not really the conservative country many people think it is.

What does that have to do with getting Ireland back on its feet?

This kind of thing sends a message to the world and to business that Ireland is open and welcoming. That’s really important because businesses want a good environment. I also think that they’re sending a message of peace out of Northern Ireland though I still think that needs a lot of work. That brings me to the fifth reason I’m optimistic about Ireland’s future. The country’s foreign policy has been very innovative and sends a signal of goodwill to the rest of the world. Ireland does peacekeeping, provides food aid in Africa and other Third World countries, and the Irish were the architects of the nuclear proliferation treaty. Those things provide a basic foundation on which a new economy and political and social life can be built. Their economy is not going to save them. It’s going to be these other things that make Ireland a role model for how to think about priorities. There’s much the Irish can do to teach the world. What’s going to get Ireland through ultimately is its classic sense of home, family, and community.

October 25, 2011 by