Ireland: Why It Matters to Be an Island
Author: Michael Cronin
ISBN-13: 978-1802050516
Publisher: Royal Irish Academy
Guideline Price: €22
“Thank God we’re surrounded by water,” was the refrain of Dominic Behan’s republican ballad The Sea Around Us, which topped Ireland’s singles chart for four weeks in 1966. According to this rather more profound monograph by Trinity College Dublin professor Michael Cronin, however, Irish people have sadly forgotten the importance of being an island nation. Not only does mass air travel pollute our skies, it also allows us to visit other countries with barely a glance at the deep blue Neptune below.
Cronin insists that Ireland’s mental retreat from “islandness” is not just an academic concern. Tackling the climate crisis requires a fundamental change in our mindset, he argues, since you cannot really care for a place without understanding its geographical reality. “No (hu)man is an island, but every (hu)man on the island of Ireland is an islander. This simple fact is widely ignored in Irish life.”
Cronin builds his case through three essays that read like erudite college lectures, quoting from novels and philosophers as much as environmental reports. He begins by explaining how Ireland’s desire to transcend our island status is only natural, given its association with insularity, backwardness and what Father Ted called “big thickos”. This has been compounded by the digital revolution, which means citizens spending most of their time gazing at screens indoors while nature becomes “a remote abstraction”.
[ Tom MacIntyre: Writer who spoke to world from island off west of IrelandOpens in new window ]
Cronin’s middle chapter is devoted to the consequences of our “great withdrawal”. He has harsh words for the marginalisation of geography study in secondary schools, the upsurge of houses built on flood plains, and rural Ireland’s “culture of possession over a culture of dwelling”. Less predictably, he chides activists and politicians who present global warming as a purely technical challenge. “If it were, the climate problem would have been solved years ago.”
Happily, Cronin ends by emulating St Brendan and imagining an island paradise. His radical proposals include the creation of an all-Irish-speaking university, parliamentary seats given to spokespeople for animals, and a return to Brehon Law principles that recognise the rights of nature. Stirring, provocative and unashamedly cerebral, his plea for “ecological sovereignty” should persuade at least some of us islanders to reconnect with the waters and the wild.
Or, as Cronin puts it himself, “It is time to turn back to the sea… because the sea is not turning its back on us.”
Andrew Lynch is a freelance book reviewer