Europe: Them Or US, BBC 2, Tuesday at 9pm
It struck me as I watched Nick Robinson’s excellent two-part series on Britain’s relationship with Europe, that the EU is to Britain what abortion is to Ireland.
It may seem a bit of a stretch, but bear with me.
Britain’s schizophrenic relationship with Europe has cost a prime minister her job and split the Conservative party for the last forty years.
Unfulfilled promises to hold a referendum on membership have led to the creation of UKIP, whose electoral success has finally pushed the current prime minister to grant the in/out referendum.
The cabinet is split, the Conservatives are again at war and should David Cameron lose June’s vote, he’ll be joining Tony Blair on the world lecture tour.
In Ireland, abortion hasn’t been quite as politically devastating, but nonetheless it frightens the life out of any sensible politician.
It is incredible that until three years ago the area around abortion was governed by a law from the British times.
Despite the 1983 amendment to the constitution which granted equal status to the life of the mother and the unborn, no government has had the stomach to enact legislation to give effect to the amendment.
There were successive crisis, the truly awful X and Y cases, two further referendums and a finding against the state by the European Court of Human rights, and still nothing happened.
The second amendment to the constitution added the right to travel outside the state after a 13-year-old rape victim was prevented from travelling to England for an abortion.
Public outrage produced the second referendum, but still no legislation to set out whether abortion was allowable or not, and if so under what conditions.
When a limited abortion act was finally passed in 2013, Fine Gael was seriously damaged by the departure of five TDs and the founding of a new political party.
Northern Ireland has come a little later to the debate, but we are now convulsed by it and are nowhere near to a solution.
So when we mock the Conservative party as ‘Little Englanders’ who are obsessed with the UK’s relationship with Europe, we would do well to remember some topics in some countries simply surpass the ability of people to agree.
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Toughest Place to be … A Street Sweeper, RTE 1, Monday at 9.35pm
It’s no harm to be reminded now and again that other people have tougher lives than you.
There’s nothing like travel to put into perspective how closeted our lives are.
However much we wish to complain about the 'useless' Stormont, the ‘cuts agenda,' falling standards of living and a struggling NHS; the reality is that we live in one of the most prosperous places in the world.
Temple Bar street cleaner Mark Crosbie got a nostril full of this reality when he swapped his Dublin job for one in the Philippines.
Mark didn’t look like he’d be easily shocked but at times he could hardly get a sentence out without breaking down.
He was working with Mel Macaraeg, a father of six in a suburb of Manila.
For a €15 a week wage, Mel’s duties included cleaning out the open sewers to make sure they kept flowing.
Later when he followed the rubbish to its destination, a vast garbage mountain with swarms of ‘pickers’ trying to make a living out of scrap; Mark was overcome with emotion at the plight of these people’s lives.
“No one gives a s**t about them,” he kept repeating.
The series idea - bringing first and third-world workers together - was first seen on the BBC, but congratulations to RTE for making significant television.
