ROMANTIC IRELAND’S NOT DEAD AND GONE

MIND-BOGGLING. There is no other word for it. A decade ago the country was tearing itself apart over the legalisation of divorce. Three years ago, we introduced it by the most slender of majorities – the vote split almost evenly down the middle and succeeded by less than one per cent. Now Councillor Anne Devitt of Fine Gael has proposed that we open up castles by the sea as “romantic” places in which to have civil weddings. Just like that.

Just like that, we have moved away from marriage in church, with all its connotations of permanency, Godly authority and social blessing to razzmatazz on the ramparts, waves crashing on the shore, sun, sea, sex and sand. Crucially, the civil marriage ceremony offers an opt-out clause should the relationship not live up to its promise.

Ms Devitt is in Fine Gael. Mind-boggling. It’s not that long ago since Fine Gael Taoiseach Liam Cosgrave voted against his own party’s bill to legalise contraception. Well, alright, it was in the ’70s when Ms Devitt was in nappies. Tight-lipped Cosgrave wouldn’t touch the bill, its subject matter or the devices themselves with a barge-pole.

The joyful Ms Devitt has employed a public-relations firm to trumpet her proposal from the roof-top. The Fingal County Councillor has done her homework and has just the places in mind. She proposes Malahide Castle and Ardgillan House in Skerries as venues for civil weddings. They are important public amenities but often under-used, she points out. The increased revenue for county councils won’t be bad either, she adds. Attagirl, Anne. Pitching an appeal to the heart of local government – the wallet – seldom fails.

The business classes of her area won’t be displeased either. Fingal as a centre of scenic romance and multi-thousand pound wedding feasts ain’t a bad tourism ploy. It would counter the current bad smell about the place coming from sulphurous Abbeville, home of Charlie Haughey, just down the road from Malahide. Off with the chancers, on with the dance, to the strains of ‘Here Comes The Bride’. You just could not beat that scenario with a big stick.

hen nights

The English would love it too. Instead of lager-louts and scrubbers wrecking Temple Bar with stag and hen nights, we could attract hundreds of wedding-goers every day from a country where people queue to get into castles. No problem, says the boul’ Anne. Malahide Castle, courtesy of Aer Lingus bargain fares, is just an hour’s flight away. The coastline from Swords to Howth is only coming down with gourmet restaurants, Mexican bars, golf courses and beach houses.

You’d nearly want to get married yourself, it sounds so gorgeous. Instead of rushing from a city centre church to the nearest park for photographs and then on to the basement of a weary hotel, you just step out of a castle on the coast, feel the wind in your hair, the sand under your feet and watch the sun set over the waves beyond the picture windows, of which hotels out there are abundantly furnished. It’s dead near the airport too.

Who, one asks, could ask for anything more? No need to worry, either, about the priest copping a feel from the little pageboys. No need to worry about the priest, full stop, and the way he might look at you, the heathen he hasn’t seen since baptism. Civil marriage registrars think a person’s religious practice is a private matter. They don’t – can’t – refuse to marry you if you haven’t gone for three months to a pre-marriage course where the priest gives instruction on the “natural” method of family planning. Which involves scraping mucus from your internal organs and holding a thermometer in your armpit, since you ask.

We will have done with all that if Ms Devitt has her way which, hopefully, she will. Nor does she limit her millennium vision to the East Coast. This is an opportunity for “local authorities to take responsibility for a function which should be performed at local level. Local authorities could also be encouraged to provide romantic settings for Civil weddings, giving couples a greater choice of venue.”

I can see it all now. Leitrim is only coming down with castles and Big Houses, under the control of the state, as are Cavan, Clare, Kerry, Donegal, Cork, Waterford – any county you name has a couple which escaped the lash of the IRA and the Black and Tans. The hell with rain and falling tourism figures. Romantic Ireland’s not dead and gone, nor with O’Leary in the grave. It’s been sitting there, staring us in the face, all mossy and magnificent, garlanded with roses and ivy.

A castle, a castle, my marriage for a castle. Anne Devitt for Taoiseach. There’s women for ye, now.