No room in the estate

You remember what happened in Bethlehem, just over two thousand years ago. The story goes that a man from Nazareth and his pregnant wife arrived in the town on the day of the Roman census. The poor bastards had come a long way, and they were tired from the journey. She looked especially wasted – hardly surprising given that she was expecting, any time now.

You’d have thought, considering the big belly she had on her, that the couple might have been given a bit of a friendly welcome, and offered a bed for the night. Not a chance. Whatever the religious or social or ethical disposition of that benighted place might have been, they were given short shrift when they called to various inns and b’n’bs in the area.
“No room,” they were told. But the sub-text may have been a bit more insidious. There wasn’t a sign up that we know of, but if there was, it might have read: No Irish or Nazareens. There were some horribly prejudiced fuckers around those parts, in them days, or so we’re told. But we’ve come a long way, since then. Especially us Irish. That kind of thing could never happen around here. Of course it couldn’t.
The young couple stayed that night in a stable on a hill overlooking Bethlehem. In those unsanitary, and doubtless cold and miserable conditions, the woman, Mary, gave birth to a baby. Or so legend has it.
They called him Jesus and later he became known as the Christ. It was a big moment in human history. The same fella founded a religion, the followers of which are still around, and are known as Christians. That’s what the majority of people in Ireland profess to be.
Aren’t we the lucky people?

An unfortunate traveller family had a bit of a disaster last week. Based in a couple of caravans in the vicinity of Lahinch, they lit a fire in a stove to counteract the winter chill that’s become more pronounced in recent days. The chimney caught fire, and both of the caravans were quickly engulfed in flames.
There are eleven members of the Mongan family, who lost everything in the blaze. “It was a lucky escape,” the father Martin Mongan was quoted as saying. His youngest daughter’s face was blackened by the smoke and she was almost unconscious when he leapt to safety, with her under his arm, through the window of the caravan. But they survived.
In the immediate aftermath they must have been comforted by the fact that Clare County Council offered them a house in an estate in Miltown Malbay as a temporary home. It’d be a place to kip and to stay warm in, while they got their bearings. But any sense of relief was short-lived.
Once the locals got wind of what was happening, the barricades went up. A group of about 40 residents mounted a protest outside the house that had been offered to the travellers. Martin Mongan described arriving at the Ballard Estate and seeing a mob in the streets. One local held a banner that put their position on the council’s offer starkly: “Residents In – Travellers Out”.
Rather than risk a confrontation, Martin Mongan passed on through. Subsequently, representatives from the County Council entered into discussions with the locals. To no avail.
While the Mongan family tried to organise themselves in a tent by the side of the road, the residents spoke to the media. “The council officials said that they wanted to hand over the keys of the house to the Travellers, but we weren’t having that,” said Pat Twomy. “If the Traveller family is allowed to move in, the price of our houses in the estate will go down.”
At the prospect of that disaster, Pat Twomey’s conclusion was definitive. “There are no circumstances in which we will allow the Traveller family to move in here,” he said.
Martin Mongan had in any event decided that he wouldn’t accept the Council’s offer. “We were afraid to,” he said, “over the intimidation that might happen.”
A local Fianna Fail councillor, Michael Hillery, welcomed the fact that the Traveller family had “declined the house”, as he put it. Speaking about a family of 11, who were then living in a tent on the side of the road, he said: “I sympathise with the family who are in a very, very dire state, but providing them with a house in the Ballard estate is not the right answer.”
What then, we might ask, would the ‘right answer’ have been? As a representative of local opinion, Mr Hillery was appropriately abundant in the expression of his generosity. “The people of Ballard would have no objection to the Mongans being housed in a more suitable location,” he said.
So as I was saying in the beginning, isn’t it a good thing that we’ve come as far as we have? When you think back to what that poor little child Jesus and his mammy and daddy had to put up with, being kept out in the cold on the night Himself was born – sure it wouldn’t happen nowadays.
Not in a Christian country. And especially not in Ireland. Of course it wouldn’t.
Happy Christmas.