Trevor Laffan

• 

I got a phone call recently letting me know that P.J. Coogan of 96fm and Cork City Councillor Ted Tynan were discussing anti-social behaviour in Mayfield on the radio and my name was mentioned. Apparently, some incidents had occurred over the previous weekend and Cllr. Tynan was lamenting the loss of community policing. He suggested the work John O’Connor and I were doing back in the nineties was an example of effective community policing.

It was nice to hear my name mentioned in such a positive light. As Ryan Tubridy often says, every puppy likes to have its belly tickled. I’m glad the impact we had on the community is still remembered after all this time. I left Mayfield on promotion in 2000, over twenty years ago, and I would have thought I’d be long forgotten by now. Not so apparently.

On the other hand, I was disappointed to hear of these disturbances because I spent ten years in that part of the city, and I can honestly say I loved every miniute of it. Mayfield had a reputation in those days for being a tough spot and some of that was justified. There were some seasoned criminals living there who were largely responsible for most of the negative publicity attached to the area. Hardy characters who kept us on our toes.

Joy riding, burglaries and criminal damage were rife in the late eighties and early nineties in many towns and cities and Cork was no different. It was common for cars stolen during the night to be found in the Mayfield District the following morning. Gardai on the early morning shift regularly checked the area for abandoned cars and it was unusual not to find one. Mayfield was often referred to as Beirut but that didn’t tell the whole story.

A few dodgy families in an estate can give a place a bad name which is completely unfair to the other residents. I met some of the finest people living in areas with the toughest reputations. Decent people who didn’t have it easy but worked hard and did the best they could for their families. I made lots of friends there and I’m still in contact with some of them.

We’ve seen many examples over the years of troublesome families making life miserable for their neighbours, and according to Sally Hanlon of the Support after Crime Services, it’s still happening. She said recently in this paper that people with a history of intimidating behaviour are being rehoused by Cork City Council, leaving their new neighbours to deal with the intimidation and harassment.

That was a common problem in my time and while there is no magic wand solution, empowering the community and giving the majority a voice did help. Community policing drove that philosophy with specific gardai interacting with locals through Neighbourhood Watch schemes, community and resident associations, sporting organisations and schools etc.

It took time to develop those relationships but as engagement increased, mutual trust and respect was established. Residents found the confidence to stand against criminal and anti-social behaviour and it worked but it took twenty years to get there.

Sadly, not everyone appreciated it. Governments and garda commissioners change, and priorities change with them. We were lucky in Cork in so far as community policing was generally well supported by management, but it was still a struggle. The financial crash didn’t help either and community policing was the first casualty of that. A manpower shortage required community gardai to return to regular policing duties.

Community engagement is not a part time activity. It begins with the children in primary schools and continues until they reach adulthood. It’s a continuous process and takes years and a great deal of effort to develop these relationships. That investment pays off in the long run but not everyone in garda management accepted that which is a pity because it worked. I’ll give one example.

There was an incident in Mayfield in the nineties when the staff of a local business arrived for work one Monday morning to find the property had been destroyed with graffiti over the weekend. While it covered a substantial area and was unsightly, it wasn’t crude or offensive. In fact, some of it was tastefully done with impressive artwork. There were some nicknames there too, so it wasn’t too difficult to track down the culprits.

There were five or six teenagers involved, decent youngsters who were never likely to end up as Ireland’s most wanted so I arranged for the youngsters to repair the damaged area. The company supplied the paint and the gang set to work one Saturday morning armed with their paint brushes and rollers. The company also provided the hungry labour force with Mars bars and cans of Coke and by the end of the day, the building was restored to its former glory.

The company and the gardai were satisfied with the outcome. The youngsters were happy because they avoided an early introduction into the criminal justice system while learning a valuable lesson at the same time. They had some fun too, so it was a good result all round.

I’m retired now but my former colleagues tell me that dealing with an incident in that way would be more difficult today. PULSE, the garda computer system, would generate a stack of paper demanding an appropriate outcome and would probably blow a fuse trying to recognise a common-sense solution. Health and safety would be another stumbling block.

Times have changed but we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that we’ve always had a community-based model of policing in this country. Working with the community to develop relationships and generate trust was paramount during my thirty-five years in An Garda Siochana and that should always be the priority.

• 

According to Eoin English, writing in the Irish Examiner, the regeneration of Cork’s city docklands has been provided with funding of €405m by the Government. €50m of that will be spent on a facelift for the city centre. It’s the largest allocation for a single local authority in the country and will include a new central library as part of a €46m revamp of the Grand Parade, and a revamp of Bishop Lucey Park.

The city’s vast docklands site has been earmarked for development as a new urban quarter with the potential to house over 25,000, and a mix of apartments, schools, sports and recreation facilities as well as transport infrastructure, including two new bridges.

This massive undertaking will transform the recreational, residential and commercial areas, and prime the docklands for significant follow up private sector development. Hopefully there will be a positive outcome but without wishing to rain on the parade, there are potential pitfalls too.

Simple design failures in a development like this can create opportunities for anti-social behaviour and criminal activity further down the line. It has happened before in Europe to the extent that some places became no-go-areas. This isn’t the first development of this type and size, so it makes sense to have a look at similar projects to see how they got on and to learn what worked and what didn’t.

Back in 2006, when the docklands project was first proposed, An Garda Siochana took part in an EU funded project to examine similar projects under construction across the EU in relation to the crime prevention techniques being employed in the design of urban renewals.

Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design, CPTED as it is better known, is a crime prevention philosophy based on the theory that proper design and effective use of the built environment can lead to a reduction in crime and the fear of crime, as well as an improvement in the quality of life for the community. It is best employed by engaging all stakeholders in a consultation process at the design stage of a proposed development.

In plain English, it means using suitably qualified police officers to study the drawings of a proposed development at the early stages of the design process to identify the potential difficulties that may materialise from a crime prevention perspective before the work actually begins. It makes sense.

For example, back in the nineties during my community policing days, there was a laneway on the northside of the city leading from a housing estate onto the public roadway. There were private gardens on both sides, lined with trees that provided shelter for the residents, and cover for the ne’er do wells. The gardens became a handy dumping ground for cans, bottles needles and other rubbish.

The laneway eventually became a rat run and haven for anti-social behaviour. The residents were driven demented. They wanted action and the best solution was to block off the laneway but that was easier said than done. There were many obstacles to be overcome so it took a few years but eventually the laneway was absorbed into the surrounding gardens and promptly disappeared along with the anti-social behaviour.

With the knowledge, experience and expertise we have at our disposal in relation to crime prevention now, it makes sense to use what we know and that’s what CPTED is about. A similar laneway being proposed in a modern housing estate today would be identified as a potential hot spot by CPTED and altering a line on a drawing could solve the problem before it became an issue. 

CPTED is commonly used in other jurisdictions and is now a big business. It’s successful because the technique works. Identifying potential problem areas at the design stage makes them easier to solve.

It’s a simple matter to erase a pencil mark on a drawing or a plan but it’s more difficult, and more expensive, to alter it later when that pencil line turns into concrete. This is particularly relevant in terms of alleyways, alcoves and similar areas that can provide access, egress and cover for criminal activity. Once they’re in situ, they are difficult to remove. There have been many projects of this type across Europe in recent years and we visited some of them. 

Oud-Krispijn, a neighbourhood in the city of Dortrecht in the Netherlands, was experiencing social problems which were becoming progressively worse. Drug abuse and criminality were reaching such proportions that the area became the first ever neighbourhood to be designated as a Problem Accumulation Area.

The government gave financial assistance to the local authority to address the issue but despite their best intentions, it got worse. The physical environment was a major issue so in the early 2000’s they decided to try a new approach. The housing associations and the police joined forces to develop a substantial reconstruction programme.

This programme was at an advanced stage when we saw it in 2008 and was due for completion in 2013 but by then, 1000 houses had been demolished and 500 new properties were constructed using CPTED principles. The effect was impressive, and the environment looked and felt safe.

They also wanted to extend the city centre in The Hague. Lack of space had become a serious issue for the local authority, and they planned to relocate an industrial area to beyond the city limits and use the vacant site to develop commercial and residential properties. This project is similar to our proposed Docklands Project and they also used CPTED principles. So did the Rheinau Port in Cologne, in Germany and their docklands area was developed at a cost of €700 million.

The project planned for Cork is not the first of its kind. It’s been done before, and CPTED has proven to be a useful tool.

• 

Unisex toilets are back on the agenda after the Department of Education recommended the use of gender-neutral toilets for all new schools. They will include self-contained cubicles with their own doors and communal access to sinks but there has been a mixed reaction to the proposal.

LGBT groups say transgender children and young people can feel uncomfortable using school toilets as they worry about being bullied or being forced to use a toilet that doesn’t fit with their identity. Parents opposed to gender-neutral toilets say their children will feel just as uncomfortable going into unisex toilets.

I have some experience in this matter so I could offer advice in terms of design. I’m available for consultation and prepared to help in any way I can. I gained this valuable experience during my Chernobyl days when I spent a considerable amount of time in Belarus. We dealt with communities in rural areas back then and many of those villages suffered from poverty. They had very little, and sanitation was a problem everywhere. In many cases, toilets consisted of just a hole in the ground.

I remember one primary school we visited had a shed in the garden which all the children used as the toilet. It was raised a few feet off the ground and located next to a little playground. It had a timber floor with a series of holes cut into it. There were no toilet bowls, so the waste went through the holes in the floor directly onto the ground beneath the shed and was cleared away by men with shovels. Not the most hygienic set up.

I was in another unisex toilet in that part of the world that wasn’t any better. It was a similar timber structure with a few squares cut out of the floor and there was a pit about ten feet beneath it. The smell was so bad, it was difficult to breathe. Getting in and out as fast as possible was the order of the day. Anyway, as my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I could see the ground moving under me and I thought that maybe the waste was being carried away by a stream or something until I realised the ground was completely covered with rats.

But my most interesting experience of unisex toilets came very unexpectedly. I can’t for the life of me remember where exactly in Belarus we were, but I went to use the toilet and found a series of toilet bowls all lined up in a row. Each bowl was separated from the next by a low wall with no door. It was for all the world like they started building cubicles but gave up after getting to the height of about four concrete blocks and decided they had done enough.

I had the place to myself, so it didn’t bother me. When I sat on the bowl, I could easily see over the wall next to me so I was thinking that if the place got busy, things could get really awkward in there and I had no idea what the protocol was. What do you do if someone sits next to you? It’s hardly appropriate to reach over and shake hands or start a conversation.

As it happened, I didn’t have too much time to reflect on these issues because the door opened, and a babushka walked in. She marched passed and perched herself in a cubicle a few down from me.

For those of you who don’t know, a babushka is a typical Russian grandmother, and they usually wear a scarf, an apron and several long skirts. They are tough, capable women who have lived through tough times and know how to look after themselves. Formidable characters.

So anyway, in she comes and takes her place without batting an eyelid. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry but I went into a state of panic and suddenly became very conscious of my bodily functions. I thought I had managed to stray into the ladies’ loo and was fearful of the consequences. If any of the lads had spotted my blunder, I would never hear the end of it, but right now, I had a more serious concern; how was I going to get out of there with my dignity in-tact?

I weighed up my options. I thought about staying there and waiting her out but then if she didn’t leave before me, I could end up surrounded by more of them. With my luck, it would be time for a tea break, and I’d be caught in the middle of rush hour loo traffic.

Time was of the essence in this case, so I bit the bullet and left as discretely as you can, in that kind of situation. On the way out, I met a local guy coming in, which meant either the babushka was in the wrong place or I was. As it happened, we were both right because, much to my relief, it was a communal toilet. The babushka knew what she was doing.

So, based on my experience, I have some suggestions for the Department of Education that should be included in their recommendations. Firstly, they should insist that toilet bowls are provided in every cubicle and the use of open holes in the toilet floor should not be considered. Squatting over a hole in the ground with a drop of ten feet below is risky and could result in the loss of some children.

They should also insist that cubicles are completed to an appropriate standard. Walls should be above waist height at least, to eliminate the need for conversation between neighbours and every cubicle should be fitted with a door. Running water would be handy too.

• 

I pass the tugs berthed at the Deep-Water Quay almost every day when I go out for a walk. They’re powerful boats for their size, and they need to be because they are workhorses. They’re the marine version of tow trucks and fire engines and there is usually one of them stationed off the oil refinery in Whitegate in case of emergency.

I’ve seen them motoring around the harbour since I was a child but beyond that, I never really took much notice of what they did to be honest until I was chatting to Mick Mulcahy recently. He reminded me that his dad worked on the tugs for years and told me to give him a call. Mick is best remembered for his famous 96fm wind-ups, but he also has a great love for the sea which he probably gets from his dad.

Tony Mulcahy is a retired Tug Master, and he gave me an insight into tug life. He joined the company in 1964 and he had plenty of stories to tell. I think they were called Irish Tugs Ltd. initially, but then Cory Towage took over and the tugs are now operated by Doyle Shipping Group. I don’t have space to go into too much detail, but I’ll try to give you a flavour of the type of life they had.

Two days before Christmas in 1978 Tony was at home when the manager of Irish Tugs Ltd. arrived at his front door and straight away, he knew something was up. A small tanker, The Rathmore, was in trouble just three miles outside Cork Harbour and Tony was told to get there urgently.

It was Saturday afternoon about 3pm when he rushed off to the Thorngarth, to join the other five members of the crew, all experienced men. This was an emergency situation, so time was of the essence. It had been blowing an easterly gale all day, and the forecast was bad, so they knew what was ahead of them. They were expecting to hit rough seas, so they tied everything down as they went.

The Rathmore was a tanker of about 700 tons and was in difficulty since early morning. It was dangerously close to going aground close to a place called Fishpoint, three miles south of the entrance to Cork Harbour and close to Rinabella Bay and Fountainstown. It was a dangerous situation because the Rathmore had already lost one anchor and as the weather had worsened, there was a possibility it could lose the other one as well.

By right, it should have been a Mayday situation but for some reason a Mayday was not declared. If the skipper of the Rathmore had declared a Mayday by just saying “Mayday, Mayday, Mayday” on the radio, all services in Cork Harbour such as tugs, naval ships and the Ballycotton lifeboat would have been dispatched straight away. The law of the sea states that a Mayday is number one priority.

As they passed Roches Point, the tug started rolling violently, tossing them about like a cork on the water. By the time they reached the stricken tanker, they were being battered by huge waves and as they stepped out on deck, they found themselves working in waist deep water. They had trouble staying on their feet.

The tug was drenched with water most of the time with waves coming at them from all directions. On one occasion Tony was knocked off his feet and blown against the side of the tug which was submerged at the time, and he hit it so hard with his chest that he lost his breath. 

It was a dangerous situation with both the tanker and the tug rising high with the waves and then dropping from sight. They knew if the tug got damaged, they were in serious trouble.

After battling the conditions for a couple of hours, they finally got a towline connected to the Rathmore and started to head back to safety, but the tow rope was too short for the conditions and they feared it would break. The men had been working in water since arriving on the scene and were frozen to the bone, but they weren’t finished yet.

Tony needed to get an extension line onto the tow rope but that wasn’t going to be easy in the prevailing conditions. Lying on their backs under the tow rope, the crew members bided their time until they got the opportunity to fit the extension line. It would have been a tough ask at the best of times, but the storm made everything more hazardous, but they pulled it off.

Tony joined the skipper, Joe Keane, on the bridge and offered to relieve him at the wheel but he refused. Joe couldn’t talk. His mouth was so dry, he couldn’t even moisten his lips. When they got into the harbour, they brought the Rathmore to a safe anchorage and the Mate of the Rathmore came aboard the tug and spoke to the crew.

He shook their hands and thanked them for saving their lives. He couldn’t believe what the men of the Thorngarth had gone through.

The Rathmore men knew they were in a bad situation but when they saw what the tug crew were having to deal with, they felt safer on the Rathmore. He said the tug looked more like a submarine than a tug and at one stage they feared that when the tug reappeared out of the waves, someone would have been lost.

The Rathmore was berthed at 9pm at the Deepwater Quay in Cobh and the men went off duty. Just another day’s work for the tug men. They didn’t realise until later that the Thorngarth had been severely damaged and required some major repairs.

• 

The Irish Naval Service set up home in Haulbowline in Cork Harbour back in the forties. Since then, it has been a major influence on the town of Cobh and its people. ‘The Base’ as it’s referred to locally, occupies a prominent position in the harbour. It hard to miss and its presence has been very beneficial to the town, economically and socially.

It’s impossible to walk through the town without meeting someone with a connection to the Service. Naval personnel came from all corners of the country and many of them married local girls and settled in Cobh permanently. Some of my own extended family members served as sailors while others worked as civilians in the naval dockyard attached to the base with responsibility for maintaining the vessels.

I have relatives who spent a lifetime in the Service and back in the eighties, I availed of their hospitality on a few occasions when their ships called into Dun Laoghaire in Dublin. I was a young garda stationed a few miles away in Blackrock and was always glad to see a few friendly faces.

The reception the navy got in Cobh wasn’t always hospitable though. There was a time when the relationship between the sailors and Cobhites was fractious to say the least. In the early seventies, there were dances in the local CYMS Hall every Friday night. The navy lads were regular attendees, but their presence wasn’t appreciated by everyone.

Some of the local lads saw them as a threat, bringing raiding parties into town to steal the women. There was always a bit of tension and it didn’t take much to light the fuse. A scrap could quickly escalate to a melee and it wasn’t unusual for it to spill out from the hall and onto the street. Nothing too serious, just some bruises, black eyes, and damaged egos on both sides.

The navy lads got a lot of stick. They were accused of never going to sea because they had to be home in time for their dinner. Those of a certain vintage will remember when the LÉ Cliona, LÉ Maeve, and LÉ Macha, made up the Irish Naval fleet and the sentiments of the time were captured in a song written by Luke Kelly of The Dubliners.

We are a seafaring nation
Defence of our land is a right
We’d fight like the devil all morning
Provided we’re home by the night
The Clíona, the Meabh and the Macha
The pride of the Irish navy
When the Captain he blows on his whistle
All the sailors go home for their tea

Time has moved on since then and there is a healthy respect for the part the navy has played in peace keeping missions overseas and in protecting our waters from illegal fishing. They have also been successful in preventing the importation of illegal drugs. The largest interdiction was probably the seizure of 1,800 kilos of 80%-pure cocaine, valued at €400 million from the yacht ‘Dances with wolves’ in 2008, off Mizen Head, Co Cork.

Despite their reputation, the Naval Service is struggling to maintain its numbers and continues to lose men and women to better paying jobs in the private sector. According to Sean O’Riordan, writing in the Irish Examiner, figures show that as of March 1, the total complement of personnel had plunged below the 900 mark where the minimum manpower level should stand at 1,094.

A further 24 have also sought to leave and are currently awaiting their discharge, which would reduce trained personnel numbers to 838, more than 2,000 short of what the Naval Service is supposed to have.

My son is only 29 years-old but he told me that friends of his who had joined the Naval Service after leaving school have already left and are now employed elsewhere. So there is obviously an issue with retaining personnel which is a pity because it puts a serious dent in the supply of naval characters to Cobh and we don’t want to lose them.

Characters like Noel Fealy, a retired Senior Chief Petty Officer, otherwise known as Sam. He’s originally from Sallynoggin in Dublin and even though he’s lived here for most of his life, he still retains his strong Dublin accent. We’ve adopted him now though and he rattles off yarns faster than any Corkman.

He told me he was called by the Warrant Officer one day to discuss a problem he had. They were due to use Spike Island for their upcoming annual sports day, but the boss man had no athletes. He needed volunteers or the day was going to be a flop. Sam told him not to worry, he would organise volunteers from the different sections and allocate them to the various disciplines.

The following morning, the sailors lined up for parade and when it was over, Sam told everyone to stay where they were. He went up and down the line and selected his volunteers. The tall guys were picked for either the high jump or the long jump while the skinny guys were selected as runners. He told them they were taking part in the annual sports day, much to their surprise.

When he was finished, he dismissed the parade and headed back to his office but as he rounded a corner, he saw a recruit leaning against a door. Sam couldn’t put a name on him, so he asked him who he was. In a strong Cork accent, he said his name was “Petorrs”. Sam told him, in his best impression of a Cork accent, “Peters you’re in the hundred metres”.

The bemused man asked him what that was, and Sam held up his arms with his hands three feet apart and told him “About a hundred of those boy”.

• 

I have a great deal of respect, admiration and sympathy for all those parents who had to go through the home-schooling experience while the schools were closed. I had a small taste of it when I called to see my six-year-old grandson, Cooper, and it was an eye opener.

It was just before the last lockdown and he was playing with his electronic gaming machine. He described the various games and the different levels he had reached, and I thought he was speaking in a foreign language.

I hadn’t an earthly clue what he was talking about. I tried my best to keep up, but I could see the despair in his eyes as he realised his granddad was completely out of his depth. He was probably wondering why I wasn’t already in a home for the bewildered and I wouldn’t blame him.

The game he was talking about is a Switch, an electronic video gaming system from Nintendo. If you like to read a newspaper and occasionally refer to the radio as the wireless, then you won’t know what a Switch is either so don’t feel so bad.

It looks like an overgrown mobile phone and apart from that, I can’t tell you anything else about it, except that it makes noise. It’s a long way from the cowboys and Indians I was playing at his age but it’s probably politically incorrect to even mention that now.

When he was finished with his Switch, it was time for homework, and that presented me with a reminder of how times have changed. Cooper took out his English book to do his reading and immediately started making these strange noises. I thought at first, he was choking so I leapt into action with my version of the Heimlich Manoeuvre, but as he recovered from the unprovoked assault, he explained that this is the way they learn to read these days.

Apparently, children no longer learn the alphabet. They learn the sounds, so instead of spelling the words, he was sounding each letter and then joining up the sounds to form a word. It worked for him and he got there in the end, but it was totally alien to me. By the time I left, I was a wreck, and I realised the world is changing fast and leaving me behind. It’s happening in my own house too.

My 29-year-old son has a piece of technology connected to a TV in the back room and he plays games online with other similarly demented souls. I have no idea what’s going on except that it involves lots of shouting. Once he puts on his headphones, he is a different zone.

He has a noise cancelling headset which disconnects him from the rest of civilisation. He can only hear his own guys but, sadly, that’s not the case for the rest of us. It gets noisy when they play their war games. There is lots of fighting, shooting and killing and when their lives are threatened, there is a noticeable increase in volume.  

He shouts warnings of impending danger to his buddies, and it get so loud that there must be times when the neighbours take cover behind the furniture expecting the front door to come in around them.

When I’ve had enough, I go into the room and tap him on the shoulder to bring him back to reality. I remind him that he actually faces a greater threat of harm from the person standing behind him than he does from any trained killers on the TV. That’s usually enough to restore a temporary reprieve.

I have come to accept that as I get older, the gap between father, son and grandson is widening. There was a time when I could teach them things but that’s no longer the case because what I know is no longer relevant to them. If they have a question now, they just ask Alexa and that’s OK. That’s progress I suppose but I’m beginning to feel like my dad.

When my father got a desktop computer for the first time, he couldn’t cope. He was an amateur photographer and wanted to upload photographs and photoshop them, but he found the whole process very difficult. He was a good problem solver normally, but he found this new stuff very frustrating, and he promptly gave up.

My mother had a Kindle, but she couldn’t download books from Amazon. I explained it to her until I was blue in the face but to her dying day, she just couldn’t get it. She thought the Internet was her enemy and, in the end, she also gave up and returned to her paper backs. Technology defeated both of them and I’m beginning to understand how they felt.

Cooper wanted to practice his spelling on my laptop, and I was amazed at how well he could navigate his way around it. I can’t imagine what he will be able to do when he hits his teens or where technology will be in ten years.

Progress is inevitable and most of it is good, but I sometimes wish the young people could experience a bit of what it was like to live in simpler times. A time when there wasn’t an app for everything. A time when shouting ‘Alexa’ at the phone in the hallway would only have been answered with the dial tone.

I wrote a piece recently about Laurel and Hardy visiting Cobh in 1953 and I asked my son, Colin, what he thought of the famous duo. He never heard of them and the idea of watching anything in black and white without Hi Definition, 3D, super surround sound on a 70 inch TV with all the bells and whistles was too much for him.

• 

Fife is a part of Scotland I’m familiar with. My brother-in-law has lived in Dalgety Bay just outside Edinburgh since the seventies, so I have been there many times over the years. It’s a lovely part of the world and while Scotland is associated with kilts, haggis, the Lough Ness monster and tossing the caber, there is a lot more to it.

The scenery is spectacular, and the Scots are easy to get along with because they’re like the Irish in many ways. They have a sense of humour too.

My wife and I went into a bar in 1979 and she asked me to get her a glass of lager with a dash of lime. I forgot the lime, so I went back up to the counter and asked the barman for a drop. I offered to pay because I knew they charged for it in some of the bars, but he recognised the accent and asked if I was from Ireland? I told him I was, and he said, light-heartedly “That’s OK then, there’s no charge. If you were English, it would cost you five pence.”  

I have a friend who also lives in Fife. He’s a recently retired policeman, and we spent some time working together on a project that brought us to several countries around Europe back in the noughties. Mark always seemed normal to me, but he never told me about his ancestors. I need to talk to him about them because they obviously had issues.

According to official records from the Fife Council, approximately 3,500 women were executed as witches in Scotland between 1560 and 1727. Some estimates even put that figure as high as 6,000 during a period when Europe was gripped by an anti-witch hysteria.

I don’t remember hearing any of this when I was growing up, but there was a time when witch-hunting was big business. While I was writing a piece about sleep deprivation a few weeks ago, I discovered that witch hunters scoured the land looking for suspects and when they caught them, they tortured them until they got a confession.

Sleep deprivation was one of the methods used. The suspected witches were kept awake for days until they eventually began to hallucinate and whatever they said while they were rambling was used as evidence to convict them at their trials.

According to Julian Goodare in National Geographic, the Scots believed that during the late 1500s, the devil was at work in the land and was known for his ability to create storms, kill livestock, and spread deadly illness. Satan sought to undermine human society from within and was recruiting secret agents to do his bidding. These people were witches, and the authorities believed they had to be eradicated for the sake of the kingdom.

And eradicated they were. Out of a population of roughly a million people, about 2,500 accused witches, most of them women, were executed.

The typical stereotype of an accused witch was an elderly, quarrelsome female and many were nominated as suspects by neighbours who just didn’t like them. Those women would be interrogated and forced to name accomplices, who would then be accused of having made a pact with the devil.

There were male witches too, but it was more difficult to convict them. They had to do something specific in order to be charged with witchcraft which explains why 85 percent of the convicted witches were female. Not a lot of evidence was required for women and sometimes they were simply identified as witches by virtue of having a mark like a scar, a mole, a cyst or maybe even just a skin tag.

This was interpreted as the “devil’s mark”, made by contact with the devil when sealing his pact with a witch. That was enough to bring them in for interrogation and a dose of sleep deprivation which was the most common method of torture. The confused and terrified women would readily admit to anything just to get out of their predicament.

In most European countries, witches were burned at the stake, but the Scots were more humanitarian and preferred to strangle suspected witches first. They weren’t always so considerate though and on one occasion a crowd killed an accused woman by dragging her to the beach, where they placed a door on top of her and piled stones on top of it until she died.

Another enterprising lady struck a deal with her tormentors to avoid the death penalty. Margaret Aitken, the so-called great witch of Balwearie, told them she had a special power to detect other witches. She used that power to travel around Scotland pointing out witches, many of whom were innocent but were put to death on her word alone. She eventually slipped up when she failed to identify one woman whom she had previously fingered, and she was uncovered as a fraud. 

There was another lady called Lilias Adie who was accused of witchcraft and sentenced to burn at the stake but before the brutal execution could be carried out, she died in prison. Possibly from suicide to avoid being strangled and burned at the stake.

Marco Margaritoff wrote about this woman who was terribly mistreated in prison and those who abused her were so afraid she would come back to life, that they locked her in a wooden box rather than a coffin. Her body was buried along the seashore in Fife, and to ensure that the devil did not reactivate her body, the grave was covered with a half-ton slab of stone.

That didn’t stop relic hunters though who still managed to rob the remains of Lilias Adie in 1852, and those remains are still missing. She was only in her late 50s or early 60s when she died.

• 

Eamon Ryan, our Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications, has a new plan to save Planet Earth. He wants to do away with cheap flights to holiday destinations to cut down on harmful emissions. He says he is working with his European partners to ensure that cheap flights won’t be easily accessible in the future.

He says this will help Ireland reach zero carbon emissions by 2050 but it also means families will pay more for their breaks in the sun. That’s unlikely to win him any bonus points in the popularity stakes but it’s not the first time he’s gone against the grain.

He previously suggested that people living in rural Ireland, should start car sharing to reduce our carbon footprint. He also wanted wolves to be reintroduced into Ireland 250 years after they became extinct, because they should have a place in Ireland’s environment and would contribute positively to the ecosystem and the State’s national habitat.

He has raised a few eyebrows on other occasions too. While making a speech on racism, he used the very word he shouldn’t, and then he wanted us to grow our own salads in window boxes on south facing windowsills so we could be self-sufficient.

Minister Ryan also has plans for Dublin. He wants a city where a good education and skilled work will be available for those who seek it, where people can afford to rent or buy a house, where access to an efficient and reliable public transport system is guaranteed. Where cycling and walking are also a viable and healthy option for people getting in and out of the city centre.

That sounds fantastic but what politicians want for Dublin is of little interest to me down here in Cork. I live in Cobh, and as far as politicians are concerned, it’s the forgotten land. The condition of the roads, broadband, hospitals, garda stations and post-offices generally in rural Ireland suggests that our future is as precarious as that of the dodo bird.

The health of the Planet is a serious issue. Young people in particular are getting more animated about the subject with Greta Thunberg, the Swedish teenage activist on climate change, leading the charge. It’s their future we’re talking about, so they have every right to be concerned.

That’s music to the ears of the Green Party and their supporters, but it’s not going down well with everyone. Well, me anyway because it’s giving their leader, Eamon Ryan a platform. I’ve never met him, and he comes across as a genuine character, but I can’t take him seriously and that’s a pity because I would like to be supportive.

There’s no doubt the Planet is in trouble and something needs to change. According to the World Wildlife Fund, African elephant populations have declined, more than 100,000 orangutans have been lost, the whale shark population has fallen by more than 50% and black and white rhinos are down by 63%. Polar bear numbers are projected to decline by 30% in thirty years-time.

We’re destroying their natural habitat by looting the forests for timber. We’re killing elephants and rhinos for their ivory, killing sharks for their fins and other animals for trophies. We’re filling the oceans with plastic with disastrous implications for animal and plant life.

A dead whale washed up in eastern Indonesia and it had a large amount of waste in its stomach including flip-flops, four plastic bottles, 25 plastic bags, a nylon sack, 115 drinking cups and 1,000 pieces of assorted plastic.

I was fortunate some years ago when I got to visit the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. I spent a day diving from a boat and snorkelling among the coral and the fish. Fish of all shapes, size and colour swam around me and at times they rubbed against me as they passed by. The water was absolutely crystal clear, and I never saw such a display of colour, it was spectacular.

Now it’s in danger of disappearing. We are facing a huge challenge according to a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The world’s leading scientists are telling us that we have only about ten years to prevent the Earth heating up and if we don’t get our act together, we are going to be in serious trouble.

If the temperature increases by as little as a half a degree more, the world will be at greater risk from drought, floods, and extreme heat. Not only will that have a negative impact on hundreds of millions of people, but it will also severely damage the coral and the Arctic.

You would think that with all the knowledge we have about how the Planet lives, breathes, and provides for us, that we would show greater interest in protecting it. We should hand it over to future generations the way we found it but instead we’re hell bent on destroying it.

I won’t ever be a member of the Green Party. I don’t believe we should all go around barefoot, wearing clothes made from grass and eating raw vegetables, but I do think it is time that we took a serious look at what we are leaving behind us. We can do better.

We produce nearly 300 million tons of plastic every year, half of which is for single use. More than 8 million tons of plastic is dumped into our oceans annually and much of it ends up being consumed by the creatures living there.

All the experts agree that climate change is occurring earlier and more rapidly than expected and we are being told now that we have 12 years to limit a climate change catastrophe. We can’t afford to fail because the stakes are too high, but I still can’t take Eamon Ryan seriously.

• 

Like most people, I have been compliant with the restrictions imposed on us during Covid-19. I’ve done what I’ve been asked to do but the longer it goes on, the more frustrated I’m getting and as I am your ‘average man in the street’, I reckon I’m not the only one.

I have no problem following orders as long as the plan makes sense, but headless chicken style leadership frustrates me. I need proper direction with a clear message delivered by one person, preferably a leader. It’s difficult to stick to a plan that lacks structure and varies in context depending on who is delivering it.

The problem I have with the Government’s handling of the pandemic is that I can’t figure out who to listen to. Many people appear on our TV screens telling us what to do. Politicians, experts from NPHET and the HSE, and a host of independent experts happy to throw in their tuppence worth but the messages are often mixed and that makes it hard to have confidence in the messengers.

It shouldn’t be difficult for the relevant stakeholders to get into a huddle, consider the expert advice, come up with a plan and deliver clear instructions in one voice to the rest of us. It shouldn’t be, but it is and that’s not going to change either as long as we continue with the Chinese whispers style of information dissemination.

Chinese whispers, a game many of you will be familiar with, is often used as a warm-up exercise in situations where people come together for the first time. It acts as an ice breaker, designed to break the initial tension and get people talking to each other.

I hate these things normally, but this one is a bit of fun and there is also a practical side to it. It can be used as a training aide to illustrate how stories can sometimes become altered in the telling. How an account of an event described by one person can be unintentionally distorted when it has been passed on a few times.

It’s a technique that is also used to demonstrate to police officers how an account of an incident from a witness, given in good faith, might not be accurate or reliable. It shows too how several witnesses to the same event, might give different accounts, with some details getting lost in the telling.

It’s a simple exercise that can be played out anywhere, and the more people involved, the better. In short, the first person whispers a little story to the person next to them and that person then tells it to the next person and so on. It continues down the line, one at a time, until the last person has heard it.

The last person to receive the message then relates it back to the group and it usually happens that the story at the end of the exercise will be bear very little similarity to the original version.

It proves that while we all hear the words, we don’t always hear the same message. It demonstrates the importance of having a good communication system in place in any organisation to ensure that the right message is getting through to the people who need it most.

Many organisations suffer from Chinese whispers and during my time, An Garda Siochana was no different. Instructions coming from garda management in the Phoenix Park often got distorted as they travelled down through the ranks to the garda on the beat. What began life in the Commissioners’ office as a duck could end up as an octopus by the time it reached the various stations around the country.

Not deliberately, it’s just because we hear things differently. The military are better in that regard, and I think the police and Government could learn something from the way they communicate with their troops.

I spent a year in a military camp in Cyprus when I worked with the United Nations. Once a week we had what they called an International Briefing. It started at 8am on the dot and anyone who wasn’t already in position when the Commanding Officer (CO) entered the room, remained outside. Everybody had to be in place and ready to go at the appointed time and there were no exceptions.

Each section, or department, had a seat at the table and that seat had to be occupied by the head of that section. If he or she was not available, then the next in line took the seat. The position or seat never changed, so when the CO wanted to know something specific, he referred to the seat where the person from the relevant department should be sitting.

There had to be someone sitting there who could answer his question and while the face of the person might change, the seating arrangement remained the same.

The CO would go around the table and take reports from each section and then he would give his orders from HQ to his people for transmission to his troops. There was no questioning these instructions, regardless of what the individuals might have thought about them. They were not open to interpretation or discussion.

The meetings were formal, structured and stuck to the agenda. They were fast, efficient and effective. It took a while to get used to that style because it was a new experience for me. Meetings at home were different. They rarely started on time, seldom kept to the agenda, and dragged on until everyone lost the will to live.

The Government should be doing better though. They’re paying dearly for communications experts and PR consultants but still can’t get it right. I know where to find the right people to help – give the Defence Forces a shout.

• 

Births, deaths and marriages are a big deal in Ireland. We’re an empathetic, sociable outfit and we like to support each other in good times and bad, usually with a few drinks. Until recently, we had parties suitable for every occasion but Covid restrictions have put these on hold – for most of us anyway.

A small minority ignore the regulations and carry on as normal while the rest of us learn different ways of doing things, including how we send our loved ones to their final resting place.

I was never great at attending funerals in my younger days. I always felt awkward meeting the bereaved. Sympathising with them made me feel uncomfortable because I never knew what to say. When I did attend a service, I usually slipped away quietly afterwards without offering my condolences to anyone.

It was easier that way and I figured it didn’t make too much difference to the mourners whether I was there or not because those poor people had enough on their minds already. Shaking hands with me was one thing less for them to have to endure and I was certain I wouldn’t be missed.

I was wrong of course but I didn’t realise that until 2005 when my sister Jill died. She was in her mid-forties and had been suffering from cancer. She was married with two young children and even though we knew that she was close to the end, her death was a real shock to the system.

She was well known in the community through her music and her hairdressing so there was a large turnout at her funeral. I was surprised at how many of my friends and work colleagues attended the removal and the funeral service and it meant a lot that they took the time to travel and offer their support. It was really appreciated.

That changed my outlook and ever since then, I make an effort to attend funerals and sympathise with the grieving relatives because I now know how much it means. I no longer worry about what I say to them either because that doesn’t really matter. In fact, you don’t even need to say anything, just being there is what’s important.

My mother spent the last few months of her life living with me and when she was being removed from the house in 2017, two friends of mine appeared in the hallway. They had driven down from Cavan to offer their condolences and as soon as the hearse left, they turned around and made the long journey back home again. You can’t buy that kind of support and I get that now.

Unfortunately, Covid-19 has robbed many families of that support, but while we may not be able to gather in the church or attend the burial or the cremation, we found alternative ways of doing things. When we couldn’t go to the Church, we went as far as we were allowed and stood outside, socially distanced or watched it on the laptop. We did what we could to be a part of it, to show support.

When we couldn’t congregate at the graveyards, we lined the roadway and paid our respects as the hearse passed by. It was different, but it meant a lot to the families and they appreciated the effort.

It’s not the first time we’ve had to improvise where death is concerned and if you feel hard done by during this pandemic, spare a thought for those who lived through the famine. Bodies were stored in public houses when the mortuaries could no longer cope, and mass graves were used to bury the multitudes.

Approximately one million people died from starvation and disease and those bodies needed to be stored somewhere to prevent the spread infection and to protect the corpses from consumption by wild animals. Pubs were the best option because beer cellars provided a cold storage space which helped delay the decomposition at a time when there was no refrigeration. It was a time for improvisation as described in ‘Ireland Calling’, a website dedicated to all things Irish.

The famine was not a time for observing the accepted niceties of civilised behaviour. At the height of the famine, thousands were dying by the day. Those who survived had barely enough energy to carry on living, which meant that in many parts of Ireland, the usual burial practices were suspended.

The normal wakes and respectful religious ceremonies were set aside, and the dead were buried in a hurry. Many were simply placed in mass graves alongside dozens of other nameless victims. Coffins with hinged lids were often used for the service and once the ceremony was over, the coffin lid would be opened, and the body removed so the coffin could be used for another victim.

Diseases were rife, so burials were carried out as quickly as possible to reduce the chance of contagion. People often collapsed due to hunger or disease and appeared to be dead and in the atmosphere of haste, mistakes were made.

One of the most famous instances involved a boy called Tom Guerin. He was only three years old when he was buried alive in a mass grave near Skibbereen in West Cork. The details of exactly what happened are sketchy. Some reports say he was buried for two days and was only discovered when more bodies were put into the same pit.

Others say he was discovered during his burial when the gravedigger accidentally struck his legs with a spade, causing the boy to groan. This is probably the more likely scenario, but we’ll never know for sure. The boy survived but was crippled for the rest of his life because of his damaged legs.

Things are bad now, but they could be worse.