We are going to skip ahead to day fifteen in Ireland to end off my blog posts. This day was our visit to the Irish Parliament, so I knew I should get a good breakfast in me before we went. One thing I am going to really miss about Ireland are its cafes. It has cafes literally everywhere and they are all so good. It’s not like back home, where you might find a little café here and there if you are lucky. I decided to go to my favorite café today, probably for the last time, which is RoCo Café.
This place has a very nice selection of foods, from breakfast burritos, to toasties, to deserts, and of course lots of coffees. I think it has a lot of good brunch items, which it really good for me, because I don’t usually eat that early in the morning. So, it has many items that are good for either breakfast or lunch in my opinion. Previously, I got a really good breakfast burrito from here. But I wanted to try something else, so I got a ham and cheese toastie with tomatoes, lettuce, and Dijon mustard on it.
This was also delicious. I am going to miss RoCo so much! Once I got something to eat, it was off to The Irish Parliament. Sean gave us a little crash course in Irish Parliament before we left, and I will now do the same with all of you. Since 1922, Ireland has been a democracy. It’s parliament was influenced by the United States Government, with there being a president, an upper house, and a lower house. The current President of Ireland, or the Uachtaráin, is Michael D. Higgins. The Upper house, or the Seanad, is Ireland’s version of the Senate. It has a leader, known as the Cathaoirleach, or the Chairman of the Senate. It has a total of 60 members. Their lower house is like their version of the House of Representatives. It is called the Dail. Its leader is the Taoiseach, or the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister is actually who makes most decisions for the country, and the President is more of a figurehead and doesn’t hold as much power. The Dail uses Proportional Representation and holds an election every 5 years. The leader of the majority party becomes the new Taoiseach. However, this may become more complicated, as some of the parties might form coalition parties together. Another realm where Irish Parliament differs is that you don’t vote for just 1 member, but you vote for 3 to 5 people. These are called constituencies, and there are 41 total. That is a bit of an introduction to Irish Parliament. The other thing that we did today was getting to talk with Martina Devlin. Martina is an award-winning novelist and journalist. She has published 12 books and currently writes current affairs columns in the Irish Independent. She worked as a journalist for a long time, but decided to mostly commit herself to her novels these days because she doesn’t like how ephemeral journalism can be. By this, she means it always has to move on to the next big thing. It can never focus on a subject for too long. She offered us various tips throughout our time. She told us that both newspapers and novels are the same in the sense that they have to sell, so both must be written with that in mind. She just decided she wanted to write longer pieces of work and now has been doing it for about 25 years. Her time in journalism however did teach her useful writing skills, such as not having to use too overly fancy words. She has developed her own writing style and does not feel like she has to pad out her novels with filler. She also uses the research skills she learned as a journalist to help with her research in her novels. At the end of the day, both are forms of storytelling, so there is some overlap. She also take a lot of pride in telling things from her perspective – a woman’s perspective. In both journalism and novel writing, she did not like that men were the decision makers and thinks that you need views from men and women. Overall, the conversation with her was very insightful. And as someone who aspires to write their own novel one day, I enjoyed talking with her a lot!