Irish politics are rather silly based upon the presentation from Sean, our CEA contact. Besides their convoluted nature, however, I will say I rather like some of the reasoning behind things. In some regards it makes more sense than American politics to me.
Upon our visit to Parliament, we promptly discovered that the harp they use as an emblem was a sort of funny story. Guinness had the harp first and Parliament, to avoid copyright issues, flipped it the opposite way. I found this silly as well, but in quite a perfect way.
Something I felt that the U.S could relate to in a way is that their parliament is rather young. While the U.S. has had their house in place for a while, the country is young amongst the standards of European countries. Ireland’s parliament was only established in 1922, so some of the structure of their government, Dáil Éireann is based upon ours.
It’s located in Leinster House, a previous residence. Our tour guide gave background about the previous owner and his family that I found interesting. This included a scandal with his wife and their kids’ teacher. I do hope that it becomes a dramatized streaming show.
After the visit, I grabbed some good old American diner food at Eddie Rocket’s and then randomly ran into a friend from high school who is apparently also studying abroad.
After the unexpected reunion, we had Martina Devlin come to the center to talk to us about her work in the journalism, play, and book-writing field. She had so many stories to tell and I do hope to read something of hers. She spoke with such passion about what she has written and how it has bled into her personal life as well. She writes a lot of historical fiction and gets rather enraptured by the stories of long ago.
She even told us about her efforts to honor these women who were tried and found guilty of witchcraft in Northern Ireland. Devlin ran into many issues with getting a plaque for them, but was still able to honor the women to an extent. She’s someone who realizes that any step forward is toward the finish line.
I quite enjoyed her lecture.
This final week in Ireland was truly a nice close to the entire trip and provided me with experiences I won’t forget easily.