One of the last speakers at the We the Citizens event in Letterkenny suggested to the Chairperson Fiach Mac Conghail that he is now part of the system that people abhor, having accepted a nomination from An Taoiseach Enda Kenny to take a seat in the Seanad.
It was a comment that resonated some sense, prompted nods of agreement and in some ways helped make sense of the growing uncertainty I was having about this whole process.
When We the Citizens was first mooted I thought it a tremendous idea. I was delighted there was an event in Letterkenny and I promptly registered online for the event.
But that was then. Weeks later and having followed reports from some of the events around the country, I was less sure about whether or not any of this could make a difference at all.
Yet I went. I went out of curiosity and interest. And I went out of hope.
My initial gut feeling on arrival though, was not great.
Many of the ‘familiar faces’ I saw in the room, quite frankly filled me with dread. I tweeted to someone unable to make the event that I feared - if it was not properly moderated - this whole thing could be hijacked.
On that front I didn’t need to worry. The system used for the event, where participants were grouped into tables, each with its own moderator, worked well.
Even things like the paper table-cloths on which a person could scribble notes and comments, or just plain doodle if they were bored, was great.
Our moderator was excellent too. He tried to ensure that those who talked most, well, shut up at times – and those who had said least were invited to chip in with their views.
The open-ended topics thrown out allowed for dialogue and debate, but it was easy to get sucked into a particular subject leaving others barely or sometimes even untouched at all. But, in fairness, we were only there for a few hours, there was no way everything could be discussed.
I enjoyed the exchange of views at the table and wasn’t too surprised that many of the topics we had discussed were raised at other tables and, we were told, had been raised at other We the Citizens events around the country.
The people, it would seem, are more or less on the same page. The politicians however, don’t even seem to be on the same book.
But I also began to wonder if We the Citizens was on the same page as us – the citizens.
I had pondered earlier on whether a trip to this was a necessary journey (they are the only kind I make now when fuel is so costly and money is so tight) and listened at the event to people talking about struggling to pay their mortgages and suffering with depression.
And I found myself wondering how this event now squared with such sentiments as I watched the hi-tech video cameras move around the room, saw the computers at work in the corners and glanced around at the fancy signage.
But I guess I’d have had doubts too if the whole thing had been slap-dash, disorganised, low-tech and low key.
Still, the ‘glam’ of it all sat uneasily with me, and as Fiach Mac Conghail stood on stage for the discussion at the end with his radio microphone on, I couldn’t help but think I had found myself into one of those American-style cult meetings you sometimes see on tv, half expecting him to tell us he had a new gospel to preach, one that would bring us prosperity and happiness.
What he promised us instead was that, the findings from this event would not just go into some report that would lie gathering dust.
That, following next week’s meeting in Athlone, a national gathering, representative of the people, would be brought together to let our politicians know how the people feel.
And yet, as I left, I kept hearing the the words of one of the speakers from the floor – ‘we’re good at talking about what should be done, we’re just no good at doing it.’
Glad I had attended, I left unsure if this had been little more than a valve to allow some people let off some steam, but thankfully with a glimmer of hope remaining that some good might still come of it all.
