Fergus Finlay: Ireland may have its challenges but it is still a wonderful country

But sitting in the sun with one of my oldest friends was enough, really. Especially as the pub in question was in the village of Inistioge on the banks of the Nore in Co Kilkenny. There may not be a more beautiful place to sit in the whole country.

Unless, that is, you get a chance to play golf in Skibbereen. I played there earlier in the week, very badly, with my son-in-law, Tony, and two of my grandsons, Ross and Mikey. They humbled me, because they all played really well, dammit.

But the course, the place. Skibbereen and West Carbery Golf Club is its official name. It’s been there for more than a century, and it’s one of the most welcoming and friendly places you can imagine. We were even told there’d be a barbecue later and we’d be more than welcome to attend, despite being obvious out-of-towners. The views of Baltimore and Lough Hyne, the number of quirky picturesque holes, the whole experience was amazing. All the more so because I fancy I know a thing or two about Irish golf courses (even though my playing days seem to be well past me, at least for the moment), and I’d never heard of it.

I’m deeply in my sister Finola’s debt, because that week or so wouldn’t have been possible if she hadn’t lent us her house in Ballydehob and enabled us to base ourselves there. Not only has her house got the most extraordinary views — you can stand on her terrace and literally gaze across the ocean all the way to the Fastnet Rock — but it’s close to what is sometimes called the coolest village in Ireland.

You don’t believe me? Ballydehob is a place where artists and writers and sculptors and musicians from all over Europe and beyond came to settle. It’s full of dreamers and poets. It throbs with culture and music. There are Michelin star restaurants in the village and within a stone’s throw, but there is great coffee too.

But it’s not just cosmopolitan, it’s quintessentially west Cork, rooted in the past and glorying in the present 

Ask a local for directions and you’ll get a history lesson. Find the beaches and they’re the best in the world. We swam in Ballyrisode Beach on the way to Goleen. We watched Ross and Mikey and Katie learning to surf on Owenahincha strand (and Katie had the makings of a champion!).

In more than fifty years I have never missed a summer without getting into the sea at Rosscarbery (the beach over by the pier may be my favourite place in the world), and despite suffering the after-effects of two bulging discs in my lower back I didn’t allow that record to be broken this year.

Like many other parts of Ireland west Cork suffered grievously because of the collapse of the economy fourteen or fifteen years ago. But the resilience of the people — a resilience that I sometimes think is unique to us — has enabled not just recovery but a sense of pride

Why am I telling you all this? In part because I’ve spent the last little while travelling around my favourite parts of Ireland with some of my favourite people. But really because I keep forgetting what an extraordinary country this is and then remembering all over again. I’m lucky enough to have seven amazing grandchildren and to be able to spend time with them. I learn from Carl and Toby and Hannah and Jojo, Ross, Mikey, and Katie every day — they’re not all old enough to beat me on the golf course yet, but their time will come. The Ireland they will inherit, despite whatever challenges the future brings, will be different and better than ours.

Repressed country

I grew up in an Ireland that was bleak and poor and repressed and always seemed cold. We were in the grip of a stagnant economy that seemed to have no real future. There was a time in my childhood when my family took in lodgers and lived very frugally, just to keep the wolf from the door. And our country was effectively ruled by an authoritarian church that brooked no dissent. Thousands of children were systematically abused on their watch in those days.

In my adulthood, as the economy in one part of our island began to turn, and some light began to creep through cracks, another part of our country was wracked by violence. I worked for an Irish government during a period when bombs and implacable hatred destroyed thousands of lives. I became involved in negotiations about things called structural funds, designed to bring European solidarity to our rescue. And at the same time I was drafting speeches about the aftermath of massacres like Greysteel and the Shankill Road, working alongside great men and women to develop language and instruments that could facilitate peace. We all lived through moments when confidence seemed impossible, when it was all you could do to get up in the morning and keep plugging on.

But Ireland kept plugging on. And look at us now. I know there are problems all around us. I know the economic future is always uncertain. I know we haven’t cracked, not by a long way, some of the problems that a rich country like ours ought to be able to take in its stride. I know there are dark undercurrents of hate in some dark places. But I also know that this is Ireland. We have surmounted worse.

There are two sentences that go through my head always. They may be cliches, but they’ve always meant everything. “Ireland without her people means nothing to me” was part of the core philosophy of James Connolly. And my hero James Larkin once said that the thing that motivated him most was the “burning desire to close the gap between what ought to be and what is”.

The more I travel around my country, the more of its people I know, the more I believe that in Its fullest sense, James Connolly was right about how central the people of Ireland are to its essence. And the older I get the more I believe that if there is a people who know how to close the gap between what ought to be and what is, it is the Irish people.

Now, that’s enough philosophy for today. I still have a mission. I have to figure out how in the name of heavens I’m going to beat Ross and Mikey the next time I get them on a golf course.