Life as the Guardian's Ireland reporter: my return home to a nation in flux

http://www.theguardian.com/membership/2019/apr/20/ireland-reporter-guardian-return-rory-carroll

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I managed five months back in Ireland before falling into a bog. The patch of green moss looked firm, but when stepped on it dissolved into a pool of dark water. It swallowed my leg and encased a foot in muck, heralding a long day of squelching.

A daft thing to happen, but in my defence I was doing a story about bogs. Bord na Móna, the semi-state company that harvests peatlands, was closing “active bogs”, partly in response to climate change, so last November I found myself touring peatlands in County Kildare.

A wet leg was a small price to pay for an otherwise glorious day out of the office hiking around Ireland’s Midlands. But the misstep reminded me that I had much to learn about a country I left two decades ago and returned to last year to cover for the Guardian, taking over from Henry McDonald, who over many years built up unrivalled knowledge of the place.

I grew up in Dublin and worked in Belfast in the mid-1990s as a reporter with the Irish News, before joining the Guardian and spending the next 20 years in far-flung postings – Rome, Johannesburg, Baghdad, Caracas, Los Angeles.

Returning to Dublin has been a welcome homecoming, a chance to reconnect with family and friends; but in theory, I’m still a foreign correspondent

Embedding with troops, trailing around after Hugo Chávez or doing Hollywood junkets, I was accustomed to being an outsider. Returning to Dublin has been a welcome homecoming, a chance to reconnect with family and friends; but in theory, I’m still a foreign correspondent.

Much is familiar – grey skies, buskers on Grafton Street, the lovely habit of thanking bus drivers, the less lovely habit of political deadlock in Northern Ireland.

And much has changed. There are immigrants from Africa, Asia, eastern Europe and Latin America. There are gleaming tech offices along Dublin’s canals. There is a gay taoiseach, same-sex marriage and legal abortion. There is more money and more homelessness.

And of course there is Brexit. A huge, all-consuming, apparently never-ending story. “The gift that keeps on giving,” one news agency colleague told me, delighted that Ireland’s newsworthiness elevation spares him from doing paddywhackery stories about singing donkeys.

The Irish government has become a key player – saboteur, according to some Brexiters – in the UK’s tortuous attempt to leave the European Union. By mobilising EU support for the backstop – an insurance policy to avert a hard border in the event of a no-deal departure – Dublin has bent London to its will.

This seems a strategic triumph, but could end up a pyrrhic victory if it leads to a chaotic no-deal departure that hammers Ireland’s economy. Brexit also threatens Northern Ireland’s constitutional stability. A united Ireland, not so long ago a misty fantasy, is now conceivable within a generation. So it’s an exciting time to be here.

The problem with Brexit is that much is technical and hypothetical – shifting scenarios of possible tariffs, customs checks, frictionless crossings, veterinary inspections, VAT exemptions, regulatory alignment, regulatory divergence. Government press briefings are a type of art form where officials repeat the same mantra – no renegotiating the withdrawal agreement, EU solidarity, Brexit preparedness – and your job is to be a human Geiger counter to detect a new word or slight shift in tone, signifying news.

I have the luxury of being able to leave much of this to outstanding colleagues – Lisa O’Carroll, Daniel Boffey, Jennifer Rankin and other members of our Brexit team based in London and Brussels – and focusing on more human stories.

I seek people with dilemmas that illustrate wider themes. For instance, British migrants – Brexiles – who are pursuing not only Irish passports but to some extent Irish identity. The head of Dublin port showed me customs posts that he built through gritted teeth because they may never be used. A trucker who transports milk across the border worried about the return of “the bad old days” of surveillance, checks and delays.

I’ve zig-zagged around Northern Ireland – Belfast, Kilkeel, Killyleagh, Newry, Lisburn, Derry – asking people about Brexit. Not always an easy task – people are fed up hearing and talking about it. “I call it breakfast,” sighed Patricia Aston, a caterer in County Down who half-repents her vote to leave the EU.

Despite dire warnings from business groups, few people in Northern Ireland, remainers or leavers, are panicking. They have switched off, turned stoic or reckon it’ll somehow work out. I try to escape Brexit’s gravitational pull and cover other topics.

Ireland is small but rich in stories. Eviction protests, introduction of abortion services, a cervical check scandal, species extinction, climate initiatives, new artists, high-profile criminal trials, anger over asylum seeker – politics and society are in flux.

The collapse of power-sharing in Northern Ireland has rendered it a zombie state adrift in a dysfunctional, Brexit-fuelled vacuum. Unresolved atrocities from the Troubles and fresh activity by dissident republicans are ominous for the peace process.

Many UK media organisations are in a Brexit trance, eyes glued to Westminster, but the Guardian invests time and money in covering what happens across the Irish Sea. I get to write about Stormont’s impasse and the cash-for-ash scandal, for instance, while John Harris does a border roadtrip, and others write about rugby, abortion rights, policing, Dublin punks and Derry Girls.

I write for specialised sections – arts, education, environment – but mainly file news pieces to the foreign and national desks. In theory, the former handles the republic and the latter Northern Ireland. In practice, things blur, much like the 310-mile border has done since the Good Friday agreement.

Soft, hard or no Brexit, I’ve got a feeling the border will define my stint here. Maybe customs posts and soldiers will not return, maybe the border will remain frictionless. But Brexit has ruptured the notion that the invisible line dividing farms and roads does not matter and that British and Irish identities are fluid, that you can mix them up, choose one or both or neither. It’s a beautiful, delicate, imperilled idea.