THE RECONSTITUTION OF IRELAND:

Book buyer interest is reaching a crescendo in relation to the authoritarian, stultifying and cruel Ireland of the second half of the twenty-first century, the period that gave us such things as mother-and-baby homes, Magdelene laundries, systemic institutional child abuse and its egregious coverup, and the attempted control of the free movement of citizens to maintain state control over women’s bodies. Fintan O’Toole has stated recently (in the Irish Times of 17/09/2024) that Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These, which deals with one of those subjects in that period, is selling a thousand books a week, every week. Other writers who are mining the period are John Banville and Sebastian Barry, and also Neil Jordan with his memoir, Amnesiac.

For over 46 years I have been having my letters published in The Irish Times. Particularly strong within them has been the argument, in a lucid and forceful voice, and carried consistently over the years, for a separation of church and state, especially in education. Who knows, the letters might even have had an effect, however small, on the process of enlightenment.

A great many other topics have also been addressed by these letters. Each line in the Contents section of the attached excerpt represents one that has seen the light of day in the Irish Times Letters page.

The Reconstitution of Ireland is also a memoir. The letters are reproduced as they appeared in the paper, from the Irish Times archive, and each one is accompanied by prose which discusses its context, both in my life and in the country at large.

The title of the work is chosen to resonate with the English Language translation of Bunreacht na hEireann, The Constitution of Ireland, which has been appealed to by all sides in the arguments around the desirability or otherwise of a secular state in Ireland.

Seamus McKenna