Jennifer Horgan: Ireland needs more caretakers like Natasha O’Brien and Cara Darmody
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From thirteen, I got the bus home from school. Throngs of students joined en route, some of them less well-behaved than others — uniformed little pots and pans, boiling over with teenage energy and mischief. You know, the smokers, the swearers, the loudmouth commentators on ‘yer one’s rack'. Thankfully, there was always someone there to turn the heat down. In those days, most city buses had a conductor as well as a driver. Every afternoon he was there, managing the mayhem. A caretaker.
He’d smile, share a nicety, and would always place himself in the thick of whatever was brewing. He was grandfatherly, mumbled more than spoke, but he was omnipresent too, and so I felt safe and protected, rooted in the familiar.
I recall him so distinctly — his broad face, his old hands on the metal ticket dispenser strapped around his neck, his expert ability to stay steady in the middle of the aisle — one hand offering a small paper ticket, the other cradling a column of change.
It must be lonelier for bus drivers today, without such companions, and I know the unions fought hard from the early Sixties to keep them.
Ours, the Number 6 from the South Mall, was surely one of the last with a conductor, because I remember seeing him again, after I’d moved to London. I wanted to say thank you for his years of caretaking, maybe finally ask his name. I never did.
So, I will say thank you now, to the person who put on a conductor’s uniform every morning and took it off every night. I think you represent something fundamental we’re in danger of losing in society — if we don’t praise the people who monitor public behaviour, who are willing to speak up when it falls short — our caretakers.
I always knew, getting on that bus, that there was a person on the side of decency, perched nearby, there, if I needed him.
Who is there now? I remember him pulling teenagers back into line when they behaved poorly. I remember him protecting people with disabilities, the elderly, small children. I remember him taking one boy off the bus for smoking. Imagine now if a teenager came home, saying he was taken off the bus. Too many parents would complain.
Thankfully, there are still caretakers out there. Caretakers, people who still care about the common good, about common decency.
When Cathal Crotty, aged twenty-two, attacked Natasha O’Brien, on O’Connell Street, Limerick on May 29, 2022, he had been shouting ‘faggot’ at a man across the street. O’Brien told him to stop.
She told him to stop. She reminded him that homophobic slurs are unacceptable in Irish society because we value humans here.
What followed is beyond belief. Cathal Crotty’s vicious attack and his subsequent boast on social media reveals his character and his sickness. Time behind bars, therapy, and rehabilitation, might have been a starting point for him, and a starting point only. Cathal Crotty needed the state to pay deep attention to his loss of humanity, his absolute brutality.
The system chose to look the other way, with Judge Tom O’Donnell setting him free, carrying a suspended sentence, and a fine he will pay with ease. The individual deserves protection over the moral standards of society, according to the ruling. We must look the other way rather than pay attention. A custodial sentence was best avoided for the soldier’s heinous crime as ‘it would most likely end his army career,’ the judge argued.
As a member of the armed forces Cathal Crotty was tasked with protecting Irish citizens, but even in his case, the most extreme of cases, his individual interests trumped the common good.
We need more people like Natasha O’Brien. I often hear people complain that young people show no respect these days. This is a criticism of us, not them. Young people need guidance, not just from teachers, and parents, but from strangers on buses and on the street. We ask schools to fix every social ill because it lets the rest of us off the hook. Young people need to be reminded not once, but again and again, what’s acceptable, and what is harmful to us all. Each and every one of us carries that social responsibility. We used to have people like that, people like my lovely bus conductor. Where have they gone? Was Cathal Crotty’s rage partially because he was taken aback by a passerby who had the courage and conviction to question him, pull him back into line?
Another hero, another caretaker who comes to mind this week is Cara Darmody, the teenager from Tipperary, who met the HSE’s chief executive officer Bernard Gloster recently and told him the HSE was “a national disgrace”.
Cara is fighting for her autistic brothers, but significantly, she won’t be satisfied with helping only her brothers. She will fight for every other family. Indeed, her family is appalled that the HSE has paid for their assessments, whilst making no effort to pay for the assessments of others, and they suspect it has everything to do with Cara’s campaign. Cara stood outside the Dáil this week with a sign that read: “Taoiseach, please pay for ALL autism assessments and services.” Cara Darmody, like Natasha O’Brien, cares about society. She is a caretaker.
Is it chicken or egg that we are also electing people who promote some people over all people? Yes, we argue that the far right made only small gains in the recent election, but they made gains, nonetheless. The independents are a cause for concern. Their language is cause for concern. It is not the language of caretakers, it is the language of people with an agenda to protect some people, but not all. In a lesser-known case in Waterford this week a woman walked free having attacked a delivery man, calling him “a bloody foreigner” and a “little Paki.” Her tone is identical to some of the people we have now placed in power. We must champion our caretakers, elect only caretakers. We must allow our children to be criticised by people beyond our front door, when they are deserving of criticism. We must stop ignoring animalistic behaviour, whilst shaming the heroes who make their own lives difficult on behalf of others.
I was very lucky to feel protected on my trips home from school as a teenager. I wish I knew his name to thank him. Thank you, Cara Darmody. Thank you, Natasha O’Brien. You have the power to get us marching and fighting again. Well done to every person who turned up to the marches at the weekend. People like Cara Darmody and Natasha O’Brien show us just how brilliant our little county can be.
It says everything that our system continues to work against them.