Irish Examiner view: Quality and quantity of mercy much strained
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There are many things politicians would like to place on their list of achievements. Balancing the budget. Building more houses. Improving education. Increasing the number of hospital beds. Ameliorating climate change.
But putting more people in prison? Building more jails? Not so much. It’s a claim to fame that would play quite well in the regime of, say, Nicolae Ceausescu, alongside boasts of increasing the country’s stock of tractors and wheat yields in the five-year plan, but not to voters in liberal democracies with other preoccupations.
Or, so we may have thought until recently, when civil disorder and crime turned public attention to the quality and application of justice in the Republic.
At the level of party politics, it became a stick with which to beat Sinn Féin following its temerity in laying down a vote of no confidence against the responsible minister, Helen McEntee, over the Dublin riots.
This was an unwise move, not only because it accorded her a handsome majority, but it also allowed Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil TDs and ministers the chance to urge Mary Lou McDonald and colleagues to cast out the motes from their own eyes.
But there is a wider vein of general sentiment to be tapped at present and Longford-based Senator Micheál Carrigy was able to point to it when he described his experiences, and those of his family, when he was grievously abused, threatened, and harassed for nearly three months in 2021 and 2022.
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Now Mr Carrigy is to share his exposure to the criminal justice system with his ministerial colleagues. He believes many people “think twice” about taking their case to the courts or reporting crime because of the way transgressions are dealt with.
Equally bad, the snail’s pace of the judicial process takes gardaí off the street. Mr Carrigy’s observations come in the same week as it was revealed that the two Dublin city centre Garda stations confronted with rioting have seen officer numbers drop by 15% in four years. Cover is called from surrounding divisions and from the ranks of student gardaí, a process likened by the chair of the city’s policing committee to “being fed to the wolves”.
This is a highly dangerous narrative for any government, and one that could easily form one of the major planks of the forthcoming election campaign alongside homelessness, the cost of living, and health. And in some ways, it already has.
Just a fortnight ago, referencing the sentencing of Jozef Puska, the murderer of Ashling Murphy, the Taoiseach called for more prison spaces.
“I’m sure I’ll be denounced by the righteous ones and various others for even suggesting this, but if people want dangerous people locked up for a long time, we’re going to need more room in our prisons,” Mr Varadkar said.
Despite the cries of the “righteous”, politicians of all hues may find it advantageous to play the law and order card as voting comes closer. But after that comes the complex question of delivery. Therein lies the strain on the quality, and quantity, of mercy.
Over time, all these roles have become obsolete. But what is different in the 2020s is the speed at which skills can become outmoded through automation and the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) and augmented and virtual reality.
Most of us have only recently become accustomed to the role of influencers and the fact that it’s a job in real life. Their role is to introduce us to products and brands which will enhance our lives and image of ourselves, such is our admiration for the achievements and attractions of those we have selected as role models.
They are measured on the numbers who follow them and other metrics which manage to be both modern and arcane, such as ‘engagement’ and ‘likes’.
For this, they receive rewards, in cash and in kind, which can prove highly lucrative. For now, they are under no obligation — although that is likely to change — to declare that, in many cases, they are walking, talking, advertisements.
While ‘influencing’ is a job that has been significant for less than 20 years and has reached critical mass through the primacy of social media networks and apps such as Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok, the bad news for aspiring stars is that the writing may already be on the wall.
Marketing companies are finding that the marvels of AI and creative skills honed in the metaverse can help them do without the troublesome human factor at all.
In Spain, the most popular model is Aitana Lopez, famous for tousled pink hair. Her Instagram account has hundreds of thousands of subscribers. She is aged 25.
Except that she isn’t. Because Aitana is a construct envisioned by an advertising agency, The Clueless. Like her ‘parents’, she hails from Barcelona. And the inspiration for bringing her “to life” has its roots in a dilemma that can be found in many modern workplaces — real people can be too unreliable, too demanding, and too difficult.
Company founder Rubén Cruz said: “We did it so we could make a better living and not be dependent on other people who have egos, who have manias, or who just want to make a lot of money by posing.”
Aitana’s biggest billing so far has been for €10,000, although she has just signed on to be an ‘ambassador’ — another of those modern definitions that don’t mean quite what they say — for a sports supplement brand.
She’s not the first, and she won’t be the last such personality. And that raises the interesting question as to whether an AI can become a legal entity.
Complex questions continue to proliferate for the human race and will test all its ingenuity.
The international season may have gone out in a crescendo for Katie McCabe and the other stars of Irish football but many will face exciting challenges when they return to their clubs in the Women’s Super League and Championship and reap the benefits of new financial deals which reflect the galloping success of the game in Britain and Europe.
While most of this week’s headlines went on the new €8bn deal with Sky and TNT Sports for the men’s game, a significant decision by the WSL and Championship to break away from the Football Association and create a new competition from next autumn will accelerate the rewards available to female players. Some pundits forecast it will become the first €1bn-plus league in women’s sport.
Women’s football has undergone huge growth in recent years and while regular games in the WSL average around 6,000, major clubs such as Arsenal, Manchester United, Chelsea, and Tottenham have seen attendances quadruple. In October 54,000 people packed into the Emirates to see Arsenal v Liverpool.
The prospect of new-found wealth brings with it the opportunity to recreate the success of the men’s Premier League, and also the risk of hard-wiring in some of its weaknesses. The deal splits revenue, with 75% of returns going to the WSL and 25% to the Championship with nothing else for the rest of the pyramid. Nor will the Championship have a say on broadcasting and other commercial issues.
Business principles, it seems, stay the same irrespective of gender.