A man of the people

It is hard to imagine Pádraic Mac Donncha as a radical, someone prepared to man the barricades for the good of the cause. And for him the cause was - and still is - the welfare of the people in Gaelteacht areas and, more specifically, those who live in his native Ráth Chairn. Softly spoken, erudite and a walking store of humorous anecdotes, Mac Donncha doesen't come across as your archetypal radical yet it is clear from his life's work that, once fired up and firmly set on a course of action, it would take a lot to hold him back. Mac Donncha learned over the years that while radicalism is all very fine, it needs to be tinged with a touch of diplomacy and compromise if real progress is to be made. It was one of the lessons he learned from his own experience. It was also a lesson he absorbed from the renowned Irish writer, Máirtín " Cadhain. He knew the writer personally and regularly listened to his speeches in the 1960s. It was " Cadhain who sparked a life-long passion in Mac Donncha to do all he could to help promote the Irish language and culture and do everything possible for his own area. "" Cadhain's talks lit a fire in my stomach that Ráth Chairn should be developed," Mac Donncha recalled last week as he took time out to speak of his lifetime's work in helping his community, his people. Retired He recently retired after almost 32 years as bainisteor of Chomharchumann Rath Chairn. He never expected to fill the position in the first place; however, fate intervened and he ended up spending a lifetime in the job. It was an occupation, he says, full of variety. One minute he could be helping out in the bar in the Gaeltacht's community centre, the next lecturing to a group of students or writing to the county council about local road conditions. Before and after he became bainisteor, Mac Donncha and his colleagues faced various challenges in their quest to develop the local community. There was the time when they took on the Government as they sought to have Ráth Chairn officially recognised as a Gaeltacht. They won that particular battle in '67 but only after the people of the area had boycotted elections and a government official had referred to them as "blaggards". There were other battlegrounds. Time was when Ráth Chairn was a rural outpost, with houses scattered about, the people left with no central focal point. Now it has a community centre, a church, primary school and an all-Irish secondary school that attracts students from far and wide. It took 15 years of meetings and form-filling to establish the secondary school. Migrated Mac Donncha's connection with Meath goes back to the 1930s when his grandparents were part of a wave of people who migrated from the impoverished west to take up Eamonn de Valera's offer of land and a new life in Meath. Mac Donncha says now that, when his grandparents first moved, they thought they were settling in 'Tír na n"g'. It was the chance of a new and relatively prosperous lifestyle in the rich lands of Leinster. Each family received a small farm in Ráth Chairn and a shed full of turf, but it soon became clear that there was no fortune to be made. Pádraic Mac Donncha was one of the new generation of youngsters who grew up in Ráth Chairn. He didn't start speaking English until he was 12 when he attended the vocational school in Athboy. Like many of his contemporaries, he had to look outside the borders of his home parish to find work. He moved into the hotel and catering business and spent a year training in the Great Southern Hotel in Kerry, where he met his wife, Mairéad. He was later transferred to Galway. The hotel workers there were encouraged to talk Irish among themselves so that they could be heard by American tourists. This, it was felt, would add an air of authenticity for the tourists on their visit to the Emerald Isle. It was during the mid-1960s, and while still in Galway, that Mac Donncha came to get a clearer picture of his identity. It was another great Irish institution that helped him in the search. Meath faced Galway in the 1966 All-Ireland football final. Amid all the banter that took place among the staff and customers in the Galway hotel, Mac Donncha was earmarked as a Meathman. Bets were placed and Mac Donncha backed the Royals. Allegiance He made his way to Croke Park on the day of the game, travelling up from the west on the train, and remembers how Jack Quinn was denied a late penalty. Meath's chance of victory was gone. Mac Donncha was bitterly disappointed but the experience taught him where his real allegiance lay. He increasingly came to realise his heart was in Ráth Chairn. He wanted to return there and did so via a spell working in Kildare. He secured a job as a personnel manager with an engineering firm, ABM, in Ráth Chairn in the 1970s. He spent his spare time in the service of the local community. He worked in the factory by day before departing for his other job at night. "I used to work from 8.30 in the morning in the factory until 5.30 in the evening. Then I used to go into the chumann and maybe stay there until 12 midnight or 1am, working as the secretary on a purely voluntary basis," he recalls. It was decided to create the paid position of community club bainisteor to help ease the workload. The position was advertised for two years. In the meantime, Mac Donncha's packed schedule took its toll. "In 1978, I got really sick. I was brought to Blanchardstown hospital. I was there for a week and the doctor came to me and said they were after monitoring me and he said: 'The good thing about this is that you will have to give up one of your jobs. The records I have here say you have two jobs and that's why you are ill. You are over-exhausted'. I was doing too much." Choice At the time, Mac Donncha had two children and had a choice to make. He had planned to give up his work with the Comharchumann and stick with his paying job. He was told by an old friend, retired Capt Sean " Donnagáin, also a member of the Chomharchumann that he would never be able to stay away from community work. He felt the former army man was right. He applied for the role of bainisteor himself and got the job. One of the most ferocious battles Mac Donncha and his colleagues fought was with the Land Commission. "The farms were too small in Ráth Chairn, they were 22 acres and nobody could make a living on them and we argued a lot with the Land Commission trying to get more land from them, so that the people could have an economic holding," he recalls. Sustained attempts were made to get further land from the Commission so that more families could settle in the area. The Ráth Chairn community met with considerable resistence and the battle intensified. At one stage, before he became bainisteor Chomharchumann Mac Donncha and his wife occupied a house that had been left vacant for years. Their aim was to encourage the Land Commission to give the dwelling to a local family. The occupation attracted plenty of media attention and the Gardai were called. A none-too-subtle suggestion was made that Mac Donncha could lose his job, but he tenaciously persisted. A deal was worked out and another family eventually moved into the house. It was one battle won in what sometimes felt like an ongoing war with the State authorities. Weapon From early on in his life, Pádraic Mac Donncha came to realise that the Ráth Chairn community had a powerful weapon as it sought to achieve its aims. "When we were recognised as a Gaeltacht in 1967, I realised that if the people got together, just about anything could be done. That stuck in my mind. That you could achieve things if you kept the people together," he says. The furore with the Land Commission is one of the battles of yesterday. Settling into his retirement, Mac Donncha today prefers to look to ahead, and see what can be done. He fully appreciates the challenges that lie ahead, such as ensuring that Ráth Chairn retains its treasured Gaeltacht status. The area, he feels, could be developed for tourism and he would like to see a situation whereby Ráth Chairn could host third-level students of Irish in an arrangement with NUI Maynooth. It has been a long and interesting journey for Mac Donncha and his Ráth Chairn colleagues. A journey when, at times, the radical approach proved to be the most effective.