Darach Ó Séaghdha Author and linguist
In Calling 353, a brand-new series for The Journal, bestselling Motherfoclóir author and podcaster Darach Ó Séaghdha casts a linguistic eye on how we talk about what it means to be Irish, the signs we post to each other about Irishness – and what really lies beneath it all.
BEFORE HIS ELECTION as President of Ireland in 2011, Michael D Higgins released a collection of essays and speeches called Causes For Concern, in which he elaborated on topics ranging from the links between culture and democracy, how the personal is political and the political is personal, activism and the importance of hope, and the dangers of clientism in politics and of replacing citizenship with consumerism.
Unfortunately, he did not clarify whether these concerns were legitimate or not.
You may have heard a lot about legitimate concerns lately, possibly from someone blocking your way home from work or from someone burning a factory or communal residence in your area. You may have wondered why some topics are merely issues – homelessness, childcare, cost of living, blah blah blah – but others are ‘legitimate concerns’.
You may have asked yourself if the legitimacy is rooted in the nature of the person concerned rather than the concern itself, and then laughed off the ridiculousness of such a notion.
Ireland happens to have a long history of legitimate concerns. Perhaps if we have a look at them we can bring some clarity to the issues that everybody’s talking about why nobody’s talking about?
Legitimate Concern 1: The Existence of Maynooth University
In the 1840s, some people in Ireland – even though they had nothing against Catholics in general – felt that Catholic Emancipation had gone too far. In 1840, John Plumptree MP presented a motion that Maynooth should receive no more grants of public money.
He raised as a “legitimate concern of parliament” that the priests educated in that seminary had a sinister influence on the Irish peasantry, that the books used there were shocking, and that it was preposterous that the state would fund the promotion of a religion that was directly opposed to the religion of the state. His motion was defeated. However, seven years later a number of letter-writers to the English papers wondered if the Famine in Ireland was divine retribution for the sin of allowing a papist seminary to operate on Protestant soil.
Legitimate Concern 2: Women In Politics
Women’s Suffrage did not happen overnight, and in 1878 the issue of taxation without representation was raised in respect of women who were ratepayers in their own right. Should they not have a say in the workings of the local council? The Newry Reporter did not think so.
“A woman is not wiser or better because she has the misfortune of not having a father or husband to live with,” they wrote, adding that while they had no problem with women serving on school boards this did not mean they should interfere in the hard work of town councils and parliament, “a province in which they did not have a legitimate concern”.
Legitimate Concern 3: The Drunk Driver
In 1963, Bishop Elliott of Connor expressed his “legitimate concern” with the problem of drink driving in Northern Ireland, and noted that the Swedes had had some success with the introduction of technology, such as blood tests, to determine if a dangerous driver had drank more than was sensible or legal.
Writing to the Belfast Newsletter, the Ulster Anti-Prohibition Council advised the bishop to stay in his lane. “The fact that other countries with other drinking habits and other legal systems and other ideas of justice need, or use, other means than we do to control drivers is no reason why we should repudiate our belief in our own courts,” their secretary Mr McKimm wrote, while suggesting that the bishop’s ‘legitimate concerns’ lay elsewhere.
Legitimate Concern 4: Lynch Mobs
An eye-catching headline from the Sligo Champion in 1991 reads “Healy Explains ‘Lynch Mob’ Comments’. In the article, a statement from Councillor Gerry Healy explains that when he used the term ‘Lynch mob’ in a council debate the previous week, this should not have been taken literally, he was making a point about the legitimate concerns of local employer Saehan Media who had been wilfully accused of pollution but had not been proven to have done anything wrong.
“Does he think that the legitimate concerns of residents and others should have been ignored?” the councillor fired back at the editor.
An interesting coda to this story: Saehan Media were subsequently fined for multiple instances of pollutant and waste water discharge into the Garavogue River.
Legitimate Concern 5: Vasectomies
In 1997, the availability of a vasectomies at Letterkenny General Hospital became a political hot potato due to a number of North Western Health Board members having “legitimate” views that they felt had not been sought nor heard.
Despite the fact that they were in the minority and there was no risk of them receiving a vasectomy against their will, they insisted that the service be suspended until every aspect of it had been referred to a meeting of the full Health Board where all concerns could be raised.
Local councillor Harry Blaney (who would be elected as a TD that same year) said that he did not think this service should receive funding while there were money shortages for other general health services.
Legitimate Concern: The dog whistle years
The preceding case shows us two common themes with legitimate concerns. Firstly, the concerned person isn’t some crank with an agenda, they just don’t think something should be available for other people until everything else is perfect. Secondly, a review process with no defined end should be followed.
The use of legitimate concerns has narrowed in focus with regard to topics this century, while maintaining its commitment to these two themes.
In 2022, the Migrants’ Rights Network identified “legitimate concerns” in their Words Matter campaign as being a dog whistle, describing it as “the ultimate caveat to a lot of political debates on migration and often is used interchangeably with the narrative of it’s okay to be worried about migration.“
So don’t be bullied, don’t be made feel that you can’t say what you really think. Your concerns about the phrase “legitimate concern” are a legitimate concern.
Darach will be back next Sunday with more thoughts on the words and Irish cultural phenomena that unite us.