Outside Leinster House, gardaí are setting up barricades. The kind used for mosh pits at arena concerts.
A black flag with a white lightning bolt is being hung from a parking pole and a projector is set up, ready to show the Dáil debate on abortion on the north face of Buswells Hotel.
A sly rain is falling, making those clad in Repeal black glisten. Their flags are frayed and their jumpers worn, they’ve been here before.
Outnumbered for now by gardaí, pro-choice supporters linger on a blocked off Molesworth Street and wait patiently for history to begin.
It’s the first day of the Dáil debates on the Eighth Amendment. An amendment inserted into the constitution in 1983 which asserts that the life of a woman is equal to the right to life of the unborn.
The level of security and fencing being set up indicate the authorities think they have a revolution on their hands.
But if this is a day of revolt it will come from the speeches of TDs. If Kildare Street is the scene of a revolution, security are on the wrong side of the fence because today the power for change is not in the dreams of the people but in the pledges of their elected representatives.
For once it’s a day to be inside the privilege of the Dáil, rather than experiencing the reality outside it.
I walk up to a barricade gate two Gardaí are manning, the woman in front of me flashes a cork GAA scarf and they let her through. I’m dressed in black, it’s not as easy.
“What’s your purpose here?” I show them my media card and they slowly open the gate, still suspicious “as long as you have a purpose,” they say to my back.
For this day, I have a pass that lets me go behind the black iron gates and into the epicentre of Irish political life.
There are some children in front of me waiting for their schoolbags to be x-rayed. Two boys are giggling about having a bomb. The security guard ignores them. This is Ireland 2018, jokes about bombs from schoolboys are feathery-light but women demanding bodily autonomy are still seen as a threat of insurrection.
“They’re so out of touch with reality,” says a guard at the front desk, gesturing behind him. “They’re kings in an ivory tower playing chess with the rest of us.”
It’s a nice analogy, I think, “It’s a song,” says the guard.
I count 169 footsteps from the barricades outside Leinster House to the wooden doors of the Dáil chamber. It’s not quite an ivory tower but it’s a considerable remove from the concrete street.
Every hoarse voiced protest and candlelight vigil I have attended outside the gates of Leinster House seems immediately futile as no sound penetrates from the outside to the inside. No chanting, no music, no people power is perceptible.
No sense of the twilight chaos of the city centre transcends to the wide halls where Enda Kenny dressed in an anorak is rubbing his hands together and laughing, where everyone smiles at each other as they pass and says, ‘Hi, hi, how are you?;, without waiting for an answer.
It’s strange to be on the inside.
Simon Coveney stops by my lunch table. The last time I saw him he was the Minister for Housing and Richard Boyd Barrett was protesting in front of Dun Laoghaire town hall while the minister was inside and eventually left through the back door. I doubt he remembers me.
From the press gallery, I watch the debate begin. First up is Simon Harris. There are 24 other TDs present in the octagonal room. Harris delivers a well-written, robust speech: ” I hope that, as a country we can no longer tolerate a law which denies care and understanding to women who are our friends, our sisters, our mothers, our daughters, our wives.”.
It’s powerful to read those words, but in the moment their delivery contains no power and I’m reminded of being in a secondary school debating hall. The tragedies Harris speaks of, the women he mentions from Cork and Galway, Limerick and Dublin who have travelled abroad in their thousands to access abortion services, seem far removed from the leather seats where TDs debate their status as criminals or victims.
The room is soundproof, the rain that is beating activists outside doesn’t seem to hit a single pane of glass in the Chamber’s dome.
Harris reminds his colleagues that these are not “faceless” women. An important reminder as most things outside of this room quickly seem to have ceased to exist. How long have I been here I wonder? I’m not allowed to use my phone to remind myself of an Ireland outside of Leinster House, so I lean over to look at a Fianna Fáil TD scrolling through her Twitter feed, for some confirmation of an external world.
Next Billy Kelleher, the Fíanna Fáil spokesperson for Health, says “We cannot have a situation in which a woman becomes a second-class citizen upon becoming pregnant. We must understand that that is no longer acceptable”.
What a line, and such delivery, true recognition of women as equal citizens in Ireland.
I look around and there are less than 30 TDs seated when Kelleher gives his speech, some are checking their emails, others are looking at the ground, the press have left the gallery, to watch the speeches on TV so the room is mostly empty.
Billy Kelleher gives the speech of his life and it is to a room of people who don’t seem to outwardly care.
Later I would hear that the rain was washing people’s tears down their faces when Kelleher spoke, the crowds outside the Dáil were clapping and cheering as the impossible notion of a Fianna Fáil health spokesperson supporting a repeal of the Eighth Amendment became verifiable fact.
Inside the atmosphere was one of great banality rather than great monumentality. Kelleher sat down and he may as well have announced a bill on washing machines for all the reaction he got.
A day later Micheal Martin would make a speech of even greater importance. Suddenly it doesn’t seem to matter how TDs react because the power of their statements can alter the temperature of the nation.
It is hard sometimes to grasp that inside the chamber. No sense of the outside permeates at all and the refurbishment of the House means there is no window with a view to see the crowds outside. It is easy to forget they are there.
I hang around for ten speeches from ten TDs successively declaring their support for the recommendations of the Oireachtas committee on the Eighth Amendment. To repeal the Eighth Amendment and legislate for abortion up to 12 weeks.
And then I leave.
On Twitter, I see the crowds gathered outside, watching metres high projections of politicians deliver speeches. I go to join them and see how historical speeches are received by the people whose lives will change as a result.
The politicians are the ones with all the power but it seems glory belongs outside the home of government. For all the oration a politician can deliver it is up to the people of Ireland to support their words and inject them with gravitas. To give the words real significance is the role of the people.
Abortion is traditionally seen as a divisive issue. Something politicians kick down the road to the next election. Something that can be publicly avoided and privately dealt with.
What is remarkable is that an issue that affects the marginalised and historically most mistreated members of Irish society, pregnant women, has invaded the insulation of Leinster House, enough to make a change and light a fire.
It has taken a very long time for these days of revolt to come. But after one day in Leinster House, I understand that the 169 steps which separate kings and their chessboard cannot be measured in metres or inches, but in distance of an entirely different kind.
Main Image via: Eoin OF
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