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Respekt in English19. 2. 20136 minut

The sweetness and power of doing it yourself

A Letter from Ireland

Paul O´Sullivan
Aktualizovaná energetická koncepce počítá s dostavbou dvou nových bloků jaderné elektrárny Temelín
Autor: HN, Libor Fojtik

A midweek evening in the conference room of the only hotel in a country town. The air of expectation and limited standing space reminds me of trying to squeeze into Jo’s Bar on Malostranske to hear George W. Bush’s presidential address on September 11th, all those summers ago. The audience tonight is farmers, mostly, gathered to hear about the revitalization of an industry that used to be part of their livelihoods.

My own memories of the sugar-beet harvesting season are fond ones. During late autumn/early winter tractors pulling trailers muddied the roads and were the cause of many late or missed appointments. In purpose built concrete bays, machinery with shining fork prongs pushed the harvested crop into large mounds, ready for transportation to one of the three sugar refining factories.  Harvesting of beet was part of the annual cycle. In a country mired by economic difficulties – during the 1980’s unemployment in Ireland reached 40% - being stuck in a long tailback was reassuring, even to a small child.

↓ INZERCE

In 2006, the last of these factories closed its doors to beet growers. As part of EU restructuring of the sugar-beet industry, forced upon it by the World Trade organization, farmers in Ireland and other smaller nation producers in Europe were compensated to relinquish this part of their livelihood. Newspapers printed photographs of half closed doors and beet lying on concrete. There was public anger for reasons other than lost income: with the establishment of a national electricity grid, these factories were one of the first major construction projects after foundation of the Irish State, symbolic of Ireland’s hard fought for sovereign and economic independence from Britain. 

On the October bank holiday weekend Cork, Ireland’s second largest city comparable in population to Plzen, hosts an international jazz festival. It would have been inconceivable that anybody from the county hadn’t been at least once, but on the Monday morning in 2008 I met one such person. In other years, he told me, he had been too busy for anything else other than working at the factory. Now, there wasn’t much to do, except tend to a small herd of cows on a family farm. Instead of booking a hotel for the weekend he had decided to sleep in his car. Facing an uncertain future he could not afford to splurge the redundancy money received.

Following a 2010 report by the European Court of Auditors that admitted EU restructuring of the industry has, largely, been a failure, movement to reinstate the industry in Ireland is gathering momentum. A lobby backed by growing political support is working on the siting and construction of a new plant at an estimated cost of €200–300M. One of the strongest arguments used is advanced technology producing ethanol as a byproduct of the sugar refinement process, reflecting a changing face of Irish agriculture from production of basic foodstuffs to niche products and markets. Who knows, Ireland may follow the Czech Republic into the manufacturing of sugar-beet based spirits!

The hardnosed opinion of the Irish agri-food industry – the three factories were purchased by what is now the largest sandwich manufacturer in the world, the CEO of which is brother of the current Minister for Agriculture - is that production of sugar-beet is now economically unfeasible. World food prices, the absence of EU subsidies and the capital cost of building a new processing plant have put the idea beyond the reach of economic reality, they say.

Some weeks ago, I returned to the Czech Republic to research and write about the popularity of nuclear energy. Having travelled to Ceske Budejovice, Temelin and crisscrossed Prague, tracking down members of nuclear NGO’s, I found a story you may be familiar with: despite declining use of nuclear in many countries across the European Union, Czech society largely embraces it. There is a suggestion a strong energy sector – Czech is globally the fourth largest exporter of energy - is, understandably, a source of national pride, and any criticism of the situation can cut quite deeply.  

Despite very different recent histories, our countries are not so different…on many occasions in a café or Restaurace Czech companions and I have shared our theories on the shared blood heritage stretching back to Celtic migration from Bohemia! More recently, amid a maelstrom of political and social forces, both have endeavored to etch out strong national identity that breaks with the past. The Celtic Tiger broke a debilitating economic cycle that had been in motion for decades. Domestic industries, such as fishing and sugar production, were forsaken for EU subsidies and to create a high-tech and service economy, crudely branded as Ireland Inc.  Successful homegrown industry can be an enriching source of national pride, but also remind us of the pain of ‘progress’.

Whether the Irish sugar-beet industry can be revived hangs in the balance as much as construction of two addition nuclear reactors at Temelin, it seems. The two projects share one commonality; when the rationale is scrutinized, reasons for giving the green light are questionable. Everyone, at some point or other, becomes nostalgic about the sights, sounds and smells of their bygone years, whether these were good or bad. Perhaps, having experienced the Black Triangle, the preconception is that the only viable solution to coal is nuclear, the story presented by Czech media. Another way will only be found through open, informed debate that includes a public willing to participate and safeguard decisions by big business. Large scale economic mistakes are more easily absorbed, or ignored, in the large powerhouses of the world. Our small, beloved nations need to be more careful.


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