After one look at this planet any visitor from outer space would say ‘I want to see the manager’.
William S. Burroughs

Would you agree? If you were that visitor from outer space, would you ask to see the manager because of the mess you had encountered when you arrived at the blue planet?

And who would that manager be?

Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a sensible person responsible for running the place, one you could complain to about the chaos and destruction – or even the ignorance, the looking-to-the-other-side, the knowing-but-choosing-to-ignore-it, the stringing-it-out-until-it goes-away, and the blaming-the-system-but-never-myself attitude?

We got lots of praise for our work. We know what we need to too. We have demonstrated that we deliver. We have incredible support in many different communities.

Nevertheless, so far neither a manager, nor a minister, nor the Taoiseach himself have had enough interest to cut through the red tape to allow us to do what everybody agrees needs to be done.

When trying to see the manager it seems to me that they have left the building. A bit like Elvis. Or the von Trapp family. They’re gone. So Long. Farewell. Auf Wiedersehen. Good-Bye.

Teach An Saol, the House of Live, our National Centre, has to be built. Not in 20 years but in 2025. With Satellite Centres around the country, providing services for those who up to now have been left behind, with many of them, inappropriately, currently placed in nursing homes.

What will it take to get the manager back to do their job?

We have heard promises after promises. But – at some stage the question inevitably arises: Does the word of a senior civil servant, or of a politician, of a minister, of a Taoiseach, count for anything? Or do they just tell you what you want to hear?

Are they, in their heads, singing the “Ten Years After” song:

I’d love to change the world
But I don’t know what to do
So I’ll leave it up to you

While countless committees meet to provide advice and to inform, God alone knows who; while public servants are continously designing new processes with corresponding forms to be filled in and to be duly submitted for review and subsequent signature by the relevant representatives of the authorities in question following thorough consideration by the above mentioned committees, while there is an endless cycle of meetings, committees, strategies, plans, and papers — we ourselves take action because we need to.

Pádraig is continuing to work hard with Kay Coombes and with the brilliant support from the extraordinary staff at the An Saol Foundation Centre in Santry. One of the current goals is to support the strengthening of is upper body, including his neck – sitting in an ordinary chair, not the wheelchair, with plenty of support from the front.

We continue celebrating life and living.

No better day for that than St Patrick’s Day. No better place for it than lovely Leitrim.

I have an ‘Alien Passport’ from my early days in Ireland. I still want to see the manager.

Someone needs to take charge. Some time soon.

Lá Fhéile Pádraig sona duit.