Home Kirwan Debates Reviews Cathal Ó Searcaigh Response
Cathal Ó Searcaigh Response
To whom it may concern,

I feel a duty to correct many of the misconceptions that have been perpetrated in the last week with regard to the Literary and Debating Societies inviting of Mr. Cathal Ó Searcaigh in various forums, websites and publications.

With regard to extending the invitation in the first place:

    1. The members of the committee that are involved in the organisation of our term card (I.e. the debates we hold and the guest we invite) decided to invite Mr. Ó Searcaigh. All decisions regarding what guests we invite are taken by this sub group of committee members.

    2. He was considered worthwhile as he was a poet we had all heard of from the Leaving Certificate Irish course. We were sure his poetry would be remembered by many students in college from this and that those who enjoyed it would be inclined to go and see him thereby ensuring there would be an audience for this literary guest – something that can be hard to guarantee as many literary figures appeal to a narrower audience.

    3. We were further convinced of the merits of inviting him due to him being on the third year Irish course in this college. This meant he was being studied by a significant number of students at some point this year. We were once again satisfied that he would have a large enough draw that there would be an enthusiastic audience eager to hear what he had to say about his poetry.

    4. We also received support from academics in both the Irish department in NUIG, and from Irish academics within Ireland, as regards the hosting of this event which gave us further confidence in our decision to extend the invitation to Mr. Ó Searcaigh.

Those with objections to the event who chose to boycott it should be aware that the majority of the audience was comprised of students studying his works. He went into some detail on those poems he read with regard to his inspirations behind writing them. I am therefore happy to say those students really gained something from the event.

Given the controversy surrounding Mr. Ó Searcaigh, the invitation was discussed in some detail with various committee members and the decision made was to proceed with the invitation to Mr. Ó Seacaigh to come and address the society at a literary event, in spite of the allegations made against him regarding his personal life. Mr. Ó Searcaigh was originally invited to do a literary event with questions and answers on his literary works. He accepted the invitation to come and do a reading of his works and discussion of them but was not comfortable engaging in a question and answer session. I personally urged him to reconsider as from experience of these events, I fully recognise that a question and answer session greatly adds to them. He firmly declined and it felt that a questions and answers session could not be forced upon a guest of the society. It was then decided that the event still had merit even without the question and answer session as students would still be hearing his poetry read aloud to them by the poet himself and would be hearing his perspective on them.

On the complaints of doing a disservice to the principle of free speech that is the cornerstone of our society, I fundamentally reject this. We did not offer Mr. Ó Searcaigh a platform to defend himself against the accusations about his time in Nepal and would not do such a thing. If that had been the focus of our audience with him, it would of course have been two sided. As it was, it was a poetry event and I am perfectly happy to allow literary figures read and discuss their poetry without having to answer questions. I do of course think it is a shame that literary questions couldn’t have been taken as I appreciate that there were of course legitimate literary questions to be asked but Mr. Ó Searcaigh clearly did not trust the question and answer session to remain literary in nature and despite reassurances that I would keep people on a literary track, I had to respect the man’s decision to decline. For those of you that feel, we should have cancelled the event when he opted out of this part of it, I am happy based on the audience’s reactions on the night to hearing from him with regard to his poetry that the event was worthwhile proceeding with irrespective of this.

I appreciate that many of you object to this man on moral grounds and as such cannot appreciate his poetry. The attendance on the night suggested that there were many others who could still appreciate his poetry for what it’s worth. For those of you who expressed the view that no resolution had been brought about by the “normal channels” and therefore an outburst on the night was perhaps warranted, I would suggest that individuals did not like the outcome of the normal channels, not that they had failed to be employed in the first place. The university were made aware of the event in advance of it happening as high up as the vice president’s office and the university made no objections to us hosting the event. Lit and Deb has the right to set the agenda for its own events and in this case, the focus was to be literature for the reasons outlined above. I then feel that individuals trying to steer the event in another direction by the likes of a verbal attack on the night, are for all intents and purposes hijacking another societies events. This cannot be allowed to happen. With the audience and universities position in mind, I have to say that I stand by anyone’s decision to boycott the event but causing a disturbance of the event itself is to take upon oneself an authoritative moral position that superseded the universities position and to pervert the will of the majority.

With this event, as with others before, the Lit & Deb has been accused of inviting guests purely to attract controversy. With regard to this specific event, we stand by the fact that Mr. Ó Searcaigh was invited as a literary figure, as we have outlined above and reject that it was merely for the sake of controversy.

To address the issue in more general terms - We are a debating society and when planning what debates to host, we aim for issues that are still dividing people. For example, most people still have definite and diverging opinions on abortion being legalised in Ireland but the issue of divorce is now considered outdated. Therefore, our events do tend to divide people and can be controversial in nature. We are perfectly happy to be controversial where the alternative is not discussing the issues which really matter to people.

Yours faithfully,
Jacqueline Driscoll,
Auditor,
163rd Session,
Literary and Debating Society.