Surrealing in the Years: An abridged history of the phrase 'monopoly on compassion'

I KNOW IT’S not how we usually do things around here, but just this once, let’s start with a prayer.

Thank God England didn’t win that football match. Thank God they’re not going to win the World Cup. Thank God we’re safe for another four years. And sorry, just to be clear, in this prayer, God is 5ft 7in, 39 years old and Argentinian. 

Saved on the football front, at least. Unfortunately, even when they lose, we still have to hear from their pundit class (and I don’t mean Gary Neville or Micah Richards). In the aftermath of Argentina’s win, one of Margaret Thatcher’s old aides Nile Gardiner called for every Argentinian player playing in England to be stripped of their work visa for celebrating with a banner which read ‘Las Malvinas son Argentinas’ — referring to the disputed Falklands territory.

The Telegraph, for whom Gardiner writes a column, even wrote an article totting up every single foul Argentina committed over the course of the game, for a one-two punch of some of the most painful sore loserdom you’re likely to see.

In order to sympathise with England, therefore, you’d need an overabundance of empathy. Frankly, you’d need to personally be in possession of all the commiseration in the land. You would need, shall we say, a monopoly on compassion? 

If you’re the type to regularly watch Dáil debates, and let’s face it, if you read this column, then you probably are, then you’ll be well aware that the phrase ‘monopoly on compassion’ or some variation of it makes regular appearances in the backs-and-forths between Taoiseach Micheál Martin and the opposition benches. 

It’s a rhetorical tool that the government often uses, particularly when faced with accusations that it is letting down some cohort of vulnerable people. This week, for example, Martin told Soc Dem leader Holly Cairns she didn’t have a ‘monopoly on compassion’ when she asked him if the government would CPO the Bessborough Mother & Baby Home site. Over 850 dead children who were at one time on the premises remain unaccounted for, and survivors and family members have called for a full excavation of the site in the hopes of discovering remains and bringing closure to those still tortured by that horrifying chapter in Irish history. Instead, the plan is to build apartments on it. 

Martin has refused to confirm whether the government will intervene in this process, and instead decided to attack Cairns, addressing her as though she for one moment claimed that she, or anyone else, has a ‘monopoly on compassion’ in this matter. After two separate exchanges with Cairns on the matter in the Dáil, Micheál Martin has called on Cork County Council to ‘explore all options’ with regard to the sale of the site.

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A cursory scan through the history of the phrase in the Dáil shows that the government has said that nobody has a ‘monopoly on compassion’ when it comes to: what’s happening in the West Bank, the treatment of animals in Ireland, the treatment of SNAs in Ireland, the Residential Tenancies Bill, Jeffrey Epstein, floods in Cork, the tragic death of Harvey Morrison Sherratt, energy prices, and ‘the housing sector’. All of those examples are from the last seven months, and I have not included every example. 

Back in 2022, Paschal Donohoe actually acknowledged how often the government leans on the line. During a debate on the carbon tax, he told the Dáil: ‘Nobody in this House, as I say again and again, should claim a monopoly on compassion.’

The problem with this response, however, isn’t that the government uses it so repetitively. The problem is how nakedly it deflects the conversation away from solutions. It takes what should be a constructive debate between two politicians and reduces it to something silly, childish, and personal.

Telling other people that they don’t have a monopoly on compassion when they’re begging you to care is a bit like showing up at Heuston Station with a Thomas the Tank Engine toy in your hand and ranting at a random Iarnród Éireann staff member about how they don’t have a monopoly on the railroads. It’s a bit like telling Uisce Éireann they don’t have a monopoly on all of the water while you point at the tears streaming down your face. Oh, hey, speaking of which (I don’t get enough credit for the seamlessness of these segues, by the way. It’s not easy to do.)

Uisce Éireann, which does actually have a monopoly on water, has issued a hosepipe ban for the next few weeks as the grass turns yellow amidst a heatwave that has left many of us thirsty, sunburned, and profoundly wary of the summers to come. 

These temporary anti-hosepipe measures include the opening of a hotline for people to snitch on their neighbours using their hosepipes to water their gardens (bringing a much more literal meaning to the idea of ‘grassing’ on someone). Now, as much as we all hate snitching, there are some obvious uses of public water that are less than conscientious at a time like this. For example, it would be a very bad look to use your hosepipe to wash off your car at a time when water is in short supply.

Similarly, while water is limited, it’s hard to accept that so much of it is going towards keeping data centres cool, as well as whatever water is needed to keep the national grid operational (since we now know that a quarter of the national grid’s energy is going directly to data centres). No definitive figure has been put forward for how much water is being used by data centres directly.

In 2022, Uisce Éireann suggested the figure could be as low as 0.13% — though this figure is questionable for a number of reasons. The number of data centres in Ireland has risen in the last four years, for example, and since so much of our water is lost to leakage in the first place, this means data centre usage would be a much higher fraction of the water that actually gets used.

At the end of the day, though, even that 0.13% (which is definitely lower than the real amount) equates to 810 megalitres. Now, I don’t know how much water comes out of your hosepipe, but it’s probably a little bit less than that. That the public neither knows the true figure of how much water data centres are drinking, while at the same time being told that their own comparatively minuscule water usage must be constrained, is not exactly ideal. 

As is so often the case, it gives us the feeling that some other, inhuman interest is being prioritised over the real-time needs of the Irish public. But you can read more about that here if you like. It’s not as though I have a monopoly on good articles.