Damien Murphy

If you don’t know Dublin, College Green is the very heart of the city, the hub from which you can reach Grafton Street, Christchurch or cross the river to O’Connell Street in a handful of minutes. If you drew a regular triangle across the junction between the august facades of Trinity College and the Bank of Ireland, the unassuming old doorway of Books Upstairs could be the unlikely third point. Despite its grand and crowded surroundings, Books Upstairs remained humble and hushed, secretive and almost mysterious, as any good bookshop should be, its disorientating curved shelves and creaking makeshift mezzanine crammed with curious volumes begging for attention. It reminded me of Carl Conrad Coreander’s shop in Michael Ende’s The Neverending Story.

The absurdist philosophy of Albert Camus held that life had inherent worth, even if it had no inherent meaning  – a notion that has important parallels in approaching depression and suicide. ...To live one’s life in spite of its inherent meaninglessness constituted a revolt against the absurd, and emphasised the highest quality of the human individual... In that revolt, we create our own meaning, and so overcome the despair and angst that might otherwise result from the absurd. He writes: “The true greatness of man is to fight against that which is greater than he”. There is a parallel here with the mental health issues that I have written about in the past. In the last week or so – the week of Camus’ centenary – there have been some extraordinary and courageous testimonials in the Irish media from high-profile men about their struggles with mental health issues. Radio presenter John Murray returned to RTÉ after seven months off-air due to an “undisclosed illness” – and opened the show with a frank discussion about the difficulty of his struggle with depression. When Cork hurler Conor Cusack described his own breakdown as “the crack to allow the light in” that helped him face his suicidal depression, he was speaking of a similar experience to Camus’ encounter with the absurd: “It happens when the stage-sets collapse… It awakens consciousness and provokes what follows.”

This is Granby Park, in the heart of Dublin’s north inner-city. A few weeks ago, it didn’t have a name. It didn’t have an open-air theatre or a café. There was no library or creative workshop space. There were no art installations, and no children playing here. A few weeks ago, it was just another vacant, derelict site in an area of the city with more than its fair share of vacant, derelict sites. But for the next month, this site has been given a new, creative and inspiring lease of life by the volunteer arts collective, Upstart.

Probably due in many ways to such horrific results of cyberbullying, bullying is being discussed more openly and being taken increasingly seriously... It is encouraging to see that there is also some political will behind this, with cyberbullying being addressed by the Oireachtas (Irish Parliament) Communications Committee (even if certain of the committee’s members catastrophically failed to properly research the concepts involved). As with mental health issues, the increasing discussion and discourse around bullying is a positive development. Since bullying can lead to depression, mental health issues and suicide, the key again is to understand the problem and then to speak of it. Bullies thrive on fostering a sense of powerlessness. Actions like these are about fostering the power to do something about it.

It has not been a good week for Ireland’s human rights record. Not just one, but two, reports released on Tuesday revealed a state that was complicit in enabling systematic human rights abuses to occur. The findings of the McAleese report into abuse at the Magdalene laundries rightly made front page news, as did state’s continuing prevarication over granting the full apology the survivors called for and deserve. However, the second report did not get anything like the same coverage, even though