This year's Cúirt International Festival of Literature Lecture will be presented by Sarah Clancy, entitled 'When Government Fails, We Set Sail' on Saturday, April 25, at 1pm in the Town Hall Theatre. The event promises to make us think again about what we in Ireland can do to face injustices, both here and abroad.
As a Galway native, Sarah Clancy has grown up with Cúirt and believes it is a space where you do not have to apologise for creating or thinking anew. Bringing this motto to her lecture, she will give her audience space to think about the genocide in Gaza in a space of equality, to reflect on the Global Sumud Flotillas, and explore our lack of agency as a subversive society.
Holding our government and the European Union to account, Sarah demands an answer to the uncomfortable questions: "Comparatively speaking, lots of people have very severe problems in Ireland, but, oh my God, we are so safe and so secure compared to the people whose lives we're talking about in Gaza.
"There are those who are still in tents without water, without a food supply, yet their lives are continuing. We don't have the right to lose hope.
I really want people to use up the full amount of our democracy, the full amount of freedom that we have.
"We're used to obeying everything every day, and then we try to stand up for something, it feels uncomfortable to us. We're embarrassed to be speaking out, or that someone might say we're mad, and we're wrong, or 'who does she think she is doing that?'"
But when the majority of people Israel has killed have been civilians, Sarah argues that our government cannot criticise us for being active: "Ireland is continuing to allow overflights through Shannon. Ireland has granted licenses for planes carrying munitions to go to Israel. When they tell us that they don't necessarily approve of what we're doing, we'd have to say we don't approve of what you're doing.
"People are being annihilated in a tiny square of land, which they cannot leave. Blockading them in there was illegal, so is starving them, so is bombing them. Gaza is about the size of County Louth. It's about 25 kilometres long, and at its narrowest, five kilometres wide. It's tiny. Every weapon, everything that you see being used, is being used on the people stuck inside that space, and they cannot leave."
Our problem, Sarah argues, is that Ireland is not owning its complicity. Since the genocide happened, there has been a massive social movement of people looking for justice for Palestine, but it has not translated into government action: "We're not succeeding at doing that," Sarah insisted. "We're watching the powers that be absolutely fail to respond to one of the worst crises that has been seen in our time... and they're asking you to believe in democracy. They are asking you to be a good citizen in Ireland. Whilst they are being a really poor, weak, cowardly, and profiteering global citizen on our behalf. It creates such a disillusionment."
And while the 2025 Global Sumud Flotilla ultimately failed, it was successful in exposing the detainment and torment Palestinian prisoners face under Israeli authority. As Sarah explained: "It was really useful to show us just how badly they're treating Palestinians, because if 500 people with the whole eyes of the world on them, and they still were willing to breach every sort of human rights law that they could have. Knowing that we're all going straight back to talk to the media and all of our European countries, you can only imagine how much worse it is for Palestinian prisoners.
"The prison was so sinister.
Everybody was thirsty, but they wouldn't give us clean water to drink; they wouldn't even let our embassies bring us water. It was really horrible, but if they're doing this to us, what on earth are they doing to Palestinian prisoners who were in there before us? There was blood on the walls of the courtyard, and we could hear screams when we woke up in the morning from somewhere. There was just an overwhelming sense of violence about it."
Despite its failure to reach Gaza, Sarah still sees the flotilla as an inspiration for solidarity. With the launch of a new coalition of 70+ vessels, more than 1,000 participants, and partners across over 70 countries, on April 12, from Barcelona, Sarah is reflective: "All human activism is flawed in many ways. I don't think anybody there thought we were heroes or thought that it was perfect. Looking back, it was a lesson in the fact that even though governments might find themselves hamstrung, or they might not do anything, that actually, ordinary people don't feel the same."
The key message Sarah hopes to ask on April 25 is: "Instead of bringing only our pragmatism to it, how can we bring our imaginations, our hope, our compassion, our imagination, our mischief, our craic, and our love of the underdog together to actually tell a better story about Ireland at the moment?"
Tickets cost €16/€14 from www.cuirt.ie
