Chill factor

'The people are content,' said Charlie; but the calamities have started. Big time. Now they're asking who put the 'con' into economy Not so long ago you could have bottled the feel-good factor, there was so much of it. But the boom seems a long time gone: inflation is soaring, healthcare costs increasing and crime is on the rise. The winds of change are blowing our way, writes Kathy Sheridan.

Early May in the Republic and we're on top of the world, Ma, top of the world. Roy Keane is headed for Saipan with the lads, C & C is fizzing, Bertie is promising 300 new jobs with Elan in Macroom, Charlie McCreevy says inflation is going to fall, WorldCom is just some fat American corporation with a silly grasp of capital letters, Micheál Martin says we're getting 2,000 more healthcare workers and - get this - the Kinnegad-Enfield bypass is a go.

Bliss.

"People are content," says Charlie, ambling through a pre-election canvass on a north Kildare housing estate. A miserable teacher asks if the money is there for benchmarking and Charlie assures him that there's €150 million in the estimates for it. Silly billy teacher.

A laughing young mother comes to the door with a baby and toddler in tow and orders the Minister for Finance to "keep the money coming". "And you keep up production," he grins back, reminding her that she would be getting "a pile of money" a few days later when the double dose of child benefit kicked in. Mighty crack.

Feel-good, did you say? You could bottle it.

Apart from Michael McDowell, who's forever barking that Fianna Fáil is fighting the election on the basis that everything is "hunky-dory" when it's not, he says. He should know; he's been very cosy with them, knows where the figures are buried. There's a few people banging on about stuff like that, Ma . . . Dublin 4 types. It's okay though. No-one's paying the slightest heed to them.

That was then, this is now. It's early August, Ma, and it's gone a bit chilly at the top of the world. People are asking things like, who put the "con" into economy and they are turning to religion. About 6,000 of them turned up at the House of Prayer on Achill Island last week to be told the Virgin Mary had forecast that "many calamities are on their way to purify the world of sin and evil".

It didn't stop Charlie and Bertie going on the tear, though. (No, Ma, you can't join them. It costs €320 a head to get inside FF's tent at the Galway races).

Anyway, the calamities have started. Big time. Roy nearly triggered a civil war and the lads didn't even make it as far as the quarter finals. But sure we threw a party in the Park for them anyway, threw a fat new contract at Mick and Roy came for a short stay last week, welcomed like a conquering hero.

It was worth it. The whole fiasco gave us something to avert our eyes to while the other calamities were kicking in.

First of all, it turns out that when we go abroad as tourists, we're about as welcome as - ummm - the British. Yep, we're the second most unpopular tourists in the world. Now, Ma, that's a blow. Weren't we the ones who knew how to relax, have a few drinks and the craic, and showed everyone how to get a life? And as for tourists coming here . . . well, we're not too popular in those stakes either.

Industry people blame it on the bad weather and September 11th. We think it's the prices. Do you know, Ma, we're now the second most expensive country in Europe (after Finland)? After his holiday here, an American wrote to say that - apart from the foul weather - everything from accommodation to food was overpriced, some roads were dangerous and there's a serious litter problem. The next day a tourist industry man spelt out the solution; more money for marketing. From us.

"We have to market Ireland as a premium product," he said, several times. Now they're talking about offering free flights to get tourists in (though wouldn't you think if September 11th and/or the foul weather were really the problem, that free flights are hardly the answer?).

But never mind the tourists, what about us? We have to live here all year round, not just with the weather but with being suckered twice on prices - once, when we pay them as punters; twice, when we pay to dig the industry out of the hole it created largely by over-charging in the first place.

Still, we can't shake off the blame entirely for the fact that we've become Rip-Off Central.

The hip, image-conscious, loadamoney Irish must never be caught checking the change or arguing about prices. "When was the last time you checked your change in a Dublin pub?" a drinks industry man replies when asked if the extra duty on cider has made a difference to sales. Hint: we're now the biggest cider drinkers in Europe.

The Consumers' Association says Irish beef is cheaper in France than here and that potatoes are half the price in Germany. Four tender steaks bought recently in a supermarket in an expensive Spanish resort cost less than €12. Marks & Spencer in Liffey Valley charges more for a two-kilo rack of lamb than a farmer gets for an entire lamb.

Restaurants charge €2.30 for a glass of milk when a gallon at the farm-gate costs €1.27. A mid-market restaurant charges €3 for a glass of still water; another, €9 for a bowl of steamed rice for two. Of course you can't argue; people might think you were poor.

A can of Guinness costs 60 per cent more in Blackrock than the south of France. That's partly explained by taxes but goes nowhere near explaining how come we still dominate the European drinkers' league, with our per capita consumption increasing by eight times more than theirs. Sure we can afford it (even if the ESRI says that nearly 5 per cent more of us are living below the poverty line than two years ago). Right?

And fair play to us, we're managing all that while remaining - of course - at the top of the inflation league, running now at five per cent, and using our credit cards as a kind of protective bubble. The Central Bank says we owe more than €1.2 billion on nearly 2.2 million credit cards. That's an average of €545 euro per card.

Meanwhile, the stock markets are looking more and more like the three-card trick at Kilbeggan races.

I hope your pension is under the mattress Ma, because they say that with 25 per cent being knocked off share values this year, people will have to find another 30 per cent to shovel into their pension funds to make up for it. And the risk-merchants who took up Charlie's savings scheme and asked to put their money into investments rather than a deposit account, are looking a bit sick.

THE house insurance is gone up by 20 per cent. But the boss says that's nothing; the company's insurance bill is gone up by 250 per cent and we could all be out of a job by Christmas. He says it has nothing to do with September 11th or whatever load of b*****ks they're claiming it is (his words, Ma) but that the insurance companies shovelled lorryloads of reserves into "dead certs" such as Enron and WorldCom and Elan and they're screwing everyone to try to get the money back.

Now Elan's shares are on the floor (no, I really couldn't begin to explain what those accountancy types get up to, except they're a lot more slippery and less dozy than we used to think). Anyway, its chairman is gone, those promised 300 Macroom jobs too, and now Elan is to cut 300 existing jobs in Dublin and Athlone as well.

But like all those sleek, corporate fatcats, he managed to rake in nearly $3 million for himself last year. He'll hardly be too worried, about all the little calamities that are about to purify us little people of sin and evil - and which I'm very surprised to say, Ma, only began to hit the fan in the past few weeks, i.e. when the election was over. Isn't that a fierce coincidence?

There's the 15 per cent rise in the cost of electricity (on top of the 13 per cent last year), and an 18 per cent rise in the VHI (on top of the 9 per cent and the 15.25 per cent rises in the past three years), and a 70 per cent rise in college fees when even people in work can hardly afford Dublin rents, never mind students.

I suppose the corporate fatcat won't be too worried either about the 20 per cent increase CIÉ is looking for, or the €150 licence fee RTÉ says it needs (double that if there's a TV in the caravan at Brittas).

Or that the word is out that it's either no roads or toll roads for us now after the little adjustment showing that the €1.1 billion a year spend on our highways being trumpeted pre-election was a tad ambitious. So hello again Enfield - or that useless "relief" roundabout beside it.

Fianna Fáil has a simple view about traffic jams. It's that at least you're sitting in your own car; a few years ago, you wouldn't have had a car. Good, eh? There's talk too of a levy just to drop someone off at the airport. That's in case you were trying to save a few euro by avoiding the ruinously expensive car-parks. And let's draw a veil over the poor man who went to reclaim his car from the long-term car-park - after paying his €40 charge - and found all four wheels missing.

And do you know what else they didn't tell us before the election, Ma? That it's going to cost you €40 now, to go to casualty if you cleave yourself with the strimmer again and 25 per cent more for the prescription? And that 800 of the 2,000 new health workers won't be materialising? Ah no, that's not a cut; Bertie says it's "a moderation in the increases".

God, Ma, you can be an eejit sometimes.

But do you know what's funny? The one fellow who's going to get what was promised is Michael McDowell. He'll get his extra 2,500 gardaí - but only because they've had to admit crime is up by 18 per cent. And you know how we always suspected that assaults were happening all over the shop and were reading about it in the papers but John O'Donoghue told us not to mind the media? Well, Ma, assaults are up 93 per cent.

There's another funny thing. Pat Rabbitte says the Government knew a lot of this back in January but covered it up till after the election. Makes you think, doesn't it? Is this what Michael McDowell was talking about when he was snarling about everything not being "hunky-dory". Jaze, Ma, I think I'm getting paranoid.

The farmers are facing a 20 per cent subsidy cut and accusing the Brussels mandarins of trying to renege on an agreement - while the weather is rotting the potatoes in the fields.

GOD alone knows the kind of aggro John Dillon and the boys might unleash on the Nice referendum if this goes on . . . And can you see the benchmarking deal going through without a dust-up? Human nature being what it is, would you humbly concede that yes, the fellow who has been earning the same as you for years is actually worth more? They say Charlie's special savings scheme and benchmarking are going to leave a great black hole the size of billions, in the finances. The ESRI is warning that the Government will be a billion in the red by the end of the year. The Government says it will wind up in the black. Who do you believe?

So you see why we're all getting a bit edgy, Ma. We don't feel so good anymore. And we want to know whose fault it is.

While Bertie was on his roadrunning stunt just before the election, Ogilvy Communications did a little survey, asking people that if he was a car, what kind of car would he be? The consensus was that he would be a Ford Mondeo - great value for money, reliable, really comfortable on a long journey and above all, safe. Bless him.

Meanwhile, his campaign strategists - inspired no doubt by the Whirlpool appliances in the showroom they worked out of - laboured day and night spinning and laundering and sending out the whitest washing in the land.

They could have been honest with us, treated us like adults, trusted us to handle the truth.

Charlie says now that he was so upfront with us that he was giving accountancy classes.

How does that square with what he told Michael Noonan on May 13th? - "I can confirm that there are no significant overruns projected and no cutbacks whatsoever are being planned, secretly or otherwise".

So we're not to blame then; we were hoodwinked. Eh? Mmmh. Since when have we started believing election promises? The media - print and broadcast - did its best. One paper's full-page warning was surrounded with a dotted line for readers to cut out and keep - so the paper could say afterwards: "I told you so".

We didn't want to know. As Charlie said, we were content; just keep the money coming.

During a recent talk, P.J. Mara told a story about someone he met during the campaign who said the most influential radio station in the world was called WIFM. "What's that?" asked Mara. It means "What's Init For Me?".

Ma, it's freezing up here. Can I come home?