Destinies dictated by the lottery of life

In Ireland on Sunday last week there was a nice fluffy feature headed "They're young, rich and glamorous, and they are growing up fast - Ireland on Sunday looks at the children who have it all." The feature dealt with the offspring of several well-known business people in the Republic and described their lifestyles.

One of those profiled was a Mr Gavin O'Reilly whose father is Dr Tony O'Reilly, controlling shareholder of Independent Newspapers. Mr O'Reilly jnr is currently deputy managing director of Independent Newspapers and is widely tipped to become the chief executive, if not immediately on the retirement of the current chief executive, Liam Healy, then after Mr Healy's successor goes. Mr O'Reilly jnr and his "glamorous film actress" wife have recently purchased a home worth more than £2 million in Dalkey.

Another of those profiled is a Mr Tony Smurfit, son of Dr Michael Smurfit, who is the controlling shareholder of Jefferson Smurfit plc. Mr Smurfit jnr, we were told, "heads up" the Smurfit France operation which cost £700 million in 1994 and has an annual turnover of £1.2 billion. Mr Smurfit jnr also owns a stud farm, Fournoughts, near Naas, Co Kildare.

A third profiled was a Mr Mark Dunne, the 24-year-old son of Mr Ben Dunne, formerly of Dunnes Stores. Mr Dunne jnr is said to be involved with his father in "a bit of property" and also in running the £6 million Westpoint health and fitness complex in Blanchardstown.

All these young chaps are no doubt fine fellows in their respective ways, but a few questions arise. How does Mr Gavin O'Reilly come to be the heir apparent at Independent Newspapers at such a tender age and so junior in the organisation relative to the experience and capabilities of others? How come does Mr Tony Smurfit, the heir actual at Smurfit France, come to hold such a prestigious position at such a tender age (34) and when there are so many within the Smurfit organisation more experienced and apparently better qualified? And how is it that Mr Mark Dunne should be involved in "a bit of property" at the mere age of 24?

Of course, the answer in each case is because their fathers are in powerful positions and are very well off, but the further question arises (quite apart from questions that might properly be put to the chairmen of publicly quoted companies), is this fair? Is it fair that wealth and opportunity and the good life should be so spectacularly contingent upon the lottery of which family one happens to be born into?

To put it another way, is it fair that people who happen to be born into families that are destitute are themselves almost certainly going to be destitute, irrespective of their innate intelligence, their innate initiative, their innate entrepreneurial ability, their innate capacities to contribute to the economy or to the enrichment of society?

The fact is that we have created a society which is deeply unfair because of terms of social co-operation that we allow to determine such matters. There is no pre-ordained reason why the children of rich people should themselves be rich at the expense of the children of poor people. And, yes, it is at the expense of the children of poor people because there is a finite amount of resources to go around and if some children are inordinately rich others are inordinately poor.

It is not just a question of poverty of material resources, but poverty of opportunity and of expectation, of developed capacities or influence, of power or access to and involvement in the arts and (of course) of political clout. And of more, a poverty of respect. People who are poor, relative to the rest of society, feel unequal, feel disrespected.

Some measure of inequality in the distribution of resources is the necessary ingredient in the stimulus that is required to create wealth, but should that inequality become the iron law where by unfairness is built structurally into the fabric of society?

A powerful ideological undercurrent in Irish society (indeed through the western liberal world) is the conviction that what people "earn" from the marketplace is theirs and is what they "deserve". But how could an arbitrary social arrangement such as the market-place have such unchallengeable moral weight?

Sure, ideal markets best regulate differing choices, but how could that on its own be the basis for the regulation of society, for the determining life options, for deciding what is fair and unfair? That is even if markets were ideal, that they were not rigged from the outset, as they are here and elsewhere in the liberal world - rigged in the sense that the players in the market-place do not start out as equals and that some can dominate and distort markets to their own advantage.

Accepting the inevitability of inequality arising from unequal effort, why should that be recycled and compounded generation after generation for reasons that have nothing to do with unequal effort?

There is only one available means for remedying this, and it is through the tax system, through thoroughgoing redistribution designed to achieve two objectives. The first of these objectives is to ensure that people born into poor homes are given a fair chance and that the inequality arising from that is compensated for as much as can be done through financial transfers. The second objective is to break up the concentrations of wealth and power.

To return for a moment to Mr Gavin O'Reilly. While it is grand that he and his family are able to enjoy their £2 million-plus home in Dalkey and while that in itself is unexceptional, it is not at all grand that he should come to inherit that vast panoply of power and influence which control of Independent Newspapers plc would give him. The exercise of such power by any single individual in society is a hugely unequalising force in society, inevitably consigning a large number to the margins of society.

If all that Mr O'Reilly jnr did with his inherited wealth was to splurge it on high living, the best response might well be simply to look away. But not if such huge inherited wealth is used to compound the inequality he already enjoys in the political, media, arts and business arenas. And, by the way, I am not picking on this Mr O'Reilly, whom I do not know or know anything about other than the above.

The concentrations not alone of wealth but of power have to be broken up if a fair society is to be created, and that, too, has to be done largely through the tax system and, perhaps ironically, through competition policy.

So while we might wonder what Mr Gavin O'Reilly, Mr Tony Smurfit and Mr Mark Dunne have done to deserve their fabulous circumstances, we might also wonder what the children of Coolock, Darndale, Neilstown and the other deprived areas of our country, along with the thousands of traveller children on the sides of roads, have done to deserve their appalling circumstances.