We need to ditch our innate conservatism and seize the opportunity for fundamental systematic change
THIS COLUMN is at a crossroads.
In the manner of Robert Frost, two roads have diverged in a wood and I’m not sure which one to travel by.
The first road is the one we have looked down as far as we could to where it bends in the undergrowth. This is the Ireland with new international monikers: Eirn Go Broke (New York Times), Direland (Financial Times) and Tin Hat Time (Economist). On this path, we accept the need for sober and responsible action, in the national interest. We need to do the right thing for the long-term future of the country. I would like to travel on this road.
Ireland is in the deepest crisis since the foundation of the State. According to the IMF, our recession is the “deepest being endured by any advanced economy”.
Last week’s unemployment figures show that 440,000 people are on the Live Register, with almost a quarter under the age of 25. The Government must raise €25 billion in debt this year just to run the country.
So, constructive contributions and mature reflection are necessary to address these unprecedented challenges. This is the approach taken on Nama by Garret FitzGerald and Alan Dukes, much to the dismay (to put it mildly) of their former Fine Gael colleagues. As FitzGerald told RTÉ Radio One’s Morning Ireland last week, this is “not the best moment to destabilise things”.
The other road is very different.
It is grassy and has never had much wear. This path has potholes full of anger because it has never experienced consequences. The “national interest” has always intervened to deter us from this route.
Two examples.
When Alan Dukes was leader of Fine Gael he chose to support the economic reforms of Charles Haughey’s minority Fianna Fáil government in 1987. As part of his Tallaght strategy he decided: “If [the government] is going in the right direction, I do not believe that it should be deviated from its course.”
Likewise, the PDs made the decision in 1989 to enter into an unprecedented coalition with Fianna Fáil. Des O’Malley, leader of the PDs, told the Dáil: “This is, above all, a time for those who can work together in the national interest to do so.”
And so, on both occasions, the first road called national interest was chosen.
At what cost?
Fine Gael and the PDs kept Fianna Fáil in power during the most appalling period in modern Irish history.
The beef tribunal report outlined how decisions made by the 1987-1989 Fianna Fáil government, particularly by the then minister for industry and commerce, Albert Reynolds, “undoubtedly favoured” beef baron Larry Goodman, then a prominent donor to the party (page 232 of the report). These decisions cost the Irish exchequer tens of millions of euro because of tax evasion, fraud and EU fines.
In his autobiography published this week, Reynolds notes that the beef tribunal “was to bedevil me throughout my years as taoiseach”. Well, it probably “bedevilled” those dependent on social services a bit more because of cutbacks in public services made in the “national interest” given the wayward nakedness of the Irish exchequer.
And what of the Fianna Fáil governments courtesy of the PDs? This column eagerly awaits the findings of the forthcoming Mahon and Moriarty tribunal reports into the political decisions made during this period.
Ireland is at an extraordinary, critical juncture but we have been here before. And on each occasion our innate Irish conservatism kicks in and we embrace the status quo rather than seize the opportunity for fundamental systematic change. Instead, we are told to move forward patriotically without ever looking back.
When the word consequence is missing from the political dictionary then nothing is anybody’s fault. Any willingness to admit unconditionally that mistakes have been made is instead bypassed, like the Taoiseach did on Friday night’s Late Late Show, despite Ryan Tubridy’s best efforts.
We have never any obligation to learn from the past because the mindset of the past remains that of the present. If it is no one’s fault, then of course, no one can be held accountable and therefore nothing needs to change.
And whose fault is that? Fine Gael, the PDs, the Labour Party and now the Green Party put and kept Fianna Fáil in power for 18 of the past 20 years. In all this time, the only consequences have been to the taxpayer. Those responsible for wrong decisions remain in positions of authority without ever introducing real reform.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference