Reasons to be happier but faults still exist

A friend called from the US yesterday to complain about the bishops and the Eucharist. He went on to wonder about the scale of official corruption, the obstruction of inquiries and the Ansbacher accounts.

He railed about the inequities of the Budget and speculated on what lay behind the extraordinary decision to halve capital gains tax. He bemoaned the absence of real political choice here and the "suffocating" smugness about our economic success. (He didn't mention legal fees, the Sunday Independent, Mary Harney, Sean O'Callaghan or what passes for the Irish rugby team).

I told him there was more reason to be happy this Christmas than there has been for centuries in Ireland. That there is an unprecedented economic boom, unprecedented job creation and unprecedented wealth more widely spread.

I asserted that we have matured as a society, capable of confronting many of our difficulties, more open to ideas and solutions than ever before. We have a political system that now works better than ever before; the system and the parties which caused our economic crisis of a decade ago have rescued us spectacularly from that crisis.

There is more vigour in the arts than ever before. The towns and cities are cleaner. There is more of a prospect of resolving the conflict in the North than ever previously since Independence. Even the pubs are better and stay open longer.

I acknowledge that there are problems - the point is that we have fewer and less intractable problems than we have had previously. It should be acknowledged: we have never had it so good. Had my friend been interested, I should have said that the basis of this success has been primarily in education. The steady, substantial investment in education since the mid-60s has enabled us to benefit from the high-tech boom that has occurred in the world. And several people should be singled out and acknowledged for insuring that steady investment.

First, Patrick Hillery who, as Minister for Education in 1962, established a team lead by Paddy Lynch, then a UCD economics professor, to map out a strategy for investment in education. That team (which also included Martin O'Donoghue, later Minister for Economic Planning and, briefly, Minister for Education) produced the seminal OECD report, "Investment in Education", in the mid-60s and it laid the ground for the policies that were pursued in education over the next three decades.

Donough O'Malley, the Minister for Education from 1966 until his premature death in 1968, had the political nerve to inspire the breakthrough in education by providing free secondary schooling. Charles Haughey, as the then Minister for Finance, had the foresight to support the O'Malley initiative.

And since then all governments - those led by Jack Lynch, Liam Cosgrave, Charles Haughey, Garret FitzGerald, Albert Reynolds and John Bruton - have had the sense and steadiness to persist with that strategy.

OF course, credit goes also to the religious orders, the lay teachers, the trade union leaders and the civil servants who participated in that enterprise but it is fair that Paddy Hillery, Paddy Lynch and Donough O'Malley are singled out for special acknowledgment.

Membership of the EU has also been a major factor. Were we not members, the high-tech economic boom would have passed us and we would have missed out on the other huge benefits of membership, including the Common Agricultural Policy and the structural funds. The primary architect of our membership was Sean Lemass. Again, Paddy Hillery and Jack Lynch deserve recognition for successfully negotiating our entry 25 years ago.

There has also been the rescue of the economy from the disaster that seemed about to befall it in the early and mid-80s. The governments of Jack Lynch and of Charles Haughey from 1977 to 1982 did most to cause that disaster and the government of Garret FitzGerald was powerless to undo it.

It was the government of Charles Haughey that began the rescue from 1987 onwards. Charles Haughey, Ray MacSharry and, crucially, Alan Dukes, took the tough decisions that began the recovery - Dukes through the Tallaght Strategy which gave the minority Haughey government the political support and the nerve to do what was required. And that was continued under Albert Reynolds with Des O'Malley and then Dick Spring and later under John Bruton with Dick Spring and Proinsias De Rossa.

Yes, the Northern Ireland peace talks are unlikely to result in a "settlement". But surely they represent the start of a process that will result in a temporary settlement in a few years and, even if they don't, isn't the situation there so much better than what we have experienced in the last 30 years?

There are lots of inequities and insanities of course. The row over Mrs McAleese taking Communion at a Protestant service is Monty Pythonish. If the Protestant Communion service represents nothing, then how could Catholics be doing anything wrong in partaking in it? But all this ecumenical hand-wringing seems a little excessive, doesn't it?

But there are serious issues and what lies behind the decision to cut by half capital gains tax is one of them. The result will be to ease the avoidance of tax by the wealthiest in society - they will be able to siphon their earnings through this route to enable them pay an effective tax rate of 20 per cent while the rest of us pay well over double that. What is going on here. What conceivable economic or social necessity is there for it - we hardly need any more enterprise or incentive?

In spite of the abundance of new wealth, we still cannot meet the minimal requirements established 13 years ago for the easing of poverty. We treat the lowliest group in our society - travellers - despicably. We allow some hundreds of pitifully mentally disabled people to live out their lives in St Ita's Hospital, Portrane, in conditions that are truly shocking for want of the most minimal expenditure. (In one unit catering for 18 severally handicapped and disturbed men, one of the two toilets available to these men has been broken for nearly a year and the taps on the two hand basins in the unit have been gone and unreplaced for six months).

There are hundreds of people homeless in inner Dublin, many of them encamped on the streets beside new plush offices for barristers near the Four Courts - there is apparently no money to house the homeless but there is money to permit tax breaks for these barristers, whereby the net cost to them of these new plush offices will be zero (it is called the double rent allowance).

We were told for decades that we had first to create the wealth before we could redistribute it. Isn't it time this were now done so that by this time next year we may all have a happy Christmas?