Strong communities can balance materialism

Economics: Harvard professor Robert Puttnam was invited to join the group hug held by Fianna Fáil in County Cavan this week. Puttnam's distinction is to have written a book, Bowling Alone, said to be particularly admired by Bertie Ahern.

Puttnam's big idea is that community is suffering because we don't "reconnect" enough with each other. He points out that while in the 1950s people in the US would have gone bowling in groups of five or six, we are now too busy making money. If Americans go bowling these days, it is more likely to be on their own.

His book is an apt one for our country and our times. The Celtic Tiger has made us rich, but we suspect that this is a Faustian bargain: we fear we have lost our souls in the process and Ireland is heading in the same social direction as the US.

As well as Puttnam, Maureen Gaffney, psychologist and head of the National Economic and Social Forum, was invited to the Fianna Fail "reconnection session", where she talked about childcare (as a psychologist she might also have been asked by Bertie to supervise the odd group hug between ministers and backbenchers).

If any issue touches the nub of what Puttnam is talking about, it is childcare. The rising cost of living and the rising expectations for living standards create material and financial pressures for ever more women to work. These pressures are a result of the choices we have made about the way we want to live - to improve our standard of living even if it means having less connection with families.

Margaret Thatcher was often accused of destroying communities and families in Britain. Did she really? If anything she merely lifted the lid on British society, exposing, rather than creating, changes in values that had been underway since the 1960s and 1970s. Our State has also given us more material freedom.

Should it have done so? Many on the left in Ireland aggressively promoted individualism and the "right to choose" in relation to personal morality during the 1980s. This implied an opposition primarily to the view of the Catholic Church, which was more in favour of State intervention. But the left is now dealing with the fact that many of our citizens demand, and have obtained, the same freedom from State control in relation to their taxes as they have in their bedrooms.

Ironically the left finds itself now in alliance with the Church on economic issues.

But both the Church and the left have lost the battle. As a result, we now have unprecedented freedom of choice. We are using it to get married later, have fewer children, get divorced more often and to spend less time with children and the elderly. Any consideration of the moral rights or wrongs of such choices belongs to another part of this newspaper. Here the focus must be on economic cost.

Once upon a time families cared not only for their children, but also for their parents. These days the State is left to look after more and more of what families no longer have time for: the care of small children and of the elderly. And as suicide, juvenile delinquency, alcoholism and mental illness increase, so the burden on the State will grow ever larger.

Declining family and community life will eventually show up on our profit and loss accounts and balance sheets. Take, for instance, the ageing of Europe's population, caused by our choice to marry later and have fewer children. A report commissioned by the European Parliament in 2001 estimates that this will add about 15 per cent to our tax burden by the year 2050.

So social values can shape economic outcomes. Take another example. This week Eddie Hobbs said that we are not only victims, but also perpetrators of "Rip-off Ireland". "Rip-off Ireland" reflects a mentality of the populace, not the Government: I overcharge you because I know (or believe) that if the shoe was on the other foot, you would do the same.

So it would seem that there is a need for some force to restore the ideal of the family and of ethics in personal and business behaviour. As we remove the State from shaping private morality, it becomes even more important to ensure that families and churches are strong. Paradoxically, the more liberal our State becomes, the more important it is for religion and family to give individuals the discipline and restraint that were once imposed by the State. Sadly all restraints on private behaviour are in decline.

And it gets worse: instead of working to revive its fortunes, many of those in the churches seem to have other priorities. At last year's Fianna Fáil group hug, Fr Sean Healy spoke to the party about social welfare policy. We might here draw some wisdom from Edmund Burke when he said that nothing should emanate from the mouth of a cleric but the healing voice of Christian charity.

By the same token, it is not the government's responsibility if we are becoming more materialistic, less family-oriented and less community-minded.

Where the Irish government can be taken to task is over the spatial sprawl and dysfunction that defines our urban and rural life. Fianna Fáil makes policy, not morality. Instead of inviting Robert Puttnam to lecture them on being more community-minded, Fianna Fáil would have done better to invite some decent planning and transport economists to its meeting. Its backbenchers might then learn about issues they can influence, such as how the land use, planning and transport policy mistakes of successive governments are working against community and family life in this country.

There are several lessons in all of this. A sound economy is not the be-all and end-all of a country's well-being. A market-based economy is the best way of ensuring that material needs are met. But we cannot live by markets alone. Government, families, communities and churches are necessary.

But we must use them in the right order. It is the job of Government to make a better world for people to live in. It is the role of churches and families to make better people to live in that world.

So let Fr Sean Healy concentrate on growing his dwindling flock and on the problem of the family. And let the Government concentrate on the problems of spatial sprawl and transport.

If everyone sticks to their knitting, then this country will have some chance of reaching its full, exhilarating potential.