Packing a powerful punch

CURRENT AFFAIRS: Enough is Enough: How to Build a New RepublicBy Fintan O'Toole Faber, 272pp. £12.99

THIS BOOK will likely be seen as a sequel to Ship of Fools. In that case After the Ball, Fintan O'Toole's 2003 polemic, could be classified as a prequel. Surprisingly, that book isn't listed in O'Toole's biographical note in Enough is Enough , but I look on the three volumes as a trilogy about the Irish boom at the different stages of its evolution and disintegration.

Perhaps O'Toole never intended to write a sequel to Ship of Fools, but I suspect the revelations this year about the costs of the Anglo Irish and Irish Nationwide bailouts propelled him to examine the dysfunction of our political system, its tolerance of the behaviour that led to the collapse of these institutions, and the decision to place the entire associated cost burden on the national exchequer. This was more than a financial collapse: there was also a fundamental collapse in the capacity of the political system to act as the "government of the people, by the people and for the people".

This is an timely book in view of a probable general election in the coming year. Like the others it is an impassioned polemic, but the focus this time is on Ireland’s political culture and institutions and their manifest failure to deliver and sustain a genuine republic.

The book is in two parts, the second much stronger than the first. Part one is called Five Mythsand sets out to establish that the operation of political life in Ireland belies the claim that we live in a republic. O'Toole pulls no punches in these chapters. He disputes the common, "taken for granted" assumption that we live in a proper representative democracy where government and parliament alike operate to rigorous standards of accountability and public interest.

Instead, he paints a dreary picture of the sustained domination over a prolonged period by vested interests who have hijacked the political system for private gain. Ireland is one of the most centralised states in the democratic world, with 94 per cent of public-spending decisions made at national rather than local level, an arrangement that facilitates corrupt decision-making. The legacy of this flawed politics is evident in the public waste, disadvantaged schools, inadequate infrastructure and two-tier healthcare system that co-exist with blatant displays of personal wealth.

These chapters set the scene for the general argument, but they cover well-trodden ground and rehearse arguments that have already featured extensively in public debate. O’Toole may have a wider international audience with a less detailed knowledge of the Irish situation in mind in choosing this approach. I felt a degree of impatience with this section, and was anxious for a taste of the main course of the second part, where he identifies Five Decencies that must constitute the primary ingredients of political renewal.

Each of the chapters in the second section packs a powerful punch. It is a modern Irish version of what William Beveridge offered UK citizens at a dark moment in that country’s wartime struggle. Nineteen forty-two may have seemed an inauspicious moment to design a radical scheme of social insurance that would guarantee a basic standard of living. Yet it was exactly the right thing at that time to lift a country towards a better future. When Churchill and Roosevelt met in Newfoundland on August 9th, 1941, they added an unexpected item to their declared war aims. That was to secure “improved labour standards, economic advancement, and social security”.

O’Toole is correct in this basic premise. Our country is going through a painful economic and social trauma, just as Europe did in the war years. They saw it as a ripe opportunity to put in place the structures of a better society in the postwar situation. The UK passed the landmark Education Act in 1944 and put the National Health Service in place in 1948 at the time of the gravest postwar material shortages. O’Toole is on solid historical ground when he makes the case for a similar transformation here at this time.

His Five Decencies present an agenda that would offer ordinary people security regarding housing and pensions, healthcare, equality and citizenship. My own experience is that people express fear to me far more often than they express anger.They fear the loss of jobs, of homes and of adult children to emigration. So the security theme in these chapters is well judged.

The most eloquent is that devoted to equality, a recurring theme in social-democratic literature, based on well-established evidence that societies that promote equality have better outcomes under all well-being headings. One key lesson of the crisis is that more equal countries have shown more resilient economic performance than those that maintain huge disparities in the misguided belief that inequality has benign outcomes.

The book concludes with a working programme of 50 ideas for action. I have the accountant’s suspicion of round numbers. Why 50 rather than 34 or 67? Also, a list like this gives equal billing to some ideas that offer fundamental changes and others that are merely changes to administrative practice. I mention just one that I view as essential: the replacement of GDP as the measure of progress with a new index that emphasises quality of life. If we can win that one, many others will follow.

Joan Burton is deputy leader of the Labour Party and a TD for Dublin West