No more pennies from heaven? No more billions or begging bowls or jubilant politicians punching the air after bringing home the bacon from Brussels yet again? No more EU largesse? Ah, Jacques, say it ain't so. You know the style to which we have become accustomed. We like being festooned with those pretty, circular blue signs encircled with stars and the sweet legend: "This project is funded by the EU" We like barrelling along on the Portlaoise by-pass. And the M-50 is such a wheeze for putting the little motor through its paces. In fact we would love to side-swipe Kinnegad in similar fashion, s'il vous plait.
And are you now to dash this simple aspiration from our lips, we ask pathetically, our teary, Irish eyes and charming, bog-oak bowls raised aloft. Well, Jacques listened courteously to our tortured tale of The Kinnegad Tailback, which merely symbolised all the myriad reasons why he should continue to send our politicians home sweatin' but smilin', but he seemed unconvinced.
And soon the real source of the problem emerged: Jacques's eyesight. There is nothing wrong with it. This is just a guess, mind, but chances are he has been unable to open a newspaper in any or all of 1,237 languages in the past year without being savaged by the story of the Celtic Tiger and how Ireland's national income has soared by 50 per cent in seven years. So, no longer the "sick man of Europe", and indeed looking pretty pink beside those new EU-aspirants - Hungary, Poland, Estonia, the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Cyprus - casting envious eyes on our markets and pretty, blue signs, we were hardly astonished when cher Jacques asked us to move up and a little to the side.
Sorry, he said kindly but firmly, but ye can pay for the Kinnegad by-pass yourselves. We saw it coming and even the gloomiest of the doomsayers are admitting that it's no disaster. And Jacques will be gentle with us. We will get our billion a year in structural funds and £1.3 billion in farm funds up to 1999 as arranged and already accounted for. Then, we are to be weaned off our billion addiction slowly and gradually over the following six years. The landing, we are told, will be soft. If the tiger continues to purr alongside a soaraway GNP, we will hardly notice the bump - most of us anyway. But the fact is that there are people around the State contemplating 1999 with more than academic interest. It is inconceivable, for example, that the exemplary work and principles behind the Tallaght Partnership and its Get Tallaght Working off-shoot could be vanquished by dwindling EU money, but these are typical of the people who need assurances this week.
Anna Lee, who directs the Partnership's annual EU funding of £625,000, talks spiritedly about how their services are being accessed by the most intractable sector of all - older men who are long term unemployed. "But will I be employed in 1999? Will the office have to shut down? How much will be available for local development in future?"
At IBEC, its European director, Peter Brennan, is concerned for the welfare of the EU-funded Irish Trade Board, "hugely important in helping Irish companies export". At the National Roads Authority, Noel O'Reilly accepts that road funding will go down but, he says, "nobody could sensibly say that that's the end of the roads programme". No, but if everyone says that while competing for a slice of the national budget, difficult choices will have to be made.
Still, by crunch time and with luck, we should have most of the bases covered. Part of the reason for this is that we have been good little cubs, who have used our talents well, according to the ESRI. For the most part, we have used our billions in a way that will make a lasting difference as opposed to a quick income boost. For example, if the true import of EU structural funds were to be made manifest in this State, says John FitzGerald of the ESRI, then hundreds of thousands of our young people would be wearing pretty, blue badges with yellow stars and the legend: "Funded by the EU". This is because around a quarter of those billions have been sunk into education and training, into PLCs and FAS courses, post-primary and university - a true investment in the future.
A third of the billions are going on our physical infrastructure such as roads, railways, ports, airports - another investment in the future. The four national primary road corridors alone will devour a staggering £1.2 billion in the five years to 1999 when the current five-year plans for both the NRA and EU structural funds run out. Of that, the EU will cough up a formidable £800-£900 million. As well as all that, about a quarter of the billions are being pumped into the productive sector - IDA grants, rural development and forestry, fisheries and tourism. These will all contribute towards the "lasting difference" ideal of the structural funds.
But the surprising aspect of all this is that though the money has been "useful", it is not the reason why the economy is booming, says John FitzGerald. More important than the money itself was the fact that we were forced to plan for the money - and this, ironically, may be why no-one is reeling this week at the notion of the disappearing billions.
The Irish have learned to plan. To satisfy EU regulations, five-year plans had to be produced. Beneficiaries were then forced to report back to their paymasters to evaluate how they spent the money. "In the past, you could have had a road peter out or start to decay after a year. Now there has to be a five year plan. In the past, no-one would have looked back at something that was finished with, but they're now saying, `maybe we could do better'. And if you remember that EU money is a minority of the money spent, it means that taxpayers' money is being spent more effectively."
So close have we remained to the "lasting difference" ideal of structural funding and so relatively scandal-free have our transactions been that we are perceived as paragons in Europe, says John FitzGerald. We haven't been trounced by the Single European Market as we expected, unemployment is falling and within 10 years, our standard of living should be on a par with the EU average. Whatever happens to EU funding in the coming years (and remember it will not be disappearing but may be halved after several more years of argument), we will still have those roads and by-passes, the confident, educated workforce, the factories and the LUAS (maybe).
As long as people restrain themselves from reaching for "a German standard of living before they have a German output", all should be well, says John FitzGerald. But the amber light is flashing already and not just for people agitating (understandably) for their slice of the boom.
With new competition from the far cheaper Eastern Europe aspirants, can we continue to attract the multinationals if house prices in Dublin and Galway continue on a par with Brussels and Amsterdam - or if ordinary Dublin restaurants go on charging gourmet prices? Will short-sighted greed outpace our common sense? If we can pull back, says John FitzGerald, the pay-off will be even better than a Kinnegad bypass (for which, by the way, an "inner relief road" is being planned in the absence of the £40 million needed for a by-pass). "It's the fact that our children can look for jobs in Ireland. That's the huge pay-off for restraint," he says.
10 reasons to thank the EU
The Portlaoise by-pass Lahinch Seaworld and Leisure Centre The Hunt Museum, Limerick (grant of £675,000) Chester Beatty Library (re-location grant of £2.2 million) Dun Laoghaire Harbour Ferry Terminal Development The Northern Cross route Automation of 400 rural post offices (grant of £1.6 million) Dublin Tourism Office, Andrew Street Refurbishment of Cork's Crawford Gallery The River Lee tunnel.
And to come . . .
Restoration of the Royal Canal (to be fully navigable from the Liffey to the Shannon by 1999) LUAS The Celtic Voyager (the new marine research vessel) Southern Cross/M50 Dublin Port Tunnel Mayo National Park Kino arthouse cinema project, Cork Letterkenny Theatre National Gallery and National Library extensions.
