As Kelly's mainly middle-aged acolytes queued in the rain to get in, it was like waiting for a Ghost Train, writes MIRIAM LORD
AMID FEARS of the gathering Contagion, anxious citizens made for the top of the hill and the old cathedral.
It was peaceful inside. Cool and dimly lit. They filed into the pews seeking sanctuary, sense and some cheap economic thrills on a Saturday night.
And there he was.
A frisson of excitement coursed through the congregation.
Let him through! He’s an economist! For it was Morgan Kelly, high priest of the bust, preparing to dispense the benefit of his considerable wisdom to the 500 ticket-holders who paid €16 to hear him speak.
We really should have had a blast of the Hallelujah Chorus. Or maybe the theme from The Omen. But the choir wasn’t on until later.
UCD’s professor of economics was at Kilkenny Arts Festival to deliver the Hubert Butler Lecture, preaching his economic gospel in the heart-soaring setting of St Canice’s Cathedral. It’s just as well the architecture lifted the spirits, because Morgan Kelly was never going to do it.
And if he did, the audience would have demanded their money back.
The crowd (and yes, listening to an economist is what passes for entertainment these days) was delighted to be in his presence. They were the lucky ones – the professor’s lecture was a sell-out and you couldn’t get a ticket for love nor money.
As his mainly middle-aged acolytes queued for admission in a downpour, it felt like waiting for the Ghost Train – that sense of giddy anticipation which comes with going into the darkness and not knowing what terrible shocks you might meet along the way.
Fright Night with Dr Doom. It was the only ticket in town.
Morgan Kelly has a touch of the Marlene Dietrichs going on, which only serves to enhance his box-office potential.
He isn’t as high profile as some of his fellow members of our economic hierarchy. He can pass a panel discussion without contributing an opinion, he doesn’t go weak at the knees at the sight of a microphone and he hasn’t a poster of Vincent Browne on his bedroom wall.
Instead, he tends to confine himself to dropping the occasional depth-charger in this newspaper, causing consternation among the experts and giving palpitations to the general public.
The reason that Kelly’s pessimistic predictions are eagerly awaited is that, by and large, they have been borne out.
But we have to say, Morgan is a bit of a disappointment in the flesh. He has an engaging onstage presence and comes across as quite charming. He also has a lovely smile. Which won’t do at all.
Broadcaster Olivia O’Leary introduced him, saying his audience was “hoping to hear the truth, no matter how unpalatable”. Then everyone sat back and prepared to be poisoned.
Kelly spoke for an hour on a theme of “What Happened to Ireland?” On Saturday, some of us were also wondering What Happened to America, with the news that Standard and Poor’s had just taken away the country’s gold stars and made everyone sit in the corner. Or something.
But the professor didn’t say too much about the unfolding international crisis, sticking to where we are now, how we arrived and how “we might begin to dig ourselves out”. There was an awful lot about how we got here – “we went from basket case to international superstars and back to basket case again” – but not a lot on the solutions front.
Then again, surrounded by the cathedral’s ancient marble tombs, it was a comfort to know that we all die in the end. No matter what Morgan Kelly has to say.
This wasn’t just a lecture. It was a performance. There was a lectern, but he ignored it. Instead, he paced around the platform, gesturing expansively as he spoke without recourse to a script.
He had very little new to say (according to the miffed financial journalists forced to give up their Saturday night) although his take on the role of politics in our unfolding economic misery is interesting.
Want a mortgage? Maybe you should join Fine Gael. As Kelly sees it, with the banks becoming semi-States, political patronage will revolve around the power to dispense bank funds.
Disgruntled citizens, unable to access lending, will look for a leader. “In time it’s quite possible that some Michael Davitt figure might emerge . . . and then the banks will be in trouble.” There might also be “the possibility of paramilitary intervention”. Happy days.
It’ll take us 10 years to recover from the property crash. By the way, house prices have far from bottomed out.
The international economy “is going bad very quickly”. The Obama deal “is only catastrophic”. Our children, who hold the key, are not being educated to the proper standard in “a dumbed-down education system”.
And the bank bailout is going to cost us billions and billions and billions more than the estimate being put about by the Government.
On a happier note, Prof Kelly thinks we will survive the euro zone crisis and return to the international markets.
Phew.
Then, free of that particular distraction, we can concentrate on the fact that our domestic economy is absolutely banjaxed.
One audience member wondered whether Morgan was being excessively pessimistic? “Honestly, I never thought things would turnout as badly as they did,” he replied.
He was asked his opinion of Bertie Ahern’s infamous comment about critics of his Tiger economy being so pessimistic he sometimes wondered how they didn’t commit suicide. “Bertie would not be somebody I would particularly care about,” he smiled, to thunderous applause.
Olivia O’Leary wrapped up matters. “Send us home happy and tell how bad it’s going to get.” Morgan duly obliged, to more loud applause.
God help us, but they’ll be looking to put an economist in the Áras next.
It’s all showbiz now.