HEARTBEAT:We know how we came to this bitter pass. We know who was responsible, writes MAURICE NELIGAN.
USUAL MIXED April/ Easter weather here in Kerry. Glorious yesterday, atrocious today with the Carrantuohill range snow covered again. The gorse is in bloom and road margins and hillsides are covered with the bright yellow blossoms.
This is far more noticeable than last year. Whether this prognosticates anything or not, I don’t know. I have also seen my first swallow of the year.
Since my last sojourn, our local town Killorglin has sprouted traffic lights. This will be interesting to watch, particularly at Puck Fair. We’ll be getting a bus lane next, all the paraphernalia of modern civilisation. Where would we be going with no bells on our bicycles but into the future?
I am prevaricating because I really don’t want to write about the Budget and its aftermath. However, such dereliction is impossible and, accordingly, with some diffidence I will share some thoughts on the matter with all you fellow sufferers. I will start with the premise that there are insufficient masochists in the State to enjoy the pain inflicted randomly upon us all. To say it was unpopular would be a serious understatement; it certainly was that, but it was incompetent as well.
I will say for Minister Lenihan that he delivered his doleful message well. That’s the only nice thing I can say. There was a major disconnection between his words and the stricken, wasted landscape he was painting for us, his fellow citizens, almost as if he were saying, “I, the artist, had nothing to do with any of this; I’m just telling it the way it is.”
Some commentators were charitable and hailed it as the first step on the road to recovery. Maybe it is, but I think there is an insurmountable problem. I would like to point out to these kind pundits that as TS Eliot wrote “success is relative. It is what we can make of the mess we have made of things.”
Does the Minister and his colleagues take us all for complete fools? If so I would like to disabuse him of that quaint and arrogant notion. We know how we came to this bitter pass. We know who was responsible.
We understand that there is a worldwide recession and that this exacerbates our problems. We also clearly understand that the major share of our woes did not emanate from distant shores, but were of our own making. It was home-grown greed and complacent or incompetent government that lay at the root of our problem.
When I heard you speak with no acknowledgement of this fact, let alone an apology to the Irish people for the disaster that unfolded in your tenure, I felt that for the Government you represented there was to be no way back.
Let me see if I can paint a little word picture. There is a large placid cow (us) and beside it a three-legged milking stool upon which the Chief Elf sits. One leg represents his government, the next leg their feted buddies – the builders and developers – and the last leg, you’ve guessed it, the banks/bankers.
As long as the structure of the stool was sound, the old cow could be milked away, provided there was enough grass to keep her happy. However, the stool began to wobble. It wobbled because its design was faulty and the materials were inferior.
This posed a major problem since all legs were required to keep the rickety stool standing and avoid dumping the concerned parties on their respective arses, a so-called “hard landing”. Better maintain that the stool was fundamentally sound and might need a little adjustment and to get the cow to lower her expectations of copious grass forever.
This gradual introduction of bad news would be a “soft landing”. Unhappily that was not to happen as two of the legs collapsed simultaneously, the banking and developer ones.
Our cow and indeed overseas cows that had been milked assiduously to fill our buckets began to become agitated and demand proper management of their feed. We were reduced to balancing on one leg swaying perilously and desperately trying to retain control of the milking process and only hanging on by endeavouring to extract the last drops of milk from an increasingly stressed cow.
Now you understand that this is not the fault of the Chief Elf and his governmental leg. Far from it; their erstwhile buddies let them down.
They have promised us sturdier construction in future and in order to mollify the old pissed off cow, the miscreant legs will be pursued for their failure to hold.
Now you can believe that if you like. I don’t and a more likely scenario would be nod, wink, ‘eads down lads, it’ll all blow over and we can milk away again”. This translates into “we have a plan”. Tax everything that moves and if you’re forced to cut public spending, make sure it’s in non- essential areas like health, education and the Garda.
Minimal changes to our comfort, that goes without saying, and don’t disturb the sleeping masses of the public sector. The people don’t like this coupled with the fact that you never listen.
Your plan is ill-conceived on a wing and a prayer foundation. I hope that is no longer good enough for us. Confucius said, “the superior man understands righteousness; the inferior man understands profit”. Where do we want to go?
Maurice Neligan is a cardiac surgeon