HEART BEAT:Why did we swallow talk of grandiose plans? Why did we not call halt, asks Maurice Neligan
I HAVE emerged from hiding, now that the Lesser Authority has made her chrysalis-like transformation to brighten her groom's life. I am lighter in spirit seeing the happiness of the young couple and those gathered to wish them well.
I am also lighter in pocket (the Highest Authority said I wasn't to mention that but I am being rebellious).
Returning to the world, I awoke, blinked a few times and looked around. I found I was in some kind of fantasy land, much colder and with a chill wind blowing, such indeed that it disturbed the ruling elves in their holiday mode with all the golf and craic and all they so richly deserve for looking after us so well.
"Why is it so dark, where did all these black clouds come from? It's bloody freezing! What's going on? Well, it's like this: Winter, literally and metaphorically, is just around the corner and the little folk are becoming restless.
A Russian diplomat wrote of his country in the early 1990s: "Recession is when you have to tighten the belt. Depression is when there is no belt to tighten, the next degree, collapse, is when there are no trousers as such."
We're told now by the ruling elves that, apart from a few problems with the construction industry, it's not their fault. Even if that were true, which it is not, they totally ignore their real damnable culpability.
They squandered the good times and put nothing away for the rainy day. I use the word squander advisedly. The health service, the schools and universities, communication and transport infrastructures that should be basic in any developed western economy are, as you see them, seriously inadequate.
Don't take my word alone; you have eyes and ears. In today's Irish TimesArchbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin is quoted: "Our Irish society in its days of wealth failed to leave as its inheritance a quality of healthcare that it should have been possible to achieve."
John Carr of the Irish National Teachers Organisation (INTO) says that one child in 10 is in a class of fewer than 20 pupils - furthermore, he states that 100,000 children remain in classes of over 30 pupils.
The Minister insists that the Government's strategy to reduce class sizes is working.
A spokesman for the Department of Education says that 80 per cent of pupils are in classes of less than 30, and that the pupil-teacher ratio is a healthy 16 to one.
How do you reconcile these figures, other than by assuming that somebody is telling lies? Tautologies, semantics, ways of confusing basic and worrying facts, endless spin - and, when cornered, denial seems to be the order of the day.
We ourselves are not without blame. Why didn't we cry "halt!" when it was clear that the precipice was near? Why did we swallow talk of grandiose plans, reports, insubstantial images and promises? Why did we not insist on tangible progress?
Now we are told that it is an international problem. That is an insult to our intelligence. We know we are a small, open economy subject to the economic winds of the world.
We know that winds can become gales, even storms and that such can damage us. We elected you folk to devise plans and routes to take us through the turbulence and protect our frail little barque. You didn't do it and now we are in trouble.
It's worth pausing and considering where the money went. Much went on the trappings of Government itself. We have countless Ministers and junior Ministers, State cars and aircraft.
We have salaries for them that are higher than those of their counterparts in Britain, the US, Germany and France. We have multiple special advisers and we do not hesitate to employ outside consultants, at great expense, to do work that should be done inhouse by our own civil servants.
Nothing was omitted in the development of the panoply of power in our little land. We suffered from the delusion that we were right up there with the big players. It reminds me of Aesop's fable The frog and the ox, where the little frog goes home to daddy and says he has seen an enormous creature.
"Bigger than me?" asks daddy. "Much bigger," says the little one. Daddy puffs himself up and asks again; same answer as before. To cut to the chase, daddy blew himself up until he burst. The moral of the story is given as "self conceit may lead to self-destruction".
Instead of sustainable development, basic infrastructure, reasonable health and educational systems, what did we get? We got PPARS, electronic voting and the HSE. We got benchmarking to keep the natives from becoming too restless.
We got miles of overpriced, under-insulated and badly planned housing; we got acres of office space and industrial parks with no corresponding industries, companies or services.
We got the greatest white elephant of them all - decentralisation. Some list of achievement and it by no means complete.
Now we are told that matters are in hand. We will cut the already shamefully inadequate services and - "master stroke" - we are bringing the budget forward.
I am totally at a loss to understand how this will help. It just sounds to me like more nonsense.
• Maurice Neligan is a cardiac surgeon
