TAOISEACH BRIAN Cowen last night invoked the centenary of the Easter Rising in five years’ time as he made a “rallying cry” urging people to make short-term sacrifices to allow a return to prosperity by 2016.
Mr Cowen invoked the symbolically important commemoration several times during his speech to the agm dinner of the Dublin Chamber of Commerce last night, saying that this generation of Irish people should be prepared to “look beyond our self-interest” so as not to fail the next generation.
For the second year running, Mr Cowen’s speech of 20 minutes to the audience of almost 500 was unscripted, rhetorical in nature and impassioned in places.
At the conclusion, he emphasised the need to have the country on the best possible economic footing so as not to fail those whose sacrifice led to the foundation of the State.
“Yes, we were a generation that lived at a time and place of prosperity, but when challenged we looked to the future and looked beyond our own self-interest and said that, yes, this is a country that is worth working for and building.
“Yes, we can say in 2016 when we get to O’Connell Street and look up at those men and women of idealism that gave us the chance to be the country we are that: ‘Yes, we did not fail our children, but we did not fail our country either,’” he said.
During the course of the speech, Mr Cowen said that the Government was determined to continue making difficult and painful decisions for the common good, had no interest in short-termism, and that its strategy remained to fulfil key medium-term goals.
He also strongly rejected the contention that the country’s prosperity was founded on construction alone, arguing there were many other factors at play.
He said that some accepted that Ireland simply had a domestic demand that fuelled prosperity, that it was “construction per se and nothing else.”
He compared exports between 2000 and 2008 saying they had doubled during those eight years, and said the major multinationals that had invested in Ireland had still invested during 2008, during what he described as “the midst of a perfect storm” that brought together crises in banking, finance and the economy.
“If that vote of confidence can be given, surely we can reciprocate ourselves and have confidence in other sectors of the economy that they can perform. That is what we have to do,” he said.
The country needed a “can-do and win-win attitude” now more than ever. “We are going to come through it. Recessions end. The question is: are we in the best position that we can possibly be to pick up? Or are we going to prolong the recession and defer opportunities because we were not prepared to take decisions that we know in our hearts of hearts that we had to take now?”
Mr Cowen added that the lesson from recent economic history was that difficult decisions could not be deferred nor could the Government spend its way out of recession.
Referring to the sacrifices on pensions and pay made by the public sector, he said all sectors of the economy, both public and private, had a part to play.
“This country is too small for those kind of phony confrontations. In a republic, as citizens we have an obligation to pull together in times of uncertainty,” he said.
“We may not agree with major issues of the day . . . there is a still a lot more in common than divides us.”
Asserting that everybody needed to adapt to a new reality, he said that those who harked back to a time that will not return would not survive.
“We are going to come though it. Recessions end. Are we going be in the best possible position to pick up or are we going to prolong the recession?” he asked.