As the year draws to a close, it might be worthwhile putting aside for a moment all of the complaints about what is wrong with this country and its political system, and reflecting for a change on what is good about our society.
This is not an argument for a retreat into complacency in the face of the undoubted problems that confront a lot of people in their daily lives. However, a bit of perspective is vital to ensure we don’t become ensnared in a political doom loop that could so quickly see all of the progress of recent decades unravel quickly.
We only have to look at the way the great institutions of the United States have been shredded by Donald Trump in a little over a year. For almost 250 years, progressives across the world have looked to the separation of powers conceived by the framers of the US constitution as the model for democratic development.
In just a year, Trump has dismantled many of the protections for citizens at the heart of the US constitution and turned government into the capricious rule of a deranged individual intent on enriching himself and his family. Yet he still commands considerable popular support.
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Closer to home, the experience of the UK over the past 10 years shows how a wrong turn such as Brexit can lead to political chaos and economic decline. Even when voters realise they have made a wrong turn, putting the pieces back together again can be difficult if not impossible, as Keir Starmer is finding out.
France is now threatening to head into the same vortex as the UK with the extremes of left and right dominating political discourse in the National Assembly. This has seen one prime minister after another fall in rapid succession, and prevented the government from dealing with the huge budgetary challenges facing the country.
By contrast Ireland has, for the present, remained a bastion of political common sense and continuing economic stability with continuing budget surpluses. The worst that is being said about the Government is that it is not showing enough energy in dealing with the obstacles to building the infrastructure and housing the country clearly needs.
Hopefully that is about to change, following the adoption of the detailed plan devised by the taskforce on infrastructure to reform the operation of the planning and legal systems, which have become obstacles to vital infrastructural development.
In spite of the fact that this country has never been better off – as evidenced by the rapidly rising population and the robust consumer spending over this Christmas period – a narrative of State failure dominates political debate and much of the media. “If you listened to RTÉ all day, you would think we lived in a sh**hole of a country instead of in one of the most prosperous on the globe,” a senior civil servant remarked recently.
Of course, Opposition politicians and the media have a duty to highlight the problems facing society. But the challenge is to find the right balance, so that citizens are made aware of problems that need to be tackled, without being led to believe that nothing is being done to address them, or that politicians simply don’t care.
The Peruvian Nobel Prize-winning writer Mario Vargas Llosa, who contested the presidential election in his country in 1990 and lost, warned that people living in stable democratic societies should be conscious of the fact that things can always get worse. He cited examples of how countries in Latin America including Argentina and Venezuela, as well as Peru, were relatively prosperous democracies before a descent into populist politics triggered economic disaster and vicious dictatorship.
This is why it is essential that we have a realistic political debate in this country, so that not only the Government, but its potential alternatives, are forced to confront reality – rather than being allowed to wallow in vacuous posturing.
Ireland’s remarkable recovery from the financial crisis only came about because politicians from Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil, Labour and the Greens had the courage to take difficult decisions in the long-term interests of society. This involved short-term pain for many but, as the Central Bank pointed out recently, household wealth has doubled since the crisis.
So the achievements of the political class, as well as their failures, should be acknowledged. The treatment of older people in Ireland is probably more generous than anywhere in the world, with decent State pensions and a range of other benefits, including the perk of free travel.
I recently bumped into a Dublin neighbour who had returned from a day trip to Cork, courtesy of free travel, where he had gone for lunch with some old friends. During lunch the discussion turned to whether or not there was an afterlife. It concluded when one of them remarked. “I believe in heaven because we’re in it.”
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So this Christmas season we should count our blessings instead of succumbing to the pervasive negativity that poisons so much of the national discourse.
