YOUNG IRELAND: MAKING IT BETTER: Part II: NO GENERATION is handed the perfect country on a plate, certainly no Irish generation. Over the centuries our elders have handed us down varying degrees of war, poverty, division and social isolation. Each generation was defined by how they worked with what they were given and whether they rose to the challenge or headed for the shores.
Shane Fitzgerald’s piece (“Students seek out greener pastures to avoid recession”, Opinion and Analysis, October 29th) is understandable. My generation thought we had escaped this obligation, and for once would be handed down something perfect – a wealthy state with jobs and opportunity.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Our “misfortune” is compounded by a sense of betrayal. Those who came before us had a chance to do something brilliant with the wealth but instead they blew it.
Some politicians have called what the bankers did “economic treason”. My generation is not naive: we know this treason wasn’t confined to the boardrooms. It’s a neat trick to try and place the blame on a few. However, you all took the tax cuts, you all demanded more tax cuts, you never asked the questions you should have and you left us in an economic hole. The good news is that however badly they managed the economy, our parents did a few things right that simply can’t be undone.
For a start, no economic contraction will bring us back to the 1980s. No budget deficit will roll back a quarter-century of social change. For all the fear out there about the economy, we should remind ourselves that no spike in unemployment will restore the domineering power of the church; no economic bungling will destroy our desire to maintain peace in the North.
When I was growing up, I was often told about the 1980s. That decade became a byword for despair. Folks, we’ve all been watching and this isn’t the 1980s. It is because we have opened up as a country that we are more socially liberal. Elaine Byrne wrote of how we have to look beyond our shores for intellectual inspiration (“We must take task of nation-building upon ourselves”, Opinion and Analysis, November 4th). Thank God we have that opportunity, that we embrace such thinking instead of treating it with suspicion like previous generations. That we have access to, and respect, foreign intellectuals is something to be applauded.
If the US can throw off centuries of prejudice and elect an African-American, surely we can put behind us a near-century-old civil war and look for something other than tweedledum and tweedledee? Our politicians will no longer be able to go along with business as usual because we will demand more from them.
Our parents also made the smart move of investing in education. We have one of the largest, brightest and most-educated workforces in the world. And when we weren’t busy educating ourselves, we were busy J1-ing and inter-railing across the world. We’ve seen more countries and more cities than generations gone before. We know exactly what a well-run country looks like because we’ve seen it with our own eyes.
With this education and with this connection to the world, we have the ability and the means to lead. But lead ourselves to where? Young people in the 1960s and 1970s could be inspired by the socialism of the East or aspire to the capitalism of the West. In the 1990s and 2000s, there was no choice – just one glorious path to unfettered capitalism.
With the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the banks, we have been left with no ideology. If the task of job creation and economic renewal seems daunting, it is finding a replacement ideology that may challenge us most.
For me, the answer is to turn our backs on these failed ideas. We cannot worship infinite economic growth on a planet with finite resources and hold as the ultimate aim for our society the creation of material wealth. More importantly, we have to restore our sense of solidarity, now eroded by decades of greed.
Instead of rewarding governments for doing what is popular, we have to accept that as an electorate we must punish them for taking the easy option. I know others will disagree with this and have their own vision. But this energy and competing ideas is why we must stay in our country and not take the easy option of giving up and emigrating. For all the flaws we see in our politics and politicians, we still live in a democracy. If we engage with politics and our fellow citizens, we can emerge with a new Ireland that betters what was handed to us.
Those who want to give up and emigrate have bought into the lie that this country cannot change, when in reality the only certainty is that it will change. We may be children of the 1980s but we are not prisoners of the 1980s. We have the ability to lead and change this country, if only we can stay around long enough to do so.
Andrew Murphy is a 22-year-old law student at NUI Galway. He has a degree in sociology and politics, and has been active in student politics and the Young Greens
Tomorrow: Ciarán McGuinness – inner city community worker and businessman