Political mood of public superficially calm so far

THERE WAS always going to be a moment of political reckoning between the new government and the people. There are already signs that this moment may come earlier than might have been expected.

The change of Government, the royal and presidential visits, sporting victories, even the bouts of unseasonably good weather have raised the national mood off the floor. That’s certainly a good thing, but our economic crisis hasn’t gone away you know – and neither has the potential for political volatility.

It is worth remembering that it took three elections in the early 1980s, arguably even four elections in that decade, before sufficient political will emerged to take the tough decisions necessary to tackle our previous economic crisis. The economic difficulties we faced then were Little League stuff by comparison to the Champions’ League crisis we are currently fighting.

Nobody wants another election, and I am certainly not predicting that another one is likely. I do think, however, that we should not take the current bout of relative political stability for granted.

In addition to assessing the performance of the new Government after its first 100 days, it is worth assessing the state of the national political mood at this early juncture.

Dublin is certainly calmer than Athens, but it would be wrong to think all is at peace politically in Ireland. The Irish, as we have seen, do their rioting in the ballot box. Last February they delivered a spectacular beating to the outgoing government. That process itself released some of the national anger at our current predicament, but only some of it.

The nature of the shift in the election and the scale of the mandate for a change of government imposed exaggerated expectations upon the new Government. Fine Gael and Labour themselves made that burden all the heavier because, during the election campaign, in many explicit promises and numerous implicit suggestions, they raised national expectations to unrealistic levels on some of the key policy areas. They ran on a strategy of renegotiation of the EU-IMF deal rather than one of recognising our national predicament, and they will pay some political price for that oversell.

The conditions for further political volatility endure, even if they are not so prominent. The impact of the economic crisis on just two distinct elements of our society is particularly significant in assessing the potential for further political instability.

The first of these groups are the tens of thousands of long-term unemployed. According to the Central Statistics Office last week, there are more than 202,000 males and almost 94,000 females unemployed in Ireland at present. Some 55 per cent of them have been unemployed for more than a year.

The long-term unemployed include a large cohort of male former construction workers. Initially when the building boom slowed they may not have been too nervous. Many of them may even have been relieved to park up after the frantic activity of the boom years. They busied themselves with long overdue tasks on their own homes or those of friends or family. Now, however, after months of unemployment, many of them are traumatised by the gradual realisation that there is no apparent pathway back to work. The construction sector has shrunk to a shadow of its former self, and will never recover. There is no obvious role for these workers in the knowledge-based or export-led economy which it is said will fuel Ireland’s return to growth. There is much talk of retraining and redeployment but little reality to that, or resources for it, in the short term.

The apprehensions of these dispossessed construction “workers” and other long-term unemployed is shaping a growing angst in the housing estates and parishes where they live in large numbers. One-time breakfast-roll man is now on the dole – and his anger is likely to make him as politically potent as he was in his previous guise.

A second, more silent, and somewhat delayed, impact of the economic crisis is the worry it is generating in middle-class houses over their own private debt. These households may have a degree of job security (because they are public sector or otherwise), but they still live in constant financial fear which they keep largely to themselves.

Within their homes they have been traumatised by the gradual realisation that since the middle of 2008 all they have been able to do is “kick the can” down the road.

With a growing sense of hopelessness they have been trying to deal with the overlaying property-related debt at the same time as they have had to absorb savage reductions in their after-tax real incomes. It is a relief to them each month when they manage to pay the mortgage, and they worry that next month they may not. They have a sense of being at breaking point.

The angst from the middle classes will be all the more politically significant if, in addition to having to deal with a likely increase in mortgage interest rates, they are told in the autumn they have to pay another €1,000 or €2,000 a year in some form of household charge or increased indirect taxation.

If the Irish political mood has been superficially calm for the last three months, it is because the new Government has not yet had to make the tough calls. It will have to do so in the lead-in to the budget in November or December.

Then things will get very stormy again. If we have learnt anything from this country’s recent political history, it is that anything can happen.