IRELAND TODAY:IT'S JUST over a year since Wall Street and its Irish cheerleaders chanted "We are where we are" while Main Street reeled. Since then, every wrong-headed, populist Government economic policy, every catastrophic failure of the Financial Regulator, every rampantly greedy, short-termist instinct of the financial institutions and builders/developers has been exposed, writes KATHY SHERIDAN
A year ago, commentators were predicting something akin to the end of capitalism as we know it. Citizens were demanding humility, apologies, accountability, a purpose of amendment, radical reform, fewer tax breaks, an end to the bonus culture and a fairer share-out of the tax burden. So how is your head now, a year on? Still looking for other heads on plates?
There is a lot to rage against.
Only this week, headlines announced that banks are being “forced” to pay bonuses. But how long can a people sustain a condition of mass, impotent rage while remaining relatively sane and healthy? A few weeks ago, 1,200 people packed out the National Concert Hall at €25 a head to hear four journalists (“Four Angry Men”) give their scathing take on the culprits of the crash.
But when this reporter conducted a straw poll beforehand, it was evident that many people had moved on; they wanted to hear more about the future, less about the past. And yet, the bestseller lists are dominated by these men’s books. UK writers have produced similar works but failed to colonise the top five. So, clearly, Irish people continue to search for explanations – but what does that say about their state of mind?
In the past week, a broad-ranging social opinion poll, Ireland Today, conducted for this newspaper by Behaviour Attitudes, provided some answers – among them, the rather surprising one that the nation has indeed moved on. Emphatically so. That's despite the fact that half the participants believe the economy will be in a worse state this time next year. Asked to name the biggest personal lessons learned from the recession, overwhelmingly and unprompted, they said they should have spent less and lived within their means.
Just one in eight said it had taught them to beware of poor government and corrupt politicians, and even fewer blamed bankers. As for arming themselves against future recession, the aim is self-reliance; save more, spend less. Just three in 100 will approach the next recession by looking beady-eyed at government and corrupt politicians; only two in 100 will focus on untrustworthy banks, the same number who plan to be positive and take one day at a time.
This was no surprise to Dr Pete Lunn, a behavioural economist with the ESRI and author of Basic Instincts: Human Nature and the New Economics. “It’s very rare, when we take the biggest economic decisions or purchase of our lives, to get direct feedback. We never know what would have happened, for example, if we had taken the other option . . . Psychologists would tell you that if you want learning to be quick, what you need is direct feedback and make it salient. And that’s what’s happened here. It’s taken the biggest recession in 70 years but a whole generation has got direct and salient feedback about their behaviour . . . Everyone’s got a whacking slap in the face.”
AND NO-ONEcould accuse the survey respondents of being uninformed. Nearly two-thirds said they keep up with what's going on in the business world. The same number pay more attention to the news than they did a year ago. Even more believe the recession here is worse than in most other European countries. Successive opinion poll results suggest that voters are doggedly intent on a change of government.
The survey’s finding that nearly 70 per cent have not had a pay cut or had their working hours reduced, though backed up by CSO figures, has met much quiet scepticism on the part of economists. Dr Lunn is one of the exceptions, saying it backs up solid evidence that for morale and productivity reasons, most company managers prefer to sack people than make pay cuts across the board.
The question of whether people are working longer, harder hours for the same pay was not addressed in the survey. Whatever the truth, the salient fact is that that some 800,000 people in this small country have seen someone in the household lose their job and one in five have had their hours reduced by an average of more than 40 per cent. Unsurprisingly, CSO figures reveal one in five households is in arrears.
Yet despite all that, three-quarters of those surveyed say they are content with their way of life. Even more impressively, 84 per cent believe Ireland needs to start believing in itself again.
Gerard O’Neill, chairman of Amárach Research, characterises this as “private contentment and public anguish”. It’s all about family, he says. “Family features massively in the Irish psyche. Irish satisfaction with family life is among the highest in Europe.”
That’s the private contentment. As for the public anguish, O’Neill suggests people are prepared to leave their warm homes to listen to the likes of Four Angry Men because they are seeking new channels through which to vent concern – and to find new ways to deal with uncertainty. “If you talk to charities, or look at the community response to the floods, people are rolling up their sleeves and coming together.”
But are we somewhat amnesiac when it comes to the axis of politicians, bankers and developers? “I don’t think people will forget what they’ve been through. They will carry huge levels of personal debt into the next decade in the form of negative equity, business loans, investments that went pear-shaped.” But remember, says O’Neill, “88 per cent of the workforce is still in employment, that’s something to keep in mind.”
Dr Maureen Gaffney, psychologist and chair of the National Economic and Social Forum (and currently writing a book on these matters) was another who wasn’t remotely surprised by the sense of positivity and desire to move on.
“The Irish are temperamentally cheerful, which is great,” she says, but we are in danger of being ground down by the pessimists.
“It’s an incredible tribute to our temperament that we are not so afflicted by all the pessimism around us. We have evidence on this ever since we started conducting polls on wellbeing and happiness; the Irish have consistently come out in the top four and that dipped only slightly in the last recession. The tragedy is that cometh the hour, cometh the pessimists and they are now the overwhelming voices.”
ISN'T THATdangerously close to suggesting we stop analysing the forces that got us here or the high-stakes solutions on offer? "No, it's not. In an evolutionary way, we needoptimists and pessimists – and I don't mean optimists in a Pollyanna way. We clearly do need that realistic assessment of the challenges, but we also need to believe there is a way to overcome them and that's the way of learning, personal happiness, experimentation, economic prosperity. The evidence for this is overwhelming and while it's appropriate to point the finger, it's gone way too far . . . There is a whole other story about accountability and that one hasn't been resolved. But where is this downward spiral going to end? The fact that people believe in the future isn't surprising, but as many implications flow from that as from the doom-laden figures in the news."
Dr Gaffney’s passion for the subject implies a scepticism on the part of others that psychology has a vital role to play in the nation’s recovery. Dr Lunn points out that the British treasury department just released a document by behavioural economists, outlining the lessons learned in recent years.
While he and Dr Gaffney might approach this from different angles, they are both adamant the psychology of human behaviour is as important as anything traditional economists might have to say. "We should be putting all our energies into finding ways to maintain this positive spirit because without that, we won't be able to collectively keep going," says Dr Gaffney. "I just think people are completely underestimating that you need a particular psychology to prosper . . . When you set out to do something, you have to believe you're going to achieve it. The nature of a big challenge is that you don'thave all the information. You have to take a stance. The evidence is that the most fundamental thing to have is belief."
Her frustration is palpable – and not only with the pessimists colonising the media. “The biggest, most serious lack facing this country now is that there is nobody at senior level in Irish society articulating a persuasive vision – that word is so overused – or scenario of the kind of Ireland that we can build. Nobody is totting up the things that are still right with us. Think of the people who have to deal with the most appalling personal adversity – in the face of the most awful challenges, you have to pick yourself up and begin again in a new way. Obviously, we have to know the pain ahead. But when was the last time you heard an account of what Ireland will be like in 2015, one that we can all relate to?”
Dr Gaffney detects a "huge hunger" out there for this persuasive vision. But who should articulate it? "It should be coming from political leaders on all sides of the House, from civic leaders, from anyone who has an influence on Irish society and opinion. We allhave a responsibility." So where does that leave the Four Angry Men and their ilk? "I think we should be drawing up a panel of optimistic women – no, okay, optimistic people," she says with a wintry laugh. "And if I can't get a panel together, I'll do it myself."
