PRESIDENT MARY McAleese made a most interesting speech about the state of the nation to a private luncheon at the Institute of International and European Affairs recently. Ireland had gone, in a relatively short time, from being the economic toast of Europe to being excoriated for a champagne lifestyle that was based on unsustainable levels of borrowing. We had come face to face with confidence and crises of confidence, she said. Consensus was hard to find. She suggested that “tabloidism, anecdote and stereotype” were fuelling heady panics. The President has a point.
We have become a nasty, self-interested society where heads on a plate, or pensions, are the media witch-hunt of the day to serve the court of public opinion. But, we have to get beyond the anger and constructively move foward to the next phase of dealing with our problems.
Falling living standards are a source of public rage. Although that anger is perfectly understandable, it should not be allowed to divert communal energy from the vital task of rebuilding the economy and strengthening society. As President McAleese pointed out: the most effective way of protecting our collective national interest is by pulling together and engaging in sensible, well-informed and reasoned debate. That is proving to be easier said than done.
Correcting past regulatory and legislative inadequacies are key requirements. Those who broke the law should be jailed. Those who introduced and operated the standards that marked the profit-driven frenzy of the construction boom years should be fired or censured. But not all bankers, developers, investors, regulators, or politicians are equally at fault. It would be absurd to suggest the economic mess was deliberately engineered.
Blaming others is not a long-term option. But if the public is to forgive and move forward, there should be some acceptance of liability and accountability by those who got us into this mess. National Asset Management Agency (Nama) chairman Frank Daly spoke yesterday of developers and speculators who, despite the property crash, were clinging to their old lifestyles and had not abandoned “an extravagant mindset”. He identified outrageous bank lending practices. And he warned that no development company was too big to fail.
Politicians, like other public servants, have been obvious and easy targets. They rewarded themselves in times of plenty and, insulated from the economic crash and rising unemployment, failed to move quickly enough to reform their system of pay, pensions and expenses. Now, almost two years on, Ministers have grudgingly accepted the harshest reductions in public pay. Their “leadership by example” was undermined by the self-interest of other serving Oireachtas members. The system of dual pensions will change at the next election.
In these circumstances, are there any grounds for somebody like Alan Dukes, aged 65, to be hounded to give up his Dáil and ministerial pensions?
Where will it all stop? We have to move beyond the angry phase and pull together across our diverse constituencies of interest.