TROUBLED TIMES can bring out the best or the worst in us. Which it is to be still hangs in the balance. The first responses to the current crisis were not encouraging: the Government reached for old and failed policies; some of those with the most secure incomes were the most vociferous in declaring not an inch; and we sank instantly into a pit of national negativity and competitive victimhood. We have been pointing fingers, naming the guilty, blaming bankers and demanding that the rich and those who benefited from the boom must pay for this mess.
There are a few truths that need to be remembered. We all benefited from the boom: one measure of the extent to which we did benefit is the hole in taxes and the cuts now facing services for which it no longer pays. No bankers (or even estate agents) forced us to take out loans or demanded that we invest/speculate in property or become part-time landlords. Like all bubbles, the property bubble was based on the madness of crowds and we are the crowds.
We are now in danger of swinging the other way, wallowing in a sea of gloom, “I told you sos”, and populist righteousness about the behaviour of others. Certainly, there are people in banking and elsewhere whose actions should be investigated. But if we are to look to the past now it is more useful to do so in order to see what we can learn from it, not to indulge in the blame game and identifying scapegoats.
We have gone through many bad times and some good times. We should keep sight of the positives of the good times; the wider options, greater choices and the entrepreneurial energy that can be released by the right policies. From the bad times, we should learn not to repeat the mistakes of most of the 20th century when vested interests – the public sector, professions and farmers – ruled and everyone outside those charmed circles paid the price. We should be careful now of a 1980s-style all-absorbing concentration on the public finances and sector which decimated the real economy and caused the expulsion of many thousands of young people in that decade. We should remember that an excess of financial self-interest can damage us all.
It is a cliché, but true, that times of change are times of opportunity. We are facing a new world whose international shape is far from clear and beyond our influence. But it is within our power to shape our own new world. We should start by accepting the new realities; that our standards of living are going down, that our houses may not be worth what we thought they were worth two years ago for another generation, that future plans may have to be rethought.
Next week’s pre-budget debate in the Dáil will give our politicians an opportunity to set out their thoughts and ideas on how the future might look. It would be no harm to abandon, at least temporarily, our default mode of simply abusing them for everything and give them the space and support to think outside their own boxes and provide real, positive and thoughtful leadership. For those who rise imaginatively to the challenge, opportunity does indeed beckon.