With the next general election likely to be influenced in considerable measure by issues of corruption in public life, other critical concerns for this society must not be forgotten. The Government rightly proclaims our economic successes but this alone should not be the determinant of support come election time. Our society is at a point of decision about its future shape and direction. Political parties and the social partners agreed in 1987 on a course which took us out of the years of high unemployment and emigration. Now the time has come for new choices to be made which will determine the nature of the society which emerges from our success.
The strategy of tax cutting on which the Government has been engaged has not come without cost: higher inflation, higher house prices, greater inequality and poor public services. That tax cutting is an essential element in our continued economic success is a questionable proposition. If the Government eventually goes to the country promising more of the same, then the electorate should look long and hard at what this means.
A series of articles by Maev-Ann Wren in this newspaper last week posed the question: "What kind of society do we want in Ireland?" On our present course, we are headed for North American levels of inequality and public provision. Yet our success is intimately bound up with our membership of the EU, where equality is greater, social services superior and where work is not allowed to dominate life.
At work today is a generation of young people, who have come to take jobs and ever lower taxes for granted. Eventually, however, they will have to come to terms with the effect of high house prices, poor public transport and minimal childcare on their desire to raise families. Then, they will discover the true price of an economic policy driven by tax cutting.
The Minister for Social, Community and Family Affairs, Mr Ahern, wrote on Saturday in response to the series that he and the Taoiseach had committed themselves to the ending of poverty in our society. That commitment sits uneasily beside the record of the Government, whose last Budget increased an already high level of inequality of income by relative generosity to the rich.
The Taoiseach and his Minister for Finance have shown themselves particularly touchy about criticism of their economic management. But this is not the time to stifle economic debate. Critical questions must be resolved. How fast is it sensible to grow this economy? What population do we wish to attract and sustain here over the next 20 years? Should we be aiming for ever greater wealth or should we instead reward ourselves with greater leisure?
The Government seeks applause for job growth during a consumer boom, a boom fuelled in part by tax-cutting. Critics of government tax-cutting, like the ESRI, remain confident that employment would have continued to grow without tax-cutting but in a more sustainable way. The Government would do better to concentrate its energies on the long term strategies which will ensure durable job growth and an improved quality of life.
Central to these is improved public transport and urban planning. Yet this is the very area where this Government has shown lamentable tardiness. Debate about the shape of our cities and society is not an academic luxury. This is the time for choices about the future. Our great economic success which was built over many generations should give this generation the confidence to make those choices. The political system will be failing the electorate if they are not debated vigorously at the next general election.