Right, I’ve been stewing for far too long. I’ve been saying “Don’t get me started” for a while now, to anyone who’d listen. So, to put them out of their misery, I think I’d better get started. Time to get it off my chest.

To begin with. Nama. Or, more particularly, Anglo-Irish. I’m not an economist, but I strongly believe it should have been let go bust. But I don’t think Brian Lenihan had a choice. Ireland didn’t have a choice. The EU wouldn’t tolerate it. What’s more important: I am fairly sure that the EU wouldn’t have tolerated it under Bruton/Burton either. In return for keeping Anglo-Irish “alive”, Nama was funded by the ECB, and wildly creative accounting was permitted to exclude the enormous debt from our national balance sheet. It’s the politics of saving face, of denying reality.
The European aversion to a “fire sale” scenario is what underpins Nama, and yet, if you think about it, a fire sale is precisely what Irish entrepreneurs of the future need, to get this country going again. Give them access to the empty office blocks and housing estates at the real market value, (ie bargain basement) and let them build up new businesses from scratch. If everything was reset to its real value, then we would be ideally placed to take advantage of a world economic upturn- because Irish and multinational companies would be able to set up here so cheaply, and start employing lots of people in cheap empty factories with employees moving into cheap accommodation.
The money ringfenced to save Anglo-Irish could then go to support individuals caught in negative equity in their primary homes. There is no guarantee that it would “work” for them, anymore than there is a guarantee that it would “work” for Anglo Irish, but at least with home-owners, the terrifying prospect of being made homeless would be removed. To their credit, the Greens have been pushing hard for this “My Nama” proposal, and it has to happen soonest. It is the single most anxiety-provoking feature of this economic depression, and people would be far less worried about the future, and more optimistic, if they felt safe in their own homes. Economic recovery is a psychological thing, not just a matter of statistics.
Preserving prices in suspended animation for a decade does nothing but stagnate, stifle, suffocate. It’s a question of natural cycles - things have to die, to permit new growth to emerge from the rich humus of decaying institutional corpses. Phoenixes arise out of ashes, not out of deep freezers, preserving the living dead with a semblance of life, with airconditioning to suck the stink of gangrene away. Time to bury the dead.
However. We don’t have the option of doing an Iceland. We blew the money that the EU poured into our economy, but the price the EU is extracting from us now is typically European – a sustained campaign of fudging and shoring up. When you think of it, however, it’s how most countries work.
If we were to leave the euro, and renege on the debts that the banks piled up under our noses, our currency would not be worth the paper it was printed on, foreign investment would collapse, and we would then have to learn what real self-sufficiency was all about. Green ideas of sustainability would be the only ones that would make sense - but in a sort of grim post-apocalyptic way. The only things that might save us would be that we could be an exporter of energy - thanks to wind and wave power, schemes like Spirit of Ireland, and the new UK interconnector. But we would have to forget all notions of being able to afford foreign goods for a generation. I am not so much of a fundy Luddite to welcome that. I like my iPhone too much. Does that make me shallow?
I do believe that Fianna Fáil should be punished severely at the polls next time, for the evident mismanagement of the country prior to the last election. But I do also believe that they are not doing as badly as the opposition claims in dealing with the mess. Would Fine Gael have accepted unpaid leave for public servants, as opposed to wage cuts in line with deflation? They’d never have gone there. Where would that have left Labour?
I could go on about how affected I am personally by this recession, as a self-employed person, but I won’t. Let’s just say that I, and everyone I know, is coping with less money. But it seems terribly un-PC to point out how dramatically prices are falling. There was scarce mention in the media about the latest OECD inflation figures, released 2nd March, - because they don’t suit the media’s current, unswerving commitment to foment strife.
In January this year, consumer prices were a whopping 3.9% lower in Ireland than a year ago, the lowest drop in the 30-nation OECD. Nine out of ten countries in that organisation are coping with rising prices. The year before that, in 2008/2009, prices in Ireland fell 2.6%. Doesn’t that make it over a 6% drop in prices since 2008, approximately? Gas is a whopping 25% cheaper than it was in May 2009. Why doesn’t this get front page news, to help people get some perspective on what is happening in the economy, and to their wage packets? It means that, in real terms, Ireland is doing what it needs to do, but can’t do because of the euro - it is the equivalent of devaluing our currency. It may seem painful, or arbitrary, or unfair, and in many ways it is, but in real terms, it’s a hell of a lot fairer than the chaos of hyperinflation, which would inevitably follow if we left the euro.
There is a lot of rage around, understandably. But as Ryan Tubridy said the other day on the radio, (I’m getting over my allergy to him recently), we Irish love blaming others so much that we come out of the womb with a finger pointed.
The truth is, we’re furious with ourselves. We blame Fianna Fáil, we despise the Greens for propping up Fianna Fáil, and yet it was we ourselves who voted Fianna Fáil into government for so long. The fury that is driving the petty and mean-minded industrial action in the public service is because, let’s be honest, the labour movement feels conned by backing Fianna Fáil for so long. Bertie “I’m a socialist” Ahern was no such thing, and
well we knew it.
We Irish are lousy at empowering ourselves. We love to feel beholden to others, but we are wary of changing the system that disempowers us. Look at Willie O’Dea - a very successful politician in Irish, clientelist terms. Not because he did anything for his constituency, but he was a master at the art of fixing things for people, of demonstrating how powerful he was in making things happen for his constituents on an individual level. Because there is no independent ombudsman or tribunal where ordinary people can go to get help with their entitlements when it comes to medical cards or social housing. That would be too transparent, too fair, too equitable. But instead of challenging him to think selflessly and creatively to improve the lot of everyone in his constituency/country, they preferred to feel indebted to him and touch the forelock and give him their number one. We love giving away our power. We deserve what comes of it.
I hope come the next election that people who do feel angry about social inequality on this island will vote massively for Labour, not Fine Gael, because I do not believe their values are so different from Fianna Fáil’s. And, naturally, I hope that the Greens get some credit, eventually, for the relief that“My Nama” will give individuals in distress, for the introduction of proper planning law, (if Fine Gael stops filibustering it), for a reformed public service, for the greening of the national brand that a GM-free Ireland will bring, and for the rewards of the enlightened energy policy that will result in us being an exporter of energy when peak oil comes, as it is bound to do come the next boom.
But I doubt it.