Government inaction

The summer takes shape. This evening was warm and balmy, and the scents of charcoal and grilling beef and lamb wafted through the trees. It’ll never be the south of France, but on a day like today, it’ll do. Meanwhile, cars and planes and ferries fill with raucous red-faced (and often shitfaced) bottle blondes and hesitant himbos, not to mention extended family matriarchs and children and other relations of any and all connectivity. Ah, summer!

Except of course, that suddenly, just like that, the trickle of redundancies and closures that we had been hearing about has become a steady stream and looks like it could soon enough rise to a flood. A summer of discontent looms, one that will without question expose the conceits with which the governing classes have amused themselves and bemused the voters over the last seven or eight years.

Many people and groups claimed credit for the Celtic Tiger when it was fit and fat and in its prime. Bejasus, even the teachers did. Certainly, a number of representatives from ASTI argued that the grand education of our young flexible well qualified workforce that was so lauded by foreign businesspeople was their doing and they should now get a slice of the cake.

I haven’t heard them, or any of the others who were so quick to claim credit for the good times, accepting the blame for the present dark situation. I haven’t heard anyone accepting responsibility for the corruption that has pervaded our political, business and religious worlds.

No, when things are on the up, everyone wants to be there, and when things go wrong, nobody knows nothing. Like politicians, they are happy to arrogate the limelight when there’s a good news story, or something they can exploit for their own profit, but they are much more reticent about putting their hands up to take responsibility for the bad stuff.

Now let’s be clear. I don’t blame teachers for the present economic downturn at all. I doubt they have any more influence on that than they did on the Celtic Tiger, which was little or none. And that’s the point.

But in this country, sadly, it always comes down to money, to the need to get your slice. And that has made the place very expensive. In general, we have paid ourselves a lot of money – more than our work is worth, in many cases.

Do we apply a consistent honest rate for the job? Not that often, it seems. It’s whatever the traffic will bear. So, we get high inflation, high ‘mark-ups’ and cost overruns all over the place.

The highest mark-ups, according to Richard Bruton, are in bars, hotels and restaurants. Is there anywhere that you won’t be ripped off? I mean, I had an espresso in a Hotel very near the Spire in Dublin, and I was charged 3.75 for a piss-poor bouillon that was made of some coffee or other, but probably in a button-push machine. Awful.

Next day I went to the Steps of Rome, on the expensive side of the river, and was charged 1.70 for the real thing, a small cup of thick tarry coffee that you could walk across. No contest.

But then, it’s run by Italians.

I believe there was a news report laughing at us Irish saps on Canal 5, the French TV station. The report regaled viewers about the prices we have paid for our new bits of motorway, the new Liffey bridge in Dublin – there was one almost exactly the same built in Lyon for half the price – the Spire, the metro-to-be…

The Brits having a laugh at us is one thing – you expect that. But when the French start taking the piss out of us, then believe me, things are serious. And they’re right.

Mary Harney jauntily told a meeting of American businessmen that here in Ireland we are ‘closer to Boston than Berlin’. The reverse might be better. I read about the time the first hydroelectric station was built here in the late 1920s. We brought in Germans to do the stuff we couldn’t do.

Little has changed. We still have a problem with the idea of doing the job in the simplest, fastest and most economic way possible.

Meanwhile, a report from the UN Development Programme tells us that Ireland has the second highest level of poverty in the developed world. Of course, even the worst poverty in Ireland is mild in comparison with that in Third World countries, indeed even with some EU applicant countries like Romania. What this really means is that we have the biggest gap between rich and poor and that the high tide of the Celtic Tiger (RIP) lifted some boast very much more than others.

All of which, I suppose, is why people have started to boo the Taoiseach at public events. This may be understandable, but it’s an unattractive development. It smacks of the ugly habit of booing former Rangers players amongst those followers of the Irish football team who speak with Scottish or Northern accents.

Certainly, many people are frustrated and angry, but the booing coarsens political discourse, it smacks of the mob. Give in to one mob and soon enough you’ll be expected to give in to another.

There are courtesies that should be observed to the democratic process, whatever we might make of the outcomes. The people voted for this Government, after all. On the other hand, there’s every likelihood that the loudest booers didn’t vote.

We have a task – to rescue ourselves from the mess that we have allowed to be created around us. Maybe the local elections next year will offer us a chance to do that. So, are you registered to vote?