The Future Starts Here

Begin on an upbeat note. That was the resolution. Let optimism prevail. It is time to find a new voice. To sing the body electric! And the soul of a newly spartan people. Did you think we’d crumble? Did you think we’d break down and die? We will survive!

All very well, but there’s a few hurdles to jump first.
I was driving down Fitzwilliam Place towards Merrion Square in Dublin last week. To the left and the right, the street was littered with To Let signs. There were close to forty of them along a short stretch of less than 400 metres. It was worse than looking at lamp posts during an election. The signs were everywhere. Testament to a world that has collapsed in on itself.
No one sheds a tear for landlords – why would they? – but this was still a shocking sight. Hard to believe. Not so long ago these buildings were full of workers doing their stuff. Where have all the people flown to? How can it be that so much enterprise has been crushed?
It isn’t the vacant buildings that matter. It is the fact that the companies that occupied them have disappeared. Solicitors. Architects. Design houses. PR companies. Maybe even the odd estate agent. All gone. Swept up and dumped into the dustbin of history. Victims, most of them at least, of forces entirely outside their control. An economic tsunami lifting them up and spitting them out. Businesses dying. Friendships with them. People who got to know one another through collaborating and who formed bonds of respect and comradeship. Who picked up the phone and talked and planned and sometimes argued – but who were fighting the good fight together nonetheless to make things work.
Now they are left looking at the damage that’s been inflicted by one on the other. Fingers are being pointed. At creditors’ meetings voices are raised. Accusations are levelled. A shout rings out. How do you sleep at night? But there are hollow looks on both sides. More often than not, the ones who have gone down borrowed heavily. It seemed kosher at the time but after the collapse in property values it turned out they were over-exposed. The banks have come looking for their loot. Trade has collapsed. What can a desperate man or woman do?
Some reached for the bottle of pills. Others tried to tough it out. And the rest have been ducking and diving and hoping that the grim reaper can be kept at bay long enough to allow a cunning plan to hatch. But cunning plans are harder to imagine than they used to be. The bottle of pills is still an option. But the insurance bastards might use it as an excuse not to pay.
Vacant buildings. Businesses fit for the cemetary. There’s a knock-on effect too. The custom from the people who worked in those doomed businesses, fuelled others: cafés and bars and restaurants nearby are struggling now or closing. Everything is contracting. Buyers are not just searching for value, they’re looking for blood. A new coarseness has entered the marketplace. Middlemen are volunteering to act as bullies, on a mission to force prices down in a world where suddenly there is an over supply of providers.
This is rationalised as being a good thing. But no one is offering to clean the blood stains off the carpet. And the stain is spreading...

I wanted to start on a bright note, I really did – but first you have to be realistic about the nature of the precipice, to the edge of which we have been pushed – and over which we are teetering. You have to undestand how much of everything is in jeopardy and that we will continue to slide unless someone at the fulcurm gets a grip. The dole queues tell no lies, as people do the only thing they can and take the Minister’s shilling.
To gain foothold enough to begin the long climb back, we need to think and act smart. We need ideas. We need energy. We need commitment.
That much is obvious. But we also need to be prepared to do things differently. We need to abandon false proprieties. To take the opportunity to re-examine the new shibboleths we have created over these past fifteen years and ditch those that are irrelevant, pointlessly moralistic or representative of the kind of new prohibitionism that limits and inhibits us.
Public policy must be re-designed to achieve the greatest possible level of equality. Attacking disadvantage at base has to be the top priority. Creating a great public health care system is next. Achieving the highest level of access to literacy and to education follows. We have to strive to create a genuine sense of inclusion and of fairness.
But there is no such thing as a perfect society. Nor is there a single public good that does not contain within it the possibility of being abused. Social welfare, for example, is a good thing. Not just that, it is an essential element in any civilised, modern, democratic society. Of course, it is open to abuse. But to see this as sufficient cause for an attack on the principle is madness. In fact to get too hung up on the idea that those who are abusing the system need to be hunted down or rooted out is almost as pernicious.
Shit happens. Don’t worry too much about it. The emphasis has to be on making things better, so that there is less need for welfare. It has to be on creating work and opportunity so that people can become engaged. In Ireland, as elsewhere, disadvantage is the single greatest cause of hardship, suffering and misery. Nine out of ten of those who are living through it want something better from life. Those who aren’t disadvantaged have to recognise that it is in everyone’s interest to address it, and to address it effectively.

Meanwhile, there is a pressing need just to get some juice in the tank, before the whole ship grinds to a halt. Since all bets are off, there is an opportunity to look again at a few key areas where the stakes are especially high. There is an election looming. Any incoming government has to prioritise: (a) renegotiating the deal done with the IMF and the ECB; (b) insisting on a debt for equity swap with the ‘senior bondholders’ who lent money to Irish banks; and (c) getting tough with the exploration companies in relation to our oil and gas reserves and how much we are paid for them. No party which is unwilling to take these responsibilities on board deserves your support.
But these are longer term goals. In the meantime, what can be done to boost an ailing economy and create employment? To date the strategists have got one thing right: they have recognised that the quickest way to get money rolling into the exchequer again is through tourism. People arrive on a plane. They spend a grand or two or three a head depending on how long they stay.
In this arena, we have to play to our strengths. It is fair to say that Fáilte Ireland are well aware now of the importance of the cultural agenda. Research shows that this is what visitors to Ireland are interested in. More often than not, those that come here have fallen in love with the idea of Ireland through its musicians, its writers, its actors, its comedians; they are drawn to its reputation as a convivial place of conversation, friendliness and warmth; they hear that we offer good food, fine drink and great hospitality; they want to share in the wildness of the Irish imagination and the creativity and sense of magic that goes with it. This is a hugely important part of the message we have to communicate.
But it is utterly counter-productive if they are greeted, when they do arrive here, by cities that are deserted after 11 o’clock at night. A capital city in Dublin where little or nothing happens after midnight. One where the pubs are empty. Or where the best restaurants are struggling to stay in business.
We need to look at what happens elsewhere and see how we compare. Why is it that they can party all night long in Berlin or Barcelona? These are cities whose offer is not dissimilar to Dublin’s. They are known for their culture, their openness to art and idea, their bohemian leanings, their gay friendliness. But their nightlife is so much better and more attractive than ours in every way. We have got so hung up on the prohibitionist idea that the way to stop people drinking is to shut up shop early that we have sacrificed any sense of what is good for the life of a city.
We need to move on, to get away from public policy that is fuelled by paranoia and media hysteria.
I don’t believe that there is a shred of evidence to suggest that the restrictions on nightlife, which have been driven by the Gardaí and the Department of Justice, have had even a remotely beneficial effect on how people behave or on the use or abuse of alcohol in Irish society. On the contrary, there is considerable anecdotal evidence to support the view that the restrictiveness is a major contributor to the problems of violence in and around closing time, as people are effectively dumped out into the streets in thousands, all at more or less the same time.
Which has in turn inspired others to stay at home, where they drink more and cheaper.
We have allowed public policy in this area to be formed by the wrong people for all the wrong reasons. We are about to see the same thing happen in relation to prostitution, with another utterly unnecessary and blatantly discriminatory law which will further curtail people’s freedom in relation to sex, without any significant benefits.
For no good reason, we have adopted a poisonously negative Calvinist attitude towards public policy, where the consistent emphassis is on restricting personal freedom, rather than on promoting good citizenship. The effect is to put all of the qualities for which we are rightly celebrated – the openness, the friendliness, the conversation, the craic (or the crack, as Christy Moore insists) – at risk. What writers worth their salt are happy with this drift into pettiness and inhibition? What musicians believe that a police run city is the holy grail? And so why is that what we want to offer the people who come here because they have been inspired by these same writers and artists?
We need to reinvigorate Irish social life. We need to empower Irish people to take responsibility for themselves.We need to ensure that when visitors arrive here there is a good time to be had. We need to encourage gays to make Ireland their favoured destination. We want a liberal, tolerant atmosphere. in which people can express themselves. In a city that was confident in itself, the colour and flambuoyance of Pride could be a weekly occurrence.
Damn the begrudgers: we want to be ourselves again. And in being ourselves to thrive, bring life back to the cities and towns – and thereby go some way at least towards turning back the tide against the forces of darkness that have beset us.
What we need is not pettiness but vision. The future starts this year.