1. A complete lack of ability to plan into the long term
Folks, there is just no escaping it. As a society, an economy and a state, we couldn’t plan our way out of something if our lives depended on it. Want the proof? Every economist worth their salt knows that any small economy is only successful because the government focus resources on developing a small number of high value-added industries. Think financial services in Luxembourg and Switzerland, engineering in Sweden and Norway, communications technology in Finland. It was the decision of American multinational corporations in the I.T. and pharmaceutical sectors which kicked off the Celtic Tiger in the mid 90’s by driving an export led boom. The country was awash with money and the government coffers were bulging. And what did we do with these resources? Did we invest it in something sustainable (both environmentally and economically) like renewable energy technology and research? Did we set our sights on developing indigenous Irish industry in even one high tech sector? No and no. What did we do with our money? Yes, that’s right, we built houses, hotels and apartment blocks. Everywhere. We gave huge tax breaks to anyone who wanted to build, well – just about anything (remember Section 23 and the ‘stamp duty saga’?), and we spent huge resources in both money and man power training thousands of our young men as tradespeople, many of whom are now doomed to emigration. After the inevitable and long foreseen crash, we now have a hotel sector which is insolvent, emigration rates rocketing, a near bankrupt government, a banking sector on its knees, and the worst recession in 80 years. Some plan it turned out to be.
2. A political elite of extremely poor quality
I’m not going to pull any punches here. Our politicians, from every party, are not as capable as their counterparts in the rest of western Europe. With some honourable exceptions, I have personally been shocked by the capabilities of some of the TDs and Ministers whom I’ve dealt with over the last few months. Political scientists point the finger at the electoral system and there would seem to be some substance to this. Ireland shares the PR-STV electoral system with one other country in the world: Malta. It reinforces parochialism and parish pump politics, and leads to individuals being elected to positions of power not because of their ability to run a good public service or to lead a country, but because of their ability to attend more funerals, sports matches and social events than their opponents. It leads to the Dáil often being more like a unruly lock-in in a country pub than the national parliament. Let’s put it more bluntly than that: Jackie Healy Rae TD and Mattie McGrath TD (the latter opposed the lowering of alcohol limits for drivers) make the laws that we live under and influence the direction of the country. Enough said. The electoral system needs to be changed.
3. The cosy relationships between businessmen, politicians and trade unions
I know that the recent budget has made this a bit of a moot point, but nonetheless, anyone who has read Fintan O’Toole’s “Ship of Fools”, will know just how incestuous the political and business classes in this country are. Hence the complete unwillingness and inability of the political elite to put the brakes on the property bubble (or any other commercial activity which gets out of control) even though that is exactly their job. Similarly, the Trade Unions were not calling for a halt to the property madness and for a more sustainable development model as long as the wages stayed high and the government’s benchmarking scheme was still in effect. By buying elections through wage increases, allowing the property bubble to inflate and lowering taxes all around, everybody was winning. Business got profits, unions got wages and the government got votes. That was until reality caught up with everybody.
4. Parochialism
Ireland is a small country. Very, very small. Sometimes we forget this, so for the record we have approximately seven thousandth’s of one percent of the world’s population. And despite our size, we have an incredible ability to fight and squabble amongst ourselves over, again, just about anything. During the boom, I cannot count the amount of news clips I saw of people insisting that “there is no Celtic Tiger down here in County X” or TD’s campaigning that they would “bring jobs and roads to County X”. Understandably enough given the electoral system, no TD ever runs on “bringing jobs and sustainable development to the Irish people”. We have suffered with the parochial, small minded mindset for long enough and have allowed politicians to capitalise on that parochialism for just as long. Time we broadened our minds a bit and think of what is in the interests of the Irish nation as a whole. After all, Ireland is still a very small place.
5. Alcohol
A strange one I hear you say. Well let’s face the facts. According to research in June 2009, Ireland has 250,000 alcoholics. I would suspect that the true figure is in fact higher. Anecdotally, I have never met an Irish person who does not have an alcoholic relative. I also know of at least five senior government figures who are raging alcoholics (yes, the same people who brought the country to the state it is in) and know of one in particular who only got their very senior post because they hung around to drink with the rest in the Dáil bar until the early hours. (For some reason, the word “Kazakhstan” and the image of a ‘bottle of vodka wielding President’ come into my mind every time I think of that scene). The same research stated that the direct cost of alcohol is €960 million and the indirect cost to the country is several multiples of this figure. But enough of the statistics, the reality is that there are countless people in this country whose personal, emotional and intellectual development is being seriously hindered by their addiction to a devastating drug. I know it’s great craic, I know the banter is just brilliant when you’re in the middle of it. But everybody knows deep down that alcohol destroys lives, it’s just nobody likes admitting it. How many more car crashes, drownings, accidents, suicides, murders, rapes, divorces, broken families and destroyed lives is it going to take before we say enough is enough?
6. Begrudgery
Americans don’t do begrudgery. Any Irish person who has ever lived in America will tell you this. If you are successful in any way in America, show some initiative or come up with a good idea, you are to be congratulated and encouraged. Not so in Ireland, where the opposite is the case. The result is that people in Ireland are discouraged from being different, being successful or being ambitious. New ideas, new solutions and new ways of thinking are few and far between. And in the absence of new ideas, we come up with the same old solutions, from the same old people, to the same old problems and end up making the very same old mistakes.
7. Lack of Entrepreneurship
This is closely related to number 6. When young Irish people can’t get a job at home, we only ever have one real solution: Emigration. We are losing some of our best people to emigration right now (including many graduates of Trinity). Why is emigration the only solution? Research has repeatedly shown that Irish people are unusually reluctant to set up their own business. It is very rare to hear of an entrepreneur under the age of 25 in Ireland, but not at all unusual in other parts of the developed world. Why is this? I believe that it is to do with our culture, and in particular the culture of ‘ Keep the head down or it will be hammered down’. Whatever the cause, we have got to lose this quiet jealousy which seems to envelop our people whenever somebody is successful. As long as they aren’t doing anything illegal or morally wrong, let’s encourage successful people, and not begrudge them their success.
8. Powerful Special Interest Groups (Farmers& Builders)
Two words: Tom Parlon. This guy absolutely cracks me up, but I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. In no other industrialised country would he be given the time of day. The former head of the Irish Farmers Association (Big Farmers), former PD Junior Minister (Government) and current head of the Construction Industry Federation (Big Developers) now wants the government to – get this – invest in the construction industry. What is worse is that he seems to be taken semi-seriously. Like I said, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. The IFA is probably the strongest interest group in this country (with Fine Gael and every rural TD in their pocket), to the extent that they somehow manage to get away with defending as ‘sustainable’ a sector which receives 80% of its income from taxpayers. German ones that is. I am sorry to have to explode the apparent myth, but farming in this country is not sustainable without enormous state hand outs. Why not?
Because food can be produced in Africa or South America at a hundredth of the price that it can here. Compare those handouts to the plight of, for example, the Waterford Crystal employees who took pay cut after pay cut in an effort to save their jobs, but in the end lost their jobs to workers in the Czech Republic and Malaysia. Two groups of people in a tough, competitive world, and both groups should be sympathised with. One group lost their livelihoods, the other continue to get government hand outs. Just like construction, we are putting the country’s resources, in terms of land, labour and capital, into farming rather than a more sustainable sector. Any ordinary person would think this foolish. But not so according to Tom Parlon and the IFA. He seems to be the epitome of everything that is wrong with public life in this country.
9. Excessive Individualism & Apathy
Excessive individualism doesn’t mean people being too different from each other. Far from it. I’m talking about people not caring about anything else other than Number 1.
To be sure, everybody needs to look after themselves. But have you ever heard the phrase “Sure I couldn’t give a fuck, what is it to me?” I can’t count the amount of times I hear it in the course of a day. It was given expression in the incredibly light and muted reaction the public had to revelations of corruption among senior government figures over the last decade. The truth is that, as a society, we didn’t care who was corrupt and who wasn’t, as long as we were kept in the style to which we had become accustomed. What we fail to recognise is that if everybody adopts this kind of ‘excessive individualism’, then everybody loses. We have the lowest overall tax regime in Europe, so when public money (which could be used for schools, hospitals and keeping sick children alive) is misspent, stolen, wasted or lost we do nothing. We need to care more about what is being done with our own money and the way the country over which we the people are sovereign is being governed. Otherwise, things are not going to change around here.
10. Civil Servants
I’m not having a go at teachers, nurses, guards, soldiers or frontline workers. I am talking about departmental officials. These are people who are supposed to ‘guide’ Ministers and the state more generally over a longer period of time than a typical 5 year electoral cycle. If we really do want to plan into the long term, then there has got to be a radical shake up of the public service. I know of one section in a department where the staff do “nothing from one end of the week to the other”, to quote a staff member. While direction has to be given from the top, the Civil Servants need to stand up and be brave enough to allow reform to come through so that we can begin to develop a long term vision for Ireland and its place in the world.
I am already sick of losing my friends to emigration. I don’t want to lose any more.
