A rich country with unfinished business: Rewinding the week that was

It is far too easy to criticise the State.

It is far too easy to look at its undoubted flaws and to conclude the whole edifice is flawed.

It is easy, but it is wrong.

It is that sort of thinking that gives rise to populism and social incohesion. Sadly, we have seen some of it entering our politics. It festers, and it gives rise to the sort of violent threats being made against a number of our politicians in recent weeks.

By any measure, Ireland is a wealthy, prosperous nation. This is something Dan explored in his column on Friday, where he examined the statistics behind Ireland’s prosperity. Even the reports by the Central Bank and the Fiscal Advisory Council urging the Government to temper its spending point to the underlying positivity of the economy.

On the other side, a study in recent days by the ESRI found that one in five children in Ireland now lives in a family below the poverty line when housing costs are taken into account.

The institute says that more than 225,000 children are now subject to income poverty after housing costs.

Taoiseach Micheál Martin has said that child poverty and housing will be prioritised in the forthcoming budget. Let us all hope this is the case. 

We are a rich country, but, clearly, some of that wealth is not felt by many.

This is not an issue specific to Ireland, but it is an issue nonetheless.

I started to think about this societal juxtaposition as the presidential election began to heat up this week. Most of the candidates have said the election should be about having a national conversation. This is no bad thing. Every country needs to take stock on occasion to determine who they are and what they want to achieve.

After all, nations have different ways of finding their sense of themselves. 

Some acquire their identities through war, some through subjugation. Some are defined in their opposition to the circumstances of their past. Some are defined by a return to a glorious past, or in the seeking of a glorious future. 

Some are quite simply defined by their measures of progress. 

Ireland’s evolution as a country has been defined first by a rejection of our colonial masters and second by an attainment of the European standard of living, albeit unequally distributed.

We now find ourselves a quarter of the way through the 21st century. Literacy levels, infant mortality levels, technological indices of development, and more confirm us as among the richest of nations.

And yet.

There is a creeping feeling that the current situation is not what our founders would have envisaged for us. The Proclamation of the Republic declared the unfettered control of Irish destinies as the right of the Irish State. It guaranteed religious and civil liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities to all its citizens.

As with the United States, it saw its aim as the pursuit of happiness and prosperity of the whole nation.

And yet.

Today, we have a political economy which prejudices better outcomes for a 63-year-old over a 36-year-old. A generation, verging on two generations now, is unable to access the assets required to live a full and equal life. A system of governance that shies away from hard tasks and instead finds refuge in populist expansion of the State.

Consider the fact that trust in our institutions collectively is falling as measured by the spring Eurobarometer survey.

Our children will inherit the fruits of our good and bad decisions. Our political economy is unable, in some key sense, to deal with the challenges of housing our people, keeping them safe and free, and protecting them against the worst excesses of the climate crisis. 

Perhaps it is because the nature of these challenges is fundamentally unsolvable by a single natural state. Perhaps it is because Ireland has surrendered that part of her sovereignty that would have been able to deal with these challenges. Perhaps the challenges are simply beyond the pay grade of an economy whose entire population is the size of small cities in other countries.

Friedrich Hayek tells us we must search for imperfect truth. Whatever the truth, the intersection of the private and public sectors is the dynamic of how politics of this island work to set the tone for which, and for whom, solutions can be found. The ever-coarsening nature of our public discourse is the symptom of our inability to chart a path to a viable solution for any of these large challenges.

And yet.

Irish people respect EU institutions 20 per cent more than the European average. 

We still enjoy a depth of community feeling, what economists call social capital, that our peers would envy. We have a primary budget surplus we can use to try to fix at least some of our problems incrementally. We have a stable policy environment and a government with a commanding majority. 

If this frays, the result, as we see in other nations experiencing similar crises, is a collapse of the political centre, a takeover by left- or right-leaning populists, and a hollowing of institutions. 

The moment is nearly past to forestall a breakdown of the political centre by arresting the loss of the prestige it once commanded and bolstering its ability to solve the pressing problems of our polity.

There is a point about the role of citizens, also. Social capital is not simply a matter of neighbourliness or community pride. It is not just about picking litter for the Tidy Towns, coaching an under-10s GAA side, or writing a cheque to Concern.

Those things matter, but they are the easy part. True citizenship means recognising that the choices we make in our own lives either support or frustrate the solutions we say we want.

If we block new housing, we cannot also complain about house prices. If we pass on millions in inheritance untaxed, we cannot claim to care deeply about social mobility.

Even powerful sectors, from agriculture to finance, must ask whether the pursuit of their own narrow interests is consistent with the common good.

Despite its flaws, Ireland is a great country to live in by pretty much any metric. But, given the wealth at our disposal, it could be even better.

That is something to aspire to, and that should be part of the national conversation. 

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