West Africa food crisis appeal number:
0207 523 2141
Tom Gallagher
For a week each summer, insiders and outsiders in Irish public life gather in the picturesque little town of Glenties in County Donegal to debate the state of the nation. The Patrick MacGill Summer School is the brainchild of Joe Mulholland, a local man who rose to near the top of the Radio Telefis Eireann, the Irish state broadcaster. His contacts from years in the media enables him to lure top names to an event that commemorates the favourite son of Glenties – Patrick MacGill, a novelist and poet, a lot of whose work was inspired by his experience of the slums of industrial Glasgow.
This was the 20th summer school, held as usual in the large and comfortable family-run Highlands Hotel. The theme was ‘Reforming the Republic – Issues of Politics, Economics and Accountability’, or as Joe Mulholland put it ‘issues of survival or non-survival for the Irish state and its people’. He confessed that he couldn’t get a single Irish banker to attend. But much of the Irish political class had decamped there along with some of those who followed politics as a spectator sport. ‘Glastonbury for Geeks’ was how one journalist dubbed it and there was a democratic informality not often seen at such events in Ireland’s main neighbour.
The ‘great and the good’ (bankers excepted) did not mince their words about how dire the economic forecast was for Ireland in the two years since the ‘Celtic Tiger’ had morphed into a ‘Cold Turkey’.
He called on an Assembly of Citizens to convene this autumn in Dublin to confront a bankrupt elite.
Here are some of the remarks made from the platform during the three days I attended the event:
‘We have enormous problems comparable to those of a country that has been at war…A country that boasted about being the second wealthiest in Europe after Luxemburg now found that its coffers are empty’. (Eddie Molloy, management consultant)
‘To save toxic banks, the country will spend the equivalent of all the structural funds it received from the European Union during 37 years of membership’. [Dr Elaine Byrne, Trinity College Dublin]
‘The economy has collapsed, small and medium-sized companies are hanging on by a thread. If credit doesn’t start to flow, many small towns will be devastated’. (Dr Jim Power, Chief Economist, Friends First)
‘600,000 people out of a population of 3,800,000 have mortgages in negative equity.’ (Jim Power)
‘Public confidence has slumped not just in the government but in all public institutions’. (Dr Eoin O’Leary, economist)
‘There is nothing ordinary about Ireland in 2010…we may be at a point of danger that we never found ourselves at before. It could be the year when independent Ireland faces its worst crisis’. (Vincent O’Doherty, former head of the Superquinn retail chain)
Dr Ed Walsh, founder at the age of 32 of the University of Limerick: ’I suspect that this time next year, is if we can get here [to Glenties], Ireland will be in great disarray’. This unlikely revolutionary who, now aged 71, looked more like a Victorian accountant than a Jacobin regicide, even called on an Assembly of Citizens to convene this autumn in Dublin to confront a bankrupt elite.
The Glenties geeks were consoled by the news that the peace process in Northern Ireland still enjoyed a powerful momentum despite localised but ugly rioting having occurred in Belfast and Derry a short time before. Indeed, the main event, the 10th annual John Hume lecture, was given by the deputy first minister of the Northern Irish executive. John Hume, a key architect of the peace process, sat just a few feet away from the former terrorist or freedom fighter (take your pick), Martin McGuinness, now displaying many of the characteristics of a statesman who still preserved the common touch. Someone who was a butcher boy at an age when the teenage Gordon Brown was already plotting to storm bastions of power at Edinburgh University, McGuinness has evolved into a formidable politician who hides his natural talents behind a self-deprecating wit and an air of benignity that has often remained beyond Gordon’s reach.
There was one slightly disconcerting moment when, as he was talking about the latest stage in his remarkable concordat with Ian Paisley, a bat suddenly flew in from the twilight outside, circled around the platform and then quickly made off again into the night. But the academics, business people, retired civil servants, journalists and politicians were too absorbed with McGuinness’s speech to take much notice of this little creature and what, if anything, it portended.
The 21st MacGill had been launched by Garret FitzGerald, who had been Ireland’s taoiseach a quarter of a century earlier. Now aged 85, he is still intellectually spry with two books due to be published before the end of the year. ‘To stir things up – that’s my job’ was how he defined his role and he did not disappoint in a short opening address and subsequent interventions, refusing to pull his punches. Can anyone imagine a politician from this country, many of whose structural problems are as deep-seated as Ireland’s, talking with such bruising candour? ‘In some key respects our society has remained relatively primitive and notably ill-adjusted to the needs and pressures of the modern world. It lacks some key qualities essential to a successful state’.
The next day, the foreign minister, Micheal Martin, provided a good apology for the ruling party, Fianna Fail, in power throughout the years of boom and spectacular bust. This smooth and slightly Machiavellian figure, likely to be the successor of the hapless taoiseach, Brian Cowan, was criticised by Fitzgerald for showing no sign of understanding how bad the situation was for the country. He also criticised a leading front-bench spokesman of his own party, Fine Gael, for showing similar myopia in his MacGill contribution.
So this was far from being a stage-managed gathering even though the politeness of the audience ensured that the questioning never became vicious; and there were times when I recalled the gag from Central Europe in pre-Hitler times about ‘the situation being extreme but not hopeless’.
Broad consensus existed about the need to restore Dail Eireann to a central place in the political process so that it had proper oversight over crucial decisions. Noel Dempsey, the minister of transport, claimed that to succeed in Irish politics, all you have to do is look after your constituents but in the process you are likely to ignore the public interest and the wider economic good. An electoral system which places localism at such a premium breeds politicians who ‘end up as representatives of private industry and lobby groups and these vested interests even do your thinking for you’.
The accountancy profession was assailed for not taking regulation seriously and allowing the financial sector to make up its own rules. Dr Aibhne O’Neill, a lecturer in governance at Trinity College Dublin, argued that in good times, the feeling was widespread that there was no need to enforce regulatory powers. The mighty department of finance shrugged off the need for an external review and did the job in-house. When FitzGerald complained that there were not enough economists in the department of finance, it even threatened to institute legal proceedings against him. Bridget Laffan, head of humanities at University College Dublin, observed that Ireland increasingly relies on outsiders to write the reports revealing the greed and incompetence which brought down the Celtic Tiger.
Among the culprits, voters themselves enjoyed a prominent place. Too many were content to scramble after favours from politicians rather than insist that elections turn into public debates about the future of the country, according to political scientist Peter Mair who gave one of the most thoughtful lectures of the week. Citizens lacked a strong public morality which made it easy for them to take refuge in double-think about how they were being ruled. The problem was that for many generations morality had been narrowly viewed as comprising correct sexual behaviour with the Catholic Church’s influence being critical here, according to Dr Laffan.
According to retired civil-servant Dan Thornhill, the culture of possession remained stronger than the culture of performance and innovation with long-term planning scorned and the nation betting its shirt on a disastrous short-term property boom .
In perhaps the best-received speech, Dr Eddie Molloy, a management consultant, assailed the closed and dysfunctional management systems which shunned innovation and proper forms of oversight. He argued that Ireland suffered from a chronic ‘implementation disorder deficit’. The main carriers of the malady were ‘organised groups with strong bargaining powers’ such as property developers, medical consultants, barristers and trade unions; also senior civil servants, executives and board members ‘who have reached the top of their respective organisations because…they were unlikely ever to have questioned the prevailing culture’.
But at least the Irish are ready to confront their grim predicament. In stultified Scotland, the opportunities for such frank and open debates are virtually non-existent.
Molloy called for it to be a statutory requirement to report annually on what he described as the true wealth of a nation. Besides wealth creation capacity itself, he included quality of life and social justice, infrastructure, and the health of the public service and the extent to which its institutions were ethical, competent, and accountable.
Others called for enforceable laws that deter white collar crime for which nobody had been imprisoned in the last 10 years despite the plundering of state resources. The country cried out for fresh talent, but most able young people were unlikely to subject themselves to an aberrant political system. Once again the spectre of emigration stalked the island.
Pat Cox, president of the European parliament from 2002 to 2004 and out of national politics during the years of excess which followed, perhaps struck the angriest note. After confessing deep worries about the ability of his six grown-up children to fulfil themselves if they remained in Ireland, he argued that ‘the legacy of my generation to its children and grand-children has been trashed by so much venality and corruption. The status-quo in our republic is acceptable no longer’.
‘Mutually-dependent cronyism…helped to wreck our nation’, Cox concluded. With further bad news piling up for the republic, it remains to be seen what effect if any, the rumbles in the Donegal hills will have on a worsening situation. But at least the Irish are ready to confront their grim predicament. In stultified Scotland, the opportunities for such frank and open debates are virtually non-existent.
Tom Gallagher is professor of peace studies at Bradford University
