As history has shown us, Ireland will recover
But a glance back over history should help provide hope for the future, depressing as things are at present.
When I first started reporting on business, decades ago, one of the biggest publishing events of the year was the Foir Teoranta annual report.
A subsidiary of the then state-owned ICC Bank, its sole function was to lend money to companies who could not get money from the banks (sound familiar?).
Indeed, the banking sector back then did not see lending to Irish businesses as either desirable or profitable and right now they are smarting so badly from their dalliance with property that they are once again regrettably absent from the commercial life of this country.
The state of the Irish economy overall is a far cry from where we were in the mid-1970s when Bishop Lucey, the then Catholic Bishop of Cork felt compelled to admonish the government over the numbers leaving the country in search of jobs.
While people are being forced to go abroad again, a lot are leaving well educated and are unlikely to end up as forgotten, lonely people living in flop houses around Britain.
We have built an education system that has resulted in a substantial presence of top class multinationals who are among the very best in their fields internationally, setting up operations here.
In Dublin this week, the executive chairman of Google, Eric Schmidt, said the internet giant was a “very happy consumer” of the Irish economy.
Google has well over 2,000 employed in Ireland, but its Irish boss John Herlihy was quick to point out that in terms of the right personnel a substantial number working for the company here are drawn from several nationalities, because we simply do not have enough Irish people with the right qualifications,
In fact, the US Chamber of Commerce added fuel to that debate yesterday when it said US firms had 2,000 vacancies on their books that they cannot fill due to lack of suitably qualified people here.
It is a further reminder that having the right caliber of people available is an issue for this core part of the economy.
We forget how revolutionary the introduction of free second-level education was in the ‘60s when it was introduced by the late education minister Donogh O’Malley.
That was a milestone for Ireland Inc and many argue that it kick-started the transformation of the economy by making a well-educated workforce available to meet the demands of the number of multinationals here.
But lately, those in the know in education argue our top-level degrees do not command the same respect as those granted elsewhere in Europe and in the US.
On the plus side there are signs that entrepreneurial spirit is growing in Ireland.
An Enterprise Ireland report published this week shows the level of entrepreneurship is growing, with the numbers setting up their own businesses on a par or better than those taking the plunge in other countries across the world.
It confirms that we are creating a fair share of people who are prepared to take a chance in business and this, more than anything, is what the country needs to drive the economy forward.
Despite the present difficulties the country has what it takes to get back to growth. History shows that the evolution of the economy has been slow and often painful, but we always manage to pull ourselves out of whatever difficulties we encounter along the way.
This time will be no different, but we will need a little more help and understanding from our friends in Europe.
