ESRI optimists should wake up to realities behind ‘good times’ fantasy

We live in a world where suicide is as big a threat to young people as a road accident, where underage drinking is out of control, where the range of mental health problems is growing as our response to them shrinks. And that’s only a tiny part of the story.

READING the news reports of the latest Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) publication, I seriously began to wonder what planet they live on. You might have caught some of it on the news. The Celtic Tiger has been good for society as well as the economy. Everyone has benefited. Even the poor are less poor.

According to the press release accompanying the study, “the stresses of too much work and of juggling job and family life are less socially damaging than the stresses of too little work. National morale is among the highest in Europe. Social mobility has increased, as more people from modest backgrounds ascend into white-collar occupations. Even though there are problems in the health services, people’s health has improved”.

I’m only quoting a few of the findings here. The book on which these claims are based is called Best of Times: The Social Impact of the Celtic Tiger. And I have to admit that although I went looking for a copy in my local bookstore, it hasn’t arrived yet. I’m still debating whether I really want to send off €25 to the publisher to be lectured about “critics of the Celtic Tiger” who, apparently, “say that more money and goods have come at the cost of wider social inequality, declining community life, too much emphasis on work and competition, a more selfish, materialist approach to life and many other social ills”. And then to be told that “this gloomy view of the social consequences of Ireland’s recent prosperity is not justified by the evidence”.

Only a month or so earlier, the same body, the ESRI, published a report on who is at risk of poverty in Ireland. That study, entitled Multiple Disadvantage and Multiple Deprivation, outlined what it called five distinct dimensions of deprivation. These dimensions are described as basic items (that includes nutrition, heating, clothing); consumption (an inability to afford even modest purchases, like kids’ toys); housing; health; and neighbourhood/environment.

Deep, grinding poverty is to be found among those who suffer deprivation under all of those headings, and the earlier ESRI study found that one in 14 of the population is at risk of being what they call “maximally deprived”.

People out of work, people who are ill or have a disability, people who have little or no education — these are among the people most likely to be labelled “maximally deprived”. But the study also shows that those who experience one form of deprivation are more likely to experience another. About one in 12 of our population is actually caught in at least three of the dimensions described above, apart from the risk of deeper poverty.

And the study does accept that what they call “a small number of people” simultaneously experience multiple disadvantages in terms of poor education, exclusion from the labour market, low social class and disadvantage in the housing market, and it adds “the degree of inequality in life chances involved for this small minority is profound”.

Again, though, this ESRI study, despite setting out the facts, comes to the conclusion that “the fact that multiple deprivation and multiple disadvantage are relatively rare acts as a counter to the sometimes despairing tone of commentary focusing on a so-called underclass entirely detached from the mainstream of society. The evidence suggests that this concept does not have significant ‘purchase’ in an Irish context”.

So that’s all right then, is it? One of the richest countries in the world boasts a “small number of people” — between one in 12 and one in eight, depending on which official statistics you choose to believe. Many of these people are children, who surely can’t be held responsible for their own poverty, even if we want to get into the blame game. Many of them have little or no hope of ever making a contribution either to our economy or our society. But we shouldn’t be gloomy, or despairing, or critical.

Long live the Celtic Tiger!

I’m mindful of the fact that whoever thought up the clever title of the ESRI book — Best of Times — might possibly have had Charles Dickens in mind. His book, A Tale of Two Cities, begins with the phrase, “It was the best of times”.

Mind you, the rest of the sentence goes on to read... “it was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness… it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair…”

And isn’t that the real truth? Instead of constantly telling ourselves how wonderful everything is, shouldn’t we be asking ourselves how we solve the remaining problems? We live in a world where suicide is as big a threat to young people as a road traffic accident; where underage drinking is out of control; where the range of mental health problems is growing as our response to them shrinks. And that’s only a tiny part of the story. There are housing estates in Ireland that suffer an epidemic of childhood asthma every winter. There are places where it isn’t safe to play. There are neighbourhoods where kids are more likely to learn how to access soft and hard drugs then they are to learn algebra or history.

IS IT the best of times for elderly people living on tiny pensions and subject to extortionate charges if they need nursing home care, even in the public sector? Is it the best of times for kids who have language or speech problems, often related to circumstances of their upbringing rather than to any in-built disability?

Is it the best of times for people being made redundant at a time in their lives when they might never work again? And that’s to say nothing of the stresses and strains most families face in a world of commuting, expensive child care and fear of crime.

Sure, if you’re sitting at a desk totting up the figures, you might conclude that “the stresses of too much work and of juggling job and family life are less socially damaging than the stresses of too little work”.

It sure doesn’t feel like that, and the work of researchers all over the world has pointed to the dangers inherent in a breakdown of family life.

I could go on. The point I really want to make, though, is about the need for balanced debate. I’m not questioning the objectivity of the ESRI, but objectivity isn’t enough.

Last week we had the Minister for Health telling us that lying on a trolley could be a pleasurable experience. The ESRI telling us that we’ll always have poverty but we shouldn’t let it get us down is just a bit too complacent for my taste.

A Tale of Two Cities, of course, was set amid the horrors of the French Revolution. Among the most famous victims of the Reign of Terror in those years was Marie Antoinette who went to the guillotine with the people believing she had said “let them eat cake” when told there was no bread. I’m not advocating the guillotine for the ESRI, but it’s time they woke up to the real world around them.